Editor’s Note:  This just in from DOW Jones…

IBM Offers Lotus Notes For Apple’s iPhone

Sep 30, 2008 00:01:00 (ET)

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)–International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) said Tuesday it was making its Lotus Notes tools, including email and calendar applications, available for Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM said that the latest version of Notes would allow customers to access the software via the Safari browser on the iPhone.

The iPhone, which is still primarily a consumer device, has begun to attract the interest of corporate customers as a competitor to Research In Motion Ltd.’s (RIMM) BlackBerry device, since Apple launched a software developers’ kit allowing anyone to develop applications for the phone and making it easier for the phone to be connected to corporate IT systems. Network operators have begun offering corporate tariffs for the iPhone.

When Apple launched a 3G version of the iPhone in June, the company’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, said that 35% of the Fortune 500 companies had signed up to trial the phone.

Other business software companies including Oracle Corp. (ORCL) and SAP AG (SAP), offer software for the iPhone.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 30, 2008 00:01 ET (04:01 GMT)

 Image from TechShout.com

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Dr Lynn E. O’Connor, one of our contributors, sent me a note last night asking for our help with one of the projects that she’s working on with one of her doctoral students.  Basically they are interested in evaluating how much feeling guilty about not doing enough to help protect our environment motivates people to act in a more altruistic way.  Or, as she succinctly puts it:

“Volunteers: We’re inviting you to participate in an anonymous online study of emotions and the environment: http://www.eparg.org/wright/green/  Please join us.”

As you probably are aware, I’m a big believer in anything that can help us stave off the impending climate catastrophe - certainly looking at what can motivate people to take action ought to be near the top of the list.  I urge you to join me in helping Dr. O’Connor and her student gather additional data to help them better understand the psychology at work here.  You can do something that can potentially make a difference and who knows, perhaps you’ll learn something about yourself in the process.

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If you’re a GTD’er (or want to become one) and you happen to live overseas, your opportunity to learn from the master has just come much closer to home.  Nathaniel Stott, a contributor to GTDtimes has reported that he and his associates at Life Architect have been working on the details for months and now, finally, they are ready to release the information.

From Nathaniel:

“Life Architect is about helping people get more done. Achieving more with less stress. More time for fun! And the things we love to do in life. With this in mind we (started the company) invited David Allen to Holland and Germany to present his GTD Roadmap seminars on 17th and 19th February 2009. We are jointly organising these events with the David Allen Company. Its about getting your blueprint to a new life. Getting things done is the foundation on which Life Architect intends to continue building.”

This is less than a month before the GTD Global Summit in San Francisco so a lucky group of people might have the chance to use the Roadmap in Europe as a tune-up and then could follow David back across the Atlantic to join us for the grand-daddy of all GTD events on March 11th through the 13th of 2009.

GTDtimes would like to congratulate Nathaniel on his big news and wish him much success with Life Architect which is going live today.  Be sure to check it out.

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I love reading good prose, particularly a good narrative. Sometimes prose is called for in an email — to tell a story, explain your reasoning, provide some depth regarding your feelings on a topic, etc. Some people prefer the phone or face-to-face for those things, but in many situations, email is sufficient.

But many of the emails we send and receive every day aren’t this kind of content. They are instead heavily task-oriented — all about coordinating our work with other people. For these kind of emails, straight prose is generally a much less effective form of communication.

Over the years, as I’ve worked with people on communicating more effectively via email, I’ve observed that when people include more than one topic (even just two) in an email, all too often the recipient only replies to one of the topics. Then the sender has to reply back asking again about the overlooked issues.

Most people scan their email — they don’t read it closely. As a result, if there are action items, or items for which a specific response is expected from the other person, that needs to be clearly communicated in the email in a way that will still be effective knowing the recipient will likely just scan the email.

The solution? Numbered lists.

List each item that requires response or action with a number in front of it. You can then write a whole paragraph if you need to, but the numbered list accomplishes a couple of things:

1. Recipients are clearer as to what’s expected of them in terms of actions and responses. They can’t claim that it was buried in the email if it was specifically enumerated.
2. Recipients are less likely to skip an item when they respond. With the numbers, it’s easier to check for completeness of our response. If there are five items in the email, there should be five items in your response. I don’t claim this to be scientific — I just know it works.
3. If they skip an item, it’s easier to communicate back to them about it. “Thanks for your response, but what about item #2?” No retyping — just a single simple question.

A few tips:

1. Numbers work better than bullets. I don’t have quantitative data on this, but I can tell you that both for myself and with my clients, I first tried using bulleted lists, and that was a noticeable improvement over prose, but people still tended to skip items. But with numbered lists, skipped items in responses fall to almost zero. Apparently, without the numbers, our brain kind of loses place. Also, you lose advantage #3 above.
2. Bolding the start of each item helps. Whether it’s complete sentences or just a phrase as a pseudo-header, bold-facing the beginning of each item improves scannability.
3. Two items constitutes a list. How often have you sent an email with two questions for the other person and they only reply to one of them? It happens, and numbering them helps prevent it.
4. One list item = one action item. It doesn’t do much good to create a list if each list item has two or three questions or separate actions. Break it down.

This clearly isn’t appropriate for every email, even those longer than a paragraph, but in the proper context, this has been a great tool for me and my clients in reducing email traffic and confusion. Try it for yourself and see.

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John Kendrick, the author of the blog by the same name (and not to be confused with the James Kendrick from JKonTheRun.com) has authored a post on how he implements GTD that anyone just starting out is sure to find incredibly helpful.  Among the things that John suggests: reading the book “Getting Things Done: the art of stress free productivity” by David Allen, faithfully performing your weekly review, and keeping a journal so that you can capture things when using an electronic device might be impossible or inappropriate.

You can read the rest of this great post here.

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