My friend Raoul Widman just turned me on to this tool for blog publishing. I like it because it embeds itself into Firefox, my favorite web browser (so customizable!).
You can see here how ScribFire looks. It sits in the background and when you need it you just click on the orange icon at the bottom right of the browser window.
This is my first posting using this tool. How's it look?
The Quick Update
I've got so many things going on right now that I'm not getting a lot of blogging in.
One of the things I'm most excited about is Timemaker. It's a productivity software product I'm helping to import into the U.S. (and beyond!). What I love about it is that it is incredibly empowering to managers and business owners of "all shapes and sizes."
The thing that seems to hamper them the most is the lack of visibility within their organizations. What I mean is, using email (which is a pretty limited business tool when the tallying is all done) it's hard for them to see how coordinated (or uncoordinated) their teams are really being and whether the day's work of each individual is really forwarding the overall goals of the organization or department. The manager sends an email to someone to ask them to do Task A, but the question is, did it get done on time? Or was that person too swamped to really give it any attention?
In small organizations, it's relatively easy because you just do the rounds and see how your people are doing. But work is so global these days (remote workers) that it can be hard to do that kind of thing. So, you rely on verbal reports from employees which are usually glowing and can often distract from the real question: "is the task done?" And if not, when will it be done?
Multiply this by the # of employees and throw on whatever other organizational confusion d' jour may be presenting itself and important, critical-to-survival tasks can get a little difficult to track with any real consistency.
To put it another way, a friend told me he has about 700 employees in his organization. One day he realized that if each one were to fall a day behind on their tasks/projects, he's instantly 700 days behind. Even if the real-world implications are never quite that direct or cleanly stated, it's a sobering thought, isn't it?
Timemaker was built by an executive for executives, which makes it kind of unique as a product. Functionally speaking, it has all the features an executive would need to manage, and that's, after all, what really counts isn't it? It's all about how effective can you be--how well you're completing the right tasks which are forwarding the overall strategy.
In any case, much of my time is being spent giving live one-on-one demos to people while I get the webinars ready for action. I like this anyway because it helps me get a feel for the kinds of problems and issues that are facing today's managers and business owners.
Meanwhile my wife and I are having a lot of fun networking with folks as usual. This last week we helped 3 or 4 people connect with others in their field or who could use each other's services because, let's face it, it's always easier to promote other people than it is ourselves. And it feels more rewarding!
Have a great weekend!
