Hasta La Ideas

If you’re not a subscriber to Fast Company magazine, I wanted to call your attention to a terrific article in this month’s issue “Six Tools to Help Tackle Overflowing Email” by Robert Scoble.

Five of the tips are exclusively for Outlook users. Since I don’t use Outlook, I haven’t been looking at tips for this system as I work my way through my 2009 new year’s resolution. However, I know that many of our readers are on Microsoft systems and could greatly benefit from Scoble’s advice:

If I were going to recommend only one tool, ClearContext (clearcontext.com; free for personal use, $90 per seat for project management) offers the most immediate productivity gains. The Outlook add-on looks at who you’re replying to and how often, then automatically prioritizes the messages. It color-codes the most pressing ones, graying out mass emails.

The article even provided some insight for us non-Outlooker users:

As much as I like these tools, the best way to improve your email experience is to follow the advice I gave those Cisco employees: Take some conversations elsewhere. If you need to write a press release or a report, and 10 other people need to modify or approve it, you’re much better off using an online word-processing tool such as Google Docs or Adobe’s Buzzword. One email invites everyone to join the collaborative workspace, then everyone can make changes or leave notes on the document itself. No revision tracking. No full inbox.

Thank you to reader Laura for first bringing this gem to our attention.

Bruce Sterling launched yesterday his third major web project (after the Dead Media Project and the Viridian Movement): The User’s Guide to Imaginary Gadgets (which is also Bruce’s new book project).

This project, which is currently hosted on Bruce’s blog, is described as “a catalog of the weirdest things imaginable”, and comes with its own manifesto.

The “users” of imaginative gadgets are people trying hard to think about the nonexistent in an effective way. Not daydreamers, but true users of the imagination: creative people active within many fields. That’s “Speculative Culture.” […]

I’m interested in gadgets that illuminate speculative thought. I’m especially looking for imaginary constructs at the edges of the thinkable. Mere “weirdness” is parochial. The “impossible” is trivial. I’m searching for gadgets that are mind-stretching — so as to explore the set of possible stretches. These are the “imaginary gadgets” that the imaginative can “use.”

The first gadget on the list is the Antikythera Device (pictured above).

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Après la réussite du Cube pour Canal Plus, le designer français Yves Behar a conçu cette moto électrique, entièrement écologique. Elle peut atteindre une vitesse maximale de 240 km/h, propulsée par des batteries au lithium. Un design futuriste à découvrir dans la suite.

Elle a été présentée cette semaine à la conférence TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design).
Les premières motos produites sortiront en 2010 et coûteront 53.000 euros.

Chris Anderson has an article today in the Wall Street Journal about an economy based on free goods and services online.

But as Luca De Biase (chief editor of Nova, the innovation section of the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore) points out: it is not the gift economy Anderson talks about. It is an economy of services that few pay for but many use.

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Earlier this week we told you all about the Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth Headset (sleek, lightweight, potentially free- ring a bell?) and introduced you to their “Laws Of Style” campaign, where you were given the opportunity to send style “citations” to friends caught committing any number of fashion no-nos. Cool, right? But then we spun things around- in order to win one of the three headsets, you had to tell us your most heinous crime of fashion. You definitely weren’t shy about it! Whether you blame it on the weather, inexperience, or oh, the eighties, we’re sure you’re a much better dresser for it today. Three of you earned headsets for your honesty- were you one of them?

Click READ MORE to find out who they are!