The Least Read Blog on the Internet

Mobile White Labeled News App

2011-05-01T23:01:00.001-07:00

Another business idea I won't be pursuing.

Mobile White Labeled News App

Site that allows you to pull in numerous feeds, select on an article basis which you want, output a feed with those articles, your blog posts, with your own logo, feed description and code for inserting ads.

Register
Select feeds
Select articles from feeds that you want published
Your own blog content is in as well
Select your logo graphic and descriptive text and ad code
Output is App for Android/iPhone made from template

Twitter workflow for large organization

2011-05-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

I have tons of business ideas. This was one I had that I knew I'd need help on, and I didn't get an excited response about. If you'd like to use it, feel free.

Organizations that want to participate on Twitter do not always have one person who should craft and send out all tweets.

-multiple people/departments might want to send messages out, possibly through one account
-there may be a need for approval from managers or PR or legal
-companies need a way of tracking who authored and who approved each message

No Twitter clients provide a workflow approval of this sort. Hootsuite allows users to post to other Twitter accounts if you authorize, but there's no approval process. It's not much different from giving your password out to a bunch of people.

Cotweet also allows multiple users to use one Twitter account.

The solution:
A site where users will see a Twitter accounts tweets (from friends or searches). Users can respond on the site or post original content to be sent out via Twitter, optionally scheduling when it should post. Every post would go through an approval workflow tailored for that user. Every tweet would get signoff from all necessary people and there would be a paper trail.

If there are messages that need approval by you (you're a manager, attorney, etc) you'll be notified by email.

If your message needs editing (as decided by manager, attorney, etc) you'll be notified.

There would be many possible views of streams based on searches, autotagging, hashes, users, etc.

This would be a backend and a web front end. Making other front ends (iphone, Flash, Air, etc.) would not require redoing all the functionality.

Next steps:
Add approval for posts to other sites.
Add preview/approval for pages hosted on 3rd party sites (Facebook pages, Twitter user pages, etc).

Who pays for this:
This could be sold in a number of ways:
1. One site that various companies pay a license for.
2. One site with a subdomain for each company (http://companyname.thesite.com)
3. We custom install and configure this for individual companies and support them. They run their own Twitter approval system, in other words.
4. License this to ad agencies and PR firms for them to use with their clients in one of the methods above, meaning either they'd:
-have all their clients go through their site (http://www.wk.com/twittermanager)
-they have subdomains for each of their clients (http://nike.wk.com)
-they sell custom installations and we handle the integration and management under their name

Unions and Class

2011-03-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

The Wisconsin collective bargaining protests have raised awareness not only of unions, it seems, but also of possible class differences.

Everyone seems to think they are part of the middle class, regardless of their wealth. Everyone thinks they have rights that should be protected, and of course they're not taking more from society than they should. Along with this is the idea that someone else - whether it's the 500 richest people in America or corporations or somebody has too much of a piece of the pie.

I think unions serve a purpose, but I have my issues with them, too. They do seem to strangle businesses. And they seem to force options on people, which runs contrary to my beliefs about freedom. But perhaps most of all, it puts people into a class, and that I object to greatly.

I don't like people thinking they are better than others by birth or wealth or education. I also don't want people thinking they are lesser. No one is in a working caste, incapable of being in 'management' or running their own business. Increasingly as work is not a lifelong assignment but on contracts it seems to be anachronistic. I'm not proposing unions should be broken, but I'm questioning the logic of the arguments that say they are essential, or beneficial.

In Las Vegas it's illegal to win at gambling

2011-03-02T09:12:00.000-08:00

The laws regarding gambling, both the 'real' laws and those apparently allowed established and carried out by casinos themselves, have often intrigued people and been the subject of movies. While it's understandable that you're not allowed to tamper with machinery or have teams of people in a game communicating information about the game, other things that seem astounding to me are rules against counting cards and similar winning strategies.

Gambling is risk with money, and favoring the house seems wrong. I'm no gambler, as you may have guessed. The idea of almost certainly losing my money doesn't give me any sense of well being. Quite the opposite. But if I were a gambler, I think I'd want the freedom to win. That part is fun, isn't it?

In this recent new article, 2 men were arrested for figuring out some video poker machines had a bug in them, and without tampering with anything, they were able to exploit that.

"John Kane, 52, of Las Vegas, and Andre Nestor, 39, of western Pennsylvania, allegedly pulled the caper in Las Vegas casinos over six weeks in the Spring of 2009. According to a criminal complaint filed in Las Vegas (PDF) on Monday, the men would make small bets over and over again until finally winning a hand, then use a special button sequence to change the credits to a higher denomination and "access the previous winning hand of cards," triggering a jackpot."

They're accused of conspiracy to commit computer fraud. To bottom line this, because they found a way to win with their advantage they have broken some law. If the casino has advantages of some sort by distracting or disorienting you, this is apparently allowed. Let's assume this world isn't entirely crazy and owned by casinos and they at some point are cleared of those charges. By that point the exploit will be cleaned up and these guys will be banned from every casino for life for being smart enough that they win.

US Dept of Ed budget equal to more than $2100 per kid under 18

2010-10-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

According to The US Dept of Ed's Budget Office website they have a budget of roughly $160 billion ($63.7 billion plus $96.8 billion). According to the US Census Bureau there are about 75 million kids under 18 in the US. That means that the US Dept of Ed budget is equal to more than $2100 per kid under 18.

As the US Dept of Ed says themselves on their site "...it is important to point out that education in America is primarily a State and local responsibility." So instead of them taxing all that money away from people, and spending money on figuring out how to redistribute it from far off in Washington, and making local schools jump through hoops to get that money, why not either not tax people for it, or give it back as vouchers so people can afford to send their kids to good schools? Instead of sacrificing children in hopes of eventually fixing schools allow parents to right away find a school that meets their kids needs.

Taxing people on a Federal and State (and possibly local) level for schools and then only providing money to public schools makes for a system that favors the wealthy, who can afford to send their children to private schools or move if need be. Poorer people are forced to keep their kids in worse schools while their money is put toward improving schools in ways their kids probably won't be around to benefit from.

The current public school system benefits beareaucrats and union members at the expense of students and poor parents. It assumes people potentially thousands of miles away know what your kids need better than you. And with their redistribution of your tax money, they exert influence, too. They take your money and then graciously give it back with conditions.

The auto industry is so predictable and boring and linear it almost seems like a cartel at times.

2010-10-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

The auto industry is so predictable and boring and linear it almost seems like a cartel at times.

I wish cars were just made more reliable, rather than have new fancy features. I don't need wifi, satellite radio, automatically adjusting temperature controlled seats. I don't even want power windows. Give me the crank thing for windows so it doesn't break. Give me space for an actual tire, not a donut.

Don't come out with boring looking cars that look different from the boring looking cars of previous years. Might as well go full steam ahead for the sake of cheapness and don't change the design at all for 25 years at a time, and paint them all the same color. Would sure makes parts cheap. Or don't even have a body. Some models of Lotus and other cars are stock engines &/or frames from a manufacturer like Toyota and custom bodies. That way the cost of the functional parts would be lower and people could customize however they'd like. More of a motorcycle feel to it, I think. I don't mean the Scion model where you can choose rims and bumpers. Not even close.

Having standardized parts might mean that you could easily get books that would document how to fix things. I'm not mechanically inclined, so maybe this is just me, but I find those Chilton books very confusing, particularly when they show you a photo and it may have a ton of differences from what you have based on different years and models. Here's a crazy thought, you could even put labels on parts in the car, so if I look under the hood I'd see what's the head gasket and what the serpentine belt and what not are.

I know it seems hugely controversial for some reason to have a car that can get all it's power from an outlet. But how about if I could just plug my car in so that my regular battery could be fully charged every morning.

And if a car were standardized, I think mods to it that didn't just apply to the exterior or aesthetic elements would be easier to do and more importantly, to repeat. This might allow people to switch out how their car gets its power, for instance. Why is it anyone's business how you power your car? I don't think we need some national referendum if you want to make your car powered by charcoal and you can car-b-que while you drive. And if there was some consistency in cars, better documentation, tons of cheap parts, this would be possible. Encourage dealerships to do it, if you want to try to keep it in the family.

There are a million computers in cars now? How about a USB cord so I could plug it into a laptop, run some diagnostic program, and I could be told what's not working properly?

An Alternative to our current US tax system?

2010-09-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'm alone in thinking the US tax system seems overly complicated. It doesn't look like it really works. It discourages savings, makes running a business too complicated for some to consider, seems to favor those who can trick the system, and it requires an army of people in the IRS as well as a comparably large army of accountants.

"The President requested $12.6 billion to fund IRS's fiscal year (FY) 2011 operations, including $5.8 billion for enforcement, $4.1 billion for operations support, and $2.3 billion for taxpayer services." - U.S. Government Accountability Office

There have been a lot of ideas for simplifying the tax system. Criticisms are typically that they wouldn't generate enough revenue, they'd tax the poor unreasonably, or they too would be overly complicated.

The X Tax: The Progressive Consumption Tax America Needs? looks like a well thought out, interesting alternative that keeps these criticisms in mind. I'd be interested in hearing what others think of it.

"Good tax policy should be pro-growth, simple, and fair. An income tax, unlike a consumption tax, penalizes saving, which undermines economic growth and introduces complexity. An income tax is often thought to be fairer than a consumption tax, however, because it taxes saving, which is disproportionately done by higher-income individuals. In reality, however, a consumption tax can be designed to be as progressive as the current income tax. The Bradford X tax offers an attractive, if little-known, form of progressive consumption taxation."
- December 2008

Innovation, Full Employment, Workers Rights and all that good stuff

2010-09-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

In arguments between the dominant two political parties in the US we often hear debates on employment, benefits, workers rights and such subjects pitted as big business versus workers. How can business thrive, so that people can have jobs and people can have investments for their retirement that have a positive return, while at the same time people can have work that pays, has benefits and isn't oppressive?

Flea Market Browsers at White Cloud, Kansas, near Troy, in the Northeast Corner of the State. It Is Sponsored by the Ma Hush Ka (Iowa Indian Language Meaning White Cloud) Historical Society to Raise Money for the Local Museum Housed in the 100-Year-Old Schoolhouse. Area Indians Participate in the Flea Market in Which Native Crafts as Well as Antiques Are Featured. The Town Is Named after the Last Great Iowa Indian Chief Whose Tribe Was Given Area Land by Treaty 09/1974

At the same time we hear how small business is the backbone of the country, the biggest employer, etc. So why is small business pretty much ignored? Laws and financial help from the government center on either big business or workers. Companies are bailed out when they're too big to fail. The assumption is that this is the only way to save our economy and people's jobs. In reality it's insanely lazy and really only helps big companies, big investors, and big unions.

Money is handed out to banks with the assumption it will magically trickle down to small businesses. But those small businesses are risky. They're owned by people who have often wrecked their credit to make those businesses work, or who started a business when they were broke from lack of work. Banks don't like risk. Handing a mega bank a truckload of money and thinking it's going to somehow make it to local dry cleaners and pool cleaning companies is beyond naive. If you operate a small business you're pretty much on your own.

What could the government do to benefit small businesses? Probably the best thing to do would be to stop what they are doing. Get out of the way. Stop propping up big businesses. Stop charging the American people to hand money out to big banks thinking it will benefit anyone other than banks, big business and share holders of big business. Stop thinking unions are the representatives of all people who work.

Once they stop what they're doing, maybe they can help small businesses. Why would you want to do that? Small businesses are nimble, they innovate, they employ locally. What could be done to help?

Health insurance - break down barriers to allowing small companies to get affordable insurance. If a national scheme works, fine. Otherwise, just allow insurance companies to operate across state lines, allow groups to organize themselves, etc.

Access to capital - a slow down of a couple of months or a need to invest in equipment can be a death sentence for small businesses. Make money flow easier. Work more with SCORE to help small businesses get guaranteed loans. Establish micro lending operations like have been done to help businesses grow in the third world.

Mindset - it may seem to run contrary to common logic, but the reality is many businesses in America are too big to succeed. They are slow to change and innovate. They don't have a good handle on the profit and quality of the individual components of their products. They struggle endlessly with their relationship with employees.

With a small company a larger percentage of employees are owners. They'll work as hard as they need to and as hard as they are willing to succeed. If you're an owner you don't worry about your treatment by management - your treatment is a result of your success or failure.

When people don't have opportunity, they make their own opportunities. They start businesses. I started my business when I didn't have work. Undocumented workers start lawn mowing, childcare, house cleaning and piece work manufacturing operations that they can do from home when they can't find work.

What if instead of trying to stop these things from happening by artificially supporting huge companies, treating unions as the representatives of all the employed, worshiping employment statistics, and legislating against businesses we instead helped people work and own their companies.

Some things that make a war in Iran not seem that silly

2010-09-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not advocating war with Iran. I don't particularly love Iran - I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a nut. I think the people of Iran seem quite repressed and they don't seem to have any rights. Iran poses a constant threat to Israel, they execute more people than any country other than China, despite being the 17th most populous country, and evidence points to them supplying insurgents in Iraq.

Often times when you hear the possibility of war with Iran raised you'll hear pundits and commentators criticize the thought of getting into a third war. That might be true, but in some ways it's like saying you're eating two slices of bread and you might have some peanut butter when you're having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The reason I say this is, as you'll see from this cute map I found, Iran is right in the middle of Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Iraq and Afghanistan are less than 900 miles apart, all through Iran. So if you wanted to move troups and supplies between Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of having to go through Pakistan, across the ocean and land, you could go across Iran. In case you're thinking Iran might be a rugged frontier like Afghanistan I'd like to inform you that according to what I learned in college from writing a paper on the train system of Iran in a Persian history class, their infrastructure is quite good, at least in places.

Aside from supply line logistics, there's the issue of where terrorists and insurgents are getting supplied from. Any talk of fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel will at some point make mention of Iran.

Just to clarify, I'm not advocating war with Iran, or saying I'm in favor of it. I just want to point out that it's less like deciding to fight another country in a far off land and more like consolidating lines and removing sources of unrest in the areas we're already in. Of course, the fact that they are an Islamacists government and their country has oil and they can't seem to stop trying to make nukes doesn't help their case.

Bush tax cuts

2010-09-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

I'm no economist, so my thoughts on the Bush tax cuts expiring are not initially whether this would spur economic growth or remove a revenue stream. What I notice more is the problem with the debate about them.

Our Congressman are arguing vigorously about whether the tax cuts for those earning over $250k a year should be renewed or allowed to expire. If you're a Paygo person, believing that all payments or tax cuts should be paid for as you go, then you need to know where the money will come from to pay for this tax cut. Who is supplying the money those earning over $250k a year aren't? That makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is how Congressmen on one side of the aisle argue that this is a tax cut for the wealthy, while those on the other side argue that allowing the tax cut to expire would harm small businesses. They appear to be arguing with each other, but are saying completely different things. In addition to not being an economist, I'm not a trained mediator. However, in my experience, if there's an argument the first thing that has to be done is to clarify what's being argued about.

It would be really great if everyone sat down calmly and answered the following questions:

Does this tax cut benefit those earning over $250k year?
Are those who earn over $250k always wealthy enough that taxing them like this is not unnecessarily burdensome? Always? Some of the time?
Would this have a negative impact on small businesses? Just a small percentage of them, or most?
If it would harm small businesses what could be done so they wouldn't be harmed?

Hulu tip: walk away from ads and miss nothing

2010-03-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hulu tip: click on an ad when it comes up, close the new window, press play in the Hulu window. When the ad ends you have to hit play to get the video to play again. So when the ad comes up do what I described and go get a drink or mute it and watch something else until you want to go back.

Now that's a large

2010-02-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Thar she blows!
It's no secret that fast food drinks keep getting bigger. I'm fairly sure after a recent visit to a Schlotsky's that they've removed 'small' as a drink option. Aside from the fact that none of their drinks might in fact be small, it's psychologically jarring for me to start out at medium. Medium implies it's the middle.

I digress. This really isn't about size craziness. We're all past that now. You order a Starbucks now you order a Tall or a Venti or whatever. If we're using what I imagine are made up names for sizes why should anyone care if words that up to this point have actually described drink sizes are re purposed.

This is really about whether there isn't a Moore's Law for beverage containers. For those who don't know, Moore's Law, according to Wikipedia, "...describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware, in which the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years." I'll trust my engineering/physics friends to spell this out in formulas, but essentially, I'm wondering about the increasing requirements of beverage containers. As the volume of liquid increases (I got a large today at Jack in the Box and that thing must be 44oz) the outward pressure on the cup must be increasing . Can styrofoam handle it? Are we on the verge of an innovation in inexpensive, disposable cup materials, or will we be stuck at this point in our thirst quenching development history? Can we pull together to push modern science to the point where we hit the 86oz mark?

Managing files & email

2010-01-04T10:58:00.000-08:00

In an effort to limit the number of emails and files I have to contend with at any given point I've started my Daily plan. In this plan I have a folder within Documents called Daily where I put files I'll only need temporarily (say a PDF version of a file I need to email to someone). At the end of every day I can select all and delete, or if I feel really confident in my system I can set up a job to clear it out daily.

Similarly, with email I've set up a filter that various status and promotional emails that come in are labeled Daily, and I can easily select all and delete them if I wish.

Easy stuff to do and it helps in keeping the load of information floating around down. No one wants a desktop and Documents folder chock full of files you're not sure what to do with.

Blogging tools

2009-12-26T13:08:00.001-08:00

I tried out Drivel, the Gnome blogging tool. I don't quite get it. It seems to have fewer features than just blogging straight to Blogger. Maybe I'm missing something.

Chores

2009-12-26T13:06:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be quite busy soon, have some extra time now, and am feeling that urge to get things done that have been piling up.

We have a toilet that sporadically doesn't allow you to flush. I tried a fix for that.
We've replaced burnt out regular light bulbs.
I bought more filters to replace the old with.

I need to replace gaskets or tape or something on faucets to stop them from leaking.

Some of our trees have shoots that need to be trimmed.

I need to figure out when to apply weed and seed and how to get the ground ready. Our grass has transformed into a habitat for various types of weeds. It's one thing not to have the best lawn on the block, it's another to have the worst.

There are general, regularly accuring things that need to be done, like vaccuuming, dishes and cleaning Julia's room.

Will Piracy Finally Be Attacked?

2009-11-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

The international reaction to the rampant piracy from the Somali coast has been weak, to say the least. Various countries are escorting ships, and occasionally intercepting pirates, but no one seems comfortable with what to do with the pirates, and unless they're chased into the waters of a country that will deal with them effectively it seems they are really just released.

Spain caught and jailed some pirates for their attempt on a ship in the Indian Ocean. Now, Somali pirates are threatening the lives of some hostages unless those jailed are released.

Releasing pirates rightfully jailed would send a horrible message to criminals everywhere. Waiting could sentence the pirates hostages to death. The piracy coming from Somali needs to be swiftly and decisively ended with all military force necessary.

Why the Mac Tablet won't kill ebook readers

2009-09-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

Excitement over the yet-to-be Mac Tablet has made some suggest it may kill off ebook readers. Here's why it won't, and why we'll see changes in ebook readers in the coming years.

At present, ebook readers are fairly new. There are varying file formats, you may even have to pay to put your own content on, and the lines between content provider (books) and hardware supplier (ebook reader) is blurred. That will go the way of AOL vs. Compuserve. It's a ridiculous model and when ebook readers move beyond the niche publishers won't need to stand for that. Plus, they'll see the economic benefit of being nice to the consumer (otherwise they'll just buy someone else's book), and being 'cross platform' compatible, or more accurately, not crippled by greedy, unnecessary file formats just created to make products only work in one place.

Hardware manufacturers of ebook readers (even if they're not physically making them, that's the game they're in - the control over content is a fleeting possession), such as Sony, Amazon, etc. are trying to augment their ebook readers to increase profit margins and secure market control. We're seeing wifi, 3G, gigantic sizes, etc. These things will matter less and less, as well.

To see why, look at portable DVD players. You can certainly play DVDs on a laptop, and then you'd have so many more options. You could rip and store, do interactive stuff that requires a network connection, tweet about the movie, whatever. And yet, no one considers buying a laptop as a portable DVD player. Portable DVD players do what they are supposed to do well enough, inexpensively and easily. For $150 or less you can get a great portable DVD player that your 5 year old can operate on their own. It does enough, is probably more rugged than a laptop, and is at least a third of the price and half the size.

Expect to see ebook readers standardized. There will be higher end ones, just like you can get an iPod if you want rather than one of the dozens of other MP3 players. But just as you can get a 2GB MP3 player for $10-20, so you'll be able to buy ebook readers that will work perfectly well and be dirt cheap. A $2000+ tablet computer will have as much to do with this as a laptop does to a portable DVD player.

The Life You Could Have, Brought to You by Pharma

2009-08-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

AMC's Mad Man follows the professional, and increasingly, the personal lives of employees of a 1960s advertising agency, Sterling Cooper. Watching the show you get to see the transformation of advertising, not just in obvious ways, like focusing more on television. You also get to see the transformation of ads from being about convincing you to buy a product because it's useful or needed to convincing you that a product is a necessary element in the life you'd like to put yourself into. Ads of this sort may have existed since the dawn of advertising, but over time nearly all advertising became about showing you the life you think you need or deserve.

In Season 2 Episode 7 Senior Partner Bertam Cooper says to Harry Crane, head of Television "People buy things to realize their aspirations. Its the foundation of our business."

This is what advertising is all about. This is why in car ads you see amazingly little about the car and lots about it speeding through mountains, or being the emblem of your political beliefs, or making you a good parent. Beer ads tell you that you can't drink beer from an unlabeled glass or mug. That label is who you are. Are you a serious beer drinker? Are you into the finer things made in small batches? Are you an athlete, and you care about your body?

One of the most interesting examples of aspirational advertising today is seen in pharma. Pharmaceutical companies and their advertising agencies walk an incredible tight rope, selling their product, promoting their product, within the laws of the United States. While few pharma companies or their agencies would say that the drugs they're offering fall under the umbrella of lifestyle, they simply are. The fair balance, or disclaimers in pharma ads are getting increasingly longer, particularly noticeable on TV. While this has occured ads have transformed from having fair balance read at the end of an ad in auctioneer speed to having it integrated into the ad. This is especially noticeable in ads for drugs that most easily would be classified as lifestyle. Birthcontrol ads have tremendously long fair balance, as they are very dangerous.

In a recent TV pharma ad for Yaz, a birth control drug, a woman is at a rooftop party, and she says “You may have seen some Yaz commercials recently that were not clear. The FDA wants us to correct a few points in those ads.” This ad is in response to a couple of ad compaigns the FDA found to be deceptive, which resulted in $616 million in sales in 2008.

The entire ad is fair balance, where in all likelihood you don't hear a word of what she's saying. What you see is the party, the wealth, the youth and beautfy. This is the aspiration you'd like to realize, and this ad tells you which color pill to take. Take it and there's a statistical risk of something or other, maybe the drug even does something your doctor would perscribe it for, but more importantly, you'll be a rooftop party type of person. There's cautionary language but it's all long winded, medical stuff. Of course you'll still remember the claims that it helps with acne, pms and various other issues, if you care about any of that at all.

In another ad for Levitra, a heart medication, an aging baby boomer tells us he was surprised to have a heart attack when he was just 57. What follows is a view into his life now, where he looks like he's living a peaceful, relaxing, fun life, but he looks frail and prematurely old. He doesn't seem like a 57 year old. More like a 70 year old. Then he's talking to you again, looking into the camera, and he cautions you not to make the same mistake he made. Somewhere in that ad fair balance was yammering on in the background. What you remember is he was surprised to have had a heart attack, and if he had just taken Levitra he would have been alright.

It's no surprise that birthcontrol is a lifestyle drug, but making heart medicine something you'd want to start taking even if you didn't really need it is pretty incredible. Both of these manage to read all the required fair balance as if it's music during a silent movie. And in those movies you see the life you'd like to be yours, your aspirations. Packaged and sold to you.

Windows vs Ubuntu

2009-06-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

I used Ubuntu almost exclusively for... had to be at least a year. Then I bought a laptop that I specifically made sure would run Ubuntu well, and it had a clean install of XP on it. I decided to give it another try. There are things that didn't work ideally in Ubuntu, some programs that wouldn't work outside of Windows.

Here's the breakdown of things in favor of XP:

Skype
Just works. On Linux sound issues were not uncommon. I just need it to work. If I'm needed on a Skype conference not being on could cost business.

Flash
Just works. On Linux it's not always the most up to date version, and some things work and some don't.

Digsby
I really like this program, and it doesn't work on Linux.

Surprises
Sometimes clients want me to join on Webex or use their VPN software or something where I either really need Windows or it will take some cleverness on my part. Prefer to play it safe than try to be clever.

See what others are seeing
We make websites. The majority of people use Windows, particularly IE. I need to see what others see before they see it, not as a small percentage of cross browser testing.

Blackberry software
Doesn't run on Linux and allows me to backup and load stuff onto my Blackberry.

Games, Quickbooks, etc
Some software just won't run on Linux.

I certainly have experienced things that are not ideal in XP:

Development
Setting up a dev server is too complicated.

Command line
Being able to do a lot of work from the CLI in Ubuntu is just great, and you know stuff will just be there.

Installing software and updates
Installing software in Ubuntu is insanely easy and doing updates is similarly easy.

Rebooting
Ubuntu doesn't tell you it's shutting down and then boot you out, either.

Slow downs, viruses, trojans, failures
Ubuntu isn't perfect, but honestly, XP just has a plague of problems compared to Ubuntu. The system will slow down, you'll have to battle viruses and trojans, and most lately my trackpad and eraser pointer are occasionally not working.

Next Steps
I'm cleaning up the machine. Erasing all the unnecessary files I had. Then backing up data I needed. I'll install Ubuntu and put VMWare on it to run XP. I'd like to make an image of my current system so I don't have to buy another license. Will look into that.

Iran, elections and visibility

2009-06-19T06:53:00.000-07:00

It's no great surprise that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the actual leader of Iran, came back to say that the recent election was legitimate, even after he and the others of the ruling council scrutinized it. If they had said otherwise they would have been saying that they had been complicit in any wrong doings, since they control so much of the electoral process. He ordered the people of Iran not to protest, and said it couldn't have been rigged because of the huge difference in votes. Apparently he thinks it's possible to rig a small number of votes, but not a large one.

The central issue to this whole situation is not who got elected. Even if your candidate doesn't win, life usually goes on. It comes down to visibility, reliability, believability. The people of Iran don't have confidence in the honesty of their government. They don't trust them. There are no checks and balances, just orders to obey.

The people of Iran are smart and resourceful. Even without the benefit of knowing anything else about them, about their thousands of years of history, the infrastructure they've built in their country, or the passion and intellectual curiosity of it's people, it's clear that they're willing to risk being beaten horribly or worse to have a voice and to know that that voice is really heard, not just manipulated.

Iran is on the verge of revolution, and it has nothing to do with Jewish people (despite Khamenei's accusation), or America or any outside influence. If your people are revolutionary, militarily or otherwise (and Iranians are both militarily and otherwise) you should expect them to cause revolutions. Not including them, treating them like children, trying to force them to accept things and telling them they asked for it, is a really bad move.

2009-06-09T10:28:00.001-07:00

looks like another Facebook virus is out. Either that or ppl are a lot friendlier with me than I had thought.

2009-06-06T23:38:00.001-07:00

Billshrink (http://ping.fm/eBDEs), promoted on T-Mobile ads. Anyone try it? Reliable? Made recommendations to me to save thousands.

The Palm Pre

2009-06-06T07:56:00.000-07:00

The ignorance surrounding smart phones is pretty huge. Most of what people know is from marketing and personal experience, and that generally limits them to whatever phone they have, and whatever they've figured out themselves.

I saw a review today for the Palm Pre that was no exception. It essentially assumed that now there are two smart phones in the world - the Palm Pre and the iPhone. And it didn't question features of the Palm Pre that are strange on the iPhone. No where in the review did we hear if the Pre has a removeable data card. That's a really big deal either way.

It mentions an app store for Pre, but not if it's possible to get apps elsewhere, as is standard with most phones, and allows for a lot more freedom.

Removeable battery? no idea.

The screen size is smaller than the iPhone but the existence of a real life keyboard, which the iPhone doesn't have, was glossed over and mentioned in passing like it was an aesthetic bump on the phone.

It has GPS. Can you get turn by turn directions? don't know.

For the record, I have a Blackberry. It does have a removeable data card and battery, I can download apps from wherever I like (and in fact ones for Nokia and other phones written in Java typically work for me), the keyboard makes using it for im and email very possible. And being able to switch between applications, as mentioned as a plus vs the Pre in the article, is normal behavior. I can read through emails while on a phone call and swich to my calendar and back while doing so. No biggee. And I could sync to Exchange and I do sync with GMail and Google Calendar and Contacts.

Engadet's in depth review is a lot better (http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/03/palm-pre-review/). It looks like the Pre is a big step forward in a lot of respects. It has some improvements to make, but it's a solid contender alongside Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nokia and the other smart phones out there.

It's definitely not a one product market, and we can be very happy for that. Expect price drops and feature improvements as these phones battle for market share.

2009-05-13T10:23:00.001-07:00

Because they were making the coffee fresh when I ordered it and it would be 2 mins Starbucks gave it to me fo free. I don't understand, but I greatly appreciate it!

2009-05-09T15:13:00.001-07:00

Trying out Google Maps Latitude. Pretty cool. See where your friends are on the map.