Travel Time

One thing I do with my calendar, that I don’t see anyone else do, is I include travel time. This actually makes calendaring very complicated, because it’s not a native part of the various calendar applications.

For instance, if Mr. Everyman has a doctor’s appointment at 11:30am, he probably make a calendar entry “DOCTOR” starting 11:30, ending at noon or 12:30, depending on the circumstances.

For me that calendar entry would start at 10:30am, and end at 1:30 or 2pm, and be labeled, “DOCTOR 11:30”. This gives me an hour travel window on each side, and also takes into account an involved visit or perhaps a side trip to get a prescription filled.

I feel doing it this way is necessary, so that I can see possible conflicts, without diving into the details of every appointment. Just from the blocks of time I can tell instantly.

Where this often creates a problem, is that the wonderful advanced wizards built into our calendaring programs want to helpfully pull any date-like values from the text and create/adjust the start time based on them. So I put start time at 10:30, and then write “doctor 11:30” and the wizard changes the start time on me. It is possible to get around this usually by formatting the time in the text strange enough for the wizard to not recognize it. But what a pain.

Another shortcoming is that I can’t tell easily when an appointment actually does start. Talk about wanting to have my cake and eat it too.. This method also matches up poorly when I sync or import other calendars, which of course don’t abide by such a convention, or when others want to access my calendar, and can’t figure it out.

I’m not expecting any solutions to this dilemma, I just wanted to point it out, as I’m usually campaigning for simplifying these global PIM tools so that we can have better standardization, but here I am looking for a whole new layer of fields. Classic!

Please let it be aliens

Yes the podcasts I listen to are full of geeks and nerds. But where else can you hear things like the following:

Paul says, "please let it be aliens", to which Mary Jo replies, "even better Paul, there's a Windows Azure Data Market connection!"

http://twit.tv/show/windows-weekly/239

Windows 7 folders

In lieu of anything new and interesting to write about, I thought I would mention that this nugget from 2007 seems to still be relevant, and still fixes the problem - http://iponderus.com/2007/11/vista-folder-template-views.html . This will interest you if the folder details view you get with pictures and music annoys you – listing artist and track or date taken and resolution, instead of the standard size, type, and date modified. The worst annoyance is when you adjust it on a folder, and it goes back when you click into a subfolder. This procedure fixes it all, at least for awhile, as Windows has a tendency to reset these templates every so often, perhaps based on updates.

Find My iPhone to the rescue

Couldn’t find the iPhone. Knew it was somewhere in the house. On vibrate so calling it wasn’t helping. Checked Find My iPhone (new iCloud feature). The GPS couldn’t really narrow it down further than the house. Noticed a feature “Play Sound”. Clicked it and had the phone seconds later, despite the fact that it was on vibrate, as a nice clear ding noise at full volume was played over and over. Very cool!

iPhone Recorded Video Problems

“Someone I know” recorded some video on the iPhone of a special family moment. They held the iPhone up and down as you would usually hold it (except when watching a movie or YouTube, etc.).

I moved the video off the phone, in order to share it with family and friends. I discovered not only was the aspect ratio of the video backwards, but the video played sideways (correcting the aspect issue) in most standard video-playing software (besides iTunes and Quicktime).

So I thought “Handbrake” of course, because I was planning to make the file size smaller for uploading anyhow. Long story short I was frustrated and denied that day. I ended up settling for WMVs from Windows Live Movie Maker, and they came out awful.

Fast forward a couple of months (sometimes it helps to let a problem stew for awhile). Some more Google searches, and I came across a free, open source tool called “avidemux” (http://avidemux.sourceforge.net). It flipped the video (back to being taller than wider) and then even allowed me to crop (the top and bottom of) the video so as to fix the aspect ratio. Genius!

So if you happened to take video with the iPhone up and down, and want to share it but either the non-standard aspect ratio is a problem, or the video appears flipped on it’s side, try avidemux.

Domestic Customer Support

Just called VZW (Verizon Wireless), and spoke to a domestic support rep, very knowledgeable, very polite, very efficient! What an amazing experience that makes me want to keep my business with them.

What a difference from other support calls to various big companies the last couple of years. The backlash against against “commodity” service is finally having an effect, as companies realize that customer service is not just a cost to be cut as close as possible to the bone, but a major component of their brand reputation.

It has always seemed crazy to me, to take a customer, who is already mad at you, and send them into a maze of button-pushing forwarding circular phone menus to eventually speak to unhelpful, untrained, un-empowered, un-friendly, unable–to-speak-English support personnel. Not only does the customer’s problem not get solved, but they now have another complaint. That is company suicide.

These people whose money you have or want, and who know the rest of the people whose money you have or want, they are the very ones who’s frowns you need to strive to turn upside down.

I’ve heard recently that good support is a “differentiator”. In other words companies who buck the trend to provide it really set themselves apart and make themselves attractive. Don’t be fooled. Your brand value is exposed to negative or positive opinion long after the sale. It is hanging out there, for anyone and everyone to ruin or build up, every day. Good support is one of your few defenses and offenses. I’d suggest in terms of your brand it’s more important than the sale, and up there with product quality.

Just to be clear, I’m not putting down offshoring support per se. But unless and until the quality of that support is a compliment to the brand, it’s not good enough.

Man I hope this is a trend.

Google Music - for your protection

In Google Music – error “For your protection, please sign into your account again.”

http://digitalproletariat.com/blog/?p=3

If you are taking Google Music for a spin, and are getting stuck in an endless authentication loop trying to grab songs (even free ones), please check out this post – it fixed it for me.

Machinarium and iGadget

I've recently finished two iPad games. That's actually a big deal (relatively-speaking).

First off, I don't play many games, as I don't have a lot of discretionary time, and if I did I'd rather write programs than use them.

Secondly, I'm particular about what games I play and I'm also not that good at most games. So if I don't really like it, or it's too hard, I just don't finish, though I have to say that once I'm really playing a game I stick with it, and intend to complete it.

And finally, I suspect that most iOs games are never finished. I'd love to see some numbers on this.

So I finished these 2 games, Machinarium and iGadget, and really enjoyed them. I've been thinking about why. Even though they were vey different from each other, they both put their story, their plot, at the center of the game. In fact they actually sacrificed game play (Machinarium through a built-in cheats system, iGadget by limiting game-play) for the story's sake. A little further and they would be an interactive book.

If you like the sound of that, I'd suggest these two games.

Google Reader – end of an era

Today is the last day of updates to shared items in Google Reader, as Google converts Google Reader to push eyeballs to Google Plus.

I’ve removed the shared items widget from this blog, though there are still a couple of links to my shared items archive at the bottom right. Not sure how long they will work.

I’m going to try switching over to Tumblr to store and publish the items I want to share from Google Reader. The link for that is http://iponderus.tumblr.com, and the RSS feed is http://iponderus.tumblr.com/rss . So ironically you can view the feed of my shared items from Google Reader in Google Reader, but it will be Tumblr powering it now.

I think the preferred method (at least the one Google would prefer) is that I “plus one” the items. However my Google Plus account is personal, so no one besides close friends and family would be able to see those, as best as I can tell. Good move Google. Oh well, progress is like this sometimes.

USB Video Cards – not so much

So I had a laptop in “the shop” here for troubleshooting. Wouldn’t boot. Turned out it was booting, just not showing video, not even POST and BIOS status.

Long story short, it’s an HP laptop that probably has the NVIDIA mobile video board problem. It’s so widespread I’m not even going to post a link, just google “nvidia video laptop”. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it either. However the latest (and not the only) settlement http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-failure-g84-g86-settlement,11400.html  has closed, so there’s no recourse.

I was able to get it up, literally after a couple of evenings of dorking with it, by getting it into safe mode with an external monitor. From there I was able to drop the driver back to the Windows default VGA, and boot the laptop, still with the external monitor, at 640x480 (cue painful sigh).

I had a brainstorm. I would get one of those USB video cards I always see advertised, and bypass the internal soldered card! It would not be a mobile solution (as an external monitor would be required) but it would at least make the laptop usable (with a decent resolution and color depth).

So I ordered one from Amazon, for about $60. About the middle of the road in price and quality I’d say. Well to cut to the chase, what I found is that these devices, which depend on a technology called DisplayLink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayLink , need an actual working video adapter in the PC, in order to work. All they do is EXTEND so you can mirror or extend your desktop. So if your video card is missing, broken, or even just having driver issues, the USB card won’t work. Big bummer. Well, at least you don’t have to spend your money learning this lesson! And I can use the device, no worries about that.