All the stuff I need is on my desk :)

Anyway, again, I’m still here. Midterms are done so I guess there goes my excuse for not posting. The cafe is still hanging in there and the Free WiFi Project is slowly growing. I need to really pound the streets in order to get some more nodes out there but finding the actual time during regular business hours is pretty tricky.

In other news I started yet another company, this one is named Campus Cards. We specialize in business cards for students. Cool idea, eh? That’s what I thought. I think that student business cards is a pretty untapped market segment so we’ve got a pretty good chance of doing well. The cool thing, in my opinion, about Campus Cards is how I set the site up to use fillable PDFs embedded in the page. Students fill these out and then pay through PayPal and I get a nice email with a PDF attached which is all ready to hit the printing press.

I started Campus Cards when I, in my position as “Director of IT” (yes, that’s in quote because I really just look after the website) with the School of Business at the U of A, was asked to look into helping our students get business cards. Realistically there are no printers around that will give you less than 250 colour cards for less than $30. Even if you find someone who is willing to do meet that price point you are still going to get dinged with design fees when your print ready art isn’t perfect and also shipping if they aren’t local. At Campus Cards we are offering students across Canada 100 colour business cards for between $15 and $20, inclusive of all GST and fees, and shipping is free.

This is sort of a unique opportunity. Doing the cards manually is time consuming, but I’m doing my best to streamline the process. Outsourcing isn’t really an option because of shipping costs. That’s one thing you can count against globalization: small transactions won’t survive international shipping fees.

Anyway, back to work at my new “home office” in the condo I recently moved into.

First off, this thing was cheap. We shopped around and found a cutter from US Cutters on eBay (don’t buy from their website). After negotiating my own shipping the end price door to door was around $505. Not too shabby for a 36″ vinyl cutting monster.

The cutter itself is about 50″ long and it comes with a stand. Along with the tiny little cutting blades there is a pen plotting attachment that you can use to draw with.

We’ve cut a few things already, mostly stuff for Rob’s farm as you will see in the pictures.

Applying vinyl is pretty straight forward as long as you think things through in advance. It’s really sticky and once it’s on whatever surface you are using it’s not really coming off without being destroyed.

Anyway, with the amount we spent it’ll save us a fortune in sign making costs. Since cutting a few yards of vinyl ourselves will cost about $4/yard and having a shop do it would cost 10 times that.

This is a prime example of why I don’t care if a company has my demographic information. It’s not even that personal. Hell, there needs to be some sort of “OpenCookie” standard where I can plant a cookie in my browser that says I’m 23, male, and from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada so that the next time I search for coffee equipment I’m not being hit with bra advertisements that are completely irrelevant to me.

That’s really the goal that myself and Rob and going for, speed. We’re aiming to create inexpensive, customized, and well designed websites for small businesses and organizations. In order to keep prices down and profits up that means we need to be fast. I think that using a CSS framework will help me out.

I watched Yahoo’s YUI introduction video by Nate Koechley and it taught me a lot. Yes I have to submit to their div names and whatnot but I think it’ll speed things up.

The Hour

I made the “executive” decision to start calling each device a Community Router. Alternatively you could say Community HotSpot or Community Node, just throw Community in there because that’s what it’s all about

Whether you want to help out at home or work you can order a community router on our website for $60. We’ll send you a box in the mail with instructions and everything you need to get started.

Tell your friends and let’s get Edmonton connected!

It’s called Dropbox, and it’s amazing. Essentially Dropbox allows one to create a special folder on their hard drive which will sync anything in there with whatever computers you have your Dropbox account on. If you run a Mac, Windows and a Linux box you can have speedy up to date sharing of files. All of your files are also kept remotely on Dropbox’s servers where you can access them anywhere.

Your Dropbox web interface allows you to share folders and files with friends or even with the public. They also handle images really well with auto creation of galleries just by dropping photos, or folders with photos into the Photos folder in your Dropbox.

I used to play around with trying to sync my USB keys with my laptop but things kept screwing up. Dropbox is another slick example of how you can ditch your laptop.

I use the following services which I can essentially operate from anything with a web browser and an Internet connection:

• For my homepage I use Netvibes. It’s really awesome and displays my RSS feeds, Digg, email, and bookmarks in a great way.
• My main email address is hosted with Google Apps for your Domain. It’s basically a free and private GMail install that directly uses my ericwarnke.com domain instead of a gmail.com account. I would even pay for this if I had to.
• Along with Google Apps several of my friends and I use Google Docs to take notes together in class as well as collaborate on all the group assignments we need to do. Working on the same document at the same time kicks ass. We tried Microsoft Office Live for a bit as well but the versioning ended up sending us back to Docs.
• All my bookmarks are kept on Delicious. I’ve used this for a few years and their Firefox plugin is a life saver. I’ll never use any browser based bookmarks again.
• Now I use Dropbox

So my email, bookmarks, homepage, and now my files are all going to be available basically whenever I need them!

Currently I am:

• A fulltime (5 courses) student in the School of Business at the University of Alberta
• Also the IT Director (glorified webmaster) for the Business Students Association at the U of A.
• The sole owner of 3rd on Whyte, an Internet Cafe located at 201, 10351 Whyte Avenue, in Edmonton, Alberta.
• The founder of the Free WiFi Project which is slowly slowly starting to bring free wireless Internet access to public spaces in Edmonton. I’ve almost finished the payment system for that so check back soon and get a router!
• On the Old Strathcona Business Association Board of Directors.
• Involved in various web development projects and I am looking at starting a web development firm with my best friend Rob.
• Playing rec league ball hockey with my buds, even though I played basketball all the from elementary school until my second year of college. Our ball hockey team sucks isn’t that bad, btw.
• Still finding time for my amazing girlfriend, Megan.
• Oh, and I’ve started swimming a kilometre a day to try and get back in shape!

Busy busy!