Workcover blog for injured workers by injured workers
This blog site was recommended to my by a listener, David, and it seems to be a busy blog that documents public comments and commentary on all things related to South Australia’s workers’ compensation system.

It makes for some depressing reading. You certainly get the impression that there is a strong, heavy current moving decisions in one direction and that workers have ideas and suggestions that have no chance in holding back or diverting tide.

There are some amazing threads of conversation on this blog, especially “New Legislation- More disadvantaged Workers-More blowout??” which contains insights into the role of case managers and claims that there seems to be a layer of lazy middle people standing between rehabilitation services and workers who actually want to get well and back into the workforce. I also notice the Liberal party is involved in the conversation and there are also some mentions of Kris Hanna.

You can visit the blog at http://www.blognow.com.au/workcover/.

Polldaddy
I discovered a new service for creating polls and surveys online, that can be easily embedded into blogs and websites. It is Poll Daddy and it offers a very slick free service – which I am using for our babydavisblog.wordpress.com.

The free account lets you set up and run polls and then has an easy to follow system for embedding the poll onto your homepage, or into your WordPress blog, MySpace page, TypePad, Facebook, Blogger – and there is even a Flash converter for posting your site on systems that don’t allow Javascript applications to run.

You can also run surveys but they are limited to 100 entries in the free version.

PC World and Fox News are just some of the companies using Polldaddy which means it passes muster with some of the websites that count.

You can have your own Poll Daddy at http://www.polldaddy.com.

David Seah
It doesn’t matter whether you are retired, working freelance, running a small business, or just wanting to perform better at your job or within your household, you now have access to your very own, Personal CEO.

David Seah is a freelancer who was frustrated with his attempts to focus and see jobs through to completion, especially when jobs had nebulous outcomes or pathways. So, back in 2005, he created a set of forms to act like a CEO breathing over his shoulder to ensure he could honestly say to himself that he had been being productive.

The forms – there are many styles – have a column for tasks and bubbles for every 15 minute period in a day. It is quite dramatic when you look at a day in hindsight, or even as it is unfolding, to see a series of filled in bubbles for time taken on tasks, or a series of bubbles with slashes through them for each period that was effected by distractions.

There’s also another brilliant tool – the Compact Calendar. This simple, elegant calendar prints out onto one page and has each day of the year plotted consecutively across seven columns. So what? Well, unlike a traditional calendar, which has loose ends when months change midweek, this has the whole year available in one glimpse. This makes it much easier for scheduling projects, holidays, and deadlines. What’s more, David’s fans around the globe have created local versions with public holidays and there are some Australian calendars on his site.

If you want to look at this calendar and then work your way through to his forms, visit David Seah’s Compact Calendar page at http://davidseah.com/page/compact-calendar. Thanks to Adrian for this site suggestion.

Geoff Peters Trio
I was looking at baby name websites and found one which I’ll talk about another day, called Baby Name Guesser, but, as often happens online, I was intrigued to see a note that the guy behind the site has a jazz band. So I clicked on the link to his band’s site and discovered the most sublime, or should I say, hip, jazz.

This is the perfect arrangement of piano, drums and bass that you could ever wish for.

One refreshing aspect of the site is that Geoff has a ton of music available for you to listen to while online, or download to listen to later – all free. He is running the honour system and trusting that if you enjoy his music, you’ll hop back to his site and leave a donation via PayPal.

Forget that Melbourne has the Jazz Festival at the moment, swing over to the Geoff Peters Trio site and have your own concert at http://www.gpeters.com/listen.php.