Some nuggets of wisdom: Silicon Valley Comes To Oxford - 2009

This is a repost, borrowed in full from http://letsgoexploring.blogspot.com/2009/11/silicon-valley-comes-to-oxford-2009.html. But, reading it i thought that this has to be a part of the blog. My apologies if i'm flouting any copyright rules.

Some nuggets of wisdom:

"If you're not embarrassed by your first product, you've launched too late." -- Reid Hoffman

"You pitch an entrepreneur with success.. not with work-life balance." -- Reid Hoffman

"Don't fall in love with your product. Stay close to the market." -- Kim Polese

"The future will be there." -- Reid Hoffman

"There is an alchemy that takes place when you decide to share something publicly rather than privately - it becomes valuable" -- Biz Stone

"Deciding to take on a global issue doesn't mean you need to be arrogant enough to think you're going to solve them." -- Biz Stone

"Don't be afraid to start over again. Don't forget to trust your gut. Contradictory? Maybe. But you need both." -- Kim Polese

"Most people use only 7 sites. If you want to insert a new one into their lives, ask yourself.. which one are you replacing?" -- Reid Hoffman

"Innovation is spelled R-I-S-K." -- Reid Hoffman

"Which one of the 7 deadly sins is your social product subscribing to?" -- Reid Hoffman

"Humour is the delivery mechanism for truth." -- Biz Stone

"Sometimes the founder isn't the best person to be the CEO.. kinda like a rock band!" -- Kim Polese

"There's nothing that is massively successful that doesn't have some luck. But you have to plan for both good and bad luck." -- Reid Hoffman

"Entrepreneurism means becoming mortal.. being able to give it 100% and be able to fail." -- Biz Stone

"The future is always sooner and stranger than you think." -- Reid Hoffman

"You don't motivate people by being a cheerleader." -- Kim Polese

"The failure of imagination does not constitute an insight into necessity." -- Reid Hoffman

Outlook Tip: No Attachment Reminder

We all are aware of the pitfalls of accidently sending a mail without an attachment. I was searching for a way around the same. And to my surprise (of course a pleasant surprise) I found this amazing tool on the net.

I landed here:

http://www.officelabs.com/projects/forgottenattachmentdetector/Pages/default.aspx

This is a tool named Forgotten Attachment Detector (FAD) developed by Bhavesh Chauhan. To run it requires Microsoft’s Latest VB runtime to be installed on your PC. If it is not present it will show a prompt and redirect you to Microsoft’s website.

I tried and tested this tool and found it to my taste.

Thanks to the developer.

Outlook Tip: No Subject Mail

We all are aware of the pitfalls of accidently sending a mail without subject line. I was searching for a way around the same. And to my surprise (of course a pleasant surprise) I found this amazing free script on the net. I started using this script almost immediately and it has certainly brought about an amazing improvement in my time utilization.

In lay mans term this script checks whether text has been entered in the subject line.

I tested this script extensively and the one feature that I really liked about this script was that it will still give you an error if you accidently pressed spacebar.

This tiny script proved to be very efficient:

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Dim strSubject As String
strSubject = Item.Subject
If Len(Trim(strSubject)) = 0 Then
Prompt$ = “Subject is Empty. Are you sure you want to send the Mail?”
If MsgBox(Prompt$, vbYesNo + vbQuestion + vbMsgBoxSetForeground, “Check for Subject”) = vbNo Then
Cancel = True
End If
End If
End Sub

To run this script, follow the following steps:

1. Open your Outlook

2. Press Alt+F11. This opens the Visual Basic editor and then Press Ctrl+R which in turn opens a Project-Project 1 (left side)

3. On the Left Pane, one can see “Microsoft Outlook Objects” or “Project1″, expand this. Now one can see the “ThisOutLookSession”.

4. Double click on “ThisOutLookSession”. It will open up a Code pane.

5. Copy and Paste the above mentioned code in the right pane. (Code Pane) and save it.

6. Now whenever u try to send a mail without subject, it’ll raise a pop-up to remind you.