I just purchased a new laptop… and NO, it is not a Mac. It’s a Dell E6500.

I have always used a checklist to install new software but recently I have modified it since I’m using more web apps than ever before (namely mint.com and gmail as opposed to quicken and outlook, respectively).

I thought you might be interested in reviewing the software that I personally install and compare/contrast to your installed software.

Required Software – Even If I Wasn’t a Tech Guy

1. Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and OneNote)
2. Notepad++
3. Mozilla Firefox
4. Skype
5. Picasa 3
6. FileZilla (client)
7. Adobe Reader
8. Flash Player
9. 7-Zip
10. AVG
11. Latest Windows Updates

Optional Software

1. PuTTY
2. TortoiseSVN
3. KeePass
4. QuickBooks
5. Adobe Acrobat
6. iTunes
7. KeePass
8. Hulu Desktop
9. Google Chrome
10. uTorrent

Required Firefox Add-ons

1. Delicious Bookmarks
2. Firebug
3. Fullerscreen
4. LastPass
5. LogMeIn Remote Access Plugin
6. StumbleUpon

I didn’t waste your time explaining the application or why I use it, but if you have any questions, comments, complaints or recommendations then just leave a comment.

Point 1: Magento Rules the Ecommerce World

Magento is now more popular (at least more visited/searched) than other major open source ecommerce web applications (Checkout Google, Compete). Currently, I believe Magento is leaps and bounds above any other ecommerce system out. If you don’t agree, I urge you to show me a more fully featured, open source ecommerce system.

Point 2: My Personal Backup is still Jungledisk

I’ve been developing with Amazon’s AWS services for about a year. They’ve really been leading the development of “cloud computing” applications. Their API’s are pretty straight forward and although I have a few complaints, it’s a pretty nice system.

The Amazon S3 Network (which allows you to store data on Amazon’s cloud) has been my latest love. Amazon’s “pay as you go” pricing model makes it competitive even when you compare it to a DIY project.

After checking this out, I wanted to start running my personal backups onto Amazon’s S3 network. I thought I’d have to develop something but then I found JungleDisk. JungleDisk is a Windows and Mac backup system that stores all of your data on Amazon’s S3 network. That means, if someone steals my laptop, all of my data would still be safe. JungleDisk currently costs $20 (one time fee) and Amazon’s S3 network costs me about $6 per month for around 40GB worth of a data.

I’m real happy with JungleDisk and I’m proud to recommend them. Its automated, fast, reliable, and cost-effective. But, they have a few things that they should be worried about… They were recently bought out by Rackspace (Amazon’s cloud computing competitor). Although you can choose to use either Amazon or Rackspace, I’m usually scared to commit to a vendor unless I know their future intentions. I hope things aren’t going to change (JungleDisk claims nothing will change), but you never know. Also, JungleDisk has a very strong competitor in Mozy (Bought by EMC which also claims nothing to will change due to their buyout). Although I have used the mozy system, I stuck with JunlgeDisk b/c of it’s performance and the Amazon’s S3 network. But now, Mozy only costs $5.00 per month! For $5.00, its definitely worth trying. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Mozy and Jungledisk.

My recommendation: personally, I don’t care which backup system you use. You can continue to use 3.5″ floppy disks… but please… please… PLEASE BACKUP. I once had a client pay $10,000 for data recovery. Seriously.

I wanted to setup a magento store and compare it to a number of competitors. But, to get the thing launched, you need to customize your server. I didn’t want to modify our server because I wasn’t sure if I was going to like magento and I didn’t want to make unneeded changes to the server.

So, I decided to make a new instance on my amazon EC2 account and build a new server.

I spent a ton of time looking for an existing AMI for Magento. After I didn’t find one, I set out to build one. I built an AMI that has Magento 1.2.1.1, CentOS 5.2, PHP 5.2.9, mysql 5.1.

If you want to check it out: download The Original Magento Amazon AMI.

Good luck and let me know if you need anything.

“Crisis Boosts the Learning Curve” on 12/31/2008 by Tom Keene on Bloomberg Radio

Tom was discussing the popularity of news coverage. He discussed that due to the the financial crisis, more people are interested in the news.

After hearing Tom’s statement I really thought about how much I learn during any crisis. I came to the conclusion that this is why so many people say you learn more from failure than success.

In the year and half of law school, I’ve learned (and remembered) more about law when there is some type of crisis than I have in class. In the 7 years of running my own business, I’ve learned more during our “times of crisis” than I ever did by reading a great book or college course.

I learn more about my friends and family when we disagree than when we agree.

Think about it.

I previously posted a note on how boxing odds work but this gives a real world example.

This is what you would have seen before the Nogueira v. Mir fight:

Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira -325 vs. Frank Mir +250

What this says is that if you pick Nogueira and he wins, you would need to bet $325 to win $100. But, if you pick Mir and he wins, you would need to bet $100 to win $250.

So, I picked Mir for $10 and I won $25. This time last year that would be 25 double cheeseburgers at McDonald’s.

Questions

1. What is your favorite sports book site?
2. What are the laws for me gambling in Arkansas over the internet?

Since I never use cash, it does me no good to have it. If cash is on me it gets wasted on something like:

• vending machine candy
• gas station food
• girl scout cookies
• etc etc etc

About three years ago, I emptied a huge “Orange Juice” bottle. The orange juice bottle sits in my closet and every day when I get I home, I dump any spare change into it. Now, when I say spare change, I’m talking about any literal change or dollar bills that happen to be laying in my pockets. Sometime I drop ten-dollar and twenty-dollar bills, but typically its just singles or change.

Last month I decided to empty it and take it to the bank. I dropped the change in an automatic change-counter and deposited the bills. It worked out to almost $300.00. Now that isn’t a ton of money but it was a nice surprise. I didn’t work for it; It’s like reaching into your pocket and finding $300.00.

You Should Try It
This is an easy task. Just go out and purchase a nice piggy bank. If you don’t want to purchase a piggy bank, do like I did and empty a big orange juice (Sunny Delight) bottle. I know a lot of people like to have cash on hand but the truth is: you don’t NEED cash. It is almost an unspoken rule that businesses must accept credit cards (or debit cards) and even if they don’t, you always have an ATM near by.

Last night the SEC put a ban on short-selling 799 financial companies. Read the Official Release Here (PDF).

From my understanding, here is the SEC’s reasoning behind banning short-sells:

Due to a horrible real estate market more people are foreclosing on their homes. This has had a tremendous ripple effect. We have seen financial stocks lose a ton of value.

As traders noticed the uncertainty in the financial markets they freaked out. When people freak out, panic rules the stock market, not fundamentals. Short sellers take advantage of the sell off by selling stocks they don’t own. This causes the stock to lose even more value.

To put a halt on this, the SEC ruled to freeze short selling on 799 companies. This freeze will allow the market to stabilize and THEN they’ll turn short-selling back on.

Although the move by the SEC to ban short-selling has had a positive effect on the market (up over 1,000 points in 2 days), it also comes with some horrible side affects or at least some BIG questions.

1. Short-sellers make money by realizing that stocks are over-valued. If they aren’t in the game, the stocks could be WAY over-valued. What is the real value?
2. When you re-initiate short-selling, there is no guarantee that the market has stabilized. What happens when you allow short-selling?

My Predictions

1. Although short-selling is due to start again on October 2, 2008, it will be extended due to the political effects of a down market (It looks bad on the president if the economy is in the gutter).
2. Stocks will rally and continue to rally until short-selling is allowed again.
3. When short-selling is turned back on… we will see a major sell-off.

Due to surge in stock prices, options have become a very popular investment strategy. View my “Options” post here.

Personally, I can’t wait for short-selling to be allowed again… I’m going to be short a ton that day… I’ve already got my shopping list ready.

For you Wordpress and Feedburner users:

I’ve been a long time fan of Feedburner. But one day, my feed magically broke. I recreated the feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/RjMartinosWebLog) and pointed it (rjmartino.com/wp-rss2.php).

Then, as I started creating new posts, I realized that nothing was being sent to feedburner. When I viewed my feedburner page, it was BLANK. When I logged into Blogline, my feed was blank.

I checked the Original Feed Validity. It checked out just fine…

I checked the FeedBurner Feed Validity. It checked out just fine.

I even re-synced… nothing.

I searched forums and found a guy named Rajasekharan at http://www.mtherald.com. Rajasekharan had fixed the same problem but he didn’t list the fix. So I visited his medical transcription blog, found his email address, and shot him an email.

He was really helpful. He explained that when he setup his feedburner feed, he gave the URL of his original feed (ie http://mtherald.com/blog/wp-rss.php). As he later found out, that was the blunder.

After changing the RSS feed to the correct URL, http://mtherald.com/?feed=rss2. It was solved.

I did the exact same thing. I set feedburner to look at http://wwww.rjmartino.com/wp-rss.php. The feed should have been set to http://www.rjmartino.com/?feed=rss2.

After changing the setting, I “pinged” the page using http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/ping, and a few minutes later, my feeds showed back up!

What is your favorite Dilbert strip?

To view Dilbert Cartoons, go to http://www.dilbert.com.