• HTC Home Brings the HTC Weather Widget to Windows 7 (Windows)
  If you're sporting an HTC phone with the HTC user interface you may have grown fond of the combination clock and weather forecasting widget. HTC Home ports the HTC interface from your phone to your Windows desktop, complete with animations.
• CyanogenMod 6.0 Released, Brings Custom Froyo Goodness to Tons of Android Phones (Android)
  Cyanogen's been putting up release candidates for the Froyo-based version 6.0 for awhile, but if you've been waiting for something more stable, you can now get the unbeatable combination of Froyo and Cyanogen for your Android device.
• iTunes 10 Gets a Streamlined Interface, Adds a Social Network for Music (Windows/Mac)
  If you were hoping for a totally redesigned, less twiddly iTunes 10, you're out of luck. But Apple added a social tool, Ping, for following artists and friends' tastes and tracking concerts. And your music list looks a bit tidier, too.
• Ubuntu 10.10 Beta Adds New Photo Manager, Improves Multimedia Experience (Linux)
  An early look at the next release of Ubuntu's Linux desktop hit the web late yesterday. What's in 10.10, or "Maverick Meerkat," for desktop users? Besides app updates, there's a new photo manager, improved multimedia controls, better Ubuntu One syncing, and more.
• Chrome Stable Updates to Version 6 with Extension Syncing and Form Autofill (Windows/Mac/Linux)
  Two years after its inception, web browser Google Chrome reaches version 6 in its stable release today, bringing with it the much sought-after extension syncing, form autofill and autofill syncing, and an even more streamlined UI.
• Steam Mover Relocates Applications to Free Up Space on Your Primary Drive (Windows)
  If your primary hard drive just isn't large enough to hold all the software you need on a day-to-day basis, then Steam Mover is the perfect tool for the job-assuming you have another storage drive handy.
• WiFi File Explorer Manages Your Android SD Card from a Web Browser (Android)
  Missing your USB cord, or just too lazy to grab it? WiFi File Explorer turns your Android SD card into a small web server, so you can transfer files, stream media, and otherwise control your content across a Wi-Fi network.
• Plex/Nine Adds Hardware Acceleration, Better Metadata Handling, and iOS Streaming App (Mac)
  Plex, the XBMC-based media center app for Macs with gorgeous looks, has updated in a big way, though with few new features. That's because Plex is rebuilding itself and making room for new uses, like its iOS streaming app.
• FilerFrog Puts Truly Helpful File Operations in Windows' Context Menu (Windows)
  You probably do a lot of things to files and folders that could be easily automated. Enter FilerFrog, a free Windows add-on that adds image resizing, file renaming, encryption, listing, path copying, and other abilities to your right-click options.
• True Time Tracker Lets You Know How You're Spending Your Time With Minimal Setup (Windows)
  Free app True Time Tracker is extremely simple: Just start it up, let it run in the background, and it will create numerous charts detailing what programs you run, what sites you visit and how much time you spend idle.

This year was particularly trying for my family and I'm sure a good many families of Wise Bread readers. This summer was particularly relentless for this homeowner. I don't even think we should use that term. I own a mortgage and it really owns me, more or less. But when the pipes cracked and the septic tank simmered at the brim under a rotted lid threatening the peace and tranquility of homeownership this summer, I started reassessing just how lack of employment, the high cost of student loans, living, offspring, the car that decided it needed a thousand dollars dumped into it, and homeowning were going to factor into my attempts at frugality.

I felt like a fraud writing for Wise Bread. Yeah. Who am I to dispense any advice when I can't even use my own toilet? So I took a little break in an effort to not feel like a fraud and reassess if there was some turn I could have made in the last year to better the situation. The process of sitting in the comfy chair in the living room staring into the abyss of the cool sage green wall with a legal pad and pen actually did help.

There were a few things I could have planned for better and a few things I could have anticipated, but in the end I don't think my choices yielded more than a couple of hundred dollars extra with better planning. But I didn't get poor me, whiny about it. My mortgage is still getting paid. My kids still have food to eat, and we are doing a hell of a lot better than many neighbors. I am grateful.

A big difference in this summer is there was no vacation. OK — technically we went away for a three-day weekend, but that was it. This gave me time to really see my community for what it is. These are predictions and solutions for surviving the national recession and individual malaise that comes with it.

Get over that American uber alles mentality

Nationalism is not productive and there's nothing joyful about watching Rome burn when you're a Roman. By this I mean we'll fare much better if we put more energy into the health and well-being of our local communities — with an eye and heart to how the global community is doing — than if we were continue perpetuating the mantra that America must be No. 1. I think we get bogged down in thinking we should all be millionaires by now. We get that look in our eye best expressed by Prince's song "Pop Life": "they put your million dollar check in someone else's box..."

We aren't as badly off as we think we are

Is a fifth of our nation underwater? Was our capital destroyed by an earthquake? My kids and I just viewed the 1992 film Baraka the other day and as the segment of dire poverty begins midway through the film, it was good to remember what real poverty looks like. We are not living on the streets and we aren't picking through a landfill for food scraps. I'm not working as a prostitute and they aren't begging in the streets. We have health insurance from my husband/their father's job.

Get over the myth of the nuclear family

If we can keep in mind that the whole reason we live nuclear is that suburban developers sold us on the idea to sell houses, we'd be better off. Cultures around the globe know that you need to be tied to your family and society. I need my neighbors and community, and my neighbors and community need me. The smartest thing I've done in the last decade was moving three miles from my mothers.

Kids need access to grandparents — biological , adopted, or faux. So many struggling families I know are too far away from their extended families. Women spend nearly as much money on daycare as what they make. Moving back to an extended family and community model of living could change that. Co-op day care and family watching children both have great merits, and it's not a one-way street. My mothers watch the kids every Saturday and then I'm available to them for errands they cannot do.

And it' s more than childcare. We can share vehicles. (Between the two households, there's a car with great mileage, a car for snowy days, and a truck for hauling.) We share groceries. We share baking and cooking. (My mom and I tend to bake or cook trays of things and we always give the other a tray of something we've made.)

I consider my friends in this family equation too. The only way we had any vacation this summer is when one friend got a hold of free passes to the aquarium, and another let us stay in her house while she was gone, and still another bought us breakfast and shuttled us to and from the aquarium so we didn't have to pay for parking. We have let people stay with us for short bits and done as much reciprocity as we can think of.

I am over the myth. I need my mommy and my friends. They need me, too.

Sustainable is a good word, not a bad word

It means more than just growing organic crops so you don't kill the soil. It means research. Everything I do now makes me think of this word. How many extra-curricular activities can my kids reasonably sustain? How much square footage of a house can be heated economically so I don't run out of cash? How sustainable are my habits and hobbies? Where I live in the mountains, it's common for neighbors to announce they are going 'off the mountain' and take orders for things that anyone needed from the civilization of boxed stores 90 minutes away. It's always gratifying not to be able to think of anything.

Live only up to your own expectations

What if we all got off our collective butts and did what we said we wanted to do instead of what we think we must? What if we didn't care about that look our parents give us that says "Why didn't you become an accountant or a corporate lawyer?" That would look amazing. I bet it would feel amazing, too. What if we stopped blaming others for our predicaments? What if we stopped waiting for someone else to fix it?

I was talking with a friend recently who took a voluntary lay-off to go to a new position at a start-up company. When the hiring executive at the new company went to his boss to make the hire, however, he was told he couldn’t bring my friend on full-time. By then his old position had already been reassigned, and if he were hired back, it would mean several other people would lose their jobs. In a matter of a day, he went from a planned, orderly transition into a new job to being without a job as the sole provider for the family.

At some point, everyone faces challenging situations where what we thought would develop or happen doesn’t. Some people fall apart. Others deal with the curves thrown their way seamlessly, functioning as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

Dealing with these moments productively, as my friend appears to be doing, depends on quickly figuring out your new reality and stepping through a process allowing you to focus and implement successfully. These fifteen steps will help you do that more effectively when the world around you appears to be crumbling:

• Define (or redefine) what you’re trying to accomplish. Figure out if your original goal is still valid or needs to change to reflect the new situation you’re facing. Once you’ve decided, make sure your team knows what the goal looks like right now.
• Identify critical priorities that can’t be compromised. Some things may be more important than others. Maybe it’s a timeline that absolutely can’t be moved; at the same time, some deliverables you expected to accomplish by the deadline may now have to be jettisoned from your plan. Make these determinations right away.
• Figure out what fundamentals still hold. Although your situation has changed, it’s likely some things you’ve come to depend on are unchanged. Make a quick check of what you DO know and can depend on in your now unfamiliar situation.
• Quickly secure access to critical information flows. If you need to move forward before everything is sorted out, devote some mental resources to soliciting multiples inputs about the situation – from those on your team, from listening to and observing other participants, from previous information sources (realizing they may now be compromised), and from anywhere else you can.
• Stay mentally active and engaged. There can be a tendency to shut down in uncertain situations. Don’t let yourself become indecisive, especially if you’re trying to process new data sources. Instead, rapidly assess the information’s viability, add it to your knowledge base as appropriate, and keep moving.
• Imagine the range of relevant possibilities that may unfold. Develop likely scenarios and their implications. Even with what may feel like extreme uncertainty, also look for common elements among the possibilities. Figure out actions you can take that make sense irrespective of which scenario plays out.
• Develop mini-plans. With the potential scenarios, figure out what you can reasonably prepare for, just in case. Use mini-plans – checklists which contain two or three steps – to plot your potential courses of action. With a series of mini-plans, your timeline from start to finish is short (which is fitting in an unfamiliar situation), and as variables change, you can choose from among the most appropriate mini-plans.
• Inventory available resources. Identify what’s at your disposal to advance your situation. The inventory should include the relevant talents and experiences of you and those on your team plus other physical and intangible resources you have. Identify redundancies, gaps, and superfluous resources in the inventory.

• Take action on your resource inventory. Shed any dead weight among your resources which won’t be necessary and could slow you down. At the same time, secure the very basic resources which allow you to function in as many scenarios as possible.
• Increase your ability to maneuver. Beyond shedding resources for flexibility, prioritize early decisions and actions which keep the greatest number of current options. Flexibility is valuable, so hang on to as much of it as you can for as long as you can without compromising achieving your objectives.

• Secure resources to operate in the most likely scenarios. You may not be able to get all the support you need to fill your gaps. Because of this, prioritize resources which will work across multiple scenarios, even if they might not be exactly the best fit. It’s about the greatest flexibility and impact from the fewest resources possible.

• Accept acting amid uncertainty. This is easier for some people than others, but you need to become comfortable right away with not being able to figure things out ahead of time. If you don’t have time on your side, you’ll have to advance with incomplete information and be open to adapting as you go.
• Be open to spontaneity and depending on your instincts. You’re facing a different situation, so the standard tools and tricks you’ve used may be much less effective. As a result, open yourself up to solutions which you wouldn’t have previously considered. Instincts can become even more important in dictating what your next move should be.
• Share information with those on your team. It takes information to co-participate successfully. If you’re moving ahead with mini-plans and a higher degree of spontaneity, it’s important to provide cues and information to your team so they can move with you.
• Gauge your progress, adapt, and keep going. By using mini-plans, you’re never more than a couple of steps away from reaching an interim objective where you can gauge progress and adjust for the next mini-plan. Make sure as you do this you’re seeking input from your team and monitoring the environment around you to see what others are doing.

While these steps are presented separately, the activities may all have to take place in a few moments, some in a split second. That’s why it pays to practice by putting yourself in unfamiliar situations to develop your skills. Then if you have to divert from your original plan and wing it, you’re in a better position to go forth creatively and boldly. I’m not sure having to innovate on the spot in important situations gets any less nerve racking, but with these steps, you can better flex and still strategically deliver results no matter what gets thrown at you personally or professionally.

Mike Brown leads The Brainzooming Group, helping organizations succeed more rapidly by expanding their strategic options and efficiently implementing innovative plans. He authors the Brainzooming™ blog, shares innovation ideas on Twitter, and wrote the ebook “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation.” He's also a frequent keynote presenter.

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