My Twitter experiences so far

Twitter seems to be the latest thing when it comes to keeping in contact with anyone and everyone, or even seeing what people are up to, are about to get up to etc.

I've been on Twitter since the end of March 2009, having originally joined with the intention of boosting my blog (which I've hardly written in) and develop, maybe, a (change of) career in writing and social commentating. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, but I have gone through the addiction, searching for anybody and everybody, posting inane updates (e.g. I'm having beans for dinner), and generally wasted a lot of time. I have found people I know, and added some, and avoided others. However, I have come to some realisations:

Post about relevant stuff and people may follow you.
One thing I've noticed is that when I tweet about relevant or interesting stuff, e.g. Mac/iPhone, my wine and restaurant choices, commentary on TV programs (Masterchef is a good one!) etc, then I sometimes get a response/tweet back or a follower or two.

Contribute to trending topics
Tweet about stuff that's trending, and people will follow you, particularly if you show some humour (e.g. again, Masterchef). The highlight is being 're-tweeted' where someone posts your tweet back

Answer questions asked by fellow tweeters. While it's fun to tweet that you're eating beans, it's actually more fun to interact with fellow tweeps by answering questions or comments if you know the answer. This also means they might follow you.

Be aware of volume
When I consider whether I may follow someone, one thing I do look at is the volume and quality of their tweets. I'd be more inclined to favourite the tweet I thought was interesting if I think that they person tweets too much about not much at all. This one is a funny one though because I have been prone to the quantity, not quality rule at times!

Use favourites
Favourites are handy. 'nuff said.

Get a good Twitter client
Using the web interface is good for occasional use, but if you're going to get into it, get a web client. There are heaps out there. The ones I have used/tried are:

• Tweetdeck
• Nambu
• Tweetie

There are also ones out there that look like an excel spreadsheet, apparently done so your boss doesn't think you're on Twitter!

Also, there are plenty of sites that work in well with Twitter to allow to you post links, pictures etc:

• Twitpic.com
• Tr.im
• pic.im

Happy Tweeting, Tweeps!




p.s. I don't really like beans!

My thoughts on presenting and demonstrating

One of the many things I have to do as part of my job is conduct presentations and demonstrations of our product. Public speaking has always been easy for me, probably since I was "made" to go and read the lesson at church as a youngster, and now I almost relish to opportunity to speak in front of large groups or present our product to them. Of course, over the last 17 years with my job, I have learnt the hard way through feedback and watching my own presentations, but also through observing others. While I don't profess to be an expert by any means, often the way to learn is through the experience of others.

Recently, I was asked to present to my team on some tips and techniques for presentations and demonstrations. I thought that I'd summarise some of them on this post, keeping in mind that not all of them may apply if not demonstrating a software product.

Comments and feedback appreciated.

Mouse work: When presenting anything that involves a mouse, e.g. navigating a product or web page, I encourage my team to take note of the following:

1. Mouse movements can be distracting. Make use of ‘home position’ for mouse when talking, for example, sit the cursor top left or centre screen.
2. Fiddling can be really distracting even if you don't realise you're doing it. One thing I see the team doing is making columns wider/smaller while talking and it can be distracting because the group watch what the mouse is doing rather than listening
3. Be careful not to rush from one concept to the next. Use pauses while the group take in what you've just said and process it. Sometimes, if it's an interactive group, and you're showing something quite new such as a software product, 'digestion' time is needed. Pauses are also good because they let the presenter think about the next bit!
4. Compartmentalise concepts before moving onto a new one
5. A trick I've learnt to emphasise something I'm doing rather than saying, is to not say anything while using the software/moving the mouse. It can be very effective to draw attention to what you're doing by not saying anything at all!
6. In reverse to the above, sometimes I've found that talking and no mouse at all can work as well if you want to get a point across.
7. When talking or answering questions, keep your hand off the mouse.

Question time: There will always be questions! This is one area that I've really worked on over the years as I was in a position to observer some of our presenters in action:

1. Do not talk over client. Stop and let them finish the question. Too often I see our staff guessing the question and then giving the wrong answer. Normally I hate people talking over me, but in a demonstration/presentation scenario, I stop dead and let the person speak.
2. Clarify Question if not completely certain what was being asked.
3. Check that you gave the correct/expected answer, e.g. ask “did that answer your question?”
4. Keep people on topic. Sometimes I'm fortunate to have someone facilitating the session, but don't be afraid to say that a question is off topic and it can be addressed later, particularly when doing software demonstrations.
5. This can be a difficult one, but try to watch for potential question. For example, the person who has something to ask but cant get a word in, but be careful not to prompt them if they don’t have a question!

Presentations: Slide shows are very very popular and there are enough web sites devoted to the topic of creating good presentations, but some points I try to stick to:

1. Keep it simple. Take a cue from Steve Jobs/Apple who give great simple presentations where it's about the speaker, not the slides. However, if you're not as confident at presenting then the slides can be a good 'support' for you. An example slide I have used is below.
2. The slides should either reinforce what you're saying with key points or "take-home-messages" or introduce/sign-off on topics. Don't read the slides word for word - the group can do that for themselves!
3. I find that if I do need to read the bullet points (it has happened) then either my presentation is wrong or the slides need re-work to take out some of the detail.
4. Having said that, summary slides sometimes may need the words.
5. If slides do get wordy (sometimes it happens), give the group a few sections to scan/read it.
6. Don't use sounds or fancy transitions. PowerPoint is great because it provides sounds, actions etc for building slides, and are great for schools, but in a professional setting they can be annoying or inappropriate if over used.
7. Keep images to a minimum - this works well with the 2nd point above. Having said that, I did do a presentation to a NSW university once where I found funny pictures like those old black and white photos you can buy on the front of greeting cards, used only those in the slide show and talked to the slide headings instead.
8. From experience, people remember the simple rather than the detailed when it comes to presentations.

Some other miscellaneous points:

1. Know your audience. Talk to the right level. Be aware if some/all of the group might have heard some points before, that may not be needed.
2. In a professional demonstration, sometimes it's worth avoiding giving of personal advice, just re-word it. For example, “personally, but you don’t have to do this” doesn't work, but say instead "a suggestion is..."
3. Having said that, in some presentations, the group appreciates getting to know a bit of who you are, rather than just someone up the front talking. This might be an introduction point about you, but could also be some personal experiences. When I'm presenting our product, I talk about "when I implemented this in xx area/department of the hospital".
4. PowerPoint and Keynote have presenter views when you have multiple monitors configured, and this can provide you with your notes, next slide and a timer. I use this where possible.

My Office 2008 for Mac journey

Today I finally gave in and purchased a full version (well the upgrade) of Office 2008 for Mac. When I had purchased my new MacBook, I'd also purchased Office Home/Student edition on the assumption that it also had Exchange Server support.

For the uninitiated, Exchange Server support means the ability to talk to your corporate/office Exchange email server. If you're a home user or have a home/small business, it's possible you won't have an Exchange server running.

The assumption was based on the Apple Store web page that contains the same blurb for all versions of the Office product, which is very misleading, especially when there's a radio button at the top allowing you to select your edition.

I currently use Office 2004 with Entourage (the email product, not the TV show!) on my other desktop Mac, and connect via Outlook web access, which seems to work, but it does lack a few of the things that I needed to use, such as Out of Office and Rules. Trying some clever things like loading Entourage 2004, then Office 2008 and not removing the 2004 program, or doing it in the 2008, then 2004 order was not successful. Office seems to load "something" that disables all Exchange support as soon as the Home/Student edition is loaded. Bummer, but clever at the same time.

This morning I loaded 2004 on the mac book, thinking that I'd just go with that, and then, I promptly got some emails that had Word 2007/2008 documents attached. Now I know I could have just loaded the converter, but I thought what the heck and forked out the $320ish dollars to buy the upgrade. I will keep 2004 on my other Mac as it's become mostly a web surfing machine, and will use 2008 on the MacBook. My Personal Trainer might buy my Office/Student edition off me if I succeed in converting him from Windoze land.

So what benefits have I discovered of using Office 2008 Standard over the other editions? I really wanted just the Exchange server support so that I could use my Mac at home and access the work email with a little more flair than the Web version. Office 2008 now gives me the ability to set my out of office, displays calendars and emails better and has better access (it seems) to view team calendars etc. The little pop up "My Day" widget seems cool too. Having the other applications of course does give me the ability to exchange documents better, now that more people are getting Office 2007 for PC or 2008 for Mac. As I find more interesting bits, I will post them in future blogs.

MacBook batteries and sleep vs. hibernate

As a new MacBook owner, I'm paying careful attention to how the thing is working etc, just in case I've got a bad one. As it seems, everything is pretty good, some strange console messages, but on the whole it's a pretty fine beast. I bought it with the intention to start blogging and to maybe explore something a bit more creative given the logical way in which I go about my normal 9 to 5 job.

Being a gadget boy (both self-confessed and labelled by others), one thing that always concerns me is battery life. Like many others have reported in the Apple Support Forum I noticed my MacBook slowly lose charge when in sleep mode. For example, I'd charged it overnight one night - 100% in the morning - and then on the trip to work (I'd put it to sleep), it would wake up to 96% after a 15-20 minute trip.

Yesterday, I let the battery drain completely (doing pretty much nothing, it took about 4.5 hours), which then put the MacBook into Hibernate mode. I left it charging yesterday evening until the power adaptor went green, then unplugged and left it as is over night. This morning, it's still showing full charge when I plug it back in.

It seems that the new MacBooks (as compared to my 2004 PowerBook G4) have a different sleep mode where it's a low-power mode holding memory contents rather than writing them to disk. This means there is a slow drain when in sleep mode, although the definition of "slow" can differ from laptop to laptop and person to person.

There is a preference pane/tool called SmartSleep that can be installed to control what my MacBook does when the lid is closed. I'm going to test this out over the next week and see what effect it has when I set it to hibernate instead of sleep. I don't see a real need to be able to open the lid and have it ready to go, and am happy to wait the few seconds for it to come back to life. I've just been reading comments on the Apple site above that there may be battery cost while it comes out of hibernate but will see how things go.

The other things I'm going to do over this weekend is go through a couple of full charge/discharge cycles to try and calibrate the battery.