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Happy Thanksgiving!

Today I will be gorging myself on some delicious foods, well actually I will be gorging for two days, and I will be with family whom I love, and giving thanks for all our many blessings.

This week we have been fortunate to have my brother in law Jay and his family in from Arizona. During their visit we were able to do lots of things together like, play the
Wii Resort on the Nintendo Wii, go to the movies to see New Moon from the Twilight Saga, and play some golf out at the Dogwoods Golf Course. While we were out there I thought it would be a good idea to come back one one day and jog the cart path for exercise.

I figured we would use our iPhones along with RunKeeper and chart the entire thing. Well to our surprise it was amazingly difficult with all the hills so we only did half of it. The first 9 holes was a little over 2 miles.

Yes it was hard!

Well I am about to get ready to go visit some family and do some eating. I might have to run the golf cart path again before the week is out!

Oh one more thing, do not forget that Amazon.com is having an all week long Black Friday with new deals each day.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

March 4th, 2009 | My Thoughts, Videos

Welcome to Wednesday, or Humpday as many like to call it.

Today I wanted to share a video clip from a movie that actually didnt do so well at the box office but eventually had a massive cult following once released to DVD.

The movie I’m talking about is Donnie Darko.

It’s a really cool movie, that I highly recommend if you get the chance to pick it up. Its too hard to explain what it is about, so you will have to visit the links below if you want to know more about that.

What I think I like most about it is that it “makes you think” and its also set in the 8o’s and I like that too.

Donnie Darko Wiki
Official Movie Page for Donnie Darko

Clip from the film Donnie Darko starring Jake Gyllenhaal

So what the Heck is RSS?

And why should I care?

Good questions. First, here’s why you should care.

Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation.

You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be “taken off the list.”

One click, and poof… the subscription is gone.

Plus, since there’s no email address involved, there’s no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you.

That’s right… no more spam, viruses, phishing, or identity theft. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher’s intentions.

You won’t need to suffer through the legalese in the privacy policy (if there is one) looking for loopholes that will send you deeper into inbox hell. No more setting up dummy Hotmail accounts “just in case.”

Again, if you don’t like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel. With just one click.

Pretty cool, huh?

That is cool! Umm… What the heck is RSS?

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Alright! Now we’re ready to get to that part.

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.

You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed – you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

If you actually want to know how RSS works, click here.

What the heck is a feed reader?

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon.

If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you’ll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters.

Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a Feed?

First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets).

If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process (like Copyblogger and many other popular sites), you’ll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. This is the new standard RSS icon:

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):

Finally, you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription function.

Hopefully this last method will soon disappear, never to be seen again.

In summary: RSS solves BIG problems.

So there you have it… RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.

The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter.

If there’s anything here that is confusing, or you have a question, please contact me and I’ll be happy to help!

Thanks to Copyblogger for a helping hand with this tutorial.

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Blackberries are nice, no great, in fact it seems like everybody has one these days right?

One of the nice features that comes along with the blackberry is the push email comes along with it. You get an email address like [email protected] when you subscribe to the pda plan with ATT. This is fine, but what if you do not want to tell all of your contacts of your new email address? That could be a real hassle. 

Instead how about setting up gmail on your Blackberry and making it so that it acts the same as the push email that comes along with it.

Setting up Gmail

One of the faster ways to use Gmail on your Blackberry is with the installable Gmail application. I will explain the fastest way later on in this post using a sort of gmail “push”.

To download this free app, visit http://m.google.com/mail from your Blackberry web browser. 

Then, launch the application with the red “M” icon from your Blackberry home screen or from the applications folder. 

If you also have a personal username@gmail.com account, you can add it to this application so you can access both Gmail and Google Apps email accounts from the same place. 

Hotmail and forwarding.

Ok so you havea  hotmail account and want to get your emails on your blackberry, well its not super simple because Microsoft makes you pay for IMAP/POP access. I suggest just getting a gmail account then forward your hotmail to that then your gmail to your blackberry. To do this, once you have a gmail account setup, just login to your hotmail account and look for Options > Forward mail to another e-mail account then enter your gmail email address.

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NOW IF YOU WANT EVEN MORE FUNCTIONALITY…

To get that “push email” type feeling with gmail, like your blackberry.net email address gives you, first go here https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=mycingular&locale=en 

Log in with your blackberry username and password or create a new account.

Once you are in, you will see your valid blackberry email account. Choose Edit, the REPLY TO will be your gmail account.

Now log into your gmail account.

Click on settings, then Forwarding and POP/IMAP

Enable pop and imap if they are not already. ITS FREE WITH GMAIL !!!

Choose to Forward a copy of incoming mail to yourusername@att.blackberry.net and leave a copy in gmails inbox

Thats it – done.

What this simply does is allows you to get your gmail emails as soon as someone sends them to you and you will not have to constantly log into gmail from your mobile to check.

The emails will be essentially pushed to your mobile like the emails that are sent to yourusernam[email protected] already do.

In even simpler terms. When someone emails you at your gmail address, it will get forwarded to your blackberry address which is pushed to your blackberry mobile instantly. Then when you reply, the user will see that it came from gmail and when they reply you will get it instantly. 

I recommend users to never use hotmail as they do not allow unlimited space (gmail space grows daily), you have to sign in at least once every 120 days so that your account doesn’t get deleted, and no pop3 access. In general they just suck.

Setting up Yahoo

Yahoo! Mail is one of the most popular solutions for web based email. It’s easy to see why, it’s got a decent spam filter, lots of storage space, and it’s been around forever. But to get access to POP and forwarding, you need to upgrade to Yahoo Plus, currently about $20 a year.

Fortunately, there’s a way to get your Yahoo email on your Blackberry without upgrading to Yahoo Plus. And if you’ve upgraded to BlackBerry Internet Service 2.0, it’s extremely easy to set up. Now you can get your Yahoo Mail sent directly to your Blackberry from your free account.

Once you have upgraded to BIS 2.0, you can link to your free Yahoo Mail account either by using the BlackBerry device or by using the web page for your BIS. 

From your BlackBerry, there should be an icon called “Personal Email SetUp”. Launch that application and a web page will appear where you can log in to your BIS account. If you don’t have an account yet, you can create one right from your Blackberry.

Once you have logged in, select the E-mail Accounts link. This will take you to a list of your existing accounts. Click the link to add a new account, and then enter in your Yahoo Mail email address and password.

If successful, when you navigate back to your home screen, a new icon will appear for each email account that you set up. Congratulations, you have now linked your free Yahoo Mail account with your BlackBerry! This same process can also be used for Gmail accounts as well, but the gmail app is nicer.

There is some sort of yahoo app available, but I have no experience with it.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/bb/mail/get 

Other nice things to install while we are at it are:

Google Talk

There’s a handy Google Talk application that lets you see who’s online and instant message with contacts from your BlackBerry. 

To download and install Google Talk for free, visit http://www.blackberry.com/GoogleTalk  from your BlackBerry web browser. 

Then, launch the application with the Google Talk icon () from your BlackBerry home screen or from the applications folder. 

Google Calendar

You can sync information in Google Calendar with your BlackBerry calendar, so whether you add new appointments from your phone or from your computer, you always have access to your up-to-date schedule. 

To download and install Google Sync for free, visit http://m.google.com/sync  from your BlackBerry web browser.

Google Docs

To access your documents and spreadsheets when you’re not at a computer, you can sign in to Google Docs from your BlackBerry web browser. 

Just visit docs.google.com/a/your-domain.com , but remember to replace “your-domain.com” in this address with your actual domain name.

Hope this article was informative to the many blackberry users out there worldwide.
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To all the cellphones I’ve loved before you just can’t hold a candle to the iPhone…..sorry.

Yes I now have a shiny new iPhone and I love it. I was against getting one when they first came out, because it lacked so many things I thought a cellphone should have.

Some of these things were:

No copy and paste No video recording No voice/memo recording No Multimedia Message Sending No Removeable battery No 3G Connectivity No GPS No Voice Dialing No MP3 as a ring tone No Over The Air Downloads No integration with MS Exchange No Office support for Word and Excel docs

There are probably some things that I am forgetting but you get the idea.

At the time when it came out I had the Nokia 6682 and it did most of those things, so I just scoffed at the $700 price tag for a 4gig iPhone that dint do as much as my current phone did.

It is also worth saying that it’s always best to not buy anything in its first year production.
You should let the manufacturers work the kinks and bugs out of new products before you buy them.

After the second generation iPhone came out, some new things were added. Better battery life GPS (really good I might add) 3G Connectivity Exchange Support Office Support

Over the Air downloads (FW2.2)

There is still no Voice Dialing, Video Recording, or MMS but really these are features I find myself not using much at all anyways.
As my contract was coming to an end I was thinking about getting an iPhone but they were still high in price so I got the BlackJack II red.

I liked this phone with its Windows Mobile. It was easy to hack and make it do just about anything, but it was still Windows and there were times when it absolutly drove me mad. It would get slow at times and there were lots of errors to where I would have to remove the battery completely to recover from it.

I kept telling myself that my next phone would be an iPhone when my contract expires.
They are now $199 when you re-up your contract. Unfortunately for me, its a long time before that happens and I was really wanting to get one asap since I new several people that had one and after I messed with it some I really grew to liking it more and more. If I were to buy one out of contract it would cost $399…ouch.

A stroke of luck just happened to come my way. I had for the longest time a 1975 Vintage Fender Telecaster Bass that’s been with me for about 20 years. It was beat up and in need of some TLC from someone that like to restore these things. It had been in once closet after another, to under beds, to being in the city storage for over 2 years.

We decided to try and cut some costs around the home and that storage facility was one of them. We had a large garage sell and I had a few items left over that I didn’t want to include in the garage sell. One of them being the bass guitar.

I took pictures of it and contacted Morrison Brothers Music in Jackson, MS to see if they bought old guitars and they did. They just wanted to see some pictures so I emailed “Clint” some and never heard back from him. After about five days I called and talked to someone else. I sent the pictures to this new person and Clint one more time. The newer person I talked to responded, but Clint did not. I waited 2 more weeks and decided it was time to post it on eBay.

I talked to a good freind on the matter and he said that its possible that I may could get between $400 and $700 for it.

I started the auction at $700, thinking that wow if I sell this I will get me an iPhone easily.

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I scheduled it to post around Wednesday and finish on Sunday. Stats have shown this is best for optimal selling and it had worked for me in the past many times over. I did this on a Friday early in the afternoon. Later that evening I decided to go ahead and list it and let it run for 10 days becuase I didnt think I would get many hits on it since it was in such bad shape. I figured it needed the most time I could get for it to be on eBay.

I listed it and not 20 minutes later I got an email from a buyer asking me if I would change it to buy now and sell it 3x what I had listed it for.

It didn’t take me long to think about this. I took it and had the money in my paypal not long after. I shipped it immediately the next morning and he was very happy with it.

I was now able to get my iPhone and also get one for my wife! She is a phone power user so she really needed one and has loved hers thus far.

I just love this device. I am really glad I waited awhile before getting one.

The GPS on it rocks! Its fast to get a lock. With my blackjack II you would have to get a lock before traveling at speeds of 60mph or so, but the iphone does it regardless of speed.

I love the wifi. I am practically around wifi all the time so this is really nice.

I have yet to do it, but it also has tv out on it so I can plug it up to a TV and watch one the movies I have on it, or share photos.

This is something that the ipod video could do from the get go and the first gen iphone never did. I don’t understand why they didn’t do that with the first gen but they have since corrected that and I am glad.

It also syncs really well with my Tom Tom GO 730 for hands free talking while in the car. I just leave my bluetooth on all the time and it connects as soon as I get into the car.

Its integration with Microsoft Exchange Server is great. When my wife and I left the store, we went to eat chinese, and while we were eating, I connected to exchange work server and pulled in all my contacts and emails in a snap. Gmail was even easier.

Also since the new 2.2 upgrade via itunes, the battery life has tripled it seems!

I am really amazed at the easy of use of this device. I could go on and on but I think I will save some of my thoughts for another post.

Check out this cellphone time line of mine.

September 22nd, 2008 | Informational, News

If you didnt know already Travis Barker (Blink 182, Meet the Barkers MTV)was in a horrible plane crash Sunday and I just found this video on youtube, check it out.

WOLO-TV in Columbia South Carolina has video today from the dash-cam of a police car outside the fiery plane crash that claimed four lives, but somehow spared Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM. They also play a 911 call and you can hear Barker, who suffered burns on his torso, pleading for help.

UPDATE the video I posted originally got yanked by YouTube so I posted another.

August 22nd, 2010 — For Sale, My Thoughts

I decided to sale my TomTom Go 730 since I no longer use it.

This item was used for 8 months, purchased brand new.

Specifications are: Audio – Internal Speaker – Yes Battery: Battery Life Up to 5 hours operation Connectivity: Bluetooth® for hands-free calling – Yes Aux output – Yes (connect to car stereo, use as mp3 player) FM transmitter – Yes GPS: Highly sensitive GPS chipset  – Yes Memory: Internal memory – 2GB internal flash memory SD Slot: microSD card socket compatible with microSD cards Screen: screen size 4.3″ (11 cm) screen type 16:9 LCD: widescreen Screen resolution: 480 x 272 pixels Size & weight Size: 118 x 83 x 24 mm Weight: 220 grams

Comes with USA and CANADA maps already installed and you can update the maps by connecting to the internet on your computer while its in the dock.

This item comes in the original box with windshield and/or dash mount, desk dock to computer, and car charger,

If you would like to purchase this from me please contact me using this link.

I am asking $180.00

February 25th, 2009 | Informational, Videos

Over at Vimeo, Jonathan Jarvis has created a ten-minute film that offers an overview of the credit crisis. If you’ve been struggling to understand what went wrong with the American economy, this will give you some of the basics:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

September 5th, 2008 | Informational

Once again I’m writing a post to help give a little publicity to a website I built.

The business is called Grenada Taxidermy and as you can imagine, they mount/stuff animals.

They do all kinds, from small items like Squirells to even larger items like Polar Bears

Give the site a visit and check out the gallery to see some of the works being done.

Click Here to Visit Grenada Taxidermy

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August 22nd, 2010 | For Sale, My Thoughts

I decided to sale my TomTom Go 730 since I no longer use it.

This item was used for 8 months, purchased brand new.

Specifications are: Audio – Internal Speaker – Yes Battery: Battery Life Up to 5 hours operation Connectivity: Bluetooth® for hands-free calling – Yes Aux output – Yes (connect to car stereo, use as mp3 player) FM transmitter – Yes GPS: Highly sensitive GPS chipset  – Yes Memory: Internal memory – 2GB internal flash memory SD Slot: microSD card socket compatible with microSD cards Screen: screen size 4.3″ (11 cm) screen type 16:9 LCD: widescreen Screen resolution: 480 x 272 pixels Size & weight Size: 118 x 83 x 24 mm Weight: 220 grams

Comes with USA and CANADA maps already installed and you can update the maps by connecting to the internet on your computer while its in the dock.

This item comes in the original box with windshield and/or dash mount, desk dock to computer, and car charger,

If you would like to purchase this from me please contact me using this link.

I am asking $180.00