But I’ve started seeing several of my contributions in the app for different local cities, like these:

I still use the Weather Channel app as my main source of info because it can be awfully windy where we live, and that app has hour-by-hour wind speeds … and Yahoo doesn’t. But I do enjoy firing up the Yahoo app every day or two to see what photos are showing, both locally and in bigger cities like San Francisco, New York, etc.

Cool idea for Yahoo to crowdsource these photos.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

Fun = Seeing my Photos in Yahoo’s Weather App

That almost seems like it has to be an easter egg, doesn’t it? Too funny. Google thinks Facebook is the next MySpace.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

Is Google Trashing Facebook’s Future?

One of the big discussions about Glass is privacy, and for some reason that discussion has often focused on Glass and public restrooms.

Even though I have no desire to take photos in a bathroom, I’ve decided on this policy for when I’m wearing Glass at public events:

Glass stays on, but I raise it off my face so it sits on top of my head.

That’s what I did all last week at Google I/O, what I’ve done at various airports and what I’ve done in other public bathroom settings.

Welcome to 2013 … where technology has advanced to the point that the phrase “Google Glass bathroom policy” needs to be a thing. (Maybe I’ll add this policy to my disclosures page.)

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

My Google Glass Bathroom Policy

Saturday night, April 27th at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cleveland, Ohio.

The U2 Conference had finished earlier in the day, and this was the scene of our post-conference party — a concert put on by Unforgettable Fire, a tribute band based in NYC and Connecticut.

I’m not generally a big fan of tribute bands. In fact, on this night, it seemed the whole crowd was a bit apprehensive for the first 3-4 songs. Not sure what to expect. And then Unforgettable Fire won us all over. They were fantastic — far and away the best tribute band I’d ever heard. I let myself get lost in what sounded amazingly like U2 itself. And I’m now a fan of Unforgettable Fire — they’ve spoiled me for every other U2 tribute band out there. They’re now the official “house band” of the U2 Conference.

During “Bullet The Blue Sky,” guitarist Mick came out into the crowd and made a beeline for me. He did the entire guitar solo, which runs a good two minutes if not more, right next to me. I grabbed Lori-Jo, better known in online fandom as EdgeFest for her love and devotion to all-things-Edge, because she had to be right there with me during the guitar solo. Cameras were flashing, video was being shot (which I haven’t seen yet), and we were having our own little party — me, Mick/Edge and Lori-Jo.

As the guitar solo started to wind down, something inside me said “go for it!” and so I decided to fill the guitar solo the way Bono sometimes does: by kissing The Edge! I leaned over, grabbed Mick by the neck and planted one right on his cheek. The crowd yelled. I started laughing my ass off. Behind me, Marylinn and Tassoula were in shock.

The photo above was taken about five seconds after all this went down. It’s what pure joy looks like. Damn, were we having a great time.

It wasn’t just the moment or the concert being celebrated in that photo; it was one of the most fantastic experiences I’ve ever had. As I wrote on @U2, something special happened that weekend at the U2 Conference. I don’t know how to describe it. No words.

What a night. What a conference. What a weekend. Pure joy.

(Special thanks to my friend and fellow U2 fan, Stacey Jaros, for letting me use her photo in this post. In fact, it was in the Facebook comments of this photo where she first mentioned the look of joy she captured. And she’s absolutely right.)

Postscript: My friend and photographer extraordinaire managed to catch the kiss on camera. Here it is! Too funny!!!

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

This is What Pure Joy Looks Like

The university website is pure genius, for starters … and happens to be done by a college friend of mine! (Super smart guy. Super creative.) The Twitter account is also very well done (and also done by my friend’s company, I think), especially with funny tweets like this one:

Selection Sunday approaches and Monsters U fans everywhere pace… Keep those tentacles crossed!

— Monsters University (@MonstersU) March 17, 2013

They also have some pretty nifty offline marketing in place. Cari and I went to see 42 last weekend (really good) and came upon this big Monsters U cardboard display in the lobby. It’s about the student ID cards and there’s an opening where you can stick your own face in and get a photo. So we did!

I haven’t seen something like that in the theater lobby before — pretty clever if you ask me. And yes, I’m really looking forward to June 21st. The first one, Monsters Inc. was my all-time favorite movie for several years. So I have high expectations for this one….

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

Monsters U ID Cards

I just now finished Moneyball — the Michael Lewis book about baseball and the Oakland A’s. It was published in 2003 and I’d always wanted to read it. But just never got around to it.

I think my son bought it a year or two ago at a school book sale, or something like that (Sean?), and he read it first. He said it was really good — and he was right! We saw the movie last year, and it was pretty true to the book, but (as is always the case), the book is better than the movie. Super glad I finally read Moneyball.

I also recently finished watching something even older: Band Of Brothers. Holy crap, how great is that miniseries??!!??

That came out in 2001 and I’d heard a zillion people over the years saying it was great, but never watched it until now. For about two months, it was my treadmill entertainment at the gym, so I basically watched it 40 minutes at a time — although there were a couple nights that I had to keep watching, so ended up on the treadmill for an hour or more.

I’ve just started watching The Pacific, which is like the sister series as I understand it, but it’s not quite as good as Band Of Brothers so far. I’ll keep watching.

But now I’m wondering what else I missed 10 years ago that I need to watch or read….

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

10 Years Late & Well Worth the Wait

A little after 6:00 pm tonight, I got Flickrmail from Yahoo letting me know that one image I submitted didn’t meet the size requirements — and the fact that they’d already started reviewing my images made me wonder if any were approved.

Sure enough, in the list of “Top Contributors” to the Project Weather group, it says that I have one photo in the group:

And when I clicked that “YOU” link, it shows just my image(s) that are in the group:

That’s a sunset photo from 2008 taken right here in West Richland. Cool! So hopefully someday (soon) I’ll see my own image in the Yahoo Weather app. And hopefully some of the others that I submitted will get picked, too.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

BAM! Already Got One Photo Approved for Yahoo’s Weather App

What Yahoo’s doing differently is crowdsourcing stunning photos from Flickr users. Here are a couple screenshots I took last night:

Every image is credited to the photographer in the lower right, and that credit links to the photo page. (The credit is easier to see in the app than in my screenshots.) So, while Yahoo isn’t paying photographers for these images, they could be sending some nice traffic and exposure. And that leads to the obvious question:

How Do I Get My Photos in Yahoo’s Weather App?

1. Sign up for a Flickr account, or sign-in if you already have one.

2. To have your photos considered, you have to be a member of the Project Weather group on Flickr. Join that group.

3. Submit your best weather-related photos to the group. Your photos won’t automatically show up in the group. Yahoo has a team of moderators that reviews images for possible inclusion in the Yahoo Weather app.

In addition, there are some photo-related guidelines you need to know about. These are detailed in a Welcome/Help message that’s posted in the group. The guidelines include:

a) The photo should depict one of these weather conditions: Clear, Cloudy, Rain, Storm, Fog, Snow

b) People shouldn’t be the focal point of the photo. If it has people, they shouldn’t be identifiable.

c) Horizontal-shaped photos should be at least 1024px wide by 554 px high

d) Vertical-shaped photos should be at least 680px wide by 1024px high

e) Square photos should be at least 1024px by 1024px

f) No borders, frames, timestamps, etc. Just clear, unadorned images.

g) THIS IS IMPORTANT: Your photo has to be geotagged using Flickr’s map-tagging tool. That’s how they know the photo’s location.

If you don’t geotag your images, you’ll get an error message like this when you try to submit it to the Project Weather group:

As best I can tell, the title and description of your photo don’t matter. That amazing New York photo above, for example, is titled “Civilizzazione / Civilization” and, even though it mentions New York in the description, Yahoo gets the location from the geotagging, not the description.

4. You’re done! Sit back and wait.

Yahoo says you won’t be notified if they choose your photo. It’ll just show up in the Project Weather group someday (Yahoo says it should be reviewed within 30 days, but that group is getting popular so I think it’s going to be longer than that.) and you’ll see “Project Weather” listed on your photo page under the Groups section.

More Tips for Yahoo Weather Photos

As I said above, Yahoo is looking for photos of these six specific weather conditions:

Clear, Cloudy, Rain, Storm, Fog, Snow

Photos are also being assigned based on time of day. The Help page says

The frequency at which your photo displays in the app depends on the number of photos in the group that reflect the same weather condition, location, and time of day as your photo.

So if you geotag your photos, that takes care of the location. If you shoot photos of those six weather conditions, that helps your chances of getting your photos included. And then there’s the “time of day.” My guess is that Yahoo will be looking for photos that match these times of day:

Sunrise, Morning/Daytime/Afternoon, Dusk/Sunset, Night

But that’s a guess on my part; Yahoo doesn’t specifically call out how many times of day it uses. But the team is obviously reviewing each image and assigning it to show in the app at certain times of day.

So that’s it. Pretty simple to submit. But maybe not easy to get your photos in the Yahoo Weather App. I’m not even going to bother submitting any Hawaii photos — I’m sure Yahoo will have a zillion to choose from. So I’ve mostly submitted photos from my hometown area, where there are likely less pics to choose from.

Hopefully in a month or so, I’ll spot my photo(s) in the app and do another post about that!

UPDATE: It didn’t take a month. It took less than 24 hours, as I wrote about here: BAM! Already Got One Photo Approved for Yahoo’s Weather App.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

How to Add Your Photos to Yahoo’s Weather App

It had been about five years since we tithed regularly. We reluctantly stopped because we had attended Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University — a class aimed at teaching better money management skills and eliminating family debt. And during that class, Dave encouraged everyone to continue tithing while reducing debt, but also said that in cases of extreme debt, it might make more sense to stop tithing and dig out first.

Extreme debt? How about $82,000 of debt? That was us. And it sucked.

We’d been irresponsible with credit cards going back to the 1990s. We were living well above our modest means. I used credit cards to fund my attendance at eight shows on U2′s PopMart tour, and eight more on the Elevation tour. When Cari got out of retail and started her real estate career in 2004, things got even worse. She wasn’t making any money (almost no one does when they first start out in real estate). We were taking cash advances on Card A to make the minimum payment on Cards B, C and D. Our debt grew each year and reached a high of $82,000 in 2006.

It was ugly.

We managed to get rid of a little debt over the next year or two. And then, in early 2008 (as I recall), we attended Financial Peace University and it literally changed our life. That was the inspiration and education that got us on the road to ending the slavery of debt.

We didn’t follow the program by the book. We should’ve devoted every extra dollar we had to paying off debt — no vacations, no eating out, no unnecessary expenses, etc. But I wasn’t willing to go several years without, for example, getting my kids back east to see and spend time with my parents. So we took a little longer to eliminate our debt than we could’ve.

But we paid off all our credit cards, one at a time. Each one was closed as soon as the last dollar was paid, and then we got to enjoy the cutting up of the credit card.

In early December 2012, the last credit card was paid off. Wow, did that feel great! That was the end of a five-year battle to get rid of $82,000 in debt. Today, the only debt we have is our house payment. That’s how it’s supposed to be when you follow the Financial Peace plan — no debt except your house. And that you try to pay off as quickly as possible.*

We pay for just about everything with cash or our debit card. We do have a credit card, but that’s only used when it doesn’t make sense to use a debit card and we pay off any balances on it right away.

And we couldn’t have done it without Financial Peace University. Can’t recommend it enough. You can visit the FPU website to find upcoming courses in your area. Want to get out of debt and be the master of your own finances again? Give it a shot.

*There are a lot of details about the FPU plan that I’m skipping. It’s basically a 7-point plan, as mentioned below in this FPU video.

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

$82,000 Later, Financial Peace & Freedom

But now that I’m comfortably in my mid-40s, I find myself having this experience on a daily basis: I’ll hear a song that I used to love with lyrics that I thought were so profound and I’ll just laugh at how unbelievably bad the lyrics sound now and how silly I was for thinking otherwise.

Like just yesterday, I heard a song by The Fixx called “I Will.” Not one of their hits, but I remember playing it over and over for a time back in the ’80s. And I just thought these lyrics were amazing:

The pleasure of life is the pain of living
What we take out is replaced by giving
If you can contain your own emptiness
Then life is forward, no idle regrets

If the love doesn’t set you free
Then I will

Dude… the pleasure of life is the pain of living!

The teenaged Matt McGee was blown away by the depth in those words. The mid-40s Matt McGee chuckles every time he hears that line … and hundreds of other 80s songs with lyrics that don’t seem nearly as deep now as they did then.

#GETTINGOLD

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog.

Rethinking ’80s Song Lyrics