pointing out the obvious

As a result of a comment by k-fleXxX in a previous post, I realize just how little I do for social causes. I’m certainly not speaking for everyone, but I’m a relatively aware person but do not actively participate in or donate to social causes. I am guessing that most of my peers are in a similar position. It’s a sad state of affairs.

These are some of the things I like to do…

• Support small/independent businesses because I like to see the little guy succeed (and feed his/her family).
• Want to see an indie flick? Check out Lightchasers.
• Looking for some fair trade coffee? Checkout Responsible Harvest.
• Avoid unethical companies. Though, watch your sources, some are whacky.
• (rant…) Tip wait staff, taxi drivers and other service industry staff well because I’m only going to burn that extra $5 dollars on something insignificant - I also know revenue canada targets them for undeclared income, which is sad because 1 well-off person likely shelters more income from the tax man than a dozen service staff.
• Donate to something.. usually it’s wwf.ca, and as a result I have a growing collection of animal beanie babies.
• Donate old clothing, appliances to goodwill. They have started coming door-to-door!
• Use recycled building supplies and find treasures.

But my overall financial contributions to the cause are terrible. I spend more on coffee than I do donating in a year. That’s pathetic. Do I really need that car? Do I need that computer? Do I need those jeans? no.. no and no. Is my whole generation like this?

we’re doomed.

and yes, I’m feeling particularly sorry for myself this morning. awesome.

It’s a hot topic right now (har har) in Australia and would be an interesting precedent.  They’d be the first to ban them completely.  I can’t wait to see what happens.

Interested in a comparison between them?  Check it out here.

I think bookmooch hit the nail on the head. For those of us who are looking for a particular book, don’t want to spend $22 and have a bookcase full of other $22 books collecting dust, this site will make your day. I’ve been a member for a while and am guilty of not actually doing a book transaction yet, but I’m in a bit of a reading rut.

Reading ruts are usually well solved by Indigo or Amazon’s “other people liked” recommendation engine. If that doesn’t work for you, LibraryThing aims to fill the void. While none are perfect, they give you helpful suggestions that end up pointing you in the right direction.

Unfortunately, this gets me all hot and bothered about the state of online personalization. It seems no one has an effective solution yet for recommendations, aka cross-selling. I could go on and on about this, so I’ll save the rant for another post.

snow.

I don’t remember ever experiencing snow, lightning and thunder together, but it happened this morning around 8am on my way to work. I was also ridiculously covered in snow on my short walk to the subway.

it was surprisingly warm.

it was awesome.

With technology companies creating all kinds of useless gadgets, I think it’s about time they create a smart phone. When I say smart, I mean smart enough to not require diapers anymore. Here’s the idea..

Most cellular and mobile phones have bluetooth. Most offices are migrating towards IP phones. IP phones should be bluetooth enabled so that my cellular phone will detect it’s presence, and automatically forward all my calls to it. When I walk away from my desk, my cell figures out that I’m no longer sitting next to my landline and will turn call forwarding off.

You can extend this idea to allow everyone’s cell to forward to the nearest phone. If someone is sitting at my desk, maybe all of their cell calls are directed to that phone? Wouldn’t it be great if your cell calls were directed to the nearest phone in the airport lounge while you wait for your flight?

I guess the idea here is to have a single number for everyone. Whether you are at work, at home or on the move, people only have to call a single number to reach you. This also avoids insane cellular bills by forwarding calls to landlines, as well as increasing the quality of the call (I get terrible cell coverage at the Maple Leaf lounge in Pearson’s Terminal 1).

You might think cellular carriers would hate this idea - it reduces the number of minutes consumed, but if you think about it, it would INCREASE the number of calls throughout their networks. Your mobile number is now your main number - which is almost the case now, but in this case there are no other numbers. This is a cellular carriers dream.

Of course you can extend this idea and apply it to a range of other concepts, but I think the cellular application is the most relevant.

It looks like someone patented a similar idea, but it’s convoluted and impossible to understand.

When changing jobs, computers or both, it’s always annoying having to copy all of your music/pictures from one computer to another. GB’s of music and pictures can take time. For those of us with ipods older than lindsay lohan, I don’t have the battery life to listen to it all day, or the storage space to use it as a portable disk.

This is where jungle disk saves the day. It makes using the Amazon S3 network drive a snap.. So, with this in mind, I can theoretically copy all of my music to a network drive and share it between work and home.

The additional benefit is if I add music at work, I also get it at home. If I map my drives properly, maybe it will even let me keep my play history and favorites, but I’m okay if it just allows me to share my music.

For a quick primer on how to get iTunes working with JungleDisk and Amazon S3, checkout this howto.

Thanks to Taz for bookmarking it in delicious, and for me adding him in my network last night so that I may find these interesting things.

I wish I could read german, but somehow, I don’t think it would make me feel any better.

Being featured on apple.com is incredible exposure for Blast Radius and a guaranteed raise for Marcus Ericsson. I never really met him, but from what I see on flickr and my time at Blast, this guy is incredibly talented. Nice one Marcus!

See what people can do with Apple hardware? Is anyone listening out there? (inside joke.. blastee’s will appreciate it)

Interesting results.  When searching for “atg documentation” in google, this site shows up in the #3 (mirror) and #5 spots.  ATG shows up as #1, but you have to register and login to view the docs, so a search engine won’t actually index the meat of the documentation.

awesome.

In an interesting turn of events (which totally makes sense now that I think about it), businesses are considering off-shoring within the country. So, for example, a company based in Toronto would offshore to Sioux Lookout, Ontario - where the cost of living is lower, thus salaries are cheaper. This keeps companies happy by exploiting cheap labour, and people employed in smaller cities.

I would seriously consider a pay cut to live in a remote area for a few years. If anyone is actually reading this, I would relocate to the Northwest Territories, the Yukon or Newfoundland, so long as they have a decent net connection and Apple delivers hardware out there.

Checkout Rob’s post, it’s interesting.