The other day I wrote this article, posted it here, then today I woke up and found it here.

I’m a big fan of Lifehacker, and I’ve been reading the site for a few years now to get my productivity fix. This is actually the second time one of my posts has gone from Apartment Therapy to Lifehacker, the first being earlier this week. I’m sure Apartment Therapy appreciates the extra traffic, and I know I’m glad that my work is being exposed to more people.

If anyone at Lifehacker is looking for a new writer, feel free to contact me, I’d definitely be interested.

It seems like I have hard drives floating all over the place in my office. There’s the one I use for cloning my main computer’s drive every night; the one for backing it up hourly; the storage unit for the family’s iTunes library; the storage unit for my Whipps Industries archive; the storage unit that backs up the media machine iMac and the previous two storage units; and the four others that sit in a drawer just behind me and to my left. It’s a bit ridiculous when you think about it, and another good reason why I want to buy a Drobo.

These are the topics that I like to write about on Apartment Therapy’s Tech section (the recently rebranded version of Unplggd), because it solves a real world problem — one I really have. In this piece I outline the three ways that I manage to keep my hard drives concealed and clean looking, minimizing the clutter in my office. If all of those drives just sat on my desk, well then I don’t know how my OCD would handle it.

As the editor of iPhone.AppStorm.net, it’s my job to always buy the latest and greatest iPhone so I can relay information about it to our readers. When the iPhone 4S was announced, most Apple fans were a bit disappointed, as we expected to see something big and new with a shiny new package, and not an iPhone 4 with new software. But it turns out that Siri, the iPhone 4S voice recognition app, really is amazing to work with.

I wrote this piece at iPhone.AppStorm about Siri because I think it gets a bad rap and it’s really not warranted. Check it out and see if you agree.

As a professional writer, I have a wide variety of different clients. Some of them come to me via referral, and others I have to go out and actively pursue. Finding those customers can be and all-day chore, but if you don’t go after them, then you may lose out on the next big deal.

One option I discovered for finding those clients is If This, Then That, a popular web service that lets you do all sorts of things automatically without any outside interference. Although my results have been a bit mixed as of late, it’s still the best way for me to find customers without losing most of my productivity.

But wait, there’s more. IFTTT can also do other things, such as post things from your Instagram to Facebook and much more. If you haven’t started using it yet, you should heavily consider it.

Like many people, I struggle at times with trying to accomplish all of the many things I need to do throughout my day. For example, I have a meeting today at nine about Project No. 1, then my task list for the day consists of 20-30 items (I don’t want to count them at the moment), and I have to get that all done by 3:30 when I pick up my son at daycare. Between taking care of my son, trying to be a good husband and running my own business, things can get pretty stressful. Up until a few years ago, I had a really hard time balancing things, and then someone recommended David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, and well, it changed my life.

Writing for Unplggd is more about tech than it is about using a GTD system, but the theme for January revolves around changing your life for the better, and that’s exactly what this book did for me. It’s not a complex system requiring a ton of expensive software or equipment, just a pen, paper and a filing cabinet.

And if that wasn’t a big enough bit of praise for the book, I’ve since passed it down to my wife who now is much more productive, and we both gave it as Christmas presents to co-workers. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

I love Dropbox. I’ve been using the file syncing service for years now, and in the course of working at various magazines, I’ve also used it for their workflow process. It’s drop-dead simple to use, syncs across platforms and just works. I love it.

The only real issue I have with the service is that I can’t have multiple Dropbox accounts on one machine — or at least that’s what I thought, but it turns out you can, using a little loophole.

I’m sure this works on a PC as well, but since I don’t have one, I wrote about the process on Unplggd using my Mac as an example. It came in really handy when I was working at Jetset, and I’m sure it will in the future.

In 2009, Whipps Industries started as just a guy with an idea, and just a month later was thrown into complete chaos.

For those that don’t know the story, my wife and I decided to start the company in October of 2009, when she was six months pregnant. She was gainfully employed at the time, and since she had health insurance, we knew that we were covered no matter what. I began in earnest on October 3rd, with minimal pressures and a bright outlook.

On October 30, my wife was laid off. No one was going to hire a woman who was seven months pregnant, and all of a sudden I had to earn enough money to pay for not just the two of us, but our first child, and we had no idea how much that was going to cost.

But it worked, and my wife stayed home for the following 20 months so that we could both be at home with our newborn. It worked out pretty well, and although she’s back to work today, we do have plans to have another child so this could all repeat again in the future.

As for Whipps Industries, in the remaining months of 2009 and into 2010, things went pretty well, exceeding my expectations pretty early on. In 2011 the company went even further, and has even spurned some new projects that could be very cool here in the near future. But what about 2012? What’s going to happen next year?

In the next few months, Project No. 1 will be coming out, with the help of my good friend and colleague, Marie Look. Shortly thereafter, I’m hoping to work with Marie on another project, but that’s Project No. 2 and that’s still very much in the planning stages, so it’s way too early to announce anything. Then, Project No. 3, well that’s a real passion project for me, and something I really want to get going. In 2012, that will happen, even if it’s just planting the seeds.

Now I hate being cryptic about all this, but there are big things planned for this coming year, and I want all of you in on it. Feel free to follow us on twitter @whippsind, and check us out on Facebook as well.

Thanks for all of your support these past few years. Here’s to many more.

I never really paid any attention to kitchen technology until a few years ago; I just figured that the kitchen was where I made food, so that’s good enough for me. But then I met my wife, and she introduced me to the world of custom kitchen design. I haven’t been able to look at a cabinet the same ever since.

When I was assigned this piece for Unplggd, I knew that I had a bit of a challenge ahead of me because the site doesn’t really focus on kitchens, but I found a pretty good selection of products and roundups to make the piece flow well. Check it out and let me know what you think.

It’s weird, but part of my job involves playing video games, spending hours fiddling with my iPhone and being involved in as many social networks as possible. One of my favorites is Instagram, and it turns out that it’s Apple’s favorite as well since they just named it the iPhone App of the Year.

We hadn’t looked at the app over at iPhone.AppStorm in almost a year, and since it had gone through a major redesign in that period of time, I figured it was time to give it another peek. I think the app is a lot of fun, personally, and I’d recommend it to anyone.

 I’ve been playing video games for a long time now, and although popular opinion is that people should grow up and move on to more “adult” things, it’s now my job to talk about and review these things so I don’t feel so bad. But in the course of doing my job, I’ve found that some games just don’t work on certain devices.

For example, take most console games — those designed for use with a controller while you sit cross legged in front of a TV — and port them to the iPhone. It just doesn’t work every time, and sometimes it’s more frustrating than not.

So this is my little piece about all that. It’s just a small portion of my editor’s duties over at iPhone.AppStorm.net, and I love it there.