Technology

Cool Tools / Software / Internet — 2 Comments
28
Dec 07

Google Calendar as memory

I’ve been attending to my finances in my typical feast or famine fashion. I sat down and looked through my records after ignoring everything for a few weeks… checked my accounts, analyzed earning / spending and tried to see where I can cut costs. I have two checking accounts (one business and one personal), two savings accounts, and a handful of different brokerage accounts (partly due to having a few different 401k plans over the years and partly from chasing after the lowest commissions). As a result, the process can get complicated.

One thing I discovered is that I had some additional charges on my cellphone bill due to receiving a bunch of text messages from a few people I’ve been following in Twitter. (This was a case of poetic justice as I unfairly maligned Twitter in the past.)

To avoid future surprises, I signed up for a bulk messaging package ($5 a month). Then I called to have the plan applied retroactively so I could save forty bucks on my past bill. Many people would not have done this, but I enjoy negotiating.

The whole point of this is that I found another nice use for Google Calendar. Normally after such a conversation, I might make a note of who I talked to and what was the outcome, so I could safely forget all about it. This time I dropped an entry into Google Calendar and included all the relevant information. If I need to reference the event down the line, I can use Google Calendar’s search function. As Ron Popeil might say, “Set it and forget it.”

Cool Tools / General / Software / Internet — 1 Comment
01
Dec 07

You don’t need GPS

If I made a list of all the things I wanted for Christmas, it would include two items. A new laptop and a GPS receiver. Unfortunately, the laptop is a little more necessary.

There was some good news last week that made everything better. Google released a really cool update to Google Maps. Now that Google has released a new version of Google Maps for mobile devices (with My Location), I can do 70% of what I would do with a standard GPS receiver (Garmin, TomTom, etc.) on my Blackberry, which, unlike most other gadgets, I always have with me. Using this new version of Google Maps I can determine my position to within a few hundred meters; close enough for things like driving directions and finding the nearest Starbucks. The Google Maps application does this by using your cellphone to figure out where you are in relation to the nearest cell towers. It works very similar to GPS in that instead of determining position by triangulation against orbital satellites, it just asks your phone where the nearest cell towers are and figures it out from there.

Google was nice enough to put together an informative video about how it works:

Technology — Comments Off on Cellphone subsidies = trap for consumers
13
Nov 07

Cellphone subsidies = trap for consumers

Walt Mossberg makes some good points on why it’s important to open up the mobile telephone industry. The carriers argue that they have to force long-term contracts and lock down access in order to offer subsidies. As Mossberg points out, this is a trap for consumers. I’m sure we’ve all seen those prepaid wireless phones they sell at Target and Wal-mart. They usually run about $60-$100 per handset with the expectation but not the certainty that they will get more money out of you. This price point is not far off from what the carriers charge even if you get a one-year contract. If the FCC mandated handset portability as they have in Europe, carriers would adapt their product to meet the market demands.

But the problem is even worse. The government didn’t require the CDMA companies to include a removable account-information chip, called a SIM card, in their phones. So, unlike people with GSM phones, Sprint and Verizon customers can’t keep their phones if they switch between the two carriers, even though they use the same basic technology. And, the government allows the GSM carriers to “lock” their phones, so a SIM card from a rival carrier won’t work in them, at least for a period of time. Techies can sometimes figure out how to get around this, but average folks can’t.

The carriers defend these restrictions partly by pointing out that they subsidize the cost of the phones in order to get you to use their networks. That’s also, they say, why they require contracts and charge early-termination fees. Without the subsidies, they say, that $99 phone might be $299, so it’s only fair to keep you from fleeing their networks, at least too quickly.

But this whole cellphone subsidy game is an archaic remnant of the days when mobile phones were costly novelties. Today, subsidies are a trap for consumers. If subsidies were removed, along with the restrictions that flow from them, the market would quickly produce cheap phones, just as it has produced cheap, unsubsidized versions of every other digital product, from $399 computers to $79 iPods.

Society / Technology — 2 Comments
12
Nov 07

QR-Code: Linking the physical world

QR-Code from WikipediaQR-Code (quick response barcode) is a 2-dimensional printed barcode-like system used to encode information such as URL’s, phone numbers, text, and other data. The code image can be read by a scanner or decoded from a photographic image of the printed code.

From the QR Code web site: “QR Code is a two-dimensional barcode, used widely in Japan. The advantage of QR Code from well-known barcode is larger data capacity (more than 100 bytes, typically) and error correction.”

From Wikipedia:

Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR-Code is now used in a much broader context spanning both commercial tracking applications as well as convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users. QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that a user might need information about. A user having a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phones browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks. A user can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.

The use of these types of codes allows more physical world interaction with our communication devices. For example, you could launch a URL directly from the code image printed on a show flyer or film showing. Or, you could print a QR Code on your business card to allow people to easily capture your contact information and copy to their phone.

Related stuff:

  1. PHP and Perl scripts to generate QR Code.
  2. Semanote: Tag the world This looks like fun.
  3. QuickMark: Read barcodes and QR-code with your webcam
  4. Web-based QR-Code generator
  5. TED Talks: Jan Chipchase: Our cell phones, ourselves: Must watch video.
  6. QR-Code processing library
  7. QR-Code WordPress Plugin: WP-QRcode is a highly configurable plugin that generates QR codes for your blog posts and lets you show them in specific places in your WordPress website. The purpose is for mobile phone users to have easy access to your posts by capturing the QR code by the phone’s camera and then go straightly to your post from the phone’s web browser.

I would like to be able to photograph and read barcodes from my Blackberry, however most mobile readers do not support the Blackberry. If you know of any reader that does, please let me know.

If you have a Windows Mobile Device or Symbian device you can use the following applications: Kaywa Reader, QuickMark. Devices that support J2ME can use QRMidlet.

Media / Software / Internet — Comments Off on Now I get it. I think.
07
Nov 07

Now I get it. I think.

I was startled when my 18 year old cousin told me to “email” him on MySpace. I asked, “No, what is your email address? So, I can actually send you an email.” Email = MySpace? Since I’m not a user of MySpace’s closed garden, basic old-fashioned open-protocol email is how I get in touch with people. He had a Hotmail account, but couldn’t remember it. I was really surprised that he contacts his friends solely via MySpace and the cellphone. But, my guess is a lot of other people his age are the same way. After all, on MySpace only your friends can message you, right?

It just seems like a strange way to do things. I have a feeling a lot of kids these days are comfortable using the Internet, but that maybe they find aspects of it a little complicated so MySpace and Facebook have a natural appeal. It’s easy. No need to manage multiple accounts for blogging, photos, messaging, etc. Just sign up for whichever social network is hot and go crazy.

I take it for granted that not everyone enjoys the challenges that come with some stuff on the Internet. So, I get it now. I think. Social networks make the Internet easy by keeping everything all in one place. It’s like AOL, but not old-skool AOL, which is for old people. Is that it?

Cool Tools / General / Software / Internet / Technology — 1 Comment
15
Sep 07

Cheap and easy way to go paperless

I read a good entry over at Signal V. Noise about how to go paperless by using an expensive duplex scanner from Fujitsu. While I still think this is a great way to do it, and I may even buy one of those scanners, a while back I came up with an easier and far cheaper way to scan my mail and documents into a digital form and have been using it for a while.

Most offices, like mine, have fax machines or fax copiers. I also have a fax to email service through my toll-free provider, Ring Central, where your fax documents are scanned and emailed to you as PDF attachments. If I ever want to archive a paper document into a digital form, I just fax it to myself and save the PDF to my computer. I also leave a copy in my gmail account where I can access the file from anywhere.

The only downside I have discovered is that the faxed PDF is not transformed into indexable text via OCR (optical character recognition) during the scanning process. I compensate for this shortcoming by giving each document a readily comprehensible file name. If you fax each document at a high enough resolution you may be able to perform OCR on the output, however the descriptive file naming used in conjunction with Google Desktop Search has worked well for me.

Friends / Software / Internet — Comments Off on The Real Fleury Blog
25
Aug 07

The Real Fleury Blog

My friend Phillip recently recommended the blog of Marc and Nathalie Fleury. Marc is the former CEO of JBoss, which was acquired by Redhat. Both Fleury’s are entertaining bloggers with a matched sharp sense of humor. Maybe it’s a French thing. Many of Marc’s entries are delightfully over the top like Fake Steve Jobs, but with the added bonus that it’s the real Marc Fleury. For example:

From Remember, I don’t give a shit:

And, while you’re at it, please address me as Doctor Fleury, and no, that’s not my DJ name. I didn’t suffer through ten years of differential equations to be talking on a first name basis with some random honky.

From Life After Marc Fleury:

And then I wonder, maybe Cameron is on to something. Could it be that all the ballsy visionaries are in one place and all the pontificating windbags are in another? Is it possible that Cameron is very happy at Oracle, just as it is apparent that Shaun is happier at Red Hat and I am only happy when I call the shots?

Good stuff.

Music / Software / Internet — 1 Comment
25
Aug 07

Wake up like Bill Murray

groundhogday.jpgThe Blackberry makes a pretty good alarm clock. It has a weekend off setting, so you can leave the alarm set all the time. And, it’s portable and battery-powered so you can hide it on a shelf or behind something, so you have to get up and turn it off. It also makes an awesome travel alarm. Just stretch out, set the alarm and you’re good to go. Another good feature is the ability to set the alarm to play any sound file based on how you like to wake up. The other day I had the idea to create a ringtone from Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” to use as my alarm sound a la Phil Connors in the Harold Ramis classic, Groundhog Day. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray is jaded weatherman, Phil Connors. Trapped in time, he wakes each morning to a clock radio playing “I Got You Babe” to relive the same day over and over.

When every day can feel like a repeat of the day before, it makes the perfect song to wake up to. Download it to your Blackberry or cellphone.

Literature / Media / Software / Internet — Comments Off on Plano, Texas Library Lookup via Amazon
24
Aug 07

Plano, Texas Library Lookup via Amazon

A while back I recommended a cool Greasemonkey script to check the library for the books you are browsing at Amazon.com. It has saved me a ton of money (sorry Amazon) and has turned me into a regular library patron. Now when I click a link to Amazon, the script checks to see if my libraries have the book. Then I can click through and put the book on hold and grab it when I get to the library.

I was talking to this guy I work with about good books and I told him about this script and found out which library he goes to. Then I just edited the script to support his library. So, if you get your books at the Plano library, you can now use this script. (Remember to install Greasemonkey for Firefox first.)

While we’re at it, if you have a library and can’t find a similar script on userscripts.org, let me know what library you go to and I can whip one up for you.

For more on Greasemonkey, you can read Mark Pilgrim’s Greasemonkey Hacks in its entirety online.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →