April 2008 Efficiency Newsletter

Technology does not create productive people. We do.

Another great month! And it's not over yet: at DC's super hot TECH Cocktail event this Thursday, SET will be demo'ing our application, AwayFind, that allows people to stop checking their email. When we haven't been working on AwayFind, we've been growing our audience on the Technotheory blog and actively working on client engagements--we're especially interested in partnering with design firms, so please reach out if you're curious.

Tips from Technotheory

Step away from email and save money

Here are just a few of the productivity tips from this month's blog posts. Too much good stuff to read now? Sign up for our blog via email or RSS.

• Improve the quality of your inbox by setting up filters
• 10 reasons to turn off automatic email checking
• 7 uncommon online purchases that'll save you time and money
  

Tool of the Month

Flickr Creative Commons Search

If you put together presentations, then you've probably struggled to find high quality imagery. Microsoft Clipart just doesn't cut it. Here's how you can access high quality, commercially-approved images for free:

1. Visit this page, which will only search photos that can be modified and used in commercial settings. (You may want to bookmark it!)
2. Enter your search terms
3. Click the Most interesting and then the Thumbnails hyperlinks
4. If you find a photo you like, you may want to click All Sizes to see different versions of the photo
5. When inserting the photo, be sure to link back to it with a credit such as "Photo credit: [insert full URL to Flickr Photo and/or the username of the author]". For instance, "Photo credit: technotheory"

For more detailed versions of a very similar set of instructions (I wrote this independently and before I read Skellie's advice, but it's so similar and her blog so good that I want to link there), click here.

Don't want to include a photo credit? Then you'll need to pony up and pay for an image instead - check out the inexpensive but popular istockphoto.com.