Business N2K » Smart working

How to upgrade from Tiger direct to Snow Leopard

Steve Livingston — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:15:44 +0000

Although I’ve had few problems with the Tiger OS X operating system for my Apple Mac, there’ve been a few occasions recently where applications have not supported Tiger (e.g. Google Chrome, Evernote etc) – this is only going to get worse.

So I thought I’d better make the move from Tiger to the latest Mac OS Snow Leopard. Easier said than done.

Here’s how I managed to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard.

First, let’s address my two initial points of confusion:

Can you move straight from Tiger to Snow Leopard? There is little guidance on this but the answer is YES (provided you’ve got the right hardware i.e. Mac with an Intel Processor . 1 GB of RAM. DVD drive for installation and 5GB of spare hard drive disk space).
Is it a case of just sticking the Snow Leopard CD ROM in to update and sitting back – NO!

(I wonder whether point 1 is not widely publicised because plenty of folk will have paid £100+ to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard OS when it was launched a couple of years ago (before the launch of Snow Leopard) however, now you can jump directly from Tiger to Snow Leopard for just £25!)

As you have gathered from point 2 above, I did initially just shove the Snow Leopard disk, rebooted my Macbook (holding down the C key to activate the installation process) and installed it. Beforehand, I had ensured that I had cleared up my disk using the handy Disk Inventory X free tool to free up the minimum 5 GB. I had also backed up my data.

It all appeared to install fine, but when I clicked on Safari, iTunes, Finder and pretty much any other application (apart from Firefox) it failed showing an error message along the lines of “Safari quit unexpectedly”. So frustrating!

Here was my Twitter feed at the time!:

After much searching online using trusty Firefox (with Safari now defunct) for possible explanations, I found the following which came to the rescue:

This article. – although the disk permissions etc didn’t actually help, it was the reference to the “fresh installation” that opened my eyes to the fact I’d probably missed something…..

This video showed exactly what I should have done – basically, erase Tiger OS. Having followed this advice, it worked perfectly.

I hope this works for you too.

10 tips for getting more stuff done

Steve Livingston — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:49:46 +0000

Plan your day but build in contingency time for last minute emergencies (they always happen!).
Open email first thing in the morning and deal with emails that can be sorted within a few minutes. Then close it, ideally until lunchtime when you can revisit. Reopen at close of play. 3 focused email processing stints. Good luck (still struggling with this myself).
Close that internet browser!
Get some quiet / alone time. Shut your door if you have an office or find a quiet space if you’re open plan (or go to your local coffee shop).
Use autotext shortcuts where possible e.g. in a Blackberry go to ‘Options’ then ‘Autotext’ and insert commonly used email terms (e.g. ‘R’ for ‘Regards’). Saves you a ton of time when you’re on the move.
Ask yourself “Am I the right person to be doing this? or “Is this the best use of my time?”. If not delegate or outsource it.
Treat ‘To-do lists’ with care. Make sure you put your most important task at the top and don’t allow yourself to jump to the easier stuff until you’ve completed it. The danger of to-do lists is that we become obsessed with the thrill of crossing actions out and so end up focusing on the low value easy stuff (often without realising it).
Turn off the ‘New Mail received’ chime and notifier on your email.
Have stand-up meetings only. This makes everyone focus on the important stuff, keeps meetings shorter and minimises the risk of chit-chat.
Get out for some fresh air or exercise. Even if its only for 30 mins. A refreshed mind is usually more focused and productive.

Any further productivity tips to add?

How to listen to your customers and competitors online using Google

Steve Livingston — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:49:19 +0000

It is really important that you are listening to the comments being made online by your customers regarding your business products or services. Also to monitor industry trends and news – plus to keep an eye on your competitors.

This allows you to be responsive to any complaints or erroneous information that may be published online and keep abreast of what aspects of your business that your customers are raving about – so that you can concentrate on doing more of it.

I have turned my Google homepage into a real-time database of news and information pulling articles from across the world as they are published – and its really simple.

Watch this short video in which I show you how to do it.

A couple of top tips before watching:

Click on the Full Screen View option in the bottom right of the above video to enlarge the viewing screen.
I continually refer to RSS Feeds which is the technology behind delivering the articles and news feeds directly to your Google homepage – it stands for Really Simple Syndication but you don’t need to know much more than that (I just like to consider it as magic!).