The Linkblog is changing along with mynew business I’m developing right now. Therefore links will be oriented less and less on software development, and more towards effective use of web tools. Hope you’ll be in this journey together with me.

Don’t expect heavy updates though. My market is the Netherlands, and my online activities are mainly done in that language. Feel free to have a look over at my Dutch blog on Working Smarter

I’d be happy to hear from you. We haven’t seen each other for a long time!

• The decision before the decision – Seth Godin
  ‘When you think outside the box, what you’re actually doing is questioning the decision before the decision ‘
• What’s Blocking Your Path Today? – Time Management Ninja
  ‘ While you cannot stop obstacles from appearing, you can choose how you deal with them. Sometimes, it is a matter of perspective. Other times, it is a matter of effort ‘
• 6 Tips To Free Yourself From Your Technology Leash – Time Management Ninja
  ‘ Is your technology a tool that gives you more flexibility in life?
  Or is it a leash to your work that constantly reels you in, causes stress, and never lets you go? ‘
• How to Stay Focused When Plans Keep Changing – Chrissy Scivicque
  ‘ If you find yourself in a situation where plans are fluid and you’re having a hard time keeping focused, try the following techniques ‘
• Choosing your customers – Seth Godin
  Seth on how you (when you’re a business owner / freelancer) choose your customers – instead of the other way around
• Should Email Be a Minimum Job Requirement? – Time Management Ninja
  ‘ (…) at many companies today, email takes up more time than it saves. It actually reduces company efficiency.
  Email misuse (and abuse) can quickly bring a workplace’s productivity to a stand still ‘
  I’m afraid I’ve met *all* characters described here at least once in the last couple years
• Are you addicted to perfection? – David Allen
  GTD going wrong
• 10 Keys To Be A Becoming a Better Communicator – Celestine Chua
  Especially for all you “guy in a room” types
• 7 Simple Ways To Say “No” – Celestine Chua
  On why it’s so hard to say no..and what to do about it
• 11 Creative Ways to Avoid Becoming a Workaholic – Tammy Strobel
  I would really like to read this post…but I’m lacking the time ;-(
• Goodbye to the office – Seth Godin
  ‘ I think in ten years the TV show ‘the Office’ will be seen as a quaint antique ‘
  Don’t know about the time scheme, really, but fact is in time we will see big changes in BigCorp. Don’t know about you, but in the Netherlands, my home country, this New Way of Work is really taking off.
• Choose to Spend Time on High Impact Activities – Srinivas Rao
  On being more productive by thinking about the impact of *what* you do
• You are in control when you can see it all – David Allen
  ‘ (…) “simplifying” our lives.. (…) by that we do not mean lowering our standards, but rather focusing on the ones that are most important to us ‘
• A successful executive – David Allen
  ‘ A successful executive is one that solves bigger problems than he/she creates ‘
  And let that sink in for a second..or two!
• Tips and Tricks about Google – programmerworld
  Handy tips to do a smarter Google search
• The end of busy – Leo Babauta
  ‘ Stop being busy and your job is half done ‘
• How to Really Begin Adding Value – Mark Harrison
  ‘ Einstein wrote, ‘Only a life lived for others is worth living.’ This idea can sometimes be called adding value. Why is this way of looking at things so valuable? ‘
• But what have you shipped? – Seth Godin
  A rebuttal to all the cool wannabee LOLcat programmers out there
• Losing weight with the GTD Weekly Review – David Allen
  I can’t imagine NOT doing a thorough Weekly Review on all incoming stuff, outstanding actions, and new plans. How about you?
• The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People – Leo Babauta
  If Leo says it, it *must* be true. This no. 1 habit will appeal to lots of you
• How to replace yourself with a very small shellscript – Hilary Mason
  Hilarious video with a serious overtone on how to implement an auto-responder on your email. As programmers we know that this is feasible. However, it has it’s disadvantages Check this TED-style story!
• Simple five step plan for just about everyone and everything – Seth Godin
  ‘ The number of people you need to ask for permission keeps going down ‘
• Slow Down and Enjoy Relationships – Corey Allan
  We tend to think the world moves at a faster pace than before. This is not the case: the only thing that’s changed is our capability of following events on a much wider scale than before. Time to step back and think about what’s really important
• 100 Incredibly Useful & Free iPhone Apps – Joshua Johnson
  ‘ The best part of the iTunes App Store is that you don’t need to spend a single cent to fill your iPhone with amazing applications. There are tons of developers dishing out quality free applications daily ‘
  Maybe it’s a Dutch trait, but free iPhone apps attract me more than payed ones somehow

• “You’ve Got Waves”: How to Get Google Wave Notifications – Gina Trapani
• The Most for Your Minute – Productivity501
  Turns out the order in which you do stuff matters. Sometimes a lot.
• Desktop Fun: Starship Theme Wallpapers – the How-To Geek
  these must be the coolest.star trek.wallpapers.evah.
• Who’s In Charge of Your Life? – Ali Hale
  should be you actually, but all to often you let it be someone else
• The relentless search for “tell me what to do” – Seth Godin
  ‘ When asked, resist ‘
• Think I Won’t Pay for Quality Web Content? Think Again – Louis Gray
• See Maps of Street Address Locations the Easy Way – the How-To Geek
• Workspace of the Week: A simple study – Erin Doland
  Being a workspace geek, I can’t help but link to all those beautiful workspaces that catch my eye every now and then. Enjoy and find some inspiration
  And did you know there’s a group on Flickr devoted to this subject -Unclutterer Workspaces- heading toward 3,000 members *drool*
• Get Customizable Distraction-Free Writing with CreaWriter – the How-To Geek
  I already knew about OmmWriter, the great Mac tool for distractionless writing. I helped myself with DarkRoom, a nice replacement..be it a bit too..distractionless Now the Windows platform has a perfect OmmWriter replacement, and I’m definitely gonna give it a whirl!
• Free yourself from distractions with Concentrate – Erin Doland
  ‘ If you’re a Mac user and often find yourself tempted to goof off when you should be working, I want to introduce you to Concentrate ‘
• Stop Wasting Time by Matching Your Past High Levels of Effort – Armen Shirvanian
  ‘ Once your mind reaches a certain understanding, your mind will never go back to not having that understanding. In the same way, you can always return to a production ability, or winning streak, that you once had ‘

• You Don’t Need to Regularly Reinstall Windows; Here’s Why – The How-To Geek
  Great tips to keep your Windows top notch..for ages!
• Get Things Done with The Middle Way Method – Jason Fitzpatrick
  ‘ If you’ve tried various productivity systems and found them either too focused on top-down or bottom-up management, you might want to take a peek at The Middle Way Method, a system that blends the strengths of both techniques ‘
• When Doing is Due (and the Things That Keep Us From Doing) – Glen Stansberry
• One Number Checks Unread Counts for Gmail, Wave, Reader, and Voice – The How-To Geek
• Enjoy Distraction-Free Writing with WriteMonkey – the How-To Geek
  Here’s the same idea as below, for Windows!
• Ommwriter Creates Serene, Unadorned Writing Space – Whitson Gordon
  Combination of serence music with a distraction free environment makes this look like a great tool. Mac-only though…
• Are You a Productive Geek? Here’s the Site You Must Belong To – the How-To Geek
• MailDrop Automatically Adds Email Attachments to Your Dropbox – Kevin Purdy
• What Are Your Creative Solutions to Weak Cellular Coverage? – Kevin Purdy
• 10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling – Rick Mans
  Reelly, have a look
• 13 New Lessons in Customer Service from a (Good) Car Salesman – Amber Riviere
  ‘ I’m happy to report these latest lessons in customer service from a car salesman (and this time a good car salesman) ‘
  Good news from the car salesmen front for a change
• My Most-Used iPhone Apps of 2009 – Marshall Kirkpatrick
  At the end of every year it’s the same: “best of” list are found everywhere. I don’t do lists like that, but there are a couple that I as a recent iPhone owner am especially interested in
• Evernote Makes Major Updates to iPhone App – Will Kelly
  Great stuff. Evernote is a wonderful app. Be it for you iPhone, Mac or Windows machine. It synchronises to and from everywhere!
• Ten Essential Time Management Tips – Ali Hale
  Time proven time management tips

PROGRAMMING

• Twitter Word Cloud Visualization with Google API – Elijah Manor
• Book review: Professional Refactoring in C# & ASP.NET – Jef Claes
• ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta Released – Phil Haack
• LINQ Query Syntax – a whistlestop – Marc Gravell
• Microsoft PDC09 keynote highlights – Maarten Balliauw
  Look, it’s already PDC time. Time flies when you’re busy doing other things…
• How We Do Things – The Team Room – Scott C Reynolds
• Using the JQuery dialog widget in a custom SharePoint web part – Charles Lee
  On JQuery UI… ‘ Actually it (like a lot of the JQuery UI widgets) is an incredibly powerful tool to your client side arsenal ‘
• Where do you benefit from dynamic typing? – Jon Skeet:
• Reproducing a WPF memory leak – Ayende Rahien
  ‘ (…) I started getting more reports from people experiencing large memory usage from NH Prof. That lead me to try to track it down again ‘
• Writing Maintainable Automated Acceptance Tests – Adam Goucher
• How to get Started with TDD – Miško Hevery
  ‘ Best way to learn TDD is to have someone show you while pairing with you. Short of that, I have set up an eclipse project for you where you can give it a try: ‘
• Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx) released on DevLabs – Matthew Podwysocki
  ‘ If you’re not familiar with Rx, it is a library for composing asynchronous and event based programs together using observable collections (IObservable<T>) ‘
• The High Cost of Losing a Developer – Dave Laribee
  ‘ The point of this post is simple: RETAIN YOUR GOOD DEVELOPERS ‘
• Request/Response Service Layer: Conclusions – Davy Brion
  ‘ Now that you’ve learned everything there is to know about the Request/Response Service Layer (RRSL), i’d like to repeat the benefits of the RRSL that i stated in a previous post: ‘
• Raising Events With Rhino Mocks AAA Syntax – Richard Banks
  ‘ I was just helping out someone today and showing them how to do it using the Arrange, Act, Assert (AAA) syntax in Rhino Mocks 3.5 and I thought you might be interested in know how to do this as well ‘
• It Doesn’t Matter If You Know What You’re Doing – Lee Brandt
  ‘ Developer’s, in general, are always afraid to let other developers see they’re code. They are afraid they won’t measure up ‘
• Clojure: A first look at recursive functions -Mark Needham
  ‘ Clojure doesn’t perform automatic tail call optimisation so we end up with a stack overflow exception if we run the function with a big enough input value ‘
• Mindfulness and Agile Teams – Amr Elssamadisy
  ‘ Fewer distractions can be found in many Agile teams as they focus on delivering customer value and having self organizing teams focused on one project at a time ‘
  A keynote
• Four Attributes of the Ideal Pilot Project – Mike Cohn
• Make Email Your Servant (Not Your Master) – Paul Sloane

THE REST

• The Complete Guide to Google Wave Is a Comprehensive Book on Wave – Google Wave – Lifehacker
  do you already Wave? Find me on azuidhof [AT] googlewave [DOT] com, let’s start the conversation!
• Disciplanner Makes Tracking and Assessing Your Goals Simple – Jason Fitzpatrick
• Tom’s Planner Is an Impressive, Intuitive Project Scheduling Tool – Adam Pash
  Cool new planning tool. Try it while it’s free!
• Information Pollution Alert! Living with Data Smog – Dustin Wax
  ‘ it’s not just that there’s too much information out there for one person to adequately encompass, it’s that there’s too much data out there to even make out the information clearly ‘
• Productivity Down! An Emergency Response Guide – Organize IT
  ‘ We’ve all been there, and more often than not when you’ve lost your momentum it’s doubly hard to get it back again ‘
• How to Achieve Critical Goals – The 4 Steps – Mr. Self Development
  ‘ Failure to achieve a “critical” goal renders the achievement of-all-other-goals inconsequential ‘
• 12 Lists That Help You Get Things Done – Dustin Wax
  Want to be *really* productive with your lists? Split them up. Dustin explains how
• Productivity Tips #15: Focus On That Which Matters Most – Organize IT
• The Only Way to Become Amazingly Great at Something – Leo Babauta
  ‘ (…) don’t get discouraged if you’re just starting out. Have fun, like we all did in the beginning. If you have fun, you’ll learn to love it, and THAT’S when it clicks ‘
• Searching for a Shared Virtual Workspace? – Clemens Rettich
  Showdown between Google Groups and Windows Office Live
• How To Focus On What Truly Matters – Sid Savara
  ‘ How did I end up working on all these things that aren’t who I am, and that don’t represent where I am going? ‘
  What to do about it
• Five Best Online Backup Tools – online backup – Jason Fitzpatrick
  Don’t leave the house without an online backup plan in some way. Me? Dropbox all the time!
• 25 Internet Startups That Bombed Miserably – Business Pundit
  Always great to read about other people’s failures. As long as you learn the lessons that can be drawn
• Watch 4 Days of TED India in 4 Minutes [Video] – Amit Agarwal
  This Friday I’m going to TEDx Amsterdam here in the Netherlands (well, a simulcast streaming version of it, to be exact, since I wan’t on the invitation list ). Looking really forward to it. Amit has a couple video’s from the Indian version to whet your appetite with TED, in case it’s new to you
• The importance of innovation in the era of the “new normal” – Jim Carroll
  ‘ I’ve witnessed first hand what innovation leaders are doing to ensure that they can survive and thrive in a period of n rapid economic change ‘
• 13 Ways I Get Back into Blogging after a Vacation – Darren Rowse
  Getting back into the flow can be hard after a holiday. Darren shows how the get back the magic inspiration of writing
• The Anti-Social Network – Omer van Kloeten