I say for the CEO or Manager but in reality these could be used by any worker looking to be as productive as possible each day. I, for one, find myself looking more and more at information or news sites from RSS feeds etc., as of late. This time, while valuable for keeping up to date with what is going on my industry doesn’t really drive my business forward. So with that in mind here are two little tools that will help you be more productive each day.

TaskBlase is a small windows app that hooks into outlook. Basically you set a task that you want to do and click start, when you get that task done press stop and repeat. Each of these tasks and time spent on it is summarized in your outlook calendar. So if you use a timesheet application like 1time your can easily update your timesheets. You don’t need to be using a timesheet application to find value in it.

I think it helps you set a task and just focus on that task until its done, like upload document A, finish review document C, create logo, reply to client X etc., or even bigger tasks like life sustaining client work. I have to say in principle its a good little app but its very rough around the edges. I think it could integrate with the task bar instead of being a stand alone app. For me anyhow I had problems moving the app around the screen, useful all the same though.

The next one is a FireFox extension called TimeTracker; a very simple extension that records what time you spend browsing each day. In the options menu you can filter work related web pages and at the end of the day you’ll see how much time you have wasted looking at other websites. It is pretty amazing and somewhat depressing all at once. It works really well though.

I find them useful anyhow and while I sometimes forget to start the TaskBlaze the Firefox TimeTracker is very useful. I think competing with others in the office to have the least amount of wasted time might be the most effective, well for the competitive ones anyhow.

I recently attended the Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 event hosted in the Helix, DCU. Thankfully the 200 yards I had to travel from the office meant I didn’t get caught in much traffic.

Very interesting speakers in particular; Jeff Clavier, the very entertaining Marc Canter and Judy Gibbons.

The event was strongly represented by venture capital people with some great advice for anyone trying to raise money for the next big web 2.0 show stopper. I’ve sumized some of my notes below:

• Have a sustained Differentiation i.e. the difference between your product and the next guy isn’t a feature they can have as part of there’s in a week or month.
• Build end user value. Ask yourself what is the value of your software to the end user or ROI for enterprise 2.0 applications.
• You need to build an image of trust.
• Show a steady 30- 35% monthly growth in sign ups, a huge frenzy of sign ups all at once is not always considered a good thing.
• A business plan is important but a VC will only be interested in your presentation and executive summary so make it stand out.
• Be sure when presenting your product to introduce yourself. Don’t just go off explaining how great your product is. They will want to know as much about you as they will about the product.
• They will also want to see what you’re personal ambitions are not just having a business road-map but a personal one as well. If you plan to sell early and get a quick few bucks and retire they more than likely won’t be interested.
• The management team is very important, a venture capital company are more likely to go with a smart person with a dumb idea than the other way around.
• Think Big
• It is often good to have a product where it is difficult for the customer to change horses because they feel tied to your product or service.
• Have a solid business model.

As a general rule these VC companies and people were looking for more B2C style web 2.0 ventures like facebook, delicious, flickr etc instead of the B2B apps i’d be interested in like basecamp, blinksale and salesforce but still most of it was very relevant and informative.

UPDATE:

Jeff has uploaded his slides from the event, highly recomended.

Just to quick post to let you know that blog.1time.ie is now alive and kicking. Check out the latest post on the “general state of play” of 1time.