As a recommendation system geek at Baynote, I always love to see funny product recommendations. I loved the “My Tivo Thinks I’m Gay” write up a few years back. Most of the wacky recommendations I have seen has been from Amazon. I’m not sure if that’s a function of their methodology or popularity. Here’s the latest I saw on a blog post:
For those of you non-gamer geeks out there, Neverwinter nights is a medieval fantasy game with a very similar look to that of Lord of the Rings. Not exactly a close match to “Paws and Claws: Pampered Pets.”
If anyone has had any funny or strange recommendations, please let me know!
Typically the hardware I buy has many bells and whistles. I love products that can do a lot of things very well. My iPhone is not an exception to the rule, but the Flip MinoHD is. Unlike the iPhone, the Flip MinoHD does just one thing really well, and thats OK with me. It takes great movies without a lot of fuss. I love intuitive interfaces, and thats what this camcorder has, and not much else.
Here are a few reasons why I love it:
The smaller the better. The form factor is very similar to a candy bar cell phone. It slips right into your pocket or, in my case, my wife’s purse. It claims to be the world’s smallest HD camcorder weighing in at only 3.3 ounces.
Simple & Intuitive. There is no menu system to get lost in, and no need for explanation. I picked it up and immediately knew what to do to get it going. You power it on with a power button on the side and hit the big red button to record. The other controls are primarily for playback.
No wires or loose parts. For someone who has a serious problem with misplacing wires, this is a great feature. With the press of a button, a USB adapter pops out of the top of the camcorder for immediate use. I know there are some people that like expandable memory and removable batteries, but I am not one of them. It has 4GB of flash memory and a rechargeable battery built in.
Over the last few months, my wife and I have begun watching these two comedy central stars. We started watching during the election because all the other news shows typically resulted in me jumping up and down in front of the TV yelling at Pat Buchanan and Bill O’Reilly and my wife sitting there trying to calm me down.
Not just a joke
Now that the election is over, I’m able to watch CNN while remaining in my seat, but Stewart and Colbert are now a part of our daily routine. On one hand these guys are absolutely hilarious, but on the other the information is often quite enlightening. While everything out of Stewart’s mouth is rolled into a joke, a fairly educated mind can pull out some high quality information the more tame media sources won’t dare present. In the case of Colbert, one needs to take what he says and turn it 180 degrees to understand the implied meaning.
Bottom line
If you want to be entertained, watch The Daily Show & The Colbert Report.
If you want to learn something, watch The Daily Show.
If you want to see the slime of America get dragged through the dirt, watch The Daily Show.
If you are a self hating Republican, watch The Colbert Report.
If you hate Bill O’Reilly, watch either.
OK, this is more of a assumption than a fact. If one plotted revenue and development time on an app, the
I’m Rich” app would have the highest profit margin of all. I don’t know how many apps were sold, but at least one is believed to be on a special iPhone. Here’s the “proof”:
I feel for this poor guy, but thats a pretty creative way to make a buck. I’m sure there are plenty of individuals out there looking to make a point with a thousand bucks just laying around. With that said, shame on you developers for trying to take advantage of us Apple Fanboys.
Updated!
According to the LA Times, 8 people purchased the “I am Rich” app. $8,000 for a few minutes of coding? Sounds like a win to me.
My last post was discussing my hesitations on buying a new iMac 24 inch 3.06ghz. Apple’s sextastic hardware wooed me into buying the mother of all iMacs. The unboxing of an Apple product is almost a ritualistic ceremony. The packaging is so meticulously done, you almost want to save it (on one occasion, I actually did). Setting it up was simple, as expected:
Unwrap the iMac, plug in the power cable.
Plug in keyboard and mouse.
Look amazed at how easy that was.
Typically, one would simply hit the power button and in 15 minutes be browsing on the net. However, I have a MacBook and I have no interest in reinstalling the 50 or so applications all over again. As well as setting up application settings, email accounts, instant messenger accounts, etc… So I thought. *I wonder if I could just hook up my Time Machine backup drive and migrate everything saved on my MacBook.* I decided to research this on the web. I looked at my calendar and verified that I was free all Sunday for damage control.
Starting out as a PC Enthusiast, I’m used to things working “in theory,” but not in practice. I checked out this link on Apple’s website, and it seemed to be a pretty straight forward process. Therefore, I gave it a shot.
Steps to migrating Time Machine backup on an old machine to a new machine
Make sure to have your source computer backed up on the time machine drive.
Connect drive to new computer.
Go through the cool intro video (hey, it is cool!).
Select Time Machine Migration Assistant
It should find all Time Machine backups connected to your computer. Select the appropriate drive.
Check all the boxes displaying the information categories you are restoring.(applications, home folder, etc…). The “Calculating size” process might take a while (mine did), so be patient.
Everything from here on out should be easy enough.
After the restoration process was over, everything worked. I mean everything. All my applications worked. All information was imported over. You might say “Well, duh, Apple said it works seamlessly.” But remember, I come from a PC world, so I just assumed I would have applications that didn’t launch or some kind of spinning beach ball of death explosion on my screen. It didnt happen. Everything worked as organized. Tomorrow, I’ll be continuing my log on the iMac experience.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t get excited about Apple hardware rumors. However, this one seems to be too good to be true, check below. I’m in the market for a new computer. I’ve settled on the 24″ iMac 3.06. I’ll be selling my homemade PC, and it will be the first time I have a completely PC free household. Currently my PC is pretty much nothing more than a gaming rig. Although, these days my gaming has been cut to a minimum. WoW is pretty much the only game I play, and even that is a casual activity when time permits.
The iMac 3.06ghz is plenty for casual gaming with a 8800GS 512MB video card. However, these rumors make me want to wait for the next update. The last iMac I purchased for my wife ended up becoming obsolete 6 weeks after its release due to the switch to Intel. Im not looking for a repeat.
At the conference call for Apple’s third quarter earnings, repeated mention was made about a “future product transition” that would impact margins for the current quarter. What was not mentioned was the immediate impact it would have on Apple rumors. Rumors of price cuts, iTablets, MacBook touches, and more have resounded across the Internet tubes and into the cocked ears of Apple fans everywhere. The latest comes from Computerworld and Seth Weintraub, whose summation of “insiders” talk for the MacBook includes:
Thinner, rounded design
Glass trackpad—no, seriously
Aluminum case
Late September release
And those are the serious rumors. He also speculates about the Pro laptops, talking crazy about the MacBook Air using Intel’s Atom, and the rumored MacBook Pros using Intel chipsets. Centrino 2 and Montevina in Apple laptops, how crazy would that be?
I fought the Twitter craze for a while now, but the time has come to take the plunge. I tried to convince myself “Its just endless Facebook status updates, why do I need this?” The truth is, I don’t but its pretty fun. I downloaded Spaz, this new Adobe AIR app and Twitterrific for the iPhone. Its pretty fun and quite addictive. I haven’t truly had the time to explore the app, but I’m convinced that Twitter will be playing a larger role in my life in the days to come (whether I want it to or not). For you Twitter veterans out there, should I stop before its too late? In the mean time, follow me.
In a class this quarter taught by Andrew Nelson I read an interesting book, “Finding Time” by Leslie Perlow. The book discusses the impact of technology and the new economy on work/life balance. This year for the first time I enrolled in Yoga/Pilates for 2 reasons.
Reason 1: I have a bad back and I heard from multiple credible sources that this would strengthen and stretch my back muscles. This turned out to be dead on and my back hasn’t felt so good in a long time.
Reason 2: I am so consumed by technology/work, and I rarely have anything to keep me away from all my information flows.
Thanks to my trusty iPhone, I have access to all 7 of my email accounts as long as I’m awake, whether I’m at my computer or not. Google Alerts keeps me hooked into all relevant news articles that contain keywords I specify. Pageflakes provides me with a 1-stop-shop to read all of my online news. The list goes on and on. I find myself working in some way, shape, or form as long as I am awake. Furthermore, I see sleep as a necessity that is simply a detriment to my productivity.
What creates this mentality? Leslie Petrow argues that its our socio-economic system that rewards endless work, rather than balance and productivity. Deep down I believe this to be true. I truly feel that downtime allows for more engaged work and improved productivity, but within society one is pressured to always be working and showing ones dedication to their job.
This quarter, I decided to add an activity to my life that does not rely on technology to give me at least one hour every 2 days to relax and refocus. Unfortunately, I let my work get the best of me and missed more of my yoga/pilates fusion classes than expected.
Nevertheless, the classes I did attend left me feeling relaxed, invigorated, and motivated. I was also happily surprised to notice that my back has never felt so good. I almost got suckered into an expensive chiropractic treatment process, but I’m fairly certain that continuing these classes will suffice as a treatment for my back. I would definitely recommend yoga/pilates to anyone looking for an activity to assist with relaxation, strength, flexibility, or all of the above.
One of the things recently talked about in our Facebook class is the news feed. The consensus was that its an Ace in the hole for Facebook. I’m not going to argue with that, but how much is too much? Sure, I’m glad that Facebook gives you the ability to control what shows up where on mini feeds and news feeds, but I am beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed with all this “control.”
One of Facebook’s strengths (atleast in my mind) is the UI. Its clean, simple and attractive. reading the information relativ to your network is easy and the format is great. Now I feel like I have to defend myself from so much information so I can still make out the important stuff.
With the news feed being opened to Apps, and now the feature Project Beacon which includes products your friends have purchased from partner sites in your feed, The clean interface might be a thing of yesteryear.
Could Microsoft be rubbing off on Facebook already? Check this video out to see the a possible evolution of Facebook. Replace “iPod” with “Facebook”
I’m fully aware of all the lame apps around, but creating a good app is a lot of work. My entire team definitely underestimated the amount of time required to develop an app that is useful to users. Our app is aimed at the car enthusiast community, therefore we’ve performed some “field” research to get feedback on what kind of features they would find useful. Obviously, we had our own ideas previous to the research, but the feedback was great. We got a lot of awesome suggestions(along with some entertaining ones). If you are developing an app for a specific community, I highly recommend speaking directly with people who will likely be using your app to get great ideas. Obviously, user comments on the app are effective, but it is definitely a different type of feedback than feedback “in the wild,” or sites where your users congregate en masse.
Typically the hardware I buy has many bells and whistles. I love products that can do a lot of things very well. My iPhone is not an exception to the rule, but the 
The smaller the better. The form factor is very similar to a candy bar cell phone. It slips right into your pocket or, in my case, my wife’s purse. It claims to be the world’s smallest HD camcorder weighing in at only 3.3 ounces.
Simple & Intuitive. There is no menu system to get lost in, and no need for explanation. I picked it up and immediately knew what to do to get it going. You power it on with a power button on the side and hit the big red button to record. The other controls are primarily for playback.
No wires or loose parts. For someone who has a serious problem with misplacing wires, this is a great feature. With the press of a button, a USB adapter pops out of the top of the camcorder for immediate use. I know there are some people that like expandable memory and removable batteries, but I am not one of them. It has 4GB of flash memory and a rechargeable battery built in.
Over the last few months, my wife and I have begun watching these two comedy central stars. We started watching during the election because all the other news shows typically resulted in me jumping up and down in front of the TV yelling at Pat Buchanan and Bill O’Reilly and my wife sitting there trying to calm me down.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t get excited about Apple hardware rumors. However, this one seems to be too good to be true, check below. I’m in the market for a new computer. I’ve settled on the 24″ iMac 3.06. I’ll be selling my homemade PC, and it will be the first time I have a completely PC free household. Currently my PC is pretty much nothing more than a gaming rig. Although, these days my gaming has been cut to a minimum. WoW is pretty much the only game I play, and even that is a casual activity when time permits.
I fought the Twitter craze for a while now, but the time has come to take the plunge. I tried to convince myself “Its just endless Facebook status updates, why do I need this?” The truth is, I don’t but its pretty fun. I downloaded