What I like is to find, explore and introduce readers to innovative ways that may or may not solve some of the society’s problems.

We are seeing a lot of innovative start-ups and business overseas that make society a better place but at the same time profit from it.

This is not really an investment or money related topic so I would discuss with my readers more at my productivity blog Productive Organizer under the segment Better Society.

Better society is a segment on Productive Organizer where we focus on business or people taking alternative efforts to improve the way we live through innovative means as well as opinions on our current society.

If you feel strongly or are interested in such a topic, you can follow and contribute at my sister blog or add the RSS feed to your rss reader.

Unemployed, Home-makers and Students – Do they have skills?

One group that were out of the employment equation are these 3 groups of people. We often hear that in Singapore society, when you reach the age of 45-50 you become very difficult to get employed.

People think that you learn things slower and you are resistant to new processes.

It becomes difficult to employ home makers if stay home mom is away from the working community for a few years.

During times of high unemployment, students fresh from college or university find it difficult to get a job

But do they really don’t have any skillset?

1. Home makers are able to cook well. They may organize things better than others because they are focus in this area.
2. They may have the best ideas how to teach and take care of infants.
3. The retired may have ample experience and able bodied, since they have been practicing their craft for 40 years.
4. The students are rough around the edges, but they can get the job done if their attitude is right

A Marketplace for skills and chores could be the solution

A market place is where we can meet those that do not have the time, have specific needs and are willing to pay for short tasks with those that have the skills to do it, want to try and simply love to do it.

At Productive Organizer we introduce 3 of them:Task Rabbit,Coffee and Power and Worklists.

Task Rabbit is a start-up that focus on having a bunch of ad-hoc life makers that can help working people or people short on time to fulfill their unique needs.

With a marketplace to match these people, both side wins out.

If you want to make this a more permanent engagement, build up a reputation just like as a free lancer or a professional and you are likely to get more engagement or charge more for it.

Conclusion

Sometimes, technology comes along but people do not make full use of it. When entrepreneurs come from a view to make society a better place and create a business model that is sustainable from this, everybody wins out.

I like the idea that while it doesn’t solve long term issues, like YouTube, people with interest and passion can create a passive income for time spend doing things they are willing to do.

What do you guys think? Will it work in Singapore?

Just to share, I do blog a lot and have stayed off exercise for some time and have notice a drastic worsening in my health.

So I definitely agree with this infographic

[Hattip Barry Ritholtz]

One easy way to keep track of only the comments is via RSS feeds reading it on your iPhone, Android phone, web browser or Google Reader.

To find out more about RSS take a look at this article >>

My site’s Main RSS feed is here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/investmentmoats

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I really don’t like to come up with this post but I guess it might be easier this year.

Work have been hectic in a way I think most people would think its not, but for me it is enough.

This year have been a year where I muddle through and at the end of the year I really don’t know if I have achieve anything work wise.

I realize one thing is that I really can’t concentrate that well.

Psoriasis and Wellness

One main reason is that my psoriasis have gotten to the point where it is starting to interfere with my work and off work

1. I don’t think clearly enough. It seems like intense concentration is a problem. I can’t monitor more than certain number of things and always gets pointed out by my Boss. Not good.
2. At night it gets so itchy ( I am nearly 70% covered) that I really cannot do much. This has led to lower number of analysis and posts. Have to apologize to any loyal readers around.
3. Medical cost to cure it has escalated with not much visible results. Financially this has become a drain.

Psoriasis is a problem not many people understand. In my 15 years with this problem, I have never met another person who has it. Sometimes I seriously wonder why I am so unlucky to get this.

Money and Investing

I didn’t make much big positions and my portfolio is for all to see.

Un-realized Gain is 10% overall at this point for my Dividend portfolio.

Income Distribution made up 7% of Dividend portfolio.

I am pretty disappointed with many moves made but this year I do finally realize how I should be investing. When you approach 6 years in the market its time to focus on what works and leave out those that doesn’t.

My goals for 2011

I think at this point it becomes clear that my primary focus will be on health and wellness. If I don’t get this problem under control, the quality of life not to mention career wise it will not be good for me.

Switch to a plant based and whole foods diet

I will switch to a plant based and whole foods diet as much as possible. I truly believe a lot of the problems humans have is due to what we put into our body.

I just had lunch with my colleagues and the more I see what we eat the more I believe problems like Diabetes, Eczema, High blood pressure, High cholesterol can be brought to control if we choose to eat wisely.

The difficulty is really in Singapore, there is no healthy food sold during lunch time!

Learn to prepare healthy lunch meals

Many would see it as drastic but I think only those food prepared at home are really low in salt, MSG, sugar.

I used to know how to cook well and lost that over the years. I should probably learn to pick it up. 

Become a better lead

This year, I made enough mistake to be disappointed with myself. These mistakes are not rookie mistakes but should not have been made because that is expected of me.

I hope for this year I can really learn to track things and learn what is important from those things that are not important. That way I can be better at my job.

Add SGD24,000 to investment war chest

To some it is a big amount. To others this doesn’t constitute much. Hell, a Keppel or a Sembcorp Marine employee can probably hit this target with their bonus.

But that is the little amount I can save from my puny salary.

SGD10,000 per annum dividend income

This is a drastic increase from what I achieve this year but I feel it is achievable since I have 60% of the investable amount in cash.

But make no mistake, I will be flexible here. As long as I smell that a large decline is coming this dividend portfolio will be pared down. The thing I learn from 2007 is that you can stop your portfolio from a serious rot. Preserving capital both monetary and psychological is important.

Create one web or mobile application

Software engineering, user experience design and following the latest technological trends is my main hobby currently. Many might not know that I do blog about mobile productivity, user experience and technology in general at www.productiveorganizer.com

I am about to put out my first app on the Android market with 3 more friends. Hopefully I can create another this year.

If you guys have a great idea and would like to share you can email me at drizzt@investmentmoats.com

Conclusion

That’s it from me this year. I would like to thank my family for helping me through this difficult year but also great friends and colleagues with a special mention to LBN, Van, Jan, Wen Wen,Kim, ZY, Willy, A1 & 2, Wing, JR, YY, Ah Yeow, Ah Wei, Tonton, TM and KL for helping me in little and big ways.

Thank you my fellow bloggers Musicwhiz, Momo, La Papillion, AK71 for making this a great community and not to mention to you the readers. Without your critiques and inputs it will not have been such a great journey.

All the best for 2011. Good Health for all.

Other than trading and investing, what got me excited right now are really ways to organize the way you perform things and ways to get things done. How you are able to improve productivity at home, at work but especially mobile productivity if you use good ways to organize your environment better.

So do tune in to my new space

[Visit The Productive Organizer Today >>]

An added benefit of it is the tight integration of Google Gears into it.This i would think will translate to better performance when working with some Web 2.0 application such as Gmail, Remember The Milk etc.

Specifically, Google Chrome enables you to launch a streamline web application such as Remember The Milk or Zoho Docs by itself.You can compare the vast differences in speed when you launch a Google Chrome instance vs a Mozilla Firefox 3 instance.

The problem is that for these application, you would require only one copy of it to run and reference it time and time again. What do i think is the best way to do this? Enter AutoHotKey.

Here i will go through an example of how i will use Chrome and AutoHotKey to bring up a list of To-Dos on Remember The Milk.

1) Download Google Chrome. First if you have not download Google Chrome, you can download the web browser over here.

2) Download AutoHotKey. Download the smashing launcher/shortcut software that is AutoHotKey over here. You can use the quick start tutorial provided to learn about the number of shortcut and conveniences you can achieve with AutoHotKey here.

3) Save Remember The Milk iGoogle Homepage as a Gears application. Remember the milk have a comprehensive web front but for reviewing your list time and again, it might not be a good idea to view every thing.

Here we make use of a streamline version of Remmeber the Milk Task List made for iGoogle. Launch this link here in your Google Chrome browser.

We will now make it into a gears application. Click the Control on Current Page icon on the top right hand corner shown in the diagram. Then select Create Application Shortcuts...

Select Start Menu (I prefer to have my desktop very clean) Then click OK. You should end up with a streamline Chrome Remember the Milk instance like the one below.

4) Get launch path of your RTM Gears instance. Go to your Start Menu, Find your Remember the Milk Gears instance and right click on it. go to Properties. Note the Target path. We will insert it later.

5) Create scriptlet to launch and activate this RTM Chrome instance. Now we need to create the AutoHotKey Scriptlet to launch and activate this instance. Right click on your AutoHotKey icon in system tray and select Edit this script. Insert the following scriptlet at the bottom of the script file:

^+r::
IfWinExist,Remember The Milk Homepage Module - Google Chrome
{
WinWait,Remember The Milk Homepage Module - Google Chrome
WinActivate

}
else
{
Run,[insert the target path in Step 4 here]
WinWait,Remember The Milk Homepage Module – Google Chrome
WinActivate

}
return

Replace “[insert the target path in Step 4 here]” with the target path you noted in Step 4. Save the config file. go to the system tray, right-click on the AutoHotKey icon and select Reload This Script.

6) You are done! What happens now is that we have assigned to launch this Gears RTM instance using [Ctrl + Shift + R] key. If one instance is open up, it will go to that instance instead of launching a new instance. You can change the shortcut key to one you prefer. For info, ^ represents Ctrl, + represents Shift and # represents Windows Key. So ^+r will mean Ctrl Shift r.

You can launch alot of things that you frequently use. I can list a few here:

1. Remember the milk
2. Zoho Docs
3. Gmail
4. Google Docs
5. Google Calendar

Hope this has been useful.

Having said that, Organize IT has 2 very good articles on how to better make use of any to-do list. This i feel is much more useful then finding the holy grail.

[Organize IT | 10 Ways to slim your To-Do List: Part 1]

[Organize IT | 10 Ways to slim your To-Do List: Part 2]

43 Folders has always been about things more subtle and less thought of. Here in these 2 articles, they write about refining the ways you name and work with tasks.

[43Folders | Building a smarter To-Do List Part 1]

[43Folders | Building a smarter To-Do List Part 2]

Next Actions

Alot has been mentioned about next action based on David Allen’s GTD,  but 43 folders illustrate the importance of physical definition. A proper and good definition increases the likelihood you dun encounter mind blocks translating what is written down to an action.

The next action is actually a physical action. For example, if the next thing you need to do is talk with Jan about something, then your next action is "find the address book, look up Jan."

The idea (as described in GTD) is that by focusing on only the very next action, we make the task more palatable to our mind. "I don’t know that I have time and will to do my taxes, but I do have the time and energy to find the address book."

After you have the address book in hand, it’s a short step to looking up Jan, and once you’re staring at her phone number, it’s just a matter of course to dialing Jan. When she says, "Hello?", what naturally follows is what you meant to call her about.

But don’t worry your head with all those details; You just focus on getting the address book. And that’s all you put on your next actions list: "Find address book, Jan’s phone number."

The Next Action should always be an actual physical action. Pick up the paper and read an article, look up the number to the vet, find the duster, fetch the report. Avoid vague (and cumbersome sounding!) items like: "Complete the Project, Deal with Fluffy, Clean the House, Clear off the Desk." See all those capital letters in there? That’s what it feels like, to your mind.

To make your Next Actions (and Projects incidentally) look and feel actionable, use verbs to start the name of each one. For example: Take Fluffy to the vet, File old bills, Mail Bob’s birthday card. For inspiration, take a look at the Next Action and Project verbs from David Allen’s original Getting Things Done Fast CD booklet.

[43Folders | Next Actions: Both physical and visible]

Another good article on next action list is written by Dan Fletcher and it goes abit further to describe the full flow of it.

[Investment Moats | Getting Things Done: A Guide to Next-Action Lists]

Readers can view my BlogLog on the left sidebar below.Aside from the look and feel, the big upgrade to it lays in the flyout feature, which displays a much more detailed bio of the nameless faces that otherwise appear in the MyBlogLog widget.

So i began to see if Sunbird and Google Calendar is a more viable option since most of the time i do my checking of calendar on any desktop computer.

I explored Google Calendar and found that it is very good. You can use it to address your GTD needs. The best part is that there are many resources on the web that discuss on productivity with google calendar.

Other positives about it:

Mobile Version for WIFI checking

I can check it on my Dopod C500 as well. They have a mobile version of the online reader that has an Agenda layout.

Sharing of Calendars with others

You can share your own calendar, thereby enabling you to sync with what your friends, colleague and family members are doing. But i find value-addedness in sharing Singapore Holiday and Weather Calendars. This means that i do not need to look up all these dates myself! Others will be doing this for me!

SMS and Pop-up notification

 I am in the midst of trying out the SMS notification. The local telcos that work with this is Singtel and MobileOne. Is receiving the notification free? Google Calendar is a free service and Google doesn’t charge you to receive notifications. However, i believe that it is stil within the number of SMS you receive charges your Singtel and M1 charges, so use it only for your important events.

Integration with Google Map to find your place

An integration with Google Maps. This will be especially useful to Singapore Drivers. If you set the location of where you planned to go for the Appointment or Event, you can look it up in the map option.

Clicking on the map hyperlink will bring you to a search of the location of the place. In this case, it is our dear Funan IT Mall.

You can see i would need to specify singapore, if not it will throw up other Funan malls around the world. by leveraging on Google Maps, you are able to find the driving route from your place.

Here you will see how to get from Seng Kang to Funan. I can even manipulate the route that i drive away from TPE for flexibility.

Offline Google Calendar

I have yet to explore GCal in offline mode. One option you can do is print out and pin it in your office.

Setting up Event Calendar on your site

Google Calendar allows you to set up an events calendar on your site as well. You can check out how it turns out on my site [here].

Linking Google Calendar to Thunderbird

At times you would want to be able to access to your calendar through a consolidated desktop client. Many would go for the free solution in Mozilla Thunderbird. Kudos to chantc for highlighting this hack.

One of Thunderbird’s strengths however, is, like its cousin Firefox, it works on a plugin system. That is, people have written third party modules, which can be used to enhance the functionality of Thunderbird. And I use 2 of these plugins:

• Lightning
• Provider for Google Calendar

Quite simply, Lightning provides a calendar interface for Thunderbird, its part of the Mozilla Sunbird project, and helps provide the Schedule interface which standalone Thunderbird is missing.

The magic here, however is the Provider for Google Calendar plugin, which, unlike just adding the necessary links to Thunderbird, to access Google Calendard, not only provides read access, it provides write access as well..

Install both plugins, and restart Thunderbird, you will then be shown, a Calendar in the left pane, this calendar has 3 tabs Agenda, Todo and Calendars.

To setup Google Calendar,

1. Click on the Calendar tab.
2. Click on the New Button, in the Calendar Tab, and you will be given a choice, you need to select, On the Network.
3. Click on Next, there is an option for Google Calendar, select this.
4. In the Text bar under the Google Calendar you will need to enter the Link URL which allows you to write to your Account, you can find this, by logging into the Google Calendar account you created earlier.
5. In your Google Calendar, create a new Calendar, or if you already have a calendar created, click on the down arrow next to the calendar. And click on Share this Calendar.
   You will be taken to a new page, where you will need to click on Calendar Details on the top of this page.
6. Then Select the XML button, next to the Private Address, this will allow you the read/write access to the calendar, if you need read only access, or wish to share calendars with read only access, use the XML button next to the Public Tab.  
7.  When you click on the XML button a URL will be displayed (i’ve edited the whole strin below for security reasons) Copy this URL , and paste it into the Thunderbird Text box, then click on Next.
8. Give the Calendar a name which you will use in Thunderbird to identify this calendar, and choose a colour, this is the colour which will identify your Google Calendar, if you are using multiple calendars.
9. Then click on Next and then Finish.
10. You will then see your calendar listed as available. you should now be able to add an event in either Thunderbird, or the wEb Interface, and both will update to show the events. You can set reminders, repeat events, and all the usual type of Schedule details.

The end result? You should be able to see this in your thunderbird.

Sync the PDA

The next step is to sync the Calendar with the PDA, this is done using the GMobileSync app for Windows Mobile or Smartphones. it requires .NET CF 2.0 which is available for download from the site, and provides not only read access to they Google Calendar, it also provides write access. This means as well as having PDA based access to your existing schedule, you can provide updates from your PDA to your calendar too. The application requires your login ID and password for the Google Calendar site. The Sync is a manual operation, and not automatic (yet)

Resources for Google Calendar

I don’t have much resources here now, but i will add on to it once i discovered more stuff.

• Calgoo Seem to have a service that enable you to sync GCal with Outlook.
• Google Gears does not seem to work with Google Calendar for now.
• MakeUseOf has a really good aricle on Google Calendar Tricks titled Best of google Calendar (Addons + Tips)
• This is the bomb of the resources. At the Ubuntu forums, we uncover this topic that enables you to setup Mozilla Thunderbird with Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar to be able to read and write to Google Calendar. The title of the article is [Using Google Calendar, Thunderbird and Lighting to full effect]
• Geek to Live has an article on Black Belth GCal Scheduling/

Got this off Lifehack and i think its pretty nifty. You can create a batch script out of this. What it essentially does is force your PC to shutdown without asking you whether you wanna do it.

Many of you guys will find this good as you install more stuff on  your pc and it gets bog down during shutting down times.

Here’s another way to quickly shutdown your Windows computer