Government technology to speed up private projects

Technology in 24
Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Technology in 24
So I’m a 24 addict. If any of you are following this season or caught the episode from 11:00PM – 12:00AM, then you had a chance to see a pardon document produced and signed by the president in just minutes. For those of you that don’t follow the series, you are missing out and I’d like to explain to you what happened.

Request a pardon
The FBI Director requested a pardon from the President, who then asked for him to draw up the documents and send them over to her when he was done. Of course he was already prepared. I imagine that the document was drawn up in MS Word, and converted to a PDF. I would also imagine that this would normally be a template, so this part isn’t impressive, but what happens next was pretty hot.

Remote desktop and file sharing
The director tells the President that he has the document and pulls it up to show her the document through a Cisco Webex. I would have opted with a different solution, one that was less expensive. But if you’ve got the funds behind you, Cisco’s Webex is a very reliable and robust application for sharing. It was pretty cool that they had 4 different people up on webcams for the conference, and had full control over their applications. You’ll also notice that they are using Logitech Webcams.

From here the President was able to add her digital signature to the document by signing it through the webex session. She used a Wacom tablet to add her signature. It caught my attention since I had just blogged about the newest Wacom tablet. This is so awesome that they were able to quickly produce and sign an official document all remotely.

Send document to helicopter agent
While the document was still at the FBI, now with the Presidents digital signature, the FBI director needed to get the document out into the field so that his field agents wouldn’t restrain and arrest the person that was just granted immunity. He was able to send the document wirelessly to his agents while they were in transit in a helicopter.

What makes all of these even more amazing, is that all of this technology is publically available. You could even have all of your templates stored on Microsoft Live, or Google Docs for quick access from anywhere.

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Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

The Perfect Tools – The right mouse

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Like the mighty pen for a writer, our mouse is our tool that we bond with and bring our dreams to life.  I had the experience of using a wacom tablet a few years back, and unfortunately I don’t have one right now, but I wanted to take a moment to share a few details about the most recent release.  The wacom tablet is the perfect tool for a digital graphic artist.  If you really want to expedite your graphic design projects, get your designers the new Wacom tablet, INTUOS4 professional pen tablet.

I’m sure that there would be no argument that Adobe’s Photoshop is the perfect tool for creating original photo quality artwork.  The latest version, Adobe’s Photoshop CS4, is phenomenal.  All of the new features will speed up productivity immensely.  And coupled with the next generation, Wacom Generation 2 tip sensor pen tip, your designers will be unstoppable.

While Wacom’s Cintiq has an LCD surface and can display your screen, I think that most designers would make the transition to the Ituos4 more easily so that you can gain speed without losing focus on the screen.

Since I don’t do much design work myself, this would definitely be a luxury item.  I find myself spending most of my time in long documents.  Whether it is programming, reading configurations, schema’s, reports, or data documents, my files tend to run really long.  My mouse preference is Logitech’s MX Revolution.  The endless scroll really speeds up time, and the comfort has no other match.  I’ve tried many Microsoft Mice, and while I use a Microsoft keyboard, I prefer the Logitech mouse.  On my laptop I use a Logitech's VX Nano, again with many of the same features, but mini for the laptop.

The right keyboard and mouse will make all of the difference in your work day.  In fact, I just went out and picked up a new mouse for a CEO.  His old mouse was slowing him down.

Which mouse and keyboard combination do you prefer?  How about for work versus play?  Leave me your comments.

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

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