Why I want a Kindle, but maybe not this Kindle

As I was looking at the boxes of books in my basement that I haven't cracked in the last 3+ years, I realized that while there were some books in there that I like, I'm really unlikely to keep carting the boxes of books around for the rest of my life. Furthermore, I started thinking about how cool it would be if, instead of looking at boxes full of books, I was just looking at folders on my hard drive (I used to feel this way about CDs and I imagine lots of people did before the iPod came around). Carrying around boxes of heavy books is a pain, while carrying around a hard drive is very easy.

The Kindle would seem to be the solution for me: simply draw a line in the sand as of the day I receive the Kindle and never buy another paper book again. I could talk myself into that kind of strategy, but I'm not sure that the Kindle is the perfect device yet for the following reasons:

• It uses a pretty proprietary data network to download stuff from Amazon. Although I'm not a world traveler, I'd like to be able to buy books when on vacation if I run out.
• It doesn't seem beefy enough for general use. I take books to the gym, to the beach, read them by the pool, etc., so I want my ebook reader to work in all those places without getting damaged.
• You have to turn it off during takeoff and landing. This rule applies to all electronics, but I think about how much time I have to leave my electronics off on a plane, and I'm usually reading during that time, so that's frustrating (and applies to any ebook reader, not just the Kindle).

Anyone have a Kindle that wants to convince me otherwise?

Link -- Amazon Kindle

Tags: Kindle, ebook+reader, Strategize, Ross+Hollman

Slim down your wallet -- fat wallet 2

If your wallet is big enough to affect the geometry off your butt when you sit in a chair, it's time to go to work on slimming it down. My first suggestion is to read my post about consolidating all of your club cards. Next, check out this article from Real Simple, which has some great ideas about receipts, ID cards, etc.

Please fix your big, fat wallet.

Image from mikeying88.

Tags: wallet, Strategize, Ross+Hollman

The final solution in getting mail out of Outlook and into Gmail/Google Apps

If you use Google Apps and Outlook 2003 or later (this also works for a multitude of other desktop mail programs), simply download the newly-released Google E-Mail Uploader.  It's not clear if this works for regular Gmail accounts, but it definitely works for Google Apps accounts.

If you use Gmail or Google Apps, simply turn on IMAP access, configure your desktop client appropriately to access your account via IMAP, and drag and drop your e-mail into the Google IMAP folders.

Both of these methods preserve all of the original e-mail information, including the correct dates.

Thanks to everyone that worked with me in the past to come up with workarounds to make the upload of e-mail to Gmail easier; it's now so easy that it fits into this small of a post.

Tags: Google+e-mail+uploader, Gmail, Google+Apps, Strategize, Ross+Hollman