I was a huge fan of the Max Headroom sci-fi series back in the 1980s, broadcasting 'From 20 minutes into the future' with journalist Edison Carter and his digital avatar 'Max'. Twenty years on, there are millions of avatars walking around virtual worlds, and camera-phones in pockets that can record and publish. As the world speeds up to Internet time and discovers citizen media, Kiwis have the advantage of literally living in the future.I was a huge fan of the Max Headroom sci-fi series back in the 1980s, broadcasting 'From 20 minutes into the future' with journalist Edison Carter and his digital avatar 'Max'. Twenty years on, there are millions of avatars walking around virtual worlds, and camera-phones in pockets that can record and publish. As the world speeds up to Internet time and discovers citizen media, Kiwis have the advantage of literally living in the future.Due to a trick of the timezones, we're three hours ahead of Australia. We've gained an eight hour lead by the time the sun hits the west coast of America. The UK wakes the latest and is around half a day behind NZ, depending on time of year and the archaic daylight savings times.

Whether you blog, podcast or vlog from Aotearoa, you can be publishing while the rest of the world is stuck in gridlock or asleep. It's like winning a temporal lottery or having a digital time machine. Clever Kiwis can use their time advantage to be first to comment on blogs or social news sites. Post your witty erudite comments on Sunday to an international mailing list, and you'll be the first quoted in their Monday digest.

For net broadcasters it's a dream. A late night Friday show in the USA and UK becomes a cruisy Saturday afternoon live session from New Zealand. Along with streaming has come time-shifting, where viewers choose their own viewing times. It's a terrifying concept for advertisers, but viewers love it. T

hey also love short punchy pieces when they watch them online, and the length of most popular clips is between one to three minutes. Short formats are much easier to produce, and you no longer need to make recaps and padding to fit round the ad breaks. Best of all, modern web publishing tools allow you to work ahead editorially. Your pod or vlog can be published automatically, while you're off being creative or finding inspiration at the beach.

Seasoned surfers know the best time to hit the waves, and it's important to know about Internet tides. When millions go online to check their mail, the network tends to slows down. I find it's best to surf international sites during the day, before the West Coast wakes up. I also avoid UK sites around 8pm when the UK and Europe log-on for their first morning coffee.

Working out timezones can be confusing by hand, so I use the online Worldclock to easily keep track. You can create and save a personalised page, with the list of cities where your friends or collaborators are based. You can also use the Worldclock Meeting Planner to arrange meeting times across up to six timezones.

As more people carry cellphones, wrist watches are on the way out - nearly two out of three teens say they never wear a watch. There is even talk of change to a 25 or even 28-hour day, though it seems that our internal human clocks run on a daily cycle of 24 hours, 11 minutes. The 28 Hour Day idea does sound appealing, with four-day weeks and 56-hour-long weekends, but however long we choose to make our days, time doing what we love will always be most precious.

After all, every minute we save doing 'stuff' is more time to spend on being creative, and most time-saving advice boils down to 'Get the most important stuff out of the way, before you start to play'.

61 Time Saving Tips is a great list, and my favourite time-saving place in cyberspace is Lifehacker.com. It's full of productivity tips, tricks and software resources, plus low-fi Lifehacks that don't involve technology. There are more great sites in the Top 50 Productivity Blogs at Zen Habits. Just make sure you spend all that extra time on making something amazing!

5/7/07

As well as being TBI's strategist, Helen Baxter a.k.a. MsBehaviour runs dance-music label TMet Recordings, 3D animation company Mohawk Media and has a fortnightly slot on National Radio called 'Virtual World'.