Last week, Caterina Fake wrote about the a social observation she made at SXSW which she called FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out: people checking their Twitter and Foursquare feeds to see who was where, doing what, to make sure that they were in the right place at the right time with the right people. And if they weren’t, quickly switching locations.

I’ve never been much of a joiner, so I’ve rarely suffered from this condition. I’m usually not wherever is trending — a disdain for long lines, overcrowded rooms, and inaudible conversation attempts. Just being somewhere, standing there in the place I’m “supposed” to be, to see and be seen, has never been my bag. That’s because I suffer from something far worse:

FONC — Fear Of Not Contributing

I’m a giver, not a taker. My whole life it’s been difficult for me to accept the offerings of others and feel self-worth from what I have and who I’m surrounded by. The only way I feel whole is when I’m contributing to the universe in some way — building something, helping someone, improving somewhere. I think in a lot of ways I became a consultant because I didn’t feel I was contributing enough at a full-time job. I wanted to contribute more and I was being held back. I was told outright that I was overshadowing the contributions of my teammates.

My need to contribute is a compulsion. Every day that I don’t create something is a day I feel I’m worth less. String together a few days of feeling worth less and eventually you’ll feel worthless. Of course by “you” I really mean “I.”

I burn out after working myself to the bone, and then give myself the day off to relax. But while I enjoy the respite, by nightfall I’m in a panic that the Earth has continued spinning and I didn’t actually have to do anything to help it.

It’s here that my Impostor Syndrome rears its ugly head. If the Earth keeps spinning without me, if companies keep making money and employees keep getting paid, and customers keep buying things they don’t need and figuring out what they do, and people keep learning and getting inspired by the work of others, and User Experience keeps making the rounds in conversations over lunch tables and boardroom tables, well then what the heck am I here for?

Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.

My FONC, aptly named, puts me in a funk on a regular basis. It comes and goes, but it mostly creeps up when I’m alone, at home, choosing to sleep or read or watch TV instead of crossing off something on my to-do list. My to-do list symbolizes the areas in which I believe I can contribute. Whether it’s crafting a proposal for a prospective client, producing for an existing client, drafting a blog post, or answering emails, when information and insight flows out of me, I can prove that I belong.

Just knowing where to be and being there, the goal of someone inflicted with FOMO, isn’t nearly enough to sustain me. I need the constant feedback and praise and criticism of a soul who knows she doesn’t belong at all. Because in those brief moments, I know my voice is heard. I know I’m noticed and I matter. And I know I’m there, wherever I am, for you.

• Darlin’ Do Not Fear
• What are you worth?
• A Brief Recap on Year 4
• To gather together
• Who is Gabby Hon’s hero?

I’m pretty obsessed with my iPad. When I first bought it back in April, I didn’t take my laptop out of the house for a good month. I watched movies in the park, showed samples of my work to prospective clients, read my feeds in the bath, and tested out a whole bunch of apps.

People always ask me which apps I really use, and I’ve been trying to figure it out myself. After deleting a bunch that I had stopped using and organizing the rest, here’s what I ended up with.

* denotes that this is actually an iPhone app that I use on my iPad

Sketching and Notetaking

• Sticky Notes
• Use Your Handwriting (UYH) Gold
• Penultimate
• Doodle Buddy
• Adobe Ideas

News, Publications, Feeds

• Reeder
• Flipboard
• Pulse News
• NPR
• CNN
• NYTimes
• The Guardian Eyewitness
• Mashable
• PopularScience+

Productivity and Publishing

• Dropbox
• Remember the Milk*
• Instapaper
• iA Writer
• WordPress
• Posterous*

Finance

• Harvest*
• Mint.com*

Social Networking

• Twitterrific
• Twitter for iPad
• AIM
• Skype*
• Facebook*
• LinkedIn*

Entertainment

• Netflix
• Hulu Plus
• Pandora
• IMDB
• Marvel
• Kindle

Shopping and Travel

• Gilt
• Zappos
• Kayak HD

Food

• SeamlessWeb*
• MenuPages*
• FreshDirect*
• Urbanspoon
• Epicurious

Games

• Pinball HD
• Scene It? Harry Potter HD
• Words with Friends HD

Utilities and Other

• PCalc Lite
• GoodReader
• The Weather Channel Max
• Dictionary.com

So tell me, what awesome iPad apps am I missing? Seeing what I use you can probably get a sense for the sort of ways I like to use my iPad. Significantly more consumption than production. How does that differ from how you use yours?

• OpenTable has a brain. Does your product?
• Photo of the day: A man in need of an iPad
• Feed Reader: Inbox Zero
• Links from 3/2/2008 to 3/5/2008
• My 10 Favorite Tools of 2010

As the year comes to a close, I can’t help but think of all the ways my life has gotten even better over the past 12 months. I’ve met incredible new people, I’ve opened myself up to new experiences, I’ve taken new risks, and I’ve found new loves. The most significant behavioral change that comes to mind is that I’ve spent considerably less time on the computer. That was one of my biggest goals for 2010, and I’m proud that I stuck to it and made it happen.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, Why would someone in tech have a goal of spending less time using tech? By limiting my computer time, I’ve given myself much more time to get to know new people, connect with people face-to-face, get to know new environments, really take in my surroundings, reconnect with nature, reconnect with myself, and ponder the meaning of life.

As user experience designers, it’s crucial that we spend time digging deep to understand people’s needs, and quite frankly, people don’t need to spend time on the computer. Using a computer is a means to an end, not the end itself. I realized that being at a computer wasn’t a necessity for me. Instead it was only necessary to use it enough that it would help me to do my work successfully and grow my business, but no more.

So in 2010, I focused on finding the tools that would enable me to do just that. Choosing effective tools that facilitate effective activity let me get in and get out, and get offline as much as possible. Now I share with you the 10 tools that changed my world this year. Maybe they’ll change your world in 2011.

At the very least, ask yourself why you’re using what you’re using, and if it’s in fact helping you get where you’re trying to go — or if it’s just getting in the way.

1. iPad 3G

Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way. Without a doubt the iPad has allowed me to spend less time on my laptop, less time at a desk, and less time feeling like I’m working. The iPad feels like a toy — whether it’s the form factor or the novelty just hasn’t worn off yet. Either way, it allows me to consume more, more quickly, and have more fun while doing it.

It allows me to be more mobile, more engrossed, and more spontaneous. I see absolutely no reason to buy an iPad if you don’t have the 3G. Let’s face it, even in NYC there are a whole lotta places that don’t have free wifi coverage. Having the iPad 3G, I’ve been able to read the newspaper in Central Park, listen to uninterrupted Pandora while riding my bike (with my iPad in my backpack), and pull up recipes in the grocery store. It’s so damn sexy, versatile, and pleasing.

The only thing that drives me batty are all those fingerprints — gross! Perhaps I need to invest in a screen protector or wipe. Ideas?

2. Dropbox


I used to use Time Machine to back up my files. I have a terabyte external drive that I’d plug into my laptop periodically to sync. But more and more I was spending time away from my desk, and soon “7 days since your last backup” became “30 days since your last backup” and I started to get nervous.

I had heard of Dropbox for group file sharing, but I’d been a Drop.io supporter so I’d never tried it out. Then when I got my iPad, everyone was talking about how amazing the Dropbox app was so I had to see for myself — which meant I had to create an account.

When installed on your machine, Dropbox copies your files to the cloud and maintains your file structure. I created aliases for all of my folders and moved the originals to Dropbox so I wouldn’t have to change the way my files are organized. Every time a file is edited, moved or deleted, Dropbox automatically syncs with your web-based backup. So long as you have an Internet connection, you don’t have to do anything. If you’re not currently connected, Dropbox will update when you are. You don’t have to think about it.

What I love the most is that the original files are always saved right on my computer. It’s not like using a virtual drive where the source files are remotely stored. With Dropbox, everything that lives on the web is a copy.

If you have multiple devices, you can access your files from any of them just by installing another instance of the app. Dropbox’s iPad app is incredible, probably my favorite app. Whenever I meet with a prospective client, I no longer bring my computer to show my portfolio. I pull out my iPad, open up Dropbox, navigate through my folders just as I would on my laptop, and open the relevant files. Because I have the 3G, I can do this anywhere at anytime; I don’t have any files stored on my iPad because I can always pull them from the cloud through Dropbox. And best of all, my deliverables look so damn good when they’re backlit.

I pay for 50GB (plus a few free extra gigs from referrals), and have all of my business and personal files, music, photos and videos synced. I also host the Loosecubes team’s folders, where we store, share and collaborate on files for product development. Every person you share your folders with gets access to the directories on the web, and can sync with their own devices, allowing them to work off their own original files when they’re offline. Dropbox tracks who’s updating what and when, and handles conflicts beautifully.

The one thing I wish it was able to do was allow real-time collaboration, showing updates happening to a single doc on multiple devices (like Google Docs) instead of having to save and reopen. That would be so killer.

[If you want to sign up, please consider using my referral code. You'll get 250MB free space, and I'll get 500MB!]

3. Venmo


My friends and I go out to eat together a lot. We go in groups of 6 to 12, and hardly anyone carries cash. So each of us takes turns putting the whole bill on our credit card and collecting money from everyone else. And to do this, we use Venmo. Multiple times a week.

Venmo was started by two young guys in Philly and NYC, and it uses Twilio on the backend (to be mentioned again). I like to explain Venmo by calling it Paypal via SMS. When you create an account you choose a username and hook it up to your checking account. Then when you want to send someone money, you send them a text message with the syntax “Pay <username> $<amount> for <description>” and POOF! money is transferred from your account to theirs. The recipient gets a text message and an email, and you all move on with your lives.

One of my best friends in college always used to say, “It all comes out in the wash,” whenever a group of us would go out to eat and have trouble figuring out who owed what. What I’ve realized about Venmo is that I now have a small pool of money that is designated just for time spent with friends. I never transfer the money that people Venmo to me back into my checking account, so whenever I Venmo other people it’s using that same money. It’s just getting sent back and forth between all of us on a regular basis (and from the screenshot above, you can see we like to write creative descriptions). No one feels slighted, no freeloads, and no one hesitates to pay. It’s actually pretty fun.

[Use my referral code to sign up!]

4. GroupMe


At the moment I find myself in two kinda cliques — Epic Brunch and UX Therapy. We’re not exclusive and bitchy, but we sure do spend a lot of time together. This is pretty unusual for me, as an only child and loner, independent soul and social floater. But I’ve really been enjoying the consistency.

These are the same two groups I use Venmo with, and we’ve recently been using another SMS-based app: GroupMe, also based on the Twilio platform. Simply put, GroupMe is group SMS. And currently, it’s free. You get a custom phone number when you create a new group, and add members to it with each of their phone numbers and a display name (via web or SMS). When any member of the group texts the group phone number, all members of the group receives it, preceded by the display name of the sender: For example:

Whitney: what time are we meeting for brunch?
Ben F: 1pm, but I’m running late
theoskye: I’m hopping on the train now

It saves us so much time when coordinating and reduces the amount of Reply All email going around. (Cuz why do we need archives of these exchanges? We don’t.)

Another really amazingly cool feature of GroupMe is that if you call the same group phone number, all of the members’ phones ring simultaneously and it creates an instant conference call.

Did I mention this is FREE?!

I’ve heard through the grapevine that there are a lot of equally awesome features to come. I’m looking forward to see how they plan to make money. If they keep the service as simple and effective as it is, I’ll be happy to pay the fee.

5. Reeder


I should have named 2009 my year of “Mark all as read.” I had a hundred subscriptions in Google Reader and every other month or so I’d check in, see that my unread count was 1000+, declare bankruptcy, and leave. The only blog posts I ever read were ones other people linked to on Twitter.

Reeder on the iPad has changed everything. I can’t quite pinpoint how they’ve done it, but they actually make reading all my feeds easier, faster, and more fun. Just about every morning I wake up and sit up in bed or take my iPad into the bathroom, and less than 10 minutes later I’ve read them all, sent some posts to Delicious, emailed some posts to friends and colleagues, and gotten my inspiration for the day.

It shows me only unread posts by default. I tap to read all and get a full daily list in reverse chronological order. I tap the first post, and then scroll down. At the end of the post, you can scroll further to pull up the next post in the list, regardless of source or category (since I’m in the All Unread view).

The font, leading, and line length are part of what makes posts so easy to read in Reeder. But if you want to see the post in its site design, or read through or add a comment, you can tap the post title to launch the webpage right in the app (without having to launch Safari). The share services are still accessible, and you can easily back out and return to the post in the Reeder format.

You can star a post, mark as unread, “share” it on Google Reader, or share it with a variety of services (which you can choose in the app’s Settings). The one service I wish they’d add is Posterous, and I’ll explain why below.

6. Posterous


Posterous is the adult Tumblr, and it’s totally changed the way I share links with my team. At Loosecubes, we use Posterous as an internal blog, to share product and business ideas, articles and links, general inspiration, and more broadly, post things that ought to be archived for later use (we use Yammer for quick status updates that aren’t relevant in a few days).

You can post via a WYSIWYG editor on the web, or even more effectively via email. By default every post generates an automatic email to all contributors, meaning you can also comment on any post via email (which Disqus allows you to do, but not WordPress — why?!).

My favorite way to post to Posterous is using their bookmarklet. On any webpage, select the text and images you wanna share, click the bookmarklet in your browser toolbar, and the selected content will get posted as a blockquote with whatever commentary you add. If you don’t select anything before clicking the bookmarklet, it will automatically load all of the images on the page and allow you to flip through to the one you want to include in the post. I’m doing a bad job of explaining it, so just try it out for yourself.

I like Posterous more than Tumblr because its default theme is optimized for blocks of text rather than just pretty images, and it actually has commenting functionality — a necessity for teams. Additionally, the distinction between contributors and subscribers, and the ease of private sites, makes it a much more robust tool to groups.

Posterous is currently in private beta testing of its new groups functionality, which among other things will allow for multiple administrators. I’ve been invited to participate, but they don’t want us to share any of the details, so I’ll shut up now.

7. GoToMeeting


I’ve done a bunch of remote gigs this year, and started doing more remote usability testing, too. GoToMeeting has been a loyal pal, despite a few bouts of tempermentality.

Though the Mac version doesn’t have all of the features of the PC version (like recording, which I’m assured from the inside is coming soon) — and it costs a hefty $50/month — it has been such a timesaver for me. It’s a real treat not having to travel to a client to review my deliverables or give a presentation. Of course there are times when it’s beneficial to be there in person, but a lot of teams I work with have multiple offices nationally or internationally, and not everyone can travel all of the time.

GoToMeeting lets me easily share my screen, give a participant control of my machine’s mouse and keyboard, or change the presenter to any other participant. When you set up a meeting, you have the option to have audio as VoIP only, or use a one-time-use custom toll-free conference call phone number — which allows people to either a) not tie up their phone, b) call in when they can’t be at their computer, c) save money if calling internationally, etc etc.

Doing remote usability testing for House Party using GoToMeeting was really credible, and a ton of fun. Thanks to Brynn Evans, formerly at Bolt | Peters, I was able to record the sessions using iShowU HD (after a somewhat complicated rerouting of audio, explained here).

~$600/year is pretty steep, so I’ve canceled the service for now. I wish there were a per-session price that I could pay in times of low volume, and upgrade to a package rate when working on a project that requires it more. Maybe my friends at Citrix will give me that gift in 2011.

8. SeamlessWeb


Okay let’s be honest. I constantly shit on SeamlessWeb for its awful user interface, yet I continue to use the service 3-5 times a week. Their iPad app is a significant improvement over the webapp, but it still has lots of flaws. Nonetheless, twice in the last two weeks I’ve had friends over at my place, and when it’s come time to order dinner, we pass the iPad around and each add our orders into SeamlessWeb. Despite my friends being pretty damn geeky, we’ve all gotten a huge kick out of it — the sort of programmatic vending machine of it all.

SeamlessWeb does two important things: it offers me a huge list of restaurants to order from that I might not have otherwise known existed, and it lets me not have to talk to anybody. The latter is probably the most important point.

When I’m hungry and lazy, my design sensibility gets put on hold. When the food shows up in a flash, no mistakes made, and all I have to do is sign my name…well that sure makes for a great experience.

9. MapMyRide


Since moving to the Upper West Side this spring, I’ve been riding my bike a whole lot more than I ever have before. I have a highly accessible bike room, which I think has something to do with it, but I also now live right near Central Park with one of the best bike paths in the city.

When I bought a new bike in May, I gave myself a 20-mile-per-week goal, and started tracking my routes using MapMyRide.

Every time I get back from a ride, I trace my path on the map if it’s a new route, or pull up an existing route and add a workout. I enter the duration, give it some ratings, and can add notes if there’s anything in particular I want to remember. Then I can see my average speed, elevation across the route, and total gain.

Mapping my rides feels like a little treat at the end of a tough workout. Sometimes I’m ridding just for fun, to feel the wind on my face and clear my head. Other times I wanna work up a sweat. MapMyRide lets me track both without judging which is better.

Their iPhone and BlackBerry apps have automatic route recording, but I don’t like the idea of my whereabouts being traced in real-time, so I don’t use it. And I find retracing my steps kinda fun anyway.

10. Livescribe Pulse Smartpen



I got the Livescribe Pulse pen as a gift last December, but I didn’t really start putting it to use until I started conducting research for House Party in June.

The electronic pen has an LCD screen, a voice recorder and an infrared camera near the tip of the ink that records your handwriting and syncs it to the audio. When you later tap anywhere on your notes, the pen plays back the audio recording from the exact millisecond you wrote it — letting you hear the context, fill in anything you missed, and bring yourself back to the moment. It’s truly magical.

There are special Livescribe notebooks you need to use, printed with an almost microscopic grid of black dots, in order for the pen to work (the camera uses the dot grid to orient itself, and identify the notebook and page number). They make 5-subject ruled notebooks and leather bound Moleskine-style notebooks, all available at Best Buy and online, or you can print your own.

When you lay the Livescribe pen on the USB dock, it downloads the audio and video files to your computer. Livescribe Desktop lets you view “photographs” of each page of each notebook in your own handwriting, with the same ability to tap anywhere and hear the related audio. You can listen to the recordings by session, export to AAC, or upload your pages to the web to share. There’s even a Livescribe Store where you can buy a whole slew of apps made by the relatively small community of developers.

The pen has a bunch of super cool features ranging from awesomely productive to just plain silly. There’s a way to draw a piano and play the keys, and a way to tap words to translate. The entire user interface is printed in the notebooks and the LCD menu navigation is controlled with a tap of the pen.

I think the thing I appreciate the most about the Livescribe Pulse pen is the ability to flip the display on its LCD depending on whether you’re a righty or a lefty. As a southpaw myself, I’m used to having to flip a pen or pencil sideways in order to read whatever is printed on it, so imagine my delight when I happened upon that feature!

The whole experience is so futuristic, even owning it for a year now and using it during more than 50 interviews hasn’t even slightly diminished its wonder. I can’t imagine ever conducting research without it.

The one thing I struggle with is that it’s obviously electronic, and can make other people in the room uncomfortable. Since they know that they’re being recorded, even though its solely for my personal use, it definitely makes people think twice about what they choose to say. So I hide my notebook under the table, or hold the pen in such a way that prevents people from being able to see the LCD screen. I try to limit questions to a minimum.

Final Thoughts

I don’t want to act ashamed of the tools I use — the Livescribe pen or any of them. They work for me, they make me better. They allow me to cut out wasted time and focus on what I’m good at and what matters to me. Ultimately that’s why we add new products, services, techniques and processes to our lives in the first place, isn’t it? Not simply for the heck of it, but to make things easier in some big or small way, to improve the way we do things or approach things, to increase pleasure and productivity, to optimize our time and efforts, and minimize our pain.

Hopefully one or more of the 10 tools that meant so much to me this year can have a positive influence on you. Please feel free to share your own top tools in the comments, or add your thoughts to any of the ones I’ve mentioned here.

I can’t wait to see what goodies 2011 will bring!

• Yet another list of iPad apps (what I use)
• OpenTable has a brain. Does your product?
• Awesome Email of the Day: How Little You Really Know
• New Year’s Resolutions for 2011
• I wish I knew how to quit you

Brett Harned is one of the best project managers I’ve ever known. I have the pleasure of working with him at Happy Cog, and getting to watch his skills put to work for the benefit of our team and the client team alike.

Despite being an adamantly behind-the-scenes kind of guy, he recently started blogging about the ins and outs of being a PM (after much urging), and is already imparting many a-nugget of wisdom to the masses. If you work on the web (and even if you don’t), it’s definitely worth adding his Adventures in Project Management to your feed reader.

Brett is publishing a series of Q&As with web professionals on the value they believe a project manager brings to the team, and I had the honor of being the first interview. It’s a pretty lengthy post, but I hope people will find my perspective interesting.

My answer to one of his questions:

A good project manager makes the team look wonderful and makes the project and its outcome better; a bad project manager makes the team look bad, the work product terrible, and wastes the client’s time and money.

Read Working with PMs: A Q&A with Whitney Hess

Many thanks to Brett for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts on the subject!

[This seems to have resonated with my friend Jeremy Kutner, website Project Manager and Producer at Atlantic Record. Rock on!]

• Whit Hour – Week 6
• Wondering? Ask me on Formspring!
• Can Leadership Be Learned?
• Whit Hour – Week 4
• Whit Hour – Week 12

Yes, I’m obsessed with Konigi’s Omnigraffle wireframe stencils, but what if you could have real-life stencils to help you sketch? You can. They’re called UI Stencils, and they’re made by Design Commission, an experience design agency in Seattle.

Drawing can be intimidating for a lot of folks, and the fear of not being a “good drawer” prevents people from picking up a pencil to communicate their ideas. But UI Stencils make that a breeze by providing stainless steal stencils for common UI components for websites, iPhone and now iPad. Their kits also come with a mechanical pencil and PDF templates. Not bad for just 18 bucks each.

They also sell sketchpads and sticky pads with the browser chrome pre-printed so you needed worry about drawing to scale.

Follow them on Twitter @uistencils.

[I honestly can't remember how I happened upon these, or if someone sent me a link directly. If it was you, tell me so in the comments. I apologize in advance :)]

• Yet another list of iPad apps (what I use)
• I am a stencil
• OpenTable has a brain. Does your product?
• Steal inspiration from everywhere
• IxDA NYC: Todd Zaki Warfel’s Prototyping for UX Practitioners

I was just smacked in the face by a recent blog post by my dear friend Jeffrey Zeldman, Free advice: show up early, about the consequences of being late to client meetings. Why? Because it forced me to finally fess up to one of my major flaws: I’m always five minutes late.

Sure, five minutes is better than 20 minutes, but late is late. I always have a good excuse, but excuses are inexcusable.

“If 80% of success is just showing up, 90% is showing up early.”

People rarely complain about my constant tardiness, but I think they’re just being nice. I don’t want to wait for it to tarnish my reputation before I do something to change it. After all, I’ve dedicated my career to creating positive experiences. Why should I neglect the experience I create for my clients? (and colleagues, and friends, and family)

So I’m making a vow: From this day forward I will show up everywhere five minutes early. I’ll be the one who has to wait. I’ll bring a book, or a crossword or KenKen puzzle, or I’ll just make that phone call I’ve been putting off. Whatever I have to do to kill the time, in the long run it will make a tremendous difference in how I’m perceived.

I hope you hold me to this. If I’m late to meet you, I expect you to tell the world about it here in the comments. I deserve to be called out, and I want to be better.

I can’t wait to see how life will change when I’m not running late.

• Questions show passion, not doubt
• Tips and Tricks for BlackBerry Users
• Awesome Email of the Day: How Little You Really Know
• Happy New Year to You
• May you be inscribed in the book of life

I have a problem: I don’t know how to say No. As a result, I bury myself in obligations I can never fulfill. I’m sure this has a negative effect on a lot of my relationships, but the most important relationship it’s hurting is the one I have with myself.

When I quit my job a year ago to become an independent consultant, one of the fantasies that lie ahead was a wide open, endlessly flexible schedule. I truly believed my days would consist of parks and naps, with a little bit of work on the side.

Now I’m forced to face facts: my schedule is a nightmare and if I don’t do something to fix it soon, I’ll be burned out before I reach year two.

Tony Bacigalupo, founder and mayor of the Manhattan co-working space New Work City, has listened to me whine about this a million times. He, Greg Palmer, Mark Burstiner and I finally sat down today for a group therapy session. We all feel like time is slipping through our fingers, and the lack of structure in our lives is a big contributing factor.

But complaining doesn’t make your problems go away. We need a strategy and construct to improve our productivity and restore our sanity.

Today we are starting a new initiative called CoStructure. We aren’t quite sure what it’s going to be yet, but we have some basic principles in mind:

• We are all accountable for each other’s success
• Productivity doesn’t just happen; we must set aside time for it and stick to it
• Canceling on yourself is a lot easier than canceling on someone else
• Not all routines are bad; structure allows you to do what you need to do when you need to do it
• Nothing is still something, and we all need to make time for nothing

This is just the beginning of our thinking, but one thing is clear: we all need a support system. Being independent doesn’t mean you have to be alone.

Stay tuned to our CoStructure blog on Posterous for further developments.

• New Year’s Resolutions for 2011
• I’m here at SXSW and I want to meet you!
• I Popped My Cherry at BarCamp Philly
• Client Matters: Needs + Resources + Location + Schedule + Budget = Scope
• Happy Cog and Happy Whitney

If you’ve been reading this blog for long enough, you know I don’t own an iPhone. How is it possible for a designer to not own an iPhone? Read one of my most popular posts: “Why I don’t have an iPhone (but might someday).”

I am the proud owner of a BlackBerry 8830 World Edition on the Verizon network. I’ve had it for a year and a half and it makes me very happy. When the BlackBerry Tour 9630 is released sometime in July, I’ll be the first in line.

Recently a new friend taught me a whole bunch of tips & tricks on the BlackBerry that I had never stumbled upon before (and some which I use often), so like any good neighbor now I share them with you.

If you don’t know the names of the keys, you’ll need to refer to this diagram from Mobile Wireless News:

Navigation Shortcuts

• To go to start/top of list or page: press T
• To go to end/bottom of list or page: press B
• To bring up the Taskbar on any screen: press ALT + Escape (similar to Mac Command+TAB or Windows ALT+TAB)

Typing shortcuts

• To insert your phone number: type mynumber
• To insert your PIN: type mypin
• To insert your the local date: type LD
• To insert your the local time: type LT
• To insert an opening parenthesis ( : type br
• To insert a closing parenthesis ) : type rb
• To insert your signature: type sig
• Press SPACE twice to insert a period and capitalize the next letter
• Press SPACE to insert the “@” and “.” characters in an Email field
• To copy highlighted text: press ALT and click the trackball
• To paste previously copies text: press Shift and click the trackball
• To create your own AutoText: go to Options > AutoText > Select “New” from the menu

Email shortcuts

• To compose a new message from within Messages: press C
• To show only incoming mail: press ALT + I
• To show only sent mail: press ALT + O
• To show only show phone log messages: press ALT + P
• To show only SMS messages: press ALT + S
• To show only voicemail messages: press ALT + V
• To make an unread message read or a read message unread: press ALT + U
• To toggle between a contact’s display name and email address: highlight the contact and press Q

Browser shortcuts

• To move to a specific web page: press G
• To return to the home page: press H
• To open the bookmark list: press K
• To refresh a web page: press R
• To view the address for a link: highlight a link and press L
• To view the address for a web page: press P
• To view a thumbnail version of a web page: press X. To return to the normal view, press any key

Miscellaneous shortcuts

• To dial alphanumeric phone numbers: Hold down ALT while typing letters (converts to numbers)
• To bring up the “Help Me!” screen that lists version, app version, pin, imei, uptime, signal strength, battery level, file free, and file total: hold down ALT + Shift, then the letter H
• To reboot without having to pull the battery: hold down ALT + Shift + Del

For some more advanced shortcuts, check out BerryReview.com

If you have any useful tips & tricks that I didn’t include here, let us know in the comments!

• Ten Best Things and Five Worst Things About the BlackBerry
• Why I Don’t Have an iPhone (but might someday)
• Text message your order to Amazon
• Twitter Keyboard Shortcuts
• My Cell Phones: 2000 – Today

New Work City, a new coworking space in New York City (get the name?!), opened its doors on Monday, November 3, and I’m pleased to say that I am a part-time member.

What’s “coworking,” you ask? It’s a new movement for freelancers and small business owners of all kinds to stop working at home or out of random cafés and start working together in a shared, open, collaborative space. Coworking spaces have opened all around the world, with popular spots Citizen Space in San Francisco and Independents Hall in Philly.

In the summer of 2007 my friends Sanford Dickert and Tony Bacigalupo started CooperBricolage, a coworking community gathering at the East Village café Gramstand. They offer free wi-fi and yummy treats, but you’re working among the masses, so it can get noisy and crowded (and quite hot downstairs in the summer months).

There was a real need for a more structured work environment, with desks and comfy desk chairs, a stronger wi-fi connection, a conference room, a fax/scanner/printer, and dedicated daily working hours. So Tony and Sanford decided to open New Work City. It was a year in the making, and they were meticulous about choosing the perfect space. Finally last month, they opened at 200 Varick Street at Houston St. The office is on the same corner as the 1 train, right next to the legendary SOB’s, with a deli downstairs, lots of food options within walking distance (including Chipotle), and just around the corner from the lovely Bedford St. It’s an ideal location for me because I live so close by and can stop in for the day or in between meetings, whenever the need arises.

There are several pricing options depending on people’s needs. I’m a part-time member, which means I pay $200 a month and can work from the space two days per week. The full-time membership is $550 a month, and that gets you your own key to the space so you can come in absolutely anytime you want. If you know New York real estate, those prices are a STEAL. Executive suites, where you can rent your own private office within a larger space, can charge upwards of $3,000/month. And here, you get so many more benefits that help you in your work and your life.

If you’re still kind of skeptical of this whole coworking thing, I thought I’d tell you my top 20 reasons why I’m here. If you’re in New York City and working from home every day, there is hope. Join us. The more the merrier here, and daily drop-ins are only $25. If you don’t live in NYC and want to find coworking near you, just check out one of the hundreds of locations around the world, or start your own!

Why I Work at New Work City

1. Work feels like play here
2. There’s inspiration in the air
3. A kick-ass neighborhood
4. Great music
5. Free wi-fi
6. It’s quieter and cheaper than Starbucks
7. Comfy leather chairs
8. A private bathroom
9. TONS of natural light
10. It’s actually quiet
11. Expert help at the next desk whenever you need it
12. They have a cool name
13. Tony B is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet
14. I can help contribute to its growth
15. I like feeling cutting-edge
16. It’s a good excuse to shower and look nice
17. Setting aside time to work is smart for any independent worker
18. Lots of boys ;)
19. There’s a ridiculous amount a love in this room
20. Coworking will change the face of business forever. You heard it here.

Interested in joining New Work City? Check out their website, email me with questions, or better yet just stop by and see it for yourself.

• To gather together
• By supporting New Work City, you make what I do possible
• Tweetup Goodness – 5/27/2008
• I wish I knew how to quit you
• Blog of the Day on Logic + Emotion

Oh happy day!

As I’ve said before, I find it nearly impossible to keep up with the steady stream of information that gets pushed at me all sorts of ways. In the case of my RSS feeds, I’ve opted in, chosen to receive this deluge of content, and yet it still feels like a job to get through it all.

On days like today when I get down to zero, I feel like I’ve won the battle.

But not the war.

I have a method for managing my incoming emails on my work and personal accounts, but I have yet to devise a system for RSS feeds. I’ve already deleted as many subscriptions as I feel comfortable parting with, and hitting “Mark all as read” is just pointless. I want to know what these folks have to say, and I want to be able to digest it all and perhaps even act on information as necessary — forward it to a coworker or friend, tweet about it, write a blog post. But I always feel like I’m skipping over so much.

Does anyone have advice they can share? Please post your tips in the comments for all to benefit. Thanks!

• The catch-up obligation
• Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation
• Design.alltop.com
• What I did while Twitter was down today
• FONC and the Impostor Syndrome