Mail to the Future is a really cool application based on the soon to be released Frontier 6.0. It allows you to send mail to yourself or anyone else on any day in the future. I've used it to send tommorrow's me a mail before.
My Aeron chair came today(much to the pleasure of my back). My rationalization is that I spend more time in the chair in front of my computer than anywhere else. As a result, I need a chair that will keep my body healthy.
On a side note, there is a really good case study article on what Herman Miller has been doing with their Web presence, and how this channel change has affected their existing channels at the Industry Standard .
More on yesterday's rant about the Amazon.com issue. It's common practice for magazine distributors to pay newstands for the premium shelf placement. It's also common for bookstores to take money for special display of books in strategic parts of their stores. Can someone explain the difference to me?
Webmonkey has a feature up today entitled From Web to Print . I think this is really interesting because this issue is usually approached from the opposite angle.
So everyone is mailing me, "What happened to updating your site?"
I'm in deep thought mode. I've got a lot of projects on the table, and I feel like there are a thousand things that need to be explored, both mentally and technically.
Work is beating me up. Lots going on, mostly just more work than should humanly be pushed onto one person. I think that some of this may be in violation of the Geneva Convention.
I went to my local meeting of the Association of Internet Professionals last week. A good reminder of how good it feels to be around other people who get it.
I spent much of the evening tonight installing a G3 processor in my old PowerBook 1400. It really feels ten times faster. Despite the limitations of the original system architecture, this upgrade made an almost unusable computer feel snappy.
This InfoWorld Electric Story Welcome to the 'new Web Order' is a must read for those of you that may have missed it. This is the technological core of where the whole industry is going to be in the near future. Impossible to compete with this stuff using static tools to build static sites.
I regained contact after several months with a good friend and former employer this weekend. I think our brief email exchange helped both of us sort out work situations that we have each have been finding difficult. There's no replacement in this world for people who care about you and are willing to tell you the truth.
I have been spending a lot of time analyzing my process. Do I think about things with a clear head before I make decisions?
Kate has been away the last two weeks straight, and I think that has something to do with this introspection.
Amazon Will Offer Refunds . Maybe I'm just cynical, but I just assume when I go to a site like this one that the recommendations are partially paid for. Is this any different than selling placement on search engines? I know that in this case it means that a financial transaction occurs, but who is buying a book solely based on this recommendation?
I buy a lot of books, sometimes in bookstores, sometimes on the Internet, and sometimes direct from publishers. I don't think this is the big deal people are making it out to be. It's no different, for instance, than Oprah Winfrey having a stake in the film rights to a book she is recommending on her show. I don't see her shelling out refunds. However, this recommendation is also not all that it seems.
Don't take things at face value. Evaluate things for yourself and make good decisions based on the information available to you. I give myself this advice every day, and I wish I followed it more diligently.
The Falcons were crushed. They didn't have what it took to take Denver out of their gameplan. Since I'm a Giants fan, I can only say that the Falcons at least made it to the Super Bowl.
January has gone by so fast. Guess when you're busy, the time flies.
I picked up a copy of Web Design in a Nutshell , one of the newest O'Reilly books. It seems to have a ton of useful information. It's animal is the Weasel.
A friend pointed out that Bumpe , the round red cow from Sweden is getting a lot of press these days. While we at Bump are not affiliated with Bumpe, we endorse his general attitude.
I love having distinctive desktop pictures(wallpaper) and I change the backgrounds on both my Windows and Macintosh machines on a regular basis. Desktopia is a Web site(with an iMac-esque interface) that warehouses all sorts of interesting pictures for this purpose.
Regardless of what happens with my work environment(as you can tell, it dominates my mental landscape these days), this process has re-awakened some of the thinker in me that has been lulled to sleep over the last year.
In the meantime, there is a lot going on Web-wise. Plenty to read, and many technologies to become a student of.
As devoted to the Web as I am, I'm still a magazine junky. My current favorite is Fast Company . Real world material that applies to me everyday. They do the best job, of any magazine I've ever been a devotee of, of developing a community. It's almost as if they have applied the Web concept of community to their print publishing efforts, and it has worked.
I'm listening to some Beck and doing the baseline work for some pages I'm doing for a friend's wedding. What we came up with in the hour or so we have worked on it so far is here . I imagine we will improve it quite a bit going forward.
The has been a lot of community conflict(an ongoing thing) between Script Meridian and Userland Software . I have to say that it amazes me how difficult it is for people in any community, Web based or not, to get along without these sorts of dramatics. Egos get in the way mostly. People with different visions and competing egos are at the root of this. I just want to use software and make interesting things.
I found an eMate cheap, so I ordered it. It could become a good writing tool.
Well, I have to go look for a box to ship a Bebox in, expect more this week than in the last few as I am thinking and writing.
You'll find that I moved the December content to its archive page, updated the links page and the information page, and started working on more content.
My two week work induced hiatus is over. We went to New York(our home office) and kicked butt. Gave the presentation, and made all of the points we wanted to make. I think that it went as well as it possibly could. We essentially were introducing an Internet business model for the trade publishing business over the next five years.
So the decision on whether to proceed with this plan is now out of my hands. While that relieves me of a burden, it doesn't necessarily comfort me. We'll see how things play out. Without being dramatic, I think that I let this drag out too long.
All in all, it was great experience for me. We worked very hard to develop a long term plan, and I've never been in a situation where I was the one presenting to the CEO of a large corporation before. I learned a lot from the experience that I'm sure I'll use over the next twenty years.
I've always worked for smallish companies and this marks the first time that I really don't have access to the primary decision makers on a daily basis. It's definitely frustrating. It's really difficult to transfer your vision to someone in a two or three hour presentation.
MacAmp Lite 1.0 has been released by @Soft. It's shareware for $5 and worth every penny. They'll give you a five dollar discount off the full version when it is released too. I went over and bought it as soon as I found out. I really enjoy the whole MP3 thing. I just wish my RIO would work with my Macintosh too.
OK so I'm a dorky consumer and I ordered this Internet Time Watch from Swatch. It came today, and I think it's pretty cool. It keeps this Internet time in addition to regular time, includes a year 2000 countdown timer, and has a built in animation of a dog pissing on a lamp post. The band however is huge.
CNN is using Internet Time in their time stamp on their home page.
I'm using Internet Explorer 4.5 on my Macs now. It's pretty impressive. I really like the "Pageholder" feature that allows you to hold a page in a window to the left. I'm using the Bump Links page and it fits great, giving me access to all of my frequently visited sites.
It's really the first time I've strayed from Netscape in five years. I also have enjoyed the form autofill feature.
I may also move to Outlook Express on the Macintosh for my mail needs. I'm still pretty frustrated with the performance on Bare Bones Software's Mailsmith, and former Emailer engineer, Jud Spencer, is working at Microsoft on Outlook Express now. I use Microsoft Outlook on my PC's, and the Exchange Server version of Outlook at work, so it might be a good match.
Microsoft also has posted a site called MacTopia . Strange how much effort they seem to be spending to get Macintosh Internet customers. The site doesn't look terribly useful, but I'm going to monitor it.
You can actually get into the Apple Store today. I wish they were shipping DVD drives as standard components. It's the standard in the PC world for professional level systems. Come on, don't just give industry standards lip service Apple, set the trends. I'm glad that they finally got Firewire onto the motherboard though.(Even if Sony did beat them to it.) I'm waiting until I have all the specs before I make a final purchase decision on the new G3's.
Still big doings at work. I report to someone new. It's going to take some work to get him up to speed on things. I do like a challenge.
Well I've opened the new year in fairly good fashion. This morning was very very stressful, but I am settling down now.
I'm analyzing the log files at work from December. Hoo hum, it's pretty boring sitting around waiting for the logs to process.(Good thing I have two computers on my desk.)
I spent most of the weekend working on my machine at home. I added the 3dfx card, and played a fair amount of Myth II to test it out.
I'm still working on my list of things that I want to do in 1999. I also didn't finish my brother's site over the weekend(Sorry Chris, I'll get to it this week.)
Here's a site I did in an afternoon at work. I think I have improved, and I hope to keep improving in the new year.
I'm still cranking along with RealBasic . I may post an alpha version of the tool I'm building with it to this site as soon as February.
O'Grady's PowerPage posted a site redesign today. MacWorld announcements tommorrow should be interesting. It's the first show in a year that I have missed.