e-Tools Quick Take...

Just a quick update, here:

I found a work-around for Blogger's inability to keep completed tasks from showing up in my "Blogs to Be" sidebar gadget. This was coming from a Remember The Milk task list, and has probably only been read three or four times in the correct manner. I found out how to change the feed from Atom (default) to RSS, and now it works! At least there is a workaround for Blogger's ineptitude.

Since my favorite browser, Flock, has now integrated the photo sharing services of Tinypic into its Media Bar, I have signed up as well. Another member of my household has been a longtime user of this service, for stuffing her blogs full of pictures, so I have some catching up to do.

I've added a Digg feed to the sidebar, but unlike the gadgets referencing the most popular articles on Digg, these are just my own most recent diggs. You're here (all 2.5 of you) to read my spewage, so you deserve to see the "garbage-in" side of me as well. Look for "What the heck is kEnny reading?" on the right.

...

On a somewhat unrelated note, something funny happened between last night and this morning. On a whim I decided to look up the ShamWOW guy, Vince Clortho Offer. I found his Wikipedia page and used twitter to make note of it. This morning I got an email from twitter announcing that _VINCEOFFER_ was following me on twitter! How very interesting!!

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Sunday Morning Musings

I've been working long hours lately, getting to work some time around 6:00am so I can leave at an early enough hour to enjoy the company of my family. This has somehow been accomplished without the help of an alarm clock. I'm really not sure how I managed to do it, but I like that I can get up early in the morning without disturbing anyone else in the house with blaring noises.

That leads me to this morning. I'm up with nowhere to go, so I figured I would use the opportunity to write a little.

I'd like to lay out some of my thoughts on living with a burgeoning writer. I have always enjoyed writing, but haven't felt much need for an outlet for it until Allison came along. She and her friend Chris, whom I am happy to claim as my own friend too, have helped me realize more of my own enthusiasm for writing than I knew I had. This has led me to find new uses for tools like Remember The Milk. I have a list, which you can find in the kEnny's Tasks section of the sidebar, to show future topics I might write about. I really love that I can simply add something to that list whenever I feel inspired, then pick up that train of thought when I have time later.

I'm learning that living with a writer has its own challenges. Allison needs more time to herself, just like anyone with a "real" job might need to travel to their place of work to actually grind through the particular chores of their occupation. For her to write at home, this comes in the form of some isolation from the frenzy currently defining our children (and probably myself as well). She will find it easier to have a chunk of time during the day to work once the kids are both in school, which she might be looking forward to just a bit. The nice thing is that she has a wide selection of mood music to choose from and a nice place from which to write, with a fairly large workspace and a big window close by. I don't think she would have been able to throw herself into it nearly as much if we (that should really be she, but I did try to help a little) hadn't kept an eye out for her workspace since we moved into the new house.

Her excitement has been rather infectious, and I'm really glad to have been a part of it.

-I should also add at this point that I love the dawning of the new day. I've written the previous words in the last forty minutes, and just noticed that I can see the light starting to fill the sky. One of my favorite morning-time memories is from about ten years ago. The cubicle I occupied at the time, with my current employer, was on the fourth floor on the eastern side of the eastern building of the campus. This put us up above most of the trees for a good distance at the time. The spectacular thing that made the memory special was the way everything above the level of the cubicle walls was lit in golden brilliance as the sun came up. Just sitting in my cube during sunrise, I could see the air shimmering over my head. Really amazing stuff!-

Thanks for letting me share!

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E-Tools that don't Cinco el Buque

(I've been trying for so hard to find the name for part 5. Please forgive my lingual mutilation)

This time I'm going to discuss some specifics in using Twitter and Remember The Milk. They seem to be the services that my friends and family have the most problems with. I'm going to start with Remember The Milk, as it is more immediately useful to those who might feel a little daunted by the two at first glance. I seem to be most successful when I can demonstrate the cool stuff first, then encourage the newbs to try it out for themselves.

Remember The Milk is all about lists and how to access and add to them. Checking off items can be useful as well, depending on what you are using the lists for. Lists, or any items within them, can be made public or shared with people that have been added to your RTM Contacts (they have to be RTM users as well. I keep finding new things to make lists of, things that are genuinely useful! The kicker here is that you can access your lists via SMS (with the help of Twitter), mobile web browser, your desktop computer's browser, and even news feeds.

My big thrill for friends and family is Birthday Lists. Everybody is trying to figure out at the last minute what to get somebody for their birthday. We can near-completely solve this by simply populating a list and publishing it. Any lists you have published can be seen by anyone on the web, and has it's own news feed as well. I have shared such a list here. You can see that it is pretty sparse right now, but hopefully you get the point. Now you know what I want for my Birthday!!

An example of using news feeds can be seen in the sidebar. Look for "kEnny's Tasks - Blogs To Be" on the right. This is my list of reminders for things I want to write about. The list is hosted by RTM, but now you can see it from my blog.

How about your favorite books, or books you want to read? Make a new list for the ones you haven't read yet, populate the list with books you want to read, then check them off as you finish them. You have just made a new list of recently read books, that can be added to your blog. it gets updated automatically as you add them and mark others complete. You can move the best ones to a "Favorite Books" list and add that to your blog as well!

I love movies, and I love seeing them in well equipped, modern theaters. Ever since the early nineties, I have avidly watched previews to find the next movie I need to see, then kept the lists to remind me of what I wanted to see later on. I first used PDAs of various sorts for this. I stopped being quite so much of a geek (I mean by whipping out a PDA and typing or writing on it during movie previews, the rest is kinda hard to wash off) when I found a companion to enjoy movies with. Now that I have RTM and Twitter, I am doing it again with my cell phone, which isn't nearly so out of place. At home, I can go through the list of movies and use IMDB to add opening dates, websites, and any other details. Weeks later, RTM sends me a reminder for the movies opening that day. It shows up on my cell phone as an SMS message, courtesy of Twitter, and my email inbox. If I miss a movie and it isn't in the theaters any more, I move it to my movies-to-see-at-home list, and the due date is removed. Now I can watch for it to be available on TV or DVD. I would like to eventually connect that one to a TiVo Wishlist or Netflix Queue. That would be sweet! WAIT! I'm going to add that to my to-do list right now!

I also love music. I've spent a lot of money on music over the course of my years as a bachelor, but in acquiring extra mouths in my household I have come to realize that the same money is better spent elsewhere. I'm very lucky that the popularity of MP3s popped in not long before my first household companion showed up. The good part about having other ears in the house is that I get exposure to music I might not otherwise ever come across. The bad part is that I don't have anywhere near as much spare time for uninterrupted tune-browsing as I used to. Now I can make a note right away for music I need to look for. At my computer is where I can sort the list contents. In my spare time I can see where those songs or artists lead me. Music ID services and HD radio data are also very informative sources for artist and song information, and I'm looking forward to using those to automatically populate my music list in the future.

I'm moving next month, so I started a list of all the big stuff we have to ensure we have the proper facilities to transfer them to the new house. I shared the list with Allison so we both know what we have in front of us.

When I've got a bill or other important matter to attend to in the near future, I send it to RTM, so I don't forget. It only takes a minute to make the note, and I don't ever have to worry about misplacing it.

Does it get better? Yes. Using tags and locations (RTM integrates Google Maps), you can connect items from multiple lists. There's a multitude of ways to manipulate data in RTM. Sign up now, then go here for help setting it up. You won't regret it.

Next?

This is where Twitter comes in. At its core, Twitter is known as a micro-blog. You can send short messages to update your status, and you can "follow" your friends' updates at the same time. Many services (like RTM, duh!) use Twitter as the glue between you and their operations. This population is what gets me excited about using it, because Twitter is so connectible to begin with. You can send and receive updates (and therefore message to the other services) from the mobile devices via text message, email, IM, and their web page, to name only the direct methods. There are scores of other desktop gadgets and programs that can do it as well. My favorite-est browser, , has Twitter functionality built into the sidebar. Between my phone and Flock, I get all the Twitter love I need.

Twitter is smart, too! If you set it up for multiple interfaces (IM, SMS, and Web), it can figure out the best place to contact you. When you have a message coming in, and you aren't logged into your IM service, it can go to your phone. If you designate hours when you don't want Twitter sending Tweets to your phone, it only leaves them in your log on the web for you to check on later. You can also selectively enable alerts from certain folks and services so that you are not totally inundated with incoming Tweets all the time. That was the part that took me a while to catch on to. Every time I added a new entity to follow, I also had to enable their alerts to come to my phone. After that it all works great!

I'm only following one actual person on Twitter: one of my sisters, whom I have suckered into trying it out. I follow 2 services: RTM and Xpen$er (which I haven't done a whole lot with yet). I have also set up two accounts to post to, using Twittermail, that I follow. Twittermail allows you to send an email to post to your Twitter account, and is great for coordinating activities for large groups of people. Anyone who knows the correct address can post comments or directions to everyone following that account. One recent example of such coordination was protesters trying to get face-time with the Olympic torch. I have set one up for use during a week-long family reunion this summer, and another to help coordinate resources at work. You can follow updates from your favorite political candidate, and many other entertaining and informative people.

That's what I've got for now. Tune in later to see what title I come up with for the next installment.

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An Update in General

I've been busy lately, but not here exactly. I started two new blogs that more adequately address some of my desires for outlet of late.

The first was Pushing Wool, a place where I do my part to hinder or help the larger coordinated efforts to pull the wool over our collective eyes. Having been trained throughout my life to be suspicious and look for ulterior motives, I feel well equipped to address these issues. I know there are many other worthy places to look for such illumination, but I think most of them have either jumped the shark and/or been swallowed by the gigantic loom of lies and misinformation.

The second blog, which I just kicked off a few days ago, was something I had been considering for a long time. It wasn't until somebody came out and said I should write for one of the beloved car magazines, that I really considered giving my own thoughts on the topic more than just lip service (because I really can talk about cars all day long). Once given the nudge, I was determined to give it a name both clever and self-centered enough to meet or exceed the standards set by my other blogs. I finally came up with Autogotistical Carpinions.

In the process of becoming inspired on the spot for topics about which to blather on about (see?), I've been trying to utilize any possible tools at hand to make it easier to keep track of my thoughts for expounding upon later. I'm now using Remember The Milk for that purpose, via Jott or by SMS via Twitter when I'm on the go. When I organize my task inbox later, the blog ideas get filtered into their own list, which you can see the contents of in the sidebar of this blog and both of the new blogs. This was my first attempt at using the news feed from a list of reminders. I like the fact that you can make some of the static blog content a little more dynamic without too much babysitting.

So that's what I've been up to. Keep an eye out for more from each blog. I'll probably be adding a news feed for each blog on the other, for a little cross-promotional action.

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kEnny's E-Tool Fourvarites!!

These are my mobile phone essentials, compiled over the last year and some, since outgrowing my Motorola RAZR V3. They are somewhat tailored for use on my Sony Ericsson K790a Cybershot Cameraphone. Yes, I called it a Cameraphone with a capital C. My rule is that if it has more than 2 mega pixels and a REAL flash, it gets a capital C. Get one for yourself and you'll see why. There are a few available now with 5MP sensors as well.

Daily Use Tools: These are the programs and websites I use every day, to keep in touch and up to date.

• 4INFO: While it is a very capable source of information for mobile browsers and SMS related queries, I primarily use 4INFO to give me my morning weather forecast on the weekdays. The infospace supplied services for AT&T Wireless still suck for regularly scheduled alerts.
• Twitter/Remember The Milk: I don't use Twitter other than to connect to Remember the Milk, for which I am contually finding more uses. I just recently added lists for Movies and TV shows to see, gifts to get for people, and music to take another listen to. When I happen to catch a movie, I can type in the names of the previews to add to the list. When I'm listening to the radio in the car, I use Jott to tell RTM who I need to listen to again (because I try to make a concious effort not to take my eyes off the road). When my kids start asking about all the neato cool stuff they have got to get, as told to them by various children's television networks, I can keep track of those as well. RTM has a very easy to navigate mobile site, which really shows off how flexible their service is. As a side note, Remember The Milk just got whole lot better by using a Firefox add-in to integrate closely with your Gmail Inbox. Very sharp!!!
• Jott: I have to check in at Jott's website every week or so for new Jott Links. My favorite new one is called Trapster. Sure, Trapster has their own software that runs on your GPS enabled mobile device (mine is not yet), but if you just want to do your part and look out for your fellow drivers, you can use Jott to send the exact location and type of service spotted to Trapster's database, in a safe manner!
• GrandCentral: Since starting my E-Tool monologue, GrandCentral has graduated to the only voicemail service used for my cell phone. After re-enabling the internet access for the phone, and realizing that calling AT&T's voicemail counts against your anytime minutes (during the daytime of weekdays), I realized that I could keep a few more rollover minutes by using my unlimited Media Net access to check my voice mail visual-style from GrandCentral's mobile site. It took a little digging, but I found the generic GSM commands to send from my phone to change from ATTWS voicemail to GrandCentral. *** Know what makes this cool now? I can give my GrandCentral number to anyone, and it will either screen the call or forward it to my cell phone (or any number of other phones I specify), based on my preference. When I can't answer my cell phone, same thing! The links to the voicemail messages are sent to my Gmail inbox, just like my Vonage voicemails, and both services send SMS alerts to my phone.
• Weather Underground: This is the sexiest website for weather, hands down! Not only does it give you an amazing amount of information (lots of great Google Maps mashups), but it has advertising for meeting single people in your local weather area too!! I use their RSS feed to get detailed weather predictions each day.
• Google's mobile services: Where do I start? Headlines via RSS, Gmail and Google Maps from Java applications, and browser bookmarks for local movies. Of special note is Google Maps. They added the ability to triangulate your location based on cell tower data, allowing remarkable fun watching the map move when you aren't driving. It is also handy for looking up directions. The directions can start out from your approximate location. You can also get loads of information via SMS queries.
• Blogger gets special mention apart from the rest of Google, as my phone has software made specially for it. Blogger can be configured to send SMS, MMS, and other picture messages from my phone (directly after taking the picture, even) directly to the Blogger blog of your choice. Since I only use Blogger, there's no problem.
• Fandango: While I have been hesitant to use Fandango previously, due to Regal Cinemas as Comcast relations, I have to admint that they have a pretty good mobile portal. They have the only movie listings I have found where you can view show times for future dates. You can even purchase tickets from your mobile.
• Yahoo! Go: This is one I've been following for some time, but still isn't available for the firmware version on my phone. I had a chance to try it out on a Samsung Blackjack, where it worked really well. Yahoo! Go packs in all kinds of Yahoo! content in an easy to navigate package. If you are a Yahoo! user, this should be at the top of your list.
  

That does it for now. You can expect part five when I come up with a clever way to phrase the title. :^)

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