How did I not know how wonderful this was before? It’s not like it just came out yesterday. And it’s free!!

Fluid is an application you can use to create Site Specific Browsers (SSBs) on the Mac based on the Safari rendering engine (WebKit). The author freely admits that the concept was inspired by Mozilla Prism, which does something similar for Firefox and its rendering engine, Gecko. As well as Adobe AIR which brings its own tricks to the party beyond just duplicating a browser.

The beauty of a browser like Google Chrome is that each tab runs in its own space in memory. If a web app misbehaves, you can shut down that tab and free up its resources without bringing down the whole browser. Fluid brings a similar concept to the Mac in an oh-so-elegant way that relieves most of the pain I had in switching from Firefox to Safari.

As a matter of fact, I tried the latest Firefox release candidate the other day and found that I still prefer Safari for day-to-day use. Fluid-created SSBs make the experience near perfect for me.

It’s simple. When you launch the application you just tell it which page should now be treated as a stand-alone application.

You can use the icon from the page’s website, or point it towards a PNG file of your own. So far, I’ve created SSBs for my task manager (RTM), my 2 main Google email accounts, my timesheet & expense application (Clicktime), Salesforce, Convio Admin, Box.net, and my feed reader (Fever). Convio in particular is tons faster running as a SSB than it is in any browser. You can tweak the behavior of each SSB in preferences, controlling its layout, tab behavior & navigation.

This is way more than a simple desktop shortcut for getting to a website. I no longer have to be concerned about keeping my mail tabs accessible in Safari. They’re always open and not in the way of my other browsing. Even better, I can delete the cache of any SSB without affecting the cache of other pages.

Here are some other features that I am loving:

Apps can have dock badges! This is killer. There’s a Javascript API for developers to add this functionality. Unread indicators for Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook are built in to Fluid. So I was easily able to create separate SSBs for both of my main Gmail email accounts, using images for the icons that help me tell them apart. If I had any feeds set to show unread counts, I’d see that in the Fever icon, too:

Support for userscripts.org. It’s kind of like Greasemonkey for WebKit/Safari. I can’t use the Better Gmail extension I loved from Firefox, but I can easily add some of the scripts (not all work) to my mail browsing experience in their SSB. Proceed with caution here and only install scripts you know/trust. Some can be nasty/dangerous. There are some specifically designed to add the necessary Javascript code for dock badges in Fluid.

Turn a web app into a MenuExtra. You know, those little icons at the top of the screen? There are some web apps that you want accessible no matter where you are, rather than breaking your concentration and switching to a completely new application. Simply select “Convert to MenuExtra SSB…” from the application menu. Of course, you wouldn’t want a big honkin’ screen to pop up there, so I think it’s better to use mobile interfaces. I use it for Remember the Milk, using their iPhone view. On second thought, it’s much better to use the Google iGadget for RTM

Anyone else using Fluid and have any tips & tricks to share with me?

There’s been a bit of talk lately in the technosphere about the role of blogs in the new real-time web. Louis Gray has a wonderful post on the subject that reflects my own opinion, “Blogging Is Still the Foundation In A World of Streams.”

The blog is the foundation and center for who you are – either as an individual, or a brand. While I believe the best bloggers in the world are participating outside of their blog, on Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and everywhere else, to only participate in those areas leaves a gaping hole. The world of lifestreaming and real-time is fun, but it can be as deep as a soap opera in a world that still demands insightful documentaries and news reporting.

I think there’s another benefit to a blog: it’s a mandatory time out.

I’ve gotten into my share of online tussles over the years. Most are because I’ve hit the “reply” button in the heat of the moment. From where I’m sitting, the real time web is just a collection of knee-jerk reactions. Sometimes emotional. Tweets may be intelligent and interesting, but they’re rarely careful and measured. When started, the snowball is difficult to stop as folks are reacting to the initial spark long after your own anger has subsided. It usually goes along until all parties run out of steam or someone compares the current situation to the Holocaust, whichever comes first.

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I work on a blog post it’s a process. I’m Googling for “evidence” to back up my position, or following links. I’m re-reading what I wrote, rewriting sentences as I build a case for my position on a subject. By the time I hit “publish” I’m usually feeling confident that my post accurately reflects my point of view with some amount of argument to back it up. Right or wrong, if I take someone on in my blog, I’ve at least considered the counter point first.

9 times out of 10 for hot-button subjects, I talk myself out of making the post as I’m trying to create it. I realize that the cutting remark isn’t worth posting after all. Salvation is a “delete” key away. For that reason whenever I feel myself reacting in the moment, I try and force myself to think of a blog post first…before I leave that comment. Even in those months that I wasn’t publishing much content here, I was still composing posts in my head as a way of getting my thoughts straight.

Not every blog post composed has to be published, but it’s rare that someone gives themselves the time and space to cool off when replying to a tweet or a FriendFeed thread. It’s too short, it’s too easy, it’s too quick. And that’s the reason why I think the so-called real-time web (Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, etc.) should never truly replace the old-school blog.

Blogging, by the very nature of its drudgery and delay, forces you to think of the greater impact. No matter how active I get on Twitter or Facebook, I need the very act of blogging to come back to and keep me sane…whether I hit “publish” or not.

When you’ve been using Salesforce for a while, you accumulate logins. You may have a login for your main instance, a login for your sandbox (a dupe of your instance without data that you can use to try new things) and maybe even logins for developer edition instances.

Here’s a tip for creating one-click Salesforce logins that I picked up a few years ago.

This is not secure. Only do this on a computer that you know will never be touched by human hands that aren’t your own. If you do this on a computer that someone else has access to, and they get into your Salesforce and do terrible things, please don’t come back here and blame me. You have been warned.

That’s said, let’s get to the tip.

In your browser or your favorite PRIVATE bookmarking service, create a bookmark that looks like this, replacing the red sections with your own information as explained below:

https://www.salesforce.com/login.jsp?pw=yourpassword&un=user%40domain.com

yourpassword = obviously, your password. Remember what I said about keeping this bookmark private?

user%40domain.com = your login username, replacing the @ with %40. Why %40? Not entirely sure.

Give the bookmark a unique name and there you go. When you’re ready to login, just click the bookmark and you’ll skip the front door. Create a separate bookmark for your sandbox, developer instance, etc. and save loads of time and hassle remembering which email you address you used this week for which setup.

One of the most heralded new features of iPhone 3.0 is Push notifications. That means that even though an application is still not allowed to run in the background, it can periodically call home for information and display a message and/or badge to let you know of changes.

This can be incredibly useful or incredibly annoying. I can’t stand applications that display a badge I already read. When I’ve ready the alert, take the badge away unless you have something new to tell me. And I certainly will never, ever authorize a game to notify me of anything (I’m talking to you, Tap Tap Revenge). Just because a feature is there doesn’t mean you have to use it.

This morning, I was thrilled to see that my favorite task manager, Remember the Milk, now has push notifications. This makes sense. Pop up alerts for due tasks! Finally!

Now that I’m blogging on judisohn.com as the domain, it’s time to tackle another problem.

If I listened to conventional blogging wisdom, I’d only be blogging about Weight Watchers (my most popular posts by page views) or Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction (my most popular post by comments).

My blogging mojo has never been around page views. If it was, I’d still be blogging on WebWorkerDaily. Instead, I like to blog about whatever it is I’m passionate about at the time that it matters to me and then hope I say something that sparks a conversation.

Yet I am mindful that there are two distinct audiences that read my blog.

There are my nonprofit/Mac/techie geek friends who visit because of what I say about the latest gizmo, gadget or trend. Last November, I was incredibly honored to present at a session at Dreamforce. The moderator of the panel pointed out to the room that my blog could be found at momathome.com. I immediately flashed on the latest post I had on the site which just happened to be about getting Chewii, our mutt. I’m in front of hundreds of professional colleagues who are being directed to my site, and it’s currently featuring pictures of my puppy. Great.

And then there are the folks who find this site looking for info about SOD, or they’re my friends and relatives who aren’t into tech and just want to see what I’m up to beyond my Facebook updates. My mother will tell me she read my blog, and in the next sentence remind me that she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about in most of the posts. I want her to get something out of her visits here, too.

I’m going to try something new. I’m not quite forking my content, but I’m going to be classifying posts into just two categories: personal and geek/tech. I’ll use tagging more often than I did in the past to help in searches. There will still likely be a healthy dose of personal stuff in the tech posts (as they say, you can take the Mom out of the blog…), and visa versa. On balance, I imagine there will be more tech posts. If a post is clearly in one direction or the other you’ll know by the category.

I set up two new RSS feeds, so for folks who want the geekie stuff, you can get just those posts. For folks who want the personal stuff, I set up a feed for that. You can also click the appropriate tab at the top of every page to get to the appropriate category.

We’ll see how this works for a while. It’s all a process and learning experience. That’s what’s fun about blogging.

11 years ago, I registered MomAtHome.com to go with my freelance design side biz, Mom at Home Design. I’ve been working for C3 fulltime for four years, and it’s been a while since I made the decision to shed most of the “Mom” stuff from the site.

This morning I decided to make the official change to using judisohn.com as my primary domain. None of the content is changing or moving, it’s just about changing what shows in the address bar. It makes sense on many levels. I’ve been energized about blogging again recently, so the timing is good.

I have to admit that I was influenced by Steve Rubel’s switch from Micro Persuasion to SteveRubel.com. If someone with his audience can give up a blog brand that no longer worked for him and put it under another roof as his approach to tech evolved, what the heck was I afraid of? The “brand” I’m working on is me. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s time for the domain to match.

It was easier to do than I thought it would be. Visits to judisohn.com were landing here anywhere, I just didn’t advertise it. For my email address, I added judisohn.com as a domain in Google Apps, along with all the necessary MX entries on my MediaTemple hosted domain. Now any email address to my @momathome.com email will automatically work for @judisohn.com. In Gmail, I set the new domain as my default sending address. Over time, I’ll change the email everywhere it needs to be changed.

For the site, in WordPress I set the new domain as the blog’s address. Simple. My feeds are all on FeedBurner, so that was an easy switch. Folks subscribed to my complete feed shouldn’t see any difference.

Google Webmaster tools has a nice “change of address” feature that let’s you tell it that you’ve moved your site. That’s done, although I know it will take some time until searches return results at the new domain.

My last hurdle is to make sure that visits to momathome.com/whatever show as judisohn.com/whatever in the address bar. Right now, you can enter on a momathome.com link and it stays that way until you move around the site and then it converts to judisohn.com links. I’m pretty sure it’s a change to my .htaccess file, but I’m not entirely sure what to type. Anyone know?

P.S. If you have this site bookmarked or linked as momathome.com or “Mom at Home” I’d appreciate it if you could change the link to judisohn.com and call it either “A View from Judi Sohn” or even just “Judi Sohn’s Blog.” Thanks!

One of the first applications I purchased when I switched back to the Mac fulltime in 2006 was 1Password (known as 1Passwrd back then).

I had been using RoboForm on the PC (still do for my IE-only sites that I get to from Windows XP on VMWare Fusion) and I had hundreds of logins and saved secure notes that I didn’t want to lose. 1Passwrd worked in both Firefox and Safari and imported those saved logins. In fact, I’d say this application was one of the reasons I was able to move back to the Mac as easily as I did.

I paid $29.95 for that software. It was buggy, and didn’t work nearly as well as RoboForm did on the PC. But it was the best option of what was available on the Mac so I stuck with it. And it was updated. And updated. And updated. The developers actively responded to questions, complaints and feature requests in their forums. They respond to tweets and emails promptly. Their license card scheme was a little funky and an online version didn’t quite work out. But the software was updated again. And again. And again. They introduced a new keychain format which lets me keep my copy of 1Password in sync on both my laptop and desktop computers. It works beautifully.

I was never asked to pay another dime (until the upcoming 3.0 version).

So they introduce an iPhone app, and there’s some confusion. And if you read the comments, some folks are upset and feeling ripped off.

Not me.

Bottom line (I think): there will be 2 iPhone apps, neither will be free. One will be “Pro” and have more features, not all of which made it into the initial product. So they’re asking folks to pay $5.99 for the Pro version now (instead of the $15 it will be when it’s more feature complete), while the standard version will stay at the $4.99 it is now. A lot of the confusion stems from Apple’s app store policies, which they can’t control, and their own miscommunication which they are working to remedy.

What are the Pro features? I think it will let me use my 1Password logins in Safari easier and copy/paste from the app in some cool way. I’m not sure. I bought it anyway.

You’re not sure what it does because it doesn’t do it yet and you bought it anyway?

You heard me. Why did I buy it? Yes, the whole two iPhone app thing was confusing. Yes, they could have done a better job up front explaining it. Water under the bridge.

I know that a few months from now I will get more than my $5.99 worth, just as I’m now getting way more than my $29.95 worth out of the desktop app. I know that the developers will continue to be very nice people who will patiently answer the same silly questions over and over again in the forums without getting testy about it. I know that every bug will be tracked down and squashed.

Sometimes you support a product based entirely on its feature set at the time you click the “buy” button, and sometimes it’s a matter of faith. Agile Web Solutions has earned my purchase based on faith.

Right now, I’m counting down to October 25, 2009. That is the day that my 2 year contract with Sprint will be fulfilled, and I can freely cancel my mobile data plan.

It served me well. When I was driving Laini 50 miles each way to school and back and needed to work from where I was, I used the USB EVDO modem constantly. There were some months that I was easily using 4GB of the 5GB “unlimited” plan. Now, I’m lucky if I use 500MB in a month. I still use the modem when I’m on the train to my office in DC at least once a month, or when I’m working from the waiting room of Laini’s physical therapy appointments and the free wifi the hospital offers is spotty, or when I lend the modem to Eric for his trips to Manhattan on the bus. But we’re certainly not getting enough use out of it to justify paying $68/month past the end of the contract.

JKOnTheRun has a post today that’s thinking along the same lines I am. Personally, I think it’s a matter of time before AT&T cracks down on folks who are tethering their iPhones without AT&T’s blessing, so I don’t want to go that route. And I expect AT&T’s own iPhone tethering plan when they get around to it to be ridiculously expensive. I can get a lot done with the iPhone alone, but there are times that working off a phone just won’t do.

Mobile broadband is a nice-to-have if I can find a reasonable option. I’ll do without it otherwise.

The MiFi looks interesting, but I would only want the as-you-use-it plan which would make the initial no-contract cost expensive. And it would mean opening an account with Verizon Wireless since Sprint doesn’t offer the pay-as-you-go plan. ::shudder:: I would rather stick sharp pins in my eye. Next!

Which leaves the Virgin Mobile Broadband2Go as a very viable option. Buy the modem for around $150 and then pay only when you know you’re going to use it. Based on our current usage patterns, we’d go from $68/month to maybe $10-20 a month, if that much. Tempting, until I noticed this:

No Mac drivers? Seriously? What is this, 1998?

Slashgear says that VirginMobile promises Mac support “in the weeks ahead.” Let’s see what they say in November (and how good the coverage is here on the east coast).

Back in February, I did a little “thinking out loud” about where C3 was going with Salesforce.

We started using Salesforce as our main database in 2006, following the nonprofit best practices of the time. Now, 3 years later C3 has grown exponentially and we’re quickly outgrowing the structure I set up in 2006. Not outgrowing Salesforce by any stretch. There were simply some assumptions I had made in setting up our data model that were true and valid in 2006 that no longer apply. I had a big decision to make on where we would be heading next.

Over the last few months I’ve talked to many folks I trust and respect in the Salesforce nonprofit community. People who are a lot smarter than I am on many levels. They confirmed what I already suspected: There are no easy, obvious answers. Whether I decided to install the Salesforce Foundation’s Nonprofit Starter Pack, Convio Common Ground or something in between (or nothing at all), I would have some concessions to make.

After weighing all the options, and with a little help from some friends, we’ve decided to purchase Convio’s Common Ground.

I feel good about our decision. Read on for why…

Let’s face it, Convio has a certain negative reputation in the nonprofit community. It’s expensive. The interface is unwieldy. It’s expensive. It’s overkill. Did I mention that it’s expensive? All that can be very true.

But here’s the thing…and I’m being entirely sincere…I’m grateful that Convio has been a supportive partner of C3 since before Convio. When I was looking at nonprofit software vendors at the end of 2005, GetActive didn’t snicker at our ridiculously small budget. They took a chance on us and helped us work out an arrangement so we could afford their service and get the most value out of it. That carried over when Convio bought GetActive a couple of years later.

In 2005, a Convio sales rep literally laughed at me on the phone when I spoke to him. Today, while by no means a perfect fit for all organizations (and yes, it can be buggy and the admin interface still sucks in spots) that condescending “you’re not worthy of us” attitude is all but gone from Convio. It’s far from free, but if it’s a fit they’ll work within an organization’s budget and needs. We’re living proof.

While I may kvetch on Twitter about how much I hate the Convio admin interface, overall we’re more satisfied than dissatisfied. So to my question of, “Do we really want to tie Salesforce to Convio?” the answer that makes the most sense to me is: no compelling reason not to.

The reality is that for C3, the Nonprofit Starter Pack is more expensive than Common Ground. Say what? But the Starter Pack is free, you say. Have I mentioned that I’m not a developer? I’m a decent self-taught Salesforce administrator, and I’ve somehow managed to figure out how to get Salesforce to do what I want it to do through a lot of Googling, social networking, tutorials and trial and error. If I get to the point that I can even understand Apex (Salesforce programming language) I’ll consider it a miracle. Forget any dream of being able to say, “Oh, let me build a trigger for that…” Hiring a Salesforce developer either as a consultant or staff member is way out of my reach.

Bottom line: The Nonprofit Starter Pack will require more knowledge to install/configure than I can give it. Thank goodness the Foundation has the amazing Steve Andersen working on the software now, so it will only get better. As it improves, I would have to handle updates on my own, counting on my friends in the NPSF community to guide me out of whatever mess I know I’d create for myself.

On the other hand, Common Ground has functionality out-of-the-box that is fully supported by Convio, and is frankly amazing. And getting better all the time. For starters, it’s more in line with how I prefer to handle households in Salesforce (treating them as an account, rather than a custom object). Email messaging campaigns in Convio are mapped to Salesforce (not available in the connector I’m using). It has built-in functionality for Tribute/Personal Fundraising gift campaigns. It can handle any kind of donation or sales process we’ll throw at it, although it’s a tad weak on e-commerce.

I’ll be busy this summer. There will be some hard decisions as we figure out how to get existing data into the new Common Ground model. I’m sure I’ll have many a blog post on the process as we go.

Overall, though, I think the rewards of Common Ground will be much greater than the concessions I’ll have to make.

In December 1994, on our last night of vacation in Las Vegas, Eric and I had tickets to see Cirque Du Soleil at Treasure Island. We decided to skip dinner before the show, instead sharing a popcorn during the performance with the intent to grab something more substantial afterwards. As the show was ending, I started feeling uncomfortable. Bloated, queasy and I had a sharp pain under the right side of my ribcage. Within a few hours I was throwing up, running a fever and the pain was more than I could stand. Eric and I took a taxi to the emergency room. Just how you want to spend the last night of your vacation, right? The doctor there assumed I had gallstones, but nothing showed in the test so they doped me up with enough pain meds to survive the flight and sent me home.

Locally, my doctor said I had reflux. I didn’t buy it, but eventually the symptoms got better and I got back to my life. Until the next similar attack. More tests. More misdiagnosis. Finally, in 2003 a gastroenterologist did a HIDA scan which specifically tests how the gallbladder functions and the test showed that mine wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. Bingo! I had my gallbladder out and I thought all was well. Until the attacks started again.

In 2005, after drinking a bottle of Gatorade (for a colonoscopy prep) and having another attack, I was finally diagnosed with Type 3 Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction by a gastroenterologist who knew enough about it to suspect I had it, but didn’t know what to do about it. Since then I’ve learned that Type 3 SOD is a condition that’s difficult to diagnose and treat. One common treatment involves a procedure where the side effects are often worse than the condition. In September 2005, I blogged about what I was dealing with.

Over the next 3.5 years that post has gotten 610 comments and counting. It’s usually on page 1 or 2 of Google search results. Frankly, I was happy when it fell to page 2. That meant that there was more credible information about SOD taking its place. When I was diagnosed, there was little information online aside from a few articles that esentially questioned whether or not the conditioned existed. Most of the comments here are from people just like me. They thought they were the only ones dealing with this, or were told that it was all in their head.

I haven’t done anything except approve comments as they come in. They, not me, have built a community here and the best thing I can do is not get in its way. I added threaded comments and comment pagination in an attempt to make the comments a little easier to read, but that’s about it. This is my personal website, not a support forum. If I tried to make it anything more than that, I was afraid I would ruin it.

I didn’t want anyone to think I was attempting to dispense medical advice, and I don’t censor any comments posted as long as they’re not flaming or spam. Over the years folks have started SOD-specific support sites, the most recent being thesphincterofoddi.com, but they’re still coming back here. I’ve taken a kind of “whatever” attitude about it. Folks want to keep commenting on a 4 year old post, more power to ‘em.

Then this morning, I saw a referrer in my logs from the Journal of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. John Affronti, MD wrote an editorial (95% of it over my head) in the May issue about doctors who are prescribing Levitra for SOD without any solid evidence to back it up. Dr. Affronti states:

The public’s perception of all this is also important to address. It is conceivable that individuals with SOD (or those who think that they have this problem) will come upon the information reported in the study by Cheon et al somewhere, somehow. “Googling” sphincter of Oddi dysfunction brings up some pretty interesting things, including blogs in which all sorts of remedies are discussed by people with various levels of medical knowledge. One of my favorites is at http://www.momathome.com. If you want a peek at what some of our patients with SOD are saying outside the examination room, check it out.

Wow.

It doesn’t even matter what I said in the original post anymore, but the fact that I’m still maintaining this site and blogging away on what matters to me does matter. It’s not about pageviews. It’s about the people who might relate to something I’ve posted, and even the chance that another post could organically evolve to something that has an impact again.