I just completed reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. The book is a must read in case you want to better organize your work and want to become more productive at work and at home.

These days we have so much (like he calls it) 'stuff' that quickly overwhelmes us. Your desk quickly has many piles of documents and your e-mail box is quickly overflowing with all kind of information. David Allen describes in his book how to effectively arrange all this 'stuff' in an appropriate way, in order to have what he calls it 'a mind like water'. At any time during the day you'll know what to do next. A key solution for reaching a state of 'a mind like water' is putting all your 'stuff' in an inbox (including all things in your brain) and process this 'stuff', separating actionable things from non-actionable things.

David Allen's system is set-up in a way that you'll quickly know what is your 'next action', which will give a huge boost in your productivity. For me, the information in David Allen's book is invaluble. It's one of the best books I've ever read. I recommend wholehartedly anyone who wants to become more effective and productive to read his book. It can be ordered from Amazon for a very reasonable price. I ordered mine also via Amazon for about $5.00 only (exclusive of mailing costs).

Recently, I visited an event called the 'IT HerOlympics' here in the Netherlands.

On this event Microsoft launched it's SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Server 2008. It was an exciting event with good presentations and much fun. There was also a lasershow.

Some time ago I learnt using 'Outline View' in Microsoft Word (via the menu-items: View - Outline).

I find it useful on occasions to organize my thoughts when I'm analyzing business processes. This view in Word makes it easy to arrange text, make some text more important and other text less important. Also it enables me to organize my writings in hierarchies.

Over time, many people experience that their computer is getting slower over the years. Most of the time the cause of this problem is that whenever you install new software, often additional helper software is installed that's automatically loaded when your computer starts.

Most of the time many of these tiny helper software is displayed beside the Windows clock on your taskbar. These tiny programs are sometimes helpful, however these programs often slow down your computer considerably. Often you don't need these helper programs, so it's better not to load them automatically whenever your computer starts. Personally, I limit the programs that are allowed to start automatically at computer startup.

With Windows Taskmanager you can see which applications, processes and services are running on your computer. Also you can see how busy the processor(s) of your computer are and how much internal memory is being used.

Taskmanager gives a deeper insight into your computer. For example, you can see which process consumes the most cpu (central processor unit) time or internal memory.

You can launch Taskmanager by pressing the 'Ctrl' 'Shift' 'Esc' keys at the same time, or by right clicking on your taskbar and selecting Taskmanager.

Sometimes I'm looking for a certain file or a certain text in a file. Often I just use the Windows search function by right clicking on a certain folder in Windows Explorer and choose 'search'. Also my Delphi programming environment has a find in text in file function and I make extensive use of it.

Sometimes when you want to delete or move a file in Windows Explorer, a message is displayed that the file is locked by Windows or an application.

This locking is in most cases very essential, but it can be annoying. Most of the time I try to find out which application is causing the file to be locked or I simply restart my computer and in most cases the file-lock is gone.

Pictures, animations, graphics, images, sounds or free clip art for your publications, powerpoint presentations, for school or your website

In case you are in need for pictures, animations, graphics, images, sounds or free clip art, you should definitively check out the following site of Microsoft, where you can find more than 150,000 free downloads.

Learn more about all Microsoft Office products

Many people don't know that Microsoft offers a great Microsoft Office training site with many free interactive training lessons with audio. You'll be amazed at the free information they provide and how much you will learn from the lessons.

Currently, I'm investigating in content management systems (or C.M.S. for short) for making the maintenance of my site much easier. Maintaining websites without a content management system takes much more time. Although you have more flexibility without a C.M.S., maintaining individual HTML and CSS pages, including menu's take a lot of time. Once a content management system is set-up, you are basically only busy with the content of your site.