I’m often asked which web and iPhone apps I find most useful as a digital gypsy. While I am always trying out new things these are the apps I use everyday and are part of my digital toolbox:

HootSuite

You can manage all your social networking (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) from this app.  The three things that are coolest about it are that you can schedule tweets, manage multiple Twitter/Facebook accounts and the iPhone version works really, really well.  Soon you’ll also be able to manage your Google+ accounts and pages using HootSuite.

Raven Tools

Analytics are key if you want to be able to know what works and delivers results online.  We use Raven to research and track how to make our SEO, SEM and Social Media campaigns more effective.  It’s not cheap ($99-$249 a month) but if you are serious about online marketing you need to check our Raven Tools.

Google Apps

I’ve been using Google Apps for around five years now and its Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Contacts might not be the most sophisticated on the market by they are cloud based, solid and simple to use.  Google and Apple don’t play well together so expect to have to do a little bit of configuration if you are an iPhone and iPad user.

OmniFocus

I’ve tried every task management software out there; Remember the Milk, Google Tasks, Toodledo, paper lists, you name it.  OmniFocus works best for me because I can use the Getting Things Done methodology for managing multiple projects and tasks.  It’s also nice to have a trusted system so I don’t have to keep in my head all the stuff I need to do.  If you are looking for professional grade task management then Omnifocus could be for you.

MailChimp

Email marketing is central to every businesses’ marketing efforts.  MailChimp helps you design email newsletters, keep track of all your lists and does it in a way that is legal.  There are a lot of email marketing services out there but for me it came down to MailChimp v Constant Contact and MailChimp won hands down.

Spotify

The problem with iTunes is that it’s not great for discovery and you have to pay for each download whereas I would prefer paying a monthly subscription and getting as much music as I want.  Spotify is an amazing web and mobile app that gives you access to pretty much every piece of music you would ever want to hear from $9.99 a month.  I also enjoy it as a way to discover new music by using the Radio option and there is a free option if you are willing to put up with the adverts.

Skype

I think I must have been one of the early adopters of Skype and it’s key to me being able to stay in touch with my friends, family and customers around the world.  I pay for two online numbers from Skype (one in London and one in San Francisco) which allows me to have people in those places call me at local rates.

Dropbox

Dropbox is one of my favourite apps as it allows me to have all my files in the cloud so I can access them anywhere, anytime and on any device.  It also allows co-workers to get access to the files I want them to see.  Small businesses I know are evangelical about Dropbox and the power it gives them to scale their businesses.

Work

The first couple of months of 2011 were spent traveling back and forth between Scotland and California for work.  I’ve always enjoyed California and the San Francisco Bay area and this was the first time I was able to spend a significant amount of time here.  Apart from the climate, good wine and food I also love the general outlook to life that many people have here.  The folks that move to the sunshine state, whether that’s to work in technology in Silicon Valley, to find fame and fortune in Los Angeles or just to generally reinvent themselves have a pioneer spirit about them.  In October I decided to make the move permanent and joined ArtistWorks, the world’s leading providers of music education online, as Director of Global Business Development.  The past couple of months have been the most rewarding period in my business career as we launched the ArtistWorks Academy of Bluegrass, the ArtistWorks Academy of Drums and quietly signed some of the world’s greatest music artists with a view to announcing a whole slew of new online music schools in 2012.  ArtistWorks is one of the most hotly tipped EdTech (education technology) companies in the Bay area and the company has been growing at a pretty phenomenal rate as it now teaches music online to students in over 52 countries.  It’s also given me the opportunity to work with some incredibly talented people in the worlds of technology, marketing, music, video editing, sound design and education.

Politics – Well that was interesting!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  As anyone that knows me will testify, I am passionate about politics and the role of politics in improving the lives of others.  In the Spring of this year I was a list candidate for the Scottish Liberal Democrats at the Scottish Parliamentary Elections when my party took a pretty serious hammering.  I’ve previously written about some of the reasons I believe we lost but from a personal perspective I do not find the current political landscape of Scotland particularly appealing.  Following the election I decided to take a step back from being involved in any political party and instead focus on areas where I believe I can have more impact.

Thirty Seven Beds and Twenty Cars

After the election I decided I needed to make a major change in my life and the result was that my wife and I decided in the summer to move to America.  We did so in a rather unusual way however.  Not knowing where in California we wanted to live we exchanged our holiday home in Europe with different families in Northern California using a website called Home Exchange and the result was that over the past couple of months we have stayed in some amazing places.  These include two weeks to two months in holiday homes in Mill Valley, Napa, St Helena, Yountville, Guerneville, San Anselmo, Carneros and Sonoma.  Exchanging homes in this way allowed us to get to know the area better for when we decided to settle down somewhere longer term, we met lots of new friends and it made us appreciate how to travel in a minimal way.  In addition to this we ended up making additional trips to Los Angeles, Carmel, Saratoga, Monterey and Italy.  Tallying it up I figured I’ve slept in a total of 37 beds this year and driven a total of twenty hire cars though!

Zen and the Art of Tea

Living in California has meant some pretty big changes to my diet, exercise regime and general well-being.  One of the first things I got into when I arrived here was Bikram Yoga as well as significantly improving my diet by eating lots more fresh fruit and veggies.  Lifestyle design and experimenting with different foods and exercise regimes is big here and it’s been kind of fun to shake things up a little bit.  As a Brit it’s also nice to see that California finally has a proper tea shop with Samovar Tea Lounges springing up in San Francisco.

My Top Books of 2011

• The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charles T. Munger
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout

My Top Gigs of 2011

• Jeff Beck at Napa Opera House
• The Infamous Stringdusters at The Independent, SF
• Steely Dan at Mountain Winery
• Russell Ferrante and Bob Mintzer at Teatro Alaleano, Montegiorgio

My Top Tracks of 2011

• Make it Mine by Jason Mraz
• Big Lights Bigger City by Cee Lo Green
• Stratus by Billy Cobham
• You Are by The Punch Brothers
• Alfie by Pat Metheny

A Special Thanks

To finish off I’d like to thank a couple of people who have made 2011 so much fun.  First of all my wife for supporting me and having the spirit and good nature to follow me on this excellent adventure.  To the team I work with at ArtistWorks for putting their faith in me and inspiring me to work harder and smarter each day.  To my friends and family who supported me in making this change.  To an old school friend who convinced me to take the plunge and set out across the sea.

Here’s to a great 2012.

If you don’t yet have a Kindle Fire and would one for free, Tim Ferriss is giving away 50 of them. This is a thank you for providing him with so much helpful feedback over the last six months.

Here’s how to get one:

1) Just spread the word in the next 48 hours! Send people to this blog post or The 4-Hour Chef page on Amazon. Here are some ideas: Facebook like, Facebook sharing, retweets, Twitter, e-mail, e-mail signature, street miming. The last one doesn’t scale as well as the others.

2) By 11am PST this Thursday (Dec. 1), leave a comment on this post telling him what you did. If possible, quantify the impact (clicks, page views, etc.), and be sure to follow these two rules, which are required for your entry to be valid:
- In the first line, tell me what you’d most like to learn in The 4-Hour Chef.
- Keep the entire comment to 200 words or fewer, so use bullets!

Tim consider the first 300 submissions, and a few judges and he will choose the 50 he thinks did the best job (subjective, I know). Then he’ll ship them off! Void where prohibited, Martians under 21 not allowed, etc., etc. Winners will be announced next week.

I’m grateful to my grandfather Bill who instilled in me a lifelong hunger for learning.

I’m grateful to my father Martin for showing me that you can be the best in your field and still be a kind, honest and good person.

I’m grateful to my mother Liz for her energy and no-nonsense attitude to life.

I’m grateful to my brother Stewart for making Carpe Diem real and having me stop and reassess what’s important.

I’m grateful to my wife Alison for allowing me to follow my dreams and being there in good times and bad.

I’m grateful for my first drum teacher Dougie MacDonald for instilling in me a love of rudiments and Buddy Rich and giving me lessons for free.

I’m grateful to my school art teacher Ian Deuchar for teaching me to open up my mind and not be afraid to be different.

I’m grateful to Anthony Robbins for giving me the confidence and a positive outlook to life.

I’m grateful for my best man Malcolm for providing true friendship and laughter.

I’m grateful to Ricky Ross for what he taught me and showing me what kind of person I don’t want to be.

I’m grateful to Ajahn Sumedho for showing me what kind of person I do want to be.

I’m grateful to Marcus Aurelius for writing down his Meditations and therefore providing a guide to living.

I’m grateful to Tim Ferriss for re-igniting my entrepreneurial passions and deciding what the rules of the game will be.

I’m grateful to Kevin Rose for introducing me to Silicon Valley, startups and tea and making me travel to the other side of the world to do so.

I’m grateful to Derek Sivers for just being Derek Sivers.

I’m grateful to David & Patricia Butler for believing in me and allowing me to work with others to build something great.

I’m grateful to Billy Cobham for teaching me about music, drumming and Swiss history.

I’m grateful to Thomas Lang for showing me that excellence is a habit, not a virtue.

I’m grateful to John Stuart Mill for providing me with the underpinnings of my political beliefs.

I’m grateful to my enemies and competitors for forcing me to constantly up my game.

I’m grateful for my friends…you know who you are.

Happy Thanksgiving

I work at ArtistWorks, the award-winning company behind the forthcoming ArtistWorks Drum Academy, Billy Cobham School of Drums, Thomas Lang School of Drums and Luis Conte School of Percussion.  Like many drummers I have lots (and I mean lots) of DVDs, videos and books on how to improve your drumming.  As a kid I remember spending countless hours watching DCI and Hudson videos by Dave Weckl, Dennis Chambers and Steve Gadd’s Tuition videos and analyzing every paradiddle, fill and groove.  The Buddy Rich snare drum rudiments book was my bible and I spent many an hour with just a pair of Vic Firth 5A sticks, a battered drum pad and that book.  Then a friend suggested I check out Billy Cobham’s Spectrum album! Any drummer worth their salt can tell you the first time they heard that album.  It still remains one of the most important albums for the progression of drumming as an art form.

Fast forward 15 years later.  This year my team and I set the challenge of putting together the ArtistWorks Drum Academy, and as our company is full of drummers it was a pretty exciting project for all involved.  My team and……..

Read the Full Article now at www.artistworksdrumacademy.com/blog

I’ve always felt in my gut that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong and The Spirit Level proves it.  Author Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.

Currently Scotland is deciding what kind of future it wants and this will include which economic model it wishes to follow.  The instinct amongst most Scottish politicians is to go the Scandinavian route of redistribution via high taxes.  Some countries like Sweden do well because they have ways of redistributing wealth but others like Japan do well because they don’t have smaller income differences before tax.  Hope you enjoy this video.

Earning Trust

As Occupy Wall Street starts copycat protests around the globe I can’t help but think it is part of a wider trend, a trend that is fundamentally about trust.  A lack of trust at every level of society is behind some of the movements we are seeing in finance, politics and the economy today:

• Banks don’t trust businesses enough to lend to them.
• Employees don’t trust their companies won’t lay them off next month.
• The electorate don’t trust that their governments are doing things for the right reasons or that the economy will get better anytime soon.
• The 99% don’t trust that the 1% will pay their fare share of tax.
• Ratings agencies don’t trust that national governments will enact the fiscal measures to get their debt problems sorted.

The lack of trust is so deep-rooted and pervasive at the moment that it will take many years for the situation to correct itself.  Like Chekov says ‘you must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible’.  For many life is tough just now and our political, financial and social structures are buckling under the distrust.  Like any relationship, rebuilding that trust will require that governments, politicians, bankers, companies and individuals speak honestly and openly.  We’ve become so use to spin and untruth’s in recent years that this on its own would require a major paradigm shift in thinking.  It also requires that all parties treat each other with a little more respect.  When a politician attacks another simply to make a cheap point it devalues both of them and the valuable role they can play in making lives better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that self-trust was the first secret of success.  Mother Teresa expressed it more beautifully by encouraging us to ‘Trust yourself.  Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.  Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement’.  On our own we may not be able to control tax systems, the markets or employment levels but we can work on trusting ourselves to do the things that make the world around us just that little bit better.

Steve Jobs passed away yesterday, something we sensed was coming, yet the news is still comes as shock.  I cannot hope to improve on the many touching tributes that his passing is inspiring.  I can tell you this:  Without Steve, there would be no ArtistWorks.  ArtistWorks is inextricably linked to Steve’s inventions and his genius.

I could not believe the elegance of the Macintosh computer when I first laid my hands on one in 1984.  It was early in my career, having graduated from college just four years prior.  In college, and early in my career, I had studied and worked in computer graphics, when such a term was still in use.  Steve’s Macintosh would eventually turn every computer into a graphics computer.  The Macintosh computer attracted a new generation of creative and artistic young people to the technology field:  Suddenly technology was cool.  The fusion of technology, art, and design that the Macintosh inspired revolutionized businesses, education, and entertainment.  I jumped on the Mac bandwagon early, and immersed myself in “all things Mac”. I became known as a user interface expert, which propelled my career forward.  But in fact I owe my understanding of design, and user interface principles, to Steve.

But it is not only his inventions that inspired us.  Steve’s intolerance for mediocrity and his demand for excellence in the people who worked for him influenced a generation of technology entrepreneurs, myself included.  At times tough and unforgiving, Steve demanded that everyone around him give his or her best.  I know of more than one person who left Apple, withering under Steve’s sometimes harsh management style.  But in retrospect, it is easy to see that he was driven by a singular vision, and those who “had the chops” to stick it out with him were rewarded with the great accomplishments of their careers.  Steve had no patience for market research, saying that consumers, in fact, cannot possibly know what they want before they see it.  Over the years Steve was proven right:  Innovators must lead.

He suffered the indignity of being tossed out of Apple in 1985.  Although he left Apple with plenty of material success, he was restless.  He started NeXT, the company that was to lay the foundational work for OSX.  He bought a struggling graphics company called Pixar. Under Steve’s guidance, Pixar became a powerhouse in great family movie entertainment.  In 1997 Steve returned to fix a broken, money-losing Apple.  Steve could not stand seeing the great Apple brand tarnished.  Any doubts about Steve’s genius were obliterated by his accomplishments after his return to Apple.  Due to Steve Jobs, Apple is now considered the most valuable company in the world.   

We do not know much about his personal life. He simply did not live in public.  He was a quiet, family man.  Since 2003, he knew his time on this earth was likely to be short.  Yet he did not despair.  Many of his greatest accomplishments occurred during his latter years.   OSX, MacBooks, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.  He left us with this wisdom:  

“Each day I ask myself:  If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to
change something.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

            Steve Jobs  June 12, 2005 Stanford Commencement Address