I was wondering how long will it take for people to start developing an antipathy towards Google in the same way we have the tendency to rebel against over-successful organisations like say, Microsoft or Manchester United. Let's face it, we tend to have a soft spot for the underdogs.

Google had just released Google Reader, an RSS reader developed in the now famous Google AJAX style when I started writing this article, but did the world really need another RSS reader (check out the exhaustive list at the RSS Compendium)? I haven't had the time to review Google Reader in depth, though I have to say that the interface looks clean and very functional. There were some people who claimed that it was buggy and slow. Google slow? I thought that these two words were incompatible, but then Google spoiled us by being fast and efficient.

Apart from Google Reader, Google also released Google Talk (an IM client), Google Desktop 2 and Google Blog Search. All these four tools are all well established technologies, it seems that Google is just improving on the ideas everybody likes and adding the Google touch of class (and AJAX). Would you bet against a Flickr like tool in the pipeline? We'll wait and see.

Another thing, did you notice how so many people complain about popup ads or banners or other foul looking adverts on pages yet nobody ever says anything about Google ads that are littering every page on the web. Google does this advertising so unobtrusively that it seems not to matter to anyone. Mind you not that anyone is going to pay heed to the ads when the can get to 2Gb of free e-mail or a faster news reader or a super compatible IM client. I think Google is managing to thread the fine line of a win-win situation by generating loads of revenue from ads and at the same time delivering excellent value quality software to its fans.

This post will not interest the one or two regular readers because I doubt whether they're familiar with Italian TV.

Probably the commodity we missed most in Ecuador was TV and it shows because we're daily overdosing with the box. This winter season the stations brought some great shows to the extent that we can kiss our social lives goodbye and spend a whole week watching different shows, most of them on the Italian state channel RAI Due. I think their investment will pay off as we're spending more and more time watching RAI instead of the usually superior Mediaset channels.

Wednesday is Isola dei famosi (Celebrity Survivor) week, a program that has stirred some commotion in the news this week after the controversial wife, Loredana Lecciso, of famous singer Albano Carisi released a interview on magazine Gente stating that she's planning to separate from her husband. Great timing Loredana what better time to leave your husband then when he's starring on Celebrity Survivor. I'm sure that the hype was a conspiracy to increase the audience against La Talpa the Mediaset reality rival. Having said that, I must admit that I still end up watching these shows with all their scoops and sensationalisms.

While ranting about TV, I cannot help not to mention the Monday dose of Desperate Housewives. I've only watched 4 middle episodes from season one but I dare say that this is the best serial since Scrubs. It even has the pleasure to have helped me understand myself better too. I adore dark humour and I dig a narrator in films.

Yesterday I was reading National Geographic's Africa Special and there was an interesting article on how Africa being the first continent to host homo sapiens is now the poorest continent of the seven. According to the author in this case the difficulty in agrictultural development and the geography of the black continent played an important role in undermining its development and progress.

This morning I was reading Lindsey Vereen's Editorial in October's STP Magazine and he wrote an insight about what it entails to be the first in a market. Diners Club was the first card accepted by multiple vendors but since its debut in 1950 it now retains only 1 percent of the credit card market. Some of the difficulties pioneers face are the difficulty to identify what the market wants, and being vulnerable to potential competitors who can take advantage of the road you've paved for them.

Being a pioneer isn't a guarantee to ongoing success and web search technology and the British football team are another two proofs, but sometimes it pays to be first. In software litigation on the intellectual property of code you might gain the better hand in court if the code forensic analysts manage to find the original spark in your source code.

• Look for the unusual in everyday life
• Write ABC lists of unusual words or adjectives
• Keep it personal
• Write usual 'boring' but informative staff in point form. This will save time that can be spending writing other things
  • Weather
  • Food
  • Expenses
• Think about creating characters with names like 'popsicle' to describe adventures
• Research staff using guidebooks and other info for snippets of information
• Use metaphors to evoke and explain emotions
• Explore all the senses.
  • Smell
  • Taste
  • Touch
  • Hear
  • Sight

Now that I've long lost hope that I might learn any proper management skills from work I thought I might benefit something from learning what I shouldn't do should I ever become a manager. I'm still at the infancy stages of considering management positions but I think some of these points might be practical even in real life.

Find time for staff - I can still remember how I felt the first time that I heard the "I haven't got time for you phrase" and a few minutes later saw the boss spending half an hour with our maid. If you are a manager you are supposed to manage people and when managing people you must find time for the people. If your schedule is so busy try to learn some new time management skills but do find the time. Unless you're a super boss staff don't usually like to be in front of you, consider this as soon as somebody comes over to talk without being asked to.

Listen to your staff and believe in them - I feel mostly motivated when I know that the person for whom I'm working believes in me and wants me to achieve my goal. Listening to somebody is one of the ways you can show that you care about the opinions of your staff. Listening means actively listening, not just acknowledging words and then loose track of what was said the minute the person is out of sight.

Treat everyone on the same level - This is very tricky but keeping a good open communication with the workforce might be the best tool to achieve this goal.

People are not dumb and they have feelings - No matter how stupid somebody may look he still has feelings so you must always pay attention not to hurt his feelings. I think it's more beneficial to treat people as though they were intelligent animals rather than dumb ones.

Treat staff as people not as numbers - It's true that the companies interest are the most important factor in any equation but the people are what make or break the company. People feel dejected, unmotivated and are unproductive as soon as they start feeling that they can be used instead of oranges in kindergarten classes when children are learning addition.

Continue meeting with clients and customers and don't close yourself in an ivory tower - Most things boil down to communication so it should be kept alive as much as possible. Meeting with people face to face is usually more fruitful then sending an e-mail or picking the phone. When you talk with customers you can understand their requirements better.

Does it happen to you that you hear a new word and all of a sudden you start seeing it everywhere? That’s what happened to me after I listened to the book Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen. Arguably the most important tip in the book is the importance of writing down and constantly reviewing the next actions that have to be completed, but in order to effectively manage you next actions you need to group them together. This naturally leads to the question; what is the best way to group tasks together?

Group by Action Type and/or Location

This is the method that David Allen suggests in his book and it proposes to group tasks by the type of the task at hand. For example phone calls should be grouped together, e-mails together, actions to do at home together, etc. etc. The resultant category list will look something like:

• Phone Calls
• E-mails
• Desk Actions
• Home
• Database Updates

Group by Importance

This is a method proposed by Stephen Covey and it proposes to divide tasks according to their importance and urgency. A task can be either one of the following:

• Important and Urgent
• Important and Not Urgent
• Not Important and Urgent
• Not Important and Not Urgent

Group by Project

This method is what I was using before I started paying attention to this problem and it lists the actions assigned to a particular project. The resultant category list will be identical to the list of projects that you need to complete.

Group by your role for the completion of the task

I found this categorisation in an article about Task Management on the Keen PDA site. In this method you categorise tasks by the role that you must take to complete the task, so the category list will be something like:

• Husband
• Father
• Manager
• Co-worker

From all these different task categorisation methods which is likely to give the best results? From the past experience trying to use the different methods I’m arriving to the conclusion that each of the different methods has something different to offer and like most situations the best approach would be to adopt a mixture of methods.

I think that Stephen Covey’s task importance assignment can easily be adopted with either the Group by Action type or the Group by project type because it can act as a prioritisation mechanism for both categorisations. My current list of categories looks something like this:-

• Important and Urgent – Next Actions that need my immediate attention
• Lazy Tasks – Non critical important tasks that need little or no brain power
• Phone Calls and Mails
• Web Browsing – List of sites that I need to look into
• Mindspill – Possible new post topics and enhancements
• 3 Other projects – Project specific next actions

Have you ever given a thought on how to categorise your tasks, if so I’d be more than happy to hear your opinions?

My next task now will be finding a good super cross platform task management software tool that can happily work on my work PC running Windows, my mobile PDA running Palm, my home PC running Windows and the other home PC running Linux. I might be asking for too much at this point.

I can only say that I'm jealous! Jealous that you have a COOK who has a bedroom mistress, both of whom buy you birthday gifts. Jealous Jealous Jealous!