I bought productivity bible Getting Things Done two and a half years ago. This week, I reached page fifty. Impressive, huh?

You must be wondering: “What is the secret of his productivity success?”. Well, dear reader, I’m going to tell you.

For the last couple of years I’ve been a using an ‘above top secret’ personal productivity tool. I now believe the time is right for others to benefit from its unique insights.

So as of today, my productivity desktop wallpaper is available for GTD disciples and non-believers alike:

Want free publicity (read: easy links) for your websites?

I’m looking for case studies for my Domain Lookup tool.

I’ve received dozens of emails with kind words about the extension. I’ve found some sensational domains myself using it, and heard similar stories from users.

The catch? Most webmasters aren’t too keen to go public their website/domain portfolios.

With 2,000+ active users since launch, I’m now hoping that some of you are prepared to go on the record with your successes.

Interested in sharing any killer domains you’ve found using the extension? Let’s talk.

A kick in the Testaments c/o Amazon’s reviews of the King James Bible.

My more diligent readers may wish to read the reviews in full and post any more in the comments below. Bless you, Jeff Bezos.

Most men love lists. I love lists, too. Especially when they flatter me.

So imagine my surprise when this morning Stephen from Bony Toad tipped me off that QualityNonsense.com had been crowned Britain’s 84th best blog.

Look! Just between, er, 83 and 85!

Cue: an ironic rendition of the Ron Burgundy “kind of a big deal” speech. Joking aside, this might actually be enough to get me to post regularly…

I named my company Quality Nonsense Ltd two years ago. Funny, see?

I laughed all the way to my first meeting, where a banker looked at me with a cocktail of pity and contempt. Reassuringly, reactions since have been more positive.

I took my cues from George Eastman, founder of Kodak, when naming the company. Eastman cited three principal concepts in creating the Kodak brand name:

• It should be short
• You cannot mispronounce it
• It could not resemble anything or be associated with anything but Kodak

Sound advice, I thought, and promptly ignored points 1 + 3. But in the 21st century, there were other points to consider:

• Domains (.COM/local TLDs) should be available (try my domain tool)
• No trademark conflicts
• No vogueish-for-five-minutes names. Yes, I’m mocking Web 2.0 bandwagon jumpers like you WuFoo.com, Wyzo.com, Whrrl.com…
• Embody logic. My favourite recent example? LeaveItOut.com, an eating out guide for vegetarians, vegans, people with allergies etc.

But most important? To my mind, it’s three simple words.

Pretty damn obvious, huh? Well, think how many times each week you see an XYZ Consulting Ltd, ABC Capital, Underwhelming Generic Services Ltd.

Let’s file these in the ‘bad business ideas’ box, alongside stock photo handshakes, ‘motivational’ lithographs and Comic Sans.

If you run a young business and have not read Guy Kawasaki’s book The Art of the Start, order it this second. No excuses.

Once you’re done at Amazon, sit tight and make sixty minutes to watch Guy’s life-changing Art of Inspiration talk.

What are your favourite examples of great business names and why?

“Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music.
I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”

[From Backwards City Review via Wired].

Domain Lookup is released today and should auto-update. The only changes are behind the scenes, so please let me know if you experience any problems.

My contact form has been broken for the last few weeks. If you got in touch during April, best to assume I didn’t get your message and resend now it’s fixed. Thanks!

I’m a sucker for geek gadgets. Keyfob wifi-finder? Check. PVR set to stun? Check. Telnet on my cellphone? You better believe it.

Aleutia is one of the other businesses at Nonsense HQ. I borrowed one of their rugged, low-power PCs after seeing them knocking around the office.

The Aleutia E2 is a tiny Linux box that’s built like a tank, runs on air (almost) and ships for a pocketbook-friendly £199.

The CPU is about the size of four stacked CDs and weighs in at just over half a kilo. That means it’s small and light enough to mount on the back of the optional low-power monitor.

The E2 is built to be tough. It’s entirely solid state, using Compact Flash storage, and with a rugged case that feels like it could survive a parachute drop.

Unsurprisingly, Aleutia’s biggest fans at the moment are NGOs in Africa and Americans living off grid, but there’s plenty of room for a little imagination closer to home: file servers, print servers, you name it.

The machine comes pre-installed with your choice of Ubuntu or Puppy Linux plus Firefox, Skype, OpenOffice, a full dump of Wikipedia and a stack of other open source freebies. Everything works out of the box, so there’s no setup headaches.

The E2 uses 96% less power than a typical desktop, so can run from a solar panel or for a staggering 24 hours on a standard car battery. Even with a low-power LCD monitor, and power consumption is a mere 18 watts.

The E2 comes with a three year hardware warranty, thee years tech support and a money back guarantee. What’s not to like?

You can learn more about the Aleutia E2 care of Sky News:

Domain Lookup 1.1 adds support for a total of 60 registrars/domain tools, 30 TLDs and fixes a couple of minor glitches.

The two most interesting improvements are support for some of my favourite domain tools: Estibot and DomainTools.com.

DomainTools.com should need no introduction: it’s the webmaster’s swiss army knife, offering tools like WHOIS lookups and registrant search.

Estibot is an automated domain appraisal tool that estimates pricing data from factors like past sale prices, link popularity, phrase popularity etc.

Registrars & Tools Supported

TLDs Supported

Other Improvements

• Firefox 3.0b5 support
• Improved handling of accents, umlauts etc.
• Improved handling of link anchor text
• Toggle to allow hyphens

The latest version will automatically update next time you run Firefox. Alternatively, you can trigger an extension update under the Tools > Add-Ons menu in your browser. As ever, I’d love to hear any feedback.