Collaboration in the Cloud Book Review

Everyone is talking about "the cloud," but what is it really and how does it apply to today's IT landscape. And how does it make things better? How does it facilitate collaboration? If you haven't at least talked about how the cloud could fit into your IT organization, you're falling more behind than you should be.

It's pretty well established that collaboration is of utmost importance in today's businesses where teamwork is key and making collaboration as efficient and friction-free as possible. The biggest tool that is aiding collaboration is the concept of the cloud and, from it, the proliferation of social that it enables.

This book, while presenting a superb overview of the topics in its title, doesn't really bring anything paradigm shifting to the table. What it does is gather into one book all of the disparate topics that are somehow related to cloud revolution.

If you're a new IT professional or someone with an inkling about what you or your company can do technologically to help become more social and collaborative, this is a perfect starting point for you. Experienced IT professionals should already have this all filed away in your brain's knowledge locker by now.

If interested, you can download the book in pdf form here.

View all of my Goodreads reviews

TurboTax Business: Intuit Drops the Ball Yet Again

I really wish there was a decent alternative solution for doing multi-proprietor LLC tax filing and K-1 creation to TurboTax because this year I feel like I just wasted over $100 of my LLC's money on this junk software and will probably have to end up either filing by hand or handing off to a tax preparer to do.

The biggest issue is how utterly "glitchy" TurboTax feels this year. Last year's version was smooth enough (not the best experience in the world, but decent enough), but this year I can't even complete my K-1's to distribute to the LLC owners because the application continually hard crashes when filling out the business's information. We're not even talking about getting to the meat of the filing process--this is happening at the very beginning of the process. What adds to this frustration is that Intuit makes getting support difficult. I had to resort to using Twitter to attempt to get any type of help and they still haven't been very responsive or even touched upon the issue encountered.

I realize that the Business version of TurboTax is used by many, many fewer individuals than their other versions, but this doesn't speak well for their entire product line. I had switched from H&R Block's software to TurboTax last year so that I had a uniform experience when doing my business tax filing and personal tax filing, but I may go back to H&R Block for my personal taxes based upon my experience with the Business product.

It's quite baffling to me that Intuit can drop the ball so hard and let their products be so bug-ridden. It's not like they're creating a brand new product. They have an established product and just need to update it each year with the appropriate tax rules and maybe add a feature or two to make it look like they're not getting lazy, but they can't even make a usable product. I wish there was some way I could get get my money back since I most likely won't be able to file my taxes using this piece of garbage and will have to shell out more money to have it done elsewhere.

Snappy5: How the iPhone Camera Should Work

Having a mother who is a professional photographer, it's sort of a given that I would at least be somewhat interested in photography, and I am, but not quite to a level where I need a DSLR and pore over Photoshop to get everything just right. I'm not a fan of setting up the perfect shot or of trying to capture something in just the right way. I don't want to carry a bulky camera everywhere I go. I don't want to do a lot of work in post on shots. I just want to take pictures of things every now and again. 

With the advent of the iPhone and its possession of a quite useful camera (especially in the 4S), I found my perfect platform for snapping pictures whenever I have the chance. The icing on top of the iPhone cake is that there are a plethora of apps that make shooting fun and quirky. I love using Instagram, Hipstamatic, Snapseed, and numerous other apps to get variations on the "normal" shots you'd get from just using the stock iPhone camera app. I find myself taking pictures of random stuff all the time (even my wife has noticed, getting me an iPhoneography book for our anniversary).

Now as much as I love the iPhone and it's camera app, the biggest issue with using the iPhone as a camera is that it takes, at least on my iPhone 4, a bit of time for the app to load. Sometimes it's just long enough for you to miss that candid shot you wanted to get. Even being able to access the camera from the lockscreen in iOS5 didn't solve the problem because the camera app still had to load. I figured I was simply stuck... until I ran across the Snappy5 app. 

The app is relatively simple and makes me wonder why Apple couldn't make their camera app work like it does. Essentially all Snappy5 is, is a replacement for the stock camera app that loads almost instantaneously, be it from the app's icon, the lock screen, or via a gesture you set up in Activator. Now I suppose I should mention that you need to have your phone jailbroken to get this app, but since jailbreaking is so simple nowadays, I can't see why you wouldn't do it. 

This little app I know will make it (and has made it) so much easier for me to grab a quick, candid shot that I would have otherwise missed. It's well worth the two bucks you'll pay for it. The only improvement I hope to see in the future is potentially a way for it to launch other photo apps and do it just as quickly. I'm sure this is not possible, but it would be a hell of a feature. Imagine having Instagram's share interface come up almost instantly. For now, though, I'm just happy my iPhone's camera is now instantly accessible!

My Poor Sony Dash

Yes, I am one of the few people who own (and actually love) the Sony Dash. I picked it up on Woot a while back since the concept of an always on combo clock/news feeder/weather station was appealing to me. I've had it in my office so at a glance I have the time/date/weather and the news that's currently being displayed. I'd configured the little guy to cycle through news from Google, The New York Times, CBS Sports, and other outlets while cycling in Facebook photos, famous quotes, top Flickr picks to keep it interesting. And that's not counting many of the other interesting apps I have cycling through. It's a cool device and one of the few Sony devices I own and like.

You see, I'd given up on Sony a few years ago. I sold my PSP when I got my iPad. I sold my Playstation 3 when I didn't game that much any more. I went the Vizio route when upgrading the TVs in our house.  It was a weird transition. When I was younger, in the 90's and early 00's, Sony was THE brand. Now, however, they're not even considered when making technology purchases. Outside of my Dash, there's not a single Sony product that gets my attention... A lot has been made of this in the past about how they don't seem to care about their customers and are very stuck in their ways, but what they're doing with the Dash reinforces the attitude that is going to kill them as a company.

Over the last couple of weeks, some of the apps I used on my Dash stopped loading or instead displayed notices saying the app had been pulled. This was the case for Digg, The New York Times, and a few others. I thought it was weird that some of the most popular apps were getting pulled. Then there was a day long outage of Dash services with Sony neither acknowledging it happened or explaining it. Now it's been announced that Sony is stopping developer support for the Dash. This includes closing up the forums used and shutting off the ability for any new apps to be created or for current apps to be updated.

As a customer, this is extremely frustrating... especially when it would be so easy to just open up the device. In an age where opening up a device only makes it more popular and well-liked, while locking it down or bricking it only hurts your image, why choose the latter? Sony could still give up support of the developer community and simply open source it or, what would be really great, just turn it over to the developer community that created all of the apps. This would keep the little guy fully functional, ensures that a dedicated community stays involved, and would probably perk up interest in the tinkering community.

Instead of that option, though, I have a sneaking suspicion that my Dash is starting on its journey towards becoming nothing more than touchscreen clock... which defeats the entire purpose of why anyone bought it. Here's to hoping Sony rethinks things, but I'm not holding my breath.

My Top iOS Apps

Over at TiPb they've been running through the apps that they use most and it's had me reorganizing my iPhone and iPad apps and thinking about how I actually use both of those devices. I use both almost daily and they both have way too many apps loaded onto them, but when I analyze my app usage, there's usually only a few on each that I regularly use, day in and day out. So, if anyone is interested, here's what I mainly use my iDevices for...

My Top iPhone Apps

1. Hipstamatic
With my mother being a professional photographer, it's a bit of a given that I would at least like photography a little bit. I'm not the type of person to lug around a DSLR with me to get pictures of things, but I like to whip out my iPhone, which is always with me, and take pictures here and there. What Hipstamatic gives me is a combination of interesting classic filters that create unique pictures. The killer feature for me is the randomizer. If you shake your phone before taking a picture, it randomizes the lens, film, and flash combination so you can get something new every time... although I think it prefers a few films over others as they come up a LOT.

2. Netflix
This is how I entertain myself on my bus ride to and from work. Considering we have good 3G coverage in Minneapolis through AT&T, unlike many other cities, it rarely stutters or re-buffers. Occasionally on a few specific spots, probably where I'm being handed off from one tower to another, it will pause, but I'm ok with that knowing I can watch Breaking Bad or Kids in the Hall on my bus ride.

3. Audiogalaxy
This app gives me streaming access to my entire music collection. Sure, lots of people use Google music or Amazon's cloud, but since I have 3/4 of a terrabyte of music on my home machine, it's nice to not have to upload it all to a service (which would take forever). Instead, you have the Audiogalaxy app on your home machine that stores your music and as long as that computer is on and connected to the internet, you can stream your entire library through the Audiogalaxy app.

4. Scrabble
This is my go-to time waster. At any given time I have at least 6 or 7 games going with people. It's  not a perfect app (it takes forever to load and doesn't always load your Facebook friends games right away), but it's the easiest way to play Scrabble against my friends and family who play it on their phones or just on Facebook.

5. Facebook
Let's be honest... everyone uses Facebook now, myself included. There's just no getting around the fact that it is almost an essential communication tool for keeping up with friends, family, and those you just want to keep tabs on.

My Top iPad Apps

1. ComiXology and Comic Zeal
I list these two together as I use them both for reading comics on my iPad. The iPad is the perfect size for reading comics and graphic novels and there's nothing like having an entire long box of comics with you at any given time. Over the last year I've been making the transition from physical comics/graphic novels to digital and with these two apps I'm getting pretty close to not needing hard copies any more... well, except for when I want something to put on the bookshelf.

2. Kindle
Much like I'm doing with my comics, I'm also trying to switch over to reading digitally from dead tree books. The Kindle app makes this very possible, syncing up with the Kindle app on my other devices and on the web so I can pick up reading wherever I left off. The only downside to the iOS Kindle app is you can't buy books in-app; you have to go to the Amazon site to do so. That being said, it's still the best e-reading app I've found.

3. Terra Web Browser
Sure, Safari can get the job done, but Terra has become my favorite browser and since one of the things I use my iPad for is simply browsing the internet, I end up using it a lot. It's relatively zippy, rarely crashes, has a lot of extra features Safari doesn't (text search, unlimited tabs), and is regularly updated.

4. Kingdom Rush
The last two here are games that I've played a lot. This is a great tower defense game that my brother turned me on to. It doesn't do anything 100% new, but the mechanics of the game are so streamlined that it feels like it best captures everything that tower defense games need to do well to be fun.

5. Pinball HD
I love pinball and the iPad is a great toy to play pinball games on. The iPhone is simply too small, but the iPad excels at it. The tables that come with this free app are great, but the other tables you can buy are also phenomenal. I've spent many an hour trying to up a high score, never getting bored.

Is Being Thin Enough?

My brother and I often spar over which is the better platform--Android or iOS. He is a solid Android supporter while I tend to lean in the iOS direction (possibly because I'm an iPad and iPhone owner). I think both really have their merits and place and, really, if I wasn't entrenched in the iOS world, I don't think I'd be opposed to an Android device. The thought of re-buying all of my apps, though, keeps me away. But that's another topic altogether. What I'm leading into is talking about Motorola's Droid RAZR.

Feature comparisons

This smartphone really feels like Motorola is trying to recapture their glory days of when the original RAZR phone was the most dominant phone on the market. Making a thin phone was a great idea with the RAZR, but simply making a smartphone "thin" and not doing much else I don't think will cut it in today's smartphone market, especially when you compare its vital statistics to those of other similar smartphones (see the diagram to the right from Gizmodo).

When the iPhone 4S was announced, I was a tad let down as there wasn't anything truly revolutionary announced (although, Siri could be...), but there were some great improvements. From what I've seen and read about the camera, it's simply amazing and takes phenomenal pictures better than most point-and-shoot digital cameras.  Siri seems like it has the potential to be revolutionary if it can really do everything it is touted to be able to. Controlling your phone and executing tasks almost exclusively by voice control... that could be wicked awesome.  But, in the end, the 4S was really a beefed up 4.

With the RAZR, I'm having a hard time finding anything to point out about it other than "it's thin."  And you'll pay a premium for that thinness. With contract you'll shell out $300 for it instead of the usual $200 for an equivalent Android handset or an iPhone. You'd think that the extra $100 would get you something more, but instead you're paying extra for having less phone in your pocket, which I didn't think was really a problem in the first place, especially when you consider most Android phones tend towards being larger as that's what people want--more screen real estate.

The rest of the phone's stats don't lead me to think much of it either. The screen's resolution is slightly better than other Android phones, but still doesn't match the Retina display of an iPhone. The dual core processor and 1 GB of RAM equals other phones (yes, the iPhone's specs are lesser, but iOS is tightly integrated with the hardware so you get more out of lesser hardware). Storage is the standard 16 GB. The cameras are pretty standard in comparison to their Android peers and don't appear like they'll match the iPhone 4S. It only has an accelerometer.  It lacks the gyroscope, compass, and magnetometer that equivalent phones have. And they didn't add NFC which newer Android phones will have.

Really, there's very little that's compelling in any way. Yes, it will get Ice Cream Sandwich in the winter, but other Android phones will have it before then. The only differentiating factor this phone has is that it is smaller and I don't think that it will be enough this time around. Motorola is trying to re-use old ideas instead of coming up with new ones and it's going to hurt them in the long run. They had a hit with the original Droid phones, but now they've been eclipsed by Samsung and HTC. Consider me wholeheartedly unimpressed.

Wells Fargo IRA Transfer Bug

Apparently my real world job in quality assurance has bled over into my everyday life as I managed to uncover a pretty frustrating issue with Wells Fargo's banking and brokerage website. Before I note the bug, let's set the stage and background...

I have my personal checking, business checking/savings, taxable brokerage, IRA, Roth IRA, and a mortgage with Wells Fargo, so I have a significant amount of involvement with their financial offerings. For a couple years I've had an automatic monthly transfer set up to take a set amount of money from my personal checking and contribute it to my Roth IRA. At the beginning of the summer I wanted to change that contribution amount, so I went through their website to update the contribution amount. Everything went swimmingly... or so I thought.

This last month as I was checking my statements closer, I noticed that for the last few months there were TWO transfers from my checking to my Roth IRA, one for the old amount and one for the new amount. This would explain why my personal checking felt like it was getting pinched. I wasn't wasting more money on Papa Murphys and comic books, but instead Wells Fargo was transferring more than twice what they should. I tried to rectify this by going into my online account to see what was up. Apparently the "change" to the contribution amount just created another monthly transfer and left the previous one in place. That appears to be DEFECT #1.

This quickly led into DEFECT #2. As I attempted to cancel one of the two automatic monthly transfers, I was given a dreaded red error message saying the website is incapable of handling the request. Thinking it might be a browser thing, I switched from Chrome to IE with the same results. Time to call them up.

I called the phone number that was in the error message only to find DEFECT #3--the phone number directs you to a support number for a department that can't actually help with the issue. I had to get transferred to another department and after I made my way through a couple of representatives I was finally able to talk to someone senior to help me through my problem.

They advised me that you cannot cancel ongoing transfers to an IRA online. You have to come into a branch, sign a form, and then they can stop it. This seemed a bit ridiculous since I could create contributions online without needing to fill out a form. When I asked about this, the representative stated that actually, no, their systems since January of this year are incapable of allowing you to make or change contributions to IRA transfers. After I walked him through what I did and what I still had access to we noted that, as I had suspected, we found DEFECT #4.

After a bit of arguing about why it is somewhat dumb for me to come in and sign a form so they could key in the cancellation of future transfers that have yet to occur when I'd already given them more personal identifying information over the phone than I would on a form, all of my automatic transfers were canceled. For the immediate future I'll just make one-time manual transfers to my Roth IRA since it seems like Wells Fargo's online transfer system doesn't have all the kinks worked out of it after merging in Wachovia's system.

Phoneless and Feeling Naked

Earlier this week my iPhone 3GS finally gave up the ghost. It was a trusty companion for many years, but something finally gave way and the pin connectors that charging/syncing cables connect to wouldn't accept charges to the phone which made it, well, unusable. I wanted to hold out for an iPhone 5 (or 4GS or whatever the heck we'll get this fall), but obviously couldn't go without a phone until then so I sucked it up and replaced my 3GS with a white iPhone 4 (yeah, I got the white one, make fun of me now).

In the couple of days with no phone usage, it became utterly obvious how tethered I am to my phone and, when I'm without it, how odd I feel. To start, I simply felt odd without the trusty weight of my phone in my pocket, constantly vibrating as I received new emails, push notifications, and texts. My right leg suddenly felt slightly lighter... and my ears felt empty.

Not only is my phone my communication hub, it is also my portable entertainment center. When I'm walking just about anywhere--to the bus, running errands, walking the dog--I have my headphones in listening to some of my favorite podcasts (like Nerdist, Doug Loves Movies, The Bugle, and many others). Without something to listen to, I felt... well, bored. I'm so ADHD that I constantly need to have something to interact with or pay attention to. Without things to listen to while walking about, I almost felt like I was wasting time and found myself rushed to get to somewhere where I could interact with things again.

My run wasn't the same either as I didn't have my phone piping in some deathcore to my headphones as I tried to keep myself motivated all the way through my 2-3 mile loop. And I couldn't map it either as my phone is my GPS, which I use for tracking my runs and bike rides. I didn't know what my pace was, how far I'd gone (well, I had a rough idea), or how I compared to previous runs.

Lastly, my bus ride was almost unbearable. When I'm feeling tired, either because it is early in the morning or because I just finished a grueling day of work, I like to grab something light from my Netflix or Hulu queue and watch it as I wait to get home. Without my phone... I was forced to either do nothing (which is not an option for me) or read, even if I wasn't totally in the mood for it.

It's amazing how essential my phone has become to my everyday lifestyle, going far beyond a device used simply for calling people. Truthfully, using it for calling people is one of the features that isn't really all that important to me--it's all of the other things it does for me that matters. If anything, I could do without the phone service as long as I always had access to a nice, solid 3G or greater data connection which, if you ask me, is where we'll be in a few years.

Klout: Tool or Game

In the last couple of weeks I recently revived my Twitter account after having completely giving up on the service back in September of 2009. My last tweet at the time: "Twitter: You are a waste of time. I have yet to "get" your purpose. I've stuck with you too long hoping I would. But now, I say good-bye." I still somewhat have the same feelings about Twitter, but do see a few potential purposes for the service. We'll see if I grow back into using it or if I simply get frustrated by it once again. In truth, there were two reasons that I decided to jump back into Twitter--I wanted to see if I could use it to connect with other professionals in my field and, more importantly, I wanted to outrank my wife in Klout.

Before she mentioned the service to me, I had never heard of it, but as I did a few searches and read some articles, I found that it seems to be quite the growing service with aspirations of being able to truly measure your overall online reach, or as I read it, your online popularity.  Still, it seemed like an interesting topic since I had yet to find a true metric for measuring how influential someone is in the social media arena.  You can see how many followers someone has, check out how many Facebook friends (or likes) a person or page has, or check the amount of output that someone creates for either service, but that doesn't necessarily tell you how influential someone is. I could tweet up a storm, and craft a gigantic network of Facebook friends, but would that really make me influential?

Klout wants to answer that question, and I do definitely think that what they're undertaking could be valuable, but the more I think about the service, the more it seems that even though it wants you to view it as a tool, it's more like a game. I don't have to look any further than the reason why I started using Klout--I wanted to outrank my better half. I really didn't care, initially, what my social influence was. I just wanted to win.

But as I started to engage people on Twitter, connect with new contacts, and actually open my LinkedIn account after what feels like forever (side note: does anyone actually use LinkedIn unless they're looking for a job?) I was a bit more curious about how Klout worked, especially after I saw my Klout score drop after having seen it be on a steady rise (keep in mind I've only been using the service for a couple of weeks... yet they already sucked me in... that has to say something).  So I wanted to look into Klout a bit deeper.  How did they decide what my influence was?

Well, unfortunately, just like Google's search algorithm, Klout tells you a bit about what they do to calculate your social influence, but they don't give you the whole picture or insights into their methodology. I guess that makes sense since, just like Google, they wouldn't want you to easily game the system. What stood out at me when glancing over the metrics that they use to figure out your Klout score was that they were actually digging a bit below some of the surface level metrics. It matters how many followers you have, but more importantly it matters how much they interact with you. It matters that you have lots of friends on Facebook, but it matters even more that you receive consistent interaction on your Facebook content from varied sources.

It makes sense to use these measures, and a number of the others that they list, to come up with a social score, but it again feels like a game to me. It's neat to figure out what type of social media archetype I fall under (I'm a "Networker" by the way) and to see how my Klout scores grow (my "True Reach" is trending ever upward!), but does this really tell me anything useful about myself or my social media interaction? I'm not sure... but it makes me want to keep playing the Klout game to see how high of a score I can get!  Maybe that's all they hope to achieve. Since they need Facebook and Twitter (and LinkedIn... I guess) to survive, of course they're going to push you to continue to use those services, and to use them more heavily than you did before.

So I come back to the question I've posed different ways throughout this post: Is Klout useful? After thinking about it, spewing out what I think about the service, and mulling over my usage of the service... I still don't know, but I'm leaning towards a qualified "no".  Through my jaded eyes it feels like trying to get as many yearbook signatures as you can before the end of the year so that you can look at the oodles of scribbled messages and feel like you're popular, even if you didn't really interact with half of those people outside of trying to get their John Hancock.

Why Can't Twitter and Facebook Just Get Along?

Despite my overwhelming detesting of Twitter on a conceptual basis, I've come to realize that even though I cannot truly fathom a good reason why people are actually using it, people are. Because of this, and because I'm competing against my wife to see who has a higher Klout score, I've decided to raise from the dead, Lazarus style, my old Twitter account. I already use Facebook more than I probably should so I thought I could simply set things up so that whatever I posted to Facebook would go to Twitter.  Boy, I sure didn't know what I was in for.

To start, there's no way to directly publish to Twitter your Facebook statuses and links. There are numerous ways, including a pretty rock solid Twitter Facebook app, to import tweets into Facebook, but going the other way appeared to not be possible. However, I was not ready to give up. I was bound and determined to find a way to publish statuses and links only once and have them go to Twitter. Also, I wanted to to keep Facebook as my primary way of interacting with people and Twitter as simply something where my content got pushed to. I don't plan on following Twitter users that much because most of what comes through Twitter is garbage anyways (I blame the ridiculous 140 character limit--people who like to use full words and sentences just can't get much in that small of a space).

I started my adventure by trying to find a tool or automated solution to grab my Facebook statuses and push them over to Twitter. Facebook used to have all kinds of RSS feeds at your disposal, but now they seemed to have made them inaccessible unless you do some sleuthing to uncover what your status feed is. This post tells you how to get it.  This leads me to my first head-scratching moment. Why the heck doesn't Facebook want you using RSS feeds any more? My guess is they don't want you exporting your content to other applications or places so that you are stuck inside of their walled garden. So, now I have a feed for my status updates (note: this doesn't, unfortunately, include posted links, pictures, or uploads... just your plain text status updates.)

To get the RSS feed to publish to Twitter, I use Twitterfeed. It lets you take just about any RSS feed you can find and use it to post the contents of the feed to Twitter, Facebook, or other social services.  Once you enter in your Facebook RSS feed, you'll need to make a quick tweak to how Twitterfeed parses the feed for posting to Twitter. In the Advanced Settings section, make sure that the Post Content is set to "description only" (as shown below). If you leave it as "title only" you'll end up having every tweet prefixed with your name and if you leave it as "title & description" you'll be double posting your content. Also make sure the "Post Link" checkbox is deselected.

So this takes care of getting my Facebook status updates turned into tweets. But I also have a blog (that you're reading) and I want to make sure that when I post a new blog post it automatically gets tweeted and posted to Facebook. To do this, I used Twitterfeed for tweeting and RSS Graffiti for posting to my Facebook wall. Let's start with Twitterfeed and using it to publish my blog posts.

First, get your blog's RSS or atom feed.  Then create another feed in Twitterfeed and input your blog's RSS feed URL. Then in the Advanced Settings section you'll want to set the Post Content to "title only" (at least if you're using a blogger site). This makes the content of your tweet the title of your blog post. If you choose "description only" it will start pulling from the beginning of your actual post and if you leave it "title and description" it will use your post title and the description combined. And, I'm guessing, most post's contents won't fit in the 140 character limit of a tweet, especially since you need to save some room for the bit.ly URL. Since you want to link to your post, make sure the "Post Link" checkbox is selected and (if you have a bit.ly account) input your bit.ly details. Make sure to also have your Post Sorting done by pubDate and, lastly, if you want to prefix your tweet with anything use the "Post Prefix" field (I prefer to prefix all blog tweets with "New Blog Post:").

This gets your blog posts to Twitter, but what about Facebook? Thankfully RSS Graffiti is dead simple to use. Just authorize the application, input your blog's feed, leave the default settings as-is, and you should be ready to go. You can customize the frequency of how often it checks your feed or if you want to use a bit.ly account or how many posts it can post at once. None of those are essential to making the application work, though.

So now we have to figure out how to tie links I want to share between both Facebook and Twitter. This proved to be harder than I thought since Facebook apparently no longer has feeds for shared links or content. So, I instead decided I would simply share links to a source that would feed Facebook via Twitterfeed (that will then be tweeted through the Facebook status feed Twitterfeed is already using to tweet). For this, I chose delicious (now that it's back from the dead). Since I use Chrome, I simply had to install the delicious chrome extension and remember to make use of it instead of my previous "share to Facebook" bookmarklet. Once I had that in place, I could get an RSS feed of my links.

I took this RSS feed and again created another feed in Twitterfeed (this is turning out to be quite the tool!). This time around, under the Advanced Settings I set up it so that the Post Content was "description only" and that the "Post Link" checkbox was checked (since you want to link to the link you're sharing). I chose the "description only" option for the Post Content because I want the tweet and Facebook status sent to be my comments about the link, not the title of the link. If you would rather have the title of the link be what is sent, use "title only" since the title in this feed is the link's title. If you want both the link's title and your comments, select "title and description".

Now when I want to share a link to both Twitter and Facebook I click the chrome extension and, as shown in the screenshot below, I just add into the Notes field what I want to show up as Facebook status and, slightly later, as a tweet. Once I adjusted to sharing links in this manner, it was a perfect way of sending links to both platforms.

This covers just about all of the content that I want to be able to share across Twitter and Facebook. The only thing that it leaves out is sharing photos. I could use Flickr and then use Twitterfeed to make updates about when I have new photos, but Flickr is limiting and that doesn't get the photos into Facebook where I can tag friends. Ideally, I want to be able to post photos to Facebook and then have some type of tool to tweet about it, but for the time being I'll simply have to do a separate tweet if I want to let people know I have photos up on Facebook.

I know this seems like a pretty convoluted process, but now that I've got it figured out it's not all that bad and definitely is much better than remembering to post about things in multiple systems. I blog once. I make a status update once. I share a link once. Yet it goes to both systems... as long as I follow my scheme. If you have a more or less convoluted way of doing things, I'm all ears!

Check Your Zune

It looks like Zunes everywhere are failing. I can chime in with my own anecdotal evidence as my Zune is bricked as of this morning. I went to sync it and it just bricked. Total sucktasm since I take this thing everywhere. I've got 20 gigs of music on it along with podcasts, tv shows, and other mindless entertainment. And without it, I sure as heck won't go to the gym since I get bored after 5 minutes if I'm not listening to something.

This is extremely weird as it is happening to Zunes everywhere, so it is definitely a faulty piece of code somewhere. I just wonder how they're going to fix this since you can't get the Zune out of its bricked state. I can't get it to turn off, to sync, to play, to reset, or do anything. It just sits there, on, with the Zune logo on the front.

Thanks for the Christmas present, Microsoft.

Failing Hardware

I really love my Xbox 360... when it is working. Over the weekend I had my second 360 fail. It was really odd too, since there was no real hints that anything was wrong. I didn't have any problems with the console, hadn't been using it excessively, and really had only been using it lately as a DVD player and for playing arcade games. Sunday morning I watched an episode of the X-Files (just finishing up the 7th season) before breakfast and turned the unit off. When I came back after breakfast to play a game of Scene It with Kristi, the thing gave me the red rings of death.

This is the second time I've had to have my 360 replaced. I had to have my 360 replaced last year because of the same problem. I also had to have my power cord replaced last year. On top of those repairs, I also had both the guitar and drum set that came with Rock Band get replaced since they had broken. The 360 is, in my opinion, an amazing platform that does it all--games, a great online experience, DVD player, media streamer, and entertainment center--but the console and peripherals have such a high fail rate it's ridiculous.

I've had two 360's replaced. My brother has had to have one replaced. That's three broken consoles between the two of us. Not a great statistic if you ask me. Thankfully, Microsoft is pretty good about repairing or replacing broken machines. Oddly when I called to have this 360 fixed, it came up as out of warranty for over a year, which is odd since Microsoft has a 3 year warranty on all of their consoles. It must have somehow got screwed up in their system that I no longer had my original system, but a replacement unit. I didn't have to dick around with them, however, to get it classified as under warranty. All I did was tell them their records were wrong and they took me at my word, emailed a shipping label, and set me up to have it serviced free of charge.

It's stuff like that which keeps me so torn on the 360 and Microsoft. Their service is great. I love it, but I hate that I have to take advantage of it because of their crappy hardware. Oh well, I'll deal for now. Thankfully I've never had any issues with my Zune. I beat the crap out of that thing and it's still ticking.

Yes, There Are Zune Users Out There... And I am One of Them!

For any of you Zune owners, the latest 3.0 software and firmware has recently dropped. I must say, I liked my Zune before 3.0 was released, but there were things that could be better. Now, with 3.0, a few of my issue have been resolved and I am now more in love with my Zune then ever. Some of the updates that really made my day are below:

--Audible Support: This one is huge. I had a lot of Audible audiobooks that I bought when I had my previous MP3 player (which had Audible support), but when it died and I upgraded to my Zune, I couldn't listen to them. They've been sitting in my Audible account forever and now, finally, I can listen to them and not feel like I totally wasted a bunch of money.

--A Clock: It may seem trivial, but I thought it was really stupid how there was no clock on the Zune anywhere. Now I can time my runs and better manage my pace, as well as not have to pull my blackberry out of my other pocket just to check the time (if I'm for some reason not wearing my watch).

--Games: I really didn't seem to think this would be that cool, but after having played a little Hexic while listening to a podcast, I can see how games will be a stellar addition. As long as they don't take up too much space, I'll probably buy a few for when I'm on the go.

--Better Video Support: Some video podcasts that I subscribed to wouldn't be watchable on my Zune because the format wasn't quite right, even though they were in MP4 format. It seems that this has been addressed as those podcasts are now watchable.

--Mixview: This is a part of the Zune software that is loaded onto your PC that mimics iTunes in giving you a neato way to see similar artists to what you listen to and such. It's neat, but I won't use it.

There are a few new features that I really could care less about, like buying things from the marketplace wirelessly, buying songs you listend to on the radio, Zune channels, and the added social integration stuff, but I'm sure they have their uses for some users. Now if only Microsoft could get a little more market share. For what it's worth, I feel like my Zune is a much better product than an iPod, especially when it comes to the wireless syncing, better video screen, and moderately less bloated software.

Computer Woes

It seems like lately everything I've been doing has been centered around computers and the troubles they bring. If it's not my laptop at work crapping out, it's my brand new computer at home not playing nice or doing what I want it to do or it's my previous computer (which is now the gf's computer) not being as freshly wiped and workable as I hoped. Or else maybe it's my Skype phone not working. Or it's re-installing software on all of these machines. Regardless, I haven't had any free time on my computers that hasn't been spent simply trying to make them work. Freakin' technology can bite my ass.

EZ Tracks Review

This post is a paid review from ReviewMe.com, so feel free to keep that in mind while reading.

EZ Tracks is, from the moment you get to the main page, a throwback to early 90's sites that were trafficking in MP3 downloading. It touts free, legal music downloads... but we all know that in today's environment free usually equals illegal, at least if you listen to the RIAA and what they're spewing. The site even has an info corner to try an dispell any stigmas that users may initially have. Check out some of the Q&A found there:

Why EZ-Tracks?
MP3 music downloads are completely free and legal.
We are not P2P!

Why Download Online Music in MP3 format?
MP3's are the preferred music format, almost all portable music devices can play them.

Legal Music Downloads
Basics on downloading EZ-Tracks songs plus instructions on playing, copying, and burning music.

Countdown Music
EZ-Tracks is home to Countdown, the world's greatest cover band.

Not exactly dispelling anything for me, but I'm intrigued (for comedic reasons) about their claim of being the home of Countdown, the world's greatest cover band.

Anyways, you can look around for MP3s and bands and such, but to get to any of the actual music you need to sign up for an account at the site and, as you're signing up, the first thing they ask for is your email address with a popup message that exclaims "We DO NOT spam our users!" That screams to me that, "Yep, we probably will spam you with stuff." Any time you have to overtly deny that you'll do something it's because you're thinking about doing it or are doing it and want to reassure people's perceptions.

Now, as I'm signing up for an account (using fake info because I'm leery about things already), I find that I'm required to give my address and a phone number. Why do they need a physical address and phone number if I'm dealing with digitally distributed music, which doesn't need an address to be delivered to or a phone number to call. And besides, this is all supposed to be free music, remember? Again, they get fake info because I don't want any calls or snail mail spam.

As I finally get through their long ass registration process to get to my supposedly free music, I'm hit with advertisements to sign up for pay services. Annoying, to say the least. I just want to get my free music, dammit.

After I say "No thanks" to their offers, I find out that I'm STILL NOT REGISTERED!!! I get another page that says I need to make sure I have a valid cell number since they're TEXT MESSAGING ME MY ACCOUNT PIN NUMBER! Ridiculous! So I can't get any further because I didn't want to give out my cell phone number to get something texted to it.

This little bit makes me wonder if this is simply a scheme to get at people's cell numbers to continually text them and make money that way. I don't even have texting enabled on my phone because I hate getting raped by AT&T and their ludicrous price plans for text messaging. So it looks like I won't actually be getting my account created, which I guess isn't all that bad because the more and more I go through this site, the more and more it looks like a scam.

Oh, no a side note, I don't know if it was just a problem for me as I was going through, but on the pages asking for my cell phone number, half of the images on the page never loaded, which made it hard to know exactly what I was doing.

Hmmm... well, it seems like after I said no to everything, I still have an account. So I tried downloading a song... it sends me to an iTunes download page. I don't use iTunes. And why would I want to use iTunes if I could come to EZ Tracks for free music? Instead the site just shuttles me over to iTunes to download one of my supposedly free 101 tracks.

Let's just sum it up succinctly here: EZ Tracks isn't worth the hassle. If you want free music, keep downloading crap illegally (knowing you're running the risks of performing an illegal activity) or just pony up the 99 cents a song over at the Amazon music store.

Upgrading is Never Easy

In the quest to always have the latest and greatest, I volunteered to be a guinea pig at work and test out a new migration tool and build in order to have a newer laptop, as well as to have the latest software packages available. My prior computer was also having some issues, so this seemed like the logical thing to do. What comes with being a guinea pig, however, are all of the associate little issues that haven't been worked out yet.

For the most part, the transition to my new laptop went pretty well. It took about 4 hours for everything to get transfered from my old machine to my new one, but just about everything made it over. However, I did have to dedicate a few hours to re-installing a bunch of programs that I had on my old machine that I needed on my new machine to feel at home again. I just can't use a default Windows XP environment. After having so many utilities and tools that have made my everyday activities so much easier, you can't go back.

I got everything moved over, all my settings copied over, and it looked like everything was up to speed and rocking. Unfortunately, that was too good to be true. My mouse wasn't working and I figured maybe I just needed some updated drivers, but since it's a bluetooth mouse, there was a whole other world of pain associated with trying to get the thing working (and it still isn't as of right now).

In my most humble opinion bluetooth is a horrible technology that was poorly thought out, has been poorly implemented, and proves to cause more problems and headaches than it is worth. In my experience, I've never had an encounter with bluetooth that went well and this was another case. There was firmware mismatches, software mismatches, driver errors, and everything else you could imagine associated with my mouse and computer. What's crazy is it is a Microsoft mouse and we can't get the damn thing to work on a Microsoft Windows XP machine using Microsoft's drivers and even trying out a Microsoft bluetooth attachment. It's all Microsoft technology, but none of it works. Thank goodness I sold all of my MSFT stock so that I don't feel bad when I talk crap about them.

Anyhow, let's just say that having a new laptop is awesome, but bluetooth is not since it wasted a couple hours of my day and will cost me more in the future since my dumbass mouse still isn't working.

Google's Quasi-GPS

My cell phone bill is nearly $100 a month just to get my basic phone service with something like 500 anytime minutes (my unlimited nighttime minutes don't start until 9:00 pm) and my blackberry enterprise service. Thankfully work covers my blackberry fees (or else I wouldn't be using it), but it still leaves me with what I feel is an overpriced plan for a phone I don't use a whole lot. The thing is, I have the 2nd cheapest plan through the perennially evil AT&T. The cheapest is just ridiculous and I can't see anyone using it since there's hardly any minutes available.

Anyhow, one of the features my blackberry has is GPS. I can't use it, though, unless I add on a $10-$20 GPS service onto my monthly bill. It'd be cool to have GPS but, frankly, I wouldn't use it much since I don't leave the metro area very often.

Leave it to Google, though, to come up with a free pseudo-GPS function added into their Google Maps application on my blackberry. It was rolled out probably 6-9 months ago and it wasn't that accurate. It could locate me in a 1,000 meter radius or so, depending upon where I was in the metro. Cool as it was, it wasn't useful since it would show me 5 blocks away from where I actually was which didn't help when driving.

Now, however, there must have been some updates because as I was tinkering with it yesterday I noticed that it was locating my position accurate to within 3 meters at time (usually between 5 and 10 meters, though). That's almost GPS like tracking using cell tower signals (I'm assuming). Who needs GPS with this kind of accuracy using my cell's signal that I don't have to pay extra to use?

I'm sure that once I get out of the metro area it won't be as accurate, but I don't see myself needing it to be ultra-accurate when I'm driving out in the country and there are turnoffs every mile on average. It's awesome to have a free GPS alternative and hopefully it'll stick it to AT&T and get them to allow GPS usage for lesser fees or, God forbid, free. If you have a blackberry, download the Google Maps app and give it a whirl. It's pretty damn useful.

Is It Time to Go HD-DVD?

I'm wondering this myself right now, mostly because of the special Best Buy has this week. I can get the HD-DVD drive for my Xbox 360, which is the cheapest HD-DVD player out there right now, and it comes with the first season of Heroes on HD-DVD. On top of that, I can mail away for 5 free HD-DVDs. They're movies that I'm at least interested in and Heroes I haven't watched yet but am anxious to.

There are a couple of things holding be back, however. First, this who Bluray vs. HD-DVD battle is far from settled and it seems like either format still could come out on top. Ideally I would like to go with a dual format player, but they're pretty expensive still. Getting locked into a losing format would really suck.

And speaking of locked in, I'd be starting off my Heroes DVD run in HD, which is expensive as all get out. The standard DVD set of the first season is like $40 but the HD set is between $60 and $100. So I'd be throwing down at least that much for each subsequent season. Also, HD movies are far from cheap in comparison to standard DVDs.

But man, do I ever want to watch HD movies on my 57" HD TV. Sure, my Xbox 360 upconverts my standard DVDs to look better than they should, but the pure clarity of straight HD would be so amazing. I'm so on the fence right now...

Sponsored Post: Online Casino Bluebook Review

This is a review paid for by ReviewMe.

Now, with that out of the way... I like cards, I like doing some gambling, and games of chance are fun. However, I tend to enjoy playing cards and gambling with actual people. That's why I host a poker game at my house every week. It's a nice excuse to get a group of friends together to come play and hang out. Some people, however, prefer to do their gambling online.

Now there are a ton of online gambling websites out there, each with its own idea for how to get you to spend your money there. Online Casino Bluebook is a website that tries to pull together some of the best online casinos to try out.

The first thing I noticed when I went to their website is how dated it looks. Seriously, it's like the site crawled out of the early 00's. In a day and age of CSS, Ajax, and Flash it is really weird to see a website done totally in tables and seemingly not very interactive. So barring this, does the website do anything for you?

Well... I guess. You can find a lot of listed online gambling establishments and information about them, but I'm not seeing a lot of added value. Sure, you get a little info about each site, but it's nothing more in depth than you'd get when looking at the site's front page.

Another thing that gets to me is that all of the links to the different websites contain referrer variables which leads me to believe that this consolidation of online gambling information is nothing more than a scheme to get referral bonuses. This leads to my wondering whether the "best" online casinos to go to aren't simply the ones that pay out the biggest referral fee.

In the end, I doubt I would use this site, but if you want a lot of online gambling website links at your fingertips (and don't mind that the owner of this website gets a kickback for every new site you try) then you might want to visit it once and give it a look.

I Took the Zune Plunge

My MP3 player that I use most of the time is a 40GB Lyra something-or-other and it is starting to get to the point where it is really beat up and at times likes to reset itself. It's been durable as hell, surviving many drops, tosses, and miles upon miles of running, but it doesn't have a lot of features that I'd like to see it have when using it to entertain myself on my bus rides. I know, I just bought an Audible compatible MP3 player to listen to my audio books, but what if I wanted to watch the latest episode of the Office I downloaded? And how about syncing? That's the biggest pain in the ass with my current Lyra--the software it uses takes forever to load anything. The Zune software is relatively easy to use (I use it already for streaming music to my Xbox 360).

With that, I've been eying up the 30GB Zune. With the announcement of the Zune 2 and the recent price drops on the Zune 1, I was really tempted. They were $130 on Woot one day and you can find them at about $150 online all over. I still couldn't make up my mind. But then a huge one-two combo hit and I am now going to be the proud owner of a black 30GB Zune 1.

The first punch came in the form of finding out that Microsoft is upgrading first gen Zunes to have all of the features of the Zune 2, which means MPEG4 support and wireless syncing. Two things that I've always thought MP3 players needed. No more plugging into my computer to get files onto it. All I have to do is plug the baby into its charger and it'll do it all automatically over the wireless network.

The second thing that dropped on me, as if the first wasn't enough to think about diving into the Zune pond, was Woot had a special, offering up Zune 1's for $100. I couldn't resist. And I still had $80 in my paypal account that had been sitting there from some comics I sold a while back. Now I just have to wait for it to get here... and pray the firmware upgrade Microsoft promises works as awesomely as it sounds like it will.

I can't wait to watch recorded TV shows on the bus instead of only being able to listen to audio books or music. Sweet...