Looks like a cellular provider coverage map by the end.
Link
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
What's wrong with writetomyblog?
Writetomyblog is one of my favorite blog posting services -- create your post on their website, post it to your blog, and our done; hey, and it's free!
So, here's the problem: it hasn't been working for me at all lately. When I publish, I get this:
Post Entry Successfully Published (Post Entry as Draft, has no URL).
What the hell does that mean? It thinks that it's posting to Blogger, but by not getting a URL, there is no unique blog entry and, despite what it says above, the post doesn't go into my drafts folder on Blogger.
I have not idea if this is a Firefox 3 issue, some sort of permission issue with the Google API, some issue with the new version of Blogger, or something I haven't thought of, but I miss using the service and hope they fix it soon.
So, here's the problem: it hasn't been working for me at all lately. When I publish, I get this:
Post Entry Successfully Published (Post Entry as Draft, has no URL).
What the hell does that mean? It thinks that it's posting to Blogger, but by not getting a URL, there is no unique blog entry and, despite what it says above, the post doesn't go into my drafts folder on Blogger.
I have not idea if this is a Firefox 3 issue, some sort of permission issue with the Google API, some issue with the new version of Blogger, or something I haven't thought of, but I miss using the service and hope they fix it soon.
Do you need your own personal domain?
I don't know, do you have an extra $0.83 per month? It's not really a matter of affording it anymore -- you can probably find offers that will get you domain hosting for free; I reference the cost of registering through Google Apps and using Google Pages.
If you want people to be able to find you, it seems like a good idea. If you want an e-mail address that you'll keep forever, it seems like a better idea.
As the cost approaches zero, I think the better question is: Why wouldn't you have a personal domain?
Link -- here's mine (took about 5 minutes with Google Page Creator)Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Kinetic phone cahrgers . . . about time
Ok, it's big and ugly and not built into the phone, but Orange is testing this out:
Named as the "Orange Dance Charge," it's similar to the sort of strap you might use for an iPod when you're working out. A series of magnets and weights very similar to the systems used in kinetic watches is used to generate electricity.
I want to see this built into the phones, but it's a step in the right direction.
Link
Monday, June 09, 2008
BlackBerry Flickr App
Not sure what more I can tell you about it as it does exactly what the title suggests: provides you with a native BlackBerry application to upload pictures to your Flickr account.Download here
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Wine
Lots of people that know me think that I know a lot about wine and I guess that spending a lot of time in the Napa Valley while growing up and being acquainted with family and friends that greatly enjoy wine helps a lot. However, I'm going to share my advice about wine with everyone:
- Drink what tastes good to you at the time. Sure, there are all kinds of "rules" about what to drink with what, but if you really want a glass of white wine with your steak, by all means drink a glass of white wine.
- Don't care about what others think. This is especially true if you're ordering bottles based on price -- the only person in a restaurant that is likely to care about how much you spend on a bottle is the waiter that's watching his tip go up geometrically.
- Hold a sip of wine on your tongue and taste the flavors, but don't announce them. If you think your wine is earthy and peaty and has notes of currant, keep that stuff to yourself -- think in terms of it being undrinkable, crap, ok, good, or awesome.
- Don't be intimidated. If you find yourself in situations where you are frequently choosing wines, go spend an afternoon at a good wine bar with a wide selection and make friends with the bartender. Find a couple of mainstream whites and reds that you like that are likely to be on most wine menus and find a couple of lower production whites and reds that are less likely to be on most menus, but will seem impressive if you dig them out of a menu.
- Don't get upsold. If you get the sense that a waiter, sommelier, dude at a liquor store, etc. is trying to upsell you into expensive bottles, go somewhere else or order a beer. Knowledgeable waiters, sommeliers, etc. know that if they find you a solid bottle at a reasonable price, you are likely to drink more than one and you are likely to come back to their establishment.
- High price is not always directly related to good taste. I once was able to view one of the oldest bottles of wine in the world at the Graycliff restaurant in the Bahamas from 1726 that sells for $200K -- I have to imagine that stuff probably tastes like straight vinegar at this point.
Let me share this quote from Richard Betts, Master Somelier of the Little Nell in Aspen (this is from a recently published article in 5280 Magazine):
Easy enough."My philosophy? Wine should be fun. People get all freaked out about ordering the right wine, but there is not such thing. The right wine is the wine you like. That's it. So find what you like and go for it."
Picture from glovsky225
Friday, May 30, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Do you still have a landline phone?
I haven't had a traditional landline phone since I left college; in college is was provided for free where I was living, but I think the only people that called me on it were my parents. For a few years I had a phone from Vonage that was $15 per month for 500 minutes of long distance and everything else, but after reviewing the usage, the $15 was a better incremental spend for more minutes on the cell phone.What's the value proposition in having a landline anymore? If you still have one and swear by it, let me know why.
Picture from Darwin Bell.
Friday, May 16, 2008
In memorium
So, I had to put one of my dogs down last night, which is a totally miserable experience if you've never been through it. The temptation in these situations is to think about all the things that you didn't do, focus on all of the bad stuff, all the times you didn't take them for walks, etc., so I'd like to remember a few of the good things:
He was never left alone overnight. Any time that everyone was out of town, there always was someone that stayed at the house with him.- He got to come to more concerts than many of you have probably been to -- I used to bring him to work at the amphitheatre with me. For that matter, he's probably met more artists than many of you have.
- He got to play in deep snow.
- He got to live in Venice, CA 8 blocks away from the beach and walk on the strand and play in the Pacific Ocean.
- He got to watch my daughter grow through her first 2.5 years and to be her protector.
- He got to lay on the couch (frequently) even though he wasn't supposed to.
- He got to sleep on the bed (frequently) even though he wasn't supposed to.
- He was fiercly loyal and protective and absolutely hated mailmen and trash collectors with a passion.
I found this great excerpt from "The Best Place to Bury a Dog" by Ben Hur Lampman:
The one best place to bury a dog is in the heart of its master.
It was my great pleasure that he was my friend for 8 years -- I can count on 1 hand the number of real friends I've had for that long.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
HBO hits iTunes, if they get Food Network, I'm cancelling my tv service
So, it's official, iTunes is now carrying HBO series programs. I would say that about 95% of my television viewing is HBO and the Food Network, so I'll cross my fingers that Food Network shows are coming (or that Food Network just starts streaming online) and that I can cancel my television service.
Link -- press release
Monday, May 12, 2008
Keep Moving Forward
Quote by Walt Disney the ending of Meet the Robinsons:
Actual quote from Walt Disney's 1965 presentation, "Total Image":
"Around Here, However, We Don't Look Backwards Very Long,
We Keep Moving Forward, Opening Up New Doors And
Doing New Things, Because We're Curious...
And Curiosity Keeps Leading Us Down New Paths."
We Keep Moving Forward, Opening Up New Doors And
Doing New Things, Because We're Curious...
And Curiosity Keeps Leading Us Down New Paths."
There s really no secret about our approach. We keep movingforward opening up new doors and doing new things because we recurious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. We re alwaysexploring and experimenting. At WED, we call it Imagineering theblending of creative imagination with technical know-how.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
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).
Link -- Amazon Kindle
Friday, April 25, 2008
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.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
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.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Don't park like an asshole
If you park like an asshole, I think you should be sited for it. Luckily, youparklikeanasshole.com exists with not only some notices that can be printed out and put on cars, but also with a gallery of people that park like assholes. There's a guy in my building with a relatively nice car that blocks 2 spaces every morning and there's not a lot of parking in our lot -- there are people in my building with $100K cars that manage to fit in one space. This weekend some jerk parked so close to my driver door that I had to climb in the passenger side and there were 3 empty spaces on each side.
Feel free to print out some of the notices and keep them in your car -- I like Notice 1.
Link -- youparklikeanasshole.com
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Why Firefox 3 is super-cool and why you might want to wait
I've been a Firefox fan for years -- I load it on every machine that I sue, regardless of operating system (and usually regardless of whose machine it is). Generally I don't get into playing with the beta versions of Firefox, but due to the amount of buzz around Firefox 3 beta 4, I went ahead and installed it.
First things first, and this may be the reason you don't want to install the beta: most of the add-ons that I use were disabled as they are incompatible. Luckily Greasemonkey is compatible and most of the Greasemonkey scripts are compatible, but things like Google Toolbar and the del.icio.us toolbar haven't been updated; while I don't mind some of the things not working, the del.icio.us toolbar is what I miss the most. (P.S. -- I did install the nightly tester tools to override and enable all the extension, which was a totally bad idea as Firefox got into an infinite loop where it wouldn't boot -- luckily I found out how to launch it in safe mode from the Terminal in OS X and disable all the add-ons).
Here's what's cool about Firefox 3: it is really fast. You can search around for benchmarking and read all the reviews, but the simple fact of the matter is that I can observe it rendering and loading pages faster. Further, it seems to interact in a more snappy manner with my heavy-use Google services such as Gmail and Reader. I also like the history that comes up as I'm typing in a site.
Interestingly the search box did not install by default and I never realized how much I used the search from the toolbar until it wasn't there. Luckily that was easily fixed by simply dragging and dropping it on the toolbar. I'm guessing that if the Google toolbar was installed, that would have been automagically taken care of.
The Firefox 3 interface is cleaner and tighter and the buttons more closely resemble the OSX interface, which is quite nice.
Bottom line:
- If you are a user dependent on your add-ons, wait for the actual release, which is supposed to be June some time.
- If you are nervous about being bleeding edge and beta scares you, then wait for the full release.
- If you are like me and get along without most of your add-ons and love relatively stable bleeding edge stuff, then download it by all means.
Linik
Lots of subscribers
Wow, I haven't checked Feedburner for a while, but I now have 600+ subscribers to this blog. I remember when I first started playing around with blogging that I could hardly break 100 people, so I want to take the opportunity to thank all of you that currently subscribe and to offer the opportunity to subscribe to all of you that don't by simply clicking the icon above.
Again, I certainly appreciate your readership.
Thanks,
Ross
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Why we're using GoogleApps (and why you should think about it too)
I recently moved the company that I work for from e-mail being provided for free by our hosting provider to Google Apps Standard Edition -- here's why:
- Better reliability. The e-mail service we were getting from our web host was horribly unreliable. Even worse, the IMAP support was shoddy at best and we kept getting SSL certificate errors when trying to encrypt connections. Although we're not getting the guaranteed uptime that we would with Google Apps Premium, Standard seems to be about as good as what we had before.
- Centralized, sophisticated management. User creation, account lockout, password reset, distribution lists, etc. -- basically all we could do with the e-mail from our host was create addresses and reset passwords.
- Calendars. Shared calendar functionality is key in organizations and we got nothing from our web host. Now, with Google Apps, people can share calendars and with the Google Calendar Sync, they can get 2-way sync between Outlook and Google Calendar.
- True web-based e-mail. Our host offered it, but you had to choose between SquirrelMail and Horde and it was totally confusing. The Google Apps interface is the same as the Gmail interface and is very easy to use.
- Google sites. We were able to create a universally accessible intranet site without having to host it on our server.
- Mobile access. True IMAP support makes the BlackBerrys work like BlackBerrys are supposed to. Google Sync for BlackBerry allows the BlackBerry to sync in real-time with the Google Calendar, which, if you use Google Calendar Sync, also means that Outlook is in syn -- all over-the-air and in real-time without having to plug the BlackBerry in. Google Mail for Mobile allows full access to the Gmail interface so that users can perform searches on all of their archived e-mail.
- IMAP. Just set up IMAP on Outlook, then drag all the mail from your PST files into the IMAP folders. Once everything's uploaded, it can be searched using Gmail and all header information is preserved -- probably the easiest way to get e-mails out of Outlook and into Gmail.
We're not currently using Docs & Spreads, and I'm not sure that we will in the near-short term. There are a number of employees that have actually abandoned Outlook in favor of Gmail, which is compelling as we look at future software upgrade paths.
Rumor has it that Google may be quickly releasing offline access to Gmail through Gears, which will likely speed adoption of Gmail and cause more people to leave Outlook. There are further rumors that Google may develop and extremely low-cost server option that will compete directly with Exchange, which would evaluate.
Finally, it's nice to know that we have the ability to upgrade to Apps Premium at any time. The mailbox sizes and the features offered by Postini as part of the package with an annual recurring cost of only $50 per user are quite compelling.
Here's the bottom line: if you have a business with a domain, go activate Google Apps and start looking more professional; nothing looks worse than someone using an "@yahoo.com" address as their business e-mail address. If you're not comfortable doing this stuff yourself, find someone like me to help you out -- it's a worthwhile investment.
Link -- Google Apps
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Beyond Booked Solid
I frequently receive books to review on my blog and always disclose when they have been provided to me, so here's my disclosure that I received Beyond Booked Solid (in this post I'm going to refer to the book as "BBS" to make the writing easier) from the author's assistant free of charge for my review. Please note that I only will actually review books that I enjoy reading, so maybe 1 out of 10 actually gets any sort of mention.
When I received the book in the mail, I was immediately concerned that I had not read the preceding book, Book Yourself Solid (and this one is going to be "BYS," again for the ease of writing), but once I got in to the first few pages of BBS, I realized that reading BYS was not a requirement and that BBS stands just fine on its own. However, here's some quick background: BYS is about how to market and sell even if you don't like to market and sell, and how to fill up your time with business prospects to increase your revenue; BBS is about moving into building a bigger and better business by focusing on processes, systems, measurement, leadership, and other core functions.
The book is a good read for several reasons, not the least of which is that you get the feeling that Michael Port, the author, writes as he talks -- even though I've never seen his presentations or spoken to him directly, I can as easily envision him speaking in exactly the same way the words are set forth on the page. I like that Port ties in ideas from some of my other favorite authors such as Seth Godin and Timothy Ferriss and shows how those ideas apply to his core ideas (as a side note, if you read The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss right before you read this book, you may tend to see a lot of parallels, which leads me to believe that great minds think alike).
Here's the core theme of the book is simply this: You need to work on your business, while working in your business, while working on yourself. Port not only details how to work through designing effective systems, leadership, project management, and other core business functions, but he also spends an appropriate amount of time reminding the reader that work is not the only thing in life; he provides the framework and the tools to ensure that your business can run effectively and efficiently and profitably, and still leave you time to spend on personal endeavors.
One thing that I truly enjoyed about BBS was the real-life examples spread throughout the book, and specifically the last chapter of the book that profiled several companies that used the techniques throughout the book to build and maintain successful businesses. Too often business writers expouse about theory and technique, but are unable to provide concrete examples of application; Port succeeds in providing very concrete examples of techniques in practice by successful businesses.
Release date for the book is April 18, 2008. To those of you at the 24 Hour Fitness in Centennial that watched me read this early in the morning asked me about borrowing the book, you have my sincerest apologies, but I do hope that you will purchase a copy when it comes out and that my descriptions of the content along with this blog post were enough to whet your appetite.
Link -- BBS website
PS -- as with many of the books that I review, I received a pre-production copy. The copy of BBS I reviewed was actually a simply bound 8.5x11 document . . . it was perfect to be able to read on the treadmill and stair machine at the gym. I thought about 2 things in that regard were I to publish a book:
- Size can matter. If books were available in a simple 8.5x11 edition by themselves or as part of an upsell with the hardback, I would buy it just to be able to read it at the gym.
- There's a marketing opportunity here. How easy would it be to walk into your local gym with a 8.5x11 copy of your yet-to-be-published book and put it on every machine with a magazine/book holder? You could ask people to read it, send feedback via e-mail, and leave it on the machine for the next person to read when they were done.
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