Digging the digital

[[image:livefeeds.jpg::left:0]]If you use Firefox 2.0 (and why shouldn’t you?) and Netvibes you may have already found out that the default Netvibes extension is not working with Firefox 2.0. Which basically bums me out because every now and again it can be really handy to quicky add some feed to my Netvibes tab. Also, in the Livefeeds-settings from Firefox, you can’t add the option to subscribe with Netvibes. So it’s good to see there is a little hack to add Netvibes to the Livefeeds settings. With it, you can add any webfeed to Netvibes with one simple click. The article describes thesteps in FF 2.0 Beta but they also work in the final version. For me, the clean way didn’t work, the “ugly” way did.

• Open a Tab and type in ‘about:config’ in the address bar.
• Filter the list by the words ‘contentHandlers’. This should list the Google, Yahoo and Bloglines feed-readers.
• You will need to create new entries for Netvibes.
• To create a new entry right click the window and select ‘New > String’.
• For the first string enter ‘browser.contentHandlers.types.#.title’ as the preference name and ‘Netvibes’ as the string value. ‘#’ is the next biggest number for the feed contentHandlers. In my case it was 6.
• For the second string enter ‘browser.contentHandlers.types.#.type’ as the preference name and ‘application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed’ as the string value.
• For the third string enter ‘browser.contentHandlers.types.#.uri’ as the preference name and ‘http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?url=%s’ as the string value, ‘%s’ here is replaced by Firefox as the URL of the RSS/ATOM feed when it subscribes to Netvibes.
• Restart Firefox and check if ‘Netvibes’ is listed as a feed when you subscribe to an online feed by choosing ‘Bookmarks > Subscribe to this Feed’.

My Way: Netvibes with Firefox 2.0 Beta

Update: In the comments, Franck Mahon tells us about the Netvibes team who have created a one-click solution. Check it out on their blog

[[image:26608943_0b4e490f5b_m.jpg::left:0]]Just a quick note from the household-department. Next week we will be moving servers for this website. Not that the current server can’t keep up,but I decided to rent my own webspace. Together with the owner we will move this blog to the new space and at the same time set up a new configuration for the blog. For instance, it has been bugging me since day 1 that I can’t use the official domain Whatsthenextaction.com but am stuck to punkey.com/gtd. We will also set up the so-called “pretty URL’s” which make it better to read the URL’s instead of those pesky ID’s. Next Action after the move is starting some new design for the blog. But more on that later. First we move, than we design. If something goes “bang” in the process, you will know… 

(photo courtesy of fill3r)

Wow, this has been an interesting week! Last wednesday I wrote a review on Mindjet’s MindManager and included a little contest. I have been able to give away 5 licenses for MindManager 6 Professional, thanks to Hobie and Erik from Mindjet. I asked for some creative, thoughtprovoking mindmaps. And did I receive some, oh yeah. Now here is the big cliche, it was hard to pick five winners from the entries. It really was! I received about 20 mindmaps on all sorts of subjects. The diversity how people use mindmaps is very interesting to see. But as they say, only a few can win. So without further adue here are the winners in random order. You can click on the thumbnails for a larger view

Steve Newson sent his resume as a mindmap. Very innovative and very original! There you go Steve, one license for you! I blurred out some personal info

[[lightbox:steve_newson_cv_2006.jpg:stevenewsoncv2006_small.jpg:center:0]]

Bill Reichart sent a mindmap of his church and the accompanying actions. He is a pastor at the church and from what I can tell he uses his mindmaps to stay in touch with several life groups and tracks his responsabilities as a pastor and a person. Congratulations Bill!

[[lightbox:BigCreekChurch.jpeg:BigCreekChurch_small.jpg:center:0]]

Luciano Passuello sent in two mindmaps and both are very very special. They are very well put together and very informative. Luciano, have fun with the license!

1. The Now Habit (a book about procrastination). Download the mindmap2. One Small Step Can Change Your Life (a book about kaizen – continuous improvement). Download the mindmap

(Warning: When you use Internet Explorer, rename the downloaded zip files to the extension .mmap and open them in MindManager) 

These are mindmaps I did for personal reference while reading these personal development books. The mindmaps are pretty big (they contain the full contents of these books), but can easily be filtered using MindManager “Map Markers” feature.[…] Now, for every book I read I do a mindmap. This way, I can, at a glance, later, “reread” the whole book, just with the mindmap. It is a very effective technique as I used to forget everything but one or two ideas of the books I read.

Too bad the vast majority of the other maps I have (the ones in paper) are in Brazilian Portuguese (my native language), and don’t make much sense for English-speakers.

[[lightbox:the-now-habit-mindmap.jpg:the-now-habit-mindmap_small.jpg:center:0]] [[lightbox:one-small-step-mindmap.jpg:one-small-step-mindmap_small.jpg:center:0]]

Scott Weingart is our next winner. He uses mindmaps for his GTD 20,000 feet review. Insightful!

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Horacio Trejo is our last winner. In his words:

Here is a snapshot in the day of a teacher. I have used GTD for a few years now, and it saved my career and sanity.

If that’s not a testimonial-quote for MindJet I don’t know what is…

[[lightbox:horacio_trejo_mindmap.jpg:horacio_trejo_mindmap_small.jpg:center:0]]

A special shout-out goes to Scot Herrick. He sent in a mindmap but already has a license but he wanted to share it with us. Here is his story:

[Here is] the Mind Map that I did for meeting notes at a writers convention in early October from the seminar “The First Ten Pages.”
[…]What I did was place the handout outline as topics in MindManager at the beginning of each seminar so I would have places to start attaching the notes. Then I would add notes and/or topics as needed (speakers don’t stay on topic nor cover one at a time, so this was extremely useful).
Then, in the last five minutes of the seminar, I highlighted in green the notes that were most important to me or that I wanted to implement.
It was very fast, easy, and simple to take the seminar notes – and made the notes easy to read and use way after the seminar was done.

Thanks Scot!

[[lightbox:MeetingNotesTheTenPagePromise.jpg:MeetingNotesTheTenPagePromise_small.jpg:center:0]]

There you have it, the five winners of MindManager 6 Pro. I will email Mindjet the adresses of the winners and they will get in touch with you. Please let me know if you received your serial number so I know everything worked out fine.

To all who didn’t win, too bad but hey, perhaps Mindjet will be nice some other time and we can give away some more licenses. But on the other hand, I will give away some more software in the coming days, so make sure you stay subscribed!