"Small Business Conversations by Network Solutions" - 2 new articles
A Smart, Sensible Way To Consume TV Online Using Clicker.comOnline television seems to have been all the rage over the past few years, with Hulu being one of the first sites to have major programming available on demand for free. Now, Clicker is hoping to be one of the big guys in the industry to have droves of television & movie fanatics flocking to it. Now the question is: just HOW will they go and be the next biggest video streaming site out there? Described as being the online version of TV Guide by TechCrunch, Clicker.com provides more context and semantics in how you find movies and shows you want to watch online. As a TechCrunch 50 finalist in 2009, Clicker entered the arena in high regards and since then has earned raves for its success in telling you what is available on the Internet right now and what isn’t. They also state that they are “the first "structured, comprehensive and unbiased guide for online television.”
After you’ve selected a show you want to watch, what is probably different from Hulu that could be both slightly disconcerting, but worthwhile is that Clicker shows you the source of the video. Whether found via YouTube, Amazon, etc, the shows can be shown in a more legitimate fashion. Just how is this more legitimate? Well this way, you will know that not just anyone has uploaded a particular episode and that it is from a trusted source. The fact that you know that Clicker is working with the other publishers like Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, etc to populate their website with information is a good step in showing that they are really becoming the TV Guide of the Internet – instead of channel surfing, it’s “site surfing”. But one confusion here would be for users who may have become accustomed to the fact that websites should show videos for free (a la Hulu or YouTube). The reality check is this new service will force users to actually pay for the programs that they want to watch if they’re from a paid service or allow them to watch the free ones. This is what separates Clicker from Hulu and YouTube – it is the service that tells you what’s online and points you to the sites with the shows. Hulu and YouTube are the types of sites that host the shows and can control whether they’re paid or not. Once you’ve found a show that you want to watch, just click on it and you’re given much more information on finding that specific episode or any past shows. In the above example, I chose to look up some information on Saturday Night Live and was greeted with a description, links, sites where episodes are available from, the ability to add the shows to a playlist on Clicker and you can share it using Twitter, Facebook, Digg and StumbleUpon. As an extra bonus, Clicker knows that this particular episode of Saturday Night Live might not be the one I’m looking for, so they’ve displayed a list of past episodes available online for me – which can also be filtered in a variety of ways. Oh, and IF I’m not happy with Saturday Night Live, then I’m given some related shows that I might want to look at along that same genre, which, in this case would be The Office, Mad TV, 30 Rock, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, etc.
It seems that everyone I talk to that uses Clicker find it very fascinating and adore the service it provides. Even the panel of judges from the most recent TechCrunch50 were enthralled…here are some of the questions asked during Clicker’s presentation (source: TechCrunch):
Judging from the answers given during TechCrunch50, I’d have to say that Clicker is a good company to bet on. Since their tag line is “What’s On Online”, Clicker truly takes the cake…it is a great service that focuses on providing great content to their audience. They’re not interested in harvesting that information and host the shows. Instead, Clicker is playing the great middleman and showing the users where to find the shows they want to watch and offer a truly “TV Guide meets on-demand” online television. It will be interesting to see how they progress but, in the meantime, Clicker is the one telling us what’s on next. Disclosure: Clicker is one of my clients. This post was written without consent or approval from the company and are my own words.
Year with GTD – One Year Review and Looking Forward
I had the book (cover picture to the left) all through 2008 and had flipped through it getting some basic concepts down. Knowing that I there was much that I hoped to accomplish in 2009, I took some time during the 2008 Christmas Holiday season to re-read the book and ask a friend of mine who is a big GTD user about setting up my system. His bottom line advice was to “keep it simple” and this is because when many people start using GTD they feel a compelling need to get ultra-organized. They usually add too many layers which can make the system unwieldy and you would easily give up on it. 2009 – A Year With GTDI decided that in order to commit myself and have accountability I began learning the GTD system and tracking my progress over the year. Many GTD gurus say it takes about two years to truly master the system and at the end of year one, I agree with them. My first order of business was setting up my system and I kept it to three simple areas – work, personal and movie. These were the three distinct sections of my life that needed separation. I then took my friends recommendation and the GTD book on what the call contexts “phone, computer, office, home, errands”. For a while that was working but after a few months of choppy and unpredictable processing I fell of the wagon and went back to my old ways. I was using software from Omnifocus but I was mobile so much I had a hard time recording things. Since I didn’t have anything for my phone I used two Moleskine books – one for work and one for the movie. This helped me capture things and review it later. About six months in and my work load was increasing with new clients and the film was in the middle of production many people would have felt overwhelmed. I have to say that listening to GTD podcasts and audio CD’s along with the GTD book on MP3 for review burned in me the absolute necessity to do a weekly review. As this started to make things easier I realized that I needed to implement a physical filing system. I had been trying to get away with this all digitally but I really couldn’t in order to process things faster and more effectively. Around October I got an iPhone and added the Omnifocus iPhone app which synced to my desktop version making my inbox and capture process along with processing tasks with due dates MUCH easier. This was the final element that put my system together and have it run at maximum efficiency. Lessons LearnedThere are five major things learned in 2009. 1.) The Weekly Review is the Key to it All 2.) If it is more than one task, you need to create a project 3.) You really need to delegate or delete it, you can’t do it all 4.) The simpler you make it the faster you can process it 5.) You will fall off the wagon but it is easy to get back on 2010 – Sharpening the Saw to GTD MasteryI have learned so much about myself, how I work and just how productive I can become. I know that I would not have been able to operate at the level I needed to and accomplish everything I set out to do this year with using GTD. Now I look to the future and a new decade so borrowing a concept from Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I am looking to take the GTD concepts which are ingrained in me now and take it to the next level. I see two areas for me personally that I can do this: 1.) Maintain and Improve My Relationships with People – I read this post from GTD Times on developing and maintaining successful business relationships and it got me thinking… I have good handle on the things coming across my desk and processing tasks but how do I improve the value of the relationships I have worked hard to establish? The recommend in the article that “The GTD system recommends that you have a series of lists you review on a regular basis. One list you should have is a relationship "hit list." This is a list of your 10-15 most important business contacts. You should review this list monthly to make sure you "ping" each of these contacts (send them a note, call them, take them to lunch) at least once per month.” I am going to try this in 2010. 2.) Adapt my Selling and Customer Management Process to Fit in the GTD Framework – I was inspired by this article in the GTD Times on Adapting GTD to Managing Sales and Clients. Advice that the author gives shows that GTD works very well for when you are in salesperson mode.
Are you Thinking of Using GTD? Are You Using the GTD System Now?Have any of you used GTD? Have you tried it and abandoned it? Why was that? Are you using it now and can’t imagine functioning without it? Any recommendations to take it to the next level? Leave a comment. See you in 2010 for GTD System 2.0. More Recent Articles |
The first thing that you’ll notice when you go into the now-public release of 
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This year for me has been one of renewal and re-direction. I started this year challenged with trying to pay off debt, find a new direction for my career and working on a film project that was only on paper at the time. Needless to say, there was a lot on my plate and if I realized that 2009 was to be a year of setting new directions, learning new disciplines and acquiring new skills. One of those skills was this productivity thing called “Getting Things Done” or what many of us affectionately call GTD. I have used other systems and 
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