Will cloud games/cloud consoles open up a new door to the next level of game industry?

As the second part of the serial post on Games Beat 2011, the emerging HTML5 and cloud games will be covered today. The technologies are often referred as solutions for an easy approach toward cross-platform games.

Let’s start with the famous quote of Trip Hawkins to developers, which caught a number of audiences’ ears in Games Beat 2011:

Go cross-platform, lower the cost of acquiring customers, maximize their monetization, and cooperate.

Similar to the previous post, I’ll give you a quick summary with relevant quotes from the conference.

A) An Upcoming Era of HTML5 and Cloud/Streaming Games to Ease the Power-Game between Developers and Platform Owners

• • Trip Hawkins, Chief Executive of Digital Chocolate
    “Browser, supported by technologies such as HTML5, could set the serf(game developers) free.”
    
  • Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive
    “Game-streaming technology would impact mobile by resolving concerns about piracy of games. … Game-streaming could restore profitability for many games if mobile publishers adopt it.”
    
  • Rob Wyatt, Chief Scientist of Otoy
    “Cloud consoles, or game streaming technology could liberate games from the platforms …. Cloud games could run on any platform, get rid of piracy, and prevent platform owners from extracting exorbitant royalty fees.”

B) New technologies still being tested for stability and utility

• • The question about data caps come along with cloud/streaming games.
    
  • Native support, unaccessible by a browser app in HTML5 format, is often required for advanced features of certain devices/platforms.
    
  • Debates on whether HTML5 is the solution for making games that can be created once and run on multiple platforms have yet to be answered.

Paprikan Insights:

• The ability to use one technology stack to launch a title on multiple platforms will be a hot topic for the near future as developers figure out their distribution strategy.
  
• HTML5 is currently being seen by many as the leading technology to lead the cross-platform movement. Facebook’s Spartan project is tackling this issue as well. Though all eyes are on HTML5, there are still many questions about its technical capability/stability and there has yet to be a feature-robust game in the market that has reached critical mass.
  
• Having well invested into advanced technologies will definitely be required for growth in the future of the gaming industry, which will lead the collaboration between companies with different strengths.

Here are today’s time-killers for you: hot HTML5 games.

http://agent8ball.com/

http://www.benjoffe.com/code/games/torus/

For more information on OnLive:

http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/27/onlive-deus-ex-review/

GamesBeat2011, taken from VentureBeat.com

Games Beat 2011, held in San Francisco last month, highlighted the opportunity of social-mobile gaming — that can be even labeled as a shift to rather new mobile market as well. Today’s and the next post will give you a brief summary of the 2-day conference, separated in two parts: talks on mobile games first and about the emerging HTML5 and cloud games later.

In this post, for a better at-a-glance note, I’ll rearrange quotes/discussions from the speakers/pannel into A)bright signals and B)the remaining risks in mobile.

A) Bright Signals in Mobile

A “yet” good place for social game makers to start, considering a Z-giant firmly settling down on Facebook

• Tim Chang, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners [investor in Playdom & Ngmoco]
  “Mobile gaming is a good place for developers to start, rather than social, since Zynga dominates Facebook. HTML5 and cloud-based gaming are also emerging to change the rules in the industry.”

Successful cases proving the market for greater profits and opportunities

• Wibe Wagemans, the Hummingbird of Rovio, publisher of Angry Birds
  “Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 200 million times.”
  “Angry Birds is the third-most-copied brand in China, behind Disney and Hello Kitty. …. We even found out we have two fans in North Korea.”
  
  

Well-knowns making a market expansion to and/or within mobile sector

• EA’s Pop Cap acquisition at $750MM+
  by EA’s official announcement when the conference was going
  
• CrowdStar taking mobile as one of its major markets
  by Peter Relan, the CEO of CrowdStar
  
• DeNA’s preparation to launch Mobage in the Western markets, using Ngmoco’s ngcore technology to target the smartphone market
  by Neil Young, the CEO of Ngmoco and an officer at DeNA

Rise of tablet and cross-platform games boosting traditional games market to move to mobile sector or partner with other companies in mobile



Angry Birds, picture taken from Rovio official site

• Distribution challenge for greater market share
  • Market power comes from either owning great content or strong distribution.
• Critical issue of mobile discovery
  • Even high quality games can see difficulty in distribution due to the massive number of new app releases. A number of new emerging platforms are trying to address this issue.
• Relatively short attention spans
  • Consistent content updates and serial releases of new titles needed.

Lucky Apps to be Featured! - apple appstore

Paprikan Insights:

• Platform convergence continues to be a strong longer-term strategic focus across the gaming industry as incumbents continue testing the waters to deliver a fluid game experience across all platforms.
• Giants in the social games space have demonstrated that the web and mobile space present a large chasm. Success on one platform does not mean success on others!
• Paprika Lab will continue to focus on web social games but sees a careful but aggressive approach to their mobile strategy in the near future.

As mobile applications market gets a huge spotlight in Korea, the leading university, SNU(Seoul National University), organized an event titled “Mobile Software Contest” to promote students to participate in the actual market and gain the real experience in the field. Paprika Lab, inc. as one of the supporters — as you can see above, global corporations backed it as well as Paprika Lab — took part and met many talented students with brilliant ideas.

Of 11 teams selected from the 1st round among 65 in total, 8 teams won the prize ranged from AR mapping to image recording. It was a good chance to see the future of applied IT field with a full of passionate young developers. Hope to hear about events like this to socially connect the smart seeds with the real industry. Details on the winning teams will be on the next post !

We communicated, communicate and will communicate, but the only difference between times is a tool or means for communications. From direct conversations to signals like Morse code and to the most significant invention of Bell, the telephone, human beings have strived to have better communication tools and methods than ever. Finally, modern technology has made it come true to talk with and simultaneously see people in different nations through a small device called cellphone. The cellphone now opens a new door to the world of smart phone, as a powerful communication means and an efficient tool for a number of genius applications. Beside the phones, computers and the internet also play a leading role in today’s telecommunications.

Video-Calls and the Internet-Phone

Grandpa, could you imagine video-calls with your cellphone??

It was quite complicated to make a video call even in late 1990s. They had to use the special video phone that was equipped with a small camera and a wide screen. However, it’s now very easy and simple if your cellphone comes with a camera in it: just tap a button like a voice call! — Don’t worry, a built-in camera has become the default item for cellphones lately. Additionally, the technology expands to daily gadgets. For example, LG is launching its new TV with HD video call available. Actually the internet has contributed a lot to this because only with its help the development of gadgets with built-in telecommunication tools can come true.

Plus, there’s the internet phone that you can use without worries about heavy bills. The type of phone like the Skype’s is now very common and the quality is amazing — you may not recognize whether one’s using the internet phone or not. However, for the people who don’t have that specially designed phone, there’s still a chance to make an international call via the internet connection. Various internet chatting services are available and messengers like MSN offer video chatting mode. The better is that this technology is being used for many purposes rather than only for daily conversations between friends or family.

Now, you can see and talk with your friend with your cellphone.

While you are away, you can check on your pet at home on the internet.

Thanks to the convenient and non-regionally-restraining telecommunication method, doctors can diagnose their patients anywhere with computer, friends living in different cities or countries can discuss the result of football game, those who miss their pets back home can say hello to them. What a wonderful world!! And it’s not over yet. From this, yes, from the innovation in communication media, all the remaining fields have gained new momentum in their own way. All right, see you on the next post about changes in the entertainment!

Boxing day is a holiday?!

A long waiting line of shoppers on Boxing day

The war-like boxing day and shopping-spree season have ended, finally. With tons of season’s greetings, the new year 2010 has begun — yeah, happy new year to you! But don’t forget big up-coming events in February: St. Valentine’s Day and Korean New Year’s Day, Seollal(Lunatic new year’s day). So, save your money for the next sprees. Otherwise, you’ll be broke… LOL.

By the way, did you make your new year’s resolution for 2010? Paprika Lab did! Curious about it? Ok, I’ll tell you what: launching our game successfully in global market! Yes, we’re targeting the whole world for our big project and doing our best everyday to meet the goal. Guess what? You’ll see what it is this year and we all expect it to be a big hit to reward our efforts

Stay tuned to see its huge launch together!

+ Coming up the second article of the “We’re Living in the Future” series.

2020 Wonder Kiddy

A Doctor and an Officer

The Princess

But now, 2020 being just 10 years away, I don’t think these pictures will come true in a near future. Well, it doesn’t mean that everything does and will remain unchanged. Actually, lots of new devices, media and technologies are appearing these days, day by day, year by year. The difference is we are still human beings just like in the past — what was expected back then are ET-type people walking around with a big, bald head and electronic equipments implanted into their body or skin.

Among the changes we’ve been facing recently, the most significant one is that of media resulted from technological advances. Ranged from communications to learning and entertainment, new media are now playing crucial roles and forming huge markets over the world, boosting new industries. Those were not available in 80s or 90s, and even they couldn’t come up with the ideas for those new ways of living. Over the next 3 parts, starting from the changes in communications media, we will look at all the three fields above - communications, entertainment and education. So, stay tuned!

Today, I wanna share a pic with you. A man impressed by unexpected kindness of a cosmetic shop has left a favorable note on a web site with strong recommendation. Here is the pic from his post — a hand-written thank-you note from a sales assistant of the shop.

The post can be a good starting point to think about the importance of details we usually miss unconsciously. A glass of soda on the house, a quick note saying “thank you” — even the handwriting is barely readable, a mint with a smiling face printed on after a hours-taking journey on bus and so on can be some of the examples. Those can touch the customers’ emotions and attract an additional glance at your company or products — you know, how difficult to draw one’s attention. Simple and strait-forward policy on customer relations can avoid any misreading or confusion between staff, but there should be flexibility or creativity regarding a surprise factor for customers or clients to emotionally bond with the brand they consume, or at least to make them smile for a while.

Many companies make good products nowadays, but still, the number of those which pay careful attention to even one final detail is comparatively small. For example, when goods of an online shopping mall are packed, some owners are just finishing them up, quickly applying ugly wide tapes on the packaging, while others are adding a short thank-you note for their customers with a specially-made ribbon, perhaps the shop’s name or logo printed on, tied and curled at the end.

Interestingly, as we’re living in this tech-oriented, fact-filled world, our thirst for sharing warmth or a light sense of humor grows. So, when people face this small unexpected joy from others, they tend to talk about it at any possible moment, not to say they love the joy itself. Problems are you never know what details will be happily surprising and perfectly work before you experience one. Mirror yourself and think of what you wanted from other services; that might be the first step for effective customer relations. If you can deliver fine details of your services or work to others, you’ve just made your loyal group by the huge virality of heart-felt impressions.

We, Paprikans, had a workshop last week; it was more like an excursion, though. Along the west coast of Korea, we enjoyed driving and special treats! Because prawns are the best in this season as well as hickory shad, we took the advantage of coastal area.

One of our crew conducted a session on communication from his former experience in a management consulting firm. It was very meaningful for us to think about “Paprikan Style”. Celebration on newly joining members and a mind-refreshing walk in a special garden, so called an arboretum, gave us a chance to enhance the team spirit.

Now that we’ve all had full energy recharged thanks to the fresh air, great sceneries and inspiring talks, it’s time to breathe the positive atmosphere into our work!

Love chemistry. I’m a bit obsessed with it, so whenever I start seeing somebody, I ask myself, “Is there chemistry between him and me?” And then, I answer myself like this: I don’t have to ask about the chemistry — I should’ve just felt the way! My long-term relationship, therefore, is mostly based on the magical string that I share with the person; some say it’s attraction, some that it’s personality, but I will say it’s chemistry.

Likewise, team chemistry, which can be delivered by group-culture or DNAs of the team, means a lot not only for team-projects or sports but also for a healthy emotional attachment to one’s work or workplace. Not surprisingly, having and sharing organization chemistry is a key to integrate all the members into a group and to lead them to be of loyalty. To put it another way, if you are suffering from a-minute-before-big-fight mood in your workplace, try to find some common interests or hobbies so as to build chemistry together. Of course, chemistry is not the thing that you can make on purpose, but still giving it a shot is always better than just looking at it with your arms folded.

So, unlike a conventional job interview, many corporations now include unique questions that show their culture to find out whether there’s chemistry between the candidate and the company. Well, here are my questions for you: “Are you fun? Do you enjoy your life with challenging games and a variety of people?” If your answer is “YES”, you are definitely a PAPRIKAN! LOL

#1

Not only have human beings been evolving, but IQ of man-made items is getting higher - there’s no doubt if those things were humans, they all would be a member of MENSA, haha.

The number of smart phone users has jumped sharply year after year and cars with high technologies like a distance brake-control system - ITS of Toyota has made it available - are being released eagerly.

However, if you are not smart enough to understand and control all the functions, the tables will be turned on you! As soon as you give your control up, the device won’t make any difference from conventional ones. What does this mean? - people have made state-of-the-art utilities but the utilities lead a new trend, and, furthermore, if one cannot follow the new trend he or she would be much less likely to succeed in their career or market. At a moment that this happens, a vicious circle begins!!

#2

In accordance with its artifacts, businesses are also employing super clever strategies to stand out in the market. The first step out of the realm of intelligent gadgets has been made by “quick-to-adopt-any-effective-utility” publicity agents. For example, smart phone users are now one of the largest markets to promote a company’s new invention. Accordingly, PR directors are busy twitting or texting short messages on the Internet.

Car industry is also not an exception. High-performance braking or accelerating systems are being taken for granted, so the market needs more! They develop and advertise their new systems not only in terms of the performance but in terms of environmental friendliness - reducing “carbon wheelprints”, using biodegradable materials for parts and so on.  Plus, intelligence is a must to be on top of the list. You can name your car “the best car ever” only when it has magical power to foresee traffic lights ahead or to avoid a crash controlling a whole driving system.

#3

Well, the devices themselves seem to be enough to function well. Yet, these smart devices need innovative new platforms or systems to run, which, in turns, stimulates further developments in broader industry. For example, the iPhone boosted a variety of application-wares like our iPhone-based game, “HenHouse: Count attack“ Yeah, a new technology brings us a first-shown-in-the-world product, the product brings about a totally unexpected wave, the wave vibrates the public and business, the business starts making money out of it and that sparks another technological development! This is another CIRCLE, not vicious but actually very positive and productive!

Be well prepared before you get fooled by trend-setting technologies - you know, you can make either positive or vicious circle

Here are some that grip my mind:

There are tons of products out there, but only few are leading ones in the market. That’s either because of their cutting-edge function or notably distinct design, or both. Not surprisingly, the latter gets its ground compared to the past times when they consider the price or technical features of goods as the top priority: even if the product boasts its ever striking technology, it will fail to attract the public without appealing look. Consumers today are very picky to choose items to take money out of their pocket – yeah, it was a lot easier in the past for businesses to make a big hit. “What will the next generation’s design for this be like?” the markets are wondering.

About page contains a general introduction to Paprika Lab and our 4 values that we believe in and base our decisions on. Few pictures on the right shows a glimpse of what it’s like at Paprika Lab.

Our products page shows the list of products that we’ve launched so far and a web link or a download link in case of an app.

Contact page contains the necessary email addresses for communicating with us. On the right sidebar are some images from Google Earth pinpointing our geographical location (not linked on purpose).

Well, we hope you like our new spring looks. Cheers!

“Things don’t always go according to one’s thoughts, but things rarely happen that weren’t thought about.”

Stressing the importance of goals and purpose has become a cliche, but still holds true. We tend to hope for pleasant surprises, but they rarely occur when you didn’t prepare for it to happen. Focus on the outcome and think through of what might lead to the goal, and with some luck, it will become a reality.

* Image courtesy of veruška

1. Low Prices
2. Vast selection
3. Accurate, Fast, Convenient Delivery

It’s a great insight, since business entities tend to focus on the differences between the markets, but there are fundamental needs of human being which can be similar across the world. What I do find true, however is there are some factors not included above are also critical and general across multiple markets.

1. Trust

People won’t buy products or from places they don’t trust. It’s a matter of security as well as reliability. Because they are payinig for something, because they are giving their commitment, they must be able to trust the seller, the product, the shipping & handling companies.

It’s interesting to note that how much we underestimate trust in online shopping, and it’s precisely because it comes before everything else. No matter how cheap the product is, how vast the selection is, or how “perceivably” convenient the delivery is, people won’t buy things from places that they cannot trust.

Fortunately, Amazon.com has a great brand reputation that people do trust, so even if the sellers providing the items to Amazon have not earned such trust yet, they can benefit from supplying their products through Amazon.

2. Relevancy

This may seem to dissent from “vast selection,” but ultimately, it’s not. What it means is, people don’t want to buy 100 different cars or 100 different mp3 players. They want the one that’s right for them, but because we don’t have the necessary technology or service adequate enough to address this problem, we offer them bunch of things to choose from instead.

It’s meaningful to remember that since customers don’t necessarily benefit from vast selection, and that it also hurts the sales for the sellers, one of the most important problem for commerce sites to solve is relevancy. Jason’s recent post on the problem of having to choose from too many “similar looking” printers shows this point.

Since roughly 30% of the sales at Amazon comes from recommendation services, this is a good place to start.

3. Good After Service and Refundability

After service is like a safety net. This may not seem like a big issue (it is for people who had much hassle in their previous shopping experiences), providing good A/S or at least notifying the customers of such will help sales and loyalty. As a matter of fact, Samsung is well known for it’s great A/S (at least in Korea). Whenever you buy a monitor, whatever the problem it may have, they will come to your house, pick up the product, get it fixed or replaced, and re-delivered to you all within just few days.

If you are committing yourself to purchasing something and you know the seller will be there when you have problems, and you know that they will have their money ready when you don’t want to keep the product, you are much more likely to purchase the product without much second thought.

This also helps the sellers because (unless they have a crappy product), customers usually stick to their choices, and if their experiences match up their expectations, they build loyalty toward your products and brands.

4. Ease of Payment

Too many countries in this world still lack much e-commerce, because of this problem. It’s still too darn hard to pay for something that you want. Mobile payment is an easy way to pay for small things on the go and it is quite common in some parts of Asia, but it’s still very hard to find in some of the western countries.

Sellers must provide the shoppers with as many payment options as possible (with simple interface of course) and as securely and reliably as possible.

When I was working at NCsoft, I looked through the way people pay for online games, it was clear that the more payment options you give to the customers, two things will happen:

1. Customers will pick an easier way to pay for services and life-time value increases (for example, if someone was paying via money-transfer manually every month, they are more likely to stay as a customer when they find out that they can pay by credit-card automatically, obviously).
2. New customers appear. Some customers in the “grey area” are triggered by this new found easeness and they will begin to spill over to the side of paying customers.

Online shopping and commerce in general has one of the longest history in the areas of the internet, but there are still many problems to be solved and many values to be served.

Along the streets of Gangnam, one of the most populated areas in Seoul, is now decorated with somewhat monolith-like pillars which have numerous features:

These pillars functions not only as street lights, they supply wireless internet to everyone one in the area as well.

They also have touch-screen enabled computers embedded that shows traffic and local informations like near by restaurants and cafes. People can upload their own user generated contents to these polls. (I don’t know whether or how they censor/manage the uploaded contents)

This really is an interesting way to bring ubiquity to internet access and touch-screen technology.

—W. H. Murray

[via Signal vs Noise]

But what happens if you don’t plan ahead of time? In many cases, crisis! (”Didn’t you get the tickets? I thought you were going to do that?!”) Then, when the urgency of the last minute is upon you, the reactive planning model ensues.

What’s the first level of focus when the stuff hits the fan? Action! Work harder! Overtime! More people! Get busier! And a lot of stressed-out people are thrown at the situation.

Then, when having a lot of busy people baning into each other doesn’t resolve the situation, someone gets more sophisticated and says. “We need to get organized!” (Catching on now?) Then people draw boxes around the problem and label them. Or redraw the boxes and relabel them.

At some point they realize that just redrawing boxes isn’t really doing much to solve the problem. Now someone (much more sophisticated) suggests that more creativity is needed. “Let’s brainstorm!” With everyone in the room, the boss asks, “So, who’s got a good idea here?” (Thank you, Mrs. Williams.)

When nothing much happens, the boss may surmise that his staff has used up most of its internal creativity. Time to hire a consultant! Of course, if the consultant is worth his salt, at some point he is probably going to ask the big question: “So, what are you really trying to do here, anyway?” (vision, purpose).

Instead, David suggests the natural planning model:

1. Defining purpose and principles.
2. Outcome visioning
3. Brainstorming
4. Organizing
5. Identifying next actions

What I find true about this model is the importance of clear purpose and outcome. Whenver I am involved in a project, the clearer the outcome and its purpose is, the more members are motivated, and productivity flows like a stream of water running down hills.

Whenever the purpose or outcome is somewhat vague or not agreed upon, as time goes by, people tend to drift away in their own imaginations or lose their momentum.

So, keep your goals and purposes clear and make sure everyone in your team knows where the goal is.

This super addictive, mind-bogging, brain-training game features really cute chicks squicking out of their eggs when pressed on. After playing this game for a while, your brain will spew out alpha waves and puts you in a relaxing state.

The basic goal of this game is to press the egg-shaped buttons in numerical order from 1 to 100 as fast as you can. You will be ranked based on your speed (time-elapsed) and your max-combos.

This game can be really fun when you compete against your friends and colleagues. See who can score the quickest time. First time playing men usually scores around 90 ~ 100 seconds, whereas women scores around 100 ~ 120 seconds. (This is probably due to men being more exposed to games in their lives) When you train yourself and your brain, your score will get quicker, maybe 60 seconds, or even up to 40 seconds!

Right now, the fastest player in the world scores around late 30s.

Here’s the video of game play:

When you pause the game, you will be awarded(?) with some witty proverbs so that you can take your mind off of things.

So go ahead and grab a copy here.

We’ve placed our support page on Facebook Products page.

(familiar?)

Following is a promotional video of MAC (the cosmetics) featuring black, weird Hello Kitty. It totally broke my conventional thinking of brand extension.

(Youtube video)

[via ShoppingBlog & ShinyGloss]

Here’s the run of high level agenda:

• Ensure the Full and Free Exchange of Ideas through an Open Internet and Diverse Media Outlets
• Create a Transparent and Connected Democracy
• Deploy a Modern Communications Infrastructure
• Improve America’s Competitiveness
• Prepare All our Children for the 21st Century Economy
• Prepare Adults for a Changing Economy
• Employ Science, Technology and Innovation to Solve Our Nation’s Most Pressing Problems

It’s quite interesting to see that a government is out there supporting openness of the internet and protection of privacy. America’s lack of decent broadband might get better in the next years to come. Focus on math & science education and bio-research including stem cell is also explicitly described in the agenda.

It is motivating to see that the administration’s detailed goals on the various areas of the nation is well-informed. Most of the goals are still highly idealistic, but hopefully they have some reasonable and realistic steps to reaching these goals.

The list of the designers featured in the film is enough to excite anyone who is interested in product designs.

• Paola Antonelli (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
• Chris Bangle (BMW Group, Munich)
• Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (Paris)
• Andrew Blauvelt (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)
• Tim Brown (IDEO)
• Anthony Dunne (London)
• Dan Formosa (Smart Design)
• Naoto Fukasawa (Tokyo)
• Jonathan Ive (Apple, California)
• Hella Jongerius (Rotterdam)
• David Kelley (IDEO)
• Bill Moggridge (IDEO)
• Marc Newson (London/Paris)
• Fiona Raby (London)
• Dieter Rams (Kronberg, Germany)
• Karim Rashid (New York)
• Alice Rawsthorn (International Herald Tribune)
• Davin Stowell (Smart Design)
• Jane Fulton Suri (IDEO)
• Rob Walker (New York Times Magazine)
• more designers TBD

Be sure to check out the official website for more updates.

Trailer after the jump:

* Photograms by Donghwan Ha, Sechan Hyung

Meet Whole Earth Catalog, the inspiring publication brought back from 1960s. Steve Jobs once quoted the last issue of this wonderful magazine in his commencement speech for Stanford. Being one of the earliest publication on DIY, spawned many subsequent publications. Now we can harness this awesomeness via web archive.

1. Delete all default lists (but, you can’t delete Inbox and Sent)
2. Create necessary Smart Lists for using GTD

That’s it! Now, let’s take a closer look at each step. Bear with me while I explain. Once you go through this article, you should become the Jedi master of GTD with RTM.

1. Delete all default lists

When you sign up for the first time, there are some default general lists already setup for you. We want to delete these lists. Click Settings on the top right navigation bar, then click on Lists tab. This will show you the list of default lists. Let’s delete everything. (You won’t be able to delete Inbox and Sent)

That’s it for step one!

2. Create necessary Smart Lists

Now, we want to create some smart lists for using GTD. As we’ve learned in the first part, you can create smart lists by following the next steps:

1. Search with specified conditions
2. Save the result into a smart list

Below is the smart list that I use followed by the search conditions. For more information on search conditions, try this link. If you are having trouble creating new conditions, you can simply copy and paste the conditions below into your search box.

You can use numbers and symbols like @ to sort the list in the order you want. Once it’s done, you’ll get a screen with tabs similar to the one below:

Let me explain a bit further why I setup the list the way I did.

First of all, all of new tasks are piled into 1_Bucket. According to the GTD Framework, all tasks that we can think of should be poured into the bucket. Once that’s done, we process tasks from the top. Tasks that can be done within 2 minutes must be taken care of promptly, but all others must be organized into other lists. We can do this by assigning tags. Here are some tag rules to get you started with:

• @buy: something that you need to buy. For example: books and groceries fall into this category.
• @contact: whether by calling on the phone or by email, your list of follow-up todos goes here.
• @home: tasks that you should do at home
• @office: tasks that you should do at your office
• @someday: tasks that you are going to do someday, but not right now. For example, a vacation trip to moon might fall into this category.

Notice that I’ve mixed context and action lists, which is not exactly the standard GTD. You should find a mix that matches your need best. There are two more tag rules that I use. Remember that you can use more than one tag on a single task.

• na: Next Actions. When you add “na” tag to your task, your task shows up in 3_Next Actions as well. For example, if you have to make a presentation for tomorrow’s meeting at work, you can tag that task “@office, na”
• +project_name: I add “+” to the front of all tasks that belong to a certain project. Anything that requires more than two tasks are considered a project in GTD. For example, if you need to paint your bedroom wall, you might have tasks like 1) buy a sky-blue paint, 2) paint the wall. Then you can tag these tasks “+bedroom_paint”

So, whenever a task is assigned with a tag, that task shows up in two places. First, a smart list assigned with that tag (e.g. @office) and 2_Review or 3_Next Actions.

You should focus on the tasks in 3_Next Actions on daily basis, and review the tasks in 2_Review on regular basis (by adding “na” tag).  With a basic understanding of GTD, you now should be able to elaborate further on from this point. Go and create some smart lists that suit your taste.

3. On Managing Projects

As mentioned above, project means something that requires more than a single task in GTD. You should create an extra smart list for managing projects (e.g. Prj_Bedroom Painting) and tag the relevant tasks with tag:+bedroom_paint. By following the conditions above, project-tagged (tags with “+” at the front) tasks won’t show up on 2_Review, because it’s not really straightforward to consider all of the relevant tasks within a project from 2_Review tab.

So, you should review your tasks on regular basis by going around 2_Review tab and your project tabs.

That’s it!

Now with some adjustments, you should be able to GTD using Remember the Milk. There are plenty of useful keyboard shortcuts for RTM, so you should check them out if you want to harness the full productivity with RTM.

My goal was to minimize the overhead of managing my tasks and having a trusted system for organizing todos. Then I gave remember the milk (RTM) a shot.

Close friends have been recommending this site for months, if not for years, but I didn’t really care to try it out because it was another web-based todo tool and I’ve tried so many in the past that I was simply too tired of poor performance and usability. Contrary to my assumption, remember the milk had a clean interface, rich keyboard shortcuts, light-weight performance, etc. I also stumbled across numerous articles implementing Getting Things Done (GTD) with remember the milk, so I decided to organize a tutorial of my own to share with the world.

Below is another, half-baked, yet simple way to implement GTD with remember the milk. (kudos to dodobing for wonderful tutorial. My work is based on dodobing’s with some added salt)

1. Getting around remember the milk

Once you’ve signed up, you should click on Tasks on the top navigation bar, or Continue to Tasks on the right sidebar, which will take you to a screen that looks like the one below:

You will see five tabs labeled Inbox, Personal, Study, Work, and Sent (these are default lists) followed by list of tasks underneath. Orange, dark blue, bright blue colors on the left side of the task list show priorities, and on the right side of the list shows additional information (like due dates and notes). Their Tour page shows the summary of features on RTM.

Here are some noticeable services on RTM that you might want to know:

• You can use RTM with Gmail by enabling Gmail Labs (read the instructions)
• If you are using Google Gears, you can use RTM in offline mode which can be quite useful for people on-the-go with their laptops.
• Tasks can be synced with Google Calendar
• You can use it with twitter as well
• There is an iPhone/iPod Touch app that you can use (it’s not completely free, unless you are using the $25/year Pro account)
• You can tag your tasks, delegate and share tasks with other people

2. What you need to know before diving into GTD with RTM

First and foremost, you need to try Smart List. I have to admit, I hate having to learn new things when I come across a new web service, but smart list was quite easy to learn and rather, enlightening.

Gray-colored tabs are general lists. They are just plain tabs. You can add or remove general lists at your will. Blue-colored ones are called smart lists. These tabs show tasks that match certain conditions (e.g. certain tags, due dates, and alike). (FYI: white-colored tab is the currently selected tab)

For example, you might want to create a list of things that are due within this week. You can make one using smart list, and the list gets automatically updated according to the conditions you assign.

Making smart list is really simple. For starters, let’s add some tasks that come across your mind. Then follow the next steps.

1. First, search something that you want to make as a condition for your smart list. Search form is at the top of the right sidebar that looks something like below. You can simply search for something by the task name, but you can also create complex search conditions using search options. Multiple search conditions can be assigned as well.
   
2. Do the search. Tasks may or may not show depending on the conditions you’ve assigned. It’s okay to not have any task that satisfies the conditions you’ve set for your smart list. Below is an example snapshot of the result that shows on your right sidebar when searched with tag:@work. You can see the summary of the search result.
   
3. By clicking on the Save tab, you can create a smart list. You need to fill in the name for your smart list. Let’s save it as @Work.
   
4. That’s it! You should see a blue-colored tab labeled @Work on your list now. Whenever you click on @Work tab, you should see the list of tasks with @work tag.

For further information, RTM’s website offers a video tutorial of using tags and smart lists as well.

So, that was smart lists. Next time, we’ll go straight to implementing GTD using RTM.

It seems like now days, everyone agrees simplicity is important, but one should ask, by how much? I recently finished reading “Yes!” and one of the chapters, “When does offering people more make them want less?,” includes an interesting research on simplicity vs complicated choices.

Iyengar and fellow social scientist Mark Lepper also examined whether the damaging effect of offering too much occurred in other domains, such as food products. They set up a display at an upscale supermarket in which passersby could sample a variety of jams that were all made by a single manufacturer. Throughout the course of the study, the researchers varied the number of flavors of the jam offered, so that either six or twenty-four flavors were featured at the display at any given time. The results demonstrated a clear and astonishing difference between the two conditions: Only 3 percent of those who approaced the extensive-choice display actually purchased any jam. Contrast that with the 30 percent who bought jam when they approached the limited-choice display. (p.31)

We tend to think offering more options and more product lines will actually drive more sales and volume, but looking at the research like this, one has to wonder if this conventional thinking is indeed true. It maybe is worthwhile to keep in mind that when Steve Jobs returned to Apple as iCEO, one of the first things he did was to trim down the tens of product lines to just four: two notebooks and two desktops. This decision lead to a hefty increase in revenue. Now days, they have iPods and iPhone, but considering their revenue and size, it’s still relatively easy to remember all of their products.

It’s interesting that iPhone alone, in terms of revenue, beat few other major players like LG which sells hundreds of product lines. Simplicity can be beneficial not only to a single user’s experience, but to overall numbers for your company.

Then somewhere in the world has been trying to change the way we donate to charity. Here’s an interesting idea implemented by Korea Smart Card: raise charity fund through NFC(Near Field Communication). Countries like Japan and Korea have wide adoption rate for NFC and idea like this will enable people to donate without having to pull out a bill from your wallet.

All you have to do is tag your wallet against the sensor and you are instantly billed a single dollar on your credit card for donation. I’m not sure whether this kind of donation is eligible for tax exemption or not, but this seems like an efficient (and maybe a bit less humane) way to raise charity.

By lowering the barriers to charity on streets, this kind of technological approach may increase overall participation. I wish some social-psychologist’s team will do research on whether this kind of automated charity program can actually increase the total amount of funds or not.

At the beginning of each year, I draft up a personal plan of the year ahead, slice them up into four-quarters (just like how companies are run), and manage them quantitatively throughout the year. I haven’t done the review yet, but I can feel that this year’s plan went pretty smooth. If my plan card’s score sums up to around 60 points (out of 100), I consider the plan to have been executed well. 80 means great. 100 means superb. Thus, the plan needs to be somewhat audacious to be meaningful and worth striving for.

The effectiveness of writing down plans and crafting necessary steps required to make those plans a reality is well described in chapter 17 of Robert Cialdini’s latest book, “Yes!,” which I think is one of the finest books I’ve read this year.

For those of you who aren’t into the whole ‘planning’ thing, you should try to write them down and build up quantitative criteria for measuring the progress of your goals. It has been working for me for the past four years and I believe there are some people out there who will benefit from doing the same.

Maybe this is why people just order from places like Dell even though they have to pay that hefty-extra price, for a piece of mind. I think this is a big, solve-worthy problem. Even if I have to buy multiple products from couple of different vendors, I want to have a consistent, simple shopping experience. Order products that I can trust from sellers, again, that I can trust.

Even after a decade of ecommerce marching through our bedrooms, there still is a huge void that needs to be filled with a better, simple shopping experience. I want to do something about this.

Now that grand finale of shopping season is coming up (hopefully everybody got their presents ready by now), I have to wonder, how many people who have shopped online for the past couple of months from places other than Amazon or eBay found their experiences to be simple, even to the extent of joyfulness.

This is a dire and meaningful problem that needs to be fixed.