Alex Bain's Blog

TripIt.com: Use it

My friend, 'Dre, recently left a stable job at a huge company to live the dream at a sweet start-up: TripIt. The site is awesome, and she deserves to get rich as a result.

The concept is so simple: organize all of your travel itinerary details in one place, and make it dead simple.

Example: You book a flight through JetBlue.com, and they send you a confirmation email with the details. Forward the confirmation to [email protected], and you're set. But wait, you also make a reservation to eat on this trip through OpenTable.com. Forward their confirmation email to [email protected]. You book a hotel, a car rental, a train ride? Forward on the info. What if you don't get a confirmation email? Their site is so easy to use, it doesn't matter. They do a better job of explaining their product than I do. Check out their explanation and demo.

It's well worth using if your traveling on your own, but the site really shines when you're coordinating travel across a group of people. Now everyone has one common place to share all their itinerary info.

2 other benefits that I can no longer live without:

1. They create a calendar based on all your info, which automatically pops up in my computer's calendar program, iCal, but works in Google Calendar, or whatever else you use.
2. If you have to drive anywhere while you're on your trip, and can pre-load directions from Google Maps, and they'll be built into your itinerary.

They have all sorts of fun little touches too, like being able to assign a custom picture to your trips so you can see which trip is which out of a list. This is the ideal kind of web2.0 site: well thought out and constantly improved.

Go sign up for an account, and the next time you book a flight, send them your info. You'll be hooked.

Finally, my friends pick up on the trend

Two of my friends started blogging in the last ~1 month. Scott Orn and David Vivero. I recommend reading both of them for the same reason:

Their writing is good enough that, you can either quote them, or steal their ideas, in a conversation, and either way you sound wicked smart.

I've been in enough ridiculous situations with Dr. Vivero that I have goofy pictures of him like the one to the right. Sadly, I have none of those when it comes to Dr. Orn, but he's been kind enough to publish his own, like the one to the left.

UPDATE: I'm embarrassed to point out that I neglected to mention the hottest new blog to hit Europe: LondonLevys.Tumblr.com. My friends, Dan and Esther, have moved to London for a while, and are tracking their adventures through a slick Tumblr blog.

WorkHack.com

I found a great new to-do list manager from a productivity blog I've been reading: LifeDev

My new favorite site for making a quick to-do list is WorkHack.com

It can be used in conjunction with GTD, or just with managing any quick project. What's cool is that you don't have to sign in, but you can still save your work. I also like the "miniWorkHack" feature, which makes the web-page really small, so you can put it in the corner of the screen but still see it.

Why you should read 43 folders if you own a Mac

"All the reading in the world won’t teach you as much as your first french kiss."

I've recently started studying up on the topic of productivity, because I had huge problems in the area last semester. I simply had more things to do than what was possible, and found myself in need of a system to "priorganize" my activity.

Obviously, I'm a fan of the book Getting Things Done. I'm about 80% of the way through it, and very excited to start implementing it's advice this semester. What I've found though is that, while the book is thorough and complete, there are all sorts of little tid-bits being passed around online that make one's commitment to productivity even easier.

In the same way that there are many Mac rumor sites, but if I only have time to check one I check TUAW.com, there are many sites on productivity, but there is one that is more perfect for me than any other: 43Folders.com.

The site's name is a reference to part of the GTD system. It's written by a guy named Merlin Mann and he employs video, podcasting, and writing to help you become a more productive person. He's quite clever, and one of his recent posts contained the above quote which reminds me of Good Will Hunting and is certainly one I'll pull out in conversation in the future.

Zillow.com

I haven't been this impressed by a website in a LONG time. My friend, Randall, pointed this out to me.
Follow these steps and tell me if you think I'm exaggerating:

1. Think of a house you'd be curious to know the current value of. The house you grew up in, a house your friend just bought, etc. (this works better if it's been sold once or twice in the last 10 years)
2. Go to Zillow.com and type in the address of the house you just thought of
3. You may need to move the map around, but if the house is is there (and most are), you can click on the house, and it will give you the option to show more detail. Do this.
4. Not only does this give you bird's eye views of the address from 4 different angles, but it shows you the property's value over time, and sales history. By default, it only shows you the value over the last year, but it's kinda cool to check out the last 10 years.
5. Once you're sufficiently impressed, try typing in some celebrity addresses.

Was I lying? Bookmark this baby, because you know there'll be plenty of occasions to use it. Only bummer is that is doesn't work with the default Mac browser, Safari, so Mac users have to go out of their way to use Firefox or Camino. Small price to pay.

The last weather site you'll ever need

When it comes to weather information, I've always been willing to put up with a confusing interface, if I thought the detail was better. In college I noticed that Weather.com was wrong more often than it was right. It was as though they didn't even employ meteorologists, they simply generated random weather code. My friend Jeb relies on WeatherUnderground.com when he evaluates potential natural gas trades, so I have used that site for the last few years.

Then, yesterday, I threw away everything I thought I knew about weather. I was planning a golf outing with some folks I've met at school, and one of the guys said there was an 80% chance of rain right during the hours we were playing. He knew this because he'd check the National Weather Service. He'd gone to their site, entered the zip code of the area we were gonna golf in, in the bottom right he clicked on "Hourly Weather Graph", and then looked at the chances of precipitation as they change over time. Considering that most of why I check the weather is to know if it will rain, and what to wear, having the hourly info is huge.

What's funny is that Weather.com said there was a 30% chance of rain today, while this site was saying 80%... and it rained hard today.