Happy New Year ... Here are some technology ideas for 2010

As people around the globe ring in 2010, the Technology Plumbing team wishes everyone a happy and prosperous new year.

To help get the new year off to a good technology start here are some technology thoughts to ponder:

While the ebook wars heat up, Amazon has quietly provided a software upgrade (version 2.3) for its Kindle readers. While not earth shattering, they do provide a few key improvements as noted below. Click here for Amazon's official description of the changes. It should be noted that the rollout to at least my Kindle was slower then I was willing to wait, so I manually upgraded my Kindle by following the directions specified here.

Key changes:

1. Native handling of PDF files. When I had originally sent myself a PDF file to read on my Kindle it never did show up and there were several steps that had to take place in order to actually read it. With the upgrade, just email the PDF file to your Kindle's email address and a minute later it just shows up, ready for you to read it. This will be quite nice if you need to take business documents on the plane with you to review without having to get the paper documents out (not to mention potentially saving the printing of the document in the first place) or firing up your PC on today's over crowded planes. I won't go into the security issues in this posting, so please no flame mail from the security folks.
2. Longer battery life for Kindle (Global Wireless): You can now read for up to 1 week on a single charge with wireless on. Turn wireless off and read for up to 2 weeks.
3. Manual screen rotation: The Kindle screen can now manually rotate between portrait and landscape views so you can see the entire width of a web page or magnify the page of a PDF file. The page-turn buttons work the same in either orientation, and the 5-way controller movements are switched to match the orientation. Click on the "Aa" key at the bottom of the keyboard to bring up the options.

Intouch Products has come out with an interesting product that competes in the premium digital picture frame market that HP is attempting to market to with its DreamScreen product that I mentioned back in November. Both seem to suffer from 1st generation issues, but it will be interesting to see if they are able to sell to the early adopters while finding ways to add in the missing functionality from the early versions.

Forbes Magazine, not exactly the home of technology, had an interesting sidebar to compare and contrast "virtulization" vs. "the cloud". While technologists are still arguing about the details and the directions of these two technologies, Forbes boils it down this simple premise that I think most people can understand and work with: You virtualize hardware and run your software in the cloud.

• This means that utilizing virtulization products from vendors like VMware you can run multiple virtual servers (or PCs) on large physical servers and users and applications will think they have multiple servers or PCs at their disposal.
  
• This works by leveraging the fact that most technology only uses the physical resources for short periods of time and thus they can be shared.
  
• On the other hand software not hosted directly on your PC (I am using the term PC in general, meaning your personal computer of choice, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc) is hosted by your business, at your data center, or by a third party provider. As these hosting environments are abstracted further and further from a users computer it is said to be hosted in a cloud.
  
• The concept here is that the cloud, if properly done, is made up of many servers in multiple locations protecting users from failures in the infrastructure running the software and driving down and spreading out the cost of the infrastructure.
  
• Given these definitions of virtulization and clouds it becomes easier to think about the various permutations that can occur based on your specific needs and structure. Consider in the extreme you can run cloud applications such as Google's Gmail or Sales Force on a virtual PC running on a thin, inexpensive client.
  

US Air's current magazine has excerpts from Dov Seidman's latest book titled HOW: Why HOW We Do Everything ... in Business (and in Life) , which focuses not on what to do but making sure whatever we do, we do it the right way. In other words, it is the HOW, not the WHAT that matters. After reading the excerpts, I have downloaded the entire book to my Kindle hoping to find better ways of doing things in 2010.

• I have to point out that on the page facing the start of the excerpt Amazon had placed an ad for the Kindle. While the ad featured a different book, the connection was quite clear. Read this excerpt and if you like it, download the book to your Kindle.

As you finish up your various holiday festivities, hopefully you will find some interesting (calorie free) food for thought in this blog post and will come back and read my 2010 posts.

Until then, happy new year!

A real world example - Setting up a new PC

Last week I wrote a post about the steps you should follow in setting up that new PC you got for the holidays. Now I am back with a real world example as I have just returned from setting up a new PC for a family member.

The mission was to setup a new Windows 7 (64-bit) HP Desktop and bring over all of the good parts (without the "bad parts") from a 5 year old Compaq desktop and after 2 days of work we can say that the mission was accomplished. To guide the process we created a checklist of items that combined the best practices of setting up a new PC along with an inventory of the old PC's applications, data and functions to help ensure all applicable parts were migrated.

Here are the milestones and notes from the project.

• Make or create restore disks. While the HP PC did not come with restore disks, the Windows 7 O/S on the PC did have a nice utility that easily walked me through the process and the I created the 3 restore DVDs along with a recovery disk (that Windows 7 also walked me through). I even got to take advantage to the built in Lightscribe functionality to label each of the disks appropriately. In terms of Lightscribe, while this was my first hands-on experience with it, it was easy to use, but the results were just OK, compared to putting a real label on the disks or writing on them with disk markers.
  
• Update your PC. It was interesting that not once during the setup did Windows 7 ask me to install any updates, but since this was a significant item on my checklist, I navigated to to Windows Update and forced it to apply all of the O/S updates and patches, which took place without an issue.
  
• Setup your anti-virus application. The HP PC came with a 6 month trial of Norton's anti-virus which we chose to activate and subscribe to vs. transferring the license from the AVG product we were using on the old PC. This decision was based on two reasons: 1) The AVG website made it very difficult to figure out how to transfer the license and 2) my past experience with uninstalling AV packages tells me it is usual a messy affair and I didn't want to have remnants of Norton hanging around and causing issues. While we kept Norton, taking advantage of the 28% discount they were offering based on the new PC purchase was not well done. We followed the instructions on the enclosed paperwork, but it was very unclear if we were really getting a discount as there was no displaying of the base price or a discount amount. Going directly to the Norton site didn't help as identifying and comparing the products proved to be difficult at best. At the end of the day we went with the simplest method to ensue a good initial experience and less issues down the road. In my book Norton is a fine product, but their marketing process leaves something to be desired.
  
• Move or install your software. This was a time consuming but straight forward process thanks to having the various CDs or access to the appropriate web sites. What we did experience was some of the Windows 7 incompatibilities as we were moving from 32-bit Windows XP to 64-bit Windows 7. The net result was we were not able to install the existing web camera, the film scanner or the Palm Tungsten EX synchronization software. The web camera and file scanner vendors had not created 64-bit drivers and the Windows 7 generic drivers would not work with these devices. Palm did have an updated Palm desktop product that works with Windows 7, but for some strange reason no longer supports USB synchronization with a 64-bit O/S. Palm will work via Bluetooth synchronization, but the new HP PC did not have built in Bluetooth capabilities and finding a Bluetooth adapter that works with Windows 7 was beyond what we could find in the local stores.
  
• Install the common plug-ins and utility software. Installed Adobe's PDF Reader, the Firefox browser, Thunderbird mail client (the newly released version 3 is very nice), RoboForm for password management, Xmarks for bookmark management, Picasa for photo management, YammerFox for managing our families Yammer site, Microsoft's SynchToy for data synchronization (more about this in the backup bullet) and Dell's DataSafe client for off-site data backup.
  
• Develop a backup strategy. As noted above, we installed SynchToy, which copies all of the changed data files from the HP's hard drive to an attached USB drive every night by leveraging both SynchToy and its simple integration with Windows Scheduler. In addition we setup a scheduled Windows Backup process that every Sunday creates a full Windows backup on the attached USB drive. In terms of off-site backups, we configured Dell's DataSafe client to copy all changed data files to Dell's storage cloud every night.
• Remove the "bloatware" that comes with many PCs. In terms of new PCs, there wasn't too much bloatware, but we removed it as we found it.
• Register your PC with the vendor. HP made this process as simple as possible.
• Synchronize your browser favorites. As noted above, we installed Xmarks on the old PC and copied its bookmarks to the Xmarks repository. Once we installed Xmarks on the new PC and signed in, all of old bookmarks become part of the new PC's bookmarks. While you can move bookmarks without a tool like Xmarks, using the tool not only moved the bookmarks but keeps the data current in the Xmarks repository giving us another backup of this data.
  

Hopefully this real world example will help you in setting up your or your friends / families new PCs, but let me know how your experience goes.

In case you missed my post on my travels to do this work here is the link to that story.

One more case of partners not talking to each other

Yesterday I talked about how United and US Air couldn't get their boarding pass formats in sync as I started on United and then picked up a US Air flight to get me to my final destination. Well today, on my return trip, the roles were reversed and I started on US Air and finished on United, but more problems ensued.

Last night, when I tried to check in to my flights via United's website it let me check in to the second leg on United but would not check me in on the first leg via US Air. The message told me to check in for this leg at US Air's website. So if United is first and US Air is second, United can check you into both flights, but forget it if it is the other way.

Trying to get everything done before heading to the airport, I went to the US Air website and tried to check in. It did suggest I could check in to the US Air flight, but then failed to complete the transaction with some sort of undefined error. This forced me to get my US Air boarding pass at the airport, killing the whole point of on-line check-in.

One more rant on US Air / United integration (or lack thereof). When I landed after my US Air flight and checked the screens for the gate for the United flight, my flight was not listed. In its place was a different United flight number (clearly marked as the UA flight number) going to my destination at my scheduled time. I made the assumption that this was my flight and either the flight number was wrong or the flight number had changed and headed for the gate noted. As happened last time, the US Air screen was wrong and when I got to the gate, it was the right gate with the right flight number.

I know the airlines are under tremendous cost pressures, but when you decide to do something you might as well do it right and make the technology work for you and not against you.

Am I being too hard on the airlines? Let me know or share your thoughts on this topic.

Strange technology tales from the road

As my Technology Plumbing readers know, I travel a lot for business, but this week I am traveling for pleasure and visiting family in Florida. While I will talk more about the reason for my trip in a later post, wanted to use this post to talk about some strange technology tales that I have observed this week.

• I flew into the West Palm Beach (PBI) airport, which I have not previously done, and was shocked to be asked to sign the credit card receipt for my $3 charge. Now I know I could have paid cash for this transaction, but one of the allures of credit cards is their convenience. But having the attendant hand me the receipt by itself and ask me to sign it on my lap is just so last decade. O'Hare and most airports I have visited have the swipe and go process down, so time to get it together PBI.
• I booked my flights on United, which got me as far as Washington DC's Reagan airport, before handing me off to US Air for the flight to Florida. When I checked in for the United flight, via the Internet, I received boarding passes for both flights in United's format. This of course worked fine for the United flight, but the US Air gate attendant insisted on taking my entire boarding since there was nothing to tear off (United scans and returns their boarding passes). This left me with no boarding pass as I walked down the jetway. Luckily I recalled my seat assignment and was able to board without incident, but if there had been an issue with seating assignments I would have been in a strange position. If United and US Air can't figure out how to share boarding passes formats, how can we trust them to share much else?
  
• I am Sprint customer for my family's various cell phones and while visiting Florida thought it would make sense to move my family in Florida to Sprint as part of my existing family plan. Since I don't use all of my plan's minutes, and my Florida family doesn't use many minutes each month it seemed like the perfect match. Now here is the problem, Sprint limits the number of phone lines for a single package to 5. I understand they wouldn't want this to be unlimited, but in this case they have passed up the incremental revenue from the 2 new lines and the sale of 2 new phones, not to mention making this long time Sprint customer less then happy. In a competitive situation isn't it better to take some incremental revenue and keeping a long time customer happy then to get nothing and give the customer another reason to look around?

Well hopefully, my trip home won't involve anymore strange technology tales, but while I am traveling home, I will let my readers and these companies ponder these tales and hopefully learn from them.

The Evolution of Digital Camera

Back in Florida this week, which means flights on US Air and an opportunity to read the latest copy of the US Airways Magazine. As I have mentioned before in this blog, I find the US Airways magazine one of the best in the industry.

In this issue, they have a nice article on Samsung's new Geo-Cam (CL65) digital camera. This camera continues the recent trend of convergence in the technology world by adding functions not traditionally associated with cameras to this technology marvel.

In the case of the Geo-Cam, in addition to the traditional functions like taking pictures, it also features Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities allowing this camera to function like the camera functions of many smartphones. This means you can upload directly from the camera to Facebook and other social networks. Some would argue that improving the quality of pictures being posted to Facebook is a double edged sword (more pixels showing you doing potentially stupid things, anyone). You can also use these functions to do "old-fashioned" functions like uploading pictures to your computer and / or network wirelessly.

In addition, it provides Geo-tagging of your pictures by using GPS functionality built into the camera. This means that it will get easier to know where the nice pictures this camera takes where taken.

It will be interesting to watch as cameras gain more smartphone capabilities and smartphone's gain improved camera capabilities to see which platform rules the day. For now, if you are in the market for a digital camera be sure to add the Samsung Geo-Cam to your shortlist.

Got a new PC for Christmas ... now what?

Sitting here on boxing day I am sure many of you are excited about receiving a new computer for Christmas. Hopefully all of you computer recipients will show the same level of thought and consideration that the people giving these very nice presents took when picking out your gift.

By that I mean, not just ripping open the boxes, plugging everything in and starting to "play" with your new "toy".

So what needs to be done to properly setup a new computer? Well let's start with a nice article written by Michael J. Miller of PCMagazine.com. His main points with my commentary:

• Make or create restore disks. If you computer didn't come with restore disks or a restore partition then be sure and create them either with the tools provided by your PC vendor or by using one of the many 3rd party tools available. Lifehacker has a nice article on the various tools available. Having this nice insurance policy allows you to restore your machine to its out of the box state should something go terrible wrong later on.
• Update your PC. Any computer you purchase is built at a specific point in time and so its software is out of date by the time you take it out of its box. The good news is almost any operating system that comes with your computer has functionality that will get you current if you just allowed it to its job. Just make sure you allow it to do its job when the software asks to do it.
• Setup your anti-virus application. Most new computers come with at least a trial version of an anti-virus app, so take advantage of what comes with the PC to at least give you time to install your favorite or figure out what your favorite app is. If nothing else start with the free version from AVG to give you at least basic protection.
• Move or install your software. You cannot just copy software from an old computer to a new computer, so you are going to need the installation disks, download locations and the various serial numbers associated with each application. Hopefully, you have taken some of my previous Technology Plumbing advice and placed a copy of all of your software in a common repository (such as USB drive or NAS box) along with their serial numbers. But if not, once you have gathered all of this, now would be a good time to do so. Remember if you are retiring an old PC, be sure and de-authorize the software on the old computer so you can properly install it on the new PC and do this before you shut down the old computer. Software like iTunes is particularly sensitive to this kind of operation.
• Install the common plug-ins and utility software. Many computers come pre-installed with some of these utilities, but be sure to upgrade what comes with the computer and install what does not come with the computer. Some of my favorites include Adobe's PDF Reader, Tweetdeck for managing your social networking accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc and RoboForm for managing passwords in a secure and convenient manner
  
• Develop a backup strategy. Hopefully you are already practicing what we at Technology Plumbing have previously suggested, if not this is the best time to implement a strategy that provides both on-site and off-site backups that protect you in the event of either PC failure or worse (fire, flooding, theft, etc).

In addition to Michael's ideas here are a few more:

• Remove the "bloatware" that comes with many PCs by actually uninstalling this software vs. just deleting off the desktop icons.

• Register your PC with the vendor or seller so you can take advantage of service and support offerings they provide.

• Synchronize your browser favorites using a tool such as Xmarks from Foxmarks

If you follow these ideas your experience with your new computer with help keep your holiday's merry and your New Year happy.

Outsourcing - Good, bad or just the way it is

I look at outsourcing from many different perspectives. Using my Economics education I see the movement of resources to places that have a competitive advantage over US resources as logical.

From my business background I see the need to continually drive down the cost of doing business as a business imperative. Everyone else is doing it mentality, so if I don't drive down my costs I will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to others in my space. With this being said, companies saying they are opening off-shore locations to enable them to do business around the world, need to be honest with themselves and their employees and say it is all about saving money, because that is what it is really about.

From a public policy perspective it is never a good thing to see good, well-paid jobs leave the country. But even with a "free-trade" policy it is not a good thing to encourage this type of job loss via a tax policy that puts American workers at an even more of a disadvantage. It is important for public policy to put American workers in their best competitive position (in spite of our higher standard of living) .

From an individual perspective I see outsourcing as a threat to my economic security as well as my ability to grow my compensation given the additional competition off-shore resources provide. I also use this threat as a constant pressure on myself to keep current and keep myself in a position to be a valuable contributor to my company's success.

Finally, I wanted to share another perspective from Ron Hira, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology and author of Outsourcing America about other ways the outsourcing trend is hurting our competitive position in the world. Ron's interview with ComputerWorld is quite enlightening.

So to answer the question I posed in my post title, is "Outsourcing - Good, bad or just the way it is?" The answer is all of the above and more. It is good for global companies, bad for US domestic companies and individuals. It also is just the way it is, but that doesn't mean we (the proverbial "we") can't do something about.

We all need to do everything we can for ourselves to make sure we stay as competitive and valuable as possible with education in every way possible, not just formal schooling, but continual learning from our experiences and our networks. We also need to work with our public officials both elected and appointed to ensure our public policies put us all in the best possible position. This is no different then how we work with our managers to ensure they understand all of the good things we do for our companies and the value proposition we individually bring to the table.

Finally, because there are no guarantees in life, we must all have contingencies in case our best laid plans don't pan out.

I recognize this as a different kind of post than you may be used to reading about in Technology Plumbing, but I hope it inspires you to at least think about the outsourcing topic and perhaps inspires you to comment on this post or even better do something that impacts this trend.

As always, these views and comments are my own and do not reflect or represent my employers or anyone else I may be associated with now or in the future.

Technology comes to the old fashioned check

I am sure many of you have seen the Bank of America commercials with their slick "deposit automation" features where you feed your check directly into the ATM machine and it prints the check image right on your ATM receipt. Those images are then available via your on-line access.

These new ATM machines from Diebold are part of how the banking industry is applying technology to improve their efficiency, which will help their bottom line (and maybe hold down some of those outrageous fees).

Another good example of applying technology is USAA's Deposit@Home which allows you to scan in checks from your home scanner and "deposit" the images into your account. This not only saves your bank money, but saves you the time from going to the bank or finding a friendly ATM.

Now as a technologist, I always like to take note when technology delivers great business value, but in all fairness there is a certain amount of negative postings and comments about some of this automation. The tone of these comments indicate there may be a few glitches still to be worked out, such as the inherent inefficiency of having to feed in each check individually vs. stuffing them all into a single envelope and processing them all at once. One only needs to look at the trade-offs we make with cell phones to see we are willing to trade off some quality and reliability for the right amount of convenience.

When an old fashioned processes like check processing can benefit from technology it is time to think about all of the things we do day to day and find ways to advantage of technology in new ways to improve their efficiency and your bottom line. If nothing else, be sure you take advantage of the efficiencies your bank is offering you.

Thoughts on blogging

I read Peter Kim's latest blog post today and was immediately moved to write a blog entry about his blog entry.

In his post he lists 5 thoughts on blogging:

1. Once momentum is lost, it's a lot easier for the blog to remain at rest. For all the physicists out there, there's no lack of force around here, but it has been driving business activities other than the blog.
2. The blogs I've followed since "the early days" of social media post much less frequently today. That contributes to a lack of great content to react to.
3. Audiences and attention have fragmented wildly. The growth of other platforms (e.g. social networks, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous) has clearly cut into the time and attention paid to blogs.
4. Even ego traps don't work well anymore.
5. Not posting on a blog reminds me of that Geico commercial - it's just sitting there watching at you, waiting for you to post again.

Now I know very few of my Technology Plumbing readers care about why I write a blog or what Peter Kim thinks about writing blogs but his points seemed so spot on to the challenges of writing a blog I had to share.

What my readers care about, at least I think what they care about, is information on technology that can be used to help their business and their personal lives. With that said Peter's comments are applicable to not only writing blogs but about staying focused on what is important to you and your business given the challenges and competing interests we face every day.

Let me know your thoughts on Peter's thoughts and what they meant to you.

Things taken for granted no more

As we get near year-end and people and business start making plans for 2010 I thought it made sense to review some of the things we take for granted to see if really should continue to assume we have to do business these same ways in 2010

• Phone Service - At our houses most people still have land lines or VOIP services directly associated with their homes, while more and more of our voice usage is via cell phones. At what point will your land lines / VOIP go away and you will rely totally on your cell service? For me, the only folks who call my home phone are the many telemarketers I ignore based on their CallerID. Once my last child heads off to college this coming fall my VOIP service will be gone (sorry Vonage).

• Satellite Radio - A few years ago, it seemed like Satellite radio was the way to go for getting commercial free radio and the programming you wanted. Today the progress that Internet Radio has made makes Internet Radio a viable option for many homeowners and small business. Take a look at your ROI for picking up a dedicated Internet Radio device or just connecting an old PC to your existing sound system vs. paying those monthly fees to Sirius / XM.

• Cable Service - You may or may not be ready to cut the cord with your cable provider (unless they are also your broadband service provider) in lieu of getting your TV shows via many of the Internet options available. But you may be able to at least cut back some of the channels you subscribe to as they may not really be used or moving to the web makes more sense.

While I have listed only 3 items above, tis the season to review not only these items, but also look at all of your recurring expenses and make sure you are not paying for services you no longer need or can get in alternative and potentially less expensive manner.

Share your ideas on what expenses you are reviewing as there are now better ways to perform this work or service.

Monitoring your power

There are a number of power monitoring options starting to hit the market, but Wattvision has an approach that will work for more folks now vs. the approach that Google and others are offering as their solution can take advantage of digital meters vs. waiting for smart meters like Google and others require.

I will like to be able to give you a more detailed review; however, even with the "work now" approach being offered by Wattvision my house still uses an old analog meter so I cannot try it out directly. My electric provider, ComEd, is moving straight to SmartMeters, but have yet to reach my town with this project.

In the meantime, if you have a digital electric meter, you might want to check out Wattvision's solution. You can get a discount on a Wattvision sensor by using the discount code offered to Tech Crunch readers at this link. This offer reduces the sensor cost from the standard $199 to $149.

If you do take advantage of this service feel free to share your experience with your fellow Technology Plumbing readers.

Internet Radios, close but ...

The concept of Internet Radio is quite intriguing and appealing, but the challenge is to deliver Internet Radio and its companion services (Pandora etc) in a simple easy to digest manner.

With this in mind, the products from Livio Radio grabbed my attention as I read about their products. Thus far they have 2 products, NPR Radio and Pandora Radio.

The NPR Radio is designed primarily, as its name implies, to listen to NPR programs both live and those available as podcasts. It also has the ability to listen to the thousands of Internet Radio stations. The key to this product are the dedicated NPR buttons on the radio, which makes listening to NPR broadcasts about as easy as an appliance can make it.

The other product they offer is the Pandora Radio, designed to make using the Pandora music service (a Technology Plumbing favorite) as easy as possible. This model has dedicated Pandora buttons such as "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" which gives you a nice way to use Pandora without a computer. This model also gives you access to the thousands of the Internet Radio stations.

Both products give you the ability to connect external devices to the Livio products and send the sound output to an external device (speakers, stereo, etc).

Now here is the rub, if you want both the NPR and Pandora functions you are out of luck and you have to pick one or the other. Now they mention they are looking to bridge this gap, but given their approach to having dedicated buttons, my guess is this bridge is a new product, which does nothing for those who buy one of their products now.

So at this point, I am holding off on buying anything in this category and will wait and see how Livio progresses its products.

Will also continue to watch Livio's competitors like Logitech's Squeezebox products and keep everyone updated on how this space progress.

Holiday Gifts and Thoughts

Now that we have passed "Black Friday" and "Cyber-Monday" the holiday shopping is getting even more serious as there is still plenty of shopping left to do. As the weekend winds down here are some of my thoughts on what is going on, at least as far as technology shopping goes:

• The shopping mall parking lots look to be quite full, not that I have any intention of actually going to a mall when there are so many ways to do my shopping on-line.
• Of course the key to on-line shopping is to get your shopping done early enough to take advantage of the free or low cost shipping. As we get closer to the holiday's having to pay for expedited shipping takes away much of the incentive for shopping on-line (other then avoiding the crowds).

• Even with my significant use of Catalog Choice I am still getting way too many catalogs in the mail and spending too much time stripping and recycling them. Even catalogs I like such as the great writing and productivity tools found at Levenger come way too often to be of any use.
• The need to constantly reinvent yourself is evident as I look through the very nice offerings from Wind & Weather and wonder why anyone still buys weather instruments (other then for purely decorative purposes) given the amount of weather info available via the Weather Channel or nice browser tools as Forecast Fox that keep you as current as needed on the current weather conditions as well as what is coming.
• Speaking of reinventing, there are some very interesting new products out this year including a power outlet that combines power and USB outlets in one standard wall outlet. In addition, I like the concept behind HP's DreamScreen 100 combining a digital picture frame with music delivery as well as access to social networking sites. The jury is still out on HP's execution, but for the earlier adopters out there it may be the product to go with this holiday season.

Well time for all of us to get back to shopping, but hopefully today's Holiday Gifts and Thoughts post will help all of you in your holiday shopping efforts.

Holiday Gift Exchanges aren't just for High School

Hey all, Sarah here again. With my Dad's recent post about the holidays upon us, I figured I'd let you in on what I was up to with the holiday season.

Let's start back in high school. Every year, my friends and I gathered one day in November after school and pulled names with their lockers out of hat. We then had about a month to leave notes, hints or whatever we wanted in their locker and the day before Christmas Break, we left a gift in the locker with our final hint. After school on that last day, we met to accuse who we thought was our Secret Santa. It was a tradition.

But then last year, we went to college. We were all sad to realize the Secret Santa couldn't continue if we were all in different states. But then one of my friends found a site called Elfster. On Elfster, you can register as many people as you want through email invites and the site assigns each person a Secret Santa. You can then create a wish list, ask questions to anyone or everyone in the group, and generally just mess with people, which is the best part. Then when we all came home for Christmas Break, we met and exchanged the gifts, each guessing who had them once again. It was just like old times. I'm so glad that technology has helped us carry out the holiday cheer even though we're miles apart (and don't have lockers anymore).

We're doing it again this year, and I thought I'd share so maybe you could too. So check out Elfster yourself, the set up is ridiculously easy (they even prompt you for a spending limit, you can't forget anything) and registration is free.

Holiday Lists

As Thanksgiving is now behind us we all turn our attention to our holiday shopping which brings out the proverbial questions what to get family, friends and business associates as gifts.

Lets start with the "easiest" group, the family. My family, like many, is spread around the country so the idea of people making lists and keeping them in sync is always an issue. Over the years I have progressed from shared Word documents to Cozi Lists but this year I have moved to Google Docs as it gives me the ability to customize the lists and share them with my far flung family.

In this model, I create the original document, share it with my family members who then access the document and update it with their ideas and wishes.

The gift givers (and we are all gift givers) then review the list and have some ideas on what to buy the various recipients on our lists.

Nice benefits of this method:

• Single location that is always updated
• Auto Save function captures those quick updates without having to think about saving
• Easy to embed links, so each person can quickly provide a direct way for you to purchase the gift for them via on-line shopping (I do realize this takes some of the fun of gift giving away, but we are talking about efficiency here)
  
• Printable so you can take them with you when you still go physically shopping.
  

A couple of caveats on our road to the "perfect" holiday list:

• Sharing a Google Doc is easy as long as everyone has a Google account, so if everyone in your group doesn't have one this would be a good time to create one. Not only will this give them access to the holiday list, but will allow them access to the many other Google features (Gmail, iGoogle, Google Reader, Google Voice, Wave and many more).
• This method is great for creating the list, but not so great for managing what has been bought by whom, but I am still working on that part. If you have ideas on this part, please feel free to share them with the Technology Plumbing audience by commenting on this post.

We will talk about friends and business associates in another posting, but for now, get started on putting together your list (I will leave it to you to determine who is naughty and who is nice) and then get started on your shopping.

Disclaimer: I do not work for nor am I associated with Google in any manner, I just like their products and services and recommend them purely on that basis.

Different Airline Yields New Ideas

I normally fly United for my travels, but on this trip I ended up on US Airways via United's code sharing program. For the most part the flight the US Air flight process was similar to United's and other then the fact that the gates listed by United and US Air didn't match (and no one at US Air seem to care about this discrepancy) it was a normal flight.

One small thing that did vary between US Air and United was the in-flight magazine. Both magazines are fine at what they do, but because I hadn't read the US Airways magazine I took the opportunity to read through it.

So why have a shared this seemingly non-technology news to the Technology Plumbing audience? Well mainly, because there were some very interesting articles and ads in the magazine that I want to share with you, so lets get our journey off the ground:

Jabra's new HALO bluetooth headset looks to provide a beautifully designed, very light weight set of headphones that promise a great listening experience up to 30 feet away from the source for around $130. While I can't give you any first hand feedback (though I would if Jabra wants to lend me the headphones) the picture and accompanying story makes me want to look at them as a possible replacement for my current Bose headphones.

Next up in "The Gist" section of the magazine was a new palm-sized projector from Cinemin called the Swivel. As you might surmise from the name of the projector that one of its features is that it can swivel up to 90-degrees allow the images to be projected in any direction for around $350. It provides compatibility with iPods, iPhones and laptops so it is nice way to project images without having to worry about carrying or finding a more "full-size" projector. Now it should be mentioned that at this size, you will need a darkened room to clearly see the image and the image resolution is limited to 480 x 320 so don't expect the same type of results you will get from larger projectors.

As we make our approach to landing this blog post, let me next bring up the relatively new Link product from long time lockset manufacturer Schlage. This remotely controlled lock set lets you open and lock Link controlled doors. This type of functionality is designed to allow you to deal with folks who need access to your home or business without having to give them a key or any access codes. The idea is the contractor contacts the owner when they are at the building and the owner remotely opens the door for the contractor. When the work is complete, the contractor leaves and the owner locks up the property. It is a nice example of using technology to deal with an age-old issue.

To bring this post to a final landing I hope that not only have I provided some new ideas for my readers to consider, but also suggest that sometimes breaking a routine can lead to some new insight for some new sources of information.

Goldilocks Time

After reading this Coolest Gadget article on bed sheets that can tell you what time it is via a braille like touch, I have to agree with the author that it is an interesting idea, but nothing more.

Taking the time to feel your way around the numbers on your bed is probably way more work then just opening your eyes to read the clock.

With that said, I am still looking for new ways to make a clock's output more readable for those of us who have trouble reading clocks in the dark without our glasses.

I currently use a SharperImage clock that projects the time on the ceiling in large digits, which I can actually read, but the clocks alarm functions are less then optimal so I am always on the lookout for something better. I have my eye on HP's new DreamScreen 100 which would probably be a very nice step up, but is certainly overkill as an alarm clock and most likely suffers from "first-generation" issues based on the early reviews I have read. Though if HP would like me to review one I am more then happy to do so :)

So for now, the bed sheets clock is too light, the DreamScreen is probably too heavy, so I will stick with my current clock until I find the just right clock to tell me it is Goldilocks time.

How not to use social networking

There is a local BBQ restaurant in my area called Uncle Bubs and they do make a very nice BBQ sandwich, but they don't really understand how to use social networking.

They are trying to become part of the Food Network's Diners, Drive-ins and Dives program and are offering a free "party" if they get selected to all of the people who voted them onto the show.

So far so good, however, their efforts thus far to publicize this idea have consisted of doing a story with the local newspaper, who didn't even get the story onto the papers web site.

The Uncle Bub's website contains no mention of the effort either, which leaves the folks who read the local paper to create their own viral process to get the word out. It doesn't help that the Diners, Drive-ins and Dives website only contains a mail link to submit your favorites and no web forms that would make it so much easier.

I did do my part and posted the information to my Facebook profile and hope that my friends tell their friends and so on, but things would have been much easier if Uncle Bubs and the local newspaper had just posted the information in a shareable manner. Uncle Bubs even has a Facebook page, but did not take advantage of that outlet.

Don't get me wrong, I am not picking on Uncle Bub's, and I have never watched Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, but just wanted to point out that how your business can do better and take advantage of the many benefits of social networking. If your company doesn't understand how to do so, there are plenty of professionals out there that can assist.

Am I being too harsh on Uncle Bub's or do you need help with your social networking efforts, let me know with your comments to Technology Plumbing.

Music to my ears

I enjoy listening to music and the web has been a huge help with filling my ears with the music I already like as well as a constant flow of new music.

Like many of you I started with iTunes and still use iTunes with my iPod today, but Apple's model is a bit locked down for me and I have been exploring other services, many of which integrate with iTunes.

At this point I have tired and rejected Rhapsody, which started out nicely, but their upgrades have made the product so unreliable that I gave up on them. They also lock you down to select MP3 players none of which work as well as the iPod.

I am a big fan of Pandora and use it on the web as well as on my Blackberry (and via my Blue-Ray DVD player) and it works for my casual listening times where I want to hear a certain type of music or don't want to bother picking what music I want to listen to letting Pandora take care of it for me.

Recently I have been using Lala, which is a mix between all of the other services as companies continue to try and find the right combination of services and pricing. In the case of Lala you can listen to any song they have in its entirety once for free. This feature allows you to determine if you really want to hear it again or if hearing it once satisfy the need for that song. If you decide to purchase it you can do so as a web purchase or as a MP3 purchase. A web purchase means you can listen as often as you want to the song via Lala's web portal for just $.10 a track. A MP3 purchase is DRM free meaning you can listen to it anyone including iTunes. Lala even provides nice integration with iTunes meaning that songs you download via Lala are automatically added to your iTunes library (if you want).

Finally, a nice feature of Lala is that you can upload songs you already have (at least the ones that are not DRM protected) which gives you the ability to listen to them on Lala as web songs providing nice portability to your music collection.

I have not found a way to integrate listening to Lala outside of the web client yet, but hopefully a Blackberry client is in their plans.

While this is a never ending journey, I have summarized my findings so far in yet another Google Docs spreadsheet. As I update the spreadsheet this blog entry will also update, so check back often.

As always I look forward to your thoughts and comments on the music services you like or want to learn more about via Technology Plumbing.

Join me in an experiment

Normally on this blog I share information and ideas mixed in with a bit of humor (well at least I am trying to be funny). But today, I have something more to share then that. I was recently granted some new Google Wave invites and I am willing to give away 5 of them to Technology Plumbing readers who can tell me why they deserve an invite to the Wave Preview program.

To enter, simply comment on this web post and I will pick the 5 best comments and send each of you an invite to join the preview. Be sure you provide your email address in your comment.

Why am I doing this? Well, first of all, because I can as I have the invites, secondly, I want to know who is reading this blog and gets enough out of it that they are willing to post a comment and finally, these new Wave users can form a Technology Plumbing group that can join some waves to see how like minded folks can collaborate on Wave. I am already doing this with folks from my corporate world, but want to see how folks that don't share a common employer interact.

We will let the experiment run for a week allowing you time to come up with something that will move me to give you an invite.

I await your comments.

Talk about being connected

I have often heard the expression that a person is connected. Now in the normal context this normally means politically connected, but in today's technology world being connected means something completed different. Today there are so many ways that people can reach each other and being the kind of technologist that likes to track things I decided to figure out the many ways that I can connect with people.



As you see for handy little Google Docs embedded spreadsheet above, I have 17 different ways to connect. This of course is subject to change and the spreadsheet will change as I add new methods (what am I crazy, please don't answer that).

So what is the point of this whole exercise? Well besides reminding myself of the fact that I spend way too much time trying to keep up with all of these communication channels, I hope it illustrates the many ways that you can use to keep in touch with your friends, families and customers.

If any of these methods are new to you check them or better yet contact me and I can write about the most popular methods in an upcoming blog.

Picture this on your Website

One of the projects I have been working on recently is adding some pictures to one of the websites I maintain.

It started out as an effort to take pictures of the shop's stylists, but then we started taking pictures of the various locations inside and outside of the shop.

Soon I had a bunch of pictures and we started talking about what to do with them, when I remembered the movie function in Picasa (a Technology Plumbing favorite).

The Picasa movie function is not going to make you a Steven Spielberg, but it does allow you to select a series of pictures, create some nice transitions, add some music and you have poor man's "Ken Burns Effect" video.



Once you create the video, you can upload it to YouTube (part of the Google umbrella). Once uploaded and processed the video can be linked and / or embedded into your website.

Now the video is OK for what it needs to do, but I definitely learned some lessons.

• The music is important to set the tone. My original soundtrack was nice but didn't give enough piazza. My "critics" were very happy to provide some alternative soundtracks that made it work.

• When you are using pictures as video, you can't have enough pictures. If you think you have enough, take more to give the video more "movement". I want to add some pictures in the next version of the video.

• All of Ken Burn's videos use a lot of voice over narration. My video has no narration, but that too will be added in a future version of the video.

For now, we will see what kind of feedback we get from this version of the video and create some updated versions going forward.

Let me know your thoughts on using pictures and videos.

Doing the Wave

Over the past week I have been doing the Wave. Not the strange little crowd behavior often seen at sporting events, but using Google's new Wave product now in "Preview"mode.

Now before you get all excited about checking out Wave, please note it is by invitation only and I have no invitations to give out.

So why am I even telling you about Wave, well because it pretty amazing technology and it appears to have some interesting disruptive possibilities.

I guess the best way to describe it is too say if email, IM and Twitter/Yammer/Facebook were to get together and have an off-spring, it might be Wave.

The product provides threaded multi-party conversations that provide for simultaneous, near real-time updates. The first time you watch multiple people update a Wave (Google speak for a threaded conversation) at the same time you will be hooked and want to figure out the possibilities.

Of course, all of this chaos, can be confusing at times, especially because it not sequential as people can insert, remove, edit or reply to any part of the thread at any time. There are tools that let you deal with this by looping through the updates (via the space bar) or "play back" the Wave in case you came in late to the wave and what to figure out how things got to the point of where they are now.

All of this would be cool, but the fact that like Facebook, Wave is its own world, it features add-in functionality, called Gadgets and Robots. This extensibility already provides a number of very nice features such as on the fly translation from one language to another, to polling to Google Maps and because it has its own API, many more extensions will be coming to Wave (I wish my company's products had as many extensions as Wave already has).

In my first week on Wave I have participated in Waves that have shared a YouTube video, allowing all participants to watch and comment on the video at the same time; a Wave that allowed all of the participants to place a push pin on a Google Map where their office is located (and comment about it) allowing many of the participants to learn more about their company then most of the HR programs we have seen (no offense to my companies fine HR department). Finally, today 28 Wave participants, who are also employees of my company, participated in a Wave during our CEO's live Webinar. Don't worry nothing proprietary was shared, but folks did react to what was being said and shared content for folks that were not able to attend (the Webinar is offered multiple times and recorded for later play back), but with Wave the opportunity to share in real-time was pretty amazing.

There are plenty of rough edges with Wave at this point, but the early adopters lucky enough to get invites are enjoying the experience. In fact, a poll in one of the Waves shows 22 will use it when it comes out of preview mode, 0 will not use it and 10 others voted maybe.

I vote to keep using it and share with the Technology Plumbing readers how they can use it to help their companies.

New Ideas for Your Office - Where ever it is

Offices today tend to be what you make of them and where you can make them. So to make your office, where ever it is as productive and useful as possible I wanted to share a few products that have caught my eye recently.

BlueLounge has a neat (OK, showing my age with that word, but it does keep things neat) cable holder that can be "stuck" to your desk and hold your cable ends in place ready for you to use. Should minimize the "cable crawl" where you have to crawl around on the floor looking for that iPod cable.

Belkin (a Technology Plumbing favorite) has a nice clamp-on Surge Protector to help manage your power cords by clamping the power strip to your desk. Notice a trend in these ideas of managing wires and cables, true wireless connectivity can't come soon enough :)

I am a big white board fan, but the cost and difficulty of getting and mounting white boards with enough space to work on can be difficult. This brings is to IdeaPaint, which takes the idea of a white board and extends it to your entire room (or at least the walls you want to use). Instead of mounting one or more white boards, you simply apply IdeaPaint to the area you want to use as a write-able surface. This idea is in use at many corporations (including my own), but IdeaPaint brings this concept to the small business or home office where it can be used for both work and family matters. When needed, simply paint over it with either another coat of IdeaPaint or a more traditional wall covering.

Combine these new products with basics of a good office, like a good chair, good lighting and a work surface that positions your work area at the right height will make your "office" work for you and not just be just a place you work.

Going Corporate for just a moment

While I try to aim this blog at individuals and small and medium sized business, sometimes the corporate person in me comes out and whats to be heard.

In my corporate life we are doing a lot of interviewing. Yes we are hiring as some parts of the economy are doing OK in these overall tough times. But this article is not about my companies good fortune, but more about how people need use technology to prepare themselves to be hired when they want to or need to change jobs

As I was typing that last sentence, I was listening to Rod Stewart's' version of "You've Really Got A Hold On Me", talk about direct inspiration.

You've Really Got A Hold On Me...

Sorry about the musical interlude ... back to getting hired

Each time, I got notified of a new candidate being presented by our recruiters, I would quickly scan the attached resume and then just as quickly jump to LinkedIn and see what information I could view about the person, including the groups they belong to, the number of connections they had and if I knew any of their connections, recommendations, etc.

In addition to LinkedIn, I would also do a Google search to see what else might pop up such as an unprotected Facebook profile (you don't have one of those, do you?).

I am now getting as much information about a candidate from my on-line search as from the person's carefully prepared resume. By the way having the resume does help to confirm what I am finding on-line does indeed belong to the same person.

As my own candidate review process has evolved, I found good article by Meridith Levinson on CIO.COM titled "Personal Branding Really is the Key to Finding a New Job" telling people to make sure the LinkedIn profiles were as reviewed and prepared as their resume.

So let me add my own experience to Meridith's story to convince you to get your on-line world in order and working for you so you can find that next job whether it is in the corporate world or with a small / medium business.

Power ... What is it good for

The title has nothing to do with the Edwin Starr Song or the Lord Acton quote about absolute power. Instead it is catchy (I hope) intro to start a conversation (which requires you to comment) about power.

In today's post I am going to talk about 3 "powerful" stories:

David Greenfield published an article titled "Is the Smart Grid a Dumb Idea" and the answer is of course not. The question is do we have the discipline to replace our historically haphazard electric grid with something that can transmit our ever increasing need for power (the current economy excluded) in a much smarter fashion with much less loss and much greater awareness and management of the power we are using.

Windmills - I have a fascination with windmills, not the old fashion type, but the large modern windmills that are sprouting up in places such as North Central Indiana. My fascination comes from combining something old with technology to create green. Green power for consumers and green cash for the farmers who are turning their farms into homes for hundreds of windmills.




Indiana Windmills

Big Brother Fan | MySpace Video

Drying my hands - I have written about the pros and cons between paper towels and hand dryers, with high efficiency hand dryers carrying the day. When I wrote that, it seemed like high efficiency hand dryers were pretty rare, but in my recent travels I have noticed that Excel Dryers are becoming more and more common. While it may appear that we are actually using more power than "just using" paper towels, the reality is this kind of trend is good for power conversation when you factor in the power required to make, deliver and dispose of paper towels.

There you have it. I have "powered" through some ideas on Power and ways to use it more efficiently. I will continue to come back to the power topic from time to time because as a technologist I understand that I am very dependent on power for technology to work. For that matter, all of us are dependent on having clean, reliable, renewable power to make our livings and our families comfortable ... and that is a powerful statement to make.

Read about these products and ideas and contribute your own ideas to the conversation.

Technology Across The Pond - Part III

In part II of my series on Technology Across the Pond I talked about my first day in the UK and technology in and around the hotel.

Today, in the last part of this series on UK Technology we talk about technology in the office and away from London.

First I want to mention the nice little power adapter I picked up right before my trip. My regular adapter mysteriously went MIA, which I noticed as I was packing up, so time for a quick run to Best Buy. I wasn't expecting much, but when I found the Targus APK01, it was more then just enough, it was actually a very nice design. Now before everyone gets too excited, it is still just a power adapter and that is all it does. The specialness is all about the way the various country adapters are nested into each other making it easy to carry and hard to lose the individual adapters (which is probably what happened to my last adapter. The adapters themselves are no bigger then they need to be, which has sometimes been an issue with other adapters I have seen. Bottom line is this little device will live in my briefcase along with the other handy devices like the Belkin mini-surge protector

The first day in the UK office is always fun. First of all getting through building security is much more of a challenge in the UK then in the US. Most offices the in the US have virtually no security outside of the big corporate offices in NY. While in the UK they take it very seriously, checking IDs, getting folks properly signed-in and making sure a credentialed employee escorted us to our companies location. A pain to be sure, but it does give you a good sense of security.

Once to our companies location, in addition to seeing people I haven't seen for a while, it is time to grab one of the open cubes and get connected. The concept of Hoteling is a fine one, but the shared cubes are seldom maintained and are often a source of spare parts for the permanent cube dwellers. We (there were 4 of us) each grabbed a cube, but only 2 of the 4 first cubes we grabbed were fully functional in terms of power and network connectivity. After playing musical cubes we were finally able to get everyone connected. Wireless networking would have made things better, but large companies are still challenged by the security issues of wireless making its adoption quite slow. Wireless power is still a pipe dream of mine, but its day will come soon. I wonder if security issues will slow its deployment as well. Check out this video on wireless power to see what the future holds.



Once everyone got connected, the day in the office, at least from a technology perspective, was fairly normal, though London's fog and rain made it so humid, it felt like my glasses were fogging up.

The rest of the trip followed similar themes of getting connectivity (never as easier or as inexpensive as the US), getting through security at our client's site and finding our way around via Taxi. Note: While the London Taxi drivers know how to get anywhere in London, when you get away from London, the Taxi drivers often don't know where anything is.

With our business finished, we headed home on our various flights to our various home cities. Now normally, international flights are seldom delayed any significant amount of time, but unfortunately, this was not a normal flight. We had two minor mechanical issues, neither of which would have kept us from taking off, but in combination, they kept us grounded. After a bit of a keystone cops act in determining which of the two issues to fix, both got fixed and we finally took off from London 4.5 hours late.

Back in the US, ready to continue my focus on the day to day technology challenges we all face.

In case you missed them here are links to the earlier posts in this series:

Part 1
Part 2

Rethinking the Spreadsheet

For many of us working on a spreadsheet means working with Microsoft Excel and in the corporate world that is still true almost all of the time. However in the rest of the world alternatives, led by Google Docs, are changing this.

Now at first, you might think the appeal of Google Docs is that it is free vs. what it costs to license Microsoft Excel or Office and that is certainly true.

However what is really happening is applications like Google Docs are changing the way we think and deal with spreadsheets and documents in general. Of course Microsoft is trying to play catch-up with this new way of working, but in general it is difficult for incumbents to adjust if the new way is significantly better then the old way.

So what makes Google Spreadsheets better?

• The ability to access your files from anywhere you have an Internet connection as the web (do a dare use the over-hyped word "cloud") is the file system. This is far different then syncing a local file system to the web. Of course you will still want to properly back up your Google files.

• The ability to use web functions like =GoogleLookup("Roger Clemens"; "earned run average") to present and use dynamic data. Yes I know Roger's ERA is pretty static at this point :). Click here for more details and examples of Google functions
  

• Sharing and embedding files - It is very easy to share your files with your co-workers (individuals and groups) or the public with proper access controls. Embedding these documents in websites gives you a whole new way to share the data in the documents, which is probably why you created them in the first place.

Now at this point Google Docs are not the functional equivalent of Microsoft Office, but since most folks only use a fraction of what Office offers, you may find that Google Docs provide what you need from a "legacy" perspective while opening up a new way of creating and sharing data and information, which at the end of the day is what is all about.

Let me know your thoughts on Google Docs and what new uses you are finding.

Simple is often better

In music, like technology, simpler is often better. This video by the late Israel Kamakawiwo is just a man, a ukulele and a beautiful backdrop (Hawaii). Next time you have a technology problem think about keeping the complexity level as low as possible. In the meantime, enjoy the video.

Technology Across The Pond - Part II

Continuing the discussion on my recent trip to the UK. In part I I talked about getting to the UK, in part II I will talk about my technology experiences while in the UK.

• During the car ride from the airport to the hotel, I was pleased to see my Blackberry working as if I was still in the US. Thanks goes to that AT&T global network leveraging the O2 network locally. Of course I haven't seen the bill from the trip to know what, if anything, additional my company is going to have to pay for my Blackberry usage.

• Checked into the Hilton Hotel at Canary Wharf and was happy to see not only multiple UK power outlets, but also a US power outlet. While I had a UK adapter and my trusty Belkin Mini Surge Protector (that I have written about previously) to support multiple items, having the US power outlet provided even more flexibility

• Of course my trusty Verizon Wi-Fi card was useless in the UK, so I had to rely on the connectivity options provide by the Hilton. The good news is they offered a nice wired Ethernet offering. The bad news is the cost of the of connection was quite steep and the fact that it was priced in GBP means the dollar cost of it was just this side of ridiculous. However since I had work commitments that required connectivity, I went ahead and ordered it.

• While I was doing my work, the Bears game was starting back in Chicago. Since I had to be up to get my work done and had already paid for an Internet connection, I figured I would use part of the bandwidth to listen the game via NFL.COM's local audio broadcast. So I shelled out $4.99 (on my dime, not the companies) to pick up the game. It was good to hear the game from Jeff Joniak and the team, but since they don't broadcast the commercials I got to hear a lot of recorded messages. I almost prefer the commercials to the repetitive recordings.

In the next part of this series I head to the office and on to my clients locations with more technology observations.

I know that face

Google recently released Picasa version 3.5 of its photo management software. The key new feature of this release is name tags which provides the ability to tag your pictures with the name of the person or persons in the picture.

For those of you who use Facebook, it features very similar tagging mechanism; however, Picasa also provides facial recognition, so once you identify a person once (or twice) it will scan all of your photos and identify other photos containing the same person.

Once you have tagged your photos, you now have "photo albums" by person, which you can view and perform other features.

In addition the name tagging features carries over to Picasa's Web Albums, if you set your privacy settings to allow it.

When you factor in features such as the ability to embed in a slideshow of your web album, Picasa provides a lot of utility for your photo handling needs.




A couple of caveats, one is that Picasa is not at the same level as Flickr in terms of community and features professional photographers need.

Secondly, the name tagging feature is designed to work at the workstation level vs. at the picture or network level. This means if you have multiple PCs they will not share the naming work you perform on the initial PC. Plus you have to back up both a configuration file and database files. Here is a link to good thread on the topic.

Mixing Technology and Music - Oh Yeah! - Part II

In part II (Part I) of my on-going mission to share both music and technology with my Technology Plumbing audience, I have to share Rodrigo y Gabriela. I first heard this Mexican guitar duo on Chicago's WXRT and have been hooked ever since. They just came out with their latest album 11:11, which features 11 songs and 11 musical influences in their lives. Their influences range from Jimi Hendrix to Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin to Metallica. These two guitarists get so much music out of their acoustic guitars you have to see it to believe it, which I hope you will do.

Technology Across The Pond - Part I

I spent last week in the UK working with some of my corporate clients. While I travel a lot in North America, this was my first trip overseas since I started this blog so I wanted to share some thoughts and observations about technology getting to / from and within the UK.

• Traveling in coach is not a great way to get much work done or get any sleep in. The airlines have cut so many flights that the remaining flights are fully packed leaving no room to do anything but work on one thing at a time. Forget about having documents out while working on your PC. Also forget about sleeping as the seats in coach barely recline.
  

• My flight (and most flights) do not provide power in the coach section, so the time you can spend working is limited to the battery life of your PC, which we all know is not up to a 7+ hour flight.
  

• On top of the battery issue, lighting on an overnight flight is poor at best. While I admit to being particularly light-sensitive (I need lots of light to work well), working with only the light from PC screen and a poorly aimed overhead light was causing me to make more typos than normal, even as a good touch typist.

• Given these challenges my goal of completing some technical drawings on the flight over were not fully met, but I got enough of a start on them to feel comfortable that I could complete the work from my UK hotel room.

• One good side effect of not being able to work as much on the plane is that I did see two very good movies, The Hurt Locker (about Army Bomb Squad members trying to survive in Iraq) and The Brothers Bloom (2 brothers grow up as con men and try to pull off one last con).

I will continue this series on technology across the pond in my next posting, so stay with me as I talk about hotels, the tele, cars, roads and more.

The e-book wars heat up

Barnes and Noble discusses their upcoming e-reader device and strategy. Going with a 3rd party device capable, of delivering color, paired with the previously announced Barnes & Nobel e-reader, which can be used on many devices, may give them an interesting strategy of sell once, read anywhere. The key will be execution as the rush to become the iTunes of the ebook world continues.