Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Once again Barack Obama is showing signs of change. This one I can definitely get on board with. Fireside chats, something that every president does once a week since FDR, and have since been put on the radio, has said that he will put his firesides on YouTube.

What a great idea! Informing and leading the general public from a medium that most Americans have access to. I always wondered why previous presidents didn’t put their weekly address, on the television. I’m not talking about press conferences. I’m talking about some sort of weekly address that speaks honestly to the nation.

Maybe they have previously done this on tv. But I haven’t noticed it. YouTube is such a brilliant idea. I’m not sure how it’s comment feature for such showings will go. I can only imagine the comment battles that will go on. Maybe you’ll be limited or maybe they’ll close the comments.

Either way, it’s great to see government coming into the new age. Maybe he can spread the thoughts to other forms of government and we can stop wasting so much money…

I’m always a fan when a company comes out with a new idea rather than creating a commodity out of a design that’s already out there. Or maybe that’s what these guys are doing?

Either way, I stumbled across this new company in a small article in wired magazine that combined t-shirts, social networking and you cell phone. Although the idea is still growing on me and I can’t see it getting much more than a cult following, the concept is great! Take something that’s been around forever, the t-shirt, and make the message it delivers fluid.

I’m not talking about creating a digital screen print on a t-shirt that changes. I’m talking about a new company called W-41. It’s a new company out of the Netherlands that’s decided to take your t-shirt to the next level.

W-41 places a design on the back of their designer t-shirts. The design looks like a futuristic barcode. Then while you’re out at a club, the supermarket, or walking your dog, anyone with a phone and their free application can snap a photo of your barcode and up pops what you’d like. A message, your website, your facebook info, your myspace, or anything you choose.

While the idea in this application seems a little hard to get widespread popularity (unless of course it becomes standard on every t-shirt design) the concept is great. I’ve heard of applications for cell phones that have barcode readers and pop up info of products right in stores but this goes even further. It marries the photo recognition software with useful applications, right on your cell phone.

Think of all the possibilities: A cell phone app that takes pictures of products or barcodes and up pops Google Shopping Search to tell you how cheap you can get it online, or amazon reviews to tell you how bad the product is.

Portable apps are tying together every aspect of our life and if you can get even a small cult following, you’re doing something right.

Some of you familiar with Microsoft Office Applications know of the flow chart and process mapping program called Microsoft Visio. It’s a great program that has a lot of standards, templates, and useability options that make it useful in a lot of situations.

I use it in my biotech position to map engineering processes and actual fluid flow. I’ve heard of others who use Visio in “mind mapping” and brainstorming processes to build ideas into projects and product development cycles.

The only problem is that Visio costs a bit of money. For those of you addicted to free web applications, forking over the money to buy a Microsoft product probably isn’t on your top priority. You need other solutions.

Well I did a little hunting around and found two free web applications for just those purposes, flow charts and brain storming.

The first one is called Gliffy and I really hope this application gets picked up by Google in the near future. It’d be a great addition to the Google Free Web Apps. (Although I really hope Google builds more connectivity into their apps and allows users to cut and paste their favorite portions from each app) Anyway, Gliffy is just like Visio and has a lot of built in capabilities to help you diagram flow processes. Try it out.

The next web app that I think you should try out is Bubbl.us. It’s a brainstorming web application, also free that gives users another interactive ability to create brainstorming on the fly, also would be a nice tool to add to Google and allow collaboration through Google Talk to have easy web conferences. Although I haven’t tried the sharing action in Bubbl.us I’m not sure it has real-time sharing like Google Documents does.

Either of these applications can be a big help to those of you who are visual planners and need to see the way things connect together to get a real sense for how they work. These two web applications should be in your toolbox if you’re making the switch to all online medium of communication.

I was tipped off to an interesting article over at Forbes about the concept of Google and Apple joining forces to form a super power of tech goodness. Talk about monopoly!
It seemed cracked out at first, would the world let this happen? Would Microsoft let this happen? If everyone under the sun has been suing Microsoft due to bad business practices which include bundling software wouldn’t they naturally do the same with Google and Apple?

But then I got to thinking, the nice thing about Google is that most of it’s services are given away for free and are open source or semi-open source. Who the heck would anyone sue?

What if Google actually did team up with Apple? Could they then give away the iPhone infinity, a super powered iPod, iTV, Browser, life organizer phone. It would be in the spirit of Google and with the tech sexiness of Apple, all funded by you and I buying music from GooTunes and spreading the advertising love around the world.

What a utopia!

If the iPhone Infinity were to actually exist I would like to be a bunch of things.

Be Apple Sexy
Have a regular sweet scratch resistant screen
Paper thin fold out screen
Option bluetooth wireless mouse
Solar and Motion rechargeable (Think of those watches)
Phone
iPod
Projector
Browser Based Desktop with all the “office like” capabilities
Automatic 411 with GPS
And just be sexy!

Please?

Picture came from Forbes and a dude named Dave Klug who I think is this guy.

Ok, being a shareholder of Microsoft Stock (MSFT), and generally a fan of their company (I know how can I like the “evil empire,” I am really dissapointed with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). I recently ranted about it over at my SprintRants Forum Rant about anything Sub-Forum and there’s a reason it was a rant and not a review.

Let me start out by saying that I use flock and you can find out why at my flock browser review post.

It’s a great expansion on the open source mozilla browser. It allows you to have speedy tabbed browsing, faster browsing than IE, it easily organizes and displays (more on this later) rss feeds and also lets you blog to a number of different blog softwares right from the browser (just like I’m doing right now.)

Ok, onto IE7. It sucks. For one thing it’s big and clunky. It was a huge download and seemed like it took 30 minutes to install. It’s slow to start and the biggest pain in the but is the tabbed browsing. For IE 6 you could download the msn toolbar and get tabbed browsing that, from my recolection was fast at loading tabs. Now the tabs take literally 3-5 seconds to load. I know that’s not a lot of time but it’s a pain in the butt. Both flock and firefox load new tabs in less than a second, instantaneously.

Next up on my list of why IE7 is bad is the dang navigation bar that’s frozen to the top and the refresh and stop buttons that are completely different from all other browsers, they’re left of the nav bar and from my best efforts to change them seem to be imovable. The only reason I can think of why this is, is because MSFT decided to make it different and unchangeable to piss you off if you were trying to switch between browsers, eventually you’d just stick with IE because you’re sick of always going to the left of the screen when the refresh button is now right of the nav bar.In addtion to not being able to move the forward, back, refresh and stop buttons around, the nav bar is stuck to the top of the browser. You can’t unlock it and move it to the bottom where it’s been on every othe browser ever created, or at least below the dang file/edit/view/favorites/tools/help selections. Why the hell are those now stuck to forever existing below my navigation bar.

If someone determines how to unlock the navigation bar let me know, for now I’m just pissed off that Microsoft thinks they know more than I do about where I want that bar.

As for the wonderful integration of an RSS reader. IT SUCKS, plane and simple. Maybe I wouldn’t have said that about it had I not used flocks rss reader but it’s true. When you click on your feeds button in flock a sidebar opens to the left, like that in IE, but then Flock allows you to have a front page, then organize in sub categories (folders) all your feeds for each category. When you first view your front page it shows you the most recent feeds in the browser (to the right) from all your categories. A quick snapshot of your feeds. How novel? Then if you click on a category it shows you the 10, 50, or 100 most recent feeds in the browser window. Then if you click on an individual feed it will show you the 10-50 most recent posts for that feed.IE7 does no of that, sure it organizes it in folders, but you don’t have anyway of seeing a quick snapshot of all your feeds, or for that matter a quick snapshot of your categories or folders. You have to click on each individual feed to see it and then it shows you the 10 most recent posts. Of course you can change how many posts you see but you have to view each feed separately.

Of course you may be able to change this but from my googling of the topic and from my extensive digging on IE7, I can’t figure out how.

Next up is the fact that maybe Microsoft missed the fact that blogging is pretty big right now. Maybe they want to stick with ruling the corporate and little old lady world. But wouldn’t they have won over a lot of techies if they would have integrated a way to blog easily into their IE7. Even if it was just blogging to Microsoft Spaces, but they have nothing. Flock lets you blog to blogger, wordpress, typepad, and I think a few others. IE, nothing, unless you count the fact that you can download a google toolbar and blog to blogger. Maybe the MSN toolbar allows you to blog to Spaces, but does anyone use Spaces?

Bottom line is use Flock, or at least don’t upgrade from IE6, 7 is bad enough said.

PS sorry if I ranted a little too much.

technorati tags:IE7, Microsoft, Flock, Firefox

The promise of a better life for some, and the promise of super human abilities for others has scientists and researchers always trying to improve on and mimic the functionality of the Human Body.

In a recent article from Wired titled What if Bionics Were Better, they bring to readers attention a growing group of people eager to try any new technology that improves on current human performance. Performance such as the human hand, feet, interaction with WiFi, etc etc. Whatever you have control of oustide the body people are probably thinking of ways to integrate it with your everyday human features. Those bland things like, your eyesite, why not imbed a chip that allows you to watch TV in one eye while you walk down the street and look for obstacles with the other.

Or how about the whacked out idea of feet that integrate into a car and allow your nervous system and muscle movement to control the machine. Does it sound like something straight out of the Terminator? Well if people are willing to try this stuff out, these technologies could begin to enter the testing phase sooner than we think. Look at the last 15 years and just try and imagine what the next 15 years will bring.

Will you be able to listen to millions of different songs without even carrying an iPod? How about an embedded chip in your brain that sends signals to the same nerves that control sound recongintion and gets it’s song signals via Wi Fi. Turn it off and on with a thought.

When can I get one of those? How about we call it the iPod Cloud?

technorati tags:Technology, Bionics, Wired

I had to read about it in Time Magazine this week. A service that lets you text one main site your wearabouts and inform your friends, friend of friends, and your crushes where you are.

The site: Dodgeball.com. The parent company: Google. Tha’ts right maybe I missed the boat but Google has added yet another company to it’s arsenal of internet empire.

Dodgeball.com is a social information network. If you’re in one of their 22 cities across the United States you’re in luck. You can signup, choose your friends, choose some crushes, and begin to text your Happy Hour location. Within minutes you’ll get notified if any of your friends or friends of friends or crushes are in the area.

Then those friends will get notified of where you are, with address and be invited to join you. One text message to get all your friends in the same place.

You can also text the bar name to get detailed address data sent back to you.

The crush thing seems interesting. You have to choose a crush and then they will be notified if they are within ten blocks of you. I guess that’s a good way to stay away from your stalkers. Pretty soon GPS will just let you know where these wierdos are.

An interesting idea. Although they don’t have it here in Hawaii I’m not sure if I would use it but let me know if any of you are part of the new text messaging craze!

technorati tags:Dodgeball.com, Social, Networking, Google, Text, Messaging

I recently wrote a great article about the Best Blogging tool ever over at Blogging On Empty, my blog all about blogging efficiently for those of us who don’t blog full-time.

The article is titled Best Blogging Tool Ever - Flock You and truly is the best blogging tool ever. In fact I am blogging from the browser right now on this post as I read in the background my post about how great Flock is.

Having 11 blogs I am always looking for more efficient ways to get my news and blog and I just happened to find both of those tools in one great web browser.

Head over to my article and see the great review I wrote about why you need to start using Flock as your browser of choice. Just try it out and I’m sure you’ll be hooked. And for those of you who are anti Microsoft, don’t worry, it’s based on Mozilla.

technorati tags:Flock, Blog, Tips, Time, managment, efficiency, browser

Google announced early today that Google Checkout is live.

With the announcement of yet another service for Google to add to their empire, as well as the the Fed Raising Interest Rates Again made Google stock (GOOG) jump 11 points today. Man, if Google even makes a peep it seems like the whole world stops to listen.

What does this mean for you and I without Google Stock (GOOG). Well from what I can tell of the service it means we can spend money a lot easier on the web, without inputting anything into forms. Although Internet Explorer, IE, comes with a form filler, as does the Google and MSN toolbars, they don’t make managing your impulse buys quite as easy as Google Checkout.

For those of you in love with Paypal, don’t worry Google Checkout isn’t taking them over quite yet. The service is more for existing stores and to keep your orders tracked from one main site. Creating a bank, like Paypal, is going to take a little more time than what was spent on Google Checkout. But Google Checkout does offer a really nice one click easy way to shop at a lot of your favorite online stores; “Jockey, Starbucks Store, Levi’s, Dockers, Buy.com, Timberland, Zales.”

And for those of you who use AdWords to advertise you can use it there, although once you set up an account it’s pretty easy to have them automatically take the funds out of your account. But it’s there.

Just to check it out I decided to head over to Timberland and see what was new. I searched through some men’s goodies and found a nice pair of timbo boots, added them to the cart, and checked out my shopping bag. There it was, proceed with checkout or…. checkout with Google. Clicked on the icon, and it directed me to the wonderful white space filled touched up with blues, reds, greens, and yellows, that is Google. Simple checkout, sign-in, I’m done.

I’m not so sure this is a good thing though. Whenever I went to an online store, filled my cart with goodies, and proceeded to the checkout, the time I spent finding my credit card, typing in all the numbers, looking for the CVC code, was my time to decide.

“Do I really want this purchase?”

Now without that time, I fear I may purchase a few too many goodies from online stores. All I have to do is enter my numbers. Hmm. Maybe I should start a Betty Ford Clinic’esque, Over Buyers Anonymous Clinic.

Back to the bit about taking over Paypal and ruling payments on eBay. Could it happen? Yes. However, to do that you’d need to give every seller their own store like account to manage everyones purchases, allow real cash, rather than just credit card payments to exchange hands, and need we not forget… Take over Paypal.

Until then Google Checkout is what it is. An even faster way to auto fill your credit card info online. There’s no “money” exchanging hands, and you can’t fund your account through a bank account. It’s just an easy way for resellers to get you to use a credit card.

But we’ll all be waiting for the next version of Google Checkout.

Windows recently starting introducing it’s Live brand of software which is run through your web browser and can be accessed from any computer anywhere in the world. The Live products are no doubt in response to Google beginning to make a play into the software market by offering such things as photo software, site statistic software, desktop search, as well as numerous other products which you can find available in the Google Pack.

The newest release in the Windows Live Free Software is it’s Windows Live Beta. You can sign up to get an invitation at mail.live.com, or if you have a hotmail account an invitation may be sitting in your inbox.

The overall look and feel of Windows Live Mail is almost identical to the Microsoft Outlook Mail service, except for the ads at the top and right of the screen which at first glance are quite annoying. I am sure they will get less noticeable but they flash and blink and scroll unlike Gmail where the ads are a bit more subdued. Mail Live, unlike hotmail, offers 2 GB of storage right off the bat which is a serious upgrade, although all the major services are realizing that this is becoming the norm.

The biggest difference Windows Live Mail has over Gmail is it’s folders feature with drag and drop capability. This can save major time when trying to locate a group of emails. That is just too easy and I still can’t figure our why Gmail doesn’t offer it. I know that Gmail offers a label service that allows the user to label emails, but that method is quite cumbersome and annoying. I prefer the drag and drop and my assumption is that most of you do as well. Correct me if I am wrong.

Microsoft also has search capabilities integrated right into the Live mail, just like Gmail but trying to remember what was specifically said in an email is a lot more difficult than remembering the subject. Another reason the drag and drop wins out. Maybe if I could drag and label I would be happier with Gmail’s method???

Overall I still like Gmail, the font is easier to read, there is less clutter on the screen and the colors are softer. If Gmail adds a folders option I may never sign into my Live account again, but until that happens I’ll see what both have to offer and what improvements are made. Plus it’s always good to have an extra email account for those spammy forms you have to fill out.