b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Book Reviews
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Wednesday, January 9, 2008
The 4-Hour Work Week
Got a new book over the holidays - "The 4-hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferris. One of my consulting colleagues recommended it a few weeks ago as being a good source for tips and ideas for some of the areas I've been investigating as a sideline the past few years. I love the book. I read most of it on a 2-hour flight from Atlanta to San Antonio, so it's clearly a fast read. But it's also a practical book, containing specific and usable ideas and recommendations in the areas of personal automation, personal outsourcing, product development, and removing yourself as a bottleneck.
This is what I call a "connector" or gap-filling book. I think you have to be at a certain point in your thinking on these areas in order for it to resonate with you. I've spent more time than I care to admit thinking about and poking around the edges of this stuff and made very little progress. I've read numerous books on time management and internet marketing and product development and PPC advertising and such. I've conducted a few of my own experiments. I've tried to find assistants and sources for doing tasks that are necessary but burdensome and low priority for me. But it just never worked like I wanted. There was never a serviceable "big picture" I could latch onto and I never got that mental "click" that happens when a concept gels in your mind and you can begin to make it your own. I don't know why this is so hard in some things and so easy in others, but I've learned to keep striving for that "click" and I know it when I feel it.
“4-hour Workweek” was a constant stream of little connections and examples that fit together to form a proper big picture, such that things which previously seemed isolated and disconnected are now linked in an overall vision. This is important for me as I have no energy for pursuing small things, no matter their potential, when I can't see a clear contribution to a the bigger goal.
I don't have any interest in copying Ferris' global vagabond lifestyle. But his approach to creating a low-pressure, low-risk, low-involvement business structure is compelling - especially if you have already been struggling to do many of the things he discusses. If you haven't, Ferris' claims may seem like just so much additional BS in a world already filled with it. But I don't think they are. My goal for 2008 is to implement as many of Ferris' strategies as possible, starting with the identification and outsourcing of my "boat-anchor" tasks and moving up to higher-level functions such as product design, marketing, etc. I will outsource as much of this as possible, and catalog my progress and failures here. It will be nice to have a theme for blog entries again.
Terry Frazier at 11:58 PM
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Wednesday, December 28, 2005
scanR - Mobile Scan, Copy, Fax
More on the paperless office. scanR let's you capture documents and/or whiteboard shots with your camera phone, and then returns them to you as PDF files via e-mail or as a fax image. The company's before/after photos are impressive. You need a 1 megapixel camera to play. [via Rob May]scanR - Mobile Scan, Copy, Fax
scanR helps you capture and share documents and whiteboards. scanR uses advanced imaging technologies to convert pictures into readable PDF files and faxes. Good camera phones can take decent photos of babies, pets and sunsets, but are not designed for scanning. scanR is an innovative service that turns your camera phone into a scanner, copier and fax.
Terry Frazier at 10:58 AM
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Monday, December 5, 2005
Automating the International Affiliate Sale
It also occurs to me that, with one of those things that can look you up via your IP address, you could dynamically generate a link to the correct associates site (US/UK/etc...) without needing to provide a whole bunch o'links (but obviously providing fall-back to a page with all of them in case it goes wrong).This seems like a good idea but I don't know anything about it - how difficult is it, are there existing tools, etc. An inquiry to AJAX and Remote Scripting guru Brent Ashley on the feasibility of Matt's suggestion led to hostip.info which has some interesting examples of what can be done with ip lookups. Below I've pasted in a snippet of code that should (if all goes well) display the national flag of an individual page viewer.
Terry Frazier at 2:18 PM
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