Using YouTube videos to send a message

My kids got me a Google Chromecast for Christmas and its been really cool. It makes it so easy to get music, movies and videos into my living room. But its also created a new family activity where we'll all sit and share interesting YouTube videos with each other.

Last night, there was a new development in how we use Chromecast and communicate. We were sucked into watching the Justin Bieber deposition (he's kind of a douchebag) and didn't notice that our oldest had disappeared.  Suddenly our video was interrupted by this video.

Yes, can you guess where he was. And what he had a shortage of. And his pleas for help unheard, as we watched how ridiculous Justin Bieber was.  We replenished him and all went back to watching videos.

Our daughter suggested we watch the Oculus preview. I'll link to it so you can watch it, it you want, but I don't recommend it.  It's creepy. Creepy like the back of my neck was all tingly and I was there, in my living room with the lights on. And it was just a 2 and a half minute preview.

Our oldest weighed in on his opinion about the movie with this clip. I am in wholehearted agreement. Not a movie that I'll be watching.

An interesting development in communication, wouldn't you say?  How do you use technology to communicate in your house?

Make your own Google Maps

As I was looking for the location to a meeting my wife sent me, I noticed a new tab on my search results on Google Maps. You now have the ability to create and annotate your own maps directly on Google Maps.

Google Earth has had this functionality for a while. You could mark a map with a polygon, placemark, or path, save it as a .kmz file and post that to the web. Then Google Maps could open it and display it. You can create pictures or video placemarks (links to files elsewhere on the web) and a similar to Google Earth, you can save your search locations on the map too. The user guide explains all the functionality with step-by-step instructions.

All this same functionality has now been ported to Google Maps. It is pretty neat and easy. I made one map of two fun twisty routes near my house that I love to drive in my MINI. You can make your maps public and included in searches or unlisted so that you can give out the URL to others.

This is pretty cool. Now I can make my own routes and not have to always go the fastest way!

Google calendar prints in color!

I am a big fan of Google Calendar and I use it relentlessly in my implementation of GTD. One of my "prepare for a trip" steps is to print out the up-coming week (so I can refer to it when I am on a plane and not connected).

Tonight, as I am preparing for my upcoming trip, I hit the printer icon and the preview looked different. It was in color!

As you can see, each calendar is in a different color. It is a nice feature and a long time coming! Well done, Google.

Remember the Milk integrated with Google Calendar

Remember the Milk has been my to-do list manager of choice for a while now. It has some really great features:

• Reminders by Instant Message, email, text message
• Multiple lists with priorities
• Create to-dos via email or text message
• Share or send tasks to others
• Publish your task list via RSS or iCal
• Supports the use of tags on tasks
• Tasks can be associated with URLs or locations and laid on top of a Google Map
  

It easily integrates with Getting Things Done and I use this service on a daily basis. On top of all that, it is free. On a daily basis, I live and die by my RTM task lists.

But they have taken it one step further. Google Calendar has some functionality to display web content. Google has created some calendars that show the weather for your location or the phase of the moon. Emily, Omar and Bob T Monkey at RTM have just released RTM for Google Calendar. It uses one of these web content calendars to show your tasks that are due on a particular day.

It gets even better than that! You can add and complete tasks as well! From the looks of it, it is based upon their recently released Google Gadget for the Google personal homepage or Google Desktop sidebar.

Remember the Milk is an excellent Web 2.0 task list. Though still in beta, it performs excellently and the team keeps adding new functionality and is quick to provide support! I can claim identifying at least one bug.

I recommend this service. You should use it. Google should buy it and integrate it into their services.

It's a record week!

Because I get up so early, I was able to get a jump on a blog review/comment of a new Google feature. This time, my blog posting actually linked to the Google Blog entry and it made it on the trackback list.

Having my posting there brought me record amounts of traffic. I had 69 pageviews, just on Thursday! If only I could get 69 every day!

So far, this week is topping out at 123 visitors and they didn't all read one page and leave! Four people actually read my post about Google and read other pages! I'm pretty excited about that. Maybe I can covert 1 of them into a regular reader... Well, I can hope.

On the other neat factoid, these visitors came from all over the world! The United States, Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, Germany, Austria, Philippines, Malaysia and India all were represented in my visitors. That in it self is pretty neat.

To the early bird go the visits!

Google's done it again - click to call

Google has introduced one more neat feature on Google Maps - Click to Call!
Read about it here. And try it out - it really works.

There are several services like this, JaJah is one that charges a small fee to connect your phone to somebody else's (but does it internationally). This is a great step in telephony and computing and just being connected.

Already, through VOIP, if you call my work phone, it gets forwarded to my home office and simultaneously rings on my cell phone. With instant messaging, VPN and wi-fi, any place with internet and cell phone connection is just the same as my office.

I don't use any soft-phone service like Skype, but I am tempted. I still like being able to walk away from my computer and through a smaller more portable device (like my cell phone) still be connected.

Google recently launched Java based Gmail client for phones and it works on my phone. They also just released Google Maps for mobile devices. They both work great, although I need a bigger data plan.

This is what Web 2.0 and 3.0 are going to turn into. Sweet.

Integration with other Google products

I wrote and tried to post this from with in Google Documents and Spreadsheets when I originally wrote it.

Today, after writing about some funny news article, blogger told me that they now support posting from Google Docs and Spreadsheets! So, this is the test of it. If you are reading this, it means it was successful. If it isn't succesful, I'm not going to re-write this (or copy and paste).

Gmail just added the feature to be able to open spreadsheet attachments with Google Docs and Spreadsheets! Nice feature, no need to download to my PC and then open them with Excel upload to Docs and Spreadsheets to view them.

I like how Google (and other Web 2.0 businesses) continue to add new features to their products. This is a good development in software evolution. Who wants to wait 4 or 5 years for the next version? Why not add features incrementally?

Now, they need a better name for Docs and Spreadsheets - I've written it too many times in this posting.

Get your quivering beaver at Burger King!

This post is rated PG. Although, there is adult humor cleverly concealed in here.

Some times, when you go to a really fine restaurant, the food can be described as causing intense emotional excitement.

That same experience can be reached at Burger King. Yeah, that guy looks kind of creepy, but hey, he must do it for somebody.



This is the promotional toy for Open Season, some new animal themed movie. I want to know what the moose will do!

Boy did I feel dumb

On Saturday's in the fall, we have soccer games. As you might recall, I am the coach for both my oldest son's and daughter's soccer teams. But swimming season has also begun, which they both participate in as well. And as you can guess, there was a conflict this weekend. It wasn't really tough to overcome, but I screwed it up.

Warm ups for swim meets usually start at 8 am. Back that up for finding parking, getting to the pool, getting the stuff you need to entertain yourself and your non swimming kids, eating breakfast, and dragging kids out of bed that means that a swim meet day starts just about as early as a work day.

The boys soccer game was in the middle of the first day of the swim meet (I forgot to mention that, didn't I - some are two days), so we took two cars and I would go to the soccer game with out my son, since he was swimming. No problems here, I left the pool right on time and got to the field on time for soccer warm ups.

The soccer game was a great game. The boys really worked on playing their positions and it payed off. We were playing on a dirt field and I don't think they like it very much, but maybe this game will help them overcome that. I called my wife after the game and found out that the swim meet was done and she was going shopping to find a birthday present for a party our youngest was going to.

We were supposed to be at the girls' field at 1:30 for a 2 pm game. Heather didn't think that there was enough time to buy birthday stuff and eat lunch at home before we had to leave, so we decided to meet at Chipotle. I was supposed to go home and get my daughter her soccer gear and meet them there. This is where things started to go down hill.

I get home without incident and took off my soccer cleats before going inside. With this being fall soccer in the rainy North West, cleats get muddy or help pick up the cut grass, depending if you are playing on dirt or grass. My wife frowns (rightly so) on either of those substances in the house. My daughter's soccer stuff was right where she told me it would be and I zipped back out to Chipotle. It turns out, I left my cleats at home. Mess up #1.

I went to Chipotle and they weren't there yet. I found them shopping still and finished out the trip with them. I took the booster seat so that I could take my daughter to soccer and asked if she wanted to change in the bathroom in the restaurant. She wanted to change in the car. Mess up #2, but I didn't realize it at the time.

We had a nice lunch and I though I needed to leave at 1:20 to get to the field, which was pretty close. Everything went smoothly and we got the field just before 1:30. My daughter changed in the car and we walked out to the field. I walked up to the other coach and he said he wasn't the one we were playing and asked if we were at the right field. I thought I would wait for people to show up, but by now it was 1:35 but the kids and parents are timely.

I checked my Google Calendar reminder and learned that I was at the wrong field! Mess up #3. And there was only a slight chance that I would make it to the other field before 2pm. We run back to my MINI and as I'm driving, calling the team parents. Unfortunately, the roster I carry around with me only has home numbers (mess up #4). Luckily, one of the families also list their mobile number on their home answering machine. I called her, but she had dropped off her husband (without mobile phone) and daughter at the game. She was closer to the field than I and offered to return to let them know that I really was on my way.

We got to the game at about 1:56 and sprinted to the field. The parent's told me they were all warmed up and ready to go. I assigned positions and put the girls on the field and the ref came to me and asked if I had a pinnie for the goalie. I did, but they were in the car. Mess up #5. I sprinted back to the car and grabbed a jersey. On the good side, I don't really think that the game started late (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

The girls game was great and the ref was really good (It is nice to have a ref that cares at the younger kid's games). The ref was probably also a good role model because she was a teenage girl still playing soccer.

So, amidst my mess ups, which count 5, there were some good points. My son's swim meet went very well and both soccer games went well. In the end, all's well, that ends well, right?

Buh bye, Writely

Google recently acquired Writely (if I were a true journalist, I would specify the date and the amount of the purchase) and under the cover of darkness two nights ago, released a new service Documents and Spreadsheets. This new service combines Google Spreadsheets and Writely documents all into one portal.

I really like Google's venture into the web based applications with Spreadsheets and Writely. I think that they provide some great opportunities for collaboration - I've used them to publish soccer team rosters and some required documents for games. It makes it easy for the other coaches to have the same set of documents that I do, with out having to email them back and forth. Think of disk space savings, when we all look at the same document online.

Some changes

1. Consolidated user interface - all in the Google blue and white scheme
2. One web portal for all documents
3. The ability to tag documents has been added to Spreadsheets. I really like tagging and find it to be superior to folders. I bet I could write a whole blog posting on that. Maybe...

This is cutting edge, the web based Office 2.0 applications and I think that this evolution of the Internet will be pretty neat. There have been several articles on ZDNet about the ubiquity of Internet access, offline access to web based apps, and more. This is the future.

Getting back in touch

This morning, I was making blueberry muffins and my mind wandered back to college days. I do know why, the recipe I was using was given to me in college by a friend of my mom's. My roommates and I put together a recipe book and most of the time, we cooked dinner together.

I keep in touch, loosely, with Erik (one of those roommates), but kind of lost track of the other, Alex.

I decided that I would track him down...

It was much easier than I thought, because he has published a few academic papers, so a Google search on his name turned up him and somebody in Austin. It was easy to figure out which one was the right one and I sent him an email.

I told him some of the things I had been doing, told him about my MINI, told him about my blog. I stopped, because it began to sound like a personal ad and I'm already taken and not looking.

So, yes, Alex, if you check, this blog entry is about you.

S'mores, in the microwave?

I was doubtful, but it really did work! I had proposed ice cream for dessert and it was soundly decried, being "too cold." So, we were thinking of other ideas and Heather came up with s'mores.

We only had mini-marshmallows, so they weren't going to be roasted on any skewers (maybe toothpicks, but there would be roasted fingers, too). And, however blasphemous it may be, the only chocolate we had were chocolate chips.

Heather came up with the idea of making them in a microwave. I was dubious, but we tried it out. Since we were playing it all by ear, Heather asked the kids how long they thought it would take and their estimates ranged from 30 seconds to 1 minute. 18 seconds is all it takes!

They ended up quite yummy and so I decided I would capture the method here. Who needs a campfire when you go camping now! Just bring a microwave. Who needs a s'more maker at a girl scout meeting. Just bring a microwave.

Step by step instructions

1. Take a graham cracker and break it in half and place it on a microwave safeplate.
2. Arrange mini-marshmallows on one half of the broken graham cracker.
3. Arange chocolate chips on top of the marshmallows. I maintain that the expanding marshmallows help melt the chocolate chips. I tried to make sure that I get chocolate chips between the marshmallows.
4. Microwave for 18 seconds. Your time might vary depending upon your microwaves power rating. Observe it so that the marshmallows don't over expand and make a mess. I perfer a crisper graham cracker, so don't microwave it. They become more chewy if you do microwave the cracker.
   
   
5. As soon as the microwave is done, place the top graham cracker on. The marshmallows cool quickly, so they won't be as melty.
6. Enjoy!

Random thoughts and recent learnings

1. Excel is not a very good database. It is a great spreadsheet, though.
2. Caffeine makes the world go round.
3. When iTunes adds Podcasts to your iPod, it plays them in the order they were downloaded. This can be problematic when you are catching up on podcasts after being gone for a week, or longer.
4. iTunes doesn't share network connections with itself, so I had to manually download several podcasts (see above).

Oh, and evidently because I've migrated to the beta version of blogger (more integration with Google Accounts), comments can be made by beta version users, "Other" or "Anonymous." Old skool blogger accounts might have an issue with making comments. I apologize for the difficulty - so migrate to the beta!

Trends I've noticed

Using Google Analytics, I've begun to see some trends in how my blog attracts readers.

1. I have a dedicated readership (most of my readers are returning readers). Thank you!
   
2. They are spread throughout the US
3. When I post something, I get more visitors and page views

So, just to give you a teaser of what is to come, we are all travelling right now and we took the Amtrak train. And it was quite an adventure.

For me, this is a work trip, and I really haven't had much of a chance to blog. So, I hope you'll accept this and wait for the whole story.

When technology fails

I am traveling for a few days and am going to rely heavily on Remember the Milk and Google Calendar and SMS notifications.

I didn’t get my reminder for my flight 3 hours in advance. Don’t worry; I did make it to the airport on time.

Beginning to get worried, I sent myself a test event from my phone. It was sent back, saying that my cell phone wasn’t registered with Google.

I decided to blog about this experience and the first time I tried to make this posting (from my mobile phone) the mo-blog posting got kicked back.

I wondered if something was wrong on Cingular’s side. To check what was being sent via SMS, I sent myself a quick email, planning on checking it when I got to my hotel. And then it was time to get on the plane.

When I turned my phone back on in Oakland, there was an SMS notification waiting for me, reminding me of the phone number to call for the shuttle to take me to the hotel. Luckily, I wasn’t reliant on this, because had already printed out the email with that information.

I had a conference call shortly thereafter and I got reminded about that one too. So SMS notifications were working. But when I got to the hotel room, their wired internet service wouldn’t assign me an IP address.

Argh. I’ve really come to rely on this technology and this is unfortunate. I almost didn’t set my alarm this morning, planning on relying on my SMS notifications. Good thing I didn’t. One of the lessons I learned in the Army (which is still holding true): communication gear will always fail in the moment that you need it.

Finally, the internet in my hotel room is working. My apologies to those who read the partial post from my phone. I can't tell where it will stop when I moblog!

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Google Spreadsheets

Google just released a web-based spreadsheet application. When that happens, I blog about it.

This time, I'm not so hot on what Google has done. I mean, it is a great web application, but there are several (two come to mind) really great local PC based spreadsheets.

Users can drop their current email clients and calendar applications and move to Google's respective apps. I don't think that is the case with spreadsheet. Sure, its in beta, but it just doesn't do it for me.

One of the nice things that it offers is online collaboration. That's a nice feature, but the people you are collaborating with have to have Google Accounts. Now, I can't imagine why anybody wouldn't have a Google Account (unless they are an employee of a rival IT company), but there are still those that don't.

You can't make charts with Google Spreadsheet. Yet.

And for hardcore spreadsheet users, they are already well versed in the in's and out's of their spreadsheets already. I couldn't figure out how to calculate an interest payment.

My recommendation stick with Excel or OpenOffice. This is a nice tool to play with, maybe make quick and simple spreadsheets. It isn't an Excel killer, but it is one more app in the productivity suite...

Remember The Milk

I've migrated my personal email to a great web based application, gMail. I've stopped using Outlook for my personal calendar (inter-twined with my work calendar) and started using Google Calendar. But this post is not about those.

I've found a great task list manager application, again web based.

Remember The Milk

It lets you create multiple lists, prioritize, tag, set due dates, everything that a task list should do. You can send tasks to other people (as long as they are members, too). It will remind you in a variety of ways, including Text Message, Email, Instant Message (in almost every protocol). And on top of all that, it has a slick web interface. It will also export your task list to lay on top of any calendar that supports the iCalendar standard.

And it is all free.

This has allowed me to move my task list (both personal and work) out of Outlook.

With it all being web based, my task list is at any computer attached to the internet, be it at the library, one of the several in my house or...

There are some really great apps out there on the web and this is counted as one of them. Check it out. Manage your life.

Blog Tracking

Last night, I set up website tracking with StatCounter to see what kind of readership my blog has. In the last 8 hours, my wife checked it out and some one from the UK loaded my Week in Review.

What was really cool was that the tracking told me that he left by searching for 'calendar sync outlook' on Google. Maybe my prostelitizing worked and there is a new Google convert out there.

Big brother is watching!

The Week in Review

There have been several things that I've wanted to post about during the week, but I was spent from my gigantor travel blog. I didn't expect it to become the monstrosity that it was.

So, I'll catch up with a Week in Review.

Monday
iTunes had a 4 track + video She Wants Revenge live album and since I really like the band, I purchased it. Let me just say, save your $4.99 and go buy lunch at Taco Bell. It's not that the music was bad, it was just identical to the studio version. It was recorded live someplace in LA, but it didn't have any of the live feel, no sounds of the crowd, no "You rock, LA," none of that. Great band, but if you already have these songs, there is no need to get this.

Tuesday
The kids are on spring break, so I stopped work early to go with my family to the DoubleTake exhibit at the Experience Music Project. I always enjoy going to art museums and have gone to several with the kids. The art work is from the personal collection of Paul Allen and the art is paired (or grouped) in a way that asks the viewer to compare and contrast the artwork. It was a really neat exhibit and made you think about different works of art.

This also was the first exhibit that I've been to with an audio commentary. At times, I wasn't sure what I thought of it. Basically, in the exhibition room, there were all these people with a thingy stuck to their ear and hardly any whispered discussions of the art. In the end, I think it was nice, because there were so many different pieces of art that the commentary helped bring focus and attention to the things to compare and contrast.

Afterwards, we ate at a nice Vietnamese restaurant, Huong Bihn, in the International District in Seattle. It was really good. I think it was the first Vietnamese place I've been too.

Thursday
Google Calendar was released. I've been waiting for this for a while. I am a huge fan of the company Google. They make some of the greatest most flexible tools available. I imported my Outlook Calendar into it and have been using it side-by-side (because sync'ing isn't available yet).
Heather has wanted to be able to see my calendar and now we've got a good tool to do that. I also created a calendar for each of the kids to better keep track of their boatload of events.

I totally recommend Google Desktop Search, Gmail, Google Earth, Google via SMS and Google Calendar. Heck, Blogger is even a Google tool. Leave me a comment if you'd like me to share my calendar with you.

Friday
The end of the week is here. We got a lot of work done, but at the same time it was a frustrating week. I tire very quickly of people who are out of the loop and don't follow their own project's progress and then say how they are going to run to various Executive VPs because their isn't enough capacity when they change the scope of the project at the last minute.

Today was a rough day because Heather wasn't feeling well and Chase threw up more times that I can remember during the day. Three times in our bed. Not in a bowl on our bed, but on the bed itself. Sucks.

The day ended on a high note, when Alec went out to get the mail. The first issues of Maxim, Stuff and Blender that Heather got for me. Woo-hoo! It's gonna be a fine weekend!

Happy April Fools Day

Check this out. This has got to be a joke - but they say "love is just another search problem" and you know there is some truth to that.

Google Romance

Happy April Fools Day