Google Fonts

Fonts and typography have a fascinating world of their own. A lot of thought and effort goes into creating a new font family. In the era of pen and paper, the handwriting gave an insight into the personality of the writer, perhaps the same is conveyed through their choice of fonts in the digital era.

My initial days in IT started with Verdana - the font looked clean, nicely spaced and easy on the eyes. However, it wasn't quite the right choice for technical documents, which was the real of Arial and Times New Roman. These two fonts were --and I guess still are -- so ubiquitous by their presence, they were considered as workhorse fonts.
Another font that caught attention was Helvetica, it's an elegant font, and it looks best in the titles or headers.
Around 2007, Calibri became the default font in MS-Office products and it became the new de facto standard. Although it still remains the default font, Microsoft later came up with Segoe UI, and it has been one of my favourite fonts for the past 4 years.

Recently, I have been experimenting with IBM Plex font family, and loving it. It is functional as well as aesthetic, and provides a much wider range of styles and a better support for Unicode.

If you love typography, and enjoy trying out different fonts, the Google Fonts site offers more than 800 free typefaces.

https://fonts.google.com/

Ike

Ever since being introduced to the Eisenhower Matrix, I have been using it manually in one form or the other; so it was a delight to find a productivity app specifically based on it.
Aptly named as "Ike" -- the nickname by which Eisenhower was fondly referred to -- the app presents us with four quadrants: FOCUS (tasks that are important and urgent), GOALS (tasks that are important but not urgent), FIT-IN (tasks that are urgent but not important), and BACKBURNER (tasks that are neither important nor urgent). The user interface is sleek and intuitive and provides most of the features needed in a To-Do list, such as reminders, schedulers, and notes.
One cool feature is Location reminder: You can specify reminders about tasks to be performed at a specific location. A boon for forgetful folks like me!
The free version is good enough, but I would suggest the full version which costs Rs. 100/-. It's worth it.

App Idea: Uber for retail goods and skills?

[Disclaimer: Perhaps an app like this already exists. If so, please do let me know!]

Consider this use case scenario:

I am sitting at my desk, working. I am having a terrible headache, and realize that I need to buy medicine for it. 

Just then, my wife informs from the kitchen that we need to order some grocery items. 

My little kid is tugging away at my leg; She wants a drawing book and a set of colour pencils for her drawing class. 

(Image credit: Far Reach Inc.)

So… I open this app and enter my list: A strip of tablets, a bunch of grocery products, and a couple of stationery items. 

The app sends notifications to various shop-owners around my home. Pharmacists see the medicine list, grocery shop owners see the grocery items and stationery shop owners see the demand for drawing book and colour pencils. 

Each of them enters a 'bid' in their app. 

I see the various 'bids' on my app. Depending on the location of the shop, the brand of the product, and, perhaps my past experience with a particular shop, I select the vendors. 

For example: I need the medicines urgently, so I would select the nearest pharmacy. 

I need good quality grocery and it's not very urgent, so I would select a vendor that could be little far away but with whom I have had excellent experience in the past. 

Each of the vendors that I select gets a notification. They pack the required items and send it out for delivery. Optionally, I can also mark some items to be picked up by me. For example, for stationery items, I may select a shop that is located on the way to my kid's drawing class. 

The cost for the items delivered would be auto-debited from my account in the same app, and credited to the respective vendors' account. The app can also provide a "credit" or "EMI" option in the cases where I cannot make the payment right away.

The app would also provide a facility wherein users can give feedback about various shops. This would make the shop owners pay attention to the quality of goods and customer service. 

Furthermore, this need not be limited to goods. How about 'shopping' for skills that are available for hire nearby. For example: I need to build a website, so I can enter it in my app, and the web developers in the area would get notifications which they can bid for.

So basically... This is Uber, but for retail goods. 

What do you think?

The Eisenhower Matrix

Dwight Eisenhower was a remarkable man. He served as the Supreme Commander of military forces and one of the chief architects of Operation Overlord (the Normandy invasion) that ultimately defeated Germany and Italy in the Second World War. During his tenure as 34th President of United States of America, he consolidated the USA as an economic and military superpower, started the Interstate Highway System (one of the biggest civil construction projects in history), founded NASA and DARPA, and forewarned about the threat of military-industrial complex. 
And when he found some time from all of this, he created the Eisenhower Matrix. 

Eisenhower Matrix is a simple yet highly effective productivity tool. It consists of four quadrants along two axes (Important vs. Non Important, Urgent vs. NonUrgent) and provides a guideline for what you should for a set of tasks in each quadrant. Important and Urgent tasks must be done by you and on priority, Non-Important but Urgent tasks can be delegated, and so on.

This Matrix can be extrapolated and modified in a variety of ways depending on individual preference. This infographic shows a couple of them.

To-do list app

I had been searching for a good to-do list app for some time now, trying and rejecting half a dozen apps in the process. 
My search seems to have ended, for now, with To-Do Prime. 

It has most of the features I was looking for, syncs across multiple devices, can work offline, has no ads, and is free.

Why forget?

One activity that would immensely benefit each one of us and yet does not need any additional investment, is to decide we will never have to use the statement "I forgot". With the plethora of reminder mechanisms available -- mobile alerts, email notification, web sites dedicated to generate reminders -- it's indeed amazing we still manage to forget anything.

All relationships, be it personal or professional, rely upon commitments. And nothing is more detrimental to a commitment than to forget it to begin with.

Dictionary of numbers

Just found a wonderful extension for Google Chrome: Dictionary of numbers.

It searches the text in your web browser for numbers and provides context to help you understand the numbers better.

For example, if a web page contains “318 million people”, it says

 

318 million people [≈ the population of the United States]

http://www.dictionaryofnumbers.com/

Microsoft Converter

Since last couple of days, I have got quite addicted to an app called Microsoft Converter. It has 20 categories (area, speed, energy, currency, time, etc.) and each category has 10 units within which you can do conversions. 

Thanks to this app, now when am gently cruising at 60 kmph, I know am travelling at 0.05 Mach (speed of sound) or, that distance from home to office (2km) is equal to 1.34x10^-8 AU (distance between Sun and Earth).

[Presentation] The ONLY 3 productivity tools you will ever need

About 4 years ago, I has posted a blog about the 3 productivity tools you will ever need.

It is heartening to see that this belief has stood steadfast and true over the years; even after four years, these three tools continue to make the biggest impact on my productivity.

I have now converted the blog article in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. It is available for viewing and download on SlideShare. 

Agile @ Home

Participating in various Agile-related activities in our office inspired me to think about implementing Agile approach in a rather unrelated field: our family.
The Agile philosophy contains some best practices, which, if adapted and customized slightly, can help us manage our personal lives in a more structured and productive manner.

Here is a write-up which outlines this approach.

Also available on SlideShare as a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/gautamsoman/agile-at-home

Introduction

Agile is an incremental, iterative methodology used widely in software industry. Agile @ Home is a proposed approach to bring in the best practices of this methodology into our daily lives. The objective is not to make our family life a formal, mechanical process, but to bring in a structured approach to get things done without causing undue stress.

Stakeholders

Product Owner (PO)

In Agile @ Office, Product Owner creates the product backlog.
In Agile @ Home, Product Owners are primarily responsible for guidance and monitoring. They should ideally be the senior-most member of the family. They can also be someone from outside the immediate family; but someone whom the family trusts and respects; and looks up to for advice.They should help Scrum Master to resolve conflicts.

Scrum Master (SM)

Ideally a enior member of the family. Role can be rotated among two equally senior-members (husband /wife) after every few sprints. They would be responsible for tracking progress of all tasks.

Scrum Team (ST)

All members of the family unit (except infants!). The Scrum Team members should be coached by Scrum Master on Agile processes. This can be done during Sprint 0 (zero).
Preferably not more than 7 members should be under one Scrum Master. ‘Pair working’ concept can be used: two folks working on a big task.

Agile Ceremonies

Product Backlog

Just as in Agile at Office, this is the most important step. All the stakeholders (PO, SM and ST) sit together and brainstorm about everything that family wants to achieve, in the short-, medium- as well as long term.
This should be done periodically, at least once a year. Creating a solid, comprehesinve Product Backlog sets expectations clear, brings everyone on same page.

Sprint Planning & Sprint Deliverables

During Product Backlog, all stakeholders decide on time-boxed unit for a sprint. Recommended time-box is minimum one month and maximum three months. At start of every sprint, all stakeholders agree to select a chunk of product backlog.
Each family member:

• Picks up the tasks at granular level. 
• Commits himself/herself to the selected task.
• Specifies exactly what they will deliver at the end of the sprint

Daily Scrum Meetings

DSMs are a crucial part of Agile @ Office.
For Agile @ Home, they can be held either at breakfast or dinner, when SM and ST are available. In case, it is not possible for SM and all ST to meet at a common time, SM must interact with each family member and keep track of progress.

Burndown Charts

Stakeholders can decide on a mechanism to track the progress.
Some approaches to track progress:

• Verbal updates
• Note pad/Diary
• Sticky notes on refridgerator
• Kanban boards 
• Excel sheets… 

Sprint Deliverables

Agile @ Office focuses on ‘working software’ at end of each sprint.
Agile @ Home focuses on significant, measurable progress on each task. It can be:

• A tangible, physical product 
• A recommendation for a specific product/item
• A ‘SMART’ plan for a long-term activity

Sprint Retrospective

All family members share their updates, preferably at a common meeting. Completed activities are discussed and agreed upon as DONE. Unfinished items are moved to the next sprint backlog.
Sprint Retrospective should preferably be clubbed together with next Sprint Planning.

Example Scenario

Stakeholders: 

• Grandparents: Product Owner(s)
• Wife: Scrum Master 
• Husband, daughter and son:  Scrum Team 

SM and ST visit PO for product backlog:

• Husband wants to plan a North India trip in December
• Wife wants to start a jewellery shop
• Daughter wants to go abroad for higher studies after her Masters degree
• Son wants the long-promised gaming console

The stakeholders decide on the sprint duration: 2 months

Each team member picks up tasks at granular level:

• Husband will identify holiday destinations and overall budget required
• Wife to analyse feasibility of jewellery shop in the locality
• Daughter to identify admission requirements and college names
• Son to compare Sony PS3, Nintendo and Xbox and come up with final recommendation

All the stakeholders decide on priorities

• Since admission dates are close by, daughter’s admission is top priority.
• Wife’s shop is a potential source of future income, hence next on list. 
• The gaming console was promised long ago, hence is included. 
• Last is the vacation plan. 

Over the period of sprint, the SM and ST have discussions over dinner.

After 2 months (sprint exit), all stakeholders meet.

• Daughter is ready with short-listed college names and admission details. The discussion is done and she will start with admission process in next sprint. 
• Wife informs that her analysis indicates that jewellery shop is not feasible due to presence of big brands in local vicinity. Hence idea is dropped. But there is much scope for a boutique. This will be analysed further. 
• Son specifies Xbox and provides reasons (many gaming titles, etc.)
• Husband informs that finances are not sufficient to meet all above requirements and the vacation; hence the vacation plan is moved to general backlog with a provision for an abroad trip to visit the daughter.

Sprint planning is done for the next sprint… and the cycle repeats.

Using OneNote

Ever since my early college days, I have been a regular user of notepads — those small, spiral-bound things that you can easily carry in your shirt pockets. The notepads were an immense help in tracking the studies and various activities.*

When I started my IT career, I was pleased to see Microsoft Outlook. It has a great Calendar feature and a neat Tasks feature++. For a while, it seemed to me that I wouldn't need anything more.

Yet even after a few months, I was still carrying my notepad around. The reason being that Outlook doesn't have any provision for free-form note-taking. Sure, you can always type out the content and save it as drafts, or mail it to yourself, but it only adds to the clutter.

So again I was back on the road, looking for a better tool. I tried using sticky notes (both the digital and paper kind), Google Docs, Evernote, but none seemed to work. **

On  joining my current project, I was intrigued to see my scrum master, Pradnya, using an application that looked familiar but couldn't quite place it. So I asked her, and she graciously walked me through it. And thus started my journey with perhaps one of my most favourite software tools: Microsoft OneNote. 

OneNote is a digital note-taking tool, and it comes bundled with Microsoft Office suit. In fact, it has been around since Office 2003 ( and hence the notion of my being familiar with it, even though I had never tried it before). It is organized as a typical notepad: you create a notebook, which has multiple pages, and each page contains one or more sections. You can move or merge sections and pages either within the notebook or across other notebooks.

You can do all sorts of things using OneNote: type in notes anywhere at random, capture a screenshot and insert it directly into the page, record audio or video, create free-form sketches or drawings. There is no need to manually save the document, the data is saved automatically as you type.

OneNote has a seamless integration with other Office products: you can email a page directly using Outlook, you can import your Outlook tasks into OneNote, you can directly insert Excel documents or Visio diagrams into OneNote, and so on.

Another powerful feature is the wide range of in-built tags: To-Do, Highlight, Remind me later, Critical, Idea and so on. 

The search feature is quite powerful: it can search across text, images and audio recordings.

OneNote also works as a superb collaboration tool. You can use it as a digital whiteboard and share notes with other users and edit each other's notes (with required access privileges). You can invite people to view/use your notebook, share the notebook with a meeting in progress or share it on Web as a link.

And of course, you can also password-protect your notebooks :)

With SkyDrive, all the notes are automatically saved to the cloud and are available on all the devices you use (for example: office desktop, personal laptop and smartphone). You can download and 'save' the entire notebook (with all its pages and sections) either as a OneNote file or a PDF and email it to other people.

I have been using three versions of OneNote till now: OneNote 2007 on my personal laptop, OneNote 2010 on my office desktop and OneNote 2013 on my phone#. In fact, having OneNote  was one of the prime considerations in choosing Nokia Lumia Windows Phone as my new smartphone.

I would highly recommend this tool to everyone. A quick tip: Add OneNote to your start-up programs list so that it is launched every time the machine boots up.

This blog was completely written in OneNote.
And, I don't carry a notepad anymore.

If you haven't tried OneNote yet, here are a few links to get you started:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/onenote/

http://www.onenote.com/ondc#

And if you're already using OneNote, these MSDN blogs would be of great help.

http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-onenote/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/descapa/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/: a very informative and educative blog by co-founder of OneNote

Mike Tholfsen, Test Manager for OneNote crafted this wonderful poem:

My one and only OneNote : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2006/09/06/my-one-and-only-onenote.aspx

---

* It is a matter of nostalgic joy to leaf through these pages.

++ It's another matter that I didn't have as many meetings back then. How I yearned for those, and man, how I wish these days to have lesser meetings so that I can get some meaningful work done.

** I am surprised that Evernote — which was quite a rage back then, and is widely popular even now, didn't work for me.

# Just as am about to post this article, my office desktop is already upgraded to Office 2013 ( and hence OneNote 2013) and my personal laptop got the Office 2013 as well via Microsoft HUP. Yay!!

SkyDriving!

I have been exploring SkyDrive from Microsoft since last couple of days. SkyDrive (skydrive.live.com) is a online file hosting service, that lets you upload documents, photos and any kind of file and access it. You get 25GB free storage space, and individual file size can be up to 50 MB. 


I will be using this site to upload scanned copies of some documents that are required often; for example, copies of passport, PAN card, marriage certificate and stuff. Earlier, I used Gmail account for the same. But , web-based email is blocked at many organisations. 

Using SkyDrive has been a pleasant experience so far. There are options to restrict the access rights to various levels, such as public, for friends, and only for personal use. The file organisation is good, and upload/download is hassle-free.


One of the features I really liked was, you can download entire directories as ZIP files, thus saving you the effort of downloading individual files. 


The only catch (there always is one!) is that you need a Windows Live (such as MSN Messenger or Hotmail) ID to create a SkyDrive account. I didn't have it, but it took less than a minute to create one. 

The 3 productivity tools you need

You want to streamline your work, be more productive, and be more efficient. You take a look around and find productivity tools and techniques galore, enough to intimidate you back into the un-managed ways.

So, what is the easiest -- and probably the best! -- way to go about getting started with getting things done in a systematic way, without investing too much time and effort into myriad approaches?

From personal experience, I would say just three tools are sufficient to do the trick:

1. To-Do list
2. Checklist 
3. Reminder mechanism

Let's see how to use these...

•  THE TO-DO LIST: WHAT to do A good to-do list should consist of two parts. One part should have the task-lists. Tasks are the chores that you need to repeatedly perform with some regular frequency, such as sending out a status report every Friday, or, washing your car every 15 days.
  
  More details about creating task-lists can be read here. The second part of the to-do list should have action items specific for the particular day (or week), such as a meeting with software analyst or attending a wedding reception at 9 PM.
  
  Tools: 
  For the office work, I used StickyPad earlier. But now I use the Tasks feature of Microsoft Outlook. It integrates nicely with e-mail and calendar features (see below) and has almost all the features one could ask for. 
  For personal work, I extensively use the Notes and To-Do List features of my cellphone.
  
  Success Mantra: The key is to have specific, actionable items on your to-do list. For example, "I want to reduce weight" is merely a wish; you need to convert it to something like "Jogging for 30 minutes every morning from 7 AM to 7:30 AM". Now, this becomes an action-item.
  Some say that the best time to chalk out a to-do list is just before you go to sleep or early in the morning before you set out for the day. Well, I don’t have a specific time to update the to-do list; but just go on adding to it whenever a task presents itself.

•  THE CHECKLIST: HOW to do
  Checklists are a list of items that help you either to perform a task in the best possible manner or to verify if a completed task meets the requirements. Hence, the checklists can basically be of two types: pre-emptive and corrective. For example, a checklist that you use while conducting a software release is a pre-emptive checklist, whereas a code review checklist is a corrective checklist.
  
  I have always been big on checklists, so reading The Checklist Manifesto by Dr Atul Gawande was a comforting feeling!
  
  Tools:
  As of now, I am not using any particular tool to create and manage the checklists. They are mostly scribbled on a paper notepad or saved in MS-Excel.
  
  Success Mantra: 
  The key is to be honest with oneself while using the checklists. It’s a tall order, but you can always try! You need to force yourself to acknowledge that you have skipped some essential steps during a procedure or that your finished work doesn’t satisfy all the expectations. This will not only help you brace yourself for any glitches ahead but will also –hopefully – forewarn you against making the same errors again in future.

• REMINDERS: WHEN to do
  Most of us use reminders. The hitch is that most of us don't really act on them when the alarm goes off, instead preferring to hit the snooze button.
  It helps if you set two reminders for each task, one for any preparatory actions you need to perfrom and the second one for the actual task.
  For example, your buddy's birthday is on 1-September and you wish to get your buddy a present.  Then it's not a good idea to set only one reminder for 1-September. Better set a reminder a week before so that you have sufficient time to go out and buy that gift.
  
  Tools: For office work, I use the Calendar feature of Microsoft Outlook. It integrates nicely with e-mail and Tasks feature (see above) and has almost all the features one could ask for.
  
  For personal work, I use the Calendar as well as Reminders features of my cellphone.
  
  Success Mantra:
  The key here is to make your calendar sacred, something that no one can override… not even you, not without a good reason at least. If you mark a time-slot for studying Linux then hanging out in a mall with friends during that time should be avoided, however tempting it might be.
  
  Of course, you cannot always have things your way. If you mark a Friday evening to watch a football match on TV and your wife informs, “We are visiting my folks today evening”, it would be wise not to insist too much on preserving the integrity of your calendar.

Using these three basic tools in a disciplined way is guaranteed to bring a huge improvement in your productivity and efficiency.