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Thoughts and things I care to shareNotes about the G1 as a MID
It’s surprising that something as portable as the T-Mobile G1 and powerful a platform as Android can be so useful. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but I’ve been using my G1 as a mobile internet device more and more often.
The biggest issue as many will point out is power, and the G1 is worse at power consumption and management than any other device. On the other hand, the abilities simply outweigh the power disadvantages that it has. Besides, keeping a charger (AC, USB, and auto) at hand eliminates that issue for the most part… minimizes it really.
Since jumping from the Windows Mobile camp to Android, I’ve noticed that my phone is fun & easy to use again. It’s more powerful, simply because I use it for everything rather than explain how useful it can be as I did with Windows Mobile. The software is fun too – many more new ideas and attempts to do different things than the staid, boring software selection that WinMo had when I last looked (it’s changing I know).
Anyway, just wanted to drop a note about how much I’ve come to depend on the G1, much more than my MDA that stayed by my side for 3 years. Even though I believed that to be a powerful, useful device, Windows Mobile can’t hold a candle to Android (or the iPhone) at this time. The phone is fun again.
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Moved FeedBurner Feeds
Well, I finally got around to moving my FeedBurner account to my Google account. Not sure if I did something wrong, or if I just need to wait a few days. It seems that I can’t see any items in my feed now, as I monitor it in Google Reader.
Has anyone else done this and found the same issue? I know I’ve probably missed something somewhere. I’ve got the “MyBrand†personal domain settings enabled, and updated the DNS CNAME records for my domain last night as directly by the MyBrand settings page on FeedBurner.
So far, it’s no go, but I wonder if the CNAME is pointing to the right URL. In the email I got after the FeedBurner –> Google migration was done, it showed a different URL for the feed. Namely, http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Rickmahncom – which is different than the rickmahn.feedproxy.ghs.google.com that is listed on the MyBrand page.
Suggestions welcome, but I’ll probably be testing different settings this evening. Sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause.
2009 – Goals & Plans
So it’s the end of another year. As such, I wanted to take a minute and put my plans & goals for 2008 out there. I’ve not done this one before, but thought I give it a go this year. Much has changed and I have some directions that I want to follow in 2009 that I neglected in years past.
Writing – Blogging
I’m planning on making a return to a regular blogging schedule after a bit more than a year of a more random approach. The reason for this was partially work related, but also from a lack of direction in the Fall/Winter of 2007/2008. This will include the review of a couple other blogs I have – see if I still have the passion & interest to continue those, or if I should end up selling them off.
Writing – eBooks, Newsletters
Ah… yes, there were two aspects to the writing bug this time around. I also am planning to move forward with some eBook projects and a possible Newsletter in 2009. I’m not sure when exactly this will take place, but will be working on the planning in January. The eBook topics will relate to personal branding, the social web, information technology (& social media), and probably how many of these relate to the enterprise. I’m thinking hard on these lately.
Events
Social Media Breakfast – Twin Cities (@SMBMSP on Twitter) has been a great success here in the Minneapolis & St. Paul area, and I plan to continue evolving our local version. It will remain a low or no-cost event. In addition to this fun monthly event, I’m planning on working some one-off special events and possibly an annual event. Whether those are a summit, retreat, or un-conference style I’m not sure yet, but I do have a few concept ideas that I want to expand on. I’ve found that I really enjoy helping people connect, and thereby connecting their business or career needs with resources in the local community.
Online Income
2009 is the year I get serious about increasing online income. By focusing energies on new ideas and business models for my consulting services I plan to make the transition this year from a senior technologist role to a business & customer communications role. The end result will probably be something different, but that’s the fun of a dynamic, fast-paced industry… it’s constantly changing.
Direction
The next few weeks of this year is also the time I’m going to be taking to reassess my career direction. Am I really pursuing the dream, or have allowed myself to get sidetracked and mired in the mechanics of the mundane, again? This is a crucial piece of the puzzle, as it feeds into everything else. Without direction, none of has have a clue as to where we’re going.
So what’s your plan for this year?
Photo credit: tochris
Enabling Tweetbacks
I’ve installed Dan Zarrella’s new Tweetbacks WordPress Plugin today, and will be monitoring it to see how well it works out. I’ve seen a number of folks over the last week taking a close look at this new idea, and have always been trying out some of the cutting-edge Twitter tie-ins and tactics.
Have you tried out this new plug-in? What do you think?
Windows 7 – My First Observations
So, with the first public beta of Windows 7, I thought I’d share a few of my initial observations and opinions on the latest version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. My testing of Windows 7 is taking place on my production laptop – an Acer Aspire with a Intel Core Duo 1.8GHz, with 3GB RAM based on the Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset that many “average” laptops are built around.
Having been a user, advocate, and professional using Microsoft’s operating systems for the last 20 years, I do have to admit that I can come across as a “fan boy” at times. These observations may be just another example of this tendency, but I do try to be as impartial as I can (Vista rocks), er… sorry.
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Performance
I’ve only been running the Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview for about 32hrs at the time of this post, but I do have to admit that performance is better than Vista SP1. I haven’t run Windows XP on my laptop, so I can’t really compare it well with that OS. Simply put, it does appear to be a better performer than Vista.
Comparability
Here is one area that a few people will get a chuckle, or maybe help me figure out my one issue. Most everything is working great, except… Outlook 2007. I had to run the application compatibility troubleshooter to figure out what was wrong. I ended up setting the compatibility to “Vista” to run it. I’ll come back to Outlook later this week to investigate the issue more. Other than that, I’ve had no problems with 3rd party apps and utilities from large and small vendors.
Windows Sidebar/Desktop Gadgets
IS GONE! This is probably one of the things that helps performance in my opinion. While I liked the utility of the Windows Sidebar in Vista, the extra screen real estate and the processor cycles just for the Windows Sidebar ate up RAM and performance.
Luckily, this isn’t the case in Windows 7! The gadgets that were helpful, useful, or just plain fun in Vista’s Sidebar now run right on the Windows 7 desktop. This is a great enhancement, and one that I was looking forward to. You can see a few Vista Sidebar gadgets shown running on the Windows 7 desktop.
Peaking
Peaking is an uber-cool enhancement to Windows 7. Simply hover it the absolute bottom-right corner of the screen (shown in the 2nd screen capture below) and whatever windows you have open become transparent so you can see the desktop. Nifty to check the time, weather, or other gadgets you have on the desktop.
There are many great enhancements to the UI in Windows 7, and Microsoft seems to have focused on just making it all work together simply and easily. Of course, I thought that of Windows Vista as well, so take it for what its worth.
I’ve not had a chance to perform any significant testing that is network or file-system related. Areas that Vista had real issues on it’s initial release. I’ll be watching and testing for those as time goes by, but the first day has been a fun experience.
Since Windows 7 is running on my personal production laptop, I’ll be using it daily for all my usual tasks, and will probably drop a post when I run into things that are interesting or troublesome. I hope this gives you an idea of where Windows 7 is at so far. If you’re interested in experiencing it, I do think it’s stable enough for the average IT pro to use on a daily basis as you’d probably know what your getting into anyway. Good stuff.
Windows Beta Geekout – 2009
It’s nice to have a new beta to play with. Microsoft’s released Windows 7 Beta 1 to the public, and I’ve got it downloading now. I’ve really enjoyed Windows Vista for the past 2+ years, and am looking forward to the updates that Windows 7 brings.
If you’re interested, you can head over to the Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview site and download the 2.8GB DVD to try out yourself.
Interesting how people plan for the new year
I’m catching up on feeds and have run across a number of posts and articles on personal plans, goals, or predictions for 2009. It’s a good exercise, and one that I’m working on for this week as well.
However, I’m amazed (nay, dismayed) at the number of people who either do not understand what a goal should be or at the goal that they’re fixated on. Especially in relation to blogging. There are a number of great posts around outlining what people are planning to do, but I’d like to see folks really focus their energies when writing them.
For example, I’ve seen a number of people taking about increasing their blog posting schedule, or about getting 100, 200, 300 RSS readers, or hitting 1,000,000 page-views. This doesn’t tell me what they’re purpose is, however. It doesn’t tell me why I should come back tomorrow to read a post. It doesn’t tell new readers why they should spend time reading their blogs. This is simply a lack of understanding of what makes a good blog – in short, numbers don’t count. It’s about the quality of information rather than the numbers of clicks you can run through Google AdSense.
Another theme I’ve seen in some of these planning post for the new year are more lower-level task specific items rather than broad visionary goals for an individual. New or casual bloggers who are interested in growing their blog should look at things that bring value to themselves and their readers. An example of this would be something like "Revise and rejuvenate my blog’s theme to reflect it’s focus, and for easier reading" would be better than simply wanting to "get a new blog logo".
These more far-reaching goals help us stretch outside our comfort zones for the year. It gives us something to strive for, something to attain… hence "goals". I hope more folks take the time and really go through a good personal growth exercise for 2009. It doesn’t have to take long, and if a person allows themselves an hour or two to really think about what they want to accomplish in one year – and what just may be possible in one years time, they may surprise themselves and really accomplish more than they think they can.
So good luck to you on your goal quest for 2009! Watch for my 2009 goals post in the next day or so.
Android Apps – Suggestions
Ok, I’m getting antsy for a few good apps that I need or would like on my G1 Android phone. I’m betting we’ll see some interesting new apps hit the Android Market in January when Google adds the ability to charge for an application. I’d also like to make a few suggestions for some applications that I really need to have soon for productivity purposes.
Office Apps
The need for real word processing and spreadsheet applications is no joke. An app that supports Word, Excel, and a couple extra file formats would be appreciated. This is an application that I’d pay for. Make it decent, include PowerPoint support as well – it needs to be a quality app. Ability to save/load from SD is a necessity btw.
Adobe – Flash & PDF
’nuff said.
Video
A camcorder app would be awesome, but even better would be to see a QIK client released. Is this too much to ask?
Onscreen Keyboard (psst Google, you listening?)
There are a couple apps that already include an onscreen keyboard, so why can’t the OS? Alls you have to do is draw some buttons and feed the button presses through the existing keyboard driver – come on, it’s not that hard. I’m surprised at all the existing Windows Mobile onscreen keyboard vendors – this is an easy market to jump into here.
Navigation Software
Here’s another good opportunity for some enterprising company. Don’t get me wrong, Google Maps with GPS and 3G kicks ass, but when you’re out of data range – and when you really do need some navigation assistance – it really starts to show its deficiencies. A good navigation software package like TomTom or Garmin’s would be quite nifty – and with the size of microSD cards on the market, not too hard to load up maps for offline roadtrip fun.
So these are some of the things that I would like to see. There are tons more – do you have some suggestions?
Photo credit: disrupsean
Moleskine Notebooks – Going analog for the fun of writing
Try as I might, I couldn’t find the post that I thought I wrote about Moleskines some time ago. I think it was about a year ago a couple of online friends and I had a chance to finally meet and talk in person. It was a local version of LifeCamp, and it was Jason DeBoer-Moran (@newcoventry on Twitter) and Thomas Knoll (@thomasknoll on Twitter) along with a few more folks looking to organize and prioritize our lives these days.
One of the biggest take-away’s for me from that first meetup with my now-good friends was the importance of keeping track of thoughts and ideas. While these guys had been doing this for some time, it was a new initiative for me to keep something close to hand to quickly capture those moments of inspiration. The best device to record this information seemed to be a simple notebook.
However, I wanted to find something that was as rewarding to write in as the thoughts I was trying to capture. This is where the Moleskine comes in. Sure, lots of folks are turning back to these traditional mobile information gathering notebooks – to the point of it being cliche. The thing is though, I really enjoy these notebooks. They seem to reward the writer with a great feeling when writing in them.
For me in particular, these notebooks bring a sense of permanence to the things I’m writing. They bring a connection to the past, and offer a way to tap into the legacy of pen & paper in a way that the average ringed notebook found at your local big box discount store for 99¢ simply can’t. If you’re looking for it, a Moleskine can’t be beat for bringing another dimension to note taking or journaling. Give it a try for your next journal and see if it helps to inspire and capture the ideas, stories, and things that you’re trying to save.
Thoughts on Social Media Careers
I’ve been working in the technology field for a long time and the thing that really keeps me engaged is the fact that it’s always changing. Technology evolves and there is a constant need to be upgrading or planning on upgrading. It’s made a great career for myself with a number of great projects and experiences that I can look back on with fond memories.
"IT" as it’s called has also enabled me to push boundaries that were uncomfortable for me, allowing me to grow and continue to learn about things that I needed to but was uninterested in. To my mind, this is what a career should deliver; experiences, personal growth, team participation, leadership, and providing a decent living for a family. This is something that a technology career has rewarded me with for my investment.
So with that knowledge, experience and expectation, I wonder just how big the social media market is for it’s practitioners. As every site integrates more social media and "web 2.0" technologies and methods, how will social media professionals remain in demand? Ensuing generations will be even more well versed in the concepts, tools, technologies than even the much celebrated millennials today.
As the online world continues to circle around and pick up the once-forgotten "human face" that it lacked in the .com boom/bust, it becomes harder to distinguish just what a social media professional is. I fear that most of them will simply be absorbed into the existing professions as Marketing and Public Relations – already, the social media sphere is mostly made up of this demographic.
Am I off base here or is there really a career path for social media specialists or professionals as we know them today? Or will it just become another skill listed by bullet point on the resume of future marketing professionals? What do you think?
Photo credit: Jay Dugger
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“We are not enemies but friends.”
Live your life.
Completely.
Without fear.
Live it with Love, compassion, empathy, tolerance and joy.
Treat every person with the kindness, respect and dignity they deserve by the very virtue of being a human being.
Out riding this rainy, wet spring. Got 1,000 miles on the clock with more to come this season. #IMRG #IndianMotorcycle
Watching early seasons of #GoldRush. Fun seeing @GoldrushRick in season 3! Hope his new season is off to a good start!
Oh yes I did! https://www.instagram.com/p/BsRDO9ogSO0/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=1kha5yzhjq3ot