Digital Nomad Rhyker of Tell-a-few.com is sharing

'Digital Diet' May 2012

2012-05-14T17:37:00.000+02:00

This seems to be a returning topic every month. For example checkout the previous posts:

I've been looking how much time and peace of mind I've gained over the past few weeks, and it's nothing short but amazing. Very liberating I've got to say! And nope it's not the first time I'm doing such a thing. Did it all before at the end of 2008, but wasn't quite ready mentally and financially. It's nice to have a backup plan in place; a residual income stream.

Anyway let's get back at what I did this month to further 'slim down' my nerdy lifestyle, to replace it by more freedom:

Update 5th of May 2012: decided to no longer spend time at developing sites; not for external parties, neither for myself.

Update 12th of May 2012: made a list of all the domains I'll be selling. Basically everything but tell-a-few.com and 2-4 others.

Update 13th of May 2012: received no e-mail. I really mean none. The entire day! That's a first timer in the past 7 years that I've got my gmail account, and a fantastic feeling :-)

Update 14th of May 2012:

after several discussions with my clients, decided to sell my teamviewer remote service, domains and license to the highest bidder
after having launched the new osxlatitude.com last week, I've also decided to no longer be involved with OSXlatitude.com and lay down my function as core member. Maybe I'll be back in the future.

Update 15th of May 2012: above 2 points, really defy the reasons for having a computer. So really selling everything I have in this area, and ordered my iPad 3 16GB Wifi + 3G (7GB a month).

Mission Impossible - Theme Song

2012-05-13T12:25:00.003+02:00

Q&A with Gary Vaynerchuk - Nordic eCommerce Summit 2012

2012-05-12T17:19:00.000+02:00

awesome interview with living marketing & branding legend Gary VaynerChuck

A lot of good stuff chunked in this interview for every IM, MLM, PD, marketing, branding expert or wannabe.
Some amazing quotes or episodes from the interview you gotta checkout are:

[33m06] "Globalization is here, there's huge opportunity. But I don't want people get crippled by it. You don't need to go global. Why don't you figure out local first? I think people are trying to run, before they have anything. I'm looking at so many startups doing well. And then saying: we're going to China! And I'm like: asshole you still suck in America. So you know ... you gotta execute first". :-)))

And absolutely check out what Gary shares about gratitude around 37-40 minutes.

Does the Talk Fusion service sucks?

2012-05-06T22:23:00.001+02:00

While googling for Talk Fusion news and ideas, I found an article at CNET's forum, where it's been said that Talk Fusion sucks. Does it really? Well there's no reason to attack the author his opinions, nor defend Talk Fusion. Aweber, mailchimp, getresponse might have some pretty interesting features when it comes to tracking the whereabouts of your readers, but a functionality level they are like 2-3 years behind, compared to Talk Fusion. Rome wasn't built in one day, neither was FaceBook, nor Talk Fusion. Things improve over time. The cnet's article was written in 2008 btw. It's 2012:

Need a demo account, to test drive some features before buying into Talk Fusion? Pass me an email to rhyker@gmail.com and I'll be happy to answers your questions and after you attended a live 1hour2retire.com webinar, I might even set up a 24hour demo account. Although I'm pretty sure you don't need it, cause you'll be sold after seeing a presentation what it can do. It has this huge "I NEED IT NOW & FOREVER"-factor. ;-)

And Talk Fusion support, simply has the best support I've EVER encountered at any organisation. And I've worked for quite a few myself (including ASUS notebook, Belkin, Philips, and several ISPs). I'm known and feared for my techy questions and critical claims, but Talk Fusion is able to answer all my concerns with accuracy and within a few hours, no matter what part of the day I e-mail them. Simply fantastic and setting the example how all companies should run their support.

2GB USB Linux persistent Part 2

2012-05-05T13:24:00.003+02:00

I've already updated the original post multiple times, and the list of changes and tweaks is growing and growing. So ... to make the editting journey easier to understand, I'm creating this part 2 :)

I usually work till deep in the night, without the family (or the people I'm staying with at that particular time) noticing. Howeverrr ... when I shutdown the computer, or get an error I get a loud *beep* ... that has to go. I did find /etc/inputrc and set the bell-tone to none, however still getting sounds. So I liked this solution by remove the pcspkr module all together by editing /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and adding

#cu silly pc speaker

blacklist pcspkr

Save your file and the speaker beep will be gone when you reboot. However don't want to wait, then simply type: sudo rmmod pcspkr

Been experimenting with a lot of browsers of the past few weeks. While it looked like Midori was going to be my new browser king, I had to chose IceWeasel for support of latest and greatest HTML solutions, but is pretty iceweasel crashes often, and I am with Chromium now. An interesting thing of Chromium that you want to disable disk caching as fast as possible. It's not an option in any menu. It has to be done through commandline. You can either edit it in the menu, but more beautiful is this solution:

--disk-cache-dir=/dev/null --disk-cache-size=1

On Ubuntu/Debian, you can just add these flags to the CHROMIUM_FLAGS variable in /etc/chromium-browser/default and it will be used every time when starting Chromium.

Also been switching between adobe flash and the distribution's version of flash many times now, and currently loving the distribution's version the most. Adobe Flash isn't updated as much as the Windows equivalent, and for some reason stalls videos after 1 second pretty often. So that's 'fixed' sorta. What isn't fixed yet, is my unability to access my facebook.com page ... right now I'm doing it through m.facebook.com (smartphone version of the site).

Next stop ... to be able to download YouTube videos to be used at my own YouTube account (creating playlists without annotation crap from other people), either to be send out in video e-mails. While there is a commandline solution with wget which involves about 3 lines of typing, I prefer a graphical solution. But solutions like Clive, YouTube-dl and uTube Ripper take up a lot of diskspace due to conversion filters.

Contrary to my popular believe, Chromium CAN be extended or not? Cause for some reason: YouTube VideoGrab 2.4.4 / Chrome YouTube Downloader / Easy YouTube Video Downloader are not showing up. :-/

So although I like conversing diskspace (and need a solution for the FaceBook issues). I'm installing iceweasel again as a secondary browser with the excellent Video Download Helper solution. Oh BTW ... whenever you run out of diskspace, and wondering where it all went? Don't forget to clear out your trashbin.

to be continued ...

My Google Account Activity Report April 2012

2012-05-05T01:29:00.003+02:00

Follow up post to last month's results. Instead of bunch of text just a screencapture:

Quite an increase, however I've spend less time at the PC, and yet increased productivity thanks to my digital diet of March 2012.

My Office Space May 2012

2012-05-01T15:10:00.000+02:00

To force myself into a Digital Nomad Lifestyle, I need to adapt to a more communicative and mobile lifestyle instead of 'techy procrastination'. Therefore a lot of changes to last month's setup, and a different label for things ...

Virtual Office Gear:

1GB Pendrive with F4UBCD + PortapleApps
2GB Pendrive with persistent Linux Crunchbang
Nokia 6710 Navigator (phone with A-GPS)
Apple iPad 3rd Gen 16GB WiFi + LTE

Coming soon:

A-Solar Nova BackPack AB308P

Setup at my current physical office in Holland:

0nd floor (kidding) ... downgraded my uplink to my ISP with 10Mbit down / 1Mbit up
1st floor (300Mbit WiFi): TP-Link Ultimate Wireless N :: SSID "HoortZegtHetVoort.NL"

Dell Latitude D430n (12" 1280x800, U7700 C2D 1.33GHZ CPU, 2GB RAM)
PCMCIA Cardbus 4 port USB-hub

Logitech C210 budget webcam
Microsoft USB Laser Mouse 6000
Samsung DVD+/-RW USB-powered burner

Online Services & Cloudbased Apps 'Rolodex' - May 2012

2012-05-01T01:00:00.000+02:00

Opposed to March 2012 version of this blogpost, there quite a few changes going on. First of all I've phased out Google Chrome as my primary Internet browser, and totally hooked on lightweight Internet browsers (like K-meleon and Midori).

Plus I've found an online equivalent of the OSX Widgets Dashboard: iGoogle. I knew about it, but didn't know how it has matured! So instead of using google.com as my start page I now use iGoogle with the following 'widgets':

3x Dutch RSS feeds: Hardware.info, iPadClub.nl and jouwaanbieding.nl
Sticky note
Google translate
Google tasks
Google time & date
Google calendar
Google gmail
Google dual-mode calculator
Inspirations Quotes & pictures
Currency converter
Buienradar (Dutch weather channel)
Directions by Google Maps

So this also defies the purpose of having Google Chrome, making me more software independable, and more 'cloud-pendable'. Actually ... in a way it also makes me OS independable. As I'm not running OSX at all at the moment, but a Linux Debian distro.

Other Online Google Apps that I use in conjunction with the ones mentioned in the iGoogle list and are worth mentioning are:

Calendar | making life more managable
Docs (soon to be merged into Google Drive)| 5GB free storage space for documents, presentations, etc.
Gmail + Contacts + Labs | not just my mail client, also my dialy todo lists & CRM
Profile | to keep track of all the communities I'm involved in

Payment gateways:

Mollie (NL) | International payment gateway for accepting iDeal payments, etc. Blends in great with MoneyBird book-keeping.
MoneyBird | Bookkeeping program for all my entrepreneurial undertakings | €11.90mo
PayPal | business account, so I'm able to receive creditcard payments as well (from remote IT clients)

Online Communication:

IMO | webbased Instant Messenger client with Skype protocol support (including voice)
Talk Fusion | Video email

Financial vehicles to earn money online:

Talk Fusion | the best 2012 opportunity to make money online; learn to earn!
WorldVentures | online travelclub | $50 ... learn why it's worth it here.

Create your own website

blogging: WordPress + Google Blogger
blog template sites: BestTheme.net
domainnames: TransIP.NL + HostNet.NL + GoDaddy
hosting: SolidHosting.NL + Google Blogspot
opt-in regular & video email: TalkFusion
webinar software: TalkFusion

Is World Ventures Millionaire BootCamp Cyprus Real or a Fraudulent Scam?

2012-04-29T00:32:00.000+02:00

Every once in a while you read a thing or two in the media about World Ventures being an illegal pyramid scheme, while there's a ton of actual proof at the actual worldventures.com corporate website that it isn't (like DSA Top100 company, Ernst & Young entrepreneurship of the year nominees, BBB ratings, etc.)

So whenever somebody tells me it's a scam I usually laugh in their face. C'mon! Do your Due diligence properly! But sure .. let's assume all networkmarketing companies are scams. Then please ... explain me this video:

"Okay ... so MLM / network marketing is legit, and Prof. Charles King is the authority, that doesn't say anything about World Ventures!" I'm so glad you brought that up! Check this out:

Whatever argument you have at the legal side? Just went out of the window. ;-) However ... it's still true most people fail at Network Marketing. That's because other companies do not have a millionaire bootcamp likes World Ventures has in Cyprus June 2012:

Do whatever it takes to be at that event ... cause 2 years ago in February 2010 we had the first one, and out of that just in Europe alone it has grown to 10,000 members. That means a few things. First of ... a lot of people are travelling 5-star for 2-star prices. And those members didn't fall out of the sky, they were introduced by somebody. Would you rather earn 1% of 100 memberships, while travelling the beaches of the world? Or ... to keep on earning 100% of your effort in a job (you actually hate)? Get more information (and WIN a FREE Dreamtrip) by opting in at http://travel.windreamtrips.com

2GB Linux Crunchbang Persistent USB-OS

2012-04-28T23:49:00.003+02:00

This article is going to be the follow up how to create an awesome space saving virtual office on the road, that can be used in every computer and/or Internet cafe.

Before we continue, you need to know a few things. I'm assuming that you can know what 'persistent Linux' means. However, there are 2 ways to create a persistent USB installation. The most common method is by using unetbootin, liliboot and similar tools; it basically creates 2 partitions. 1 partition for the 'live cd' and 1 partition for saving some data. The problem with this approach is you cannot modify any of the core files and/or add apps. Which makes it -- in my opinion at least -- pretty useless. You don't want a toy, you want something you can use while travelling!

Originally I was planning on using a 128MB pendrive. But couldn't get DSL, Slitaz, Puppy to boot the GUI at my 5-6 year old Dell Latitude D430. Read more about that 'adventure' at OSXlatitude.com ... so ... already familar with creating a CrunchBang Persistent USB stick I chose to pursue that option at a spare 2GB thumbdrive I still had laying around. Yes I know about Joli and other cloud-a-like or cloud based OSs, but I wanted something cleaner (interface wise), and OpenBox does that a whole lot better than flashy kiddo looking GUIs (like E17).

The installation itself is super easy with this excellent guide. Tip: even when you do not have a harddrive in your system? And your USB pendrive is showing up as the only harddisk (SDA), still make sure you install the GRUB bootmanager to /dev/sdb1, otherwise you won't be able to boot. I know ... sounds confusing, just do it ... saves you a bunch of reinstalls and booting errors.

A default Crunchbang install is about 2GB though. And I wanted to have a few things added on there (in no specific order):

~~Midori | Primary lightning fast browser~~
~~IceWeasel | secondary browser~~
Chromium Browser
TeamViewer 6 host (for servicing customers)
Skype
plenty of WiFi kernel firmwares
gUVCview (webcam recorder)
gFTPview | basic ftp client
VIm | best basic terminal editor
Geany | X text editor
Thunar file manager
Viewnoir | image viewer & screencapture software
~~Synaptic Package Manager~~

So to fit all that on there, a few things had to go:

Transmission | torrent client
VLC | media player ... all video content is going to be webbased anyway
xchat | irc client ... who needs IRC these days?
Aptitude | terminal based package manager ... useless when you learn to work with apt-get
Games | doh ...
Office | using Google Docs
Linux manpages | got the internet for that ... saves you about 160MB!

And a whole bunch of other big and small things with regards to themes, skins, etc. End result? Have everything running at lightspeed! It's faster than Win7 / OSX on a SSD! And who can say no to this "BrasilLinux-eye"-themed login screen?

Total time investment of installation, tweaking and fine tuning: approx. 6 hours. Free space left: 33MB.

Update: a few tips additional tips to save yourself a few headaches. The #! / debian based Flash package is out-of-date and gives a lot of flash / html5 playback problems. You're better of using the flash-nonfree package from Adobe. However makes sure you use the "use netscape plugins" option in Midori (Preferences -> behavior tab). Otherwise you won't be able to play Flash. Also ... Midori supports custom user agents. Getting tired of all kinds of errors in the Google Apps suite? Change the user agent into Chrome version 20.x ... Midori really is THE best Linux browser around. It's supersmall (5% the size of Chrome), lightning fast, small memory footprint, and yet supports plenty of basic extensions (embedded within) including ads blocking.

Update 2: just found out that to be able to use the folder upload feature of Google Drive I need to have Java installed (icedtea or sun jre). That's another 70MB I do not have at the moment. Hmz ... to be continued!

Update 2012-04-19: hmm this solution is of course also great to use with the Zotac Nano!

Update 2012-05-01: was having a number of stability issues with latest and greatest features of HTML5, and a nuisance with Midori of random crashes and not having support for justify alignment. Thus removed both IceWeasel (FireFox) and Midori (4MB), to replace it by Google Chromium browser (40MB). It's indeed a lot bigger, but there's no need to install Java now to be able to fully utilise Google Drive. However to free up some space to be able to install Chromium, I removed: Synaptic package manager, Intel WiFi support, Image Magick. Total free space now: 30MB.

Update 2012-05-05: continuing this post in part2 ...

Going iPad only & Digital Diet Part 3

2012-04-27T14:21:00.001+02:00

Last week I made a start with this article, and because I deemed it impossible after doing some due diligence, I didn't finish it ... and actually deleted it. But ... after meeting a few people over the weekend with 3rd generation iPads, the fire got relit within me. Yes the past 2 months I did have an iPod 4th generation, based on the road warrior blogpost.

A laptop gives me too much luxury (read: distraction) and the iPod is too much of a gadget. So the missing link would be an iPad. There are few things you cannot do / have to consider when buying an iPad when you've got a background similar to mine:

giving Remote desktop support through TeamViewer is possible, but not great
creating Adobe After Effects movies ain't possible
site development severely limited.

But how much revenue are these tools generating for me? Multiples of $100-250 a month, while it costs me 40 hours a week at minimum (not just labour, also creative thought processes). So I'm gonna sell all my computers ... again (had a similar episode at the end of 2010).

What isn't contributing to my vision of the 2012 digital nomad lifestyle ... has to go. Being smart is great, however whatever doesn't duplicate will not generate long term residual income. So starting May 1st 2012, I'm going full-time in being a network marketing professional. Instead of treating it like a part-time hobby (due to continuous excuses and/or ICT procrastination). For things to change, I have to change. How much residual do I need? Well let's put it this way $500-1000 residueal every single month, would be buy myself financial freedom to travel wherever I want!

ANYWAY! To get back at the iPad discussion. It needs to be an iPad 3. GPS is not necessary, can use the WiFi GPS-a-like location services. 3G? Waste of money. Every respective hotel, hostel, etc. has free WiFi. Storage space? Using the cloud, and because I'm not a gamer, neither a heavy apps user ( I focus on quality vs. quantity) a 16GB model should be enough for now. When I change my mind? I can gift it to a family member :-)

Update April 29th, 2012: I found a workaround for my TeamViewer remote support issue. Which is something that was bothering me, as it's an unique selling point to people in my team. Additional benefits of this solution is not having to have an iPad keyboard accessoiry which not only save me 100EUR, it's also more space in my suitcase!

Upgrading my D430 with SSD & accessories

2012-04-27T13:22:00.003+02:00

What started with the most horrible decision of 2011 (giving away my Dell Latitude D430 U7600 to my sister), has turned out to be a great hardware adventure, as I was able to buy a Dell D430 U7700 with a rare a 120GB 5400rpm ZIF harddisk (instead of the 60GB 4200rpm). But things are about to get a whole lot better and worse at the same time. Read on to read what happened the past 5 days.

You can a quick recap here why I considered selling my beloved D430 (to replace it with something else). Short answer: Solid State Drives are very expensive. Which is why we created this forumthread at OSXLatitude (with regards to PATA ZIF SSD). Let's see the IRL performance increase:

Yes ... I would loved to have a Runcore (as the reviewer has in the above video), but it's for sale for 'just' €200. A Tweaker buddy of mine is selling his 32GB MLC KingSpec. Yes I'm aware KingSpec ain't the best brand. However my current CrystalDiskMark scores aren't really great, and the KingSpec drive does offer a slight improvement ... and at €50 incl. shipping it's a bargain.

Yes, I thought about getting a different laptop for weeks to increase performance (Dell E6220 still high on the wishlist), however the D430 truly is something special. Sure I could also buy an UltraBook for €1000+. However the D430 does pretty mutch the same for €175.

What to do with the 120GB? Have a nice leather USB harddisk casing? Hmz another USB port, filling up and I only got 3 that are filled already. So also ordered a PCMCIA 4xUSB2.0 expansion card. Hmz the last time I actually used PCMCIA cardbus was back in 1998 at my Digital Compaq laptop. Good ol' times!

Anyway while scouring the Internet, I actually sold the 120GB to a customer of mine. But ... while changing drives I also made a critical mistake by severing the HDD ribbon cable. That's basically when I made the decision to switch to an iPad only configuration.

A Tweakers.net 'buddy' was able to refer me to this link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ribbon-Cable-Dell-Latitude-D420-D430-Laptop-Hard-Drive-/180860505693

So for the first time in 6 years, I've actually ordered something again through eBay!

Luckily I do have a ZIF to USB converter. However it's not able to boot Windows (get the 0x7B error). So to keep using my system while waiting for the cable I setup a 2GB Linux persistent drive. Read more ...

My New PortableApps USB stick

2012-04-27T12:52:00.001+02:00

4 years ago I mentioned the PortableApps suite. Not quite sure how long I've been using it. Anyway, I found a spare 2GB USB stick laying around, and decided to fill it up, so it services in purpose in times w/o my own PC with the latest and greatest PortableApps.com

I'm lazy today though. So instead of making a list of links? Here's the screenshot of the AppsMenu:

...screenshot is coming soon ...

Of course there are some other Apps and hidden features on to the thumbdrive. I'm afraid I cannot disclose those.

Custom User Agent Strings

2012-04-25T13:39:00.001+02:00

One of the great features of today's modern lightweight Internet browsers, is the ability to change the user agent, and such to bypass browser 'feature' detection. However ... what are the correct strings?

Checkout this website: http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/useragentstring.php

More specifically:

http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/Chrome/

Top 5 Lightweight Windows Browsers 2012

2012-04-25T10:33:00.001+02:00

6 months ago I wrote an article about Lightweight Windows Browsers. The clear winner was the Gecko based K-Meleon.

Due to some interesting circumstances, I'm currently working from a 256 RAM Windows XP configuration, which is why I was wondering if there are better Windows Browser Apps.

Resources used:

My favorites (in chronogical order):

K-Meleon | still reigning champion with easy interface, lowest memory profile, Flash support. However 1.60 beta has not full HTML5 support, but by faking a Firefox 12 useragent, that isn't a problem with Gmail (where I ran into the problem for example).
Midori | QtWeb / GTK2 based, second smallest memory profile, snappy, fast, full HTML5 support ... but no flash support. Perfect for testing Apple tablet compatible websites ;-) Seriously, it's a great browser, but lacking flash on a computer platform is rather silly.
"The World" | myeah mixed feelings about this one. It has low memory profile, but couldn't get used to the interface much. It's not longer on my harddrive, but definitely worth mentioning.
QTweb | nice!
QupZilla | nice GUI (chose the built-in Mac one), built-in AdBlock (with preconfigured filters), nice low memory profile sorta ... it does make very strange spikes. For example; right now I have 3 tabs: a blog, my own blogger backend (this site) and gMail, and memory usage is in between 58-150MB. Yeah that's odd, isn't it?

Other browsers I did try again (and didn't make it too the list): Arora, Avanti, Dragon Internet browser (from Comos), GreenBrowser, Slimbrowser, Commetbird,. "No links?" Nope use Google ;-)

Why WorldVentures by Peter Powderham (2012 edition)

2012-04-20T18:27:00.002+02:00

Veteran Network Marketing legend Peter Powderham came out of retirement in 2010 to join WorldVentures. Here he shares his story why he just could not miss out on what he believes will become the biggest dynasty in MLM. "Opportunities like this come round every 20 years and travel done correctly is the time in Direct Sales. WorldVentures has the juice."

Peter's Bio

Master distributor of 3 MLM companies
Served on the UK Direct Selling Association (DSA.org), UK DSA Legal Task Force and World Federation DSA
Served as the CEO, MD and GM of numerous companies worldwide
MLM Corporate Officer for 9 years
Consultant to companies wanting to launch into Europe & Worldwide
Has achieved complete financial freedom since his mid forties having made many millions from the network marketing industry

Learn how to pack a suitcase 2012 style

2012-04-20T04:26:00.001+02:00

Mike Putman (President of WorldVentures' Rovia; our travelclub) explains not just how to properly pack your suitcase, but also what kind of suitcase to look out for (really all the specifics) and what to pack it with. Enjoy!

World Ventures Dream Price Promise

2012-04-20T04:17:00.003+02:00

Travel Booking Engine Insights

2012-04-20T04:08:00.000+02:00

Mike Putman -- WorldVentures' Rovia President -- shares insights about travel booking engines, and how we get the best deals!

WorldVentures' Compliance Reminders

2012-04-20T03:50:00.003+02:00

Of course we all read the Terms & Agreements when joining WorldVentures. However Dan Stammen (Chief Marketing Director) is kind enough to go over them with us in these two videos. Kindly reminding us what we can and cannot do ..

That was pretty interesting actually! Are you ready for part 2?

So be a good boy or gal !

Talk Fusion International Convention 2012 Recap

2012-04-20T01:51:00.000+02:00

Get all the facts here! Are you Dutch? Visit this page for a Dutch presentation and ALL my due diligence:

WorldVentures UNITED! 2012 Highlights & Updates

2012-04-18T23:14:00.000+02:00

WorldVentures UNITED! 2012 was an absolutely incredible weekend. Founders Wayne Nugent & Mike Azcue both delivered powerful messages, independently, and together. There was training from some of our top leaders, we made several exciting announcements, and most of all... we had FUN!

If you weren't a part of the event, or if you just want to relive the memories, check out this highlight reel from WorldVentures UNITED! 2012 and see why roughly 4,000 representatives from 21 countries came to the Paris Las Vegas Hotel April 12-14 to start Living the Dream!

Bethanie Webster's speech at 3:28-3:48 REALLY got to me. I'm gonna be the next BMW driver!

NEWSFLASH: WorldVentures is Going Global:

At UNITED! 2012, WorldVentures Director of International Kyle Lowe shared an update on everything that's happening with WorldVentures worldwide. We've expanded into 21 countries and there are exciting things happening all over the globe. From Singapore to Zimbabwe, and from Cyprus to South Africa, there are incredible stories of success and changed lives unfolding.

To all of our WorldVentures family in Austria, Botswana, Canada, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Kenya, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe, thank you for all your love and support, and congratulations on all your success! WorldVentures Founders Wayne Nugent and Mike Azcue and the rest of the executive team are looking forward to amazing things happening in all your markets in the months and years ahead!

Free Screen Recording Softwares For Creating Attractive Screencasts

2012-04-17T16:38:00.002+02:00

Have a few projects coming up that require me to make some screencasts. In Mac OSX the default standard to do that is using TeleStream's Screenflow. However -- guilty as I am -- working a lot in Windows 7 again these days. I know of Camtasia, but it's not very userfriendly, so I was wondering if there are better solutions.

Resources used:

http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/10-free-screen-recording-softwares-for-creating-attractive-screencasts/

My short specific reviews:

Techsmith Jing | Solid screencapture software (both images and video). However you need to register for a free Jing account to instantly share video on the proparieraty screencast.com platform with 2GB of free space, and a recording limit of 5 minutes per video.
Wink | Freeware apps that sounds promising with .EXE / .SWF output format. It's not really capturing video. It's rather a image slideshow based approach with audio overlay. Great for future projects, but not what I seek at the moment.

Aham ... to save a time, I just bought Camtasia Studio.

My "Zotac Zbox Nano XS AD11 Plus" 2012 SFF MINI-PC!

2012-04-17T02:19:00.000+02:00

Hold your horses! Don't have it ... yet, but what I've been reading so far about this amazing peace of pico-ITX engineering makes my 'nerd heart' beat faster, as I'm a true sucker for systems like these. Quick recap: Micro ATX back in 2001, my involvement as Associate Editor at SFFtech.com in 2002-2004 working with ASUS, MSI, Shuttle barebones, Asus 1000H in 2005, the past few years basically had all kinds of netbooks, a few months ago a refurbished Shuttle X200, and currently an ultrabook predecessor the Dell Latitude D430. Anyway! Nuff about my background. I'll let Zotac present:

I've already did all my research so I'm jumping straight to the comparison of my current 'workstation'. The U7700 1.33GHz in my current D430 has a CPUbenchmark.net score of 749. The AMD E-450 APU a score of 774. So it seems just slightly faster, but there's a whole lot more going on. The APU holds an ATI HD6320, that's three times as fast as the GPU in my D430! And from there on things get really exciting with Kingston V100 series mSATA 64GB SSD, 2x USB3, 2x powered USB2, HDMI 1.4a, eSATA, IR receiver + remote, WiFi 802.11n, Gigabit LAN, mic input, VESA mountable, 6in1 memory card reader, incredible low dimensions (10.6 x 10.6 x 3.7CM), etc. etc. Are you drewling as much as I am already? DIY builds like these won't cost you ~ 325EUR. Cause that's how 'much' they are charging us!

NXS AD11 info by the manufacturer:

Official Press Release 11 April 2012
Zotac USA
Zotac Global
Specsheet Brochure (PDF)
Quick Install Guide (PDF)
User Manual (PDF)
Memory compatibility list | yes it comes with 2GB, but can be upgraded to 1x4GB DDR3 SODIMM

Article reviews I found so far:

Video reviews I found so far @ YouTube

Hardware.info TV (Dutch)

Interesting to note:

will it run OSX86 / Hackintosh? Nope, but who cares! Windows 7, XBMC or Linux all the way in this particular case! Well add more good info over time. Oh ... you do care about Hackintosh support? Then a Zotac Zbox Nano ID61 might be a better fit for you (but you might run into HDMI output issues).
Zotac has promised to release an optimized XBMC soon! So no second guessing to get OOTB support.
It's not passively cooled, and the fan is said to be rather noisy at high CPU loads
802.11n WiFi isn't 300Mbs, but limited to 150Mbps.

How Linux is Built

2012-04-16T07:29:00.000+02:00

While Linux is running our phones, friend requests, tweets, financial trades, ATMs and more, most of us don't know how it's actually built. This short video takes you inside the process by which the largest collaborative development project in the history of computing is organized. Based on the annual report "Who Writes Linux," this is a powerful and inspiring story of how Linux has become a community-driven phenomenon. More information about Linux and The Linux Foundation can be found at http://www.linuxfoundation.org and http://www.linux.com