Best work email
Here’s an email that was sent by a co-worker to my entire agency.
Instructions for dispensing hot water from the red spigot.
The red lever requires a 2-step action to dispense the water.
1. Push the red button at the top of the lever in
2. Press the red lever down
3. Hot Water!
The attached PDF is a rendering if you need a visual.
PS: the repair service has been notified for the cooler located in the training area.
A little context: Our agency recently installed water filters at all the sinks in the building. Each have two taps: one for hot, another for cold.
Update: I added a link to an image of the PDF that was sent along with the message.
I always say, “It’s all about perspective”. This proves it.
CellTell offers service that gives you the ability to send voice messages to your Backpack account. If you’re like me, you already call home from work, or vice versa, to leave voicemail reminders. This will allow you to keep an archive and access them from any computer. By the way, both services can be used for free.
eBay is missing the boat
I just finished reading about the recent partnership between eBay and Yahoo! and couldn’t help but think that eBay is missing out on an opportunity to compete with both Yahoo! and Google.
Although reservations exist, the partnership is going to bring targeted Yahoo! advertising to eBay.
“Small text ads that automatically appear next to related material on Web pages have proved hugely profitable, but eBay has long been wary of placing them on its site because they are likely to refer people to sites that compete with its marketplace.”
What are these small text ads? They’re from companies who have something to sell. I can think of another large population who has something to sell which eBay has direct access. Yup, people on their site.
Why not build an ad network to compete with Yahoo! and Google and take advantage of their greatest asset; the dedicated user base. eBay could start out simply by serving the Auction Ads (Trademark pending) to their own site. When a user adds something to sell, eBay gives them the option to bid on keywords for text advertisements to help promote their product in other spots on the site. Once eBay works out the kinks locally, they can expand to a Google type ad network and allow the millions of web loggers and top quality content producers to place eBay ad listings on their sites.
It probably isn’t consistent with the eBay business plan to become a provider of advertising, but I doubt the initial business plan had eBay being a payment gateway or a phone company either. As the CEO Marge Whittman said, “we have to embrace some of the things that are happening on the Web.”
8 years!
“Life is good great.” I wake up most days thinking this. It’s weird to look back to see where you are. 8 years ago my life changed for the best. A weekend spent with some buddies, water skiing, relaxing, bar hopping turned into the weekend I’d meet my wife.
Several years, hundreds of hours and thousands of miles on the road keeping the relationship alive while I lived in Winnipeg and she in Minneapolis. Daily phone calls, and countless emails (all saved) providing a detailed transcript of our relationship.
8 years later and living in the same city, together, for over 5, I can say that I am happier than I have ever been. The past 8 years have felt like 8 days.
I was just thinking the other day about the simplicity of Sudoku and I was thinking about how it could be messed up if developed by a team of people, then I see this. They took the thought right out of my head.
Inspiring
Hivelogic and Simplebits have collaborated on a great little web site called Cork’d. Aside from the fantastic name, it is also a well designed and programmed little app. It has community; it has tags; it has reviews; it has Rails.
One of the complaints that my wine loving self and wife always have is that we don’t know where to begin when we go to buy wine. We always end up buying the bottles we know, even though hundreds of other [I’m sure fantastic] options are available. Cork’d might just help us get a little more adventurous.
It’s a very inspiring app in its simplicity. I’ve had a little pet project that I’ve been slowly developing that plays very nicely with a site like Cork’d. It feels like it’s time to ramp up my development.
I’m hating the “I’m loving it!” campaign, now they’re going to remake the interior of the restaurants. Is a turd covered in chocolat still not a turd?
This is a great way to use Instant Messaging even when you’re being blocked by organization firewalls. Has anyone seen a browser within a browser?
Comment
Installing RubyOnRails 1.1
This is a little tutorial for installing the newest version of Ruby On Rails from behind a firewall. It discusses installing and upgrading your install of Ruby and Ruby Gems, plus walks through the Gems that are required to run Ruby On Rails on your system. This can be used to have a light Ruby and Rails development environment. If you don’t care about running Apache and MySql and a few other applications that come along for the ride, Instant Rails will get you developing in Rails much quicker.
The Times are a changin'
It has finally happened. The New York Times has designed a web site that can read like a newspaper.
The biggest problem I’ve had with newspapers publishing online is that they lose the print format and basically become a news site like any other. Just like CNN or CNET. What I love about newspapers is that by flipping through the pages to skim over articles I may come across an article of interest but which I wouldn’t have searched for.
The Times has created the best of both worlds and I’m smiling. Their homepage deals with the breaking news, while the 3rd tab in takes you to the news from the print edition, organized exactly how you would see it in each section of the paper. That’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for. I hope online newspaper departments around the country are scrambling to play catchup.
I do, however, have two issues with the redesign. First, why Georgia still? Yes, it’s a classic print type-face, but it looks horrible on screen. Serif type-faces for high res print; sans-serif for low res monitors, right? Second, I’d love to have a toggle feature that allows me to turn on/off, oh let’s say, 40 word teasers for each story, just to add a little context to the headlines. You require that I login to read the articles so this could be a simple preference setting. Otherwise I’m giddy.
Unfortunately my hometown rag was recently redesigned, so I’m guessing they won’t be looking to implement a new format anytime soon. Although it is something that can be done within their existing design.
Here’s the grass chair we’ve all been wainting for. Under consideration.
Investing
I’ve recently purchased shares of PALM, makers of the Treo and classic Palm Pilots. I made the decision to purchase it just before their last quarterly earnings report, so I bought in at $19.64/share, which one week later looks like an excellent buy.
I bought on company fundamentals and potential for growth. Palm has double digit growth for revenues and earnings, competitve margins, lots of cash on hand, very little debt and one of the biggest eye openers to me was that they are matching RIMM’s revenues with less than a third of the employees. I think Palm has a lot of upside potential.
Not to sound superior, but I feel like I’ve done a good analysis of the company and feel that as long as PALM can see consistent revenue growth things will continue to the upside. But as much as I feel I’ve analyzed, I was curious to read what other investors have to say, so I decided to check out the investors board for PALM at Yahoo!.
Talk about an eye opening experience. It is very possible the people on this board have done as much or more research on the stock as I have, but I’m skeptical. I can’t believe the level of pointless postings going on. It is like being at a casino and watching rows of gamblers numbly staring at slot machines, pushing buttons and pumping money in. There’s an average of two posts every minute. Here’s a snap shot of what investors (read gamblers) are saying:
“UGHHHHHHHHHH 23 IS THE NEW 21 ”
”$ 2 3___T W E N T Y___T H R E E___$ 2 3 Yippeee!!!”
“Great day for AAPL to buy PALM on its 30th Anniversary”
“if palm raise to 40+, all shorting money will become zero, and shorters will receive magin call, and their broker will help them to cover it in the market! This will pop palm to 100+ again, then palm need another split, compared with rimm and its peak price 1000+, palm still has a long way to go…. ”
Crap. All of it. These are a couple posts from a 5 minute snapshot. Speculation, based on nothing about Apple buying Palm, which I can’t say will never happen, but it is extremely unlikely. Some investor looking forward to a share price of $40, then to $100 then to $1000? I never want to say never to any of this, but it’s pure speculation, with no data backing it up.
There are very few signals to all the noise. Investor board trolling is a waste of time and can cloud your judgement. Buying and selling should be based solely on the performance of the company and it’s competitors.
I generally enjoy what Mark Cuban has to say regarding business, investment and basketball (all of which are the same for him). His comments on recent blogging memes going around are on the money as well.
Demystifying the design of a logo. I like how calculated it is. It really shows the process that goes into designing a logo.
Online investing
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been interested in the stock market and how it works. I’ve always loved numbers and solving problems. That’s partly why I like writing computer programs and is likely the source of my stock market affection.
After years of watching the stock market from the sidelines, thousands of hours watching CNBC and reading dozens books on trading strategies from the “experts” I can finally afford to take the leap myself and I feel well equipped to make sound investment decisions.
Fortunately the internet has created a closer to level playing field for investors like myself. In the past I would’ve had to subscribe to newpapers to see price listings, call or mail companies for their prospectus, phone my broker to place an order then phone back to find out if the order was executed and watch business reports in the hope of hearing some news (preferrably good) about the companies I owned stock in. Today, I can go to any number of financial sites to get all this information and more.
Now I can look at industry analyst estimates on earnings, get up to the second news about a company and compaines related to an industry, watch near realtime stock prices move up and down by the penny, place limit orders with a degree of confidence, watch daily stock volume, listen to company conference calls and interact with company management.
I use a few web sites to research stocks for different reason. I use Yahoo!Finance because I like the clean interface and the ability to list the historical information (highs, lows, open, close, volume) between a specified period of time, but it isn’t good for getting deep into company financials. I like MSN Moneycentral because it is good at getting deep into the financials of a company and has a pretty decent stock screener, but the interface is uncomfortable and cluttered. There are other sites that do things better as well, like AOL does a great job of covering conference calls and Reuters, of course, does news very well.
Enter Google. They just launched Google Finance (beta of course) and have done a fantastic job of bringing all of these great resources together in one location. Google has answered my need by centralizing the best financial data. Their charts are amazing, they post relavant information from all the sources mentioned above, they give direct links to company information on the company web site and they link to the best parts of the outside web sites, some of them competitors like Yahoo!. Google Finance has created a one stop investing location for all my research needs. You have to check it out and seriously consider moving your portfolio research over to them. I will be playing with it and posting a review in the coming weeks.
Seriously?
I haven’t seen the video yet, but did Steve-o “announce” these with a straight face?
Why do you break my heart?
Apple—Apple—Apple. You had me waiting, credit card in hand, for your announcement today. Remember? Your announcement for the Apple branded sound dock? The one that would take my 5th Gen iPod and amplify my sweet music? The one that would provide a nice sounding system for my home office? The one that would have the same functionality of the Airport Express? The…”Airport Express functionality??” you ask? Well, yes, of course. Of course it would have built-in WiFi. Of course it would offer a USB port or two. Maybe with an update to iTunes, it would even be able to update my iPod using your neatly integrated WiFi capabilities. You’re Apple—without these features it is simply a Bose SoundDock.
Sadly, I’ve slid my credit card back into my wallet. Today, for the first time since I fell in love with you, you underwhelmed me. It’s not you, it’s me. But don’t forget—you made me this way. I just expect more from you. I definitely didn’t expect you to come out with a more expensive system that already exists. Yes, yes, I’m sure yours sounds better, but we’re talking about digitally compressed music here. I’m looking as much for functionality as I am for sound quality. If high quality sound is really that important, believe me I’d be listening to my CD’s on these.
Don’t worry, like any good marriage, I’ll stay faithful. This is just a rough patch. They happen. Your cleanly designed hardware and superior software will ensure I’m yours forever, but please don’t take me for granted again. It just hurts.
With love,
Clint Pidlubny
I think I read somewhere that Google is hiring 3 engineers everyday (likely averaged over the year). Judging by this listing, it’s having an effect on the Cupertino real estate market.
Traffic
Anyone out there have a weblog that isn’t getting as much traffic as you’d like? What price are you willing to pay to increase that traffic?
I’ll tell you, I mentioned the Lady’s of Curling once and Google’s been serving up the hits ever since; much to the diappointment of the searchers, I’m sure. So let’s see if the fans of Sarah Kolb, Clive Owen, the Powerball Winners, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Craig, Grace Hightower, Pierce Brosnan, Mia Sarah, Sean Connery, Wilmer Valderrama, Prince Charles, Natalee Holloway and Vida Guerra swing by on their way to higher quality info.
For you visitors saddened by my deception, feel free to click the names above to be taken to the Google search results and thanks for swinging by.
Malcolm Gladwell has finally started a weblog. The only other person I can think of who is missing is Andy Rooney. Come on Andy, give me what I need.
There are not enough Joey Cheeks at the olympics this year. After hearing his press conference where he announced the donation of his bonus and reality stating description of his current profession, “I put on tights and skate in a circle” I am saddened to see all this other crap taking place around him. Chad Hedrick needs to get his priorities straight. Oops, apparently he has. “Hedrick said that while he plans to continue speedskating, he also wants to get into some acting in Hollywood pretty soon.” No better time to bring that up than during all the drama surrounding you at the Olympics.
A new approach to the flip. Launch your product in a closed beta version then sell to Google. Congratulations MeasureMap team. I’m still waiting to get in on the beta test.
Only during the Olympics
I was browsing around the old Buzz Index today. This made me chuckle.
I’m sure it will be another 4 years before we see Curling reach the top 10 in “Today’s Top Movers”.
UPDATE: This women of curling calendar may have something to do with curling’s sudden rise to the top of the Yahoo! searches.
Olympic Schedule
I was all over NBC trying to find an Olympic broadcast schedule exactly like this one found on MSNBC’s web site (thank you Jason Kottke) – a work of art compared to the one on their NBC Olympics site. Now that I’ve found it, I have one other complaint. Would it kill you to be a little more specific with the event playback times? For instance on Feb 15th in Men’s Hockey, Canada plays Italy sometime between 5AM and 4:30PM on MSNBC. Could we narrow that down a bit please? I’d like to record it, but not for 12 hours.
Don’t even get me started on the number of commercial breaks during the coverage. Ugh!
