Action Jay's Desk

Meet the New Boss - My Next Move in #custserv

2012-01-25T16:51:00.001-06:00

We're a month into 2012 and already got changes going on. First the sad news: I'm leaving the awesome crew at Point2, who've been great to me over the last several months. But the good news? I'll be starting at @Sasktel, getting back in the ISP game and looking forward to supporting customers in an industry I'm really passionate about.

So moving forward, what happens? Well, I'll have to review the new social media policy to find out. Am I required to keep big disclaimers identifying my job on my personal feeds? Can I remain "unbranded" and let people who really care just dig into my LinkedIn? In any case, I'll probably frustrate the trainers with a good batch of hypothetical situations while I feel it out. In the meantime, don't let who I work for change a thing. I'm still happy to help online and will continue to represent myself the best I can.

Here's to the new job, and hopefully many years of good times upping the game in customer service.

Man vs Virus: The Project PC Post Mortem

2012-01-15T06:35:00.001-06:00

So! I had a fun time in the last week or so, taking care of a family PC that had been dropped at my doorstep with a plea to clean it of various ailments. I figured it had been a while since I dove into hands-on troubleshooting, so why not? This could be fun! I dubbed it the Project PC, and live tweeted the process. Now that it's complete, here's the rundown of what happened, and how we fixed it.

Engage nerd voice.

On our first boot, we were met with a rogue anti-spyware application called System Tool. This is one of the most common types of infections out there. Basically, it'll pop up all these warnings and run fake scans and offer to clean your PC for a small fee. It's dirty pool, but people end up with them all too easily.

How?

Well, as you surf around the internet, you've probably noticed advertisements on web pages. Some of them are designed to look like warnings and dialog boxes that are part of Windows, prompting you to click and correct a fake problem on your computer. That downloads the installer, and presto. You've just infected yourself.

Getting rid of this particular nuisance meant using some tools built into Windows, like Task Manager to locate unfamiliar processes, and MSConfig to manage the applications and services that start up with your computer. Once I stopped the program from running, it was a breeze to locate the executable and delete it.

That was the easy part.

After this cleanup, I noticed that the ping.exe process was running hard in the background, chewing up almost 160 MB of memory at a time. That's not normal. There weren't any more odd programs running that I could spot, so I decided it was time to bring in a real Anti-Virus program.

Since we're dealing with a pretty low-powered machine, I decided to go with Microsoft Security Essentials, which has a nice, small footprint on the system performance. I Googled the phrase, and clicked on the correct result... and was redirected to a download page for another fake antivirus app.

So, what now? Well, now we send in the big guns.

The runaway Ping and redirection are caused by a Rootkit known as TDSS. This is the real source of our problems. If we continue redirecting legitimate search results to malware download sites, it's only a matter of time until we get seriously messed up again. Not only that, but TDSS has a few hooks into the computer that allows all sorts of bad things to happen. The ping, for example, was this PC participating in a remotely coordinated Denial of Service attack - where a series of compromised systems would continually slam at a server online until it's no longer able to manage incoming traffic. The bad guy was still in control here, so we had to find and remove the rootkit.

TDSS is a nasty customer. It inserts itself as the driver tdx.sys - a file protected by Windows so that it cannot be removed. You would normally have to boot into a second Operating System in order to delete the file. Luckily, there's a tool by Kapersky designed to beat this exact rootkit, aptly named TDSSKiller. I grabbed it, and sucessfully killed TDSS.

We rebooted, and good news! There was no sign of infection. Bad news, the computer was now no longer able to get online. It refused to obtain an IP address from my router, which would be necessary for doing internet-type things.

I checked in the system log and found that the service DHCP, which is responsible for obtaining an IP address, was being held up due to a dependancy on the previously removed tdx.sys. Ah, whoops. I should have figured that a root kit that hijacks your browsing experience would have inserted itself into the computer's networking setup.

I couldn't find documentation online that proved the file was necessary at all, so instead of restoring it, as I didn't have system disks, I just popped into the registry and removed the dependancy (this was in HKLM/system/currentcontrolset/services/dhcp in case you need to know). On the next boot, we got online with no problem, and no redirects. We were essentially clean. But there was a bit to do yet.

I ran further scans with Malwarebytes and cleared out some junk files with CCleaner. I also went about fixing the attributes on the user's personal files - which TDSS had set as invisible and read only. Finally, I went about uninstalling various toolbars and crap applications - online casinos, Limewire, and the virus addled pirated versions of silly Popcap games that were downloaded using it. There were also some "Free" screensavers, icons and such from the peddler Freeze dot com. This all paints a pretty likely picture of how the rootkit landed on this computer in the first place. Left to their own devices, we're guaranteed to end up right back at square one soon enough.

Remember, if you try to get something for free that usually costs money - and don't know what you're doing - you're setting yourself up for a butthurt PC.

So now that we were clean, I needed to stage an intervention. Stop junk from getting here in the first place. Here are the preventative measures I set up:

It all starts with Google Chrome. If you haven't used it yet, this browser is fast, lightweight, and generally doesn't support the attack vectors that end up loading junk via Internet Explorer.
I added in the AdBlock extension to prevent those happy flashing ads from loading and enticing our user into bad downloads.
I set the default search as DuckDuckGo, letting us bypass the link farms and crap sites that litter Google's search results.
I set the PC up for OpenDNS, which should actively block malware sites from being able to load.

Next, I needed to set up some alternatives to correct bad surfing behaviour. I added Facebook and Grooveshark to the desktop as an application shortcuts using Chrome. This should let our user network and listen to music without having to do searches and risk landing on bad sites. I put a shortcut to the Chrome app store there as well, labelling it "Apps and Games". There are plenty of free games available here that should scratch that itch without needing to download junk.

For ongoing care, the first thing I'll do when I hand the PC back is email the user an invite to my Soluto network. This will let me remotely monitor and correct issues before they become major headaches.

Now, this was all a lot of work. The preferred (and quick) solution to an infection like this is of course to just wipe everything and reinstall. But without any system disks on hand, I needed to defeat it the old school way. I'm pretty proud of my work, and hope it's a while before I need to deal with this particular machine again.

2011 Year in Review - Where was the Action at?

2011-12-30T21:26:00.001-06:00

Some years are bigger than others as far as personal growth and change go. I'd like to think I had more happen in 2011 than any other year of my adult life. To review:

In March, I was laid off along with 500 co-workers from the Cable-co. I immediately went to work on aggressively marketing myself, going so far as to open the website "hire.actionjay.com" and leaning on my online contacts to help me find something new in the tech support space. Within a few weeks, I was hired, and ready to start my new job in May.

During my job search, we found out that we were pregnant, and went on a trip to the states to visit Bri's (@action_wife) family and deliver the news. It was a great visit, and a little emotional for the in-laws who would be getting their first ever Grandchild.

After coming home, we realized that we needed a new place with more room for Baby, and jumped on a beautiful apartment in the same building where I once lived several years ago. The management here still recognizes me from back then, which is nice.

Ironically, my new job was two blocks from our original place, and the move re-introduced my hour long daily commute. On the bright side, I was employed. Also, half my transit costs are being reimbursed so it's fair to say that I'm okay with that. Plenty of time to catch up on RSS feeds and podcasts while on the road.

In June, I was lucky enough to make my way into the Mobile / Social Media Conference. I got to see a lot of smart folks talk, and made several local contacts. For all the time I spend interacting with folks over Twitter, it was fun finally meeting some of them face to face, and having my own presence at such an event.

We skipped a couple of the summer festivities this year, like Taste of Sask and The Prairieland Exhibition, in lieu of seeing the musical Wicked, which was amazing. I'm a big fan of making memories together, and this definitely fit the bill.

All throughout the year I've been trying to get back into making music, with small bursts of limited output. I put together a new site to host it all, at music.actionjay.com, and had been working to drive traffic to it by highlighting individual tracks with the hashtag #earmassage on Twitter. It's not something I would remember to do on a daily basis, though, and falls to the wayside a little too easily. I may reinvigorate this with some automation later on.

We finally got the documentation together for Bri's citizenship application, gathering all the time-sensitive materials within a window where they were all valid, and sent it in. They confirmed that they've received it, but we won't hear anything about the next stage for 10-12 months. In the meantime, everyone we know opens every conversation asking how we're doing with this paperwork, and I die a little on the inside.

In August I was named one of the top 25 influencers in Customer Service by Mindtouch, putting me alongside authors and speakers on the topic. For a front-line phone monkey, that's actually pretty cool. I still don't know how much actual clout (or Klout) I have, but it's nice being able to connect with people and talk about something I'm passionate about in a somewhat professional manner.

In September, we visited my family in Swift Current to celebrate my grandfather's 80th birthday. I don't get to see that side of the family very often, and they all adore Bri which makes it very relaxing and a lot of fun.

Around the same time, I discovered that my old employer was ramping up a call center in India. Still a little sore from the layoff, I blogged about it - got on Reddit - and probably brought in more traffic to my site than I'll ever see again. There was some lively conversation around it, though I'm still on good terms with my buddies on the inside. I'm generally not a mean person, and don't burn bridges if I can help it.

In November I participated in National Novel Writing Month in an attempt to rekindle my creativity. I fell short at about half the 50k word goal. But thanks to the help of 750words I achieved a seconary goal of writing at least something every day for the month.

I also made my way to the Saskatoon Barcamp which was an all-day "unconference" style event where anyone who wanted to present could grab a slot. I met many more people this time, and was much more comfortable introducing myself and chatting. I was even recognized a couple times, which is great for my ego.

In anticipation of our baby being born mid-December, we held a quiet early Christmas at home. It was nice having the holiday out of the way while others were still stressing about shopping and wrapping. Our due date came and went afterwards, and we started to get antsy.

Having gone six months without so much as a sick day, I took some time off work as we hit a week overdue with the baby. After a few false starts, we headed in to get induced. A long night of labor followed, which I live-tweeted with the hashtag #action_baby, and our beauful boy Jacob finally came into the world on the morning of the 24th.

He's a week old now, sleeping soundly right beside me while I reminisce with a little Dire Straits playing. I feel good about how the year went, and hope 2012 will be full of positive growth and fun challenges. I'm going to be trying to figure out my work/life balance considering the new addition to the family. I may slow down in some of my hobbies while I dedicate more time to Jacob, and my stream online is likely to take on a whole new slant with lots of first-time parenting fun and games.

Bucking Scope of Support for Fun and Profit - Featuring @Comcast #custserv

2011-12-09T12:29:00.001-06:00

After years of being told "We don't do x" or "We can't support y" a handful of brave companies are shrugging off these limiting shackles and providing help for their confused callers. The genius move? They're also charging a premium for this service, allowing you to recruit them as your own personal 'tech people' for any issue that you might need to look into. It's like roadside assistance for your technology.

Today I'm sharing a Q&A with Daniel Herscovici, who is managing @Comcast's Xfinity Signature Support service. This big name cable provider and ISP was one of the first on the scene with this idea, offering monthly plans starting at $4.95 to help with your computer woes. The plan scales up from there to cover additional devices and wireless networks, and membership can net you discounts on other services. (XFinity Signature Support)

1. Where did the idea for this expanded scope of support come from? How did it grow from an idea to its own product?

The idea of expanded scope of support came from you, our customers. We noticed that customers didn’t just call us about our core services, but also called to get help with wireless networks, deal with viruses or with questions about how to get the most out of the new digitally enabled home. As customers are connecting more digital devices to our service, we quickly realized that our customers trusted Comcast as a place to go for many technology questions,and we wanted to be able to help them. With one trusted source, customers no longer would be subjected to the finger pointing that appears to be so rampant when it comes to technology support (please call your printer manufacturer, no.. please call your router manufacturer… no please call operating system company). They could just call us and we would stick with them until their technology question was answered. That’s how, and why Xfinity Signature Support was born.

2. Do you have dedicated staff for this? Any special training or extra procedures to consider when putting agents in an expanded support queue?

We do have a dedicated staff that is highly trained in the latest technologies and all the most common issues customers might encounter. Xfinity Signature Support personnel are passionate about technology, so chances are if you have a question, they have seen it and can address it quickly. However, our requirements for agents in our Xfinity Signature Support service go beyond just training and procedures. Not only do they have to be technically experienced and savvy, but we also want to make sure they are good listeners and are empathetic to the customer who’s likely frustrated or confused.

3. What happens if/when you get stumped? Do you have any special resources for your agents to fall back on?

While our front-line experts handle the vast majority of issues we have a “guru crew” that is constantly researching the latest and most complicated issues. They are dedicated to solving the hardest problems, publishing and sharing that knowledge among all our Xfinity Signature Support agents as soon as they make a discovery. We also have a team dedicated to working with industry groups and monitoring blogs and Internet chatter for the latest bots, viruses or just the latest software and hardware issues being talked about so we are well prepared for anything a customer might need.

4. Any interesting feedback or customer stories that you can share?

The most common feedback is how amazing, and convenient, it was to have a problem solved remotely. Customers are thrilled that they literally don’t have to lift a finger once they have given permission to the Xfinity Signature Support agent to take control of their computer and solve the issue and show them how to complete a task. In fact in some instances, customers have actually just left to do other things knowing that when they returned to their computer the problem would be solved. Customers have also commented about how the Xfinity Signature Support agent was very supportive and understanding during their call. The best example of this, and a great way to show you the depth of knowledge of our agents, involves a customer playing an online game called “Second Life”. Once an agent received a call from a customer who, and I quote, “wanted to be taller”. It turns out that if you don’t configure your “virtual character” correctly you can’t make them taller. Our agent, also an avid SecondLife gamer, was able to fix the configuration issue and make the customer taller. While we do a lot of work removing nasty Viruses and Bots as well as repairing and securing wireless networks, we are available to help any technology question…. Even making your Avatar taller!

5. With the blurring lines between online services and the products that use them, what do you see in the future of tech support?

The future of tech support is more about what will be covered and less about how it will be done. We are now experiencing the future in that you now have one contact to address your issue and it can be addressed over the phone, online or in person, whatever makes the most sense for you. As new technologies appear, whether they are a new gadget or a new web-based service, they’ll be rolled into Xfinity Signature Support services so you can continue to have one number to call to address all of those issues. The one change you will see in how support will be provided is an increasing number of issues will be handled by self-healing technologies that Xfinity Signature Support will provide as one of the benefits of being a member. So you’ll spend less time calling support and more time doing what you wanted to be doing in the first place. We make make sure technology is working properly, and optimally… then we work with you to learn how to get the most out all the technology you installed in your digital home.

Bucking Scope of Support for Fun and Profit - Featuring @Sasktel #custserv

2011-12-08T12:43:00.001-06:00

Today I'm sharing a Q&A with Kayli Barth at @Sasktel. This DSL, TV and Phone provider has been around in Saskatchewan for as long as I can remember, and is just beginning to roll out a new subscription service called LiveExpert, where a small monthly fee of $5.95 gets you unlimited access to their tech support. A premium version at $14.95 also includes proactive monitoring and management through their provided software. (Sasktel LiveExpert)

1. Where did the idea for this expanded scope of support come from? How did it grow from an idea to its own product?

The idea for offering a service like SaskTel LiveExpert was derived from a multitude of SaskTel resources, industry trends and the support/customer experience environment. SaskTel receives a substantial number of calls per month that are considered to be out-of-scope, or in other words; questions/support issues pertaining to products and services that are not provided by SaskTel. The SaskTel HelpDesk would do their best to refer customers to online resources and/or manufacturer websites, but ultimately, their responsibility is to provide support for various SaskTel branded products and services.Customers then needed to seek out information, support or remediation for their non-SaskTel related issues, be it online or from a friend or from a PC repair shop.

With the launch of SaskTel LiveExpert we can improve the customer support experience by offering customers an affordable, 24/7 unlimited, technical support service for their PC and PC-related technologies that are considered to be out-of-scope.

2. Do you have dedicated staff for this? Any special training or extra procedures to consider when putting agents in an expanded support queue?

There are dedicated professional resources to provide support for SaskTel LiveExpert customers, powered by Global Mentoring Solutions Inc.

3. What happens if/when you get stumped? Do you have any special resources for your agents to fall back on?

There is a standard escalation process that is implemented should this happen. In the rare instance where the SaskTel LiveExpert technician is unable to resolve the issue initially, they have additional technicians, support-coordinators and seemingly endless knowledge-base tools at their disposal to resolve the issue.

4. Any interesting feedback or customer stories that you can share?

We actually only launched on November 9th, so customer feedback/stories will be forthcoming.

5. With the blurring lines between online services and the products that use them, what do you see in the future of tech support?

There will likely be a continued push for always on, always available customer support as more and more products continue to become I.P. based. The shift towards online chat functionality will continue to push towards the norm, as more and more people (particularly younger generations) have accepted and continue to accept online chat support as the norm. There will likely be an increase in product/service specific tech support, but also more all-encompassing, at your finger-tip type support from various providers.

Bucking Scope of Support for Fun and Profit - Featuring @Hover #custserv

2011-12-07T13:08:00.001-06:00

Today I'm sharing a Q&A with Ross Rader, the general manager at @Hover, a domain registrar built from the ground up with a slant on usability and customer service. Their new Ask Hover support lets you get help at a rate of $15 for a 30 minute session. From there, they'll help you configure your domain with competitors, and field any other questions you might have about the internet. (Ask Hover)

1. Where did the idea for this expanded scope of support come from? How did it grow from an idea to its own product?

We're really focused on making sure our customers get the best possible help we can provide them and we've always been fans of Apple's approach to retail customer service. Ask Hover is still mostly just in the "idea" phase for us and in many respects is our first crack at replicating some of what makes Apple's Genius Bar so great for Apple's customers. We already provide this style of service to customers that call us, and this new offering is our first step at formalizing the approach and hopefully turning it into something that provides lasting value to our customers.

2. Do you have dedicated staff for this? Any special training or extra procedures to consider when putting agents in an expanded support queue?

Nope, we generally don't have specific staff dedicated to this offering or that offering. Although our staff *is* very dedicated. :-) Our approach is slightly different in that we believe that there is no such thing as "second line" support. In other words, the person that answers the phone when you call in is fully trained on all aspects of our services, and 100% empowered to do what it takes to fully help you when you call - without having to escalate to second tier support, track down a manager or otherwise give you the run-around. So all we're doing here really is making our existing agents available at a time when our customers find it most convenient and giving them free reign to help the customer in any way that the customer wants.

3. What happens if/when you get stumped? Do you have any special resources for your agents to fall back on?

Well, we do a couple of things there. First off, we don't charge for the service unless the customer we're trying to help is perfectly 100% happy with the help they receive. The second is that we might simply say "I don't know, but give me a few minutes for both of us to figure this out together." If its an especially gnarly issue, our customer service agent might have to take the problem solving offline, learn a few new things and arrange for a followup call with the customer. We don't pretend that our customer service staff know absolutely everything, but we do promise that they will go out of their way to be perfectly helpful. We think that being honest with our customers when we don't know the answer is a perfectly good response, so long as we're able to really provide them with truly helpful answers in the end.

4. Any interesting feedback or customer stories that you can share?

Well, we only recently launched, and we're quite excited at the prospects and unfortunately, I don't have any great stories to share just yet. I do always like to encourage people to continue calling us for help with their vacuum cleaners though. Not a week goes by where we don't provide a misdirected Hoover customer with some sort of assistance with their dust busting woes :-)

5. With the blurring lines between online services and the products that use them, what do you see in the future of tech support?

I really deeply believe that the future of customer service is the future of ecommerce. There is only so much that a web site can facilitate. At some point, the human-machine interface breaks down and people have to talk to people to solve some sticky problem or another. I think smart companies intuitively understand this and are actively working on strengthening their human-human interfaces and supporting them with great ecommerce technology on their website. It will become increasingly difficult to offer something for sale via a website without having a solid customer service strategy to back it up. Take Google for example - they used to pride themselves on having a wholly automated business. Now they employ thousands of people in customer service roles and are actually providing some pretty decent customer service nowadays. People, customers expect a lot from their commercial relationships nowadays - I know I do - and organizations need to realize that the centralized customer service model that evolved during the eighties and into the nineties no longer works. With the rise of the Internet, customers have almost perfect information at their fingertips, are often highly organized and networked and in many regards, are more sophisticated than the companies that purport to want to sell them something. Many companies have yet to figure out that they need to develop a healthy respect for the modern customer and organize as tightly around each individual customer as they can. Thousands of companies are punished by their own ignorance every day and I'm alway surprised at how long it is taking some of them to absorb this message.

Bucking Scope of Support for Fun and Profit (intro) #custserv

2011-12-06T21:51:00.001-06:00

"Scope of Support" is a phrase that every tech support phone rep should be familiar with. It's the guideline that determines what you're allowed to help a caller with. It helps avoid the liabilities of messing with third party products, and makes sure you don't set unrealistic expectations for the next agent. It also causes headaches for customers and support agents alike who know the simplicity of what they're asking for, but simply aren't allowed to get satisfaction.

Working for an ISP, I used to get into all sorts of spats with our scope of support. I'm a generally helpful guy, and got myself in trouble whenever I skirted these rules to help out. Granted, the rules themselves were written for the internet of the nineties. Want help configuring a mail program other than Outlook? Preposterous. Setting up a router? Forget it. Getting a video game system or handheld device to connect to the internet? Yeah right. If you were lucky, your agent would give you some general tips and a link to the proper documentation. If you weren't lucky, they'd just tell you to call the other company and hang up, not even offering a number, website, or any advice on what to ask for.

But people continue to call anyway. In the customer's view, everything that touches the internet becomes associated with the ISP, and the general availability of support staff makes them the first call when help is needed. Callers often understand that their hardware wasn't manufactured by the internet company, but they also understand that these techs work with computers and networks all day, every day, and are very likely to have some knowledge to impart.

Bridging the Gap

There's an interesting new trend in the tech support world. After years of being told "We don't do x" or "We can't support y" a handful of brave companies are shrugging off these limiting shackles and providing help for their confused callers. The genius move? They're also charging a premium for this service, allowing you to recruit them as your own personal 'tech people' for any issue that you might need to look into. It's like roadside assistance for your technology. I had the chance to sit down (virtually) with a couple of players in this space to get some insight into their all-inclusive support offerings, and over the next few posts I'll be sharing their answers to a few of my burning questions about the how and why of these new offerings.

So! Watch this space. This is going to be fun.

Tools for Writing Fools #NaNoWriMo

2011-11-12T11:18:00.001-06:00

Okay, so we're already almost two weeks into National Novel Writing Month, that great (stressful) time of year where aspiring authors band together and support each other in finally writing that book they've been meaning to. What I've got here is a super quick roundup of some online tools that might help if you've been falling behind.

First of course is the official website, nanowrimo.org, an online community with local message boards, chat rooms, and plenty of inspiration and challenges to help you get going. They keep plenty of stats on your writing to help you see if you're on track, and how you stack up against other authors. Just be sure to update your word count regularly, and you'll see your progress bar inch steadily towards that 50k.

As for actual writing, I find that the toughest thing is getting started when you sit down. That's where 750words comes in. This is a site built around the credo of "The Writer's Way" challenging you to pump out about three pages worth of stream-of-consciousness as you start your day. The practice, known as Morning Pages, is meant to help you center yourself. It's not a blog, or a journal, but it does help keep you motivated by handing out badges as you go, and giving you cool feeback.

Once I've popped the cork for the day, I move over to Yarny, a distraction free online writing app which allows you to organize your work into drag-and-drop snippets. It also keeps track of your overall word count, and saves automatically in the cloud. If you don't trust the cloud, you can always download your work-so-far in a basic text file.

By the way - if you've ever lost your work, you know how important backing up is. If haven't yet had this happen, don't take it for granted and get a backup solution anyway! I store my stuff in a Dropbox folder, which automatically syncs online and between multiple computers, so I've always got the freshest copy on my Desktop, Laptop, and iPod.

Speaking of iPod, I spend a lot of time in transit, and love to brainstorm on the go. All my outlines and notes are drawn up in the Evernote app, which also syncs online. It's great for research too, because you can grab snippets of websites or anything else and quickly add it to your notebook.

So those are the tools. Next, probably the most important part of your writing workspace, is music.

I find that I write best to instrumental music, as lyrics tend to distract me. So most of my work is done to game soundtracks like from the Overlocked Remix community. Many others might have movie or television soundtracks that work for them as well.

As a super quick shameless self-promotion, I happen to be sort of a musician, and created plenty of instrumental music over the years. It's all online in a handful of formats, and you can find it at music.actionjay.com.

If you find yourself spending more time picking out your music and building playlists than actually writing, consider pulling up Grooveshark instead. Here you can throw in a couple tunes, turn on the radio function, and it'll automatically keep feeding you similar music.

And that's it for today's roundup. Now, just like you, it's time for me to get right back to writing!

Good times at #barcampyxe

2011-11-05T21:56:00.001-06:00

Unbenownest to me until like 48 hours ago, today was Saskatoon's own Barcamp. This is a freeform conference for the loose conglomerate niche of tech geekery, so that would include pretty much everything that's awesome. Luckily registration was free and they weren't going to let anything like oh, say a 100% increase in signups stop me from getting in. So greeted by @gingerk and @bkorte, and with a lovingly penned nametag from @dejong I hopped right in.

There were many talks going on concurrently. Not that much of a programmer or business dude, so I stuck to the touchy feely things like real world problem solving (@dalezak), digital storytelling (@smpiadmi) and podcasting (@iChris)

One standout was an early session on the success of the book, The New Rockstar Philosophy by @voyno and his comrade Hoover. It's awesome to see such cool energy from local dudes. whatever it's fueled by.

And now, some pics of a bunch of geeks tweeting about how awesome socializing is:

See the full gallery on Posterous

There was also a reflex test / electroshock therapy device present, which brought with it a certain level of hilarity. Let's Watch.

Other personal moments of triumph, I got to meet @kab0b in person, who is a gentle giant. Don't let the avatar fool you. I also got to hear what @chrispowell really thinks about the 4 hour work week, chatted with @deeannmercier about The Lighthouse and the fun of old CMS software, and waxed poetic on personal marketing with @katrinavision

Also, @sneakyfox gave me a beer! Yaaaay.

In all, it was good times in real life. I love these conferences and hope to see more. People are fun!

You guys, #action_baby is almost here

2011-10-15T12:31:00.001-06:00

Sorting through papers and such this morning, I came across a print of our latest ultrasound. It's pretty stunning to see and know that there's a real life person in there. Unlike previous visits where I was like "Wow is that a face?" and they were like "No that's a liver".

Baby is very active as of late, keeping Bri (@action_wife) up most nights with plenty of squirming and rolling. The odd cravings do still pop up - a few days ago we suited up and made an evening run to the grocery store specifically for cinnamon buns.

We still haven't picked up much in the way of clothes or bedding, cause we've been waiting to determine the sex. Not one of the ultrasounds could tell us; there was always a foot or a liver or something in the way. Our obstetrician tells us it's a boy, though. I'm inclined to believe her, because she reminds me of that old dude from Gremlins and he was totally wise.

We're still on track for mid-December. A messenger donkey somewhere in Canada is on the way with the next phase of Bri's immigration paperwork, which will allow us a cost-free birth. We'll be alright if the timing doesn't line up, of course, but it'd be a nice bonus.

But yeah. I'm excited, nervous, and giddy. Pretty much the standard stuff every guy goes through leading up to their first kid.

The Path of Stuff. Reading, Saving and Sharing in the Wild RSS

2011-09-22T10:28:00.001-06:00

Consider this a thinking-out-loud post. I'm trying to consolidate things that I find interesting online, and have a pretty big batch of services floating around to help with the task. I thought it'd be neat to highlight this stuff as you might find at least a couple of them useful in your own day-to-day web surfing life.

This is part recommendations, part comedy as you'll see just how many different apps are in use here.

How do I find Stuff?

There's a handful of websites that regularly post awesome content. Anything I like, I save the RSS feed into Google Reader. This is pretty much the center of my internet experience, and I tap into it from a few different places.

Feedly, a beautiful, slick web based reader for my browser
Snackr, an Adobe Air based app that scrolls on my desktop
Reeder, a great iOS app that caches content for on-the-go reading

All of these sync with Google Reader, and have the ability to tag items to read later (and send it to instapaper for easy reading), or share to social networks.

Stuff also comes to me through my social circles. When you're following a buttload of people though, it's hard to keep up. That's where Summify comes in. This automatically curates and shows me the top content being shared around. Think of it as a private version of Paper.li, without the obnoxious auto-posting.

What do I do with Stuff?

What usually happens is that I'll tweet items I like, either from my reader, from the article's social sharing buttons, or from the wicked simple Chrome plugin, Cortex. Sometimes if I really like something I'll post it to Facebook as well. My Google Plus feed gets no love, and that's part of what I'm trying to resolve.

Enter If This Then That. This is a roll your own intergration platform. It doesn't yet support Google Plus, but will probably be one of the first places to do so now that the API is out and about. What I plan on doing here is enabling a recipie to automatically cross-post things straight from Google Reader just by clicking the (currently useless) Share button.

My own Stuff

With Posterous as my entry point of choice for my content, I've already got automatic sharing as an option. I set it up to cross-post to Blogger, which I consider as my "actual blog" while Posterous is sort of behind-the-scenes.

Twitterfeed then monitors RSS of a couple places where my content lands, and automatically posts from there as well. Pretty sweet.

The history of Stuff

Cortex keeps a history of things you shared with Cortex, but nothing else. Bit.ly keeps a history of things that went through it using your API key, but I usually forget to Bitly-ify my links, and I prefer to track analytics on just my own content anyway. I haven't been saving items in Google Reader to begin with. So how can I look back on stuff?

Tadah. Trunkly! This automatically scoops up everything I've shared, no matter how I shared it. It gives a master RSS feed which is pretty useful when you're looking for something from your social history. I looped this puppy back into my Reader for refernce, as well as plugged it on my Blogger sidebar so visitors can see what I've been up to.

Aaaaand I think that's about it. Quite the ecosystem, eh? I'm looking forward to simplifying my flow of Stuff, and especially to getting things onto Google Plus so I can stop looking completely inactive on that particular network. What's your path of Stuff? Using tools I didn't mention? Know how to get Stuff to Google Plus? Share em in the comments!

Now this is learning. @codecademy

2011-09-20T21:28:00.001-06:00

Welcome to Codecademy! I heard about this on a recent episode of The Social Hour and was immediately interested. Basically, it's a code parser with built in interactive lessons. They start simple, with hello world type exersices, and build up from there. The framework allows for much more complex lessons, and different programming languages as well.

Add in the social elements, and gamification with points and badges, and you got yourself a real winner.

I blew through the first course this evening, a nice refresher for Javascript considering I haven't done serious coding in years. Really looking forward to what sort of new content lands here.

This is what happens when the operative word is "Celtic" #earmassage

2011-09-19T17:37:00.001-06:00

Action_Jay_-_Garou's_Lullaby.mp3 Listen on Posterous

With apologies to Loreena McKennit, who is probably about two notes shy of this particular melody. That said, I'm still pretty fond of this nearly 15 years later.

Haven't had much studio time lately to produce anything new, but I did upload everything - including my incredibly old stuff - to Grooveshark for anytime streaming. You can search me out there anytime as Action Jay - or just click here.

Verdict on the #Shaw outsourcing story? People kinda seem to care. #custserv

2011-09-05T12:03:00.001-06:00

I don't know who posted the discovery of the Gurgaon Guys blog on Reddit and DSLReports, but it sure seems to have driven a lot of discussion, and a lot of hits back to my original post. The comments seem to react to a lot of sore spots in the current customer service environment, not just with Shaw, but with Cable and Telcos as a whole.

Outsourcing, for whatever purpose, is not okay with Canadian customers. Not so much about language barriers, cultural difference or other xenophobia, but because these jobs could easily go to Canadian employees.
Many employees and former employees see this as the beginning of a larger Outsourcing initiative, and anticipate more layoffs in the near future, despite the fact that Shaw is actively hiring in several markets.
The personality and business habits of CEO Brad Shaw, whether real or imagined, is not flattering in the least. Distrust of the family is compounded by knowledge of retired father JR Shaw's incredible pension, and the ousted brother Jim Shaw's public shenannigans.

One recurring theme is that the company has had several watch words and slogans over the years that don't appear to line up with their behaviours. These are often brought up during the comments thread in a sarcastic manner:

People Powered

After the layoffs, the customer service team is sorely understaffed, resulting in incredible hold times. Complaints on Twitter are more often about the hold times than the service itself. The remaining Canadian agents are still good at what they do, but that's assuming you can get to them.

Customer Focus

While I was there, Shaw had a history of making bottom-line based desicions first, then responding to customer complaints afterwards. This went for little things like making the Fireplace channel paid-only during the holidays, up to Usage Based Billing, and now with the idea of outsourcing call centres.

Together is Amazing

This slogan, and the now defunct website, was a PR move to make the company look like part of the community. They ran food drives and attempted to solicit fundraiser ideas from customers. The response from this wasn't exactly rainbows and butterflies, and the whole campaign fell flat pretty quickly. You can't buy community approval with a couple cans of soup.

Inventing a New Model of Customer Service

Shortly after Brad took the reigns of the company, he introduced a "new direction", and this phrase was one of the buckets in which employees were encouraged to submit ideas for improvement. Some good did come out of this, like my buddies on the Twitter team. Otherwise, the "Our Voice" forum was a laundry list of complaints that never got addressed. I don't think the idea of laying off hundreds of employees and outsourcing call centres came from the front lines.

While I worked at Shaw, I submittedt the idea time and again that the first Cable or Telco to truly differentiate with stellar Customer Service would be able to run away with the ball, since every other company in the sector is doing the least that they can. All over the industry front line employees are left out of the loop, paid the least, and then forced to face the angry public on behalf of the company. This results in high turnover, either from disengaged employees quitting, or others scrambling to get promoted up and out of the department.

I had aspirations to turn this entire situation on its ear while I was with the company, and I kinda stuck out because of that. People locally saw me as a bit of a geek for it, but others a little further up the chain seemed to like what I was going for. Either way, that didn't count for much when the axe came down on the entire Saskatoon office. Yeah I'm bitter, but yeah I still care too. For now, I'm just hoping that a little bit of sentiment analysis can help the people up top get their heads out of their asses and invest in joining the present century of Customer Service. It doesn't matter if this particular call centre stands or falls, or if it even exists. There are other problems happening right now that really need to be addressed in order to win back some goodwill.

I have a standing invitation to chat with one of my buddies on the inside, and will probably lock in a time later this week. I look forward to seeing what kind of response the company's been brewing up over the weekend.

Cakespotting at Gramp's 80th birthday bash

2011-09-03T19:24:00.001-06:00

See the full gallery on Posterous

This is awesome. The picture's from 1957 and he remembers exactly what he was doing that day.

Lookin good,Grampa Baron :)

More family pics and such to come on the Facebook feed.

Two steps back. Meet the new #custserv crew at #Shaw Cable (rant)

2011-09-02T06:49:00.001-06:00

So yesterday I got a link to this blog where a couple trainers from Shaw chronicled a grand adventure: Opening a brand spanking new call centre in Gurgaon, India. The whole thing got locked up pretty quickly after it was discovered, but I did manage to save a few snippets. With apologies for the friends I still have at Shaw, you can download the "Gurgaon Guys" blog from this link

Go ahead, check it out. I'll wait.

Done? Good. Now meet the folks reponsible for your next terrible customer service experience:

Kyle and Ryan are going to enable some hardcore medioctiry

I worked for these guys for two and a half years. Well, not these guys specifically, but the company as a whole. During this time, the number one positive feedback I got from customers was that we actually handled calls locally. It was always a pleasant suprise, and my callers thanked me from the bottom of their hearts just for speaking English. Better yet, we could actually respond to issues because our call centre was in the same building as every other department of the company.

If you lived in Saskatchewan, you talked to one of us in Saskatoon. If you were out east, you got an agent in Winnepeg. If you were out west, we had you covered from Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. We knew the neighborhoods and local companies of the cities we served, and it gave a small town feel despite the fact that you were talking to a gigantic corporation. We knew when an outage was going on, we knew when weather was causing issues, and we knew what areas of town had janky old cable that was scheduled to be refit.

Heck, in the off chance that one centre got busy and had to offload calls, customers would get straight up pissed. "Those idiots in Winnipeg don't know anything about Saskatoon". And so forth. Well hold onto your socks fellas, cause now you're about to talk to people who don't even know the geography of the country they're talking to.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Important training materials. Note the position of Canada within "North America"

Why am I so pissed off about this? Even after our Saskatoon office was laid off six months ago, I had faith that the company was going in a forward-thinking direction. I knew that there are people there who give a shit about customer service. My friends from the Twitter team, for example, continue to be awesome and responsive. But like so many cablecos, the people on the front lines don't make decisions like this. There's someone high up who doesn't care if you have to wait on hold for an hour to speak with someone who doesn't even know what the TV Channel you're trying to order is about.

See the full gallery on Posterous

No I haven't been watching Big Brother. But have YOU seen Bandh Darwaza?

Best of all, this decision was probably made long before my team was disbanded. While the PR machine is spinning, talking about how this is a family owned, purely Canadian company, there was a plan in the works to remove all human contact from Canada and outsource it to the lowest bidder. I busted my ass at this company, fighting for a better customer experience and railing against the horribly outdated and inneficient tools. We pushed to hire enough agents that we could maintain a hold time under five minutes. We wanted to introduce Workshifting, remote work and flexible schedules. Now they've gone and devolved their operations further than I thought possible.

From what I hear, this particular call centre is "only" handling outbound sales calls. But that's just the beginning. If you work in any other department that can be outsourced, it's time to start looking for a new job before it's too late. Shaw's already axed entire call centres, including employees who'd been with the company since before the internet. They're entering a brave new world of terrible customer service, and undoing any goodwill they've ever had for being a "Canadian" company.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Congratulations guys. Enjoy my job. /rant

All you have to do is...

2011-08-31T06:51:00.001-06:00

I'm pretty sure that nobody who's assured us of the simplicity of immigration has ever dealt with immigration. This is a fresh set of documents to fill out, probably number three or four since we started the whole thing.

Gala Antics - Breakfast with a Budgie (Pics!)

2011-08-23T06:43:00.001-06:00

So this morning Bri suprised me with some egg n cheese sammiches. Part of a complete breakfast! Before sitting down to eat though, she had to visit the little girl's room. And that's when the parakeet struck!

See the full gallery on Posterous

Once she caught me sneaking pics though, the gig was up.

Highlight of our night with #practicebaby

2011-08-19T21:15:00.001-06:00

See the full gallery on Posterous

My neice is a goon. We had a fun evening watching cartoons, threw some fruit loops around and then changed my first diaper ever.
Also, it's a little creepy how babies can maintain direct eye contact with you while pooping.
Hoping to get more babysitting in before our own arrives. Lord knows I need the practice.

Just plain awesome: @mindtouch's top 24 influencers for #custserv (and me)

2011-08-03T18:40:00.001-06:00

via mindtouch.com

So this came out yesterday, and I'm still kinda grinning about it. According to the folks at Mindtouch, I'm among some pretty excellent company online. I already know most of these people, having connected over the weekly #custserv chats. They're all a lot of smarties. These are authors and speakers, huge personalities online with thousands of people in their networks. And somehow I finagled my way onto the list, just some regular old phone monkey in Saskatoon.

Still grinning. I'm pretty happy about this.

See the full article at http://www.mindtouch.com/blog/2011/08/02/the-most-influential-in-customer-ser...

Tinkering is fun

2011-07-22T10:14:00.001-06:00

"Technology means Magic. It's basically anything that you don't know how it works, and when it breaks you have to buy a new one" - Strong Bad

I love tinkering. When something doesn't work the way I want it to, I dive right in, take it apart and find out why. With a little bit of understanding behind how things work, things can last well beyond their warranty. This controller, for example, has a couple less-than-responsive buttons after nearly a decade of service. It's all a matter of contact pads underneath the buttons that get a little loose over time, so you just pop the hood and resituate things. Not hard at all.

For a lot of poeple, everything inside the plastic shell of their belongings is a total mystery. That's kinda sad. Next time something acts up, take some time to tinker. You may well learn something.

Gala Antics - Parakeet Video Dating Round 1: Apple

2011-07-13T19:20:00.001-06:00

SDV_0309.MP4 Watch on Posterous

Gala meets one of the more popular and talkative 'keets on Youtube. It's a parakeet video in a parakeet video. Birdception!

Emulation Station Addendum - Setup Video Walkthrough

2011-07-06T22:01:00.001-06:00

emu.mp4 Watch on Posterous

Since all my talk of rom sets and such was kinda hard to get across in a blog, here's a quick screencast of the process showing off the tools and such involved. Might be useful for other emulation enthusiasts. Enjoy!

Building the Emulation Station: A Retro Gaming Software Roundup

2011-07-06T07:03:00.001-06:00

Over the last week or so I've been totally engrossed in a new project, putting together a catch-all classic gaming rig for use on our tv. I've always been an emulation enthusiast, keeping a collection of 8 and 16 bit classics at the ready pretty much ever since there was an internet. But the whole thing had always been confined to my computer as a technical curiosity rather than a proper setup for the appreciation and enjoyment of these old school games. I set out to create a seamless retro museum experience that anyone can pick up and play, and so far it's going pretty well. Today I'm sharing some of the tools I used to make it happen. Enjoy!

The host for all our software is a mid-range HP laptop, connected to our TV via an HDMI cable. It's not a powerful computer, but neither were any of the consoles I grew up playing. We have two Logitech gamepads, preferable due to a standardized button layout that lends itself well to any system we'll be emulating. And since the laptop mirrors video straight to the TV, we only need to open the lid to power it up.

Now, to really get up and running there's three things we need.

Emulators, applications that mimic the behavior of classic game systems.
ROMS: downloaded copies of software from game carts.
A Frontend: a slick menu driven interface that launches these applications with minimal technical jiggering.

First for emulators. For the original 8-Bit Nintendo I chose Nestopia. For the 16-Bit Super NES I grabbed ZSNES. And for the Sega Genesis I picked up Fusion, which can also emulate a handful of other Sega Systems. There are emulators out there for many other consoles, some much newer, and some totally obscure. For the purpose of this project, I'm leaving them out in favor of these big three.

My goal was to recreate a retro gaming experience, so I messed around in the video settings of each of these to enable what's called NTSC mode. Basically, this is a filter that makes the final image look like it's on an old tube tv, complete with scanlines and color bleed. That step is optional, of course. They all also have options to make the final image look much crisper than the original systems could ever do. The preference is up to you.

Next to put together the ROM collections. This is the part where I remind you that distributing these copyrighted works is not legal, so shame on wherever you get them from. Some of the companies that originally made these games are still in business making new games which are sometimes totally worth sixty bucks a pop. So don't let this possible foray into digital piracy make you ungrateful, fellow consumer.

That said, let's download some games.

Now, you'll either seek out ROMS one by one as you think of them, or grab a huge pack through a torrent of some sort. It depends whether you're out to play a certain game for nostalgia, or to create a digital hoard like a deranged completionist. I went the completionist route. The downside is that a number of these games exist in a multitude of variants. With different regions, re-releases and prototypes of games, and numerous hacked and translated versions, the 'complete' set of ROMS for a system can be quite the intimidating list to dig through. Luckily, the emulation scene has a handful of practices that help us out here.

Along comes the Goodtools project. These guys set out to catalogue and package up all known variants of ROMs, tagging and sorting them with clever naming conventions. For example, "Jay's Adventure (U)" would be the USA release, where "Jay's Adventure (J)" would be the Japanese version. Hacks, bad rom dumps, and other curiosities are filed with their own standard tags. Finally, all variants of a ROM are packed into the same archive file. Since the files are so similar, the compression on these archives is pretty excellent. This is what we call a GoodMerged set. If you're downloading a 'complete' set of ROMs for any system, chances are you'll get them in a set like this.

For my project, I wanted to strip out the extra versions of games. I used a tool called UnGoodMerge to extract the most legitmate copy of each game from my set. From there, I used the program RomCenter and databases from the No-Intro project to check the completedness of this collection. No-Intro catalogues only the 'proper' version of each game, ensuring I would be getting the most pure experience. Any game that didn't come out properly through my UnGoodMerge operation, I manually went back and grabbed from the archives.

Finally, the last piece of software to tie it all together - the front-end. There's a few out there to try, like the media-center integrated GameEx or the super flashy but slightly cluttered HyperSpin. We ended up going with Maximus Arcade thanks to its clean look and relatively painless setup. Each of these programs presents a nice full screen menu system for choosing your console and game to play. They launch the emulator seamlessly, and can quit back to the menu with a button shortcut on the controller.

The frontends have the ability to play background music while you're browsing the menus. Naturally I put a couple of my favorite Overclocked Remix tracks into the loop.

To complete the experience, there's a collection of box art for games hosted on HyperSpin's website. Assuming you have the same filename for the ROM itself and the boxart image, your frontend of choice can let you browse games visually by displaying this art. RomCenter came through again, allowing me to rename my files to the No-Intro standard and make sure everything matched up.

And that's pretty much all the tools and knowhow you need to make your own Emulation Station. It's a fun project, expecially when you're running batch operations on thousands of files and treating the collection as a single entity. If you're up for some oldschool gaming fun, or just want a nice way to browse your own collection, feel free to grab some of these programs and try them out yourself.

Gala Antics - Freaking out Carter

2011-07-01T10:48:00.001-06:00

So we're heading home with my nephew in tow. He remembers that we deal in parakeets and starts asking questions. We tell him about Gala.

"Does it bite?"

"Oh yeah, she's crazy. She'll bite your face off."

We get in and he's extremely wary of the budgie. Turn on the TV and she ZOOMS out of the cage to come sit with us, prompting the poor kid to yelp. She lands on Bri's knee and he's keeping his distance, and then this happens:

SDV_0305.MP4 Watch on Posterous

Good times.

Gala Antics - Toilet Paper

2011-07-01T10:37:00.001-06:00

SDV_0294.MP4 Watch on Posterous

She flew over and landed on the roll a few times, absolutely loves it. But because she moves so quick it took us a long time just to get this clip.

New Tune - How it Feels

2011-06-06T06:39:00.001-06:00

Action_Jay_-_How_it_Feels.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Put in some time the last couple weeks with the goal of creating something pretty. I think I done good :)

As always, my tunes are up for download at music.actionjay.com, and will show up for the streaming soundcloud widget soon enough. Enjoy!

Spotted on @quora - that @davekerpen can be such a stinker :)

2011-06-01T18:41:00.001-06:00

I lol'd. good work, @davekerpen!

More Sky Pics

2011-05-26T20:57:00.001-06:00

Actually caught these during the move earlier this month. I love good
shots with light beams. They call em God Rays, I'm told.

See the full gallery on Posterous

There's a baby in there!

2011-05-16T18:05:00.001-06:00

Little guy was squirming while we watched and everything. My only beef
is that instead of a digital copy, they put the pictures on some sort
of paper sheet that couldn't be uploaded to anything. So I took a
picture of that.

Music Bonus Outtake Round: Accidentally Enigma

2011-05-15T17:45:00.001-06:00

No lies here. I'm heavily influenced by Enigma. I've recreated some of their drum loops more than a handful of times, and general chord progression and mellowness of my tunes are pretty reminiscint of their work. That comes back to bite me in the butt now and then.

Outtake_-_Accidentally_Enigma.mp3 Listen on Posterous

So I put together the chords and drums and thought, hey some pizzicatto strings would be great right about here... and then I got a melody in my head, and then I pretty much just remixed the beginning of Find Love

Whoops. Can't win em all.

Anyhow, I've been working on clearing old tunes out of my queue and either finishing or setting them aside, kind of an Inbox Zero approach. I want to start working on completely new stuff soon and need this out of the way first. I've also put together music.actionjay.com - a simple little page hosted on Dropbox with streams and links to download all my music, including incredibly old stuff, AND the original MIDI files if that strikes your fancy. Go ahead and check it out :)

Music Bonus Round: Consecration

2011-05-15T11:08:00.001-06:00

Consecration_(intro).mp3 Listen on Posterous

This has been sitting around for a while, intro to something that never quite took. So I chopped it out to share on its own :)

New Tune: Notes to My Self

2011-05-15T10:43:00.001-06:00

Notes_to_My_Self.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Not much to say that it doesn't say for itself. Just a little mellow and introspective. Relax, enjoy.

My cards have arrived! From @aboutdotme and @overheardatmoo

2011-05-10T18:32:00.001-06:00

SDV_0289.MP4 Watch on Posterous

Batteries in the camera are dead, so no stills. Instead how about an awkward unboxing video?

New(ish) Tune - Here Comes the Rain

2011-05-08T11:08:00.001-06:00

This has actually been sitting near-finished for quite a while. Just did the final export today so I could make sure my software was up and running.

Hold_Me_-_Here_Comes_the_Rain.mp3 Listen on Posterous

It's a bit of a rehash of one of my first MIDI tracks ever, plopped right here for comparison. I liked the original idea and melody behind it, but definitely missing something in execution.

Action_Jay_-_Here_Comes_The_Rain.mp3 Listen on Posterous

The Big Move!

2011-05-07T11:05:00.001-06:00

So several years ago, I got talked out of giving up my old apartment to move across town. This led to a few slummy places, trailer parks and basement apartments in busy, noisy areas of town. I've wanted out since before Bri moved in with me, but never really had a good catalyst for it. Now with a new job and a baby on the way, we figured it's pretty much the perfect time. And wouldn't you know it, I was able to get a new place in my old building!

SDV_0282.MP4 Watch on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

Packing and moving stuff out of such a tiny place was a pain. But with my buddy Shaun's help we were able to manage. The glass top table was pretty much the only casualty.

SDV_0283.MP4 Watch on Posterous

SDV_0284.MP4 Watch on Posterous

We had to take the couch out through the window. In fact, we took nearly everything out through the window because the corners into the hall were too tight.

See the full gallery on Posterous

All packed up and ready to go, now let's check out the new place!

SDV_0287.MP4 Watch on Posterous

SDV_0288.MP4 Watch on Posterous

So much more room. In fact, the place feels kinda empty since we had so little furniture to bring in. I downsized a lot over the years thanks to my limited space.

See the full gallery on Posterous

We're nearly all unpacked now. Still need to pick up some things, like blinds and a new coffee table. I converted the huge storage room into my gaming cave / studio, and the second bedroom will be for baby. This new place rocks, and we're super happy to have it.

Gala Antics - Pass the Remote

2011-05-01T11:32:00.001-06:00

SDV_0281.MP4 Watch on Posterous

More fun with the bird. With all the toys and perches and dangling things we try to keep her entertained with, she's most interested in the things she sees us handling on a daily basis. Here she is enjoying the company of the TV remote.

Guess who's got two thumbs and a bun in the oven?

2011-04-30T14:57:00.002-06:00

So in between vacationing, switching jobs and apartment hunting, we've got one last big piece of news for the world at large. Turns out that amidst this whirlwind of big life changes, Brianna (@action_wife) and I made a baby!

Well, not a baby yet. More like a little blueberry sized bunch of cells. But by December, God willing, we'll be enjoying parenthood and finally starting that family we've been wanting for some time. I'll admit it's all a little scary, and the timing of our discovery could have been less crazy, but we're ready and willing to start this new adventure.
That said, as first time parents we're open to suggestions and advice and pretty much any kind of moral support we can get. Being from the internet generation, we'll be on the lookout for cool tech that makes this all easier to manage. First resource I have on the list is the Mommy Beta blog at www.mommybeta.com. If any of you have more cool sites or apps to check out, let us know!

Pic: Land of the Living Skies

2011-04-26T20:29:00.001-06:00

Indeed.

Snapped while landing in Saskatoon this afternoon. Some kinda crazy.

Happy Easter! A Basket of Recommendations to Keep Your Family Safe Online

2011-04-24T13:01:00.001-06:00

It's Easter and we're visiting family. Like any tech savvy fellow that means I get to perform "computer stuff" while on site. Things aren't terribly virus-addled since our last visit, but that's not going to stop me from dropping a few recommendations to help keep it that way. That said, let's get started!

OpenDNS - http://www.OpenDNS.com

OpenDNS is just what the family here needs, what with a teenager present who is just beginning to discover the "wonders" of the Internet. Basically it's a replacement phone book for the internet, locating websites so you can view them. With control over your own DNS, you have the ability to rip pages out of that phone book, stopping undesirable sites from showing up. We set it up at the router level, and walked mum through the administrative dashboard where she can control what can and can't be viewed on the network.

AdBlock - http://www.adblockplus.org

A lot of junk that isn't necessarily classed as malware can come across in ads while you're browsing. You know the type, flashing free this and punch the monkey that. With this extension installed on their browser of choice, there just plain won't be anything malicious to click in the first place.

Microsoft Security Essentials - http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/mse.aspx

I can't guarantee total freedom from junk at this point, so a free, full featured and low impact antivirus solution is still needed. Ever since Microsoft came out with their own, it's been my top pick. Time to uninstall those expired and ineffective security suites and pop this on instead.

Soluto - http://www.soluto.com

There's a lot of stuff that runs on a computer. Not all of it is necessary, and especially not right when you're starting up. Soluto is a great, user friendly tool for analyzing your startup, sorting your processes and eliminating stuff that doesn't need to be running.

Grooveshark - http://www.grooveshark.com

I know what you're thinking. This isn't quite in line with the previous recommendations. A streaming music service in amongst a post about safe surfing and pc performance? Well, consider how people "get" music for a moment. P2P programs, coupled with junk to begin with and opening vectors for all sorts of malware. With Grooveshark you won't have to download MP3s from shady corners of the net, and you'll be that much safer for it.

And that's this holiday season's quick round up. If you're visiting family too, take a moment to get them set up on some of these services and make the internet a better place for them. Got something I missed? Leave a link in the comments for all to enjoy!

Shenanigans!

2011-04-24T07:06:00.001-06:00

I don't remember him in the movie AT ALL.

Spotted at Walgreens in Rochster NH

Pics! From @museumofscience in Boston

2011-04-24T06:27:00.001-06:00

We took a trip to Boston yesterday to check out the Museum. Here's a few cool shots we grabbed.

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We caught the electricity show and got Vandegraffe'd. It was hard getting shots of the actual lightning though.

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I love this skeleton dude on the bike. He's really burning off the calories.

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Something didn't seem quite as science-y as the rest about this spaceship, let's get a closer look.

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I don't know why we were so entranced by the moose. We have mooses in Canada, nothing special. But it's a fricken moose!

Amazing! The water fountain works without hands! The wonders of technology.

From Fired to Hired: Three Weeks of #crushit-ing

2011-04-16T11:14:00.001-06:00

It's been quite a ride, a rollercoaster of stress, rushing and waiting and worrying about the future. But I'm happy to report that I'm back on track with a new job, furthering my career and safe again to look after my family. Three weeks can seem like a very short time, or a very long time, really depending on what happens and how you handle it.

The last time I was laid off in 2008, there was a few weeks notice before the actual closure, giving a head start to search for my next job. Even with that, I was down to my last dollar by the time I finally got a bite. That's a job search from June to October, papering the streets with resumes and looking for anything I can get. I didn't have a preference to the type of work I wanted to do: I just wanted a job.

This time around was quite a bit different. In the last three years I spent a lot of time building up a network online. I made a lot of friends in the business of customer service. After participating regularily in #custserv chats in Twitter, and working on a little bit of personal branding, I was enjoying a sizable network of colleagues. I read books on the subject and contributed to blogs. I was learning a lot, and began taking customer service and call centers very seriously. This let me get noticed in the company and expand my role at work. If you consider the big outsourced center I worked at before as the 'flipping burgers' stage of my career, I was moving up to the sous chef level of things.

All this work paid off when the layoffs hit Shaw. My contacts sprung to life, offering support and forwarding opportunities to me. Heck, my first lead came from a CEO who helped fast-track an interview the very next day. The company was based down in silicon valley though, and by the end of the week we decided the logistics of moving were too much of a stumbling block.

I spent my second week submitting to a couple other leads down south, hoping to find one who might allow remote work or help with the process of moving. Having spent a week in San Diego last year, and after the punishing winter we just had, leaving Saskatoon sounded like a good idea. I put together a website to chronicle my adventure, leveraging that personal branding we talked about to stir the pot and get these companies talking.

For my third week I decided it was time to start looking locally. By now my family was protesting the idea of me leaving, and the whole thing was becoming less adventurous and more scary. I didn't want to let go of my Customer Service credo, so I had a good idea of the types of places I'd be applying. I printed up a stack of resumes, and was about ready to beat the streets. There was just one last online lead I wanted to check in with.

On the very day of the layoffs, a couple of the messages I received talked about Point2, who were looking to fill a seat in their call center. I spent a while checking out the website and familiarizing myself with the product, and attended one of their webinars. Then I dug a little more to see what sort of culture they were all about, and that sealed the deal for me. These guys were serious about treating employees and customers right. Shift work was unheard of, and the place was close enough that I wouldn't have to worry about commuting. Work/life balance, front-line empowerment, a usable ticketing system, everything was in place for a company to really rock customer service. So I sent in my application, and the response was almost instantaneous. Turns out they'd been watching me the whole time, waiting for me to get in touch. There was an interview, some shadowing, and now I'm set to start kicking butt in May.

There's a lot of stories about people going full circle, ending up where they began but much wiser, and equipped to deal with challenges that were originally too daunting. It took me a few weeks of adventure before I appreciated the opportunity that was right in front of me. In retrospect I sort of wish I applied on day one, and saved myself some of that stress. But then again, after courting a handful of dream jobs only to find that the best of the bunch is literally two blocks away gives me a real sense of local pride.

It's been a crazy three weeks. Now I look forward to going back to work, doing what I love to do and sharing my adventures. Once again I'd like to extend a huge thanks to everyone in my network who helped me during this tough time. I couldn't have done any of this without you.

Gala Antics - Backseat Gamer

2011-04-12T11:10:00.002-06:00

SDV_0267.MP4 Watch on Posterous

Gala loves to chill with us when we play video games. Sometimes she offers helpful commentary. Here she is coaching me on Castlevania, and eventually deciding that she'd rather play instead.

Gala Antics - More Burrowing

2011-04-06T10:48:00.002-06:00

SDV_0272.MP4 Watch on Posterous

Even unsupervised, she'll seek out places to burrow. We've found her in the cage cover, in our bed, our coats, and our laundry. Most parakeets hate enclosed spaces, but Gala's not like most parakeets. Normal, or crazy? You decide.

Gala Antics - The Burrowing Parakeet

2011-04-06T10:35:00.002-06:00

SDV_0275.MP4 Watch on Posterous

So Gala's going through this phase. She's constantly trying to get into things. She'll jump over to me, hang out on my shoulder for a moment and then try getting under my collar or up my sleeve. Once in, she's perfectly content. We're suspecting it's a mimicry thing, since she's seen us putting clothes on and decided she wants to get in as well. What a crazy keet.

Post-Layoff: The Dust Settles, and Clarity Kicks In

2011-04-01T18:43:00.001-06:00

"Unfortunately, what this means, is that there is no longer a role for you within the company."

It took a moment to set in. I was crammed into a room with about twenty of my colleagues, friends and peers. We were a tight-knit crew of tech support agents, up till now enjoying a relaxed atmosphere in what was probably the smallest call center within a company that employed over thirteen thousand. But as of today, like five hundred total across the country, we were now out of work.

The rumours started about 24 hours earlier when we all received a meeting request in our email. No details, just a time, a place, and the title "Saskatoon Operations". We immediately thought the worst and that stress made for a harrowing last day with the company. I had already heard that layoffs were happening from friends in Vancouver and Calgary before I made it to the meeting, so I was ready for the news. I only showed up to pick up my paperwork and go. My mind was elsewhere, wondering what to do next, how to support myself and Brianna, how long we'd be able to last if I couldn't find a job. All the sorts of things that you stress about in this situation.

Funny thing is, this wasn't my first time going through a layoff. In fact, the last call center I worked at was shut down as well. And this was during the very week that I had flown Brianna to Saskatoon, met her in person for the first time, and we decided that we wanted to be together. We figured things out then, and we can do it again now. But this time, nearly three years later, things are a little different.

After the first layoff, all my tech support friends went straight to local computer repair shops and retail outlets. A few of us even landed together at Shaw's call center doing the exact same front line work, taking abuse from customers and middle management while trying to claw our way to something better. Some did make it to that safe zone off the front line. The rest of us, despite repeated applications to other positions, were caught up in the shuffle and now have to hit the streets, dropping resumes off, again, at the same usual suspects.

The job market in town sucked then, and at a glance it hasn't improved much since. This isn't a city that advertises opportunity. The help wanted signs and newspaper ads are all just bait to pull in the next batch of entry level highschool dropouts. At my age, though, I'm done with being at the bottom of a company. I've got experience under my belt, and responsibilities that require more than the minimum pay that can be doled out. I'm ready for better. I'm in career mode, and this time around I have a secret weapon: the internet.

I have contacts all over the place now, in industries that I really care about, all thanks to the network I've built up over the last couple years. I pinged my online friends and found a number of interesting possibilities, some with the ability to work remotely, and some openly offering to help with relocation. The idea of leaving town is scary, but considering how long we've been wanting to get out of this apartment but couldn't afford to, it could be a very welcome change. My final pay and severance would give us what we need to make a fresh start.

I'm not saying this is the plan for certain, but right now it's the best possible outcome.

During this experimental phase of my job hunt I'm keeping a few things in mind.

I want to be able to support my family and maintain a healthy work/life balance. That means pay, benefits, and flexibility required to keep myself, Brianna, and anyone else who comes along from going insane.
I want to be able to effect change in a company. Input from your employees is important, and if I'm going to be passionate about my work, I expect to be listened to and taken seriously.
I want to be empowered to do the right thing for my customers. My biggest pet peeve of being a front line agent was having my hands tied by stupid protocols or limited tools that meant I had to escalate cases and couldn't see things through to the end.
I want to work for a company I can stand behind and be a proud advocate for. It's much easier work if you actually know and care about the product or service you support.

So this, effectively, is my new credo. My cover letter to the world at large. I'm not looking to cram myself into an arbitrary position at some company I've never heard of just because they have an opening. Heck no, I'm a tech support agent, a customer advocate, with an opening for one kickass company I believe in to come along and join forces.

Photo Essay Adventure! Building a computer for @penguinloverwoo

2011-03-20T16:32:00.001-06:00

My fiancee Brianna and I, we constitute a computing household. There's the main desktop, full of power and awesomeness, and then there's the laptop, a passable but not necessarily powerful device. We switch back and forth between the two on a regular basis, but over the years as new games came out we found that we were fighting over the desktop more and more often. Especially with the new WoW expansion, which won't even run on the lappy anymore.

So we'd been waffling with the idea of getting a second desktop for quite some time. This means playing together in a few games as well, which is pretty cool. But being a techie, I'm much more inclined to build a machine than to buy one outright. We also have a no hand-me-down clause, though, meaning I'm not going to pass off old outdated tech to build a machine for someone who's arguably going to push it more than I would.

Then again, I'm not the kinda guy to upgrade out of nowhere. Any part I replace is usually broken. So our cache of spare bits for Bri's desktop isn't a whole heck of a lot. That makes us both a little miffed.

So! Enter my buddy Shaun (@ssjseth) who is a leading edge kinda guy. He often outmodes parts that are more powerful than I'm using. So in one of his tax-return fueled fits of tech enhancement, he decided to help us out with a handful of parts. Motherboard, Video Card, Ram and Processor. All pretty good stuff, and actually more powerful than what's in my desktop. We could use these to put together Bri's first awesome rig. Yay!

So here's the goods delivered by our benefactor.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Of course, that's not enough to build a computer. So to round it out, we went on a little shopping trip to Saskatoon's own OTV (@OTVTech). Behold our bounty!

Oh yeah, and we also needed a desk.

So with all this, we began the process of building. The desk itself took about three hours, and came out very snazzy. Fits nicely in the apartment, too. Actually takes up less floorspace and looks better than the janky laptop cart we had.

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With the desk together, I walked Bri through the process of building her first computer from parts. Everything (almost) came together perfectly.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Turns out, once we got it together and started on installing Windows, the motherboard died. I took over at that point and led a rollercoaser of troubleshooting that lasted all night and most of this morning. In the end I donated my own motherboard to the project, breaking the no hand-me-down rule for just this once. I'll buy a new one for myself later this week. Here's one shot of the ridiculous frankenstein setup I had while testing:

Anyway, in the end it all worked out and Bri's now rocking a kickass gaming rig

See the full gallery on Posterous

Yay! Thanks to you Shaun, we'll no longer be killing eachother over who gets to use "The" computer. Now once we get some games installed, it'll be time to lan-party it up in here.

Who Dat? Get insight on your social contacts with @hoverme @rapportive and @gist

2011-03-12T09:38:00.001-06:00

10,000 tweets and a parakeet on my head

2011-02-09T20:06:00.001-06:00

Three Wolf Moon Shirt, Clip-On Tie, and Gala on my noggin. That pretty much sums me up. I'm a professional Internetter. Thanks to everyone who's put up with me this long, and looking forward to much more fun online.

Quick cool pick, pimping out email with @WiseStamp

2011-01-28T06:52:00.001-06:00

Check it out, WiseStamp (www.wisestamp.com) is a browser addon that lets you create snappy, social enabled signatures. It has the ability to embed your latest tweet, last.fm tracks, digg, and so on. It also lets you quickly put in links to your social profiles. There's a ton of pre-rolled widgets available in the editor. I kept mine fairly simple, but hopped into the HTML editor to add a status widget from Skype, and my Gravatar pic, which both update dynamically.

WiseStamp is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and works for major web based email like Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo.

Internetting Without a Net: Personal Tweets, Unintended Publicity, and #custserv at @ATT

2011-01-13T19:04:00.001-06:00

Earlier today TechCrunch pulled a huge dick move. They took a reader's tweet stream and publicized it for their whole audience to see. Now, nevermind the moral ramifications behind this, getting permission to repost and run a story about the tweets and all that, because face it, this is TechCrunch. They did this because 1) the reader works for a company that's big in the news today 2) some of the tweets reflect poorly on the company and 3) this sort of headline will generate traffic. In the midst of all this, we have a very important lesson to learn. That is, that the internet is watching, and your attitude online can make you famous or infamous in a snap.

The spin on the article is that the company thinks you're an idiot, or at least some of the people on the phones do. To tell the truth, I can identify with the rep on this one. Customers can suck sometimes. In many companies, working the front line in customer service is probably one of the most stressful, frustrating jobs there is. It's an entry level position so everyone else in the company has seniority over you. Your access and power to actually effect change in the company is nearly nil. Every second you spend doing your job feeds into numbers and stats measuring your performance, which you'll get a constant reminder of. But despite being the very bottom of the lowest rung of the ladder, you deal with customers head-on who can be outright belligerent and expect you to move mountains for them. Basically, to paint an ugly picture, the average front line rep takes it from both ends. Morale and turnover in call centers is a huge problem, and it's no surprise that people will want to vent from time to time.

The right to remain silent.

The old adage is that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. But with a social circle of say, one hundred people on Twitter, it's probably okay to think out loud, right? Well, it'd be nice. The downside is that there's no way of telling whether something you say will leave your circle, or get misconstrued, or get you in trouble. In today's example, a stray tweet ended up sparking a PR kerfuffle in the midst of a perfect storm. Considering these possibilities, you've got some choices to make. Do you associate with your employer online? Do you make your stream private? Do you walk the line with a careful filter, or do you just Tweet like you don't care and hope nobody finds out?

When I learned that my company was launching a social media team, the first thing I did (aside from applying for the job) was go through my stream and begin erasing anything that might make me look like too much of a jerk. Once the team was assembled, I made sure they knew who I was, and what I do online. I'm lucky in that our policy actually encourages us to be honest online about who we work for. It also strongly encourages us to be good net citizens because directly or indirectly, our actions do reflect on the company. There's an element of trust there that makes you feel kinda good.

Compare this to my last job, an outsourced call center which they'd rather you don't know ever existed. An entire unit in training was spent showing screenshots of blogs that got people fired. Don't talk about work, don't get into the support forums, don't comment on blogs or follow rumor sites. The last thing they ever wanted you to do while supporting their products was care about their products on your own time. That's exactly why rogue accounts and blogs spring up talking about how the job sucks.

The takeaway.

A good social media policy actually makes it fun to talk about work online, and allows you to connect with colleagues and others in the industry. Sure, I refrain from Tweeting real nasty stuff, or at worst vague-ify some of the more humorous "moments in troubleshooting" if I absolutely must share. But overall I feel empowered and proud to be myself. Now, I'm not saying that today's situation was a result of a poor policy. I know one of the fellows behind the curtains there and he's a smart cookie. If anything, this situation was the result of a bad day, and a momentary lack in judgement which made our tweeter the target for a predatory blog. Is this person getting fired? I don't think so. While the account was shut down pretty quickly, I think that was more to protect the person than the company. I have a good feeling that when the dust settles, there's going to be a quick round of education and then our friend will be back online and feeling better about their job in no time.

Related Reading: Are Your Personal Tweets Hurting Your Company's Brand? by my good twitter friend @wordsdonewrite who will probably tear me a new one for some of my creative grammar in this very post.

Pic! Showing off with Gala for the @logitech #logitechrevue contest

2011-01-09T13:35:00.001-06:00

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]Pictured, my new G330 headset - which I'll put as my favorite. Gala's favorite is the Rumblepad 2. In the background we have my DiNovo Edge Keyboard, MX Laser Mouse, and my X530 surround sound speakers. The computer is a sweet rig, but it's all the Logitech love that makes it a joy to use.

Pics! Gala Gives you a Sense of Scale

2010-12-31T23:48:00.001-06:00

See the full gallery on posterous

So either Parakeets are tiny, or our sofa is incredibly huge

Old Tunes - These Songs are in ALL CAPS

2010-12-24T20:21:00.001-06:00

Just digging through some old stuff. These have some sort of musical merit, but lack a certain nuance. Fun though! Tin Soldiers and Traced, just loud and crazy stuff. Enjoy!

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Action_Jay_-_Traced.mp3 (2369 KB)

Download now or listen on posterous

Action_Jay_-_Tin_Soldiers.mp3 (2603 KB)

Gala Antics - The Pendant

2010-12-18T05:51:00.001-06:00

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SDV_0254.MP4 (25626 KB)

The classy little gal loves jewelry!

News Flash: Our Bird is Still Crazy (pics)

2010-12-18T05:47:00.001-06:00

See the full gallery on posterous

She's been spending a lot of time upside down lately. No idea why, but she loves it. Just hangs there, chirruping and playing with "Orange Bob". Those Kinder Surprise toys practically pay for themselves in entertainment value for her.

Twitter tools: Hashing it out with an #intro for @hashable and @bettween

2010-12-16T21:59:00.001-06:00

So late last night and early this morning I caught a handful of my contacts on Twitter talking about Hashable, getting all excited as they tend to do when something new and shiny comes up. I'd heard about the service a few times as it flitted by in my news feeds, but never really paid much attention until I saw it in use. Curious, I checked out my friends' Hashable profiles to see if this is something that might be useful to me. I'm still a little bit on the fence about that.

The idea behind this is to keep a log of your offline interactions with people, note that you've actually met and track the strength of that connection over time. The given examples are power lunches, conferences, or beers with a colleague. Great. I may love the social media stuff, but Saskatoon ain't exactly in the silicon valley. The likelyhood of my attending some big conference or event and trading business cards is about the same as getting me on the moon.

So, can a social miser make any use out of this?

Well, maybe.

The feature I'm interested in is that you can create your own tags to define as a meaningful interaction. For me, I'd note a good chat, commenting on blogs, or discovering a new contact via proxy. Problem is, I've built up a lot of these relationships already, and Hashable doesn't exactly ship with a time machine.

That's where Bettween comes in. This little beauty of a tool's been a favorite of mine for some time. It lets you enter a couple Twitter handles and see all their mentions and conversations over a given period of time. It's great for catching up when you only heard half a conversation, and interesting if you're just a voyeur. It also turns out to be an excellent way to measure your own personal connections.

See, pop just your own username into Bettween and it'll come back with a list of all the people you interact with, in order, with your most active people right up top. These are the people you'll probably want to invite into your Hashable circle right away, and begin tracking.

The next step is to somehow combine the two. Hashable aims to be a sort of online CRM, but it really only gets the data you send its way. I'd love to have Bettween's data integrated so you can view your conversations with a contact. This would be especially juicy if they used the Hashable Tweet as an anchor, and spread out a timeline from there. Any other data geeks salivating at the idea?

Just another day at the office

2010-12-15T11:54:00.001-06:00

Coworker told me to smile. Five minutes later this shows up in my inbox. We do good work here.

New Tune! A Fine Mess

2010-12-14T23:19:00.001-06:00

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A_Fine_Mess.mp3 (5171 KB)

I had this bassline rattling around in my head for years, never committed it to a full on song until now. Kind of a fun piece of butt-rock. Hope you enjoy!

Music - Old vs New (Part 4/4 - The Jayomon Beat)

2010-12-11T03:23:00.001-06:00

One day I discovered how the Slap Bass works, and the rest is pretty much history. My first time out with the rock organ as well, and some neat drums trying to create something bouncy and fun. It more or less does what it sets out to, and I was happy.

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the_jayomon_beat.mp3 (4010 KB)

Then over time, after I created several more pieces I was starting to see that this was actually kind of slow and weak. It needed a boost. So I recreated it from scratch using my current toolset and tried to make it as loud as I could. I like to say it succeeded. And I'm actually still kind of proud of what I did.

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Jayde_-_Soup_-_The_Jayomon_Beat_(Spin_Spinny_Dance_Mix).mp3 (4154 KB)

Now, that's the last of my previous rehashings. I thought I'd share these songs as a bit of a peek into how they come to be. Hopefully the next time I post it will be something completely new and original. Until then, enjoy my more polished work over at Soundcloud

Gala Antics - Extreme Close Up

2010-12-10T21:28:00.001-06:00

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SDV_0248.MP4 (6701 KB)

This cracked me up. That is all. Also, pics:

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Music - Old vs New (Part 4/4 - The Jayomon Beat)

2010-12-09T20:19:00.001-06:00

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the_jayomon_beat.mp3 (4010 KB)

Download now or listen on posterous

Jayde_-_Soup_-_The_Jayomon_Beat_(Spin_Spinny_Dance_Mix).mp3 (4154 KB)

Music - Old vs New (Part 3/4 - Into the Dark)

2010-12-09T20:03:00.001-06:00

Foreboding ambience? You got it. A nice low hum and some music box for the intro make this one of my favorites from the earlier batch of music. It picks up nicely towards the end, and the whole feel of the piece is just plain cool. Again, poor instrumentation and a lack of nuance is probably going to keep this off the top forty, but whatcha gonna do?

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back_into_the_dark.mp3 (3541 KB)

And then one day I thought hey, wouldn't this be cool if it were totally metal?

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the_thing_that_lurks_in_the_dark.mp3 (3916 KB)

Yeah, probably not. Fun, sure, but definitely missing out on the original spirit.

One more pairing to come, and probably the most successful as far as turning a cheezy MIDI into a competent piece of music.

Music - Old vs New (Part 2/4 - Isle)

2010-12-09T19:51:00.001-06:00

Isle is a piece I consider on of my first actual songs, rather than just a hummable series of notes. I found a chord progression I like, plucked some melodies out of it, and mixed it together into something with more than a single layer. Yay for teenage me. The song experiments with a couple different things, but pretty much plays by the rules set out in the first verse. Junky instrument choice (Sitar solo?), and simplified percussion are pretty much par for the course around here:

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isle.mp3 (4486 KB)

Then a year or two later I'm playing around with my guitar, find myself on those same chords and plucking out a modified and interesting variation on the same notes. I came up with a new chorus to splice in, and found myself in familiar territory pretty quickly. What I ended up with was pretty much a continuation of the original song, played in new instruments, with a couple twists and the same old beat.

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orchestrated_isle.mp3 (4865 KB)

Whether it's an improvement, or evolved in any way at all, that's up to you. Next, I'll share a remake that does a complete 180 from its original intention.

Music - Old vs New (Part 1/4 - Hidden Away)

2010-12-09T19:31:00.001-06:00

I'm going to share something with you here, dealing with how I work. You might find it interesting, especially if you also enjoy the process of putting music together.

See, digging through the archives, I have a number of old tunes from before I had learned a few basics of MIDI composition. I had the notes, laid them down, and assigned them to any instrument that would do. Usually that meant a synth pad or the 'brightness' lead. They're not sophisticated in any way, shape or form, but they do have the very basics.

Now, on four occasions I've taken one of these skeletons of tunes and remade them into something new. I reuse the basic chords and melody, change up some of the instruments and fill things out. I've pulled these up to share. My first comparison is with "Hidden Away"

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hidden_away.mp3 (3447 KB)

Originally a quiet, somber piece with only the synths and echoes. The 'message' of the song is definitely there though. Some time later, I created a meandering, ambient piece for my Creatures project. The chords naturally showed up, and I built it up into a full-on remake. I played a lot with the percussion to give a 'ticking clock' feel, and repeated one phrase of the melody multiple times before doing the whole thing towards the end.

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Jayde_-_Creatures_-_07_-_Hidden_Away.mp3 (6297 KB)

This remake is a neat example of building up from the foundation of the original song. Next, we'll see what happens when new variations come from old chords.

Gala Antics - Coin Tossing

2010-12-08T21:34:00.001-06:00

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SDV_0247.MP4 (37270 KB)

More of Gala's favorite new game. She tosses coins off the desk and aims for the metal legs underneath. She's very happy when she hits her target too!

Gala Antics - Chasing the Mouse

2010-12-08T21:14:00.001-06:00

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SDV_0242.MP4 (32955 KB)

She's a crazy little budgie...

And yeah, that's my fiancee Bri (devArt | twitter) playing WoW, logged in as a Blood Elf.

Old Tune! Welcome to Tokyo (for @ninja_phil)

2010-12-06T19:05:00.001-06:00

Download now or listen on posterous

welcome_to_tokyo.mp3 (3498 KB)

I was like fifteen or sixteen when I did this one. It's bouncy and stupid and kinda falls apart on purpose. I was making music ironically. Compared to my earlier upload, it's funny to see how far I've... no... no I haven't, actually.

New Tune - It's Snowtime!

2010-12-06T13:10:00.001-06:00

I would appear to have created my first piece of music in over five years.

Download now or listen on posterous

Snowtime.mp3 (6734 KB)

I had to fall back on a virtual machine in order to run the old-school software that I'm used to. Once I got into that familiar environment though, it was just like riding a bike. The tune itself is pretty simple, since I'm more or less just practicing and figuring out how this all works again. Something bright and bouncy for the holidays. Enjoy!

With luck I might be able to get some more of these out. it'll also land on my Soundcloud shortly, along with a smattering of my old stuff.

Vids n Tunes - Birdwatching at San Diego Zoo

2010-12-05T13:06:00.001-06:00

Resharing :) This video was originally posted on my YouTube after we returned from our vacation in San Diego. It's a series of birdwatching clips from our visits to the zoo. Edited it together in Windows Movie Maker to a small amount of pain. I actually did train in video editing, long long ago, in like Adobe Premiere version 5 or 6.

The highlight of course was this little hummingbird taking a bath. Absolutely precious:

Download now or watch on posterous

Hummingbird_Bath.mp4 (31231 KB)

As for the music, that's a tune I put together years ago, called Misstress. I'm uploading that too if you want to grab a copy. Another good chunk of my stuff is available on Soundcloud.

Download now or listen on posterous

Jayde_-_Soup_-_Misstress.mp3 (5094 KB)

As with all my music in days gone past, it's MIDI based. Sequenced in Cakewalk and output in the long defunct WinGroove. There's a big hint of Enigma in the drums, instrument choices and chord progression. Because, well, that's the kinda music that comes out of me.

Pics n Vids: Our Bird is Crazy

2010-12-05T11:34:00.001-06:00

Testing out the sharing functionalities of Posterous here. Prepare to see a lot of this little nut.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Gala is amazing. She's an only child, very playful and a little but cuddly. I'll talk about our original Pair-of-keets in a later post, but for now Iet's enjoy some of Gala's antics. Assuming the upload and transcoding is working the way we expect, this should be a video of her all riled up the other day. Enjoy!

Download now or watch on posterous

SDV_0241.MP4 (14782 KB)

Trying out Posterous

2010-12-05T10:54:00.001-06:00

Well folks, landed at another blogging tool, looks like another interesting one that I'll be playing with for a while. I've imported my old Action Jay's Desk posts and would like to just take a moment to define what I'll be doing here, at Posterous.

More than Recommendations

Originally I wrote pretty specifically about software and web services. While I'm still a huge fan of finding and trying out new things, and sharing my findings, I need to expand my focus. I'm not trying to attract a wider audience (or an audience at all) but I just felt a little stymied by the limited scope of what I was doing. I'll still share my recommendations, and those will cross-post to my old Blogger site automatically.

In the meantime, I've become active in an online community centered around Customer Service discussions. We chat on Twitter every Tuesday night using the hashtag #custserv. As it turns out, I actually have some input in this more professional arena. I might be able to put some stuff together and post it here amidst the rest.

Sharing Media

Posterous can cross-post videos to both Youtube and Vimeo. Ever since we got our camcorder I've been trying to find a good way to manage the stuff we create, adding some form of context rather than just a video being thrown up. I have a backlog of stuff from this year's San Diego vacation to put up, as well as plenty of antics from our parakeet, Gala.

I also have a place here to upload sound files. I put a bunch of my old music over on Soundcloud a while ago, but again there's no context. Besides, if I ever create something new, I'd like to share it here too.

Finally, I want a central stream to put photos. I've been playing with Picasa as a big storage dump, but whenever I go to share a quick picture, there's just way too many different places these things land without context. yFrog, Twitpic, Ow.ly, it's just fragmented and annoying. So whenever I can I'm going to use Posterous instead to pop them into the main stream.

Automatic Linking

Back on Blogger I cobbled together a system using Twitterfeed and Bit.ly to automatically grab new posts and share them around. This is built right into Posterous now, so it's going to be a little bit easier to manage where these things land.

Long Form Thoughts

Finally, sometimes I might have something to say that just doesn't fit in 140 characters. Just talking about stuff going on in my life. Nah, I'm not going to start posting teen-angst Livejournal stuff, but it'd be nice to have that sort of stuff somewhere that can mesh into the rest of my stream, and where I have total control.

Anyway, that's a number of reasons behind my landing here. Watch this space, I'll be keeping you posted.

Whip your news into shape with these RSS tools

2010-11-18T11:48:00.000-06:00

Ever get into that black hole of clicking around your bookmarks to see which sites have new content? Wouldn't it be nice if those updates came to you? Well there's a technology for that, and it's been around for a while. Let's do some RSS.

Basically, what this does is create a feed out of the updates on a website. If you think about the standard setup of any site, there's a common structure to how updates happen. RSS lets you take the feeds from multiple sites and view them in a central location. Most feeds only include the 'lead' to an article, which makes great for skimming through. And if something catches your attention, you can click through to the original site.

As far as that central location for feeds, we have a few possibilities. The mainstay is Google Reader. It's a simple presentation for your data, makes it easy to sort feeds from your favorite sites into categories, easy to read, and easy to share. I have Google Reader as the base of my RSS world, but it's not necessarily where I do most of my reading. I have a few more tools that integrate with your Google Reader that do that.

First is Feedly. This takes data from your Google Reader account and puts it into an easy to browse magazine-like layout. It gets smarter about finding good content the longer you use it, and the browser extension includes a great search companion called Feedly Mini. If you're searching out a topic that's covered in your feeds, this little guy will let you know.

Another desktop tool I enjoy is Snackr. This is an Adobe Air based scrolling ticker that runs along your desktop, giving you at-a-glance updates to your feeds from Google Reader. It's a slick little tool, though a little unstable and in need of some updates.

Next, we have Reeder for iOS. This is great for catching up on the go. Unlike some other Google Reader connected mobile apps, this locally caches stories and images, so you don't need to be online. It also integrates with a huge selection of social networks and sharing services.

So these are just three great ways to get at RSS feeds. But that's only part of the story. What about content being thrown around from sites you don't subscribe to? Stuff shared on Facebook or Twitter? Well I've got a couple other tools for you there.

First we have the option of using Siftlinks, a service that digs through your Twitter stream, pulls the links, and turns them into an RSS feed you can subscribe to. Depending on the type of people you follow, that can be pretty darn useful. That's a big dependency of course. I tried it and got a lot of links to images and junk that I wasn't really interested in.

A somewhat smarter method for getting news out of Twitter is Paper.li. This takes a handful of topics or people of your choosing on Twitter and compiles links from the day into a digest page you can peruse. It's an interesting concept, though the next step is to turn that page into an RSS feed for your reading tool of choice.

Finally, for those with a few too many friends and feeds to dig through, we have Summify. This will unite your Google Reader, Facebook and Twitter feeds and let the most popular content in your personal network float to the top. When reading articles on Summify, you get great insight as to why you're seeing it, who shared it, and how popular it is. The idea behind Summify is to cure unread-item guilt. The stuff that doesn't float to the top naturally isn't worth your time. Overall a very smart approach.

So that's just a smattering of useful tools to keep updated and harness the power of RSS technology. Got something else you enjoy working with? Throw me a link and I'll be sure to try it out!

Happy Thanksgiving! Your family will Gobble up these recommendations

2010-10-11T22:06:00.000-06:00

With Thanksgiving all up on us, it's time to gather with the family and explore the nuances of your generation gap. Aunts and grandmothers will sit the youngsters down to help cure their computer woes. The youngsters will try to explain and walk their elders through the next cool new thing which isn't actually all that interesting. And somewhere in between, there'll be a bonding moment. Or so we hope, anyway. While it's almost an unspoken tradition around family gatherings, the 'computer talk' can get swept aside pretty quickly. I often hear stories of family members tossing on a maintenance program or two and assuming that'll fix everything. As for recommendations, unless they address a real problem instead of just being 'cool', they'll be forgotten just as easily as your birthday that one year.

The point of the family 'computer talk' is to educate your family members, change habits, and help them work better with their computers - do things that they already do, but do them better and easier. Isn't that what computers were supposed to be about in the first place? So hey. let's be a little more gracious to our families this year. My Thanksgiving gift to you, I've got a couple winners to bring to the next gathering....

Manage photos with ease in Picasa (www.picasa.com)

This is a perfect one to bring up at a family gathering. You've got a handful of cameras and memory cards to put together towards the end of the festivities, and nobody's looking forward to the pain of sorting through, naming folders, making slideshows, burning discs and all those other chores that come along with being a shutterbug in this century. Take a few seconds to download this brilliant little program and you'll blow them away with the smart searching, facial recognition, one click touch-ups and smooth presentation. If you're a Facebook family, there's a readily available plugin that lets you upload directly from the application as well. Overall, Picasa's just a joy to click around in, and does a great job of stepping aside and letting you just work with the photos themselves.

For bonus points, help them sign up for Picasa Web Albums, so they can sync and share their photos online, creating an instant backup in the process.

Eliminate password fatigue with Lastpass (www.lastpass.com)

Ever watch a family member try to log into a website they haven't used in a while? Once the notepad comes out with a handful of permutations on the same password, it's time to recommend a cure. I've recommended Lastpass before and I have no problem suggesting it to friends and family again - it's a rock solid password manager that works across all browsers, and for the power user it lets you generate new, secure passwords with ease. Sure it's not going to magically get you into the website you're locked out of right now, but it can definitely prevent this sort of situation in the future.

Dodge toolbars with a new Chrome browser (chrome.google.com)

I sarcastically love how long it takes Internet Explorer to launch, especially on a system that's seen any amount of use and has the standard two or three different search 'toolbars' installed. Sure they're probably not viruses, but they are obnoxious and they do get in the way of your browsing. I'd suggest simplifying things for your family members with Google's Chrome browser. It's lightning fast and practically immune to the junk that inexperienced users tend to accidentally install on their systems. Remember to go the extra step and set it as the default browser, replacing the IE icons on the desktop and quick launch if you can.

Replace file sharing with legitimate alternatives

Sure this'll sound like a high and mighty 'file sharing is bad' argument. But consider this; I come across systems with programs like Limewire running on startup, sticking around in the background, and eating up tremendous amounts of system resources just because the user wanted to download a song once. They're a vector for viruses, crapware, and for the inexperienced user they're not all that user friendly. Sure, you can 'fix' the computer by getting rid of these programs, but they'll still want to get at content. So lets direct our family towards online streaming, music lockers, or video rental services online instead. My big recommendations here are Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com) for music, and the newly launched Netflix (www.netflix.ca) for streaming video. And if you don't necessarily need your fix instantly, my favorite DVD by mail service, Zip (www.zip.ca) is an excellent way to get your hands on a large selection of titles.

And there we have it, just a handful of new toys that the family can actually get some use out of. Set these up next time you're sat down to do your thing, and they'll love you for it. Heck, you might even get a second helping of pumpkin pie!

Feedback Loop: New ways to get heard online

2010-09-13T09:30:00.001-06:00

Hello consumer society! We're all customers, using products and services from dozens, hundreds of companies on a daily basis. Sometimes things are awesome, sometimes they're not. Sometimes you want to let people know about your experience, so you hop onto your blog or Twitter and blast your message out to a small handful of people. Then it gets swept up and lost in the stream. Bravo. Even if you got a response, you may have been one of hundreds of tiny little complaints that needed less than two seconds to recognize.

Wouldn't you like to make that interaction more meaningful?

Today we're going to take a quick step into online feedback systems. Don't worry, I'm not going to write a book about how to run your business or try to change the way things work in your organization. Instead, I'm coming from things at the other end; looking for ways for you to get your voice out to companies online. Let's have a look at some of the services out there...

GetSatifsaction is one of the big boys in this space. They work with more than just feedback. Plenty of companies actually integrate this into their support structure - watch for the floating 'feedback' button on websites everywhere. For those that don't actively use the service, there's still people there talking about pretty much any brand. It's a platform where you can give your feedback, see who else has that same thought, and connect with someone who can help you. The whole process also leaves a footprint so that if someone else comes to the site with the same problem, they'll be able to see the answer. The more it gets used, the better it gets.

SocialSmack is my second highlight. This is a logical successor to just talking about companies online and hoping to get noticed. Instead of specific feedback like GetSatisfaction, this has a more gamelike aspect of giving Props or Drops to companies. That feedback accumulates and the companies get scored or scarred online based on it. There's a social aspect to it; your story can get votes, and you have your own bank of points to work with while you contribute. It's all a nice reward to speaking your mind.

Of course Yelp can't go without mention. This shows user reviews for companies, and is most often seen integrated with search engines and maps, very frequently on mobile devices. You'll get the chance to put up some content that's viewable to any potential visitors. The site started primarily by highlighting restaurants, but you'll see plenty of other business and categories listed there now.

Highlight number four, Groubal is a service which wants to gather and direct complaints online. The site invites users to make their complaint into a Groubal, an online petition that they'll take forward on your behalf should it get enough votes. If you've ever wanted to let a company know that you're not alone in your complaint, you can put together one of these petitions, promote it, and let the professionals make sure it gets to the right people.

And there we have it, four interesting ways to get heard in the online world. Got any other recommendations? Stories of success using these or other feedback systems? I'd love to hear em!

Four online music services that will never give you up or let you down.

2010-09-05T06:48:00.003-06:00

The new iTunes is out! This time with a social network integrated called Ping. Yay? This lets you rate your music and share what you like with your friends... granted you can find em. Ping has a Facebook connect feature, which Facebook actively blocked. So other than that you'll need to know the usernames or email addresses of everyone you want to share with. Oh, and you can only do it from within iTunes itself.

So, leaving 1998 behind, let's explore some other ways to discover, hear, and share great music. Shall we?

To begin, everyone's golden child Pandora - this service builds up a radio station based on an artist or song, using very specific qualities to give you more music you might like. It's all streaming, subscription based to get rid of ads, and available in the states only. Discovery, check. As for sharing? I haven't seen the service in action for a few years but I'll be sure to check it out next time I'm south of the border.

Two on the list is Blip.fm. This one had a quick little groundswell and then fell off my radar pretty quickly. This lets you track down a tune you're thinking of and broadcast it to your followers - both on Blip, and on other networks like Twitter and Facebook. Sharing, check. For discovery, you want to be following other users with similar taste, otherwise you just get a master stream of random music, and rick-rolled with Evanescance every third song or so. Although the site integrates with your networks to broadcast what you're doing, you have no way to find out if your friends are already there. You can interact with other users in pretty meaningful ways, though, giving them props for songs you enjoy.

Three, let's hop over to Last.fm. This one's a little different. The main feature is an Audioscrobbler, an application that runs on your system and takes note of what you already listen to in your various media players. Other online music services can 'scrobble' to this, too. So the site becomes a catchall for your tastes. From there you can stream radio based on your library, or based on users you follow. You can export your scrobbler's 'now playing' status to a number of places, forum signatures, badges, IM apps. Again there's no way to find people you know, so you'll be on an island. Also, Last.fm isn't free, the streaming is a first taste sort of deal. After a while you'll need to pay up.

Finally, here's the big daddy - Grooveshark. This bad boy is my personal favorite. You can find specific songs, build a radio station based on taste, and easily broadcast a song you like to plenty of other networks. Unlike Pandora, you can take control over the playlist. And unlike Ping, The Facebook Connect function actually works. There are community functions, built in, but the Import Friends is limited to just blast-inviting people rather than finding out if someone's already there. Grooveshark has a premium service, which unlocks additional features including the ability to scrobble to Last.fm, and a mobile app for streaming on the go. These are just perks, though, and the service works fine when it's free.

So there's a handful of picks from me to you. Got another music service you enjoy? Got a way to import your Twitter or Facebook friends into -any- of the above? Leave a shout and let's get rocking!

Pimping is easy after all

2010-07-30T09:40:00.003-06:00

Take a look around. Your house, your office, wherever you are. The things around you probably reflect a little bit about your personality. Pictures, decals, action figures, post it notes, you carve out a little space for yourself in the world and it helps you feel comfortable when you're writing your TPS reports. Now check out your desktop. Aside from some low resolution photo in the background there's not much there to set it apart from the next guy, is there?

For the many hours a day we spend at our screens, there's very little that we do to really own that space. Today, we're going to look at a few ways to do so. Buckle up folks, it's time to pimp your ride!

First thing we'll be checking out is that natty background of yours. Your OS gives you a handful of medium resolution images to start with, and you can put pretty much anything else you like there. Now how about grabbing something that really pops?

I've been a fan of Wallbase for a while now. This is a huge, searchable repository of backgrounds in all shapes and sizes. You can filter your results down (and may want to, there's a lot of NSFW there!) and find just about anything you like. The website's presentation and advanced search functions make it a joy to dig around in.

That set, let's move on to everything else on your computer... the real fun stuff....

You've probably seen flashing banners and blinking ads all over the internet trying to prompt you into downloading some free tool to change your cursors, get animated wallpapers, or slick-ify Windows in some other way. Of course these are all bunk and will probably give you a virus. I'm here to tell you that there's a better way, a legitimate solution to pimping out your pc.

Object Desktop is a suite of tools from long-standing developer Stardock. I've been using these things since the Windows 98 days and have been watching them grow and improve year over year. These programs let you customize almost every facet of your computing environment. The subscription model they use gives you full access to all their components and updates for a year, and then it's yours to keep. I repeat, you get to keep whatever version you're at if you decide against renewing the subscription. That's a huge bonus over a few other software-as-a-service goons who make you pay every year (or month!) just to keep using the same product.

Of course, you'll want to renew since they intoduce new programs all the time, and the current ones are constantly evolving. Either way, several of their programs have free trials, and some are even just plain free to anyone. So you'll be checking them out whether or not you're a cheapskate. I know you will. Now, let's break them down.

Pre-Pimp vs Post-Pimp

The superstar of the suite is Windowblinds. This is a skinning program, and thanks to Stardock's tight relationship with Microsoft, it's now the de-facto solution for customization. Basically Windowblinds removes all the chrome in Windows and replaces it with... well... anything you like. We're talking a complete overhaul here, a facelift for everything from your titlebar to taskbar. And since it's been around for-freaking-ever, there's a billion and one skins to choose from. Highly recommended, especially if you're still on XP and sick of the fisher-price look of things. Vista and 7 users can also benefit, and it's fully compatible with all the cool visual tricks in the newer versions.

Clocking in second is IconPackager. This is stage two of a complete desktop transformation. You can replace any-and-all icons on your system with a completely new set. Again there's a ton of themes available, and they're usually much more interesting at high resolution than the defaults. Match a good set with a good Windowblinds skin and people will think you're on some funky new hippie OS.

Next up is Deskscapes. This lets you pop an animated background on your desktop. Since I'm such a fan of the images I get from Wallbase, Deskscapes is relegated to a slick background switcher for me. But here's the huge draw of the program: instead of just blown up video files, it has the ability to render 3D animation on your desktop background. There aren't a whole lot of examples of this just yet, but the potential is there for some awesome stuff.

Finally, we have Fences. This program lets you create regions on your desktop to sort and separate your icons. It's a genius solution to a very classic problem of desktop clutter. Everything's smoothly animated and intuitive. Plus, you can hide all your icons with a double click, and set a few exceptions to stay always visible.

These are just a handful of the tools in Object Desktop. If you're graphically inclined, the suite also includes the tools you need to create your own skins, and their community Wincustomize can give you a place to share your creations with the world.

Stardock has other standalone programs available as well, such as the cursor skinning program CursorFX, and the powerfule, maclike ObjectDock. Put together in any combination, you're sure to create a desktop that'll turn a few heads. Now stop being boring and go pimp your ride!

Consolidate Your Online Presence

2010-07-17T08:16:00.001-06:00

Social networking has blown up over the last few years, there's no doubt about that. There's dozens of sites out there that you may be a part of. Some are for keeping in touch with friends and family, meeting new people or making professional connections. Others let you share your interests, art, books, music. If there's something that you have in common with someone else, chances are you'll find a way to turn that connection into an online community.

A lot of these sites can try to find your friends from other networks, or even from your address book. That's great, but how about going the other way, letting your friends know where to find you? You might not have signed up with the same email address or user name on every network, so it might be hard to track you down. Follow me after the break and let's take a look at consolidating your online presence.

This is where personal landing pages come into play. There's a handful out there, and Lifehacker recently did a pretty good roundup (http://bit.ly/aLbXsM). They name a few different options, but my personal recommendation is Card.ly - a quick and pretty online business card. You can configure this with links to your profiles on a stunning number of different networks, as well as integrate a stream of your activity. I took some time to put a master bio on card.ly, and set it up as my personal page on nearly every network I'm a part of. This sort of consolidation serves as a great master-list of where to find someone.

My second recommendation for today, going with the theme of pulling it all together, is a neat little service called Gravatar. This isn't everywhere just yet, but basically it's a central point for a profile picture or avatar. This gets automatically associated with your email address, and any Gravatar enabled network can automatically grab your picture. This means you can change it from one central location and the new avatar filters through to all your networks from there. It's great if you're looking at creating a recognizable online persona for yourself.

Finally, this is one for the Twitterers out there. If you're like me, it's possible that you've got a much higher output on Twitter than any other network. Things will be rocking and rolling there while other networks stand by without getting updates about what you're up to. There's different solutions for each network, but since your Twitter stream is just an RSS feed, it's portable and can be easily plugged in pretty much anywhere. For the big one, Facebook, I began using the powerful little app Smart Twitter. This is a great alternative to the official app, which will post to your wall but doesn't update your status. Smart Twitter also has the ability to filter out Twitter specific stuff like hashtags, retweets and @replies. This is all configurable of course, which puts the Smart in Smart Twitter.

So that's my batch of recommendations for this week, pulling things together just a little tighter for your online self. If you're curious to see how any of these work, well, click around on my own profiles for a nice example. That said, happy surfing and feel free to drop off any recommendations you may have!

It's all About You!

2010-06-27T10:04:00.002-06:00

Ah, the internet. A vast network of sites and services for the express purpose of delivering information. You can learn about practically anything with a little bit of searching around. But what if you could use some of these services to learn about yourself? Sure everyone's Googled themselves at some point or another to see what the internet thinks of them, but that only works so long as you have some information out there for it to work with. You've seen people on Facebook doing little 'personality tests' to find out things like what Twilight character they are. Let's try and get a little bit deeper; today I'm going to point out a few interesting sites you can use to gain some real insight on yourself.

750Words - of all the recommendations I'm pulling up today, this is the newest discovery. This is based on the idea that you should start your day by writing three pages, approximately 750 words, to clear your mind and give yourself some perspective on how things have been going. Doing this regularly can have all sorts of positive effects. You might find it easier to concentrate in day-to-day life, you might be more centered, more focused on the things that really matter. Not to mention you can improve your typing speed and quality with regular practice, something that a lot of organizations will focus on.

All of these are good reasons to write regularly, but if you're anything like me, it's hard to keep this sort of thing up over any period of time. That's where 750Words' genius comes in - a reward system that tracks how many days you've managed to keep up a writing streak. Plus, at the end of an entry, you'll get a breakdown of the types of words you're using, and how 750Words interprets your mindset. It's not always one hundred percent accurate, since it just uses keywords, but those charts certainly give you something to look forward to when you're doing your daily entry.

Formspring - Another gentle encouragement to practice your writing, Formspring presents you with questions about yourself that you get to answer. Everyone enjoys talking about themselves; a sad little point of human nature. And on top of Formspring's automatically generated questions, you can have other people submit them, anonymously or not. Depending on the size of your network and the number of people who may have questions for you, this could be an exciting way to interact. If you're like me with a small group of people who think you're crazy for talking about this sort of stuff, well, it invites trolls. But it's still fun and you get to choose what to answer. It makes you really think about a lot of things that might not come up in everyday conversation.

Twanalyst - if you've been active on Twitter and interested in better serving your followers, it might be neat to see what kind of first impression your feed has on people. This service digs through your last several posts and weighs the types of words you use, how often you engage in conversations or share links, and provides some neat feedback based on this. It also spits out recommendations to improve your style.

Wakoopa - this one's a little meta, so bear with me. Wakoopa is a software tracking service, it watches what apps you use on your computer and reports back with all sorts of statistics. It's great for discovering new programs, but the main draw for me is that you can use it to track your lost time. Ever get to the end of the day and wonder why you didn't get anything done? Wakoopa will let you know it's because you spent four hours looking at lolcats. It's a great, no-nonsense tool for tracking habits and, with a little willpower, making better use of your time.

And there you have it, just a handful of interesting services to give you a good look at yourself. Feel free to try any of them out, you might be glad you did.

iTunes for Windows Sucks. Period.

2010-06-19T11:54:00.001-06:00

I was going to post some recommendations and fun stuff today, but at the moment there's nothing more top-of-the-heap than the steaming pile that is iTunes. With the release of iOS4, iTunes version 9.2, the iPad, and the upcoming iPhone 4, this is a very current concern since we'll have a lot of new adoptors lining up to be slapped around by this software. Before you get any Apple device, allow me to elaborate the amazing journey in buggery that I've been on as an iPod owner. See if any of this jives with your expectations as a computer user, and maybe consider something else.

To begin with, my original hardware was an iPod Touch, 1st Gen. I didn't buy it, mind you. I won it in a draw when I worked for Apple as a phone support agent. This was when they were brand spanking new. But right out of the gate, iTunes was a nightmare to work with. Syncing has always been painfully slow - this goes back as far as iTunes 7.4, the very first version to support the Touch hardware. We're talking twenty minutes to copy a single album to the device, and any time iTunes is trying to work it becomes unresponsive, giving a static progress bar and teasing you with the possibility that everything's about to crash.

I've been through every version of iTunes, the iPod software, and Windows, from XP up to Windows 7 and then moving to 64 bit without a marked improvement in three years. I've upgraded through three motherboards in this time, so my USB controller should not be a factor in any of this. And as for jailbreaking, this all started long before it was even a possibilty. But for better or worse, it technically worked and I accepted the slow sync as a fact of life.

So What's The Problem Now?

Things really went to shit when iTunes upgraded to 9.0.1 in September 2009. Starting with this version, iTunes picked up a habit of failing to sync outright. It would chug along, giving no report on its progress as usual, and then spit out a number of errors. Couldn't copy the file, couldn't find the file, the device timed out, couldn't sync because the device encountered an internal error. I'm scared of clowns. Charlie bit me. Basically every excuse under the sun, giving me no single explanation as to what actually happened.

That's okay, I didn't want to actually put content on it anyway

Following these errors, the iPod itself became unusable. No files would play, no apps would launch. Upon reconnecting to iTunes, I get this vague sense of deja vu.

Set up my iPod? What's wrong, iTunes, did you get stricken with amnesia? This is the exact same hardware you just interfaced with. It seems syncing now comes with a scorched earth policy. But what the hell, I'll either restore from the original software or from my backup, or use the iPod's own "erase everything" feature and the cycle begins anew.

What's Going On?

Out of curiosity, I dug into the log files iTunes generates to see if there's some sort of mojo I can figure from there. Here's what I end up with.

[3992 @ Sat Jun 19 09:33:52 2010] [_ISDVLog SyncServer.exe] Logging initialized, engine version (null) : log level 3
[4500 @ Sat Jun 19 09:34:37 2010] [(unknown facility) iTunes.exe] AMDServiceConnectionReceiveMessage (thread 5072): Could not receive size of message: 0 No error
[4500 @ Sat Jun 19 09:34:37 2010] [(unknown facility) iTunes.exe] _read_thread (thread 5072): Could not receive message: 0xe8000001
[3992 @ Sat Jun 19 09:35:54 2010] [_ISDVLog SyncServer.exe] Cancelling all sync plans.
[3992 @ Sat Jun 19 09:35:54 2010] [_ISDVLog SyncServer.exe] Goodnight, Gracie.
[4500 @ Sat Jun 19 09:39:01 2010] [(unknown facility) iTunes.exe] _send_message (thread 4348): Could not securely send message: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL errno (Bad file descriptor)

[4500 @ Sat Jun 19 09:39:01 2010] [(unknown facility) iTunes.exe] AMDeviceStopSession (thread 4348): Could not stop session with device: kAMDUndefinedError
[4500 @ Sat Jun 19 09:39:01 2010] [(unknown facility) iTunes.exe] _send_message (thread 4348): Could not securely send message size 282: SSL_ERROR_SSL (error:1409F07F:SSL routines:SSL3_WRITE_PENDING:bad write retry)

[4500 @ Sat Jun 19 09:41:09 2010] [(unknown facility) iTunes.exe] _send_message (thread 4348): Could not securely send message: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL errno (Bad file descriptor)

[4500 @ Sat Jun 19 09:41:09 2010] [(unknown facility) iTunes.exe] AMDeviceStopSession (thread 4348): Could not stop session with device: kAMDUndefinedError
[4500 @ Sat Jun 19 09:41:09 2010] [(unknown facility) iTunes.exe] _send_message (thread 4348): Could not securely send message size 282: SSL_ERROR_SSL (error:1409F07F:SSL routines:SSL3_WRITE_PENDING:bad write retry)

[2320 @ Sat Jun 19 09:46:34 2010] [(unknown facility) AppleMobileDeviceHelper.exe] _connect_to_port (thread 2408): Could not connect to USB mux port 32498 for device 4: No such device or address
[2320 @ Sat Jun 19 09:46:34 2010] [(unknown facility) AppleMobileDeviceHelper.exe] _MobileDeviceConnect_locked (thread 2408): Could not connect to lockdown port on device 279029c36fae462a7695a6320b72ee20f9ebe893.
[4396 @ Sat Jun 19 09:46:36 2010] [ASL ASL] =======================

Goodnight, Gracie indeed. It's nice to see that even iTunes doesn't know how to interface with the hardware it was designed for. It's sending messages back and forth that it can't receive messages. I'm imagining tin cans at each end of the USB cable and a pair of 100 year old men going "WHAT?" "HUH"?" "WHO?". This isn't a 2800 Baud modem we're working with here. USB 2.0 has been around for ten years. So what gives?

After a while I began to just accept the idea that the flash memory inside my iPod was becoming worn. This is what they tell you about USB memory devices, after so many reads and writes the gods of technology will begin to poke imaginary little holes in the inacessible, perfectly protected-from-the-elements internal components of your device.

But why is it that I can download apps and songs and podcasts over wifi without a problem? That would strike that theory down. I began using the RSS Player app to manage Podcasts and actually uninstalled iTunes for a while, since I really had no reason to sync anymore.

So how about the idea that the USB connector on the iPod itself is going? Well, I disproved that as well when I discovered oldapps.com and rolled back to iTunes 9.0, the last version of the program that was at least able to write files to my device in chunks larger than 40MB at a time. I've been back and forth with every release of the software since then, always rolling back to 9.0 after having my device bricked.

Maybe it's Just Old Hardware?

I recently came into another brand new iPod Touch, 3rd Generation, 64 GB. Again I won this one at work. No, I don't work for Apple anymore. It's serendipity that delivered this one to me. I most certainly wouldn't have purchased it considering the hell I've been through.

By the way, let's talk about the experience of moving to a new device. iTunes backs your iPod up on every sync, which accounts for part of the insanely long process. When I got the new iPod, I reinstalled iTunes and let the old device get backed up. As long as I wasn't trying to write files to the device, that much went through nicely enough.

Upon popping in the new iPod, I got the chance to restore it from my backup. Magically all the songs, podcasts and apps I was working with were still there, including preferences. Even my playback marker in my current audiobook. It was pretty amazing and I was happy with it for all of five minutes. Because the next time I plugged in the iPod, iTunes launched and began an automatic sync using newly reset settings that deleted my apps, music, and podcasts from the device. All without a single word of warning or opportunity for me to stop the process.

That was just mean. Especially considering that the next time I tried to sync content to the new iPod, it got bricked just like the old one and I had to restore and roll back again to iTunes 9.0 in order to fix syncing.

Maybe it's Fixed with New Software?

Negatory. Today I got a hold of the newly available iOS4 and iTunes 9.2 and I'm happy to report that while the backup portion of syncing is a bit faster, the new iPod is bricked yet again, awaiting a restore.

So How About Troubleshooting?

There's something esoteric and unexplained going on here that affects random computers running this software. You'd think that Apple has enough data from crash reports to find out what the common thread is, but nothing at all in their knowledgebase that'll narrow things down for you. They basically go through all the steps of tearing down and building back up to the exact point that it failed, so that it can fail again.

These are the same steps any phone support agent will walk you through for any issue when they have no understanding as to what the fuck is going on or how to resolve it. I should know, because I used to take escalations from these people. They're throwing spaghetti at the problem. Why generate hex codes for your errors if you can't decipher them? I'd give anything to have access to their internal knowledgebase again and see what they're not telling us users. Not that there'd be much there. Apple never really cared to support or train agents in Windows versions of their products.

But yeah. If anyone has gone through this troubleshooting and actually came out with the issue resolved, let yourself be known. If anyone has an actual honest-to-god explanation as to what interferes with iTunes' ability to sync, come out of the shadows and start replying in discussion threads where this is being talked about.

What's the Alternative?

For now, I'm rolling back yet again to 9.0 from oldapps.com and will probably need to backport my iPod's software as well since it probably won't work with iOS4. Good thing old firmware images can be had at felixbruns.de. (Another pain in my ass, Apple doesn't make older versions of their software publicly available)

There are a few other possibilities on the cusp, such as the Wi-Fi Sync app, a $10 offering for jailbreakers. ~~I haven't tested this yet so I don't know whether this works or not~~. (Update, it doesn't - exactly the same behaviour over wifi which again rules out any sort of USB issue) Another possibility is that someday, Songbird's developers will crack the code of the Touch filesystem and allow syncing with their software. If this happens, I can finally say a fond farewell to iTunes for good.

This is all very sad because while I love the interface and apps on the iPod Touch, I absolutely abhor having to run iTunes in order to activate or move data to the device. I've been in the market for a smartphone for years and this is the only thing keeping me from deciding on an iPhone. Having worked in the customer service and tech support industry for several years, I understand just how frustrating these sorts of issues can be for users and agents alike. What really bothers me is that there just doesn't seem to be any effort towards resolving this or at least explaining the problem.

So that's my adventures with iTunes. I hope this information helps others, and that maybe we can stop running around in circles and actually fix it someday.

Inroads to the 21st Century

2010-06-06T10:04:00.001-06:00

Stop right there, take off your jacket. You're not actually going out to get your entertainment from some medieval age brick and mortar store, are you? Well, before you take the carriage to the market and barter away your goats, let's consider that you're on the Internet and there's a number of online services that can save you time and money when it comes to getting your media. Yes, friends, there's more to the web than videos of cute kittens, and I've got some recommendations for you.

Movies!

Netflix (www.netflix.com) shook up the rental business when they launched their DVD-by-mail service. You begin by building a list of movies you want to see. They ship discs from this list, you watch, and send em back. They also allow subscribers to stream instantly from a number of titles to your computer or a set top device or game system.

Unfortunately, Netflix is only available in the states. Here in Canada we have their special cousin, www.zip.ca. Zip works pretty well, although they're stymied by our country's laughable post office system. There's no streaming to be had just yet, but they are reportedly working on it.

Video Games!

It's probably safe to say that PC gaming is a troubled platform. A lot of this came from a lack of unified standards in years past, wildly different hardware from one machine to the next can present all sorts of interesting issues. Those day are (mostly) passed now, and your computer now presents all sorts of possibilities no matter what types of games you like. The hard part has always been finding these games. Now thanks to digital distribution, we have immense catalogues and instant delivery.

I've been a fan of Steam (www.steampowered.com) for a while now. They host a good selection of games across all genres, and frequently offer awesome deals and combo packs. Once you buy a game on Steam, it's always available for download, even if you switch computers. Their DRM is hassle free and makes logical sense, and they have their own achievement tracking akin to current game systems. Steam recently released for the Apple operating system, finally giving Mac owners a viable source of games as well.

Another excellent way to get your vids on would be Good Old Games (www.gog.com). The library here consists of, well, good old games. All patched up and made compatible for the modern operating system. If you've got some classics on your pile of shame, here's where you can pick them up.

Music!

Like most people my age, I have fond memories of the grey-area wild west Internet, downloading individual mp3 files off peer-to-peer networks and building a library of Ill-gotten and likely virus infected gains on my hard drive. As much fun as this is, it turns out that with today's always-on Internet, I don't really need copies of all that junk if I'm able to just queue it up on command. Thanks to the upstart music streaming service Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com), that's now a very real possibility. My new online music library is as large as my ability to search out bands, albums, tracks or genres. No need wait to download files, just pop it in and go, and Grooveshark can intelligently build a playlist based off your preferences.

If you're in the States, you also have access to Pandora (www.pandora.com), a precursor to Grooveshark that's currently locked down to other regions. Whether you find this to be superior or not is up to you, but it's well worth checking out.

Books!

This may seem like an odd man out, but a good lot of entertainment can be had from the written word, and the Internet happens to be full of them. My favorite way to take in a good book, though, comes from Audible (www.audible.com). This is a huge repository of audiobooks that can be downloaded to your computer, burned to Cd's or popped onto a mobile device. You can grab the books individually, or sign up for a subscription that lets you build up credits on a monthly basis, building up your audiobook library just as fast as you can get through them.

So that's just a few ways you can save yourself a trip, keying into digital goods and making the most of the Internet. You'll note I haven't made mention of any television on-demand streaming service - mostly because the good ones either aren't available in Canada yet, or are getting shut down. If you've got a recommendation in this area that's still valid, I'd love to hear it!

Digital Spring Cleaning

2010-05-16T10:10:00.001-06:00

It's that time of year again. The weather turns around, we're refreshed and ready to get rid of the clutter built up over the last several months in our lives. With the growing importance of online services, that means we need to start looking in this direction as well while we're clearing out the dust bunnies. It's been a busy season for me, exploring and joining up with countless new services as they become available, setting myself up for an onslaught of extraneous information. The time has come for a digital spring cleaning project, cutting out the cruft and simplifying online life. Here's a handful of areas to focus on.

Unify Email Inboxes
I've currently got three email accounts. A legacy account with Hotmail still used for Instant Messenger and as a junk-catcher, a main account with Gmail, and a seldom used account with my ISP. I can catch these on my iPod, or on a desktop program, but I'm not a fan of digging all the way into one inbox for some messages, then all the way back up and into the next one. Part of my plan is to funnel incoming mail to one of these accounts, making the setup on my iPod and PC much simpler. There's two ways about this. You can either forward accounts to eachother, or use Gmail's handy ability to fetch from external accounts.

Minimize Incoming Emails
Everywhere you go on the web, you're getting opted into newsletters and alerts and all sorts of not-quite-spam that clutters your inbox and makes it harder to find legitimate email. Once I've got all my email going to one place, I'll grab a slice of them over the past week or so and begin an unsubscribe spree. This should help keep a clean clutter-free inbox for the forseeable future.

Unfriend, Unsubscribe, and Unfollow
I'm a news hound in the tech and gaming circles, and I've got a lot of that news coming to me through RSS feeds. This is all managed centrally with Google Reader, and synchronized with Feedly on my pc, and Reeder on my iPod. I also follow a number of companies on Twitter and Facebook. I've found over time that a lot of these are posting the same content on all fronts. This really blurs the lines between these services, making it hard to tell whether a company's actually engaging in my social circles or just pumping out press releases. I'm going to cull the numbers and sort these out so that I can keep my news in my news readers.

Choose What to Save, and Where to Save it
Out of the gigs and gigs of data on my computer, there's a suprisingly small amount that I absolutely cannot do without. My move to Steam for gaming means I'm no longer hoarding backup iso's, since I can always redownload a game when I need it. My music collection's seeing less and less play ever since my discovery of Grooveshark's streaming service - the MP3s that I do have will probably get wiped at some point. As for my photo collection, that's now automatically synced to the cloud with Picasa.

That leaves the files that comprise 'My Documents'. In the rawest sense of the word these are a few important files I've kept hold of for years, and should something terrible happen to my computer I'd never be able to recreate them. I've been hit by this once before, and that's why I tend to refer to myself as a once-and-future writer. Sad, I know. And that's why I learned to back up. I recently discovered Dropbox, which is a free online backup and sync system. I moved my entire My Documents folder into my Dropbox, and from there on out I'll never be worrying about data again. As a bonus, I now have access to those files online from anywhere, even my iPod.

Recover Space and Performance
I caught word of Disk Space Fan a while ago, a neat graphical tool that shows your disk usage and makes it easy to track down where all your free space is going. You'd be suprised what gigantic files you'll be able to uncover using this tool. And then, once you've reclaimed a few gigabytes, it's time for a defrag. You'll probably find free tools out there, but I love the latest version of PerfectDisk for its super quick passes, and methods for consolidating free space on your hard drive.

Lock it Up
Finally, with all the digital cobwebs cleared and especially now that so much is being stored online, it's important to ensure everything's secured up tight. For this, I made the move to Lastpass several months ago and haven't looked back. This service is quite a bit more than a password manager. On top of storing your login information, Lastpass has the ability to take a survey of all your current passwords and point out any weak points or patterns. It's also able to generate new, secure passwords to make your various online accounts airtight. I'm happy to admit that I don't actually know any of my important online passwords, couldn't even guess them if I tried. Lastpass has got me covered, and despite the complexity of the passwords it makes logging in anywhere a breeze.

Normally they don't complain if it's a little big

2010-05-10T08:58:00.001-06:00

Now this is embarrasing. I have a little problem. Might be best if you can visualize it, so here. Let me show you my thing.

This here is the Apevia X-QPack version 2. A beautiful case, what they might call a sweet ride. It's compact, yet designed to accomodate regular PC components. It's much squatter (9 inches) but a little longer (14.7 inches) than the standard case. It's also got a girth of 11.2 inches, but who's counting. For a guy like me, it fits my aesthetic taste perfectly.

Now, I upgraded to this little guy from the previous model because this time around they made it just a teeny bit bigger, just enough to fit in a regular power supply. The old one was stuck at 450 Watts, and that meant no hardcore gaming for me, since I was stuck with dinky video cards.

But stuck no longer! I finally made the plunge and upgraded to an Nvidia card, the GTS250. This one was branded by BFG tech, and here's a peek at it.

The sucker is two lanes wide, using a whole second slot for its cooler. But that's not the problem. This beauty is also a little longer than your average card. It should be proud of that of course, but it makes for an interesting fit in my case. See, the motherboard in my case sits right on the bottom. When you slap a card like this in here, this is the result.

Or for a more accurate visual on the tight fit;

Now, this is normally not a problem. It sneaks in just underneath the power supply and the bracer for the drive bays. But as it turns out, these new fangled video cards need their own power connection. I've got the cable for it, but guess where the plug on the card is?

Yeah, right under the brace that it's absolutely flush against. So for the time being, my case is sitting with the motherboard tray slid out about an inch while I figure out some feat of engineering to make it fit. The offender is this tiny piece of metal designed to cradle a second cd drive, which I don't have. It's sitting empty and I'm thinking the best solution is to break out some power tools and cut it out.

Thus is the life of a PC enthusiast. When you build your own machines you come across fun challenges like this all the time. Sometimes it feels like this happens only to me, with my unique lack of foresight. Truth be told I'm not one hundred percent sold on the performance of the card itself yet - but I'm led to believe that swapping up to a PCIe 2.0 capable motherboard will unlock the full potential, so I'll probably keep it and go that route. In the meantime, any other insight from the peanut gallery on how to mod this fat bastard into my poor little case?

Making the Hamburger

2010-05-04T21:48:00.001-06:00

Sometimes it's fun to take a step back and really see the ecosystem of services put together to make day to day stuff on the web possible. Take this blog post for example. Let's follow it through the web and learn a little about all the players involved.

First step, I'm writing this out in Evernote on my iPod. Evernote is your brain on the web, a bottomless notebook you can access online, and sync to your computers and mobile devices. It's fully searchable and useful for, well, pretty much anything you want to get at later. I like it because I can start a post on my iPod and seamlessly switch to my PC once I get home. www.evernote.com

The second step is to send the completed post to my blog, hosted on Blogger. The easiest way? Well, they allow email submissions. I can send a post straight off the iPod and have it drafted. Blogger is one of the most popular platforms for blogging, with excellent tools and an easy interface. I moved to it after discovering the email feature, although there are more than enough reasons for anyone to check it out. www.blogger.com

If I decide to add any pictures to this post, they'll be uploaded to Picasa. This is an online photo sharing site that integrates tightly with Blogger, since the two are both operated by Google. I recently started using the desktop Picasa client for managing my photos, and it provides a sleek, snappy experience. www.picasa.com

My blog's design can pull in data from other sources. One bit of data I'm happy to integrate comes from Wakoopa. This is an app that can collect data about applications you run. Being a guy who bounces between applications on a constant basis, I can use the site to discover new programs and services. Since a large part of what I do includes recommending apps, it helps to be able to see what I use. www.wakoopa.com

Now then, back to the post. Now that it's on the blog, it'll be nice to let people know about it. For that I use Twitterfeed. This service monitors the RSS feed from my blog, and whenever a new post shows up it'll automatically post a link to Twitter, which then pipes to Facebook. An invaluable service for anyone running a blog. www.twitterfeed.com

Lastly, since Twitterfeed posts to Twitter, we need to shorten the link so it'll fit in the 140 character limit. For this, they employ Bitly, which compresses the address as needed. I tend to use Bitly whenever I need to create and share a link easily. bit.ly

And there you have it, the path of a blog post. These are just the services I use, and depending on your tastes you could end up with a wildly different setup. I like the idea of mapping this sort of stuff out though, even if it's just for the fun of it. Any other services you use to streamline your online output? Post suggestions in the comments.

Clearing the Attic

2010-05-01T08:46:00.000-06:00

So I've had the Desk blog hanging over me for a while, realized I don't have as much time to focus on the topic I originally chose. I love integrating apps and web services, but I'd rather not narrow myself to just that. I've cleared out the old posts and will probably pop on here occasionally.

In the meantime, my work with the Desk has helped me discover great services, moving my digital world outside of a closed ecosystem. I'll continue to recommend stuff as I find it, but the actual official topic of this whole thing, well, that's forthcoming. For now, follow me on Twitter where I'm bite sized, concise, and much more frequently active!