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I consider myself as someone abnormally concerned with efficiency. I'm always trying to find a way to execute tasks with the minimum waste of resources (time, money, energy, space,...), which is good, in a ecologic and generic way, but can be mind blowing when out of control.

During a day job, I'm pretty like John Doe: normally, I'm carrying more than one project at the same time, some where I'm really working on, others where I'm just waiting for someone to deliver some thing; when I get deep into something I usually forget other tasks, which can be tough, if we are talking groceries; So, I need a way to organize myself, to be as much efficient as i can.

I knew GTD (Getting Things Done) some time ago, and even use it for sometime, just to reach to the conclusion that is had to much overhead for my personal use. But it has some very good lessons in how to organize ourselves to better productivity, So, after some reading and digging, I decided to compile what I think are the best practices you can do to help yourself in being more efficient.

Via Maik, an excelent resource for Ruby on Rails development on Mac OS X, signed by Apple itself.

For all the product managers out there, a brilliant parody on how Microsoft would re-design the iPod packaging. See it for yourself, and please share the lessons learned (via Rui).

Karlus did it again: destakes.com, finding relevant portuguese content, at your service. Brilliant, but were are the rss feeds? Ahh, and with the best how to I ever seen, in one line.

Everyone is talking about the patent granted by the US Patent Office to Balthaser, covering "methods, systems and processes for the design and creation of rich-media applications via the Internet." A lot of FUD is going on, with people saying that AJAX, Java and even Flash will need to be licensed in the near future.

So, I decided to read the patent, and it's not that bad: the usage of rich-media applications is not covered under this patent. Instead, what Balthaser is patenting is a hosted application which enables normal people to build rich-media websites (or applications), there is, a rich-media website, that previously demanded designers, flash programmers and coders, can now be accomplished by anyone.

So, Balthaser is defending is own tool, pro:FX. The thing is, isn't this patent to broad? What is the definition of "rich-media application"?

In the same day, Google launched is new service, Page Creator, a website that enables you to create your own website, with the easiness and simplicity we know from Google. And after a peek to the Page Creator interface, my first question was: "Is this under the Balthaser patent?".

If is considered that Google (and others) must license this kind of technology to Balthaser, than we have just created a strong break on innovation, and I strongly believe that is not the objective of patents. They exist to encourage innovation, by protecting intellectual property, not for some guy to decide that put a Dreamweaver on the web is innovation. That was too damn obvious to be considered as an inventive idea.

I just hope someone get is senses, meanwhile, I'm happy to live in Europe.