Interloper View

Google platform provides a rich set of tools for management. In Part 1 , I focused on Gmail, Task and Calendar. I shall continue with other tools and how it complements my activities as a manager. Collaboration Google documents strength is in collaboration. It is very easy to create either a Document (Word), Spreadsheet (Excel) or Presentation (Powerpoint) and collaborate with either your team members or people in remote locations. I indicated the MS Office equivalent in parenthesis for those who are more familiar with the Microsoft suite of tools. When you share the documents, you can either give others the right to edit the document, comment on the document or just view the document.  In a meeting, the attendees can edit the document and everybody else in the meeting can view it. Comments can also be used to raise questions and highlight items for others to respond to. Each collaborator can activate a setting to trigger to inform them of any changes in the ...

The following are some of the ways I use Google platform to manage my time, team and projects. Reminders For simple reminders to perform something on a given day, a calendar entry works best. Set it either to occur once or repeat daily, weekly or monthly. Examples for such reminders are: writing weekly reports, paying subscriptions, having a regular 1-on-1. Gmail Task Follow ups To follow up on tasks, the task option is best. There are two ways of creating tasks. Click on add to task while you are reading a mail. When you do that the tasks will have a link to that mail. Only one mail can be linked to a task. Create a task directly. The task option is great when you need to take notes and keep track of progress, you can place notes in the task and change the due date of the task as you proceed. However, there are limitations to the task feature. The entries in the task is personal and cannot be assigned to others. If you are using the brow...

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It appears that this is a season for change. Within the last few months, majority of the sites I frequent have made changes. First Mylot decided that they are going to stop their revenue sharing program. Then ExpertColumn decided that they could not afford to maintain the site and still share their revenue. Later I discovered that Redgage had revamped their site - I like the new look.  New Beginning I just found out today, that Full of Knowledge has changed their payment scheme, they now have a minimum cash out limit of US$50. The cash out limit is the combined earning from both their sites - ExpertPages (EP) and Full of Knowledge (FOK). In the beginning, there was no limit, so payout was automatic on the following month. After that, the limit was raised to US$1/-. There were changes previously for EP, at the beginning, there was only one site. The second site FOK started later. Shortly after the sister site started, it was decided that EP would follow it’s na...

When we were watching Bedtime Stories with my daughter, she commented that the movie was stupid. However, rather than standing up and walking away, she continued to stay and watch the movie to the end. Many movies and television shows  that defy logic but are very successful. Take for example, SpongeBob SquarePants. The show completely defies logic, how could you have fire underwater or even water underwater. Yet, it is one of the most popular cartoon series at the moment. Entertainment is the key. Are you able to engage your viewers and make them laugh?  Messages do not have to be dull and blend. Some of the most effective communications are entertaining and memorable. Being able to do this effectively is an art form and can be learned. However, it will take lots of time and practice. Do you remember how babies attract attention even with complete strangers? Is it just because they are adorable or it is something else? Maybe it is because they are just curious an...

I almost missed out on the three dollars I earned in ExpertsColumn. I revisited the site and noticed that I had request a cash out to collect my earning before the June 11 deadline. I wonder how many writers on the site missed out of their earning because they failed to take action before the deadline. I thought that by asking them about the payout when the first announced the change in their policy, that they would send me the payment when they lowered the threshold. Most other websites just ask you to set the limit and send you the payment automatically once you reach the threshold. I prefer sites that do it this way. To me the lower the threshold the better since I do not have to worry about losing what I have already earned when the site owner decides to close down the site. In this few months alone, we have seen several sites stop paying their writers. At the age of convenience where we subscribe to automatic payment for our bills, why should we have to remember to reque...

I previously wrote about unlimited storage I found on internet. One of them happens to be Google Plus. Using Google Plus app on Android, you are able to turn on auto backup for all the photographs taken using your Android phone. This worked well but I found the backup stopped working properly - it stopped uploading my photographs. Initially, I thought it was my account because I was able to log into another account and get those photos uploaded and when I logged into my original account, the upload worked. However, that trick only work once. There is now an option in Google Plus to either upload your photos in full size but you are only given 15 Gbytes free space (this will may change with the unified storage - where all Google products will share the space) or use standard size with unlimited free storage. Recently, I came across the following article . I did some experiment and found that the application had difficulty uploading photos that are more than 5 Mega pixels...

I started blogging back in 2008 with Programmer’s Journal on the Blogger platform. That was the first time I realized that I am able to earn money online. The earning is not a lot but it turned out to be a game for me to experiment and see how much I could earn. I wanted to share my experience below. MyLot required a lot of active time (well at least until the rules for the site changed). I received quite a few payment from them since I started but stopped when I thought that they had stopped paying. However, after I heard they were still paying, I continued until the latest change - where they stopped sharing revenue completely. Triond is another site I received several payments from. It is great because of the low cash out limit so I did not have to wait long to reach the payout and receive my money. Bukisa is another site that was good to me for a while. I was attracted to it initially due to the high earning rate but later they changed it to be a partial share. ...

Of late, I have been writing mostly movie reviews. I found that this is a rather save and easy way for me to write online. The few times I tried writing on other things, the editor of the site I wrote for found many mistakes in my grammar. Surprisingly there was minimal or no grammar mistakes for the movie review I wrote. I love watching movies so I am happy to be able to write movie reviews. After a few disappointing movies, I try to be more selective on the movies I watch. Some movies are for my own entertainment while others to allow me to spend time with my children. One movie such movie was Warm Bodies , even though it was a zombie movie it was not scary at all. There was a part we had fun with. It was the point when the main character a zombie named “R”, he had turned back into human and was shot by the human survivors. The girlfriend was trying to convince them that he is human and used the fact that he is bleeding as proof. Zombies do not bleed. I told my children, ...

The following is the Malaysian Voters Education Series. Know your rights: Introduction: Episode 1: Episode 2:    Episode 3: Indelible Ink Episode 4 - Phantom Voters Episode 5: Episode 6: Episode 7: Episode 8: Episode 9 Episode 10: Election for Newbies Submit complaints if you are not allowed to vote to Permantau at http://pru13.info/  , if there is enough complaints, your candidate can submit a police report.

The following is a comparison of the various medical cards in Malaysia, covering Prudential ING AIA Great Eastern Allianz AXA Affin Life  The comparison is based on a 30 year old male who does not smoke. I am not sure when it was last updated. The website it was linked to no longer exist. The spreadsheet is as here .

My recent accident got me to think about insurance when I found out that my medical card did not cover for the bridge needed to replace the three teeth I lost. We consulted an agent from another insurance company who happen to be a close friend to my parents. According to her, bridge should be covered since it was to restore the function of my mouth before the accident. The other two insurance cover maintains that bridge is considered cosmetic and is therefore not covered. ©  Marissa CC: Attribution-ShareAlike Sadly, it is usually the case when it comes to insurance. We get insurance for the peace of mind that we will be covered when we need it but when we really need to coverage, we are told that we are not covered. I am switching my medical insurance for now. I hope the new policy will provide a better coverage than the one I am switching from. For a comparable premium the lifetime limit of the medical insurance is RM 1 million compared to the old one is only RM 720k. T...

In the previous article , I suggested that getting topics from movies, restaurant reviews and online forums. I will continue with other areas in your life where you can get ideas and inspirations for topics to write. © Darren Hester (Macon, Georgia USA) CC:Attribution-NonCommercial Bedtime Stories or Parenting Do you make your own bedtime stories or make up things to entertain your children. Share what you do, new parents would love to have ideas on how to bring up their own children. For example when my daughter was younger she had difficulty recognizing abc. Initially I was frustrated but at the end I devised a method to help her remember. I found out later that this was a common difficulty for young children. She has grown out of this phase but I hope that I am able to help other children with similar difficulty. Travel or Holidays Did you go to a new place or country for a holiday. Why not write about your experience? Did you see something unusual, walking fish , beautifu...