The Resident Geek: Tech Advice for Your Time, Tasks & Toys

Are you using your fax to collect tasks? You are if you’re leaving recent faxes in your fax tray to remind you of unfinished business. Don’t! Your fax machine is not an approved collecting point.

If you’re guilty of doing this, you may want to try a fax-to-email service like MyFax. This not only makes your faxes available to you anywhere you go, but it eliminates another collecting point by sending faxes to your email instead of your tray. Remember, the more collecting points you have, the worse things get.

For the rest of this post, click here.

Google is gearing up to sell its own phone built by HTC. What we’ve heard:

Microsoft’s latest automatic Windows Update is totally unacceptable. I’m talking about KB949810, pushed out in the latest raft of updates in the USA.

The software installed by KB949810 has only one purpose: to collect personally identifiable information about you and your computer and send it to Microsoft. It does this over and over, and Microsoft does not support uninstalling it.

No, I’m not kidding. This is spyware, pure and simple. Here are some details, known side-effects of this software, and possible remedies.

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Sometimes I’m asked to disclose my sources. Like, where does that high-tech insight come from? How do I troubleshoot all the nuances of all that GTD software?

While some geeks like to let everyone think they’re a lot smarter than they really are, that’s not me. Ask away.

Here are three quick tips to put you on the path to ultimate geekhood:

It’s been several months since our last post, and you’re probably wondering what happened to the Resident Geek. He served up several piping hot portions of GTD product reviews for you, and then, as mysteriously as he came, he vanished! Right?

Not to worry. There are big things in store. Click here to read more about what happened to the Geek, and find out what’s to become of his blog.

Check it out! We’ve added CRM software Relenta to our GTD Software Comparison list. Relenta’s founder and CEO, Dmitri Eroshenko, is a master networker (and a really good guy, too). After crossing paths with Dmitri a while back, it was really only a matter of time before Priacta and Relenta worked together as a team. We looked into Relenta’s CRM system, and this is what we saw: a mother lode of potential. Click here to read the whole review.

Sometimes the typical time and task software just doesn’t cut it. In the business world, large and small businesses alike use a breed of software called CRM (Customer Relationship Management), which makes it easier to reach out to your customers and manage sales. Not surprisingly, this involves tasks, appointments and the like.

There is a massive pool of CRM software to choose from. Some are well worth the time and money, but many do not even support GTD or TRO. When your main workflow is sales, this is a big deal. Since CRM is huge need for many of our customers, we started searching.

I love my Mac. It’s faster than my PC, it’s prettier than my PC, and it’s smaller. It’s not as compatible though. This really becomes an issue in regards to mobile devices. Unless you have an iPhone or iPod, it’s not likely to natively sync to your Mac.

The answer to this dilemma is third party software. But which should you choose? There’s plenty of software claiming to easily and conveniently synchronize your device with mac but which is best?

It’s hard to work in the GTD (Getting Things Done) world and not at least HEAR of “Remember The Milk”. As one of the leading Web/GTD software products available, Remember the Milk (RTM) has an unrestrained community spanning the globe. Applications for RTM include the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and all major operating systems. Before examining RTM, I had three questions in my mind: What makes it so popular? How well does it support GTD and TRO (Total, Relaxed Organization)? What does “Remember the Milk” mean?

Although I never did find out why they call it “Remember the Milk”, I did find the answer to my other two questions. So, after being subjected to a slew of tests, configurations and enduring a great deal of poking and prodding, RTM has now been officially reviewed by The Resident Geek.

There are over 6 Billion people on the planet and they all want to get the most out of their short lives. Not surprisingly, a whole slew of tools, gadgets, and programs have cropped up out of this huge demand. Unfortunately, this also means there’s a lot of junk to be filtered through. This post marks the beginning of a project to document and review the software and tools used by people around the world to get things done.

The first such review is for software that I personally use each day: Agenda Fusion 8.

Starting Monday, I will be reviewing GTD and GTD-ish Software.
Software will be rated on:
1. User Interface (Easy to learn?)
2. Functionality (Features, Compatibility)
3. Conformity with GTD Principles (See here)

What do we need from you? Tell us what your favorite piece of GTD(ish) software is and why. We will begin our reviews based on this. These reviews will be posted regularly and I encourage readers to post comments on their own experiences with the software.

Please feel free to recommend software not yet listed on our GTD Software Comparison Page. Thank you!

I have been using a PDA since I first got my hands on a Palm VIIx as a kid. You know, one of those 8MB B&W models with barely enough computing power to tell me the square root of four. Five years ago, a PDA was the height of geekiness. *Takes a bow* Only complete nerds contributed in the CE vs. Palm wars. This is not the case now. Businesses, CEO’s, mothers, and even your local football jock is looking into the new world of mobility. The question on everyone’s mind is: “Which one, which one?”

Perhaps you found a reason to get a cool new Macbook Air. Maybe you’ve dreaded the inevitable but finally bought that PC simply for it’s compatibility. Whatever the reason, you now face a major issue. Your network now has more than one operating system. If you don’t care about “Geeky” things like “File Sharing” or “Printer Sharing” then this may not be an issue for you. But when you care, you really care. In this tutorial, we’ll go step-by-step through everything required to properly set up a Mac/Windows based network.