Okay, these are just concept videos....but I'm glad I'm not the only one whose thinking about dropping his laptop. This feature is a MUST for the always-on-the-go missionary.
If you live in a country where coffee is ALWAYS near by, you'll want this feature.
Just concepts...I'd just be happy to find a way to quit roasting motherboards over the poor power grid in my country.
via GottaBeMobile
A lot of missionaries rely (unfortunately in my opinion) on web-based mail services. I say unfortunately because many missionaries live in Internet-slow countries and they spend countless hours waiting for pages to reload. Using Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird is a much better solution, and a couple of the below solutions give you that flexibility.
If you're going to use a web-based mail service, why not use the best? Last month TechCrunch compared the top three mail services, Hotmail, Gmail & Yahoo.
Their conclusion:
Overall we prefer Gmail over all other webmail applications because performance (speed) is consistently fast, and emails can be tagged making search much more effective. They also offer more storage and other features, and it’s free. However, Yahoo and Live Hotmail offer more mainstream Outlook-like user interfaces (although Live Hotmail does not allow you to access other email accounts from their application), whereas Gmail takes some time to get used to. If you are looking for speed and tagging is important, Gmail is for you. If you are looking for the closest thing to Outlook online, go with Yahoo Mail.
Read the post for more details.
I haven't posted any eye-candy here in forever, so today is the day. I've given various PowerPoint presentation between 1-3 times a day for the last two months or so. For the most part, people seem to stay engaged with what I'm presenting. But PowerPoint sure has its limitations.
Check out Jeff Han's demonstration of his new touch screen technology. It runs on a a regular computer (though its a six figure version) and looks distinctly "Minority Reporti-ish." You can read more about it here. Sorry I can't embed the video right here...it won't embed for some reason.
I would be awesome to have that kind of technology for missionary presentation! Give us another 15 years and we'll be there.
via DefenseTech
Light posting lately. I'm still out visiting the churches of my parent organization, the Christian & Missionary Alliance. What a privilege it has been to meet so many people that make my organization a great one. I'm traveling around North Carolina at the moment, a five week tour that will take me to twenty churches when I finish. Each one of the those churches has around 60-150 in it. Each one of those people have a name.
So many names.
Remembering people's names is challenging for many people, yet no sound is as sweet to someone as the sound of their own name.
The folks over at the Ririan Project have a great post on how to remember people's names. They list nine steps which were a great review for me last night. Honestly, I'm slacking in the mental discipline necessary to remember 10-15 new names each day. This post was a good reminder, encouragement and refresher on how to do it more effectively.
I'd list those nine steps briefly here, but then you wouldn't read the post.! If you are in a position that involves regularly meeting people and learning names, this post is worth your while.
If you've read this blog for any length of time you know that I have a thing for tools that let people collaborate at a distance. Maybe that's because I'm frequently far away from the people with whom I want to collaborate!
Skrbl is a very nice online whiteboard that can be created almost instantly. In their words:
The complete web whiteboard. Just start skrbl, give out your URL and instantly share online. Use skrbl to collaborate with others or, keep it your own private web space. Write notes, sketch drawings, upload pictures, share files...
Everyone sees the same screen,
Everybody stays on the same page.
You can write with a mouse or with text. You can insert graphics and 
You can use this for your self, as an online bulletin board or more valuably, invite others to participate in an online brainstorming session.
Registered users (free) can add people to the session either by sending 
On the DOWNSIDE, I sent a link to a friend who was on a 3 meg broadband connection and after about 15 minutes, he still hadn't seen anything drawn on the screen. Whooops.
Skrbl is still in beta but watch out for this little app. It's got a lot to offer.
via Lifehacker
If you're a Skype user there are a couple of things you may want to be aware of. First, the beta of skype 3.1 was released today. As always, it's beta, so use at your own risk. It has some nice new features, including the long-awaited "typing indicator." That is, when in chat you'll be notified when other people are typing. Read more about the beta here.
The second is about the release of Skype Pro. If you're in Europe this may be worth looking into:
The Skype Pro subscription deal includes:
- Zero cents per minute calling to domestic landlines in your country — this means you can talk as long as you like and only pay the connection fee (3.9 cents or equivalent) for each call that you make to domestic landlines
- Free Skype Voicemail (normally €15 per year)
- €30 discount on SkypeIn numbers
- €5 Skype Credit included as part of the introductory offer (see below)
- A €30 discount on a Philips VoIP 841 cordless phone.
- A €10 discount on an SMC WiFi phone.
- Money off a series of Skype Extras.
Bonus: If you get there quickly, you can purchase Skype Pro on a five month basis for €10 and receive €5 Skype credit absolutely free.
Details here.
Sorry for the light posting this last week. I'm home for a few days in between speaking commitments and I'm mostly "fasting" from the Internet more or less.
I blogged about AllFreeCalls a couple of weeks ago and now it appears that they're shot down for the time being. I just thought you may want to know :)
Check out TechCrunch for more info.
TechCrunch is reporting on a service called AllFreeCalls which enables you to make overseas calls to select location for the price of a call to Iowa.
Here's how this apparently works. Calls to rural Iowa are subsidized by you, the taxpayer. The subsidy is greater than the cost of the overseas call so AllFreeCalls pockets the difference. For more information on these details check out the comments on this post or here.
Only select countries qualify, but the include places like Canada, China, much of Western Europe and...especially for us in Kosovo, land lines in Serbia (Kosovo landlines use the Serbian country code so this should work).
This is a pretty great deal if you already have free or cheap long-distance service within the US. If you're not a Skype user, or if the folks you're trying to reach have lousy Internet service, making Skype impractical, see if you're country is included.
If you're outside the US, one TechCrunch commenter reports using this successfully with SkypeOut. In fact, if might try this with Skype's new unlimited calling plan for $14.95. Couple this with AllFreeCalls and your telecom costs just dropped to about zero.
Most of us use either snail-mail and/or email to keep people up-to-date back home. I think everyone on my team, for example, writes an update somewhere between once a week and once a quarter. While blogging is changing this dynamic some what, I can still say things in an email to my friends and supporters that I won't write in a blog entry.
To that end, what are the best practices for using email for updating your supporters? I'm going to riff on this DownloadSquad post on mailing list etiquette and suggest a few tips.
A. Use a list-server. A "list server" is a computer on the Internet that keeps all of your email address for you. When I want to write an email to everyone on my list I send an email to a single address and then the list server sends it out to everyone on the list. Here are the advantages:
B. Send an introduction when you add someone to your list. It's good practice to confirm with them that they were added. It's also a nice touch to let them know from the beginning how they can "un-subscribe" to your newsletter. It may be another few weeks or a month before you send your next update; don't keep them wondering.
C. Add a subject prefix. This is a great idea and suggested on the DLS post. On the subject line use a common subject for all of your updates like <kornball> Kosovo Konnection: January </kornball>. That way when people see your newsletter in their inbox they'll immediately know its from you and they can quickly sort it or read it.
D. Make it easy to un-subscribe. How does your best friend from 15 years ago tell you politely that your dumb newsletters are plugging up his inbox and that he no longer cares to hear news about East-Krasnaland or the lost people groups there-of? I usually add a footer to give people instruction for unsubscribing from the list server. This is another advantage of using a list server to do your mailing for you. They can unsubscribe and you'll never be the wiser. Most list-servers have settings that will allow you to know if your Aunt Grace dumped your missive, but sometimes its easier to be oblivious.
E. On a non-technical note, BE YOURSELF. Every once in a while I read a prayer letter that sounds like its been snatched from A.W. Tozer or Oswald Chambers. Guess what, you're probably not him! Just be yourself (praise God & hallelujah). When you're having a tough time (but resting in the arms of Jesus and trusting in his steadfast love) just say so. In other words, cut the crap. You don't have to bleed all over people to get your point across, but you don't have to smother them with a lot of psuedo-spiritual lingo either.
F. Keep them short, but keep them regular. When I'm on the field I try to write briefly but regularly, every two weeks or so. I want them to be frequent enough that people know what's going on without overwhelming people. If you're only writing every quarter you'll be forgotten by everyone but your relatives. If you're scheduling a big outreach for Friday, shoot your list a note Thursday (deepening on your time-zone) and then a quick note on Saturday morning.
Check out the DownLoadSquad post for a few more. It's really geared for mailing lists for hobbyists and special interest groups, but it has some good information for those of us who rely on email to communicate with the folks back home.
On the plane from Phoenix to Ontario, CA, today I listened to the Harvard Business Review Ideacast 2 from last May 17th. I'm trying to get caught up on these older casts and this one was a winner. From the description:
How to Manage the Alpha Male: Whether he's your boss, your subordinate, your colleague, or your client, learn how to get the best of what the Alpha Male has to offer.
I thought this was a particularly good podcast as it relates to missionaries and missionary life. Some missionaries are driven, Type-A, Alpha male types. Others, of course, are as varied as any other population group. Since we tend to spiritualize everything in Christian circles, however, the Alpha type tends to be either wildly praised as visionary and prophetic, or roundly criticized as sinful, selfish, self-absorbed, control-freaks, etc.
Some leaders are Alpha-males, though not all. As with any personality type these folks come with their attendant strengths and weaknesses.
The authors in the podcast, who have written a book entitled, The Alpha-Male Syndrome, from the Harvard Business School Press. In the book they detail the results of their study indicating, unsurprisingly, that the range of Alpha-Male traits goes from extremely strong and positive to dysfunctional. They also discovered that the greater the strength the greater the complimentary weakness and that age positively correlates to the strengths.
They gave the following examples:
If you work with Alpha-males the podcast is worth a listen. Their comments, and the book they've written, have some solid advice for both dealing with one's alpha-maleness and that of others one might work with.
Michael Hyatt has been cranking out the great posts lately. Yesterday he wrote one on Ten Annoying Meeting Behaviors which was outstanding.
I've been in meetings both in the church and on the mission field where I've seen all of these behaviors. I've been guilty of many of them too, but that's something I'm working hard to avoid...especially "checking email while in a meeting."
Because these are so well writen, I'm just going to quote at length.
There are some real stingers in this list. In some ways these kinds of behaviors may be more prevelent in faith-based-organization meetings than in the for-profit sector. I've had church elders tell me that they wanted to leave "work behind" when they came to church meetings. But Micahel nails it when he diagnoses the core problem: "When you really get down to it, all of these flow from the same basic problem: disrespect"
Did he miss any in his list?
I've noticed a tendency that comes from larger, cheaper hard rives. I pay less attention to duplicates of data, music, and especially, photos. What difference does it make when you have a half terabyte of storage?
Those of us running on laptops may be a little more sensitive, but I found a little utility called CloneSpy that's opened my eyes a little.
CloneSpy is a duplicate file-finder that doesn't just search for duplicate file names, it searches for duplicate bits. That is, it searches for duplicate files that may even have different file names but contain the same date.
CloneSpy works pretty intuitively and seems be careful to avoid letting you delete important stuff.
My only beef so far with it is that you have to make a decision on each group of duplicate files, rather than handling them in a larger batch. On the other hand, I suppose that keeps people like me from becoming "delete happy" and losing something important.
via Download Squad
Jaanus, over at the Skype blog gives some further explanation of Skype's new pricing structure. You may have seen this before, but there has apparently been a lot of rumor and opinion circulating as to what it all means. Here's a recap from Jaanus:
- As of January 18, a connection fee of 0.039 € or equivalent applies to SkypeOut calls after the fifth second, with the exception in the next two bullets.
- The connection fee does not apply if you are on the Skype Unlimited plan in the US or Canada, or Talk for Britain plan in the UK.
- The connection fee doesn’t apply to toll-free calls. You can do toll-free calls without having any Skype Credit or paying anything.
- The following regions were added to our Global Rate of 0.017 € per minute: Czech Republic, Guam, Hungary, Israel, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Puerto Rico and both Alaska and Hawaii in the United States.
- We are working on our new Skype Pro offering that, among other things, will have domestic SkypeOut calling in a number of countries with a connection fee but no per-minute charges. You can sign up to receive more info by e-mail, and it will of course be here on the blog. No date yet, but I think it’s safe to say we will speak more about Skype Pro in weeks, rather than months.
- Nothing changed in the structure of our other prices (Voicemail, SkypeIn, or free Skype-to-Skype).
If I'm reading this correctly, I'll now have to pay $.74 per minute to call Kosovo mobile phone (.039+.0354=.0744). That's significantly higher than what I was paying a year ago to SkypeOut a colleague's mobile phone.
If I'm not mistaken that's now significantly higher than a run-of-the-mill long-distance card from a retail warehouse store (Sams, Costco, etc.) If memory serves, and I can't find the data on the Sams Club site, I used to pay around $.50 / minute from the US to a Kosovo mobile (which are routed through Morocco for technical reasons.)
If you've been using Skype for US-to-foreign calls you may want to check your rates. Rates to the countries mentioned above are now apparently cheaper, but prices to the off-the-beaten-track places look like they're going up.
I'm always interested in how various people define leadership. To some you either have it or you don't. To others leadership is the synthesis of traits which can be learned and developed.
Pastor Tony Morgan wrote a great post called, 10 Easy Ways to Know You're Not a Leader. Tony is self-confessedly in the "you have it or you don't" leadership camp. While I'm not sure I agree with that I love his Top Ten NOTs of leadership:
I think this is a pretty good list. While you might take issue with one or two, flipped on their heads this is a pretty good list of characteristics. As I read through each item different things hit me, especially numbers one and two.
#1. I just listed to a great podcast from the guys at Manager Tools. One of the things that came through from their experience is that good leaders get the job done and don't wait for more funding, more personnel, etc.
#2. I was struck by many conversations with my good friend David Aderholdt who has frequently commented that he feels that one can often have more influence outside of leadership positions than inside them.
May God all give us both great vision for what he wants done, and the perseverance to gut it out until we get there.
via Michael Hyatt
WebWorkerDaily has a great article today on managing kids and the home office. As a missionary, whether I'm on the field or on home assignment in the US, I do much of my planning, studying and administrative work from my home. I would imagine this is true of most missionaries. At the same time, I have two beautiful little girls who frequently want and need daddy's time and attention. What to do?
WWD frames the discussion with this question: Are you going to leave the door to your (literal or figurative) office open or closed to your kids? The author decides to leave it "open" and gives a number of great suggestions for managing work and kids at home.
This is a question that I've struggled with as well and have also decided to keep the door open. It's something of a relief to realize that work-at-home parents from many professions are dealing with the same issues.
If you're wrestling with how to be both mom or dad at home, and gainfully employed, check out the WWD posts and comments.
I've been a fan of both Microsoft OneNote and MindJet MindManager for several years. They both occupy important places in my toolbox. I use OneNote almost daily for project tracking, reference and the core of my productivity workflow. I use MindManager for planning, brainstorming, sermon writing, agenda creation and taking notes of conversations.
Now the folks at MindJet Labs have released the OneNote 2007 + MindManager tool which increases the ability of these two tools to work together. Basically the tool provides:
These function allow the passing of data between the two applications:
Rob Bushway previously outlined how to hyperlink from MindManager to OneNote, but this new tool should make it much more natural to share data between the two applications. Some of this functionality is really already of part of OneNote. But the new open OneNote API is going to make this kind of development all the more common and I'm looking forward to seeing how real geeks leverage the power of OneNote for by connecting it other applications.
via David Rasmussen
Judi Sohn over at WebWorkerDaily recently posted a great article on the ten ways you can work with and communicate with colleagues at a distance and the best tools for doing each. The ten are:
She goes one to gives some pros and cons for each approach and some of the best tools for each of the ten modalities. If you work with people over long distances this article is worth your while.
Descapa, over at the OneNote Extensibility blog gives a great usability tip for Firefox today. You may have run accross this before, but if not its worth checking out.
. If you type "cnn" and then hit ctrl-enter it will prepend the "www." and append ".com" so you have "www.cnn.com" which is great!
Just today I got a Starbucks gift card and I wanted to see the balance on the card and to do so I would need to go to "www.starbucks.com/card" as it was printed on the back of the card. I had already opened Firefox and I typed starbucks in the address bar and at this point I would go through the effort to hit home type www., hit end type .com and then "/card" but instead I just typed "starbucks/card" and I hit Ctrl-Enter and Firefox filled in the rest for me so I went to www.starbucks.com/card. It was just too awesome.
I tried it again, for example the OneNote site is: www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/ so I just typed "microsoft/office/onenote" and Ctrl-Enter and it went to the right site! Sadly this doesn't work in IE 7 : ( However I was just very pleased to see this feature working and just how I would try it too!
Technorati tags: Firefox
Maybe the timing of this post is a little off. This time of year everyone is talking about New Year’s Resolutions. I’m not a big believe in resolutions…I don’t think they work for me. They work for some people, but not for me. You may be a little like me, in fact, according this WNBC/Marist College poll only 44% of adults are planning on New Year’s Resolutions this year.
Instead, I try to think about this question:
What one thing can I do today that will make the biggest different 120 days from now, or 365 days from now.
Answering that question helps me to leverage today for tomorrow. You see, I can't get my head around, "this year I'm going to exercise more & lose weight" It will never happen. I can only think about, "I'm going to exercise three times this week." I can't handle "this year I'm going to be a better person." I can only daily allow God to work on my heart through daily spiritual disciplines. Incidentally, according to the poll above these are the two most popular New Years Resolutions
Over the years I’ve come up with a list of things that I want to be about regularly that I think will pay off big 120 days from now. Of course, it may not be that on May 3 such and such will happen. But the value of the regular discipline of “one things” aggregates over time. Here are some of my “one things”:
Prayer & Bible Reading – I believe that my spiritual life is my life’s center out of which all personal development, discipline and horizontal & vertical relationships derive. This one thing pays big dividends over time, 120 days from now or 1200 days from now.
Scripture Memorization – This is similar to the first one but I’m committed (right now) to memorizing large blocks of Scripture. This does a number of things. It’s fantastic mental exercise which helps me to stay focused and sharp in other areas of my life. It also firmly roots me the Reality of what God says. Right now I’m using a method I wrote about here.
Exercise - This is a no brainer; regular exercise makes a significant difference in how I feel, think and act. Guess what, I’m not a very disciplined person when it comes to exercise. I’ve never had to do much to maintain my weight. But I believe that I feel better and think more sharply when I do. I don't exercise every day, but I try to shoot for three times a week.
Drinking Water - This may seem odd, but as someone with kidney stones I want to keep track of roughly how much water I'm drinking. I don't care about the totals, I just care about the trends.
Weekly Review/Daily Process-Inbox - This is something out of David Allen's Getting Things Done. In short, both daily and once a week I review all of my outstanding projects, to-dos, goals, etc.
Write/Blog - I've committed to blogging fairly regularly, not because I think there are oh-so-many people interested in what I'm writing, but because its good exercise. If you want to be a better writer you have to write. Blogging forces me, in a quasi-public way, to get out there and try to put my thoughts "down on paper."
Language Study – as a missionary in a foreign country there is nothing more important to my continued impact than my ability to communicate with the people with whom I live. At the same time, I set the bar for this pretty low. I want to spend 15 minutes every day studying language. That’s ridiculously low, you might say. But if you ask missionaries who are currently on home assignment in the US how much time they spend in the study of their adopted language few will admit to much. In fact, last spring I was busily scanning in language resource books so that I could bring digital copies home with me. One of my colleagues, who is the sharpest language learner on our field laughed and said good-naturedly, don’t bother…you’ll never look at them. Why? Because there is so much else to do while on home assignment. And she’s right…except I’ve determined that plugging away at the language for a short time every day will pay off when we return to Kosovo.
Professional Reading – This is a no brainer too, but one that many missionaries over look. Being mindful of one’s personal development pays huge dividends down the road. Here again I’m only looking to spend 15 minutes a day in professional development. To this point I’ve been pretty selective of what I think counts. For example, I just finished an awesome book called “The Arabists” by Robert Kaplan. It’s the story of how modern diplomacy in the middle east has been formed by the foreign service officers who lived there long term. It's an awesome book, but it doesn’t feed into my professional development, so I didn’t count it. Right now I count books (or podcasts) on missiology, theology, business management, finance management, etc. These are things that specifically hone the tools in my tool box or give me new tools all together.
Again, I’m not interested in spending hours every day; there is just too much to do. But by spending some time each day my mind is exposed to new material in ways that help me be mindful of my own development.
Of course it's great to have a list of regular disciplines. But how do I map my progress?
Last May I discovered Joe's Goals which has really helped me track the “one things” in my life. Joe's Goals allows me to make my disciplines regular, instead of daily. That way I don't get too hung up, too neurotic about them.
Joe's Goals gives me a handy graph to help chart these against time and also weigh them for importance. My daily devotions and weekly review are weighted at three points, water drinking gets only one. It's not a perfect tool, but it's very, very handy.
If you're still reading you can from the above graphic that I didn't hit too many of my "one things" over the weekend. That's true! We had friends visit from out of town and all my attention was on them, not on hitting the daily biggies. And you know what? That' just the way it ought to be! The "one things" are not my masters, they're my servants. Tracking my goals over a longer period of time gives me a larger context in which to evaluate myself. One weekend spent doing something else more important fits in appropriately. At the same time, when I began a new week today I was easily able to get back in the groove.
For my money, forget about New Years Resolutions. Focus on doing the things today, or this week, which will leverage your tomorrow.
Recently a friend of mine, Matt Peace, turned me on to the Harvard Business Review Ideacast series. Ideacast is a great biweekly series of podcasts that include book reviews, interviews with notables, and "lessons learned" from recent business events.
Working backward from the current podcast I hit on number 6 which caught my attention. Its from July, 2006.
How Your Company Can Make Better Decisions: In this look at organizational decision-making in light of Merck & Co - Vioxx experience, Harvard Business School Professor David Garvin offers an improved prescription for company decision-making.
Okay, I have to admit I was clueless that there was a problem, but Garvin makes some great observations:
Here is some advice to managers for creating better decision-making within their organization:
This is great advice for Christian organizations. Frequently, in the name of "constituted authority," "being on the same page" or "God's will" dissenting viewpoints, contrarians and minority view points are suppressed. Decision-making is paralyzed in these contexts out of fear of being "rebellious." Good decision-making requires openness, honesty, listening-skills and compassion. These are traits Christian organizations should have in abundance.
Jaanus over at the Skype blog announced another extra today called Unyte. Unyte is a document sharing facility built into Skype that allows you to share documents, applications and even desktops with others you're speaking with.
Unyte is great for when you’re discussing a project with colleagues. If you are on a conference call with four co-workers and want to discuss a project plan you have all been working on, use Unyte to share the document with everyone on the call and any updates you make will be seen straight away by everyone.
This probably isn't for everyone, but it's another example of how the barriers of distance are collapsing around us. Skype is really making online collaboration approachable for the masses, for the poor, and for the technically challenged. Seriously, the things that Skype, and other IP Communications companies, are offering are bringing this kind of technology down to home-espresso-maker level. They're still not for everyone, but they're becoming for more and more the regular folk.
I've been using BlogJet as my blog editor since April 2005 and needed something like it for a couple of reasons:
BlogJet did both of these fantastically and I regularly encouraged others to give it a try. Other editors I tried either didn't handle pictures well, or where priced out of reach or just didn't click with me. To be honest, it took a long time to get BlogJet to upload my pictures properly. For some reason it couldn't communicate to my FTP server and this was an issue for a number of people in BlogJet's support forums. After about six months it was fixed and I purchased the program and haven't look back.
Last week I upgraded from the old Blogger to the new Blogger. The new Blogger has a lot of great features and I'm glad I made the change. The downside is that BlogJet can't communicate with the new version. One minute I'm posting a blog with no problems, the next I'm back to using Performancing or Blogger's built in web-based editor....yuck.
That will be fixed in the next version; Dmitry has been working on BlogJet 2.0 for quite a long time, and I know he wants to get the product right. He's been very responsive to my own requests for technical help and he's made a great product. The problem is that he's not been very forthcoming about a ship date for 2.0 He posted a screenshot of 2.0 and talked about new instant search capabilities in August. Then in November he clarified the upgrade pricing policy, which is very reasonable.
But Blogger Beta went live about a month ago and he's not responded to anyone's concern that the current BlogJet won't work with it. I don't have any idea how many BlogJet users use Blogger, but I would guess that Dmitry's install base is fairly large. I would think he would release a patch, or make the 2.0 beta public, or respond in some way. But in one of the threads on the BlogJet support forum Dmitry simply says on November 3: "No dates yet, but it will be released soon." When one forum member says that "soon" isn't good enough Dmitry simply replies:
"Yep... But I promised not to make promises
But since this official announcement: http://www.blogjet.com/blog/2006/11/03/ … ube-demos/
you may not afraid of buying the current version"
Now, I actually applaud Dmitry's commitment to his product and desire to avoid endless Microsoft-like-slipped-ship-dates. At the same time, its been two months since he's made mention of 2.0 and two months is an eternity when you're trying to blog daily.
So, while I love BlogJet and wish it and Dmitry all the best, I decided I needed another option. So this morning I downloaded Windows Live Writer and gave it a whirl again.
Windows Live Writer was released last spring or summer and everyone raved about it for a while. I downloaded it and tried it, but couldn't figure out the picture uploading scheme in the 90 seconds I tried it and went back to BlogJet. Until last week.
Now it's working great, supports plug-ins for things like ink and Flickr and is as easy to use as BlogJet.
I continue to enjoy the benefits of the “Getting Things Done” methodology, even though I have a lot fewer projects on my plate. Sometimes it’s nice to have a visual reminder of the work flow behind the methodology. Stefanos Karagos over at Anabubula.com has created some great GTD desktop wallpaper for your motivational purposes.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
The first message, posted on the Google Groups forum on December 19, stated “Found
my account clean..nothing in Inbox, contacts ,sent mail..How can all
these information residing in different folders disappear? ..How to
write to gmail help team to restore the account..is it possible?..Where
to report this abuse?.Any help ..Welcome..Thanks in advance ps101″Other Gmail users then added to the conversation, saying that their
emails had been deleted as well. Most of the users reported using
Firefox 2.0 and that Gmail was open in their browser when the deletions
occured.
Everyone writing about the new Blogger, which just came out of beta. What's been odd is that people who are new to blogging have been using the new version for months while older "customers" have been stuck with the old version.
Last night up "upgraded" both my blogs, this one and ...one missionary in Kosovo to the new version. In the main, I like what they've done with the upgrade. The new version includes tags (which Blogger calls labels), new template options, new publishing method, etc. It also includes some slightly heavier weight improvements:
Lately I’ve noticed these strange folders on my c:\ drive that usually have names like: 19464fae56553de2257e. I’ve been wondering what they are, assuming that they’re safe to delete, but not quite having the nerve to.
Ed Bott “unpacks” them for us:
I have those on several machines here. They’re perfectly normal, if a bit baffling. The best clue [is] the name of the attached file: msxml4-KB927978-enu.log
It’s easy enough to break that down:
- The .log extension means this is a log file, in text format, documenting changes that were made to the system.
- The -enu bit at the end means it was in the English (U.S.) language.
- KB927978 refers to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article number.
- And if you look for that article, you find out that it’s entitled “MS06-071: Security update for Microsoft XML Core Services 4.0&Prime, which pretty neatly takes care of the msxml4 part at the beginning of the name.
The long, gobbledygook number is a security precaution. If you write a patch to a known location on every one of a few hundred million PCs, then the bad guys know to target that location. By creating a system-generated name for the folder, it’s impossible for an attacker to target the files in that location.
If you’ve got one or more of these folders hanging around, you can safely delete it.
Go ahead an delete these pesky folders. Oh, and ya, I know, Mac users don’t need to worry about them.
I remember my first real need to create digital audio files from cassette tapes. I was doing foreign language study and hated using a tape recorder for the cassette that was included in our study program. I always got lost, and couldn’t figure out whether Fast Forward was really Reverse or not. I could never cue the appropriate spot so I finally decided I would try to record the tape into my laptop and access any point on the tape almost instantly.
But how to do it? I started, like a lot of people with Windows’ built in “Sound Recorder” only to find out it would only record a section about two minutes long. Then I began to peruse the web to find some software that would let me, not only convert my language cassette tapes into something usable, but also record foreign language TV, radio and edit the files from the MP3 recorder I used for language study.
I wish I would have had access to Rick Brioda’s latest piece in LifeHacker. Rick offers another basic tutorial in his “Alpha Geek” series, this time on converting cassette tapes direct to MP3s on your computer. It’s not really very complicated; here’s what Rick used:
- A cassette player. I dug out my old Walkman, which I found perfectly suited to the task, but you could also use a tape deck.
- A stereo patch cord. Specifically, you need a cable that connects your Walkman's headphone jack to your sound card's line-in jack. You can get one at Radio Shack for around $5. If you're connecting a tape deck, you may need an adapter to accommodate its larger headphone jack.
- Audacity, an open-source, cross-platform program that makes simple work of recording and editing audio. It's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you plan to turn your tapes into MP3 files, make sure to get the LAME MP3 encoder as well; there's a link to it on the Audacity download page. (Detailed instructions on setting up the LAME MP3 encoder are included in Gina's feature on how to make a ringtone from an MP3 with Audacity.)
I wish I would have known about Audacity several years ago. Instead of using this high-quality and FREE piece of software, I bought a copy of “Cool Edit,” a product that was later bought out by Adobe and made into Adobe Audition. Audacity works great for most every Average Joe’s needs and I’ve quit using Cool Edit. If you’re interested in converting those old language tapes into usable (and storable, edit-able and archive-able) MP3s make sure you check out Rick’s post.
Also take time to read through the comments. Several commenters added some good stuff, including a link to a pay-to-convert service called Cassettes2CDs.com. Another commenter posted a link to “mp3DirectCut” which will (apparently) automatically cut your looong-ish recording into tracks.
Turn that pile of old cassettes into something useful!
Most of us have video cameras these days. Most of us take endless “footage” of kids opening Christmas presents, birthdays and other family events. Most of the time that footage just sits there are a pile of accumulating tapes that fall out of the camera bag or are stuck in a drawer somewhere.
Why not take the next step and create a short video on a CD or DVD to mail to family members or post on the web? If you’re a far away from home in some remote and dusty place I bet the folks back home would love to see your moving mug in your special Christmas locale.
LifeHacker has a short primer on video editing that will get you started. It’s all much easier than you may think and you probably own everything you need to get started:
)You don’t have to be great at movie-making to make something your family will this is great. Why not give it a try? Read more to learn more.
More news from Skype. Their new version, 3.0 went live today which adds a number of interesting features, including public chat, improved quality and new (wow) emoticons. I ran the beta for a while and was pleased with what I found (I wrote about that here).
In other news, Skype is again charging for Skype-out calls to North America. Skype’s limited time offer ends (as promised) at the end of the year.
To that end, starting January 1st, Skype will charge $29.95 a year for unlimited SkypeOut calling, which is still a pretty good deal if you ask me. And if you sign up before January 31st, you'll get service for just $14.95. If you don't have a plan, calls within the U.S. and Canada will cost 2.1 cents per minute. Rates to other countries vary.
via Download Squad
Paying only $14.95 for unlimited intra-North-American calling is a pretty good deal. I only wish a similar deal could be struck for international calls. I continue to use SkypeOut regularly to call back to Kosovo, my adopted country. Prices have gone up, however and seem to be nearing what I pay when I use a phone card from Sam’s Club. Oh well, calling my colleagues who have decent Internet and Skype is still free…can’t beat that.
Last Spring I started shooting a series of impromptu, unscripted and unrehearsed videos to update my supporters on what was going on in Kosovo. I shot one video at an outreach event, another at an empty square during the funeral of our country’s president, and so forth. When I was done I would usually add a title using Movie Maker (hey, it’s free and comes with Windows XP) and post it up to my web server. I got a many, many positive responses from these videos precisely because they were short and unscripted. People even started using them in church services, though that wasn’t really my intent.
YouTube, the ubiquitous host-er of all-that-is-video, has just begun 
YouTube gives the following guidelines for putting your video directly on YouTube.
- Uploads will usually take 1-5 minutes per MB on a high-speed connection.
- Converting your video takes a few minutes; you can add more info or upload more videos while it's processing.
- Videos are limited to 10 minutes (unless you're a Director) and 100 MB.
- Videos saved with the following settings convert the best:
- MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format
- 320x240 resolution
- MP3 audio
- 30 frames per second frame-rate
This could make a pretty positive impact on missionary vloggers for a number of reasons. First, you don’t have to have a server anywhere to host your videos; YouTube does that for you. Second, you don’t have to worry about editing…and you won’t want to. Honestly, for what I want to do, editing makes the whole process take too long and takes all the fun and authenticity out of it. Third, it makes very easy to insert video into blogs and web-pages, since YouTube’s posting tools make it pretty simple. Okay, I could go on, but this makes the whole thing pretty simple.
I tried my hand at making a quick video, but it took three takes. The first gave me a “unknown file format” when I was done and wouldn't work. I thought that was odd since YouTube did the encoding. The second attempt….aside from my ugly mug…had awful audio. I’m not sure why this is, but I used the built-in mic on my camera. It wasn’t that the sound quality was poor, it just kept cutting in and out. The third time worked just fine though.
You can see it here. You can also embed the videos quite easily into a blog. YouTube is offering a pretty handy service and best of all, it's free.
It doesn’t matter though, because wherever I read my feeds they stay synchronized. That is, if I mark something marked in one Newsgator product, they automatically get marked “read” in the other products. This really works out well if you travel a lot, or are plagued with lousy Internet from time to time.
According to this forum post Newsgator products are now $10 off through the end of the year. Just use coupon code NGHoliday when you order. Their catalog really has a number of great offerings, from web-based feed-readers like FeedDemon to mobile solutions, to my favorite, Inbox. Most of these products are around $30, so this is a pretty good time to grab one of these products if you want to read all your blogs, feeds or gather your podcasts in one place.
via DownloadSquad
I got a call from a friend overseas today who wanted some input on a document he was working on. He emailed me the document and then, over Skype, we began to talk about it. I was marking it up, he was also talking about it and making changes and quite quickly the whole thing was out of control and neither of us knew what we were talking about.
Enter web-based collaboration tools. Quite some time ago I experimented with a web-based application called “Writely,” which allowed people to work on documents in real-time together through the web. I hadn’t used it for a while, and knew that they’d been bought by Google. So when I went to www.writely.com I was quickly redirected to the Google Docs site and walked through a 30 second process of porting my old Writely docs over to Google Doc.
From there I sent an invite to my overseas friend and within a couple of minutes we were simultaneously working in his document in near real-time. I say “near” because the page and its edits only refresh about every 30 seconds or when you hit the “refresh” button.
All in all we were both impressed by how easy it was to work on a document together that we could both see, read and edit together…all from a couple of thousand miles away. It was a great way to work together.
Most of us realize, after nearly twenty years of frustration, that Windows needs to be occasionally reinstalled to restore it to youthful vigor. I was gearing up for my annual/semi-annual Windows re-installation, but I wasn’t exactly ready when it happened.
On Black Friday I bought a nice new 400GB Western Digital MyBook external drive for only $99, after rebate. When I finally decided to open it I wanted to break it into a NTFS partition and a FAT32 partition, for backing up my wife’s Mac. I loaded up Partition Magic and got ready to get to work. When I ran PM I was greeted by a kindly message advising me of a bad sector, corruption, error (or something) at a particular location on my main drive. It asked me if I wouldn’t want it to take care of that little problem. I happily (and too quickly) clicked ‘yes’ and that was that. When the system reset there was no more Windows. Oops
Fortunately IBM includes some pretty decent recover options and I was able to back off my “documents and settings” to preserve … well, my settings (I keep all my data on a separate partition for this very reason.
I had been waiting for this day for some time. Months and months ago a guy wrote a very long post over at TabletPCBuzz.com on reinstalling windows in the Lenovo X41 Tablet sans all the IBM crap that comes built in. Like most manufacturers these days, IBM/Lenovo doesn’t include Windows recover CDs with their products. Instead, they create an image on the hard-drive from which Windows can be recovered. That actually works pretty well, accept that you have very few options when it comes to reinstalling all of the (mostly very helpful) software that comes pre-loaded.
That long post has since been reposted over at GottaBeMoble.com. The first step is to create a bootable CD or DVD with Windows Tablet Edition on it. This is a pretty neat trick since you can’t buy TE at your local store. I had actually made that CD when I was still in Kosovo waiting for the day to reinstall a clean copy of Windows on my Tablet.
Anyway, here’s the point: Just because your laptop came pre-loaded with lots of stuff, don’t feel like you have to reinstall all of that when you reinstall Windows. Take advantage of the community and find people have found ways around this annoying problem. My Tablet PC runs so, so much faster with a fresh install of Windows minus all the pre-loaded applications Lenovo so lovingly included.
Oh, and by the way, this explains why I haven’t posted anything here in about a week.
I’m kind of an on-again/off-again John Maxwell fan, but this article makes a pretty powerful statement:
Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure…Successful people make the right decisions early and manage them daily.
Maxwell goes on to say some really powerful things that link decision-making with daily discipline. Good stuff. Someone wise once told me that a good decision made now is often better than a great decision made too late.
via Jason Womack
US airport wi-fi directories have been circulating for a while but the folks at TravelPost have put together a set of pretty detailed wi-fi guides for airports, domestic & international, and US hotels. For example, I fly through Vienna most frequently and the guide tells me that at VIE I can expect:
I knew there was wi-fi at a couple of restaurants around (you can tell by the squatters sitting around outside hunched over their laptops) but I didn’t have the semi-official skinny.
via WebWorkerDaily
For my last anniversary my wife gave me a great gift, a 1GB USB drive. The question is, what do you do with all that space?
A couple of days ago PortableApps.com released the Portable Apps Suite 1.0.
The PortableApps Suite is available in multiple Editions for drives of every size. The Standard Edition includes the menu, backup and icons mentioned above as well as ClamWin Portable (antivirus), Firefox Portable (web browser), Gaim Portable (instant messaging), OpenOffice.org Portable (office suite), Sudoku Portable (puzzle game), Sunbird Portable (calendar/task manager) and Thunderbird Portable (email client) and runs comfortably from a 512MB drive. The Lite Edition uses AbiWord Portable (word processor) instead of OpenOffice.org Portable and runs comfortably from a 256MB drive.
If you travel much at all, and use someone else's computer a fair bit then these portable applications are the way to go. While not part of the Portable Apps Suite, Skype is one of my favorite apps to take portable. Find the instructions here.
via Lifehacker
For the last couple of days I’ve been trying to get a “place keeping” website up for our work in Kosovo. We had a really gifted young lady design the site for us, but getting it edited out in two languages has been really challenging. I had been thinking that it would be great to have the ability to discuss the site with my colleagues back in Kosovo.
Then this evening, as I’m reading through my feeds, I come across this from TechCrunch. “This” is Fleck, a new service that allows people to comment, annotate and collaborate on a website. That is, people can view, change and add notes at any time to any website. TechCrunch’s Marshall Kirkpatrick gives us an example of comments he made on the top a TechCrunch article here, but I also made a screen capture of the image:
This is pretty slick stuff. Fleck is still in beta, and it currently only supports Firefox, but IE support will arrive later this year. The tool bar at the bottom gives you options to insert notes, bulleted items and other collaboration options.
I’m always looking for tools that will allow geographically dispersed team members to collaborate on projects and this is definitely going in the tool box.
The folks at Skype have released 3.0 beta. There are some neat new features here, but nothing earth-shattering. But that’s not to say it’s not worth looking at and upgrading when the code goes gold. The majority of the upgrade is in interface improvements and bug fixes.
On the other hand, there is something interesting here for missionary folks. By clicking on the “Live” tab you’re taken to an interface for “Skypecasts” which are being billed as “live public conversations.”
You can click to enter any of the available “Skypecasts” and just listen, or interact if you chose. There isn’t really anything earth shattering about this; other programs have offered “party line” feature for years. I don’t believe, however, that they’ve had Skype’s quality and installed user base.
Because of Skype’s ubiquity this function could readily lend itself to distance learning. This caught my eye after reading Integrating Technology in Leadership Training by Donald Sommer Evangelical Missions Quarterly. Sommer profiles some of the technology being used in the missions field to facilitate distance learning given the decreasing costs of communication and the increasing availability of computers and “internet cafes” around the world. While entry into a Skypecast cannot be password protected, you can mute or eject unwanted participants. Skypecasts are currently voice-only and there doesn’t yet appear to be file-sending functionality. If both were added before the beta goes gold, however, Skype might make a pretty sweet. Add something like Talk & Write , a free Skype “extra” and you’ve got a pretty powerful conferencing platform.
While this is primarily a geek-ish blog, but I also like to write about productivity, management and work-place dynamics. Today I was struck by something Robert Scoble wrote. Scoble used to work for Microsoft and was one of the most influential bloggers there. He has also had a profound effect on the “blogosphere” around the world, co-writing a great book called “Naked Conversation” with Shel Israel and about which I wrote here and here. More recently Scoble has gone to work for Podtech Network where he is vice-president of Media Development.
Scoble was writing about a new hire at Podtech, Chris Coulter, a long-time contrarian of Scoble. People have reacted to that so he articulates his reasons. The reason that really caught my eye was the fourth:
Fourth, if I’m going to grow as a manager and as a leader I need people I work with who see the world differently than I do. Translation: who can tell me I’m full of it. Why is that important? Well, beyond keeping the ego under check, it’s where great ideas come from…. Having diverse ideas on a team is important and brings better ideas.
Man. I don’t know Robert Scoble at all, but I sure appreciate this kind of self-understanding. Obviously this looks great on paper and will probably be occasionally painful to live with. You have to really court honesty and forthrightness for that to come off well. Not all leaders can handle that degree of feedback.
I’d like to be one of them.
I just spend a weekend with a bunch of a guys at a faith-based retreat; several of whom had smartphones. The Two of the guys in our small group had the Motorola Q, with which I wasn’t familiar. When I got home this afternoon and checked my feeds I found CrunchGear had just come out with a first time buyer’s guide to smartphones. If you’re interested in taking the plunge this might be a decent place to start. Oh, and don’t miss CrunchGear’s “10 things I hate about smart phones….it may change your mind.
From time to time we’ve all wondered how many minutes we’ve used our cell-phones. Whether its raw telephone minutes or SMS messages, time flies when you’re communicating with people. Lifehacker points to some Firefox extensions that helps keep track of minutes for T-mobile, Verizon and Cingular users.
James Kendrik has a great post “a day in the life” post about his Ultra-Mobile PC, the Q1. He uses a Samsung Q1 as his normal, take-to-work computer, even though its only
What strikes me about this is how normal all this will appear in a couple of years. One should be able to fit all their data and work material into something the size of a paper-back book.
If you’re interested in how appealing all of this might be, give James a read.
Earlier this week I wrote about Skrybe, yet another on-line calendar options that also offers off-line editing. Last night they went beta, which means that some people will be invited to participate. TechCrunch has more.
