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 [...]

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% — [...]

Ocean kayaking and whisky!

Ok, this has got to be the perfect tour: Ocean kayaking around the coast of Scotland on a tour that includes stops at some of the finest scotch whisky distilleries on the islands. I really can’t think of a better vacation.

How a web site design goes straight hell

I love this little sequence by The Oatmeal. It’s unfortunately far too true to life. It does baffle me that so many clients will hire a product design firm (whether it be web sites, marketing materials or hardware) only to completely disregard their cumulative decades of experience in favor of “Miffles the dog.”
Anyhow, buy The [...]

Is Email Marketing Still a Viable Marketing Channel?

This was just too funny. I use Postini to keep my mailbox clear of junk mail (and I’ve got to say, it does a fantastic job — and, you can now use Postini with your Google mail account). The Postini service sends me an email every morning with a nicely organized summary of messages that [...]

Finally, definitive iCal to iPhone syncing

With the iPhone OS 3.1 and later, we’ve got better options. So what is the real scoop on syncing all of our digital calendars, from Google to OS/X iCal to your holiday calendar subscription?

No contingency plan

According to the research firm TNS and its Personal Risk Assessment and Risk Literacy Survey, almost half (about 46%) of consumers can’t come up with $2,000 in emergency funds on a month’s notice. Even those making between $100K to $149K, a quarter responded that they couldn’t raise the funds either. Given that the survey asked [...]

Outsourcing your offshore nearshoring? What?

Can someone explain what this means? I found it in my email this morning: “You heard it, India is outsourcing outsourcing. So why should you consider nearshoring your outsourcing, instead of offshoring it?”
The article was about how India is now outsourcing to Mexico, apparently because India is becoming as expensive as the United States (or [...]

A little scifi story

I tap the screen on my phone, and tell it “buy cream cheese at the market.”
The next day, when I walk into the market, my phone pings and reminds me to pick up some cream cheese. It knows this because the last time I was near the market, I tagged the location. My phone also [...]

Snow Leopard headache

Being the helpless technologist I am, I had to install Snow Leopard (OS/X 10.6) the day it shipped. Actually I’ve been looking forward to this release for some time — a release almost entirely focused on making the operating system more stable, faster and more compact. How novel! Of the handful of new features coming [...]

Our media stinks

So, how many of you took the last few week’s news about better unemployment figures to heart? How many of you would be disappointed to hear its just another failure of our media to report the real state of the nation? How many would be dismayed that even our President is promulgating entirely misleading figures [...]

Iceland

As a U.S. citizen, I’ve always felt terribly dismayed at how insular the United States is. Very few of us travel internationally, and only marginally more seem to have any knowledge of the world at large. Most of our students can’t draw a map of the world or even a reasonably accurate map of Europe. In fact, I recently saw a video clip in which confused interviewees claimed they would support Bush’s plans to start a war with Australia, which had been incorrectly labeled as “Serbia” on a world map. On the whole, as a people the United States is not a part of the world. There is nothing beyond our borders worth talking about, unless perhaps it has some financial impact on our future.