Gull-wing, of course

Oh, and thanks for asking…Yes, it does come in electric!  In the form of four nearly-100-kw electric motors for combined power of over 500 hp.

Crunchgear has all the info.  Sorry about the off-topic post, but electric propulsion is a bit of an interest of mine. эротические лесбиянок мой муж занимается анальной мастурбацией

In other news, my birthday’s in December…

окончил волгоградский государственный педагогический институт

  When I got home, on a Saturday night…well, I did not see “the Englishman who could last till three” running out my back door, but I did sit down at my laptop.  Then I heard it.  The slight clicking, like tapping your fingernail on the window.  You guessed it.  My hard drive was toast.  Sure, I could have tried to fix it and maybe (but not likely) squeeze out another day or two, but the sign was ominous, even if the sound wasn’t:  My hard drive was toast. Gone. Dead.  I had exactly until the OS tried to page something in or out of memory time to continue what I was doing, then my computer would die.  So what to do?  It’s not like I could save any files!  And the more I did, the more likely the thing would page out.  Say goodnight, go to sleep. Deal with it tomorrow.

So my hard drive was dead.  Sixty Gigabytes of data gone in the span of a few short “clicks”.  Catastrophe?  Not at all.  I had started backing up with Time Machine a few weeks ago, and just last week I attached my backup drive to the network (using Airdisk on an AEBS).  I knew I had a full backup, and more importantly a recent full backup.  How recent?  I didn’t know yet.  But I slept well.  

Fast forward to Sunday.  My options were to take the whole kit to the Mac store or to get a new drive and go to town.  I dismissed the former option: first, I was out of warranty.  Second, there’s a tiny hairline crack …
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Picture having a running grocery list at work. As you happen to think about things you need to pick up at the store, you quickly scribble things down on a piece of paper. On the way home from work, you realize you have an hour to kill and you decide to stop by the supermarket to knock it out. As you walk into the store, you realize, darn you forgot your list.

Has that happen to you?

I signed up with Gubb to manage my grocery list and now there’s no more missing gorcery list problems. There’s no more list problems, period.

Yeah, but I have room for one more overly feature rich, complex program to help manage my life and business like I have room for another set of in-laws, why should I use this thing?

I found this little “web 2″ gem to be just about perfect. You can definitely squeeze this one in. Gubb.net lets you make, lists, that’s it. Simple. And you can access them through your web enabled cell phone. The sign up, setup, all of it, was a breeze and I got right into using it in about 10 seconds. They strictly follow the “don’t make me think” rules of engagement. It’s just absolutely useful.

Great, now the in-laws want us to vacation with them. They’re talking about camping and they want my wife and I to bring… everything. I don’t want to get swamped with email requests for BBQ chips, how do I get this organized between us all without losing it?

First take a deep breath. No worries, mate. Just share your list with your in-laws, or whoever you want to help your get organized. You just add their email address and your off to the races, or camping, or whatever you do with your in-laws. Its one of the best list sharing tools I have come across.

Wow. Well, the in-laws just called and they said they liked this thing so much that they were wondering if they can post the list to their blog. Yes, they’re bloggers, and apparently somewhat famous, probably writing about how much they enjoy bugging me.

Common, this is web 2.0 stuff. There’s always an RSS feed. Simply click under options and find the Feed that’s associated with with the list, copy, paste into your favorite news reader or blog tool, and that’s it! You can attach your list anywhere frankly, with anything that understands RSS technology. For your privacy, your feed reader should support “authenticated feeds”, which simply means you need to enter a username and password to access the feed the first time. You can turn this authentication off if need be.

What else can this baby do?

Check out iCal. If you have Outlook 2007, this feed type integrates with your Outlook Calendar really well. So for example, you can track a list of appointments on Gubb that will appear as a calendar in your Outlook and you’ll be able to identify any conflicts that you may come across your other calendars (use Outlooks Overlay feature). Very easy to use together.

I love it and I love you.

I know bro. I know.

As a web technology consultant, I am constantly on the prowl for simple tools that one can use to improve the way we work with information. Some tools are quiet simple (and free) to use. A recent one I found was iColorFolder is free to download and use.

iColorFolder brings you an extra set of folder images that allows you quickly colorize some of the desktop mess you may have. If you have more than 10 folder items on your desktop or in your My Documents folder, they can all start to look the same. You end up straining your eyes looking at each label until you find that important folder your looking for.

This little tool helps you distinguish them by quickly letting you select a color with use of a right-click of your mouse.

The first thing it does is replace your standard windows folder with one of their base folders. As with most software in general, that comes with a quirk. The first time you do this, your desktop icons are likely to get moved around. But this affect should go away (once you reorganize your desktop like you had before) and that’s about the worst of it.

You can select several folder skins, so you can make you base folders look different from your standard system if you care to “individualize” your desktop, or you stick to your XP or Vista style folders, they provide both.

Note: Make sure to check off “Use generic folder icon defined in the skin”. Not sure why this isn’t checked off as the default but it should be unless you plan on create a custom set of folders icons yourself. I suspect we all have better things to do with our time, don’t we?

After this initial setup, the rest is cake. When you create a new folder, that you prefer to colorize to distinguish it from the rest, just right-click and select Color Label. You’ll get get pull down menu of your available color options. You even get some extra folder images (click on Custom) that you can use to define folder that contain videos, pictures and other miscellaneous ones.

Now you’ll be able to identify and find important directories quickly and with less strain on your eyes. You’ll be glad to be using this little application.

BTW, you can download extra skins from their site as well. I found the base set of skins was sufficient enough for me. buy brahmi

Jott.com is one of the best new services I have come across recently. If you’re a web marketing or technology consultant like me, you probably find yourself driving to and from client locations a good deal part of your working week. The time I have then lets me collect my thoughts about the meeting I just had or the next steps on a project that I am working on. For whatever reason, it tends to be a particularly productive time to brainstorm for SEO phrases and content ideas.

Unfortunately, these productive brainstorming sessions leave me with thoughts that I need to annotate somewhere, but wait a second, what am I crazy, I’m driving! I need to keep both hands on the wheel. Oh and how temping it is to grab my Moto Q, usually charging in the seat over. It almost seems too easy to just pick it up and attempt to type a note to myself.

Yeah, I know, bad idea.

Thankfully, Jott can save my ideas and my life, by transcribing my voice instructs into my email, while I keep my hands on the wheel.

What’s Jott about?

“Jott™ is a revolutionary new service that automatically converts your voice into e-mail and text messages—anytime, anywhere, with any cell phone. Jott™ makes you more productive and efficient by capturing your ideas, notes to self, tasks, and more without using your keypad.”

- Jott.com

For road warriors, here’s four easy steps to setup Jott on your phone.

Step 1
First, sign up with an account on Jott.com. They will send you a typical email with a link to verify your account. Then fill out a couple of questions to let them know what type of cell phone service you have and whether or not you want Jott to email you, text message you, or both.

Step 2
What you to do next is add 1866-Jott-123 in your contacts list and then save it as one of your quick dial numbers. Mine is #5. If I press and hold 5 on my cell phone, it automatically dials and connects to Jott’s service. By reading the caller id, Jott knows I’m the one calling, and presto, you get the pleasant,”Who do you want to jott?” question. Setting up quick dial depends what type of phone you have, but most modern cell phones work roughly the same.

“Ok, but your still picking up your cell phone while your driving to press 5, that’s not quiet safe is it?”

Step 3
The next step is to get familiarize yourself with your voice-activation services. Again, this depends in large part to the type of phone and/or type of service you may have. Moto Q’s have built in voice-activation in the phone itself. My hands free device allows me to voice-activate Jott’s service with a quick press of button, nothing more complicated than turning the radio in your car.

Step 4
Use it. I have all my voice notes sent to my inbox for future reference and processing. But I also like getting them sent to my cell phone via SMS. By asking Jott for a “Reminder”, I can set Jott to send me a note at a future time and date. If I happen to be in a meeting or in an environment where I can’t leave my cell phone ringer on, I will be get a transcribed version of my note via SMS Text*.

There are a number of uses for Jott but collecting my thoughts on the go and sending myself reminders, I have found to be what I use it for most frequently. It’s quiet remarkable how easy it is to use and how sophisticated it’s transcribing technology has to be to make this magic happen so accurately. I haven’t tried blogging with it, but I am told it does a pretty good job as well. I will have to try that sometime soon.

Right now Jott.com is free, in beta, I suspect it will have some nominal fee associated with it when it’s ready for primetime.

*Note: Make sure you have an adequate plan for SMS. Overage charges are very expansive so keep an eye on your phone bill and make sure you have enough service cover your typical usage.