With gas prices soaring and no end in sight, many drivers are adopting new habits to help ease the pain. Lifehacker, The Consumerist and many other sites offer great millage stretching tips, but some of my favorites are not usually mentioned.

#1 – Order At The Counter
If you frequent fast-food joints, or anything with a drive through window, don’t idle in a long line of cars. Instead, park and order inside. It will probably take about the same amount of time, and you won’t be sitting in your car getting 0 MPG.

Keep reading for the rest of my tips.

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If you’re anything like me your daily digestion of web content can’t be contained in one browser tab. Between RSS feeds, work Intranets, gMail and other web applications, several tabs are needed, and flipping between them constantly becomes a carpal tunnel inducing nightmare.

The solution many choose is to setup a start page. Start pages are one page sites that aggregate data from many other web pages into a dashboard style display.

Google’s iGoogle is the most popular start page system, but I have started using a little known competitor that puts iGoogle to shame; Netvibes.

Keep reading for tips on setting up the ultimate start page and the secret to unlocking the start page’s hidden power.

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I just started reading a new book: “Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a reluctant Businessman” by Yvon Chouinard, The founder of Patagonia.

The book is great. The concentration of the books content is the philosophy that Yvon holds and used for the development of his company. I could talk about the book and the specifics but you should just read the book. What’s most interesting to me is the idea of the philosophy and how he has put it into action.

There are a million seminars and books out there that give you the top 8 rules and the 5 most effective techniques to achieve “X”. The sad thing is most people take the seminar or read the book and then use what they learned once or twice, if at all, and then move on to the next popular thing. (I’m all for education and continuous learning, but this seems like waste of resources.) They never take the time to think about develop the foundation that they need (the beliefs, values, and ideals) so they can espouse the ideas through actions. Yvon’s admitted overwhelming management technique is “management by absence”. What I interpret from this is that day in and day out while he was out actually using and testing the equipment Patagonia creates he spent plenty of time thinking about and his ideas and building the foundation he needed to live and apply his philosophy in action.

The next time you read a current business or management book or attend a seminar, I challenge you to ask yourself afterward, “What foundation do I need to build to be able to apply this in action day in and day out?” Spend some time thinking about it over a few weeks before you dive into something else. Pick the three most important things that struck you as you read the book and let that be a filter that you use to view your world through. I find that this helps me build a foundation for which to apply and integrate new things into my daily behavior and actions.

Additional information:
You can purchase the book from Amazon or you can read an excerpt of the book at Outside Magazine’s website

Adobe’s new suite of design tools is fantastic, if you can get it installed. As I discovered today, if you have any CS3 trial software installed prior to doing your real installation there can be a few bumps in the road.

On my first attempt I was offered a rather puzzling reason for the software’s failure to install, as you can see from the picture above. It turns out the transition from trial to licensed software is so arduous Adobe has gone as far as to release tools to aid you in the process.

Perhaps I am too optimistic in thinking Adobe’s latest cutting edge software offerings would come equipped with equally impressive installers.

Oh well, maybe in CS4.

Are you guilty of writing florid, lengthy emails in your work life? It might be time to meditate on the five-sentences-or-less philosophy espoused in the signatures of some people’s emails. I’m not sure I can totally jump on this bandwagon, but maybe that’s just my love of my own words getting in the way.

The website appropriately details the philosophy in five sentences (not including the footer).

If you’re a believer, add it to your sig: http://five.sentenc.es/

Everything evolves, even Thanksgiving. This year a host of high-tech achievements are enhancing the experience of gorging on food and avoiding weird relatives.

Turducken – a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey. Truly the pinnacle of bird-based meat dishes.

Turkey Deep Fryer – make your own deep fried turkey with this all-in-one system. Be careful though, heating a huge vat of flammable liquid to high temperatures can be dangerous.

Smoked Beer Can Turkey – this stroke of genius combines turkey, beer, and several scientific principles to infuse your meal with beer flavor.

This year I used Google Maps to plan my trick or treating route. This way we won’t forget to hit any sweet spots, and we can more efficiently rake in the treats.

View Larger Map

Photo by Alicia Cermak

Technology can be a harsh mistress, a sultry siren wooing you into total electronic nirvana. That’s why in the information age it’s increasingly more important to unplug for a while and reconnect with the real world.

Here are some tips to get you started:

1) Office Yoga – even with a highly ergonomic keyboard sitting in front of a computer all day can take its toll. Give office yoga a try.

2) Go On A Hike – with Everytrail you can look up some seriously serene locations for hiking, biking, and other activities. Its integration with Google maps will make computer geeks feel at home planning a trip.

3) Learn An Instrument – with all the free resources out there it can be fun and easy to pick up an instrument. I recommend the guitar. Also, learning the guitar has the dual benefit of also making you better at Guitar Hero.

4) Start A Book Club – before the Internet, people used to get information on a thin flexible medium called “paper.” Paper is actually made from trees, and is sometimes bound into a square package called a “book.” You can find resources here for starting and running book clubs.

5) Take In A Sporting Event – getting out of the house and socializing with fellow fans is the best way to enjoy a game and make new friends. I recommend ComedySportz. It’s the only sport that combines the athleticism of chess with the thrill of bowling.

Now get out there and enjoy the real world before its too late!

These days everyone’s first stop for information, any kind of information, seems to be Google. For instance, if you want to find out which rehab clinic a specific celebrity is currently occupying, you could easily find out.

Not surprisingly, Google serves millions of queries for famous names, but chances are they also receive a few queries for your name. To know when people use Google to dig up dirt on you, all that’s required is a Google account, credit card, and five minutes of time.

1) Setup a Google Adwords account here
2) Create a fake ad, something ridiculous so no one will click on it (remember clicks cost you money)
3) Choose the keywords you want to target, make sure to put in all permutations of your name

Once everything is setup you can use Google’s excellent reports to track searches for your name. When done right, this handy service will cost nothing. Although, in case you suddenly become really popular, remember to set a small monthly budget.

Here is my ad in action:

Everyone at ArcStone has a multi-monitor setup. Long ago I convinced ArcStone’s owner of the vast productivity benefits that come with more screen real estate. At first, like many people, he was a skeptic. However, after using multiple monitors himself, the value became apparent.

Some might argue it simply amounts to what you become used to. I disagree. I see a significant drop in my productivity when I work out of the office, and have to rely on my laptop screen alone.

If you have the means, I urge you to try adding another monitor to your setup.
Here are some examples of ArcStonians multi-monitor setups:

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Yours Truly