Ten Insightful Web 2.0 Books per CIO Insights

You can tour (via images trapped in a crappy slideshow) the ten Web 2.0 books CIO Insight has pulled together, or you can peruse the list here.

Take yer pick of format starting with this one (titles linked to their Amazon page):

1. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
   by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff


2. Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
   by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel


3. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People
   by Dan Gillmor


4. Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations.
   by Amy Shuen


5. An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths
   by Glenn Reynolds


6. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
   by Yochai Benkler


7. The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right
   by Debbie Well


8. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
   by Cristopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinberger


9. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
   by Clay Shirky


10. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything
    by Joe Trippi

I can personally vouch for 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9 and Trippi's and Reynold's books are on my list of to-be-reads.

Here's hoping you get smarter from them all, too!

RSS demystified by Howard Rheingold

Last week, I gave an informal brown bag session at work on how to use Google Reader to track information flows. I'm trying to convert folks here into leveraging RSS feeds to keep on top of things instead of our old-school ways of browsing sites checking to see if things have been updated.

I started off the session with Lee LeFever's CommonCraft show on RSS in Plain Text. And then I went on to demo Google Reader and how it worked and the advantages of sharing feeds and collaborative filtering, etc.

In hindsight, I didn't do a very good job of it. Sure, they learned a little, but not all I'd hoped.

And my assessment of my effectiveness was driven home yet again when I watched Howard Rheingold's recent vlog post: Introduction to RSS. He's a great teacher, and I can learn a lot from paying attention to the little things he does so well.

For one, Howard's setup of the problem is great:

Information is abundant.
Access to information is infinitely easy
Way-finding requires skill

Finding the information that matters and knowing why it matters in the unordered flow is probably the most important task and skill in my life.

Howard starts the hunting and gathering part of in his day by reading blogs (many, many blogs) as the first level of his filtering the "unordered flow." And how he keeps up with 100s of blogs for this first level of filtering? via RSS.

Then Howard delivers the solution with a comprehensive walk through of how he uses Bloglines to track his RSS feeds.

Go watch Howard's vlog on RSS now. Your investing seven and a half minutes watching it now will be repaid handsomely as you cut down your time spent browsing and instead let the info flow to you.

Tulley's dangerous things you should let your kids do

Gever Tulley is the founder of the Tinkering School and in this talk he shows how these things (really, there are six of them) will make your kids stronger and smarter and actually safer.

For those on a tight schedule, Tullye's list includes:

1. Play with fire
2. Use a pocketknife
3. Throw a spear
4. Deconstruct appliances
5. Break the DMCA
6. Drive a Car (bonus item)

He details the WHY behind the each item on the list in this TED video (embedded below), or your you can visit the TED site to see it there.

Blackberry shortcut: how to mark multiple messages as opened

I finally figured out how to fix one of the little things that's been keeping me from fully enjoying my Blackberry 8830 World Edition: I can now manage the "opened/unopened" status of multiple messages at once on the Blackberry.

I used to spend a good 10 minutes each day in my Blackberry message folder navigating from one message to the next (press N to move to the Newer message or press P to move to the Previous message) so that the read/unread status would match my computer-based email applications (Mac Mail and Gmail).

Now, I've discovered I can mark whole days' worth (if not weeks' worth) of messages as opened by doing the following:

• In the Blackberry Messages folder, scroll down until you've highlighted a date separator
• Click the scroll wheel to bring up the popup menu
• Select "Mark Prior Opened" and all the messages received that day (or any day prior) will be marked as opened and your unopened messages ticker will decrease in size accordingly!

Alternatively, at the date separator instead of clicking with the scroll wheel, you can use the menu button just to the left of the scroll wheel and you'll see the same "Mark Prior Opened" option plus a "Delete Prior" option for cleaning out the messages entirely.

PS from what I can tell scrolling through the Crackberry Forums, this shortcut works on all Blackberries.

freezer recovers crashed iBook hard drive data

In January of this year, my wife's iBook died a horrible screeching death when the hard drive failed in spectacular fashion. Eleven months later, thanks to help from our refrigerator's freezer, we revived the iBook long enough to grab our "irrecoverable data" from the grave.

A little bit about the iBook's untimely death: it was over rather quickly, as the open applications started slowing down and the beach ball lingered after each click much longer than it should have. Our typical tech solution (rebooting) was the exact wrong thing to do. After the Apple "BONG" signaled the restart, the screen stayed black while we listened to something scrape across the hard drive. We didn't hear the scraping for long, as my wife's shrieking "NOOOOOOOOO!" drowned the scrape out in short order: she hadn't backed up her files. Ever. And the scrape signaled the loss of the outline and 40 pages of a nonfiction book she'd been researching for months.

We went into recovery mode: The iBook was out of warranty by a good two years. No matter, we'd pay for the fix. A trip to the Apple Store's Genius Bar got nothing but a sympathetic "sorry, dude, we can't help" from the genius in residence. We then requested a quote from DriveSavers to extract the data and they came back with a "it'll be no more than $2300, but we can't promise we can get anything at all." That's almost $60 per page of the draft... too much. So, we decided to chalk it up to a learning experience (easy enough for me, it wasn't my book that vanished) and buy a new MacBook and begin backing up our data. The iBook took up residence in the storage room downstairs and was forgotten by all by my Dad.

My dad had heard somewhere that freezing the drive could help recover the data and was itching to see if it really worked. So, on the first day of my Dad's Christmas visit he asked if we still had the iBook (yes) and a thumbdrive (yes). Then he asked if we had room in the freezer for the laptop (no, but could be arranged). Finally, he asked if we were up for an experiment (sure).

We put the iBook in the freezer about 2pm Christmas afternoon and when dinner was over that night around 8pm, we took the frozen laptop out, plugged in the power cord, plugged in the thumb drive and depressed the power button.

The familiar startup chime sounded loud and strong from our frozen iBook.

We saw the screen flicker as the raster (the grey desktop) appeared and then we saw the load icon begin to swirl. Could it be true? We hadn't gotten this far at the Genius Bar back in January.

Then the OS badge appeared and, sure enough, moments later the desktop loaded back to what we were looking at last January just before the crash. The iBook even connected to our wireless network again!

Moving quickly (we didn't know how long we had), we dragged and dropped my wife's critical files from the iBook's hard drive onto the thumb drive. Success!

I didn't test to see how long the iBook would last in its frozen state, but I was able to switch users and grab some files from my own user desktop before shutting down about 20 minutes after it came back to life.

I would never have believed this were possible if we hadn't done it ourselves. I would NOT recommend this method as a first line of defense when trying to recover data from a crashed hard drive, but if you've gotten to the end of your rope and are ready to kiss your data goodbye, try popping your laptop in the freezer before rebooting one last time.

Maytag refrigerator repair: holiday surprise

Our Maytag Ice 2 O regrigerator (model MFI-2568-AES) went on the fritz last Wednesday night around 8:30pm. Thanks to the Web, ComplaintBoards.com and Forbes Appliance Repair, we had the fridge fixed (for free) within 24 hours... what a surprise!

To set the stage appropriately, we like our refrigerator a lot: it's got french doors, a bottom freezer drawer and an in-the-door console with ice and water dispenser. We bought it off the floor of Lowe's when we moved to Redwood City in July 2006, and it's served us well, for the most part.

So when this thing went "on the fritz," I mean the lights on the control panel started flickering in a Close-Encounters-of-the-Third-Kind fashion while the flap on the ice cube dispenser methodically opened and slammed shut. What kind of pissed off kitchen gremlin had decided to take up residence in our 16-months-new fully stocked fridge the week before Christmas?

Left Coast Mom and I began searching for the owner's manual to try and troubleshoot the situation (in the index under "P" for "Possessed") but couldn't find the manual anywhere in the kitchen or the files or the storage room bookcases (later we'd find out we'd stored it conveniently on top of the fridge in case something malfunctioned). So, we took to the web in search of help on our dueling laptops.

I found the owners manual online at the maytag web site and 58 Mb of file download later, I found nothing in the manual that was any help beyond how to turn off power to the control panel (remove the cover over the door hinge above the panel, then unplug the wire harness) to stop the infernal dispenser racket. We were out of warranty, and I was desperately scanning the web for any information on how our problem could be fixed and how much it'd cost us.

So I googled "maytag MFI-2568-AES troubleshoot" and about half-way down the results list I discovered the ComplaintsBoard forum overflowing with posts from folks (like us) who were confronted by malfunctioning control panel/ice dispenser. I found nine pages of forum posts, to be precise, starting Feb 9, 2007, when Cheryl M posted the following:

I bought my maytag ice2o French door refrigerator from home depot 8 mos ago. Loved it when I got it, but soon after had problems with the ice maker. They replaced the ice maker. Now the ice maker is still having problems. Its not strong enough to break up all the ice. The ice cubes freeze in big blocks causing the system to clog. Last night the thing took on a mind of its own. All the lights are flashing on the control panel, the ice and water maker don't work at all. The flap is constantly opening and closing all on its own, constantly making a clicking noise all night long. Finally we had to unplug it so we could get 4 hours sleep. Plug it in this morning and its still doing it. My biggest concern is what happens after the warranty runs out. I already know this thing has mechanical problems. Did I get a lemon or is it junk?? Either way I'm stuck with a $2,800 refrigerator that seems like it has bad engineering.

It was great to follow the arc of the discussion going from first post to group-wide resolution:

• In the first 60 days, a dozen folks chimed in to say they were affected by the same problem.
  
• Within 90 days, the forum was picking up speed and the group had diagnosed the High Voltage Control Board (part # 12920710 Board HV C) as the culprit. At least one workaround had been posted to the $200-$400 "official" fix for those of us out of warranty.
  
• On Day 133, the first "we're investigating a potential class action suit" post appears.
• By Day 150, folks begin posting success with Maytag's fixing the units for free and the discussion turns to strategies for navigating the customer service phone tree.
  
• By Day 180, the complaints are now focused on the repair services, not on Maytag. From the posts, it seems A&E Factory Service is either heaven-sent or demons-from-hell depending on which city you live.
• By Day 210, the forum is mostly full of folks expressing gratitude for all the previous posts and tips and reporting success in getting their own fridges fixed.

I called the Maytag customer service line (make that the "Whirlpool Customer Care Line" now that Maytag's been purchased by Whirlpool) and found out I'd have to wait until 8am Thursday morning to speak with a live person.

Thursday morning, I got a hold of Lorraine at Whirlpool and reported my problem. Within 10 minutes, she'd issued me a QI code and offered to set up a service call for me with A&E Factory Service the day after Christmas (6 days later!). I declined the offer and instead tried to go with a local shop, leaving a message with Forbes Appliance Repair here in Redwood City.

Bill (at Forbes) called me back around 3pm to get more details. I told him the problem and he admitted he probably didn't have the part in stock and couldn't get it until after the holiday.

I tried calling A&E myself to see if I could get a Friday appointment since I assumed they'd have the part in stock. Within 2 minutes of dealing with the customer support rep at A&E, I'd learned enough to know I was dealing with the demon variety and decided to stay with my instincts to go local.

I called Bill back and asked that he order the part and come install it. Bill took my info and was surprised when I gave him the part number he'd need to order (I had it thanks to the forum posts). He said he'd put in the order and would call to let me know when it was due to come in so he could come replace it.

Within 30 minutes, Bill called back with an unexpected question: "When can you be at the house?"

Beg pardon?

Bill happened to have the part in stock and offered to come to the house to install it that evening. All I had to do was move the fridge away from the wall so he could access the panel in the back to replace the board. (In moving the fridge, I discovered where we'd stashed the manual.)

At 6:15p, Bill knocked on the door. By 6:30p, the fridge was fixed and Bill was packing up his stuff and wishing us a Happy Holiday.

Happy Holidays, indeed. So refreshing to get good customer service from a local provider.

So, thanks to Forbes Appliance Service (650-366-8388) here in Redwood City, our fridge was fixed in record time. Here's hoping your appliances never go on the fritz, but if they do, give Bill a call to come fix them.

eating local food in Malaysia

plate of local fresh fruit
Originally uploaded by thomas pix

It's been a good initial 30 hours here in Malaysia.

Every chance I've gotten, I've made sure to eschew anything resembling traditional Western food for something more local (at least to this part of the world).

Last night for dinner, a group of seven of us at at the Little Penang Cafe (on the top floor of the Suria KLCC mall). Unlike American malls, the food court at the Suria Mall is actually a destination place to eat good food.

So, I had a bowl of prawn mee (spicy fish broth with noodles, prawns and bok choy) for dinner and a cincau (slightly sweet tea-like drink that's full of ice and gelatin blobs). Definitely not Western fare, and decidedly yummy and filling. The tab for all seven of us to eat? 102 Ringgits or roughly US$34. sweet.

At breakfast this morning (inclusive at the hotel), I skipped the stuff I'd expect on an American buffet breakfast and went for the Eastern stuff: dim sum, maasala, sushi, samosa, Mango juice (YUM!!!) and fresh fruit. Oh, wait, I did have coffee and a miniature pain au chocolat as well (it's a weakness, I admit). Again, delicious.

And at one of the break periods in today's meeting, I couldn't help but get a plate full of fresh fruit to go with my coffee (those flecks of chocolate at the bottom of the plate are just that... I ate the bite-sized mousse first).

I just can't get over the visuals on the fruit here. None of the melons really taste like what you'd expect in the States. In the picture, the polka dot fruit (dragon fruit) tastes like raw pumpkin, the yellow fruit tastes just like watermelon and the pale fruit tastes like muskmelon, maybe the closest to what I'd get at home.

While the guide books all say "AVOID FRESH FRUIT" I'm assuming they're talking about street-purchased fruit and not the stuff professionally prepared in restaurants and catering joints. Just in case, though, I'm taking preventative doses of the pink stuff so as not to come down with TD (Traveler's Diarrhea).

Wish me luck!

clean solar panels means more clean power

As I've previously posted on Earth Day, we have a bank of twenty solar panels on the top of our home that has done wonders in reducing our electricity bill from $200 a month to less than $200 a year.

This past summer was a nice and sunny one (though mercifully not as hot as the summer of 2006), and we'd thought for sure we'd reap the benefits of our solar panels in banking a bunch of credits from producing more electricity than we used.

We were wrong.

While we did see a reduction in our electricity bills (July came in at a whopping $4), we didn't see the kinds of credits we'd expected. This flummoxed us to no end. We hadn't brought any big power suckers online since last summer (Plasma HDTV notwithstanding) yet our monthly bill showed we were drawing down more power than we were generating. Why?

Well, thanks to the innocent comment made by a fellow parent watching my daughter's soccer team, I think we know why. Our panels are filthy with dust and dirt!

We've never actually cleaned them (which means: rinsing with a hose) so all the dust and dirt and muck that's been kicked up and coated our cars in the last 15 months is just sitting there diminishing the generating power of our solar panels. How could I have not realized that as a cause for our rising energy bills?

You can bet I'll be cleaning the panels tomorrow, and I fully anticipate we'll see the impact on our bill this next billing cycle.

Keep 'em clean!

pint, please (better be Guinness)

On lunch break, I discovered a great blog post over on Head Rambles with advice on how to survive your first Guinness (real Guinness, as in, ordering while in Ireland).

In retrospect, a lot of the same how-to advice applies to ordering a Guinness in the dart bars here around the Bay Area. While the taste doesn't compare, or so I've been told, you've been warned how to act.

teddy roosevelt says, "just do it"

In TechCrunch's post about Yossi Vardi, I found a surprising source of words of encouragement to just do it.

The encouragement came in a 1910 speech Theodore Roosevelt made in Paris:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Even at a century old, the observations ring loudly. I wonder if I'd hold them in such high regard if they'd been uttered just a decade ago?

using Blackberry 8830 outside USA? think again

Something's been nagging me for the last couple days about my new Blackberry 8830 and whether or not I'll really be able to use it in Berlin (Germany) when I fly there this weekend. One of those too-good-to-be-true nags that's probably borne of all my past experiences with Verizon's products not quite working as billed.

So I gave the folks at Verizon tech support a call today just to make sure I'd be able to use my 8830 next week in Europe.

Boy am I glad I made the call today.

Turns out you need to acquire (read: purchase) the "Verizon Wireless Global Support Pack" which is a fancy way of saying: you need to get the Vodafone(TM) SIM card which does not come standard on the Verizon Wireless Blackberry 8830 World Edition.

Beg pardon, but what, exactly, makes it a World Edition phone if it doesn't come out of the box equipped to work around the World?

Maybe the same folks who decided to cripple the GPS also made the brilliant decision to ship the phone sans SIM card.

In any case, the tech support rep was happy to inform me all I needed do was stop by any local Verizon Wireless store and pick up the Global Support Pack for $39.99 and install the SIM card and call back to make sure the phone's ready to go before I leave the States.

So, to the store I went, and surprisingly I wasn't charged for the SIM card (thanks to my being a BlackBerry Global Email subscriber) aside from the 20 minutes it took to wait in queue and then wait some more for the sales guy to do all that hocus-pocus behind the scenes to lock my phone to the SIM card from VZW. (If the stakes weren't so high for my making and receiving calls next week, I might've waited to see if I could buy a SIM card over there so as to have a local phone instead.)

In any case, be forewarned: if you've purchased an 8830 thinking you can use it straight away overseas, be sure to call *611 from your phone stateside to see what all you're still missing before you leave.

Can't wait to blog from Potsdamer Platz, but I've got a mountain to climb in the meantime.

UPDATE: I called the Global Support Services team this morning to double-check all is well and ready for my trip, and I was instructed to update the roaming capabilities on my phone by calling *228 from my phone and choosing option 2 from the menu. Did so, and one minute later, I'm all set to go!

price changes inside amazon.com shopping cart

Well, I learned the hard way tonight that I shouldn't put off taking advantage of a good deal on Amazon.com.

I've joined a group that's going to be climbing Mt Whitney (elev 14,495') at the end of September, and when I checked my water filter that's been in storage for a while, I discovered it no longer works.

So, I did some research at the REI.com site to discover that the filter I want to get is the Katadyn Hiker PRO Water Microfilter. It retails at $69.95, but a quick search on Amazon showed I could pick it up for the low, low price of $58.30 (tax free and free shipping!). I quickly added it to my shopping cart on Amazon but then got distracted and didn't follow through on the purchase.

A couple days go by and I remember that tonight, I must purchase the filter, tonight! (truth be told: I won big at last night's poker game and so now I've got the cash to buy it)

I navigate to Amazon, click on the shopping cart icon and there's a note in big bold letters at the top of the page (not exact, but the gist): The price of your item has increased since you placed it in your shopping cart. The prices of items in your cart may change if you wait to purchase them.

The price of my lapse? The price on Amazon is now the same as any other place ($69.95), so there's only the tax-free, free shipping going for it.

Lesson learned. Don't make my same mistake.

DirecTV Ka-Lo band up-conversion process suggestions

And just as I thought DirecTV was getting less geeky in their approach to dealing with their HD DVR customers, this new Ka-Lo band up-conversion process comes to bear.

As a DirecTV HR20 HD DVR owner, here's my up-conversion experience and some suggestions for the DirecTV folks on how to make it better (should they care) next time around.

First Encounter: I'm sent an email with subject line "Important Information about your HD Equipment" in which I'm invited to go to a web page to figure out if I've already got the B-Band Converter (BBC) module installed in my machine.

Better approach: DirecTV already tracks my equipment, my viewing habits, my programming... they should already know whether I've got the BBC modules or not. Send me an email to tell me the required modules are being shipped to me (and why) unless I opt out.

Second Encounter: A system message delivered to the inbox of my HR20 telling me to go visit the directv.com/bbc web page to see if I need to order the BBC modules for HD programming.

Better approach: Send a ping through the system to see if my BBC modules are installed (you can do that, too, right?). If not, give me a system message that says the modules are being mailed to me and to call DirecTV if I haven't received them by X date.

Third Encounter: As seen in the picture at the top of the post, the (two) modules arrive in separate padded envelopes (oh, the cost savings!) FedEx'd to my home. Each envelope contains a box containing one module and one single-page instruction sheet. The instruction sheet seems pretty straight forward: Thanks for ordering, installing is easy, pretty explanatory pictures and a copyright notice.

Upon opening the box and sliding the module out, however, my inner geek goes wild and my "I'm just a dumb customer" side barfs on the table. Included with the module is a two-color, double-sided page of instructions from the manufacturer of the module, Zinwell, whose brand is directly under the bolded, big-texted title of the Instructions sheet (no copyright notice on this puppy, thus the repost):

Installation Guide
DIRECTV Approved "B Band Converter (BBC) Module"
(for Ka-Lo band up-conversion)
SUP-2400

And then the getting gets good with the introductory paragraph that includes the BBC Module Functional Description:

The BBC Module is to be used in conjuction with the Ka/Ku Out-Door Unit (ODU) and the A3/MPEG-4 capable satellite receiver, hereafter to be called "the IRD". The Ka/Ku ODU output will consist of a three-way stacked signal: a Ka Lo-band (B Band) at 250-750 MHz, a Ku band at 950-1450 MHz and a Ka Hi-band (A Band) at 1650-2150 MHz. The IRD has an input range of 950-2150 MHz so an up-converter must be used in order to access the 250-750 MHz spectrum. Failure to install a BBC Module at the back of the IRD prevents the IRD from receiving Ka Lo-band. For clarity, a BBC Module must be used with each A3/MPEG-4 capable IRD in the home system. As further clarification, a BBC Module must never be used in a system that contains an Frequency Translation Module (FTM) as the equivalent function is already contained in the FTM.

WTF is an FTM and how can I tell I don't already have it, thus rendering the BBC module moot? Why must the BBC "never" be used in a system with FTM? so much FUD, so little time.

And still a page and a half of tech directions and illustrations I won't bore you with here (still with me?)

Better approach: Get the vendor to leave the technogeek screed out of the module box. Catch pre-shipping the fact I need two and send them both in the same envelope. Include the simple picture-laden how-to single pager and include a bright yellow postcard that says "If you do not install these modules, you risk losing your HD channel access." Done.

Boy, these new HD channels I'm about to get (now that I've successfully completed the DirecTV Ka-Lo band up-conversion process) better be good.

favorite new texting application

I've grown so accustomed to ignoring the reminder beeps on my Treo, that I need another way to capture my attention that it's time to do something.

Enter: oh, don't forget...

It's a killer app where you plug in your cell number, a date and time to be reminded and the subject you need reminding of.

At the appointed time, the reminder comes in to your cell phone as a text message (I pay a lot more attention to these than the other beeps and boops) telling you it's time to move the car or it's time to head out for that doc appointment or it's time to schedule the visit to the vet.

Bonus: I can sign up my significant other to be reminded, too (as long as she's game for it).

our special netflix membership program

For the first time I can remember, we've finally hit our quota in the number of Netflix DVDs we can have in any given month.

It's not too much to brag about, as we're on the 2 at-a-time (4 a month) plan, but if you knew our viewing habits, you'd be impressed that it's taken this long since we joined Netflix back in November 2004.

Why's this a blog-worthy event? Well, for giggles, I decided to see how long we have to wait before starting a new month (June 26) and how much it'd cost to be on the 2 at-a-time (unlimited) plan.

I follow the convenient embedded hyperlink to the Change Membership page and see this friendly notice at the bottom:

Please Note: You are currently on a special membership program.

If you change your membership, you will lose this special program.

Sure enough, as I scan the membership selections (who the heck has time for 8 at-a-time?), there's no such thing as a 2 at-a-time (4 a month) plan to be seen for my rate of $11.99 a month. I can pay $3 more to lift the monthly limit or $2 less to get 1 at-a-time unlimited.

I kinda like my inexpensive, yet special, status. So for now, at least, I'll keep what I've got.

favorite firefox keyboard shortcuts

I've been using Firefox since it was in beta, and it's only recently I've discovered keyboard shortcuts over and above the standard command-L to put the cursor in the URL bar. Given the number of other Firefox users that are surprised when I share the tips, I thought I'd put them up here for all to share:

NOTE: I'm a Mac user, so most of these shortcuts use the Command (aka "Apple") Key in combination with a letter/number. I've shortened the key name to be, simply, Cmd. I assume this equates to "Ctrl" on the PC, but ymmv.

• Cmd+L = puts the cursor in URL bar
• Cmd+K = puts the cursor in the web search box to the right of the URL
  
• bar (defaults to Google Search)
  
• Cmd+T = opens a new tab
  
• Cmd+[number key] = toggles the browser to the tab corresponding to the number pressed (counting left-to-right)
  
• spacebar = page down
  
• shift+spacebar = page up

And a bonus, Apple-only key command that's not limited to Firefox:

Ctrl+Alt+Cmd+8 = reverses the colors on the display (press the key
combo again to toggle back). I find this feature very useful when
using my laptop outdoors when it's really bright and sunny. Makes the
screen much easier to read.

Anyone else got some favorite keyboard shortcuts for Firefox?

copper river salmon for dinner(s)

copper river chinook filet
Originally uploaded by thomas pix

Tonight, I cut up the rest of the salmon we're not going to eat in the next couple days for the deep-freeze.

I still can't believe the color of the meat on these wild-caught salmon. Definitely not pale like their farm-raised cousins. We got a great price on them, ($8.99 per pound after haggling with the fishmonger) and the cooler seemed to keep them fine on the flight from SeaTac to SFO after the TSA folks confiscated our ice.

I prepared our first filet by pan-frying it with thinly-sliced onions. Here's how:

• Started by heating up olive oil and a dab of butter in a 10-inch saute pan at medium-high until the butter sizzled.
  
• Then, lay the filet skin-side down in the pan and cooked two minutes before flipping it over (with care!) to cook skin-side up for another two minutes.
  
• Toss in half an onion thinly sliced and cover.
  
• Cook for six minutes or so on medium-low heat until the fish is done.
  
• Remove the fish and set aside to keep it warm.
  
• Blast the heat under the onions and deglaze the pan with about 1/4 cup water plus 2 Tbsp lemon juice.
  
• Once the sauce reduces by half (and the onions are translucent), pour the sauce over the salmon, garnish with lemon wedges and serve over rice.

Melt-in-your-mouth delicious!

Tomorrow night: we broil it

how to reproduce 36k ft thinking at sea level?

Today is not the first time I've had some holy-smokes! strategic insight blind-side me mid-flight.

I'm just about to pass over my 50,000th mile flying in the last three months, and besides the toll of the cramped seating arrangement and the challenge of liquids (both to consume and to expend), the cocoon of air travel actually presents me a very fertile space for big-picture thinking.

I divided up this flight into three segments (all segments soundtracked with noise-canceling Shure e4c headphones and a random playlists on my iPod).

• In the first segment, I caught up on all the short articles I'd been printing out and stashing in my "flight folder" (Tom Friedman opinions, CIO mag leadership articles, conference prep materials)
• [break for food and drink]
• in the second segment, I dove into the book I'm plowing through right now (The Difference by Scott E. Page)
• [break for short nap]
• in the final segment, I read all my RSS feeds offline to get inspired by a whole plethora of different perspectives, and that's when the insights hit.

The ideas flow like water, and I madly dash the notes down in an email to myself. And here I sit wondering what is it about hurtling through space that enables this kind of thinking.

Much as I don't want to admit it, I think the catalyst is the one-two-three punch:

• my cocoon of iPod-laced sound
• the lack of distractions from others around me asking questions
  
• and, gulp, the complete lack of internet connectivity.
  

Without connectivity, there's no way for me to satisfy my curiosities by following the links in my RSS reader, so I gobble up the static ideas and perspectives quickly... and that leads the neurons to fire in ways they otherwise don't.

Next time I'm inclined to spend sleepless hours in the middle of the night surfing the web (yes, undisturbed, but no music playing), I'll instead try to reproduce the airplane experience: pop on the iPod, sign off the web and then see if I can get into an uncomfortable seating position.

Bonus points if I can endure the awkward tug of both a full bladder and a dry tongue for full replication of the high-level thinking environment that seems abundant at 36,000 feet.

turning old CDs into something valuable

Thanks to a BB post, I see that a couple of those old CD-ROMs I've been lugging around since I moved from San Francisco to DC back in 1995 might actually be worth something, at least from a patent-busting point of view.

Overly quoting the EFF story here (but for good cause):

A company called Acacia has claimed a patent on an “information distribution system” that amounts to the idea of shipping a CD-ROM that contains hyperlinks to online resources. (EFF is currently working on busting another Acacia patent that covers streaming audio and video over the Internet.)

To help bust this overly broad patent, we are looking for prior art that shows the use of this technology before 1994. Specifically, we are seeking the following items:

1. NetNews CD-ROMs, sold by Sterling Software, preferably volumes #1 through #35. These CDs may have been also available through CD Publishing Corporation.

or

2. Other CD-ROMs that were distributed in 1993 or earlier that contained
hypertext content or were installation disks for applications that linked to Internet content.

Information about these or similar items is greatly appreciated. Submit tips to Philip H. Albert with Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP.

Can't wait to dig through my file boxes to see if I've got a golden ticket!

flickr photos under creative commons license

After I uploaded my Stockholm pictures to Flickr, a good friend pointed out that (until today) I have not been practicing what I preach regarding content being available for others to build on in the Creative Commons. My own pix were under regular old copyright until just now. At last, I've put my own Flickr photostream out there under a Creative Commons license for others to use as they see fit (with attribution to me, of course).

Now, I chose the Attribution license for my own photos, as it allows for others the most creativity possible, as long as they attribute the original photo to me. But there are six different Creative Commons licenses available for employment on Flickr, and the Creative Commons web site has a very useful CC license FAQ that details the difference between each license.

Want to add your own photos to the Creative Commons? Here's how in six easy steps:

• From any Flickr page, click on your account name to get to your account settings page
• Scroll down to the Defaults for new uploads section and click "EDIT" next to "What license will your photos have?"
• Choose your license from the dropdown and click the "Set Default License" button
• IMPORTANT: once the license is set, you need to click "EDIT" on the "What license will your photos have?" again to change the license on all your existing Flickr photos.
• Once you're on the license page, choose the "batch" link in the grey box above the dropdown.
• On the new "set a license default for your photos" page, choose your license and click SAVE.

Voila! Your Flickr stream is now part of the Creative Commons set on Flickr for all the world to get jiggy with!