New Hyrax site up and running

I finally managed to get the Hyrax International LLC web site up and running — it’s really amazing what you can do with WordPress and a few plugins. Not at all like “back in the day” when we hand-coded this stuff in Perl and HTML1.0.

I still need to look into the “right” e-commerce solution, but so far it appears Instinct’s WP e-Commerce plugin is the winner. It’s a solid, mature platform and with a few of the add-ons you can build some really fantastic one-click or one-drag shopping experiences. IconDock has one of the best examples — not that I’m leaning toward that experience for Hyrax, but it is pretty slick.

Shopify is probably the runner up. It’s feature rich and has the added marketability of Pixar and C-net endorsement. It’s also got a rich feature set, but doesn’t have the robustness and sheer number of options and add-ons that Instinct’s product has. Both are widely used though, so it’s really a matter of doing the technical due diligence to figure out which one is the best fit.

Future shock

Ok, I’ll admit it — I think the iPad is going to be a huge success. Not because it has some whiz-bang feature or gizmo that makes it better than any of the competitors. No, I think it will succeed because it’s completely different. Apple is trying to solve a problem that’s been plaguing “the people we have claimed to serve for 30 years whilst screwing them over in innumerable ways.” Despite all the whinging by the numerous critics, Speirs has hit it on the head. They aren’t griping over the iPad itself, their griping over the end of a tyranny.

Brit’s have their priorities sorted

“Drinking problem solved,” reads the headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Soon Britons will be able to get smashed at the pub while their pint glasses won’t.” Apparently, in the face of a horrendous number (87,000) of alcohol related injuries, many of which stem from shattered pint beer glasses, the government has found a solution.

No officials were talking about reforming British drinking habits of course. I like that. The Brits have got their priorities sorted — and, let’s face it, they’ve got a healthy dose of realism going here. Rather than stem the tide of drunken behavior, the government has invested in developing shatterproof beer glasses. Officials swear the country will save billions in health care costs by eradicating the “pint glass as a lethal weapon” issue.

“Glassing causes horrific injuries and has a lasting and devastating impact on victims and their families,” said Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, as he introduced two new shatterproof pint glasses. Alcohol Concern, a charity that strives to reduce alcohol abuse in Britain, praised the new designs.

Do it!

Fill out the survey! It’s only 6 questions long! It’s worth it and you could win an iPod Shuffle! And seriously, it will be very valuable.

Virtual file management with dropbox

Wouldn’t it be nice if your files magically followed you from one computer to another? Even to your phone? Across different operating systems, like from a Mac to your PC?

If this sounds like something you want to try, give dropbox a go. Dropbox creates a virtual folder on each of your computers — anything you drop into the folder shows up everywhere. It’s instantly backed up to the dropbox computing cloud, and you can even get to your files through a web browser.

One of the best features, I think: You can instantly share any folder inside your dropbox with friends or colleagues, even if they have a different operating system. The shared folders just appear inside your dropbox, letting you work together seamlessly.

Give it a try for free. You get 2GB of storage with your starter account, and can upgrade to 50GB for about $10 a month. And if you’re a Time Machine user — yes, your dropbox folder is seamlessly backed up to Time Machine.

Evernote

Have you discovered Evernote yet? I’ve become very impressed with this simple catch-all for ideas, notes, events, even your favorite wine. Essentially, it can capture just about any content, including web pages, PDF files, documents, text clippings, photos, and email messages. The real power of Evernote is, at least for me, twofold:

1. It’s cross platform, working seamlessly on my iPhone. Any information I capture appears both on my laptop and my iPhone and is fully searchable in either place.
2. Evernote’s search and retrieval capabilities are phenomenal. In part, this is because it uploads everything to a central server where character recognition is run on everything non-text, turning images, scans, faxes and PDF files into fully, content-searchable documents.

As my library of Evernote content has grown it has become more and more indispensable. This took a while. At first I had my typical quandary when facing a new tool. “Where do I put this? How will I find it again?” Eventually I discovered the answer to both questions is actually quite simple: Put everything in Evernote, and don’t worry about finding it again — it’s just going to work. And it does.

This doesn’t mean it’s entirely effortless, but it’s close. I still love Apple Mail and it’s powerful search capabilities, and I still have gigabytes of documents tucked away in my file system. I don’t dump all of my mail into Evernote. Evernote gets most of my documents, faxes, PDFs, images I snap on my iPhone. But it also gets email that I think falls into the “ooh, I’m going to want to reference that again later” category, and it works nicely — especially when there’s a document or image attachment.

Give it a try, but do be religious about it for a while. Until you have enough information in Evernote, you’ll feel like you’re doing double-duty. Eventually, a transition happens and you find it has become central to your workflow. Now, I use it every day — categorizing materials I want to research, as an “idea board” for rough drafts and notes that I’m working on, and as a way to tuck away anything I’ll want to find again.

Live longer (and make better presentations)

Want to live to a happy old age? And pick up a few tips on how to make better presentations while you’re doing it? This is a great post from Presentation Zen that gives us a few tips on both (and thanks to the embedded TEDx videocast). Take a look, it’s worth the 20 minutes or so.

The tablet’s out of the bag

So it looks like the Apple Tablet is for real, not just completely unsubstantiated collective wishful thinking from thousands of Apple fans (which can be pretty powerful in and of itself). And if the slip-up is true, we’ll have all the fun details later this week — and they do sound tantalizing.

The real unemployment rate

The figure we most often hear is 10% unemployment. But that’s not the whole truth — it’s a politically spun figure that minimizes the real story. According to BBC America, we might actually be looking at unemployment closer to 17% if factoring in the “lost workforce,” or those people that have decided to drop out of industry in favor of going back to school, retiring early or trying to find alternative means to supplement income. And, according to Time (January, 2010) some regions have unemployment rates as high as 30%.

Unemployment figures are largely calculated from claims against unemployment insurance, for example, when you file a claim with the EDD. But this is a narrow view, avoiding the overall “employment health” of the country. Even so, we must recognize that unemployment figures have been calculated in this way for a very long time. This means it is a sound relative measure — that is, since we are calculating it essentially the same way we did in years past, we can measure overall health as a comparison to other years. We know that 10% is horrible. The last time we saw unemployment this high was entering into the great depression, when it rose to 23.6% in 1933. So while it may not be accurate, it does give us a solid indication that our economy is in very, very bad shape.

You cannot not communicate

“You cannot not communicate. Every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behaviour), it is not possible not to communicate.”—Paul Watzlawick’s First Axiom of Communication

This, according to 52 Weeks of UX. Stated another way, “This is the first rule of UX. Everything a designer does affects the user experience,” a message that can’t be emphasized enough.

On climate change (yea, you should care)

It always amazes me when people don’t care about important issues. I can understand that many people don’t know if climate change is something they can or can’t affect. But burying our heads in the sand won’t make an issue go away. Investigate further or, if you aren’t willing to, then let the experts decide.

Here’s a really great, well presented pro- and con- on climate change (or try this image on white, it’s more legible).

For some really in-depth analysis on climate change (not to mention a bit of exposé on some disappointing and underhanded misinformation from the skeptics) take a look at The Temperature of Science by James Hansen (PDF). James cites a few examples where corrections to data were argued to be “cooking the books.” And yet, critics could only argue about the fact a correction was made — they couldn’t find any flaw in the corrections themselves (let alone, apply their faculties to discover the original flaws in the first place).

Social networking explosion

Social networking is on a meteoric rise, according to the December issue of Time. Makes me wish I’d actually enough time to pay attention to it.

13.9 billion — minutes facebook users spent on the site in April, a 700% increase from April 2008.

95% — of business decision-makers worldwide use social networks to some extent.

35% — of Americans 18 and over used a social-networking service in 2008.

8% — of Americans 18 and over used a social-networking service in 2005.

87% — of adults said they prefer dealing with others i person instead of via computers or smartphones.