8.8.8.8

We're hiring! We're hiring engineers in the US and in our development center in Granada, Spain. This means we are reviewing lots of resumes and doing initial phone screens. One of the simple phone screen questions I love to ask is related to debugging a DNS problem (except folks don't know yet there is a problem with DNS). There is really no single correct answer. There is one really poor answer: giving up. In the process of debugging the problem, candidates often come to "ping a public IP address somewhere". I ask them to give me specifically which IP address they know is up and running.  I've been amazed by how many folks in Spain know of Google's public DNS service and know it's IP address by heart: 8.8.8.8.

The most recent XKCD comic illustrated the point about the importance of the 8.8.8.8 DNS server. Phone screen question busted.

Tools of the trade

Lifehacker.com has made a living from documenting productivity tools for your daily life. Getting things done websites each pitch their own methodology and tools. Which tools work for you is a personal affair. Here's a list of the tools I use:

• Email, Calendar and Writing: both at home and at work I use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, and Google Docs/Drive. While Apple Mail, iCal and Addressbook synchronize with Google services, I tend to use the browser as the main interface. I am a big fan of the Gmail simple interface and use the tabbed Inbox daily. A common theme for all the tools is the cloud aspect: data is stored in the cloud and synchronizes across operating systems and platforms between my work laptop, my personal laptop, my iPad and Android HTC One phone. 
• Todo list: I experiment every few months with new todo managers. For about a year I use doit.im. I love the simple and easy interface, and the fact it works with David Allen's GTD system, which I use. 
• Taking notes: at work I use Microsoft Word in outline mode for taking personal notes. Unfortunately nothing meets my requirements for a great outliner. When I need to share notes with my colleagues, I use Google Docs. Similarly at home, I tend to go to Google Docs. I never got into Evernote, as it lacks some basic outliner features. Since recent I started using Google Keep for simple snippets and pictures of whiteboards. A big advantage is that synchronizes with Google Drive and has the ability to distinguish between my work and personal Google accounts. On my iPad, I use Notability to take notes. I like the ability to mix text, pictures and sketches. Sadly only iOS is supported by Notability.
• Drafting and Sketching: I like Paper on the iPad, although I often run out of screen real estate, and my fingers are too fat. I tend to stick with rudimentary sketches of ideas or basic X-Y graphs. 
• News and blog reading: ever since the demise of Google Reader (darn you Google!), I switched to Digg Reader. I am a big fan of RSS readers. I use Flipboard on my iPad. I catch up on interesting presentation using Slideshare. 
• Social media: I live in a socially segregated world: I post tidbits on Twitter (it's open to the world), I restrict LinkedIn to work and professional sharing, I answer questions on Quora and Stackoverflow. I like Google+ - no surprise for Google fanboy. Although you would think I barely use Google+ as most of my sharing is with family in a walled off family community. I do find a lot of substantial information sharing on Google+, unlike on Facebook. I log in to Facebook to catch up with the gossip du jour among my friends. I am your stereotypical Instagram user sharing food, drinks and signs. I limit sharing of personal and family pics to my walled off Google+ community. (yes, I am married and have two kids, but you wouldn't know from Facebook or Instagram.) Buffer.App helps me posting to social media. 
• Instant messaging: Adium (iOS)
• Video Conferencing: I use Webex at work, as it has the benefit to allow people to dial in from a mobile phone or landline. At home, Google Hangouts is streaming our household across the pond every weekend. 
• Data Storage: MacOS Time Machine to USB hard drives and a Synology NAS, combined with Google Docs and DropBox. I use DropBox only for a few things: using IFTTT to store all my Instagram pictures in a single folder and for whitepapers, eBooks and other reading material as I can open it on any of my devices. 
• eBooks: I dropped iBooks for Kindle on iOS and Android. Regardless of the device I can access my book. 
• Experimental tools: TicTrac as my personal data dashboard; Prezi for online presentations. 
• Specialized: Microsoft project, and a whole suite of Software development tools. 

When you take a moment to list all the applications you use, you are amazed about how many there are. I wonder how things got done 25 years ago. 

Let me know if you have any interesting tools or if a category is missing.