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Its about mobile data, not the device

Friday I wrote a post about why I returned the 3g iphone (it was reposted here, thanks SAI and innonate). The objective was really to outline the pitfalls of the iphone for other business oriented people considering buying it about to be pushed over the edge, but the end result was really just gathering a bunch of defensive comments from iphone fanboys (I did get a few supportive comments, and clearly there are others like RWW and Fred Wilson that feel the same).

Rather than continue addressing these iphone feature specific comments, I wanted to touch on the bigger picture. What will the iphone do? No, not features, but big picture market and social transformations!

Read Write Web really nails it here, when they suggest that the iphone is going to move in on the desktop market. All those teens that used to log into AOL chat rooms, which have since moved to Facebook and Myspace are going to be able to get that experience on their phone, at anytime…..anywhere. I thought I saw some recent articles stating how popular the iphone is with kids, anyone able to track that down?

This is where the big money is, and this is where I see blackberry having some trouble. They took the enterprise market, which was the only market at the time (Dell was in the same boat when desktops and laptops were king). The iphone is creating a second major mobile market, which consists of the masses that were never going to participate using a blackberry or windows mobile phone (even though those phones could technically do it).

Similarly, I see the Kindle as having the same effect. Its forging its own market for midsized mobile data devices, albeit in a much less rapid and sexy way.

Yes, I said it, the big money. Millions and millions of CONSUMERS hooked on mobile devices more than willing to pay for apps, compulsive content purchases on the fly, or download apps powered by advertising.

So despite the fact that I don’t think the iphone is for everyone (and I hope alternatives continue to develop), the potential is quite clear. Blackberry is freaking out about this, and is desperately trying to build phones that artsy hipsters will want to buy.

Whether or not thats good for us as a whole, I don’t know yet. I suspect theres going to be some pretty interesting social changes as our less mobile friends and family catch up (my mom just sms’ed me for the first time last month!).

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Information processing online: what I save and where I save it

This is the second post on a series of how I process information online, what tools i use, and what I think would be the perfect solution.

First, lets address the specific types of information I save:

  1. I save Links
  2. I save/archive the full or partial content of articles/posts/etc
  3. I save specific clips of content within a page
  4. I save certain clips of content along with remarks to be publish on my blog
  5. I save things to send to my phone via sms
  6. I save clips of content that I want to email to people
  7. I save multiple pieces of content around a specific topic or multiple clips pertaining to one topic


Any of these things I save, I always want the ability to choose whether it is private, public, or shared to a restricted group of users. AND I don’t want them to have to have an account on the same service in order to see this information I’m sharing.

Private – just for me
Public – for everyone
Restricted Group -just a list of users I choose.

Now, how do I currently save each of these information types:


  1. I save Links
    • Delicious, Diigo, Gmail
  2. I save/archive the full or partial content of articles/posts/etc
    • Diigo, Scrapbook, Notebook, Clipmarks
  3. I save specific clips of content within a page
    • Google Notebook, Clipmarks, Diigo
  4. I save certain clips of content along with remarks to be publish on my blog
    • Diigo, Clipmarks, WordPress
  5. I save things to send to my phone via sms
    • “Send via SMS”, Google SMS
  6. I save clips of content that I want to email to people
    • “Gmail This”, Diggo, Clipmarks, Google Notebook
  7. I save multiple pieces of content around a specific topic or multiple clips pertaining to one topic
    • Google Notebook



As you can see, there is a relatively concise grouping of types of data, but the choices for where I can store this data are rather mind boggling. I would like to reduce that clutter, and in further posts will try to propose a solution.




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“File” Syncing?

Lots of new companies are coming out with file syncing products. This irks me, so here’s my rant.

Personally I’ve used Foldershare since day one (which has been out for a while, even pre-microsoft), and its been rock solid. I sync “working files” between a couple of bizdev guys and a desktop thats on all the time. This keeps the team on the same page with power points presentations, word docs, etc.

For those of you raving about DropBox, Foldershare does/did that. What makes the whole concept even less interesting is that after doing this Foldershare syncing successfully for several years I realized I don’t really have that many files to sync anymore.

Where have all the files gone (apparently into laptop bags, because in a recent search for a new business/laptop bag I found a ton that have file sorting sections, like paper files?, who uses that, lawyers?)?
Continue Reading →

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Best Website Ever

I’ve been obsessed with tourfilter lately.  Its the craigslist of music.

1) list out your favorite bands
2) put in your email
3) get an email when they play in your town 

Its really that simple, and its actually useful. I’ve bought a lot of tickets for shows i learned about through them. Shocking that people build functional, simple websites that actually do something for you and make your life easier!  

Look forward to seeing what they do in the future.     

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Google Calendar Windows Mobile Sync

I just made the switch from a Tmobile Dash (windows mobile 6) to a Tmobile Blackberry curve, and I’ve had so much trouble finding a way to sync to Google Calendar that I need to come back to make a big recommendation for OggSync.

It was downloadable from my phone, easy to setup, free for use with one personal calendar, it worked well/consistently, and it worked OTA (Over the Air)! What more could you ask for?

I highly recommend this, and would love for them to come out with something for Blackberry.

There were many other solutions, but none of them inspired confidence like OggSync and I don’t want to sync through Outlook.

Others:

  • www.goosync.com/
  • http://www.milow.net/public/projects/activegcsync-project-page.html
  • http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/
  • http://code.google.com/p/gadjet/
  • http://www.scheduleworld.com/tg/cal/day.jsp
  • http://www.nuevasync.com/
  • http://spanningsync.com/ (ical)
  • http://www.gcalsync.com/
  • http://www.syncmycal.com/
  • http://www.saraiya.com/
  • http://www.companionlink.com/products/companionlinkforgoogle.html
  • http://www.mobilegcal.com/
  • How to Sync Google Calendar with Smartphones

Should it really be this hard? I complained about this before.

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Information processing online

Here is a list of the web applications that I use in some way while I consume, process, and publish data online:

  • Scrapbook – Firefox extension for archiving a web page to your computer only
  • Google Notebook – application for clipping sections of content into a notebook, where you can group similar content
  • Diigo (I previously used Furl ) – social bookmarking application that allows you to clip content and archive online copy of full content
  • Delicious – the social bookmarking application that i’ve used the longest. I have Diigo post a copy of each bookmark to del.icio.us
  • Google Docs – web based word processor that can also publish to a blog
  • Continue Reading →

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Sharing Photos with Flickr (or any other service for that matter)

My friend and co-worker Jason recently came back from the Hamptons, and wanted an easy way to share his photos with all of the people that were there. He put together instructions for how to use Flickr groups, and was kind of surprised by how many steps where involved.

Honestly, I wasn’t so shocked. I’ve used flickr, zoomr, picasa online, and for local file management I’ve used ACDSee, iphoto, and picasa. None of them do exactly what I want, and none of them seem to propose an easy process for publishing your pictures.

These are all the steps nessecary to have a new person add photos to a
Flickr group:

  • Click the link on this invite
  • If you don’t have a yahoo account create one.
  • On the main page the first option says Upload Or, look at our uploading

Continue Reading →

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Diigo Follow Up Review

So I’ve been working with Diigo for a while now, and have already written about it on Life in Lists. My usage fell off for a while, but when I started doing a lot of research again for my day job I returned to Diigo to see if it was up to the task. I have a feeling I am going to write more in future posts about the perfect professional research tool, so I’ll focus specifically on Diigo for this post.

Things I like about Diigo:
Continue Reading →

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Sources of personal information

Here I want to begin an outline of all the personal information I encounter or take in as an input:

Real World (offline) - here we take in information from people directly through word of mouth, or we discover new information to track from our own original ideas, or by being prompted or informed through media (books, articles, commercials, signs, flyers, etc)

Online - here we take in information through e-mail, rss feeds, traditional news sites, etc

Regardless of where it comes from here is an outline of all the different types of data I might want to take-in or track:

  • Contacts
  • Locations
  • bars, restaurants, clubs
  • stores
  • travel ideas
  • Consumables
  • Products (cloths, gadgets, etc)
  • Books
  • Music
  • Movies
  • Websites
  • Ideas
  • Writing (blogs, journal, fiction, etc)
  • Business Ideas
  • Web apps
  • Vacation Ideas
  • Reflections/Observations
  • Personal Information Repository
  • Transactions (purchases, etc)
  • Passwords
  • Accounts
  • Finances
  • Insurance, etc
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Gmail This!

I spend a lot of time each day reading about new web applications and innovations. Very seldomly do I come across anything useful. In a nice deviation from the standard routine I came across this bookmarklet a couple days ago:

From the Hall: GmailThis!

GmailThis! <– just drag this to your browser’s bookmark toolbar.

The Gmail This bookmarklet rocks, and Its worked its way into my daily routine much faster than any new application. For some reason I want to compare this to the social bookmarking apps, and I definitely picked this up faster than those, and its doing a better job of getting my links and articles to the people I think should read them.

Feature Request:
I’d love to see this integrated with delicious or onlywire! Combining gmail and delicious could allow you to track interesting conversations about articles. Diigo takes a stab at this, but the actual commenting doesn’t work in closed groups. It all goes back to the BLAG concept, that I continue to seek out a solution for.

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