just an asterisk

This post will be a grouping of useful translation links.  During the last few weeks, I’ve been busy with contacts in various countries and find myself Googling “translate x into y” quite a bit. I stumbled on the table below at this link (included just incase they add further languages). The title is Translation “Bots”. You may have heard of the evil bots that control computers and send spam – Google isn’t into that. These bots are for chatting. For example, if you click on the en2ar link below, a chat window will appear and will translate what you type in English into Arabic. Sweet.

So what is a bot? It’s just software that imitates a human in some capacity (over simplification but true). A chat bot imitates someone chatting. An evil email bot, imitates someone sending evil emails. Anyway, as mentioned, the table at the bottom of this post has all the bots I could find.

For additional translation entertainment, you can hit up the standard Google Translate, which is also pretty amazing. One thing that I often do is paste a web link into the translate box and then click on the link that appears to the left. This will take you to a translated version of the site you requested! Insane!

That’s it for now – as I said, busy as heck.  Enjoy translating!

~ab

The table for your translation bot pleasure:

To me, a productivity tool has to have three components:

1. It has to be invincible – rendered illegible by flying coffee or left on bus cannot be reasons to miss a task. I love paper, but hate that it burns, smudges, rips, etc. Digital was the only answer.

2. It has to be everywhere – Paper didn’t just lose because I’m a klutz – I’m also forgetful. A digital task system, accessible from every device I’ve ever owned AND anyone’s computer, was the perfect solution. I couldn’t leave it behind.

3. It has to be simple – If entering a task takes 10 minutes, I’m not going to do it. Duh.

When I decided on those 3 rules above, I never thought about the data that I would generate after using these tools for 4 years. On a lark, I went through three months of data today in Toodledo and was amazed. It’s actually interesting!

Although it’s thoroughly geek, I thought I’d share, just to show how powerful the data we’re generating can be. I’m not sharing anything personal, professional or even the numbers. The graphs of relative values speak volumes.

First thing I did was pull my tasks completed by month from Toodledo.

The result made sense: Late November, I started using Toodledo. December was spent working my tail off. January was when my little girl was born – huge dip there – but by February, I was completing tasks again at full force. March I started a new job, so mid-way through the month, we’re already heading for a record breaker.

Next I tried to find a trend, something to make it more than just a total. Here is how I complete tasks based on the days of the week:

Interesting eh? I come out of the weekend strong, completing fewer and fewer tasks until Friday, when I  push before the weekend. My theory here is one word: meetings. As the week goes on, I have more and more meetings, reducing the time I have to complete my tasks. There is something to explore here…

My personal tasks, often the lesser quantity, generally don’t get done on Saturday and therefore Sunday is higher. This probably contributes to that sinking feeling I get on Sunday when I have to pack in my tasks and try to enjoy the last of the weekend.  Again, something to explore…

Next I grabbed the planned due date of my tasks:

What I love about this data is that it shows how I think about tasks too… These are the tasks by the day I schedule them for. Notice that I tend to come out of the weekend with a lot scheduled for Monday, but Tuesday – Friday, I plan to complete pretty much the same number of tasks. To me, this supports the meetings idea – I’m adding tasks to the list because new things are coming up. However, as we saw before, I’m not completing them.

In a similar story, on the weekend, I tend to forget how hard is to complete tasks on Saturday and I schedule equal efforts for both days.

Finally, I decided to compare how I’m finishing tasks this month vs last month:

The month isn’t over yet, but it looks like I’m getting better at closing out  my tasks on Fridays and keeping a steady stream of completions going through the week. Thursday is still a low point for me. I’m sure it’s related to meetings, but it’s a point of focus for improvement!

After playing with all this data from Toodledo, I exported my data from Remember the Milk going back to 2007 and did the same sort of analysis, finding almost identical results. I’ll spare you the details, but one favorite was that I seem to start the year off strong in January every year, but slow down as the summer approaches. I guess that’s why my resolution each year is to be more organized :)

Thanks for indulging me. The bigger point is that I was collecting this data without really thinking about it. I wonder where else I’m capturing useful information that could improve my efficiency? I’ll poke around and get back to you.

~ab

It was inevitable. My daughter was born last month (also inevitable in a way) and it was only a matter of time before I wrote a blog post about baby tech. But here is the funny part – the tech sucks. There isn’t that much to talk about. Maybe our litigious culture has squashed innovation or maybe the only people concerned are so blotto from not sleeping that they can’t invent anything, but either way – the technology just isn’t very interesting.

When babies are born, in case you are not aware,  they need to be swaddled, rocked and given something to slobber upon… As I see it, the result is that technology tends to focus on rocking and/or white noise. That’s about it. Sigh… I write this as I sit up waiting to do our late night / early morning feed and wish that there were magic bullets I could use from my bat belt. No dice.

Instead of telling you about our Fisher Price Cradle Swing (god send that it is), I’ll focus on the tech that I’ve found useful, rather than helpful, for life with a baby.

Camera(s) – iPhone and DSLR

She’s cute and everyone wants to see her, thus we’ve snapped away with both our iPhones and the big DSLR. Although in the beginning we went a bit overboard, expect to take tons of pictures. Having the DSLR, with its incredible resolution, reassures the compulsive in me who worries that we’ll miss the perfect shot. The iPhones have pretty decent cameras too, for all those times when you don’t want to lug around a baby, six pieces of matching baby luggage AND and camera bag…

Ways to share pictures – Picasa and Dropbox

Picasa lets us share our photos with the family, but Dropbox is where we consolidate. With two Macs, two iPhones and a SLR, there are lots of places where pictures end up. We combine our photos into a shared folder in Dropbox and then I upload them to Picasa. Easy peasy.

The white noise app on my phone

Hm… This one was almost a magic bullet… We were told that white noise would soothe her on our way out of the hospital room and by the time the elevator arrived in the lobby, I had a white noise app for the car ride home. The great part? It actually works (provided that she isn’t hungry, sleepy, wet, dry, too hot, too cold…)

If you want extra geeky points, go grab yourself a pillow speaker (very cheaply online) and use an old iPod to make your white noise machine. It’ll free up your iPhone for dropping calls.

Amusements – all hail the iPad

You will spend a lot of time doing nearly nothing (other than rocking your child) and your brain doesn’t have capacity for the russian novels you were planning to read. My iPad holds my books, my RSS feeds, Netflix, Hulu and my email. With a bit of balancing, I can use it one-handed. Late in the evening, ’round about 1-2am, this will become very important.

That’s it. Like I mentioned above, no true magic bullets, but there are plenty of ways to add techie flair to staying up late with your newborn. Best of luck – duty calls…

~ab

In my last post, I described how one could ditch cable and rely on a mixture of online programming and an Apple TV for entertainment.  Fun stuff!  However, a helpful commenter mentioned using an HD Antenna to capture the live and free television channels that may be floating around your metro area. I thought it might be nice to explain how this can be done (so that you can watch the Oscars, the super bowl, or any other live event on your standard channels).

Buy an antenna and connect it.

To pick up the free TV signals in your area, you’ll need an antenna.  Often today’s TVs forget their antenna bearing forefathers and mine was no exception.  You should validate that your TV has a connector like the one below.

This is the same connection that I used for my cable television (it’s called Coaxial Cable, if you’re interested).  Once you’ve located this point on the TV, you need an antenna. For those living near a RadioShack, I found this model on sale for $20.

Notice that it says “HDTV” – this means I’ll be able to pickup any free HD (High Definition) channels, as well as the standard definition ones. In most big cities, NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX have free HD channels.

The setup is very easy – just plug it in to the connector in the first picture.

Scan for channels

Your television, if it was purchased in the last 10 years, has a scanning function. Try your settings menu – heck, try any menu. You are looking for “Auto-Program” or “Channel Search” or anything to do with an antenna.  For me, in my settings menu, there was a button that said “Auto-Program”.  With the antenna connected, I let this feature rip and found 52 channels available to the greater NYC area. 52!!!

Bask in your independence!

You’ve done it! You followed 2 insanely easy steps and now you have free LIVE television. Well done you! Enjoy the Olympics!

~ab

Cable TV and I have had a pretty rocky relationship. I live in NYC, where “outages reported in your area” is seemly the permanent recording on the cable company phone line. What kills me about these events is that it’s always my responsibility to call out the cable company for time lost. I never see a credit on my bill for the time when service was out, unless I call and complain.  Moreover, my wife and I just don’t watch that much TV.  It’s hard to justify the $150 price for HBO twice a week and the real housewives series a few times a week. Oh and did I mention the service stinks?

My counter attack!

So what did I do to stick it to the man? I cancelled cable. This may sound brash but it’s not as crazy as you might think. Here is a breakdown of my thought process:

• Hulu and Netflix came with my TV – I have a Samsung TV that has “apps” and an internet connection.  It wasn’t that much more expensive and I have access to my Hulu and Netflix content (which is 99% of what I watch).  Both Hulu and Netflix require a paid account, but each is less than $10 per month.
• Apple TV streams all my media from my home computer – The Apple TV was a one time $100.  I can use it to rent movies and TV shows, like pay-per-view on steroids.
• I don’t watch sports – I think this is worth mentioning, as my solution would be hard on a sports fanatic.  Sports are a bit harder to find via the web, but not impossible.  I’d be curious to hear solutions for this in the comments…

Thoughts so far…

It has been 2 days and everything is great! I feel like I pick what I want to watch and I only see a commercial or two on Hulu.  All in all, the conversion went without a hitch.  When I want to watch a TV show, I use Hulu on my TV or the Apple TV to rent/buy the episode.  For older movies, I use Netflix and for more recent titles, I can use Apple TV as a pay-per-view outlet. Finally, I stream pictures, music and movies from my home computer over my wireless network to the Apple TV.  A – MAZING.

Here are some pointers if you plan on doing this yourself:

1. Use wires when possible: When you can, keep everything wired together.  Wireless is great, but the speed is much faster via cables.  If you can’t use wires, try to minimize the distance between your TV and your WIFI router.
2. Invest a few extra bucks in faster internet: You can pay a little more (an extra $10 in my case) and get 50% faster internet.  That burst of speed could be the difference between HD quality streaming and blurry junk, so investigate your options.
3. Learn how to use iTunes Home Sharing: Maybe this will be the topic of a future post, but you can share your iTunes libraries between computers and to your Apple TV. It’s fairly simple to set up, but can get a bit finicky. Try out this link to get you started.

I’ll try to put another post together in the future describing my whole setup, but hopefully this gives you a glimpse of what is possible.  The kicker here is that it’s all pretty easy!  I didn’t code or fiddle with complicated hardware. For the most part, it was as simple as plugging things in.

Good luck!

~ab

PS: I’m aware that the large cable company isn’t going to care much about my rebellion… but just wait comrades – the revolution is coming…

Sometimes, I forget how powerful a phone can be… The truth is this: my phone may be able to do 1 million things, but I’ll be darned if I can remember 5% of this magic when I’m under pressure. It’s like a Swiss-army knife with 100 tools – I only use the the bottle opener and the knife (incorrectly, as a screwdriver).  I don’t believe that I’m the only one in this state.  Feature overload is pretty much the norm these days.

As a result, I like to practice using features when I find them.  Some stick, becoming part of my daily routine and ritual, others fade away as simple novelty.  Knowing what your iPhone or Android phone can do is good.  Learning which features are right for you is better.

Just to give you an example, I was waiting for the wifie at the wine store and remembered Google’s photo search called “Goggles” that is part of the iPhone Google App.  Not really needing an excuse to buy wine (“google told me to”), I tried it out on a nice bottle of cabernet.

Googles Goggles (a tongue twister ain’t it?) went to work on my cab, using the image as the search query.  The result was pretty spectacular – even by the standards of the ever impressive Google.

In less than a minute, I was reading a great review of my selection and soon after SOLD.  It was a great shopping experience.  I was selected a bottle that looked about right (2 minutes), Googled it (30 seconds), learned about it (1 minute) and finished my purchase.  Not bad!  The process was fast enough that I would have happily continued to photograph bottles for a while, but the results rich enough to help me make an educated decision.  Sweet.

In closing for this rather short post, remember that the point isn’t Google’s Goggles.  The point is that my phone had a feature that was worth exploring and that a little practice was enough for me to see how I could use it in future.  That’s the key – use it and see if it’s useful to you.  If not, no sweat.  There are another 999,999 features to look into.

For the record, the wine was excellent.

~ab

Two lifehacker posts are the inspiration for this article (this one about hacking your password and this one about checking how secure your password is).

We’ve all experienced it – that infuriating moment just a day or two after a password change when you realize that you’ve forgotten what you chose (although you’re certain that it was witty and brilliant).  In truth, there isn’t much that I can do for your lost passwords… but I can probably help you create *better* passwords that might be easier to remember. Read more »

What follows is a super long story that is a bit indulgent on my part, so feel free to jump to the very end summary for the punch line if you don’t have the time/interest…

“More than 30 years ago, RiceSelectâ„¢ introduced Texmati®, the first basmati Rice to be successfully grown in America, and still the most popular because of its unsurpassed flavor and aroma. Today, RiceSelectâ„¢ offers a wide variety of delicious rice and other dishes all grown and packaged in America, all inspired by cuisines from across the world. Requested by name in countless recipes and cookbooks, RiceSelectâ„¢ tastes like no other rice.”(Source)

What they didn’t add, but certainly should have, is the following: “RiceSelect products, like our amazing Sushi Rice, can be used to rebuild shattered hopes and dreams!” By now you’re probably checking the URL to make sure that you didn’t mistype the link, but I promise you that this is a technology story.  It’s just a roundabout way telling it… Read more »

I don’t publicize my blog very much at my day job.  It’s just not really relevant to what I do for a living and frankly, I like having a strong line between work and play.  However, this is a luxury that may disappear soon (if it hasn’t already).  This past week, I read this article which demonstrated the elephant memory of the internet (and resulted in me learning something new about that expression.)  Basically, one of the contributors of DownloadSquad.com (a great blog for software) attempted to remove himself from Facebook a few months ago.  He was surprise to find that his Facebook image was still available from Google’s image search, even when his account was closed.

The truth is this:  when your picture goes out into the lovely webs of cyberspace, it’s never gone.  It might be just sitting on a shelf without a label – that is, until the technology to link you to the evidence comes along.  As an example, try Googling yourself on Google’s image search:

When I tried this, I found my photo on page 17 of the results from a site that I had never seen before.  That alone was pretty strange.  However, don’t stop there – add a piece of information about yourself that others might know (like the company you worked for last) and you might be surprised how much the field narrows.  I went from page 17 with millions of hits down to page 1 with my picture as number 2, just by adding a former job to my search.

Companies liked LinkedIn and Facebook are the source of many of these images, but there are also companies that archive older pictures from the Facebook or LinkedIn database.  For example, Radaris (which does background checks) has a copy of my LinkedIn image (how is that ok?).  Long story short, even if you remove a picture from the site you’ve signed up with, you might be too late.

There really isn’t a fix for this. The best answer is probably not to post things unless you’re sure you want the world to see it.  I know that we’ve heard this before, but the supporting evidence is rarely so easy to find.

Best of luck staying safe out there!

~ab