Author Archives: Patrick Rhone

My Indispensable Twitter Tools

Many who have been following along here know that I have become a recent convert to the cult of Twitter. For those not in the know, Twitter is a social networking site where you simply post updates, and see the updates of others, about what you are doing right now in 140 characters or less. Think of it as a giant chat room with your friends and people who would like to be. I have found it to be a great tool to keep up with my real world and online friends.

It seems that every Twitter addict has his or her own tools for posting and following their friends. Here are the ones I use:

* Twitterrific – I don’t think I could even use Twitter as much as I do without this wonderful tool. It is basically a desktop Twitter client that not only allows me to post and follow others easily, it also makes the ability reply to tweets and direct message others so much easier. There are many other clients like it out there, even for other platforms. Using a client, IMHO is the best way to interface with Twitter.

* A URL Shortening Service -Because you only have 140 characters, there is rarely enough room to paste a long web site URL. there are many web based services out there that take a long URL and make you a shorter one to post in these sorts of circumstances. I have been trying several of these – Tinyurl, Snipurl – my current favorite is URLTea. It does not matter though, the point is that if you are going to post a URL to Twitter, you will eventually need to use one of these.

* TwitterLocal – Find recent tweets from people in your area. up to a 20 mile radius. Great for not only finding people you know in real life that you did not know were on Twitter. Also good for seeing what is going on around you. I love to lurk here.

That is all folks. As you can see, I am no Twitter ninja. That being said, I tweet often and engage in intelligent conversation and that is the point. If you are on Twitter, please follow me. If not, you should be and when you are, follow me.

Brassing Adds Character: Cheap Fountain Pens

My good friend Ryan over at Brassing Adds Character has a good little series of posts going right now about cheap fountain pens. How cheap? Well, yesterday he highlighted pens that can be had for .00 or less. Looking to spend a little more? How about a great budget writer for $30.00 or under? There are some fantastic suggestions, short reviews and tips in this series. If you are looking to get into fountain pens without breaking your piggy bank, these are must read lists. Be warned though, nice pens are addictive and that piggy bank will likely be broken into sooner rather than later.

Dash/Plus in Action

Almost two years ago to the date, I wrote a Productivity Whitepaper describing my complete GTD/Notetaking/Staying-on-top-of-stuff system at that time form top to bottom. I described a number of tools, applications, processes – Basically everything I could think of that got me through the day. Of all that I included in the post, nothing has seemed to catch on and resonate with people the way that my dash/plus Markup System has. Merlin Mann even referred to it as “sexy” in a post featuring my whitepaper on 43 Folders. Not a week goes by when I don’t see it mentioned in a post on someone else’s blog or I see it in actual use by a friend or co-worker. Here are some examples of how others have put it to use:

* Joe Ely posted about how he uses it for A Simple Index Card GTD System over at GTD Times. A nice little HPDA system he has set up for himself.

To save you the jump, the dash/plus system works a little like this…

In all, it really makes me feel all proud and puffed up to know that I started something that has proven so useful to many. If this blog were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, I would be satisfied with this accomplishment alone.

Are you using dash/plus? Do you have a blog? Have you posted about how you are putting it to use in your system? I encourage you to link it up in the comments.