Two Small Ideas

On Friday, I made two very small changes to my life - really, really minor things - but they both helped and had an almost near-instant effect, so I thought they were worth sharing.

1. Add NOTEPAD.EXE to my Windows XP QuickLaunch bar. I use Visual Notepad .NET a lot. Usually as "Stat, Run..., Notepad". I use it mainly for stripping out formatting. So I'll copy something from one place, paste it in to Notepad, copy it again, and then paste it somewhere else - possibly with some minor editing in between. This is a sure-fire way of stripping out any formatting. I guess I do this several times a day. Adding Notepad to the QuickLaunch bar makes this SO much faster.

2. Installed Google Notebook on every computer I use. It's quite often the case that I'll discover something interesting at work - a piece of information, a webpage - whatever. Sometimes, I want to follow these things up at home or share them with other members of the family. I have a simple and easy way of doing this - I paste whatever it is into an e-mail and mail it to my private e-mail account - then access that from home in Outlook Express. Google Notebook replaces that - try it - www.google.com/notebook.

I hope these two little tips help you too. :)

TV from the past, Device of the future

Today, I spent some time reminiscing with a colleague about TV from the past. We started looking at episode guides and remembering back fondly to times long past. The web never ceases to amaze me - that there should be a site called http://www.eagletransporter.com/ - can you believe that? Yes, I expect you can. That came from when we were talking about Space 1999. For other reasons, we also talked about Twin Peaks.

After a while, I went looking for the current incarnations of these classics. Can you buy them on DVD? There's good news and bad news on these two particular shows. The goods news is that you CAN buy Twin Peaks and Space 1999 on DVD. The bad, annoying and somewhat frustrating news is that it would appear you can only buy the FIRST SERIES of each of these shows on DVD - you want the rest - to be able to see the whole lot? Forget it! How annoying is that? Why tell half the story? Is this a pragmatic question of diminishing marginal returns? I don't know.

Blake's Seven is another story - you can buy the whole lot - great! Ditto UFO. Ditto, it would appear, most of the Gerry Anderson series - TV with strings attached!

The other thing I looked at briefly this morning was Sony's new baby - the Mylo. It means "MY Life Online" - your plastic portable pal who's fun to be with - if I can borrow a tagline from Anne Summers. The Mylo looks incredibly cool - check this - www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/mylo/prod/index.html. You look at that, and, irrespective of your gender, it probably appeals. But then I started looking more closely, and thinking about comparisons to both my phone (QTek 9100) and the Sony PSP itself.

Mylo has wireless - which is good, but it's 802.11b, not 802.11g. If you're aiming at the device being used for streaming audio and video with high quality, "b" seems terribly short-sighted. And that's all you get - no Bluetooth, no IR.

Mylo does e-mail, which is great, but it only has support for Yahoo and GMail. I have GMail, but I also have Hotmail and an ISP address. The ISP address is currently the main one I use. You can get Hotmail and my ISP mail through a web browser, but it's better to have them in an e-mail client. Again, limiting support to GMail and Yahoo seems disappointing and short-sighted.

Mylo does web-browsing. You'd be worried if it didn't. It has Opera - which is also turning out to be a good choice.

Video - you really want to be able to watch video on a device like this, and here again Sony snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It has support for MP4 (as per PSP). Fantastic - great. No Quicktime, no Windows file formats, no Xvid, no Divx, nothing Real.

Audio, at least, is better with ATRAC (gotta love ATRAC), MP3 and WMA - presumably with DRM.

Whilst Mylo isn't a phone, it does boast what appears to be FULL support for Skype. So again, it appears tied to a single standard, but this is the vendor that currently appears to be dominant. On the Instant Messaging side, it's a mirror of e-mail with Yahoo and Google being the only supported platforms - tough luck if you're in to Messenger or AOL - isn't that just alienating about half the planet??

I think leaving out Bluetooth is a shame - and to make matters worse, Sony appear to have gone their own way with connectors and opted for a "10-pin headphone/microphone" connector - fantastic!

Another positive is the slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. On balance, I think this device is a missed opportunities. I won't be buying one, or even wanting one - my phone seems to do everything that Mylo does, and it can also do everything that I've held against the Mylo.

After years of using a phone, a PDA, and wondering about a wireless device that does everything, I finally took the "One Device" plunge. A colleague said "once you've had a smartphone, there's no turning back", and she was right. But it was taking the small phone-to-smart-phone step that convinced me that a phone-based convergence device is the answer. When I look at the brand-new, state-of-the-art Mylo, I'm even more convinced that a Qtek 9100-type device is the right answer - at least for me - and that's the point - it's very much a personal choice. If you're life is sponsored by Google and you hate Microsoft, then Mylo might be the answer. One healthy and interesting thing about the PSP is the "homebrew" scene. If "Homebrew for Mylo" evolves, then most of my criticisms may become mute. Or perhaps Sony will see a bigger picture...

Lunchtime Muse

I haven't blogged for what seems like a very, very long time. There are other things I haven't done for a long time either - like my Word of the Day distribution to my friends and colleagues.

Now I am somewhat inspired by something I just read in IT Week. I read the same story covered from two perspectives - and it's Dead Topical for this forum. It was about Blogging and work. Blogging and your employer. An English ex-pat living in Paris - Catherine Sanderson. The first article was a MULL over the whole idea of freedom of speech, rights of employers and employees and how companies and individuals should behave. Pulling together recent news and events in this area.

The second article - on the back page - was a critique of the Blog itself.

After reading both these articles in the same sitting, I had to have a peek - http://www.petiteanglaise.com/ . I've never read an "award-winning" Blog before. She is looking for a book deal. ;) I'm not actively looking for a book deal - I have enough trouble finding time to read a book, let alone write one.

I enjoyed dipping in to Catherine's blog. You should have a look. I remember spending a whole lunch hour reading Chantel's blog once. It was entertaining and I learnt quite a lot about my friend. Perhaps I should devote some quality time to reading Catherine's blog.

There's a paradox in Keith's Two Minutes. The idea was that I'd dash off something quick every day in about two minutes. That SURELY I could devote two minutes each day to this activity. The archive record shows that I blatantly can't, but also shows graphically why not.

I am incapable of writing for two minutes. I just can't do it. Twenty minutes - maybe. Two hours - no problem at all. Two minutes? Nope. Forget it. Aint ever going to happen. Even my Autochanger Audits take longer than two minutes to pen.

Two minutes would be a soundbyte - a flicker - a thought with little context or explanation - and I don't do that. Good communication and context are incredibly important to me and central to how I'm wired. I simply can't do two minutes - sorry.

Revisiting this Blog also made me think about the whys and wherefors. I know my friends read this, and I know I get comments from time to time that are clearly bogus in nature - scams and adverts. Unlike Catherine's, and to a lesser extent Chantel's, my blog is far more of a backwater. A place where it seems only those who know me go. Which is fine - it's just an observation. People have said to me that I should have a newspaper column or something like that - I have had stuff published - it's kind of cool to see your name in print - but again it comes back to precious time.

Enough musings. I will try and Blog more. Haven't I said that before? I will Blog on my beloved rats. I will blog on stuff that is entertaining me and stuff that is in my mind. I don't think I've ever blogged about work, and I've no intentions of starting. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's compartmentalising my life! ;)