Having fun with the help center reps

Today I had a "Live Chat" online with my bank about an auto loan with a loan agent who was all but unreachable. Slightly frustrated that my issue was diverted to a cross-sell for a product I essentially already use, I decided to take a different, to the conversation.

I would also like to point out that, while I understand why scripts are necessary, I really hate them being read to me--especially via text chat. It feels like I'm talking to a robot.

Personally identifiable information (other than my name, since you already know what it is) has been changed.


Duration (actual chatting time) 00:14:11
Operator Gertrude

Chat Transcript
info: Please wait for a representative to respond.
info: Hello. My name is Gertrude. Have you financed a vehicle with Rich Uncle Pennybags in the past 18 months? In the event your vehicle was stolen or totaled in an accident, have you considered how you would pay off your loan and/or come up with a down payment on a replacement vehicle? Rich Uncle Pennybags has a low cost solution that will assist you in these situations. Would you like to hear about it?
info: Your confirmation number for this chat is 123ZOINKSLIKEHEYSCOOB4
Gertrude: Hello Michael, how may I assist you today?
Michael Paul: Hi Gertrude, I just recently got approved for an auto loan and want to know if I can just walk in to a Rich Uncle Pennybags branch to finish the paperwork, or if I still have to deal with "KT", the person assigned to my loan, over the phone.
Michael Paul: KT seems to be unavailable whenever I call.
Gertrude: I will be happy to assist you with this today. In the meantime, have there been any changes to your mailing address, telephone number, or e-mail address?
Michael Paul: no
Gertrude: Thank you for your patience. You will not be able to walk into a branch and sign paper work. Once you and K.T. are able to talk he can set up an appointment with you to visit a branch. While I have you online, I may have a way for you to monitor your account easier. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?
Michael Paul: sure, go ahead.
Gertrude: How often do you use Rich Uncle Pennybags' online banking?
Michael Paul: every day
Gertrude: Great! Based on the fact that you use Rich Uncle Pennybags' online banking often I would recommend Finance Works. We are proud to offer Finance Works, a free personal money management tool. This great software is offered by Intuit, the same company that offers Quicken. Rich Uncle Pennybags is the second financial institution in the nation to offer this valuable money management tool. Finance Works will save you time because you can track, organize, and itemize all of your expenses. You can integrate your other Rich Uncle Pennybags accounts, as well as accounts you hold with other financial institutions. With this convenience, you can manage your expenses in one online banking session!
Gertrude: Would you like me to walk you through setting up Finance Works?
Michael Paul: No thanks, I already use Quicken connected to Rich Uncle Pennybags, but i might look into it in the future
Gertrude: Great! Is there anything else I can assist you with today Michael?
Michael Paul: Yeah, I'd like to assign my loan to someone else, because I'm having no luck with K.T. The guy seems impossible to reach unless you have the secret Bat Phone number.
Michael Paul: :-)
Gertrude: I have his direct phone number, would you like me to provide you with this number?
Michael Paul: No, because I have that direct phone number, too.
Michael Paul: ...unless you have the direct number to his Bat Phone ;)
Gertrude: I will be happy to see if I can get another loan officer to contact you.
Michael Paul: That would be outstanding, I really appreciate it.
Gertrude: May I get your best contact number?
Michael Paul: cell phone: 269-867-5309
Gertrude: Great! I will try to have someone contact you soon. Is there anything else I can assist you with today Michael?
Michael Paul: No, you've been great Gertrude! Thanks so much for having someone else contact me.
Gertrude: Thank you for choosing Rich Uncle Pennybags. If you need any assistance, please contact us at (800) 867-5309, or Live Chat at www.RichUnclePennybags.com! We appreciate your business! Have a wonderful day!
Michael Paul: You too :-)

What can Google Apps for your Domain do for me?

I recently decided to set up Google Apps for my domain, OlisProducts.com.

"Whether your business is moving everything to the cloud, just wants an affordable email solution or struggles to give employees access to critical information, Google Apps will help you stretch resources and work smarter."

This allows me to do a few things, for free:

1. Email. Use Gmail--including the web interface--for all my company's communications. That means that mail coming from mike@olisproducts.com actually gets written, sent, checked and managed through Gmail, just like I'm already familiar with. (What, you aren't already a Gmail user? Go sign up and try it out today.) Why is this nice? Because I love being able to use all the features that gmail offers, like labels, filters, searches, keyboard shortcuts, etc. Once you get used to the web interface and what it has to offer, you'll wonder why you ever used that beastly beast called Outlook.
2. Document sharing. We're always working on different documents, whether they're recipes, notes about past and upcoming shows, or copy for upcoming newsletters. And spreadsheets. Lots of spreadsheets. Wouldn't it be great if our staff could collaborate on documents without being in the same room? Now we can. In fact, there's no "locking" of a document like there is in a normal office setting. While you're editing your spreadsheet, someone else can come in and make edits while you make yours. Google makes seeing who's where in your document a breeze.
3. Calendars. Oli's Products goes to several trade shows per year, and it's helpful for our customers to see where we've been and where we'll be next. With Google Apps, creating that calendar is very simple. Embedding it into our website is even simpler--just copy and paste some code.
4. Corporate IM. When you're logged into your domain's Gmail account, you have a chat list right in the left side of the web browser containing all of your domain's users and online status. You can, of course, add and remove people at will.
5. Sites. If you need a basic web page for something--planning club meetings or activities, for example--you can create basic web pages to suit your task using an easy WYSIWYG editor. No coding required... just drag and drop. Click and edit. Simple.

Perhaps the best thing (for administrators) is the admin panel. It boasts a simple to use interface that lets you command and control just about everything you could think of, from sharing options to resetting peoples passwords.

So, if you're a small company looking to get it all together, give Google Apps a try. It's free, so there's nothing to lose.

Get things done... using Things (for Mac and iPhone)

Straight to the point: if you want to get things done efficiently and all the other to-do managers have failed you in the past, give Things a try. Things, by Cultured Code, is for the Mac and has a companion for the iPhone that's slowly working its way up to have the same feature set as the Mac version.

I'll leave the description up to the creators of the program, but I will tell you this: it's remarkably useful and simple to use. It's got a very simple user interface, and there are too many useful features to pick a favorite. One of them is the ability to tag a task with keywords like "15 min" or "easy" or "errand". Since you can also sort by these tags, you can quickly create a "calls" list or an "errands" list or a list of things to do that will take "15 min" or less.

Another great feature about Things is the ability to organize tasks into Projects and Areas of Responsibility. Projects are large tasks that require smaller mini-tasks. For example, I might have a project called "Paint the house" and the mini-tasks of that project might include things like "buy paint", "find some help", and "check the weather forecast".

Areas of Responsibility allow you to group tasks by how they fit into your life. Is it a financial type of task? Relationship? Are you a blogger? Then you might have an area of responsibility called Blogging.

One final feature that sticks out is the virtual shoebox. That is, say you have a task that's just something you'd like to do, but not necessarily today. It can be done someday in the future. But what do you do with the task since you don't want to clutter up your lists with things you'd like to do someday, but not today? Simple. Just put those tasks in the Someday box. Using this Someday shoebox, you can remove those tasks which don't need to be done anytime soon, but still keep them somewhere in the system for reviewing at a later date.

If you own a Mac and an iPhone, the iPhone version is worth purchasing as well. It's not quite as fully featured as the Mac version (yet) but they're working hard on bringing it up to speed and have made many significant improvements to it over the past several weeks since it's been announced.

And now, I can strike this item off my to-do list.

Blog about Things

Ah, that feels better.

Things for Mac: $49.95
Things for iPhone: $9.99

An easy way to shorten a URL

UPDATED 2/16/09

Have you ever had a long, ugly URL like this...

http://www.theunion.com/article/20090111/NEWS/901119997/1053/NONE&parentprofile=1053&title=Record%20high%20temperatures%20possible

...that you wish could look more like this: http://is.gd/fKGK ?

Quick tip for the day: head on over to http://is.gd and find the Instructions page. From there, drag the link inside the Bookmarklet section up to your Bookmarks Toolbar (aka Favorites Toolbar). If you don't have that toolbar enabled, you can enable it using View > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox, or View > Toolbars > Links in good old Internet Explorer.

When you're viewing the page you want to create a short link to, just click the newly-created Bookmark link you created and a short link is created for you using the is.gd service.

Now you can post simple, easy links to services like Twitter or in emails, IMs and more. How about you: do you know of a shorter link than is.gd?

=============
Update: 2/16/09

Just found a way better service than is.gd. Same length, but much more useful: it's called tr.im. That's http://tr.im

If you were curious, .im is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Isle of Man. It is administered by the Government of the Isle of Man and managed on a day to day basis by Domicilium, an offshore Internet Service Provider based on the Isle of Man.

What tr.im does is not only shorten a URL, but provide analytics about who's clicking your links, including such information as the visitor's location (country), Browser version, platform, and more. Crazy cool!

What's more? Simply create an account on the site (all you need is a username, password and email address to confirm you're a human) and you can keep track of all your tr.ims. PLUS, it's taking advantage of Twitter's API, so you can create a bookmarklet using the process above and tweet right from there!

Oh, I love the interwebs.

AppSniper pays for itself

I wanted to write a post about AppSniper, but MacLife just reviewed it and said everything I wanted to say... so here's the useful linkage: http://www.maclife.com/article/iphone/appsniper

How much will it cost per year to own and maintain a kitten? - Mahalo Answers

How much will it cost per year to own and maintain a kitten? - Mahalo Answers

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Brown sludge in bottom of Blendtec blender cup

I recently came across a brown sludge that coats the metal ring at the bottom/base inside my Blendrec blender cup... any ideas what this stuff might be? I scraped it off with a toothpick, as it doesn't seem to come off with a hot water rinse alone. Doesn't appear to be rust.

Skype crashing on you? It might be a driver issue.

Does Skype keep crashing on your Windows machine? Try this helpful hint: Make sure that your webcam's driver is up-to-date, preferably using drivers developed by the manufacturer.

My mom and I recently had this problem where we couldn't audio or video chat for longer than just a minute or so--sometimes the conversation lasted only seconds. It was very buggy. Skype would crash on her computer, but not on mine (I'm on a Mac, for reference). We found it interesting because I could skype just fine between my home Mac and my work's Dell laptop, so I isolated the problem to my mom's computer, which is a fairly recent and capable model.

The problem stemmed from us not using the correct driver for the web cam, a Logitech Pro 9000. After some troubleshooting, we discovered that Windows automatically installed a default generic driver for the webcam. So we went over to Logitech's website, downloaded the latest driver for it, installed, rebooted, and presto. As I write this blog, I'm video chatting with my mom and the timer is 40:21 and counting.

Apple Mighty Mouse goes ABSOLUTELY BERZERK!

OK, so it's 2:11 AM and I finally figured out why my Apple Mighty Mouse is going berserk.

First, some background. The might mouse is touch sensitive, meaning the top shell can sense where your fingers are and produce the correct type of click, according to where your fingers are. For example, both fingers down will default to a left click, while lifting your index finger (if you're right handed) will produce a left click because it can sense that your left finger is off the top of the shell.

So this evening, I had a little work to do on the company laptop. I pushed my mac keyboard and mouse out of the way to make room for the laptop, did my work, then closed the lid (left the laptop on), and then proceeded to use my mac with the keyboard and mouse.

I noticed some peculiar things happening with my mouse. See, the Mighty Mouse has two side buttons--one on either side--when you squeeze them, it makes a little clicking sound and activates exposé. What was happening this evening was that ANY time I touched my mouse, I'd hear the clicking sound and exposé would activate. It seemed to get worse, then better, then worse again, seemingly at random. Sometimes, it got so bad that it would literally toggle back and forth between activated and deactivated, many times per second--while my hand was simply resting on the damned thing. I could hear the clicks. It was insane.

But it only did it seemingly at random, which pissed me off. So, I sought out a solution.

At first, I tried to take the mouse apart... but in fear of breaking the damn thing, I chose to find other alternatives. Scouring the web left me with nothing--apparently the only major problem people have with the Mighty Mouse has to do with the scroll ball. Alas, I was about to give up and bring it to the Apple Store when I woke up.

But then it hit me: maybe this isn't a mechanical problem, but an electrical problem. Could the Mighty Mouse be short circuiting? Impossible; I bought my Mac over the summer of 2008, and Apple makes some pretty high quality products so I doubt I'd see my poor little mouse go belly up in only a few short months.

Nevertheless, I began to test things. Systematically. Starting with the cord, I jiggled it. After a while of going up and down the length of the cord, I discovered that the problems stopped once I hit the base of the cord where it connects to the keyboard. Could this be it? No, but there's a reason, which I'll detail below.

See, the point where the cord connects to the keyboard is the point at which my hand and arm was completely off of my LAPTOP that was sitting on my desk! Once I put my hand/arm back on the laptop and touched my mouse, crazy shit began to happen again. This was it!

Upon my enlightenment, I smiled with delight--for a couple reasons. One, I fixed my problem myself (yay me!) but two, I don't have to waste time at the Apple Store looking like a total loser because my symptoms would never have shown up. Imagine: "Hi, my mouse is going crazy." Apple tech: "Looks fine to me." Me: "Fuck. Never fails; you go to the doctor for medicine, but magically, by the time you arrive, you feel much better than you did 30 minutes ago."

So I got all excited to write this post to share with the world my discovery, and moved my laptop from the desk to my lap, so I could access my keyboard. As soon as I touched my mouse, what do you think happened? Well I'll be damned: same problem. Mouse went haywire again.

I then put the damn thing on the floor (avoiding contact with it) and what do you know? Mouse is perfectly normal.

So the bottom line is this: this damned Mighty Mouse is sensitive to electrical impulses, such that if an electrical current flows through the top shell that's more than a human's, it throws the whole damn thing out of whack.

2.5 hours of my life wasted, but at least now I know, and so do you.

How to sync firefox bookmarks and passwords

Do you use more than one computer? Well then, this tip may be indispensable: keep all your bookmarks and passwords in harmonious synchronization across every single computer that you use.

One of the best things about Firefox is its extensions--the ability to add functionality to the web browser that didn't exist before--functionality that is limited only by the imagination of developers out there worldwide.

Do yourself a favor and download this must-have Firefox extension, Foxmarks. Add it to firefox on each of your computers, and you'll never have to leave your bookmarks or passwords behind again.

But what if you're on a public computer? No problem, just visit http://my.foxmarks.com to access your bookmarks. Your passwords will not be available to you from here, but at least you've got your bookmarks. Besides, if there's a password you really don't remember but it's on your home computer, that's ok because you could always just use LogMeIn and, well, that solves that problem.

Scotty: Log Me In

Recently I've found myself spending more and more time wishing I could log into my home computer from work. My home computer's a Mac, which explains why I can't simply Remote Desktop from my work laptop running Windows XP. In addition to that, the corporate firewall creates more connectivity issues than I knew existed. What a drag.

But then I found a service on the internet called LogMeIn. All you have to do is create an account, then download the LogMeIn software to the computer you want to log into from a remote location. Once that's done, remote control of your computer is as simple as visiting LogMeIn.com, and literally logging in. Once authenticated, you can click the Remote Control button and be connected to your home computer via your web browser. (Side note: for the best experience, you'll need to install a small browser plug-in, available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and other browsers.)

Amazingly, this even works using the iPhone. If you're on a WiFi connection, you can access your home computer (or whatever other computer you've set up with the LogMeIn software) remotely and I must say it works great.

Best part: the service is free. You can't copy files or print to a local printer--for that, you pay extra--but that's why it's free. LogMeIn is willing to bet that if you start using its free service, you'll eventually come to appreciate the value of the added functionality of the paid services it offers, of which there are several.

Deceptive website example

OK, this will sound kinda geeky, but that's what this blog is about, right?

So I'm reading some of my mail in gmail this morning, and I did something rare: I looked at the advertisements to see how relevant they were to the context of my email. For reference, I was reading a notification that a billing statement was ready. Of the eight ads on the right hand side, only two caught my eye because they stood out from the rest--not in a good way, necessarily, but they were just different.

You see, while the rest of the ads had a green location of www.WhateverSite.com, these two that stood out had a green location address that omitted the www in replace of an actual word like "balance" or "bills". In this case, I decided to click on the ad with the location of "bills.iGrantCash.com".

I was taken to a page that threw me back to the late 90s with its dithered iGrantCash.com icon (complete with one sole underline under the letters "ash.com"). Anytime I see a web site with shoddy graphics, I immediately throw a red flag because these days, graphics should be very polished since our monitors can display millions of colors.

Anyhow, that was strike one. Strike two came when I glanced at the very prominent top right corner, which touted, "Total grant sites: 57. Sites that were scams: 56. Legitimate sites: 1." Of course, my first question was: is this one of the scam sites? Then I thought, nah, this must be the "1" site that is not a scam. Hmmmmmmm.....

What else did I see? Somehow, this P.O.S. site from the 90s had been featured on such prominent sites as MSN, CNN.com, AOL Search, NBC, CNBC, CBS, Fox News, Forbes, the list goes on. A critical thinker might ask, "how is this so?" considering the web site looks like a piece of trash, while the non-critical thinker (or citizen desperate for cash) just says "whew, that's reassuring." So, with a critical eye, I continued reading on.

The truth finally came at the bottom of the page, where I read this in the fine print:

"As Seen On" logos and trademarks are owned by their respective companies. This site is currently advertised on all the media outlets identified under "As Seen On" logo banner.

So basically, they feel like they can say they've been "seen on" MSN, Yahoo, and others, because they advertise on those sites. Thus it is their advertisement that has been "seen on" those sites, not actual articles about the great product itself, which is simply links to information you can find using any search engine.

So now comes strike three: every single link on this web page directs the unsuspecting visitor to the exact same page: http://www.igrantcash.com/NewForm.jsp?

This is a sign-up page that screams, "Congratulations You are Pre-Qualified

For Free FREE Government Grant Money"

Again, this new sign-up page features logos from major companies such as CNN, NBC, CNBC, and Fox News, which makes the casual web surfer feel comfortable and at ease. My first question was, "gosh, how did little 'ol me get pre-qualified to receive thousands of government dollars for free? was my 'click' simply enough for them to say OK?"

By the way, that sign up page asks for your name, address, city, state, phone and email among other things, and it's not even transmitting the data using the https:// protocol (HTTP Secure). In other words, it's sent across the internet in plain text.

After entering in some fake information, I'm led to a second page asking for my credit card information. This time, however, it does use the https protocol, so at least they're taking my credit card information securely.

That's a nice thought.

So the bottom line is this: you may have read this post and say, "you ain't teachin' me nothin' new, essay!" But that is not the point. This post wasn't written for you. This post was written for those who are skeptical about a site for some reason, but can't quite put their fingers on why. This little lesson, for example, would be a great thing to teach someone in your life who is just getting started on the internet, or who has been using it for a while, but isn't quite as tech savvy with regard to graphics quality, where links go to, and security protocols such as https.

Nicolaus Labor Day Parade and Craft Faire

Oli's Products is striving to spread the word that gluten free food tastes great, one craft faire at a time. Labor Day is typically a holiday when many people head to the water, relax, and have a BBQ. It's a three day weekend, so why not squeeze the Nicolaus Labor Day Parade and Craft Faire into your schedule? Get out of town, enjoy some good food, live entertainment, and explore the local arts and crafts. Come on by and sample our signature Sweet 'n Spicy Sauce or our Thick 'n Chunky Salsa. Check out website for the details.

Peppers are in Season

Here in Northern California peppers are falling off the tables at farmers market and the prices are going down in the grocery store, which can only mean one thing: Oli's Products is in full production. August and September are our busiest months for producing our two main products: Oli's Sweet 'n Spicy Sauce, and Oli's Thick 'n Chunky Salsa, as we strive to use local and fresh ingredients. We also have seasonal offerings, and currently have Oli's Sweet 'n Spicy Sauce: Mango in stock.

Did you know that the haberno chili is the second hottest pepper in the world? We use the habanero in all varieties of Oli's Sweet 'n Spicy Sauce and in the hot variation of Oli's Thick 'n Chunky Salsa. So whether you like a mild taste or you love the burn we've got the perfect treat for you.

As Fall slowly approaches, our craft fair season is gearing up, which means if you're in the greater Sacramento area you can come on out to our booth locations and sample our products in person. On August 17th you can find Oli's Products at the Loomis Basin Community Park in Loomis, CA. The fair is being held in support of the Lewy Body Dementia Association, Inc. and is going to be a fun-filled day of volleyball, food vendors, and crafts. And as a special treat, in addition to our two other product lines, Oli's Products will be introducing its death-by-chocolate brownies. If you can't make it out to see us in person and are having a chocolate craving we welcome you to make a special order at OlisProducts.com.

R.I.P. Randy Pausch (1960-2008)

In late 2007 I stumbled upon a news article about a dying professor giving his "last lecture"... kind of ironic, right? Well, that "last lecture" caught fire, garnering millions of views across the internet. What he was there to discuss was how to fulfill your childhood dreams, and the lessons he had learned on his life's journey. If you haven't seen it, here it is. (1 hour, 16 minutes. Grab a snack.) If you have already seen it, it's worth watching again.



Well, Randy died yesterday (Thursday, July 24, 2008) and news of his death is making tidal waves across the internet. In fact, Pausch has had such a phenomenal impact on people that news of his death takes up 50% of the search terms on today's Google Trends, in addition to trending very high on Summize (now search.twitter.com).

So, this is my little piece of gratitude to him: Thanks, Randy, for living a great life and living just long enough to talk about it. You're an inspiration for generations to come.

HOW-TO: Print USPS Click-n-Ship postage without the instructions

If you've ever used USPS Click-n-Ship, you've probably asked yourself how you can print only the postage and not the instructions, as Click-n-Ship uses the entire page; half the page for the postage, the other half of the page for the instructions. Once you've printed the postage, what more instructions do you need but to peel it off and stick it on your package?

Well, here's how to do it.

1. In the Print dialogue box, click Properties and change the page size from 8.5" x 11" to 8.5" x 5.5" (exactly half the height of your printer paper)
2. Print the page.

What should happen is that the postage prints and the instructions do not. If for some reason this doesn't work, you can always tell the USPS Click-n-Ship application that the page didn't print correctly, then adjust your print settings and try again.

If you've got some special drivers/software for your printer that allows you to create different "print profiles" (a one-click way to change lots of print settings at once), it's a huge time-saver. I called my print profile "USPS Click-n-Ship." I know, creative, right?

Did it work for you?

Disneyland: The Happiest (Gluten-Free) Place on Earth

I recently got back from a trip to Disneyland in celebration of my recent graduation from Sacramento State University, a fine public university if I do say so myself. During my trip, I discovered something about Disneyland that I never knew before: it is perhaps one of the (if not *the*) most gluten-free-friendly places on the face of the earth. My girlfriend, who has been gluten free for about three years now, was super excited to go to Disneyland after she read an in article in the Living Without Magazine that spoke of Disney as a featured gluten-free destination. Apparently the head chef in charge of all the dining establishments at Disney contacted her within 24 hours of sending an email.

When we arrived at Disneyland's City Hall to get this great list of dining options, I was impressed with the 10 pages of choices that were geographically categorized according to where you were located in the park. We were also allowed to bring in some gluten free snacks without any complications. My girlfriend also happens to have a disability and the staff truly bent over backwards to help her out. Between the advantage of being able to bypass the long lines and not being anxious about whether or not the food was going to ruin our day, it was truly one of the happiest days in the happiest place on earth.

Now, on to an entirely different gluten free experience.

During our trip, we also visited Universal Studios in Southern California and it was truly a night and day difference between the two parks. Universal had no literature at all to assist sufferers of celiac to dine safely. The Universal Guest Services department had reassured us that the staff was knowledgeable and that Debbie would just need to ask to speak to the chef at any of the dining options, but that did not go so smoothly. She had to shout over customers in line at the Jurassic Café to speak to the chef who was not knowledgeable about eating gluten free at all. In fact, he thought that if you remove the croutons from a salad it would be safe. She's a real trooper though; she ate a meal replacement bar that she snuck into the park, while I spent $7 on a Dodger Dog and a bag of chips (no drink included in that price; that's just ridiculous). Afterword, we left the park and enjoyed some Chipotle and some Pinkberry for dessert.

Next time we go to Southern California I vote to spend 3 days at Disneyland/CA Adventure. Between the overly chipper staff and their willingness to make sure everyone, regardless of diets or disabilities, has an equally pleasant experience, Disneyland truly lived up to its slogan of being the Happiest Place on Earth.

Review of Firefox 3

I have had the pleasure of using the Firefox 3 beta for some time now and, while initial versions were a bit buggy, the latest release candidate (RC 3 as of this writing) has really won me over with its stability and overall usefulness.

Here are my top 3 reasons you should switch to Firefox 3:

1. Bookmarks. At long last, bookmarks are now usable and user-friendly. Find a site you want to come back to later? Bookmark it with one click by lighting up the little star in the Smart Location Bar (more about that in a minute). By default, this new bookmark will be stored in the Unfiled Bookmarks folder, so you'll never ever have an unorganized Bookmarks list ever again.
   
   Should you later decide you'd like to organize this bookmark, you have two options: do it right away by clicking the star again (or double-click it at the outset) to bring up a simple organizing tool, or go to the full-fledged bookmarks organizer, where you can sort out all your unsorted bookmarks.
   
2. The Smart Location Bar (AKA the "AwesomeBar"). Instead of pulling up a list of mind-numbing URLs, Firefox now allows you to throw in keywords just like a Google search. The result set is nothing short of absolutely useful; the result is a list of sites you've both visited in the past and/or bookmarked, which contain your keywords.
   
   
3. Speed. Firefox has always been a little bit faster than Internet Explorer, especially if you used the FasterFox extension. Well now, I'm pleased to say that Firefox 3 is dramatically faster, including start up time and page loads. Users of Digg might notice that the site loads at least twice as fast and stories with 100+ comments now load in a fraction of the time. (This, combined with their revamp of the comments system makes the experience even better. Thanks, Digg!). Perhaps even more impressive is how snappy Gmail feels now.

For further review, head over to dria.org and check out this "field guide".

Qik for iPhone in private alpha testing phase

Hey all you iPhone owners out there: there's a killer new app coming. As previously noted and confirmed, Qik for the iPhone is under development and now in the private alpha testing stage. For those not in the know, Qik is a little app that streams live video from your phone to the internet and saves the stream so you and others can watch it later.

Digg.com founder Kevin Rose recently spoke with the CEO of Qik and confirmed that he'll be part of the alpha testing and it'll be installed this weekend. I'm curious to see how the video compares to the Nokias, but I'm not holding my breath that it'll be any better just because it's an iPhone.

Your thoughts?

Keeping it all in sync

This article is written for iPhone users on Windows who want to sync their Google services (Calendar, Contacts) but have found no easy solutions. It's not 100%, but pretty damn close.

I'll admit it: I'm addicted to Google and its plethora of services. I use its search engine every day, rely on its calendar to keep me abreast of my happenings, and who doesn't use Gmail? (If you don't, why not?)

I also own an iPhone, which doesn't directly sync with any of Google's services. True, I can access all of Google's services on my iPhone, but let's be real: it's still too slow over EDGE, and what happens if you have no signal when you need the info? You're out of luck. This is why, even though web apps are nice, native apps are still king.

I digress. Anyhow, iPhone *does* sync up with Microsoft Outlook, and with a service called Plaxo (currently in beta, as that seems to be the hot new trend these days), you can achieve 99% syncronization between your iPhone or other Outlook-syncing device and Google. (I'll tell you why it's not 100% in a minute.)

As usual, here are the steps:

1. First, sign up for a Plaxo account.
2. Next, set up your sync points from within plaxo. Specifically, set up a Google sync point and an Outlook sync point at a minimum. You'll also want to install the Outlook plugin that Plaxo offers to you during this process.
   
3. Once Plaxo syncs these two points, you're ready to plug in your iPhone or other Outlook-syncing device and perform a sync.

At this point, all your data should be synced up, with one exception (this is where it's 99% and not 100%). At the moment, Plaxo has limited support for syncing contacts with Google. Basically it works like this: Anything you do in Google will be updated in Plaxo. Anything you do in Plaxo, however, will NOT be reflected in Google. Ergo, if you make a change on your phone, sync it with Outlook, which then syncs with Plaxo and all the rest of your sync points including Google, poor old Google won't get the change because it's only one way: Google ---> Plaxo.

Not sure when they're going to fix that, but my solution has been to just keep all my contacts organized in Outlook and let it sync up with my phone and Plaxo, which then blasts it out to my other web services like Google, Yahoo, etc.

With this simple setup I've been able to keep most my information in sync with a minimal time investment. If you know of a better solution, please post it in the comments. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check out my other tips and tricks!