JC - Technology and Stuff

I definitely went overboard tonight! I have been using WordPress as my blog tool hosted on 1and1.com for the last 4 weeks or so and have mostly enjoyed the experience. My only gripe has been that 1and1’s implementation of the tool is fairly limiting in how you can adapt its look and feel. So I decided to go crazy today and see if I could replace the 1and1 tool with the real tool from wordpress.org. It seemed a fairly simple thing. I read a few blog posts on the subject and then I actually tried it. It was simple and it worked! For those of you who are interested, instructions can be found at http://antbag.com/how-to-install-wordpress-with-1-and-1-hosting/. Good instructions!

Basically I had to export my current blog to an xml file (20 seconds), create and setup a MySQL database (20 seconds), download the wordpress software (30 seconds), edit a configuration file (45 seconds), ftp all the wordpress files to a directory on my 1and1 account (2 mins), assign my 1and1 directory to a domain (2 minutes - this took a little longer than it would normally, I just didn’t want to delete my old blog until I was sure the new one worked), configure my new wordpress blog (1 minute), upload my old xml blog (20 seconds), upload a few themes to use (2 minutes), try out the themes until I found one I liked (2 minutes), save everything and I was done! A little over 10 minutes in total. Unbelievable.

I then spent about a further hour tweaking a few settings, style sheets and the such and I now have what I consider a completely usable blog that is better than my old one and completely tailorable. And that was, after all, my end goal.

I wonder what I’ll be doing tomorrow!

At the office I have to use Microsoft Outlook to manage email and my calendar. Not that I hate it, I just choose not to use it outside of work. As I have written earlier, I have now switched to a 100% GMail and GCal solution for my personal life.

Anyway back to the plot. In the early days of email everyone was encouraged to create different folders to store your emails on, for easy reference later. Well, that’s all well and good when you’ve only got a few hundred emails, but at work you quickly get a few thousand. Then how do you file them? If you get an email from your boss about a project you’re working on that has a link to something you don’t want to forget, where do you store it? In a ‘boss’ folder? In a ‘project’ folder? Or in a ‘reference’ folder? Hmmm…

I struggled with this conundrum for a few years, probably like many others of you. Well, I have to say I discovered a solution a coupl of months ago. I have been using this solution since then and it’s stuck. It works. It’s that simple. So, to read all about it, go to this link here. A few words about the post.

Firstly, you can ignore the piece about the ‘X1 Desktop Search’; it appears this is no longer free software. Still, it’s not necessary. Secondly, if like me you have a small size limit on your email box, you no doubt archive everything off to some desktop mail.pst file. If you do, then just run the exercise twice; once for the exchange mailbox and one for the personal mailbox.

As I say, I have been using this system for several months now and I also get my work emails sent to my Blackberry automatically and from time to time access my work email via a browser and ‘webmail exchange’. The system advocates using flags (which I use) and so the only small anomoly is that on my Blackberry if I read an email I have to remember to clear the flag in Outlook when I am next at my desk. A small price to pay. What I like is that I can read my emails and still leave emails I need to do something with with the flag set. When I’ve dealt with the email I simply clear the flag and the email ‘disappears’ into the rest of the pile. Later, when I want to find a particular email I can search on the whole ‘AllMail’ and very quickly find what I want.

Confused? Just give it a try… It’s worth it.

PS. One slight twist is that I also mark messages that need much later action with a red flags. That differentiates them from blue flag emails that I have just not yet processed to their conclusion. It’s sort of like short term and long term action items.

A few posts ago I wrote about how I had configured Outlook to sync up to my Google calendar because I used it to manage all my ‘domain’ email addresses. Well after reading an article on Gmail on another blog I decided to rethink that strategy and try using Gmail for everything and abandon my long time love/hate relationship with Outlook.

I configured Gmail to collect and handle my domain email and after confirming I was the owner of the accounts, everything sprang into life. I also added my Gmail account to my Blackberry Curve for delivery and synchronization and now everything that’s worth having arrives on my Blackberry (Gmail spam management is very good) and is available online at any time on Gmail. I also split my calendar into two separate calendars, one for birthdays and anniversaries and one for appointments. That way I can choose to share my appointments calendar if I want to at a later date without worrying about displaying all the other private information.

My only gripe is that my Gmail account does not synchronize 100% to my Blackberry. Everything arrives as it should but for some reason when I read emails or delete them on my Gmail account it doesn’t reflect that on my Blackberry (vice versa works fine). My Yahoo account on the other hand works fine. I guess it’s a little Blackberry glitch that will get corrected over time. Still, overall everything is much better controlled now, even though I don’t have my Google calendar on my Blackberry. But that’s because I have my work calendar on it and the Blackberry can’t maintain two different native calendars and switch between them. One day. But overall I wouldn’t swap my Blackberry for anything. It’s better at controlling emails and my work calendar than any iPhone. Hopefully once the Blackberry Bold (see video below) hits the market and is available for T-Mobile then even web browsing will be a killer app too.

It’s a funny thing that with all the technological improvements that have taken place over the last 30 years there’s one thing that really hasn’t changed much. Good old voicemail. Sure, you can now dial it up remotely and get caller id information, but apart from that it is just plain old vanilla voicemail that records a message and plays it back to you when you want it.

Introducing YouMail:))) a new concept in voicemail. I found this service more or less by accident, browsing a RSS service on T-Mobile rumors and new features. Actually YouMail has nothing to do with T-Mobile, it just happened to be mentioned in the news item I was reading.

So what’s so different about YouMail I hear you asking? Well, the biggest feature is the ability to play different voicemail greetings to different callers. Doesn’t sound like much? Well think about it.One message for the wife and a different one for the mother. Maybe even a ‘disconnected number’ message for the mother-in-law You get the idea. What’s more you can change the message whenever you want, create groups of callers that receive a particular message, do whatever works for you. Ok, not bad you say, but is that all? No, it’s not! You can upload your own personalized greetings, choose from 1,000s of pre-recorded ones or even record one live on the site. Oh, and there are a few other nice little things…

When you set up your online account, the system assumes you are setting up voicemail for your mobile phone (it’s not really designed out of the box for landlines - although it does work as mentioned later). The site has an extensive online list of all the different models of phones that are available for each cellphone provider and so it tries to determine who your provider is first and then offers you a choice of phone models. This is important because YouMail can then optimize its service especially for your phone. It knows how your settings are, it knows how text messages work on your phone and a million other things besides. So, you tell the system what you have and then it goes through a ‘handshaking’ procedure with your phone via a text message and lo and behold you are suddenly set up and YouMail recognizes calls from you. All you have to do then is to forward your unanswered calls to YouMail (instead of your default service provider voicemail) and every message will be captured and available to you. You can choose to receive notifications of messages via either text message, email or both. The notification you will receive will indicate the name and phone number of the person, where they are calling from and a link to the message (in the email). You can also opt to have the message attached to the email in the form of a mp3 too! Latly, there is also a beta feature available that will attempt to translate the voice message into text and send it to you via a text message! Neat! If your phone is email capable YouMail will also optimize the email so that it displays in the best possible manner on your phone too. All in all, this is a great service and they are adding features all the time. I definitely recommend that you try it.

I mentioned earlier that the service was designed primarily for cell phones and to that end it works best with them. However, if you can work out how to program your landline phone (or VOIP phone in my case) you can use YouMail for that phone too. It’s all about using the code for “call forwarding - no answer” and redirecting it to YouMail. However, that is a topic for another day and a technical one at that. You can email me if you really need specific instructions.

Anyway, give YouMail a try. You won’t be disappointed. It’s the best thing that’s happened to voicemail in a very long time.

ShamWow!! Eight towels for $20 plus postage and packing. The ShamWow holds 20 times its own weight in water and comes in two sizes. What am I waiting for? To quote the website:

“ShamWows are made in Germany from a revolutionary fabric that can absorb over 20 times its weight in liquids. Use them to clean up spills fast and they won’t scratch any surface. You can even use them as a towel or on your pets. They are machine washable and bleachable. Use them over and over; they will last for years! And they are so durable, we guarantee your ShamWows for 10 years.”

You know, these people aren’t thinking of all the possibilities. How about using them when they’re making diapers - I’m sure they would suck up all the necessary juices! Or how about moulding them in the shape of a hairdo and using them to put on your wet hair to instantly dry it and form your style? I am in the wrong career.

My other throwaway idea was a sort of obituary.com website where anyone can leave an obituary for a loved one when they die. Why? Well just think about it for a moment. In this distributed world in which we live it would be one central place to store people’s obituaries. That’s something that doesn’t exist today. But the neat thing would be the other things that could come out of this. With some simple added information about the family it wouldn’t be too many years before the site would also become a genealogy site too. Hmm. Now that sounds useful to me.

The world is becoming a smaller place and we all just need our space on it to live.

Anyway, when you turn on the news and see the ShamWow diaper or the genealogy obituary site you know where you read about them first. Have a great weekend!