What I'm Droiding

Banjo	Social	Trying it out
Angry Birds	Arcade & Action
QR Droid	Productivity
Listen	Media & Video	Free	June 13, 2011	Complete
SoundHound	Music & Audio
Twitter	Social
Foursquare	Social
Skype	Communication
c:geo geocaching	Entertainment
HootSuite	Social
Yahoo! Messenger	Communication	Not so useful anymore
Facebook	Social	Chews up my battery tho!
Evernote	Productivity
Google Reader	News	Doesn't pre-synch for me very well.
Barcode Scanner	Shopping
Google Translate	Tools
Hintdecoder	Communication	Codebreaker
Google Voice	Communication	It's a shame that the GVoice app does not have it's features.
Hashable	Social	Better than Bump!
Google Docs	Productivity
Smart Compass	Tools
Sound Meter	Tools	Is it loud in here or just me? Now we can know for sure.
Graffiti	Tools	I've loved it since the Palm Days.
Camerawallpaper	Personalization	Fun, but battery hog.
BarClone	Lifestyle	No testing yet.
Seismos	Tools
GeoCache Calc	Tools
YouTube	Media & Video
Google Books	Books & Reference
Sleep Bot Tracker Log	Health & Fitness
codeREADr – Enterprise Scanner	Business
Bump	Social	For iPhone events.

Help A Reporter

I recently got a chance to help a writer on a story about CRM.

The site helpareporter.com pairs experts with reporters who need sources. Peter Shankman runs the service, which is only available via email.

There are also other services that have similar goals, I'll post about them later.

I'll see your pair and raise you trips...

I'll see your pair and raise you trips: 

Network work

I am looking for a few suggestions. Contact me via email or via the comments.

1) Is there a good alternative to TimeWarner or FIOS in Manhattan on 26th St.
2) Can anyone recommend a good low-cost dual-WAN router or firewall?
3) Who do people use as their WWW registrar? I'm thinking of moving mine.
4) Can someone recommend a good WordPress ecommerce back end? I need a good gateway for a friend with an Intuit Merch account.

Thanks for any advice. I'll update this post with the referrals.

My last name played with Google's Les Paul Search

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tune=IAFJiQDGGGMA

Loew's Theater Becomes Latest Business to Go Dark on Third Avenue - DNAinfo.com

Local news:

Loew's Theater Becomes Latest Business to Go Dark on Third Avenue - DNAinfo.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Business Cards

I get a lot of business cards from tradeshows and I am really appalled at how bad some of them are.

People are spending lots of money to make them spiffier and stand out more, but they really just make them tougher to work with. Many people have business cards scanners and people are even using their camera-phones to collect cards these days and these weird black on grey color screens really make it tougher on the eyes and the machinery to keep my rolodex up to speed.

So here are my tips:
1- Use dark type on white cards to make reading them easier. Use a bigger font for your name so you can use it as a name tag in certain venues when needed.
2- Keep it simple. Don't put the magna carta on the back. If you do want someone to keep it in their wallet, put something useful on the back like a local map or calendar of upcoming events in your industry.
3- Keep the graphics conservative. In some businesses a photo of yourself is expected, so that makes sense. Having huge graphics or swirls just make them tougher to read in nightclubs.
4-Use normal card stock so they are easier to scan in a machine and fit in my wallet. Unless your Kevin Mitnick and can afford stainless steel cards.
5-Use multiple cards for multiple events. I give vendors a card with my info@ and voicemail #s because they always call at the wrong number and I do not want the spam to appear on my cellphone. I also have cards for personal friends and college alumni so that stuff does not appear in my office email.
6-Include links to your social media like twitter and facebook if you are using them for professional purposes.
7-Include a link to your IM or freebusy information so I know when there is a good time to contact you and we don't spend days in telephone tag.

That's all for now. Email me anytime for more personal advice. -M

Ringing the closing bell @ NYSE

http://www.nyse.com/downloads/2010/09/Cbell090110.mp4

Http://mameres.com
Sent from my iPad

Loaner

I need the grey part on the desk when you're thru with it

PC house cleaning and backups

I'm reminding people to use online backup services like carbonite and mozy to backup their pc's and to also test recovery once per season. We recently recovered some small files with carbonite for a friend, but it would not restore an Outlook pst file. There were other backups for the email and contact information, so it was not critical, but the question why still remains.

I'm also recommending Google contacts and calendar to backup your cellphone info. They work great with services like Google voice too. Ask me for more info if interested.

Tried to teach Ginger how to use the iPad today...

... But she didn't get it. Maybe a net book would be better for her...

Home Thermostats & Doorbells

Since I am an engineer, my wife thinks that I have the tendency to overthink things. A recent discussion led to the topic of advanced thermostats. This company has a few interesting ones. I like the idea of connecting it to a home-automation system so that it turns the yard lights on at the same time that it goes into night-time and day-time power saving modes. The other feature I'd like to see is a built in panic alarm that calls you if the temperature drops below or above a certain point to protect your pets in an emergency or allow a remote control to tell it to warm the house up, we're on our way home.

I also looked into advanced doorbells, this one rings your home phones with caller-ID that indicates which of many possible intercoms is ringing and allows you to speak with the person before running to the front or back doors.

What I'm iPadding...

... in no specific order and with no specific reviews. (Ratings are from iTunes)

The best discovery this week is being able to skype and make phone calls from it. The user experience is like having a conversation with a picture frame with a disembodied voice of the person in the picture.

AIM for iPad, v1.0.2, Seller: AOL (4+)
SoundHound, v3.2.0, Seller: Melodis (9+)
Beat the Traffic HD, v1.0, Seller: Beat the Traffic (4+)
Whistle Phone, v1.10, Seller: Vail Systems, Inc. (4+)
fring, v3.0.0.7, Seller: fringland Ltd. (4+)
Eye Chart Pro, v1.0, Seller: Manu Lakkur (4+)
Urbanspoon for iPad, v1.0, Seller: Wanderspot, LLC (4+)
Pocket Pond, v2.0, Seller: JOHN MOFFETT (4+)
Ancient Frog LE, v1.13, Seller: James Brown (4+)
uHear, v1.0, Seller: Unitron Hearing Limited (4+)
Hearing Check, v1.0, Seller: RNID (4+)
foursquare, v1.7.4, Seller: Naveen Selvadurai (4+)
LinkedIn, v3.1, Seller: LinkedIn (4+)
ScanBizCards Lite Business Card Scanner, v2.71, Seller: Patrick Questembert (4+)
Skype, v1.3.1, Seller: Skype Software S.a.r.l. (4+)