ProductiveWise

I’ve recently explained on MakeUseOf.com how to use Google Maps as a tool for distributed teams. In this post I am going to review other tools that support and improve the work of distributed teams. The tools will help you improve the way you share files, communicate, and work collaboratively with people not near you.

File sharing

One of the basic needs of a distributed team is the ability to share files. For ad-hoc teams, who do not work together on a regular basis, Drop.io is a great solution. Drop.io is a private sharing and collaboration web app. It lets you instantly create a mini site, called ‘a drop’, into which you can upload any type of file. You can annotate the file with comments or sections of text and use the chat feature for synchronized work sessions.

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…Read the rest of Web Apps & Software for Distributed Teams » ‎ ‎

Two weeks a go I gave a lecture in a social media seminar. Now I’ve translated the presentation I used into English and made it easier to understand without seeing the actual lecture.

The presentation describes 20 social media practices that will help you in your daily life. It includes tools to monitor your web presence, ways to track interesting topics and conversations, methods to find people and to get answers, and more.

It revolves around the following seven categories:

1. People Database
2. Keeping in touch and more
3. Conversation
4. Search
5. Collaborating
6. Monitoring and News
7. Self monitoring

I’ll be glad to get your feedback and thoughts about it.

Every MS word document is based on a certain template. The template determines how headlines look, the size, color, font of text, page layout and margins and so on.

By customizing the default template you can save a whole lot of time spent on formatting and also you can insert your brand characteristics so that they will automatically appear in each document you write. The best thing is that it is really easy to do, so let’s get started.

This is an excerpt of a guest post I wrote. To read the full post visit Edit MS Word default template to save time and get better branding on Online Tech Tips.

in this post you will learn how to save time and get the most out of your RSS subscription list in Google reader. the method presented here include 4 steps and is easy to implement right away. it is based on finding the sources that fit you best and unsubscribing to those that do not.  just to get some  perspective, take a look at my Google Reader stats. I stay on top of 1,043 subscriptions using that method.

My google reader stats

1. Star worth-reading items

the first thing you should do is to star items you like.

Do it whenever you find something that you would define as worth reading; thing you would like to see more of (Star an item by clicking the star next to it in the reading list or by pressing ‘S’ in the keyboard). ‎

…Read the rest of 4 Steps to Optimize Your RSS Subscription List in Google Reader » ‎ ‎

Have you ever sent an email asking a coworker to schedule a meeting, or a document for review to your boss, but remind bothered whether he will remember to do that or just read your email and forget?

Here is how to handle these situations. whenever you send an important task by email and want to be peaceful minded about it getting done, you should gain back control by scheduling a reminder. here is how to do that:

1. Include yourself as a BCC (that is, add your email address in the BCC filed). That way, you’ll get a copy of the email without the other recipients knowing about it. Then,



2. Move that email from the inbox to your calendar. Save it as an event a few days later (enough time for the other person to complete the task).



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…Read the rest of How to Keep Track of Tasks That You Assign by Email [Best Practice] » ‎ ‎