I’m also a big fan of TED conferences (their slogan, ‘ideas worth spreading’ is given tribute in the title of this post) and the conference videos which they make available for the entire public. I included Sheryl Sandberg’s TED video in my post, Stop Sabotaging Your Own Success, but I’ve been watching, sharing, and processing those videos for a long time now.

So it’s no surprise that I would instantly fall in love with TED’s new venture, the TED Radio Hour, an audio podcast produced with NPR which focuses on a single theme. Each episode brings together both the TED presentations and new, follow-up interviews with the presenters and other experts on the chosen topic.

The best of both worlds.

I really enjoy the TED videos, and a great way to discover other great TED videos is by clicking on one of the tags like happiness, creativity, or business, and watching all the videos associated with that theme.

But the TED Radio Hour takes it one step further and curates that content into a single theme per hour, with about 3 segments, and includes a dialogue with the speakers (and other experts) that is lacking in the original TED presentations.

So far they’ve only done two episodes, but they’ve both been great, and I can’t wait to see what else they come up with.

I thought I’d pull out two points from the first two episodes that I think will resonate with all of you.

Episode 1, Our Buggy Brain, delves into how our brain perceives value, makes us happy, sad, and even justify cheating. Especially worth listening to is segment 3 on Episode 1, when Dan Gilbert about our “psychological immune system,” which talks about synthetic happiness vs. natural happiness, and how we have the capacity to generate synthetic happiness even when we don’t get what we originally wanted.

“We have a belief that synthetic happiness is not as real as natural happiness…I want to suggest to you that synthetic happiness is every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”  - Dan Gilbert

He delves in further about how constantly questioning your decisions when there’s still opportunity to change them can also lead to more dissatisfaction, rather than making a decision and moving forward as if it were unchangeable. Your mind reacts to and will rationalize the outcome towards acceptance / optimism, rather than agonizing and doubting yourself before the decision has been made or while it can still be changed.

Sound familiar? Do you agonize over making a decision, or doing or not doing something, rather than making the decision and figuring out the next step? As a procrastinator, I can say that I use deadlines to help push me towards these decisions which then I live with, but I also hate to have ambiguity – I will force myself to a position, even one that could later be wrong, so I don’t continue to second-guess myself. Gather enough information / put in enough effort to do something decently, then make that step. Send in your application. Turn down the job offer. Ask for something you’re afraid to ask for.

Episode 2, The Pursuit of Happiness, delves further into happiness and the impact of choices and regrets on our happiness. The segment on regrets is especially interesting, and comes back to episode 1 on how we deal with not getting what we want. Kathryn Schulz talks about why we should embrace regret:

“…if there’s something to alleviate the sadness (of regret)…failures of self-knowledge are so important…these gaps in our self-knowledge are what enable us ultimately to learn, to change, to become new people…to have new self-knowledge available to us.” – Kathryn Schulz

The content of TED presentations is often ideas which apply across industries, careers, and interests. It’s often inspirational,  and it always makes you think.

Check out the TED Radio Hour’s website, or subscribe directly in iTunes.

Disclosure: I get a comment or two that sometimes these posts seem like paid content because I’m so praising. The comments & opinions are my own. If it’s paid, I’ll definitely let you know, as I state on my contact page re: disclosure. For the record, this post is not sponsored.

I used to be a die-hard Remember the Milk fan. Then I discovered Wunderlist.

What do I love about it?

• It’s everywhere I want to be. Check it out below: for your Desktop, iPad, iPhone, Android…there’s even a web version if I’m not near one of my devices.
• A neat and clean interface keeps me calm. I haven’t even changed the default wood background because it reminds me of a clean desk.
• Did you see I said desktop app? My browsers are such RAM hogs, I love not having to use my browser when I’m working from home and also keeping my lists available for those offline productivity sprints, too.
• It syncs, syncs, syncs. No matter what device I pick up (Android phone, iPad, computer) my lists are in sync.
• Some great drag & drop organization and quick views for upcoming deadlines.

What I hope to see in a future release:

Not too many criticisms here – I like the clean interface, the search capability, the print tasks, and unlimited lists and syncing. But one thing I’d really like to see is smart recognition of dates in the text (instead of manually selecting deadlines) and being able to set recurring events – pretty much my only gripe, and not that big of one!

Check out Wunderlist.

Disclosure: I’m not being compensated in any way for the thoughts and opinions in this post.

I’ve been using Jamendo.com for several years as a source of creative commons and royalty-free music as inspiration for the videos I make and put online, and it seldom takes me longer than 10 or 15 minutes to find what I’m looking for.

Artists can choose to license their music directly through Jamendo.com and/or ask you, the fan, to donate directly to them what you feel is appropriate. As always, the creative commons license should be respected.

Have you used Jamendo?

Here are some of the videos I’ve made with music from Jamendo and I’ve listed the music credits at the end – click through to the post if you don’t see the videos below:

A summer vacation in Kauai:

A weekend in Paris:

Italians talk with their hands:

Just in time for a trip to Hawaii, I started playing with the Kodak PlaySport digital video camera. This is not my first Kodak digital video camera – right around the time I was playing with a friend’s Flip camera and was looking for a personal videocamera, too, and I got a chance to check out the Kodak Zi8 (I ended up publishing several films made with that camera like a Weekend in Paris and a video about Italians talking with their hands)

Here’s a short video montage from my Hawaii trip – from frolicking on the beach and in the water, to snorkeling with fish, to recording in the rain and seeing double rainbows, to a wild, doors-off helicopter ride all over the island, the PlaySport kept up with my playful activities. (Review continues below the video)

What I loved about the Kodak PlaySport:

I spent a lot of time around water this summer (at both the ocean and in swimming pools) and I loved that I could bring the camera with me and not worry about getting it wet or sandy, unlike my Canon 7D I carry around with me when I’m in “serious” photography mode. The autofocus when switching from landscape to macro worked well, too.

In addition to the videocamera setting, the still pictures it took were pretty good (5MP) which was great when I didn’t need to shoot film and not switch devices.

The size and grip of the device were great, and overall it was smaller than the Kodak Zi8, though that meant the screen was a bit smaller as well. The rubber casing felt rugged and I was never worried about dropping it. I had the red model on the far right and liked having some color in my devices (my Zi8 was the cranberry model, too).

Best of all, it was very intuitive to use and I still haven’t opened the manual.

Where the Kodak PlaySport could improve:

After the first time I took the videocamera underwater and wanted to transfer pictures back to my computer, it was very difficult to open the waterproof hatches and get to the mini USB port later that day. At one point I had to use a knife to ease it open. After that, it was much easier, but I was a bit worried I would break it. I would suggest opening the hatches not too long after the underwater experience and make sure the salt doesn’t dry on.

The responsiveness of the buttons could be better (noticeable when shuffling through and deleting), as well as the microphone switching from underwater mode to above-water mode – once in a while the sound quality was muffled as though water clogged it temporarily.

One more thing I noticed was some shakiness while walking (and of course on a helicopter), but it would be nice if some sort of stabilization could be stronger / built-in in the camera to combat all the playing you’ll be doing with the camera.

The verdict on the Kodak PlaySport:

None of these were deal breakers, and I would definitely recommend the Kodak PlaySport video camera for an all-around digital video camera you can knock about, and you’ll find ways to use the underwater feature since you have it!

Disclosure: This product was provided to me by Kodak Italy (thanks!) I was not compensated otherwise and no review was promised in exchange. The review is my own words and feelings.

The way TextExpander works:
You insert a snippet, phrase, or entire text and then insert it into any program on your Mac (email, document, anywhere there’s text insertion) with a special character sequence shortcut that you decide on. My shortcuts are usually 2-6 characters long.

Here’s a peek into some of my snippets:

mysig = my work signature (how many times have you written yours?)
tx = Thanks
cmp = your company name

In addition, I have shortcuts for my email addresses (how about every time you log in somewhere or leave a comment on a site?), frequently-referenced URLs, and other email sign-offs like:

plm = Please let me know if you have any other questions.

But TextExpander is not just for short phrases. I have entire emails / predefined responses that can be called up with a short letter sequence (I think my longest one is somewhere around 500 words).

I used to keep a bunch of predefined emails in Google Canned Responses, but the interface is clunky and can get unwieldy if you have more than 15 or so. I often mistakenly overwrote them by clicking “Save” instead of “Insert.” And the truth is I’m not always in Gmail when I need those snippets.

How much time has TextExpander saved me? Luckily, I don’t need to wonder as they tell you directly in the app how much time you’ve saved. 10 hours of typing? Yes, please!

I definitely recommend checking TextExpander out (note: for Mac OS only). They have a free trial but I think it’s a wisely invested $34.95. If you don’t have a Mac, but have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can get their TextExpander Touch app instead.