I discovered a helpful section on Lifehacker today. They’ve tagged a whole series of articles called “Google School.” These entries provide helpful tips on searching. I like it, so maybe you will to.
Pilgrim Notes
Reflections along the way.
Author: dougfloyd (page 47 of 65)
Creative Labs beat Apple to the patent office by just months on the original MP3 players. When I bought my MP3, I chose Creative for the 40GB disc space and the dramatic price difference from i-tunes. Obviously iTunes rules the market. Creative and Apple have been fighting this patent battle in court, and they finally settled. Creative gets 100 million from Apple plus they can start creating accessories for i-Pod.
Looks like Apple is the real winner. iPod will continue to soar, and my poor Zen Nomad wander off into obscurity.
Thanks to Lifehacker for pointing me to this nifty add-on to Gmail/Firefox users. “Getting Things Done” is an organzing tool for your projects, to dos, etc. Great for keeping tasks and such organized and easily accessible. Check it out!
In Andrei Tarkovsky’s beautiful film Nostalghia, a Russian poet is seeking inspiration in Italy. In the midst of his creative struggles, he longs, aches for the homeland. He is homesick. The question is, “Where is home?” He may be longing for something much deeper than a city, a street or an address.
Ronald Rolheiser offers a Chestertonian meditation on the question of home, that I found inspiring.
Home is a place in the heart, not a bloodline, building, city or ethnicity. Home is that deep, fragile place where we hold and guard what’s most precious to us. It’s that place where, in some dark way, we remember that once, before we came to awareness, we were caressed by hands far gentler than any we’ve met in this life and where we were once kissed by a truth and a beauty so perfect that they are now the unconscious standard by which we measure everything. Home is where things “ring true,” where what’s most precious to us is cherished, the place of tender conscience, of intimacy.
Be careful of private information on public wifis. NY Times offered an interesting article yesterday about the dangers of travelers using the Internet in the airports or other public wifis. For anyone who travels, this is worthy caution to make sure you are properly guarding your info.
“Someone may have some software on their computer that allows them to look at all the wireless transactions going on around them and capture packets that are floating between the laptop and the wireless access point,” he said.
These software programs are called packet sniffers and many can be downloaded free online. They are typically set up to capture passwords, credit card numbers and bank account information — which is why Mr. Vamosi says shopping on the Web is not a great way to kill time during a flight delay.
“Where I’d draw the line is putting in your bank account information or credit card number,” he said, adding that checking e-mail messages probably is not that risky, but if you want to be cautious, change your password once you are on a secure connection again.
Using business center computers also involves dangers:
Last fall, InfoWorld magazine published an article about a security researcher who managed to collect more than 100 passwords, per stay, at hotels with lax security (about half the hotels she tested).
Michael Totten interviews a peace activist in Israel. But don’t expect him to sound like an American peacnik.
“I think what’s different from our peace movement,” Amichai said, “from the peace movements in the United States, in other countries, and in Europe is the question of serving in the army. Peace movements are usually pacifists and they don’t encourage their members to serve in the army. The Israeli peace movement believes that Israel would not exist if we didn’t defend it. There is a slogan that’s going around: If the Arabs put down their arms, there will be peace. If the Jews put down their arms there won’t be any Jews left. And I think there’s a basic truth to that.”
If you’ve got a moment, this is a worthy read.
Sounds to good to be true, but the buzz is that Steorn creaetd an energy source that produces free, clean and constant energy. Their inviting testing of their concept now. We’ll see.
If this is true, I want to put one in my Cadillac!
My dad sent me a link to WorldCat, an online catalog of resrouces from over 10,000 libraries. You can search books, music, DVDs and a variety of other formats. I like it because I find instantly locate all the editions of a particular book. Plus my search for Van Morrison turned about books about him, DVDs, and more. Rock!
After signing up and waiting for a Writely invite (and never getting one!) Writely announced today that anyone can now sign up for an account. So whoever wants to test another online writing tool,
check it out!Update: I checked it out. Disappointed that I wasn’t a part of the exclusive pre-release testers. While most of the features are similar to the other online tools I’ve mentioned, it does have an interesting collaboration tool, so multiple authors can work on a doc. And it can save in OpenOffice format. But for my applications, I still like ThinkFree the best.
I came across another article on customer-centric thinking today on Click Z by Heidi Cohen. Cohen relates a story of planning her summer vacation online, making reservations, and then canceling after reading a bad review. She later received an email asking for more feedback about the cancellation. This causes Heidi to wax eloquent about how small hotel managers are very sensitive to online ratings and work hard to listen to customer needs so they can make sure their customers enjoy the service.
The rest of the article lays out a few tips for listening to customers, gathering information and applying it. I appreciate this current focus on customer centrism and usually try to follow what people are saying about it. The trend toward customers seems like a good thing.
Especially if is for real.
Listening is an art. If I listen to a customer just to figure out a plan for the best way to manipulate them to purchase my goods, I may not listen for long. Or they may not speak for long.
Granted most of us listen to other people for selfish reasons. It is hard to listen for the sake of listening. This is challenge of turning and facing another person in all their ambiguity; valuing them as unique person; and listening to what they say (without immediately figuring out how to use or retort it). Our culture has little time or capacity for really listening, but if we learned it, it might change our lives.
Can this kind of listening work in business? It depends on the business model. Does the business exist for pure profit? Or are there other reasons? Under some models, a company might be willing to lose some profit if it means listening and responding to some genuine customer concerns. Then this stuff becomes real.
Otherwise it is just a means to end. Another method to ultimately use another for our own ends. If we practice this in business, I’m not sure we can turn it off when we go home.
I have a silly idea (maybe its purely eschatalogical), but I believe there could be another kind of commerce. Commerce is good because it involves exchange, thus presupposing relationship at some level. So could there be a commerce of love? And could it happen on this planet in this age?
I guess this why I’m a bad blogger. Too much writing and not enough linking! So I’ll stop.
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