Entries from September 2007 ↓
September 28th, 2007 — Family, Health, John, Shannon
Today has been a great day all the way around.
Today is Shannon’s birthday, she’s on a rare day off from work, and we just had really good news at John’s weekly doctor’s visit.
Perhaps it was a birthday present for Shannon. As I noted on an earlier post John’s platelet levels while taking prednisone steroids have shown the strongest positive reaction out of all the treatments he’s been on. On the other hand, the steroids haven’t kept his platelet levels up any better than others. In fact, as we completed the last week of his month long prednisone course last week his levels had gone all the way from 160K down a month ago to 38K last Friday.
Dosage during the last week had gone down to 5mg a day with 2.5mg administered twice a day after breakfast and dinner. Surprisingly Dr. Gowda decided to keep John at the same dosage during this past week and Shannon and I expected to see John’s platelet levels drop even further.
John actually went back up to 47K this week even though we maintained the very low 5mg dosage. This marks a first. John’s platelet levels have never gone back up on their own or without giving higher levels of drugs. Dr. Gowda summed up our feelings perfectly “this is good news.”
We can’t predict if John’s levels will stableize, continue to climb, or go back down but this gives us the first peace of hopeful news since we’ve begun.
Happy Birthday Shannon!
Tonight, we’re off with the whole clan to Rosa Mexicano in Palm Beach Garden’s – one of Shannon’s favorites (me too!)!
September 26th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek
September 24th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek
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A great blog of old photos. Fascinating imagery.
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Here’s a solution that allows you to give web-based Powerpoint Presentations running off of your own web server. No need to pay for webex anymore if all you need is presentation sharing. This DOES NOT share desktops of web browsers.
September 18th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek
September 17th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek
September 16th, 2007 — Uncategorized
I've been mulling over some recent information I found online at The Guardian Unlimited about the difficulties we're experiencing in deepening our online relationships with social networking tools.
These problems with online friending have captured my imagination and so I put up a post called "Will you be my friend" a week ago on my personal blog julians.name. In my attempts to be spontaneous and unedited (my vlogging policy) I misrepresented some of my true thinking on this topic. Perhaps a better way of saying this is that my current thinking is in flux. I'm feeling my way through this stuff just like many of you.
I intended that post and a follow up (this one) to be published on our business blog exceler8ion. Here it is.
Here's a summary of the content and some show notes.
First, a correction 'You can't teach an OLD dog new tricks." Just had to get that out of the way.
The video is 18 minutes but HOLD on!
Ouch.
That's better.
The good news is that I've made a significant number of my points in the first 6-7 minutes which isn't too terrible. You'll have to watch the whole piece if you want to hear my personal example of attempting to friend a colleague of mine – Shel Israel, co-author (along with Robert Scoble) of Naked Conversations who sent me to his blog to read his Facebook friend policy after I tried to connect with him on Facebook.
Here's the top 5 for people who don't have time to watch:
TOP 5 FRIENDING TECHNIQUES
How to deepen relationships through social networking tools and social media.
- Be active not passive
- Make one-to-one contact
- Respond to questions
- Play is central
- Pay attention to people (visibly) Thanks to my lovely bride Shannon!
The rest of my video discusses these points in more detail and recounts my experience to date with friending Shel. 
Jules
September 16th, 2007 — Music
For pretty much all of my waking life that I can remember I’ve loved music. There is no passion that runs hotter through my veins. But that passion hasn’t ever translated to learning to read, write, and play music.
After 38 years of life the time has come for me to do so. I’ve debated between the piano and guitar since they’re both instruments that you can solo on well and also write music with which is a main goal of mine.
I tried to play guitar when I was about 11 but I completely underestimated the reality of the hard work of practice that learning music requires. I believe I have the staying power and a life full of want, desire and pent up music creativity to drive me forward now that I didn’t possess back then.
I was going to go with Piano because of a recommendation from my friend and long time musician Dan who played harmonica (his first love), guitar and then Sax (his current love). Dan said you couldn’t go wrong with either but that the Piano might give me a better sense of playing, reading, hearing, and visualizing music (my own interpretation of what Dan said). I looked at electric pianos and keyboards but ultimately for what I want they’re all a bit too pricey for me.
Then I had a good idea. I dug my old cheapie Hondo Fender Stratocaster ripoff from 1980 out of my closet all got all set to take it to Guitar Center for some TLC. Unfortunately it’s been rusting in its case since it’s days in Fremantle and the heat from various garage storings has left the area around the pickups warped. It looks shot. It’s also left handed – like me – and I really want to try and play right handed. Huh? Lots of reasons. Bigger selection of guitars, more low priced offerings, and I think an interesting right/brain left/brain challenge (if music itself wasn’t already)!
There’s another practical purpose. I’ve owed Shannon a guitar since her 26th birthday when we lived in Alameda. I almost bought her one and then did something else. It’s a long running joke that I still owe her that guitar. In any event I reasoned that if I went right handed she could play it as well. The final reason for a righty-guitar are my kids. I really want my kids to love music. And so far they do but I want them to play as well. All my kids are right handed. Max, 16 has already started (I got him an Epiphone Dot two years ago). He hasn’t played much but he’s still toying a bit with it which is better than nothing.
Selecting my guitar. Price and quality of sound were my two criteria. I also wanted all acoustic because I want to do something that completely contrast my online life. I did what any online geek would do. I researched the hell out of really good inexpensive acoustic guitars. Every review I read mentioned the Canadian made Seagull S6 – usually as their top pick.
I called up Guitar Center and spoke to David yesterday. I asked him for his pick for the best three inexpensive and great sounding acoustic guitars. He talked about some Parkhill guitars (think I have the name wrong) that sounded really great and also Yamaha and Seagull. He closed by saying what a lot of people say about the Seagull S6 online. To paraphrase: I bought the Seagull S6 as my beginning guitar and I still love its sound, even compared with guitars I now own (insert blank name of really expensive two or three thousand dollar guitar here). I listened to a lot of acoustic guitars and my ears confirmed the Seagull is amazing, and for a list price of $369 US. With a stand, bag, picks, strings, tuner, and guitar strap we settled on $430 out the door. I think that’s pretty amazing considering how little you can get these days for four-hundred bucks.
I’ve started reading a guitar and music book and have strummed my first notes. Played Twinkle, Twinkle little star to John and Julia last night for bed. They loved it! They’ve also been unable to separate themselves from playing it. Fantastic! I think I’ll go down and buy them both a small kids guitar today so we can make some music together.
Dreams can come true. Wish me luck! I’ve got to learn to play so I can put some notes to the song lyrics I wrote a while back (yeah my first song – Area code).
September 12th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek
September 12th, 2007 — Cool, Gadgets, Internet, podcast, Podcasting, Technology
Hurry GrandCentral guys please fix this one ASAP!
I’m addicted to GrandCentral, the one-number service that rings all your phone numbers at once plus a whole lot more. I’ve got a bug to share with my fellow GrandCentral users and a few points that you might find helpful in using the service.
Don’t miss my GrandCentral call recording hack at the end of this post – you can use it to keep your service providers honest when you cancel their service and they later magically deny having heard from you.
First the bug
The problem comes if you disconnect one of your phone lines and forget to update GrandCentral. Like a lot of other GrandCentral users I typically have 3 to 4 phone lines hooked up to my GrandCentral line:
1) home
2) office
3) primary mobile
4) secondary mobile
My secondary mobile is the one that I use to evaluate mobile phone carriers and phones. It changes frequently. The other day I disconnected my latest trial phone with a Helio Fin (awesome features / boring as hell) and Helio Drift (fun as hell but missing a few things) and forgot to take the number out of Grandcentral.
The result? Complete failure.
No ringy dingy on any phone even though ALL my other lines were operational. If my friend and I hadn’t been IM’ing I would never have known. GrandCentral, please fix this. I recognize that people don’t all carry second cell phones and change them all the time but your GrandCentral users DO change their numbers – it’s a primary reason people want a SMART number platform like GrandCentral in the first place.
I’ve used one-numbers or SMART numbers for a long time. I still use Accessline as my drop-dead-reliable-one-number and so does IBM. Er, I guess that means I have two one-numbers which is kind of sad. But I’ll keep Accessline for the $20 a month I pay for it until GrandCentral is completely out of beta and 100% bug free. Then there’s the question of what Google will do to GC. Hmmmm, let me guess – text link ads everywhere on the web site and voice over ads when you call in to check messages. That will drive us to pay money for their service just to shut the ads off. No problem, I’m in!
And here’s why I’ll pay.
Three things I love that are unique about GrandCentral
- Lets you transfer live calls to your other phones. You need to walk out the door to a meeting or to get your kids and you’re no longer chained to your office phone. Never be late again.
- Let’s you record in-bound phone calls for podcasting or the ultimate in note taking (don’t worry it tells your callers even if you forget to, saving you from an embarrassing trip to jail). I have a hack for this for outbound calls (see below)
- Listen in to callers leaving you a voicemail with the ability to pick up and take the call at anytime. It’s like your ol’ mechanical answering machine from 1982 but without the fake wood grain and all the vagaries of microcasette tapes.
The outbound call recording hack for GrandCentral
aka AT&T/Sprint/Verizon/Comcast/Adelphia/Time Warner/DirecTV
YOU’VE BEEN P0wned
Now on to that hack for recording outbound calls. These instructions sound convoluted but they’re really not. If you can handle using two phones and a web browser then you can do this. The only requirement is that you have two phones and since you’re interested in GrandCentral this should be a no-brainer. These instructions assume you’ll make the outbound call from a land line at your home or office but it works with any combo.
- Login to GC web site and head over to settings
- Uncheck your land line phone from the list of active phones (you don’t need to delete it – just uncheck it so it won’t ring when someone calls your GC line)
- Now call your own GC number from the landline phone you just unchecked in your GC settings
- Your cell phone rings. (power user tip: put it on vibrate for a cheap thrill)
- Answer your cell phone, it is YOU after all. Now mute your cell phone.
- Now from your land line place a three-way call to the person/company you want to record. Don’t forget to join the calls – usually by hitting the TALK or CALL key again on your phone keypad.
- When you get your party on the line explain that you want to record the call. Then hit the 4 key on your cell phone (hitting 4 on an inbound GC call turns call recording on).
- Record away
- When you’re done you can simply hang up both of your phones or you can hit 4 again to turn call recording off. If you want to turn call recording on/off during the call just use 4 to toggle. Great when your client wants to trash their boss!
Since Google purchased GrandCentral they’ve demanded that GC avtivate an automated greeting when you turn call recording on to prevent untold litigation against the Googleplex. Smart move since call recording is illegal in some states when you don’t tell the other party you’re recording them.
about that jail thing…
Now, I’m not suggesting that you do this, but for those of you in states where IT IS legal to record conversations WITHOUT telling the other party you can always turn call recording ON at your cell phone BEFORE you make your three-way call. The message about call recording will come on but since you haven’t dialed your other party they’ll never know. Now you three-way the person you want to call and record. Again, user-beware, check your own local, state and federal laws before considering this.
Keep in mind that the power in call recording really serves you BEST when everyone knows. It’s not just a question of staying on the right side of the law. For example when you turn on voice recording for note taking purposes both you and your other party relax. You both know that you won’t miss something important. I use this all the time with web site design so I can make sure I’ve nailed down all my action items. And if you’re podcasting it’s really easy to download the file from GrandCentral and then edit it in your favorite recorder.
Second, when you’re calling someone like a service provider to get help or cancel your service you WANT them to put their best foot forward. Call recording DOES that. If you cancel, you can rest assured that the customer service rep who has just heard a message saying that they’re being recorded WON’T “forget” to cancel your service. And if they’re bold enough to do so, or if they make an honest mistake, you have a record of your conversation.
No other smart number service has ever had this much power. It’s no surprise that Google bought them. Keep up the good work GrandCentral.
p.s. If you need a beta invite I’ve horded a few.
[tags]Grandcentral smart-number, one-number, call-recording[/tags]
September 11th, 2007 — Daily NetTrek
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For all of you pained by having to send large files to and fro on the Internet there’s a good alternative out these days called yousendit. Try it for free with files under 100MB and pay for file delivery on files up to 2GB! Holy cow batman!
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Oh good god this is seriously fantastic!
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I love this.
