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Digitwirl: Sell Your Cell

Posted on March 1, 2011

In this week’s Digitwirl, our pal Carley gives you a tour of Gazelle: a marketplace where you can get rid of your old, unused gadgets. I don’t know about you, but I have a closet jammed with old stuff I don’t use anymore. Rather than let them collect dust, why not free up all that closet space and either make some money or feel good about recycling those old relics?

That’s right, you might be able to make some money from all the junk in your technology graveyard!

Digitwirl: The best place to sell your cell

What’s the deal? Doesn’t it seem like cell phone manufacturers time the release date of the next generation iPhone or Droid with the exact moment you plunk down money on the “current version?”  So, what do you do with the gadgets you’ve outgrown when you’re ready for the latest and greatest? Stash them in a drawer? Nah, too messy. Toss them? God we hope not, landfills are full enough already. Here’s a better idea: sell your cell, computer, or e-reader on Gazelle.com. The site helps you appraise your old electronics and tells you how much they’ll pay you for it, while you sit back and collect the cash. It’s not easy being green? We beg to differ, Kermit!

Digitwirl is the weekly web show that offers simple solutions to modern day problems.  In 3-minutes, Digitwirl brings busy women the very best time, money, and sanity-saving technology, and then teaches them how to use it, step-by-step.  Digitwirl was created by technology lifestyle expert Carley Knobloch, who uses lots of technology to manage her busy life as mom of two and entrepreneur.  Subscribe to get weekly show alerts and exclusive deals at Digitwirl.com, or follow Digitwirl on Twitter at @digitwirlr.

Introducing Digitwirl

Posted on February 23, 2011

This week, we’re happy to start sharing Digitwirl, a new video series from Carley Knobloch. I met Carley a little over a year ago when she heard a podcast that I recorded with David Allen (of Getting Things Done). A kindred geek girl and GTD fan, we connected immediately. I’ve been keeping up with Carley ever since then and when she launched Digitwirl earlier this year, I knew it would be a great how-to supplement for Geek Girls Guide readers.

So, enjoy! We’ll share a new twirl with you here once a week. We hope you enjoy these fast, helpful videos as much as we do.

In this week’s video, Carley introduces Evernote, which is one of those applications that EVERYONE I know raves about, but which I haven’t managed to find time to try. After seeing how she uses it to keep track of travel itineraries, business cards, photos and kids’ artwork I’m even more convinced that I really need to make time to check it out.

Digitwirl: Digital storage that keeps track of all the information life throws at you

Look around your house. Are you seeing stacks of papers that you keep meaning to go through? Boxes and files bulging with stuff you put there for safe-keeping, but couldn’t find what you need if your life depended on it? Don’t worry, we won’t judge, it’s the exact overload we were facing that made us think there has to be a better way. 

Wouldn’t be amazing if you could store information you needed to remember in one place and more importantly, find it instantly, anytime, from anywhere? Good news! It exists, and it is a total game-changer.  Evernote is a website, a free app, and an extension that builds functionality into tons of programs you already use.

If you can email it, scan it, type it, snap it, record it, or find it on the internet you can keep track of it all with Evernote.  You won’t believe how simple it is to use. Watch the video, and then forget about forgetting important information ever again.

Digitwirl is the weekly web show that offers simple solutions to modern day problems.  In 3-minutes, Digitwirl brings busy women the very best time, money, and sanity-saving technology, and then teaches them how to use it, step-by-step.  Digitwirl was created by technology lifestyle expert Carley Knobloch, who uses lots of technology to manage her busy life as mom of two and entrepreneur.  Subscribe to get weekly show alerts and exclusive deals at Digitwirl.com, or follow Digitwirl on Twitter at @digitwirlr.

Geek Camps for Minnesota Girls (and Boys!)

Posted on February 18, 2010

Geeky reader Sandra from Minneapolis said, “I heard a provocative rumor that you have, or will be starting, a summer camp for school age girls.  I have a soon to be eight-year-old daughter who is crazy into computers and I’d love to give her some extracurricular opportunities.  Are the rumors true?”

My, that is a provocative (and awesome) rumor. I wish it was true!

At this point, we are focused more on adults and working professionals and have not ventured into much content for young girls. Not that we don’t have the desire, but with full-time jobs and both of us with young kids at home — we have to focus or risk going crazy.

With that said, here’s what I know about right now for geeky kid camps in Minnesota:

Computer Camps for Girls in MN

DigiGirlz: High tech camps by Microsoft. There don’t appear to be any Minnesota camps running right now, but this may be a good spot to keep an eye on.

Digital Media Academy (U of M): Sadly, all of the kid sessions are currently closed, but it might be something to keep in mind for the future.

Eagles Summer Camp (Science Technology Engineering Arts Math (STEAM) Focus): This appears to be free for all Minnesota students entering grades 6, 7, or 8.

Geek Squad Summer Academy: Camps run by Best Buy and Geek Squad employees on a variety of techie topics.

Giant Camps (Online Camps): For ages 10-17

iD Tech Camp (Macalester College): For boys and girls 7-17.

Science Museum of Minnesota: I have my four-year-old daughter signed up for a rocket class this spring!

Help Us, Readers!

Do you know of any computer camp opportunities for girls in MN (or any other state, for that matter)? Let’s get our girls to geek out this summer!

Podcast: The Cult of Social Media

Posted on February 12, 2010

In our eighth podcast we talk about the cult of social media, what to look for when choosing your social team and how to tell the difference between social media enthusiasm and expertise. We’ve now got three ways for you to listen:

Listen Online

Click the cute little button below to stream the audio in your browser window.


Join the Discussion

What did we miss? What do you think is important to illustrate expertise and experience in social media? What successes or failures have you experienced when trying to assemble a social media SWAT team, or find a social media consultant?

The Five-Minute Guide to Google Alerts

Posted on November 18, 2009

If you’re not already using Google Alerts, you should start. Now. Google Alerts is an easy (and free) way to monitor news articles, blogs, videos, and other media.

We often say you can’t afford not to listen online, and Google Alerts is just another tool to help. With that, here is the Geek Girls Guide to Google Alerts:

1. Delivery Method
We start with the end only so you know where all of this is headed, and can think about how — and how often — you are going to want to monitor particular search terms. You can choose to have the alerts delivered to an email address (either as-it-happens, once a day, or once a week); or you can have the alerts delivered to an RSS feed (as-it-happens). If you want the alerts delivered by an RSS feed and don’t already have one set up, you can read the three part series on how to get started with RSS. You can go ahead and do that. We’ll wait here.

Okay, let’s move on.

2. Brainstorm Words & Phrases
This is where you need to put your thinking cap on.

First, get creative: if you’re monitoring mentions of your own name (which we highly recommend) don’t just set up an alert for your first and last name. Do you need one for your maiden name? A common misspelling? What about monitoring for close relatives’ names? (You think Meghan doesn’t have a Google Alert for her husband’s name? She totally does!)

If you’re monitoring for a business, put in your “official” name but also any common misspellings, or commonly-used shortnames. Put in industry keywords that you want to keep an eye on to help reveal industry content that you can comment on, blog about, or just be aware of.

Second, get picky: We suggest only searching for one term at a time, and if your term has more than one word make sure to put the words in quotes. Here’s what we mean: we monitor “geek girls guide” but not “geek girls.” Geek girls on its own is too generic and we end up with too many unrelated things.

While the full name of the company we work for is Clockwork Active Media Systems, lots of people just call it Clockwork. But, if we monitor “Clockwork” we get a TON of unrelated content, including lots and lots and LOTS of stuff about the movie, A Clockwork Orange.

Google has excellent tips on how to set up good searches (which applies to alerts as well):

  • Basic search tips: Including tips on how to use search-friendly phrases (which may be different from the human-friendly version).
  • More search help: This includes information on how to exclude terms. Remember my Clockwork vs. A Clockwork Orange example? One of the terms we monitor is “Clockwork -orange” which filters out a lot of the stuff we don’t want to see.

3. Get Alerts!

Go to google.com/alerts and enter the terms you would like to set up alerts for.

For each term or phrase, choose the type of results you want. These include: blogs, news, web, groups, videos, and comprehensive. We almost always choose comprehensive because we want to see as many results from as many sources as possible.

If you are choosing to have your alerts delivered to an email address you will need to enter that email address (if you’re logged into Google your email should already be there). Additionally, you will need to choose how often you would like to receive emails: as-it-happens, once a day, or once a week.

If you choose to have alerts delivered through a feed, the “how often” will automatically be as-it-happens.

Your frequency choices for each term or phrase will likely be different. You may want an alert about your own name as-it-happens, but only need to see an industry alert once a week. You can always change this later if you find that you’re being alerted too often or not enough for a particular term. Start somewhere, and tweak as you go.

4. Managing & Refining
If you are monitoring something with a specific end date (like an event) or things change (you break up with that boyfriend you’re monitoring), you might want to delete an alert eventually. From the Google Alerts main page you can click “Manage Alerts” and you will be taken to an admin section. To delete an alert simply click the check box and then click delete.

If a term starts making your mailbox overflow you might want to change the frequency or delivery method, or tweak the search terms if the results are not crisp enough. From the the admin section mentioned above, click “edit”, change any of the parameters, then save your changes. Boom.

5. Celebrate
Congrats! Do a little dance; you have now set up Google Alerts to help you monitor the ebbs and flows of the social media sea.

One note: Google Alerts won’t catch all tweets, so we advise setting up Twitter monitoring systems as well. To learn how to do that, read our Five-Minute Guide to Twitter Monitoring.

Best of luck! Let us know how it goes.

Have An Idea? Leave An Idea. Need An Idea? Get An Idea.

Posted on July 23, 2009

Here at the Geek Girls Guide we’re constantly talking about ways in which people can empower and enrich their lives by embracing even the simplest technology.  Our mission is to start a movement of people unafraid of tech — we want to make adventurers of even the most tentative of adopters. 

Recently we facilitated a rather controversial conversation on this blog. People from all over contributed opinions, criticism, feedback and ideas to that discussion and it got us thinking — how can we continue the best of that dialogue?  We decided to create a space on our website for ideas and conversation around them.  It seems simple, but in this crazy digital age information moves at the speed of light and ideas happen and are lost in a blink.  Some people have brilliant ideas and no interest in realizing them.  Other folks are constantly looking for ideas to bring to fruition.  And, in some cases, ideas are just seeds that, when planted, can grow into something much bigger than originally thought. 

We decided (with the help of Geek Girls Men’s Auxiliary member and uber engineer Matt Gray) to create a little idea incubator here on Geek Girls Guide and open it up to you, our readers and community, to contribute to it.  If you add an idea you’ll see that other people can vote on it, or discuss it in the comments. Share your ideas around making the interactive and technology industries places where men and women collaborate, communicate and create together. Or maybe you have a product idea, or ideas for non-profits that might help them further their mission. Maybe you have an idea for a new non-profit that fosters healthy attitudes about technology or funds technology education in urban areas.  Whatever it is, your innovation, brain power and feedback is valuable to this process. We want to find the best ideas and the people in the industry willing to help make them happen. Together, we can create change.  Join us.  Join the conversation.  Join the movement.

 

The Five-Minute Guide to Monitoring Twitter

Posted on July 9, 2009

In a meeting last week, I was talking about social media (surprise!) and urging those present to listen to the social networks. We often say that — when it comes to social networks — participation is optional, but listening is critical. I promised that if we had five minutes to spare at the end of the meeting I’d show them how to monitor Twitter for their brand and URLs. (I did go over my five minutes, but only because their wireless connection was painfully slow!)

A few days later, I tweeted about my lesson and was barraged with requests to post instructions. So, with that, here is my five-minute Twitter monitoring guide:

1. Get an RSS Reader
RSS has got to be the least understood and most underutilized technology at the moment. Enough with the blank stares, y’all: RSS will change your life! You can read my three part series on how to get started with RSS if you haven’t started using it already (ten bucks says you’re probably using it via Yahoo! or Google and don’t even know it yet).

Anyway, to take the best advantage of my next two steps you’re going to want to have an RSS reader to monitor a couple of feeds. Bloglines is free and easy; you should be able to get an account set up in a few minutes.

2. Twitter Search
Visit search.twitter.com and enter in whatever terms you want to keep an eye on. Do this one term at a time. The search box works a lot like Google (put quotation marks around words or phrases that you want to do an exact search on). So, to monitor for Geek Girls Guide, I enter “geek girls guide”. Twitter also has some handy search guidelines here.

When you get back your search results, you’ll see an RSS icon on the far right of the address bar. Click that, and you’ll be taken to the feed page. Copy the URL from the address bar, and paste it into your RSS reader (if you’re using Bloglines, you’d click the Add link to add a new feed and paste the URL into the displayed field).

Add a feed to Bloglines

Rinse, lather and repeat for all the different words and phrases you want to keep track of.

Start with as many as you can think of; you can always remove low-value search terms from your RSS reader later. For example, I get a lot of value monitoring the “geek girls guide” search but much less value for the “geek girls” search (because many people use the words geek girls and they’re not always talking about Nancy and I!).

3. BackTweets
There are probably other services that do the same thing (and feel free to mention them in the comments) but I use BackTweets to monitor tweets for the url geekgirlsguide.com. The thing I love is that it also keeps track of links to my site that are “hidden” inside of shortened URLs (see below if you don’t know what that means).

Again, on the search results page, you’ll see the RSS icon. Click that, copy the feed URL and paste it into your RSS reader.

UPDATE January 2011: BackTweets no longer offers a free service. It’s $100/month (!!!). If you have discovered other free services that monitor links within tweets, I’m all ears!

Voila! You are now monitoring a social network. Nice work! Let me know how it goes.

— — — — —

What are shortened URLs?
There are several URL shortening services that allow you to enter a long URL (like: http://www.geekgirlsguide.com/blog/2008/09/05/24/geek_chic_of_the_week_rss_part_i) and get back a small URL (like: http://is.gd/1rR6S). The small, shortened URL redirects to the same place as your long, ugly URL.

Why do people use them?
It’s nice for people who are sharing links because if you’re emailing a link to a friend you know the URL won’t wrap into several lines of the email and become unusable, or — if you’re tweeting — it doesn’t take up too many of your precious 140 characters. The most well-known service is probably TinyURL, but there are many others (my favorite is is.gd).

Doing Social Media “Right”

Posted on July 7, 2009

When we launched the Geek Girls Guide, we didn’t realize that we’d be talking so much about social media. But, at this point, it’s the topic that everyone wants to discuss. Recently, someone referred to Nancy and I as “social media experts.” That label makes me shudder.

Here’s the thing: the web has always been social. AOL, chatrooms, the BBSes of yore, all of these were ways for people to use technology to connect with other people. So none of this is really “new” — it’s just that the tools and technology are more accessible than they’ve ever been.

Back in the day, it was just us geeks talking to each other. Now our moms and grandmas are here, too! And because of that — because more people than ever are using these tools — this is all new. No one has really figured out how to do social media “right” as a company or business. What’s the right mix? What kind of investment is needed? How can companies engage effectively? Who is in “charge” of social media within a given company? How can it be measured? We’re all learning. So as far as I’m concerned, there are no social media “experts.”

The companies that are in the best position to take advantage of experimenting with social media tactics are small companies. They’re nimble, not constrained by the beauracracy of large organizations, and are — generally — less afraid to try new things (because, of course, the risk of public failure is lower than with a huge company).

With that in mind, I came across this blog recently (via Geek Girls’ pal Sharyn Morrow) and thought it was a beautifully simple example of how a company can do social media “right.” It’s not totally perfect, but they are doing many things well. And I commend them for jumping in.

The blog (ATTN: Anna’s True Thai News) is for one of my all-time favorite Minneapolis restaurants, True Thai (Seriously, if you ever go there get the kabocha squash curry. Trust me.) and here’s what I think they’re doing well:

1. Tying it all together.
They link to their blog and Twitter accounts on their homepage. Nicely done. (Even better if you can integrate your blog seamlessly into your site, but if you’re doing-it-yourself at least linking from your homepage is a great step.)

The Twitter profile links to the blog, and I think they should link to the main web site (because it’s hard to find the main web site from the blog) but overall they’ve done a good job or making sure that all of their social media tactics are tied together (blog, Twitter, Flickr).

2. Having some personality.
The link to Anna’s blog from the True Thai homepage says, “The queen of all curries commands you to read her blog.” It’s charming and fun. What’s not to like?

3. Updating regularly, but not obsessively.
The blog has a a new post every few days. Even better is that the posts actually say something of value.

Their tweets are more sparse, but also packed with value (like an alert that the closest highway was closed and customers would need to take an alternate route).

4. Talking like a human.
Reading the blog and looking at the photos on Flickr give you a sense of Anna’s personality, which makes you feel more connected to the restaurant.

5. Inviting dialogue.
What gave me the idea to write about True Thai’s blog was this post on the difficulty of serving vegan/vegetarian food. Anna is up front about her challenge as a restaurant owner, and is opening a dialogue with people. This is the whole point of social media: to facilitiate and participate in conversations with the audiences that are important to you.

And how about this – an APOLOGY for an evening on which the restaurant was understaffed! How many times have you had crap service at a restaurant? Can you even imagine the restaurant owner apologizing for it publicly and explaining to you why that happened? I wasn’t there that evening, but this apology post — just like the personal “voice” in the posts I mentioned earlier — makes me feel even more connected to this place. I have to imagine it has the same effect on other customers as well.

In general, they are being a good social media citizen. They’re participating in the community, not just braying marketing messages. They’re open, honest and imperfect. The social networks are just that — social. To fit in to the social networks, be social. Be human.

And hey, if you need more encouragement to just jump in — AdRants published a great post on Twitter last week that includes one of my favorite social networking analogies: the cocktail party.

08/11/2009: Heavy Table has a great interview with Anna from True Thai about the restaurant and her blog.

Hacking Mail and iCal for GTD

Posted on June 24, 2009

GTD stands for “Getting Things Done” (the title of David Allen’s first book) and has become a shorthand way to refer to his methodology. You can read an official explanation on his site.

In a nutshell, GTD is a way to get control of all the things you need to get done by getting it out of your brain and into a trusted system. My favorite line from the What is GTD? web page is, “The only “right” way to do GTD is getting meaningful things done with truly the least amount of invested attention and energy.” Sounds great, right? And it really does work.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about my amazing experience with GTD because of a tweet. That post led to conversations with Kelly Forrister, a coach with the David Allen company and, ultimately, an invitation to be interviewed by David Allen for the In Conversation series on GTDConnect. I KNOW, RIGHT?!

One of the things that came up in talking with both Kelly and David was how much of the dialogue online about GTD is led by men. And yet, there are plenty of women who use it with great success. So, I figured — why not blog about it? It’s not directly related to technology, but I think it’s a relevant topic for busy people. And everyone I know is busy people.

So, here goes!

What is GTD?

I don’t want to spend too much time on the question of what GTD is because lots has already been written on that topic elsewhere. If you don’t know what it is, davidco.com and gtdtimes.com are good places to start. I’d highly recommend getting a copy of the book, Getting Things Done, and reading it twice. Once just to get the ideas into your head and the second time to actually follow the steps outlined. Seriously. Read it twice (it’s a quick read). Then come back and read this post.

One of the things that appealed to me when reading Getting Things Done was that it wasn’t trying to sell anything. You didn’t have to buy a certain kind of planner, or device, or software. It’s a methodology that can be applied using a paper and pencil or the latest technology. Whatever works for you.

My System

So, what works for me?

When I started implementing GTD about four years ago, I was working on a company PC. I configured Outlook (as outlined in the GTD and Outlook whitepaper) and everything hummed right along. Three years ago, I left that job and transitioned to a Mac. Suddenly, I was adrift without a system and I ended up falling into a trap that I think a lot of GTD practitioners (and geeks) fall into: I started over-analyzing my needs and evaluating software to the point that my system stopped working very well. I tried Backpack, Remember the Milk, OmniFocus and a score of others.

Finally, I decided the best approach would be to figure out a way to bend the applications I already use all day, every day to my will. Namely, Mail and iCal. Why? Because my big issue with all of the software I looked at was that it was another thing to deal with: a web page I had to visit, an app I had to open. It was either too big a hassle or I would totally forget. So, I set about to make Mail and iCal my “system.”

1. Email

I have nine email addresses that I monitor regularly (work, Geek Girls, gmail, etc.). Using IMAP, I check all my email addresses in Mail. I can go through them at the Inbox level, or I can toggle the main Inbox open and see messages in each individual Inbox. Nice! If you have multiple email addresses (and these days, most of us do), I’d highly recommend configuring them to all go to one or two places (perhaps one for Work and another for Personal addresses).

I also have Facebook messages and Twitter DMs emailed to me so I don’t need to remember to check my Facebook messages and so I won’t miss any DMs sent via Twitter. With those added on, I have ELEVEN “inboxes” down to ONE. Nice!

Beneath the Inbox, I have subfolders for Action, Waiting For and Someday/Maybe items.

I also have a series of folders set up for Reference emails (stuff I want to keep but I don’t need to do anything with). For work emails, these are organized by client and project name. For personal emails, I don’t need to parse things out with the same detail, so I have one Personal folder where messages can be archived after I’m done with them. (I can always use Search to find stuff there if needed.)

2. Lists

A big part of GTD is keeping good lists: Projects, Someday/Maybe, Agendas, Waiting-Fors, etc. I use Notes in Mail to keep those lists. But, Mail then buries those lovely lists down in a section called Reminders and also allows for Notes by Inbox. Yuck. Too complicated. To make this simpler and cleaner, I set up a Smart Mailbox called Notes. Any Notes — from anywhere in Mail — are filtered into this Smart Mailbox:

Another important set of lists is your to-dos by context (@home, @work, @calls, etc.). This is where iCal comes in. Mail doesn’t allow for categories on To Dos — but it does allow for To Dos to be associated with a calendar. So, I simply created “ghost” calendars called @home, @work, @calls, etc.). Technically, these calendars show up in iCal, but I uncheck them so nothing shows up. They exist only as a way to categorize my To Dos. Then, I created Smart Mailboxes that filter these To Dos by context:

All of my Smart Mailboxes (To Do lists by context and Notes) are right below my Inboxes for easy access (Mail allows you to drag and drop your items in the left pane into the order you prefer):

3. Calendar

Another big part of GTD is the “hard landscape” — what do I HAVE to do on a certain day, or at a certain time. I have multiple calendars in iCal that I can use to keep track of dates and filter as needed: personal, Trixie (my daughter), Theo (my son), and family. My work calendar is managed using a different calendar system than iCal, but luckily that system has an RSS feed. So I subscribe to my work calendar in iCal — which allows me to look in ONE place to see everything I need to do. My husband uses Google calendar — which also has an RSS feed — so I subscribe to his calendars as well. So then I’m aware if he has an early-morning meeting that may affect our routine or is scheduled to be out of town on a day when I may have to travel for work as well. Since I set up my system before Google unveiled the ability to sync calendars, I bought (and still use) a little app called BusySync that allows me to add new events in iCal. (So, if I add something in iCal, it updates Google, which updates the calendar feed which means my husband’s view of the calendar stays up-to-date, too!) In an extra bit of handiness, any birthdays that are in my Address Book are also displayed on a calendar so, assuming important birthdays are IN my Address Book, I don’t forget to buy and mail cards.

So, with all of that I have EIGHT calendars all displaying in ONE place. And each calendar has a different color — so when I see “Dr. Appt” I know immediately whether that appointment is for me, my husband or one of my kids.

So, while it took me a little bit of time to get this all set up, now that it’s up and running it takes very little time to maintain. To add to or edit one of my lists takes seconds. And I like using it. That’s key: if what you’re doing isn’t fun and easy — you won’t want to do it.

Plus, it’s portable. Most of what I’ve listed above syncs to my iPhone. The only things that don’t make it over are my To Dos, but I can live with that. (And if I need a quick list to take with me to the store, an index card and a pen come along for the ride.)

Whether or not you “do” GTD, think about what tools you are using every day, and how you could streamline them to make life easier. And if you’re interested in my ninja advice on using calendars, check out this blog post.

How Backpack Made Me Like Gmail More, by Nate Burgos

Posted on April 7, 2009

I guess we’re on a little bit of a 37signals kick over here at the Geek Girls Guide. Last week, our pal Julie outlined how she and her husband use Basecamp to manage their home remodeling. This week, our newfound friend Nate Burgos of Design Feast shares how 37Signals’ Backpack has helped him keep his inbox cleaner by streamlining his writing and editing process. This article is a great example of how one technology tool (Backpack) can help simplify another (email). I don’t think Nate is alone in wanting to keep the amount of “noise” in his inbox down.

We’ll be posting some more articles around here soon about how to keep your Inbox(es) under control. Let us know if Nate’s post gives you any bright ideas!

Since starting my blog last year, I had been using Gmail to send files to my editor Silvia. The system was simple: State the blog posting number in the email’s subject header, insert pleasant greeting and notification, and attach Word document. Writing is naturally iterative. There were a number of times that I would email another, and sometimes still another, revised version of the same posting. In these instances, the subject header would read USE THIS.

At times I needed to make sure that the latest version was indeed the latest, so I used Gmail’s fast search to track it. This way of sharing and commenting on versions was my workflow for making content to post. But repeating this workflow, with each compounded and buried email in my Sent folder, proved that the system wasn’t the right solution.

Last January, my writing-and-approval system was not only refreshed but also reengineered when I began using Backpack, 37signal’s tool for sharing and organizing information. I thought my immediate choice would be Basecamp, but decided that Backpack was appropriate for my purpose. Backpack allows you to create a Page, however many needed, dedicated to a topic. Each Page serves as a central place to store the stuff pertaining to the topic of that Page, like this for a past topic for a blog entry: