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Timothy P. Green and Ray B. Rogers drop by to talk writing…and a sneak preview of one of TPG’s new songs from the upcoming record! Plus writing tips from Ernest Hemingway, and a productivity app roundup. Pretty packed episode, huh?

Show Notes

World Premiere: Lonely Without Ya Love

Yes, somewhere in this podcast episode, we have an Easter egg for you.

Timothy P. Green is back as our special guest, and this time he’s got ammo! The record has now been mastered by John Horesco, and we’ll be previewing the track “Lonely Without Ya Love.”

Check it out!

Ray B. Rogers Interview

Yep, that’s my Dad! With the official release (and hardcover release) of his book Depression Baby coming up, we wanted to have Pops drop by and talk for a minute about the book, how he started writing, and more.

Depression Baby is a unique collection of stories about the author growing up in the mountains of rural Western North Carolina during the Great Depression…and titles like “Justifiable Homicide” and “Nudity and Grand Theft on Richland Creek” are, well…not what you probably think!

You can currently download Depression Baby for your Kindle or Kindle reader software (including for deskop, iPhone, iPad, Android, you name it…) at www.TheMultimediaNinja.com/DepressionBaby

Productivity Apps/Services We Mentioned This Week

Evernote

I’ve used Evernote for quite a while. There are some newer services coming along (Google is of course breathing down their neck), but I’m still a fan of Evernote, and certainly have a good bit of material already committed to Evernote.

One of the most important tools in the studio. My (semi) trusty Fujitsu scanner, ready to eat paper documents and send ’em to Evernote!

Evernote is basically a massive filing system for text notes, photos, web clippings, audio notes — you name it — which is synchronized across all of your devices and computers which have the app installed.

Some examples of what Evernote can help you do:

• scan bills, documents and statements, organize and search by folder and tag, and make them available to all your devices
• make a grocery list in Evernote on my desktop and pull it up on my iPhone or Android phone at the store
• call up a membership card or sales receipt at a retail location instead of carrying junk around
• “clip” receipts, articles, etc., from the web
• make a folder for researching your book/record/whatever, and include notes from the web, scanner, photos, audio notes, etc.

(We even have an example in the podcast of a song on the upcoming Timothy P. Green record that we demoed using Evernote’s audio note capability and an out-of-tune grand piano…a world premiere, btw…)

Evernote is available for Mac and PC, iOS and Android.

www.Evernote.com

Toggl

Toggl is a cool web-based basic timer app — which means for example, that you can start timing something on your desktop web browser window, and add notes, stop/start the timer, etc., while you’re at the grocery store on your iPhone.

Toggle has features for timing billable projects as well. I have actually been using it by making “Projects” for “Production,” “Non-Productive,” “Sharpen the Saw,” “Relationships,” “Mandatory Tasks,” etc.; and I use Tags like “TMN020,” “Ray B. Rogers books,” “TPG,” “Multimedia Ninja Book,” etc., for what would normally be called “Projects.” (Seems backwards, but I believe I set it up that way so I can see a nice pretty graph of my time.)

You can also create Daily / Weekly / Monthly / etc. reports; and subdivide by Tag, Project, etc.

www.Toggl.com

Pomodoro Timers

I’ve found the Pomodoro Technique to be a great force multiplier when combined with a basic time tracker system. One correction to the podcast: I should note the the timer on my iPad is actually just called “Pomodoro.” The Android app I have is called “Pomotodo,” and includes some features like notes on what you did, to-do items, etc.

Interestingly, the latest book I’m reading, How to Fly a Horse, by Kevin Ashton, suggests (nay, assures us) that “incubation” is a myth. Nonetheless, I find the forced breaks and method of the Pomodoro Technique to be quite helpful.

Rev (transcription service)

As mentioned in the podcast, I tested Rev’s transcription service on the bulk of my Web Design podcast, Episode 15.

The results were pretty awesome, and the resulting transcript is posted HERE. (Unformatted, just as delivered) Feel free to compare to the audio in Episode 15. I didn’t have the intro, etc., transcribed, just the “meat” of the topic.

www.Rev.com