As we prepare ourselves for a new year, we often think of ways to make ourselves better, healthier, more productive people.
But since we spend most of our days surrounded by some form of technology, why not start with ridding ourselves of some of our worst technology habits? Below are some suggestions and products to help you with your New Year’s tech resolutions from Scott Geye, CTO of SHIFT, including his own company’s business collaboration tool:
- Reduce email clutter: SHIFT is a new network for business collaboration that helps people work more efficiently together and significantly reduces email clutter. In addition to providing an open platform for business apps, features such as Sidebars (private conversations in context), Follow-ups (one-click task management), and Muting, SHIFT provides simple ways to seamlessly share files, links and ideas. The arrival of networks like SHIFT signifies that better business is done when the people you work with are truly connected, and less time is wasted laboring over email organization.
- Streamline your online news consumption: Instead of going between bookmarked sites and scrolling through Twitter for news, created a personalized news aggregator through programs like Prismatic. If you want to compile reading material for your commute, Pocket is another tool that lets you take content from your browser and apps like Twitter and save them to read later.
- Stop wasting time surfing the web: MinutesPlease is an extremely easy-to-use site that lets you plug in the website you want to visit and how much time you’re allowed to spend there (i.e. open Facebook.com for 10 minutes). If too often you find yourself clicking through pictures of your roommate’s cousin’s friend’s dog’s birthday party, this may be a useful tool for you in 2013.
- Spend less time searching for what you want on social media: EverySignal is like a Google Alert for your social feeds. Users set up e-mail alerts for important updates shared by their connections on Facebook and LinkedIn. Now you get to choose the news you want to see from friends and don’t have to rely on your social media’s algorithms to tell you who you want to hear from.
- And stop texting while driving!: Not to sound like a nanny, but most of us still do it – check our phone while in motion on the road. Sending a text isn’t worth putting your life and the lives of others at risk. OneProtect protects the potential perils of distracted driving by blocking drivers’ cell phones while they are in motion.
Scott Geye who is the CTO of SHIFT, a platform that connects people across and within organizations to help them work more efficiently
