Apple Store Boston - Coming Soon!

I had a total moment of geek overload this morning. I was listening to Nine Inch Nails, thinking about last night’s new episode of Lost, and then I came across this sight: the scaffolding coming down in front of the soon-to-open Apple Store on Boylston Street in Boston. I’m obviously a little late to the party, as ifoAppleStore apparently had a post up about this yesterday, but I’m glad that I got to first experience the awesomeness of the scaffolding coming down in person, rather than experiencing it via the Web.

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The Apple Store vs. Tech Superpowers

As we all learned in Geek Force FiveCast #002, I walk by the currently under-construction Apple Store on Boylston Street in Boston nearly every day. Tech Superpowers, a Boston-based Apple reseller whose backdoor faces the backdoor of the new store, has been providing webcam coverage of the construction since last year, and has today posted an interesting piece on the effect the Apple Store’s arrival might have on their business.

As construction nears what looks like the final stages, the mood at TSP is one of anxiety and anticipation: What will happen when the doors open? Will we get no more walk-in service customers? Will we get a boat-load of referrals from the Apple Store business consultants looking for a Mac professional services firm? Will the Genius Bar help us rent more laptops to people that have their machines in for service? Will this city block become “Apple Central” for Boston and New England?

Probably a little bit of everything.

I, for one, hope that the Apple Store and Tech Superpowers can coexist peacefully and that the local business doesn’t die out. I wants me an Apple Store very, very badly, and I haven’t been into TSP in ages (since 1999, I think, when I won a free scanner during a WFNX contest… was it TSP back then, or something different?), but I could see myself heading in there quite a bit as my iMac ages. Good luck to the peeps at Tech Superpowers!

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Reaching Inbox Zero

This afternoon, after catching Merlin Mann’s presentation on the Worst Website Ever for the second time, I wandered over to 43 Folders. I think I’d been to the site a few times before, for whatever reason, but I don’t recall ever spending a lot of time there. Anyway, one of the articles which caught my eye was the post on Inbox Zero.

I’m a geek for organization. I completely buy into the idea that, if only I could be more organized, I would be happier and less stressed out. I’d heard the term “inbox zero” before, a concept which is pretty much self-explanatory, but I had no idea how a person accomplished such a thing. The last time my work inbox was empty was the day I turned it on for the first time.

Then, I watched the video of the Inbox Zero presentation that Mann gave at Google in 2007. And a light came on.  Most of the advice that Mann gives could neatly be defined as “advanced common sense” (a term Mann uses more than once during the presentation), but it was all stuff that I just never did.

I used the remainder of my workday and the better part of my bus ride home implementing elements of the strategy outlined by Mann. And let me tell you what: I feel one hundred times better than I did this morning. I still have just about as much to do as I did this morning, but I have a clearer picture of what needs to be done.

If you have any problems at all with an unwieldy inbox, I can’t suggest this video strongly enough.

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