Mike Elgan

If you’re into personal productivity, you’ve probably heard about a newish, Web 2.0ish online list management service that launched earlier this year called Gubb. And you’ve almost certainly heard about David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” productivity system. The Gubb service, the Getting Things Done system and hundreds of other tools and methods for getting your […]

One of my favorite blogs is called Paleo-Future. It’s about yesterday’s visions of tomorrow. The blog finds newspaper, magazine and book clippings, as well as movies, videos and other artifacts from the past that made predictions about the future. The site is entertaining, because now that the future is here, so many of those predictions […]

Everybody’s talking about Google’s secret “My World” project, a cross between the virtual environment Second Life, and the social network Facebook. Like Second Life, “My World” would let you create a cute, cartoonish avatar version of yourself, build and furnish a virtual home, play games, see the avatars of and chat with friends, and see […]

While scanning the news lately, you may have seen the headlines about China’s Lenovo and its amazing new “solar-powered PC” product, the ThinkCentre A61e. You may also have heard that Dell will soon announce a solar PC of its own. And didn’t some company unveil a solar-powered laptop last year? And what about solar cell […]

I don’t know about you, but I find myself sitting through more than a dozen conference calls per month. Conference calls haven’t changed much in the past couple of decades. They’re still an unproductive and annoying waste of time. A typical corporate conference call involves participants invited via e-mail to “call in” using the number […]

Each communications medium offers unique power. E-mail is asynchronous and can broadcast “one-to-many.” IM and e-mail can be done on a PC and with a proper keyboard. IM and phone calls are instantaneous. SMS and cell phones calls catch people away from their desks, and grab attention by audibly ringing the phone. A new service […]

Everyone talks about blogs as if they’re something truly different from other kinds of Web pages. In fact, blogs are nothing more than content Web pages published with tools that make publishing super easy. Once you set up a blog, you simply open a page, type in your text, maybe add a picture or video, […]

Last week, I told you that your personal information is easily searched, and usually full of errors. I suggested taking action to correct false information, because employers and others may be checking up on you without your knowledge or permission. But even if you correct all errors, you’ve still got another problem. The Internet isn’t […]

Did you ever wonder how great people achieved greatness? Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, Chuck Norris — how’d they do it? Genius helps. But they also had one thing you probably don’t have — servants. You could probably achieve great things, too — right after you do the dishes, pay some bills […]

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? Ha! That is, like, so 1990s! Sure, some still get this painful condition, and people are still afflicted with other 1990s-era troubles like Internet and gaming addiction, not to mention tech support and cell phone rage. But since the turn of the millennium, our obsessive use of new technology has given us […]

A camera phone is more than just a camera and a phone, much more than the sum of its parts. Camera phones are the “Swiss Army Knife” of gadgets, performing the role of other tools — if you know how to use them. Here are ten useful tools you can find inside your camera phone […]

We spend a lot of time and energy learning how to find information — how to improve our Google searches; data-mine our own PCs and company networks; and discover the most valuable sites, blogs and feeds. But is finding information really our biggest problem? With information overload bloating our inboxes and boggling our minds, I […]