follow up on demotivation.

if you've made your way to this post, please ensure you've read this one first. 


look what arrived in my inbox today! awesome analyst is at it again with the wondrous poster below: 

we've been killing ourselves to assemble this complex workplan in Microsoft Project (at the express request of our client). if you've ever worked with Project, you know that it is way more cumbersome and confusing than it needs to be. example - i opened the latest file today and all the dates were changed because the file had decided to auto-schedule itself! now i've spent the morning rescheduling previously correctly scheduled tasks. that seems worth my time. 


in other news, i'm pretty sure that awesome analyst is in the wrong line of work... 

huey (minus lewis and the news)

1. i love lamps

2. i don't love chameleons BUT

3. how could you not love this color copying/changing chameleon lamp?!

i am told that through the magic of two white LEDs, Huey lights the surface he is on, and then uses an optical sensor to determine the correct color. just sounds like magic to me. however it works, i'm pretty sure i need this as a nightlight.

ps: to witness the awesomeness of this color changing lamp yourself, i highly recommend that you watch the video in the link above.

i need this beet right now.

so, i am new to the land of iPhones. but in general, i am pretty obsessed with keeping my stuff, especially electronic stuff, safe and happy. even the screen on my slr camera has a little protector. so, i've always been really impressed with these fantastic sushi iPhone covers:

it protects my stuff, but also looks awesome. this designer on etsy has other amazing cases like the above - my personal favorite is the one that looks like a cassette tape. but then gizmodo showed me another source of cell phone cover amazement today:

that's right. dress your little blackberry or iPhone up in a cute, jean overall situation! hopefully this post comes just in time to help someone out with their last-minute holiday shopping.

urkel grue.

do any of you guys/gals use google voice? way back when, i jumped at the chance to get a google voice number, but now that the dust has cleared i realize there is no way in heck i am telling everyone in my life about a new cell number. i actively work against that idea! even in new york, i kept my 847 number, the same cell phone number since my first pink nokia cell phone in high school. so, ugh.

through a lot of research (and emailing the nice folks at lifehacker), i figured out that i could still use the google voicemail service. after a few quick setting changes, all voicemails are now sent directly to google voice, and i get an email with the transcript and audio of the message. i dont know about you guys, but i hate listening to voicemails. i dont know why, but there is something about it that just feels arduous and arcane (almost as bad as when i have to use a fax machine). they always get lost in my phone, there is no way to file or save them or mark as unread. i'll get a voicemail about something i need to deal with later, but then just forget about it because it sits lurking in my "saved messages". with google voicemail, i can see the email notification right away, read the transcript and/or listen to the audio, and then either save it neatly within my gmail folders, keep as new or whatever. just like email.

the hilarious part is that the transcription isn't perfect. you can pretty much get the gist of a message, but i wouldn't rely on the transcription alone at this point. last night, i called myself to leave a voicemail just to test out the transcription. the voicemail i left was my shopping list. when i spoke very clearly (as you would when reading a list), it captured everything perfectly. but when i stumbled, trying to remember what other items i needed, the transcription got all crazy. the last bit goes: "was St. That'sit, titles". Not sure what google was trying to capture there...

the moral of the story is, i would definitely recommend it to anyone who would like to be able to organize their voicemails... at least, what few voicemails you still receive these days. please feel free to email me if you'd like me to walk you through the steps!

happy pre-deceberween.

if you don't have a clue as to what deceberween is, you haven't been visiting my favorite site, homestarrunner.com. definitely, check it out.

also, please enjoy this thanksgiving cartoon from a few years back. one of my favs. happy turkey day!

bah!

had to tape up my phone due to false message indicator lights. how did that come on if no one called me, and i have no messages?! more importantly, how do i turn it off??

now might need an iPhone...

due to this new app. more importantly though, can it tell me if i'll like the rabbi, the service, the songs, the people, the area, the classes.... and where is the nearest and yummiest kosher restaurant??

what up me!

e: you're famous
me: i am???
e: you're one step ahead of the approval matrix

does this look familiar to you? looks like nymag thought it was cool too, and put it in their approval matrix for this week. yea, i'm awesome.

mystery box.

great talk by JJ Abrams at TED about mystery boxes.... a very cool combo of technology, movies, magic, filmmaking, lost.

at least i'm in the top 10%.

woke up this morning to an email from "tim", the founder of pandora. among other things, he notified me that due to costs of royalties, pandora will begin capping monthly usage at 40 hours. he says, "most listeners will never hit this cap, but it seems that you might." damn straight i will, tim! i listen to pandora all day every day at work! his "first option" seems ok - paying 99 cents for unlimited listening after you hit your 40 hour monthly mark. but i am not going to start getting a membership to pandora. the beauty of it is that it's free! at least tim says they'll show you a counter, so you can see if you're starting to get close to your 40 hours. i'll keep listening, since i love it so, but does this piss anyone else off? what will the economy affect next??

at the end of his email, tim says to "please feel free to email me back with your thoughts." maybe i will....

bad week for celebrities.

also a bad week to be an iranian voter, but that's all fallen by the wayside since reports were confirmed that michael jackson has died. to this day, one of my absolute favorite things to do is listen to the thriller record with those huge headphones and just zone everything else out. i think it's very easy to remember mj for his recent legal and financial trouble, but when you look back at some of the videos.... that guy can perform.

this article is pretty great. considering i found out about mj being dead (well, at that point only tmz was reporting his death; everyone else was only reporting cardiac arrest) through twitter before i left work, the blogosphere moved quickly on this one. pretty amazing to think of what his super-super-extreme star potential could have been in the age of twitter/fb.

a few concerns now... what happens to his kids? from coverage i've heard today, it sounds like he truly loved them. i hope they will be taken care of properly. also, does he still own any of the beatles catalouge? where does that go? who now owns the mj catalouge?

i would highly highly recommend the following:

• beat it
• black or white (skip to about 2:20 to bypass the macaulay culkin semi-ridic intro; don't forget to catch tyra at the end)
• i want you back (some delightful jackson 5)
• thriller (obv)

as much as i normally hate the 24-hour talking heads, i've been glued to cnn (and twitter and tmz and people). i'm sure there will be more here in the following days as more details are revealed, especially the autopsy which seems to be schedule for tomorrow.

do you know your colors?

what color are the spirals? if you say pink, green and blue, you're wrong...

they want to do what?

my brain cannot even begin to understand this. according to cnet, a "facebook movie" is in the works. does this make sense to any of you? i just can't figure out what this movie would be about. would it just be about a guy who sits around and we watch him post pictures, create invites and add new friends? why is this even a suggested movie?! of course, the powers that be already want michael cera to star. i think that makes sense, but then i remember that the movie's entire concept makes 0 sense. boo.

skweeeeeee!

would it be inappropriate to make this picture the background on my phone?

geeky gifts requests.

wondering what to get the lovely geek man or lady in your life? getting nervous because my birthday is around the corner?

fear not! gift guide coming your way!

brass-knuckles mug! (i'm drinkin' my coffee, bitches!)

lawn charger device. charges your ipod/iphone/camera/spy gear and hides those annoying cords! also gives your phone a grassy place to rest after a hard day updating your twitter.


old-timey bluetooth handset. love your cell phone but hate cradling that slim, flat thing between your chin and shoulder? connect your cell phone to this handset, and you will be in old-timey phone comfort once again!



LED umbie. even though the point of this is saftey (i can see in the driving rain, and would-be, hit-and-runners can see me), you've got to admit it's pretty darn cool.



please refer to thinkgeek for more ideas. i basically want everything.

viva la vida?

just a quick note to ask:

do you like coldplay?

if so, definitely check this out. and if you just like free music, you should check it out as well.

this also teaches us (well me, at least) that there are definite benefits to twittering...

need a little organization in your life?

is your monitor at work clouded by a mass of post-it notes? (Uh oh - flashback to 1997 - Um, well, ordinarily when you make glue first you need to thermoset your resin and then after it cools you have to mix in an epoxide, which is really just a fancy-schmancy name for any simple oxygenated adhesive, right? And then I thought maybe, just maybe, you could raise the viscosity by adding a complex glucose derivative during the emulsification process and it turns out I was right.) do you make lists, maybe on the stickies program on your mac, but then can't remember/access the note at work? what's a person to do?!

evernote is the answer, my dear friends. not only can you access it online through their site, but you can also download programs to your devices (pc, mac, blackberry, iPhone... palm pilot anyone?).

cool thing #1! your notes will sync up to ALL OF YOUR LOCATIONS. so, if you are at your work computer and you add a note through their online site, it will be waiting on your mac program when you get home! if you upload a picture note on your blackberry, it will show up on your pc at work! this would even be enough for me (dayeiu). i always make lists and need to update them and have them where ever i go... but short of carrying around a 5-subject notebook, this is the solution!

cool thing #2! evernote can search text in pictures! (this even made the IT dudes at work go googly-eyed.) if i take a picture of your business card, i can search in evernote for your name, and up pops the picture of your card!

additionally, you can have tags and different books of notes (like i have a separate one for work-related notes). i've been using it for a few days now and i think it's quite delightful. let me know if you try it and how it works out for you!

mind = blown.

just had the coolest lecture at work (one in a series of "tech lectures" at random house). it was given by nick bolton, who works in the r&d labs at the nytimes. basically his whole job is thinking about new technologies for content, layouts and access to information. um, how do i get that job? he also worked on the website/video content for david carr's book the night of the gun. (he also just seems like a nice, cool guy.)

if you want to know more about the future of flexible newspapers that can customize content based on the street corner you are standing on (and how it will cost less than the paper newspapers that you can buy now), be sure to keep an eye on this guy. (or just follow him on twitter, if you're into that sort of thing.)

pretty sure i need this.

check out the article for various other cool contraption ideas.

twitscience.

it makes me so happy when i find cool little articles that combine so many things that i loooove. case in point: the article i happened upon on cnn.com today about twittering and science. (basically, if you add "and science" to the end of anything, i'll like it.) they posted an article about a scientist who is trying to make a twitter client where you can post to twitter just by thinking. hello, 21st century. apparently it's used by viewing a series of letters, picking out which letters you want to "type", and then concentrating on the word "twit" at the bottom to post your message. not only is this just ridiculously awesome, they hope that it can be used by people with brain-stem injuries and locked-in syndrome. of course, locked-in syndrome is what afflicts the main character in one of my all-time favorite books, the diving bell and the butterfly. (it's also a true story. i'd highly recommend it. the movie is pretty good too - not as beautiful and heartbreaking as the book, but is one of the only movies to ever make me cry.)
this really seems to suit twitter, even for normal people. i'd love to be able to just think of something and immediately post it to twitter. usually by the time i actually sign on to twitter and type it out, i've changed it a few times, and it isn't as witty as my original thought. though if i had to go all the way to the twitter science lab to use their new-fangled machine, that could really cut into my posting time. i guess i'll just have to stick to the old fashioned way...