Palm CEO Looking for iPhone Returns - Swap for Treo

Palm Chief Executive Officer, Edward Colligan showed a little moxi with investment analysts stating 

"They will have 30 days to return (iPhone) so we hope we'll benefit from that, if that happens,"

Source: Palm reports profit drop, expects iPhone effect | CNET News.com

Its hasn't been a safe bet to bet against Steve Jobs for a decade but the decade preceding that proved to be a safe time to be against Jobs. Its possible that Colligan is betting on Palm and Treo's consumer experience honed over the last decade. Palm learned some hard lessons about handheld devices that do not have keyboards, especially those that are phones.

The iPhone is essentially a glamorized beta device, while the Treo has been tested and refined year after year for quite a while.

The iPhone does show some innovation in displays and in the software, an Apple strength. However, software does not make a phone. A multi function device that combines an MP3 player/phone/wifi device/VOIP phone/text messaging device/email device is a long long way from Apple's comfort zone working with just little MP3 players that get knocked off by the dozen with any company that has half a brand.

I don't know if Palm will actually receive any of that return sale traffic from potentially disappointed iPhone customers, but I think his head is in the right place. Besides if iPhone is a stellar success, Palm will probably not last much longer anyway, so that kind of simplifies Palm's strategy. Thrive or Die.

Krillion.com Matches Local Deals that you Can Pick up in your car

Often times people browse the Internet looking for just that right thing at just the right price.  Once they find just the right thing at just that right price, they then hop in the car and drive to their local retailer where they either con the retailer into giving them the product of the same price or they end up paying more for product if they get the right product at all.

A recent press release from the new website called Krillion.com covers their new services.  They provide a search platform that allows people to search for products that are available in their local vicinity.  So if you are out there looking for Frigidaire Refrigerators, because your old refrigerator is an quite as efficient as it used to be in the summer starting to kill your electric bill, you can find the refrigerator on their site and then they will give you directions on where you can find that same refrigerator in your local area and you can drive to the store and pick it up today. 

Circuit City offers a similar option for things that they list in their store, but this service covers many stores within your area and not just a single retailer.

Is Vodafone Passing on the iPhone

Apple Waves Flag in Europe A few rumors circulating through iTWire would seem to indicate that Apple and Vodfone have talked about pushing the iPhone through Vodafone, but the rumor has it that Vodafone isn't going to leap at the opportunity too quikly.

  • Its a first generation phone from a company that has never done a phone before.
  • There is already speculation of problems with the device such as the battery life and talk times (after all it does everything and that takes juice).
  • Probably more of a deal killer, Apple reportedly wants a minimum guaranteed order, which is almost laughable in the US market and down right ridiculous in the European Mobile market where American beligerance has never been accepted terribly well. 

They may try it on after all the rumor and speculation are over with, but Apple is likely to have a tougher time in Europe than in the US.  Its one thing to be a US darling but another to be a belligerant foreigner fighting off anti-trust litigation.

Link to iTWire - Vodafone to get Euro iPhone?

Apple's iPhone- Fast One or Coup d'etat

Zdnet is reporting that Apple may have pulled a fast one on At&t with an iPhone built in the form of a Trojan Horse.  They claim that Apple has held back the WiFi controls from At&t so that some day down the road, Apple or other developers could use the phone to make WiFi calls from hotspots.

The premise here is that the telcos have been holding back on WiFi with mobile phones since they have not yet found a way to make money from it.  They also claim that they have been reducing costs while increase mobile phone bills to consumers.  I support both positions myself having worked in the mobile phone industry for several years and working directly with 3 of the largest phone carriers.

Whether or not the iPhone is a trojan horse is a bit of a red herring.  It has to be accepted by consumers and it has to work before its trojan potential might be explored.  I think that it could be a trojan horse, but that is a game that Microsoft has played in the past and not Apple.  (DOS on every IBM computer)

Apple has always worked to be unique and avoid the business model of living off a host.  Steve Jobs is that devious, but he's also probably arrogant enough not to want to need another service to leach off of.  In my opinion ZDnet doesn't go far enough.

Apple doesn't want to open the door for WiFi service, they want to become a mobile phone carrier.  If you notice, activation of these phones can only be performed through iTunes.  That means that if you buy the phone in the store, you can't activate it until you get home.  You won't even know if Apple accepts your credit until after you buy the phone and install iTunes.

I'm sure Apple set up that system as they did not have the wireless infrastructure to activate phones through the normal cellular processes, not to mention they probably didn't have time to complete the EDI or XML testing of key codes required to activate a normal mobile phone.

At&t must have dropped or ignored every rule and protocol in their book to get the iPhone to market. Playing that loose allowed them to take a big gamble on the iPhone, the question will be if they gambled for a few million more handset sales a year, or if they just gambled their mobile phone service away.

That was the same question the record labels asked themselves a few years ago when iTunes came out.  Their nightmares have not become reality yet, but they are definitely bleeding out from other wounds.  Maybe Apple has learned enough from that experience to perform a coup d' etat on the wireless industry.

Stock Options Software Trial

If you are curious about learning to trade stock options, you may want to take a look at signing up for a website called stockopt.com.  Per their latest release, they are currently offering a free 14 day trial where you can sign up with just your name in any military's, no credit card is required, and you can access their online tools to help you learn how to invest in trade with stock options.

Investing in stock options is definitely an advanced investment practice and shouldn't be entered into lightly or without a great deal of investigation, study, and research.  Stock options let you leverage your investment dollars on the velocity of movement of another financial products such as a stock or a bond or foreign currency or even a commodity.  You're essentially investing in the option to buy or the option to sell whichever financial instrument is backed by the Stock option.  Stock options generically referred financially backed options of stocks, however sometimes the word stock option is also used as a synonym for other types of options which may not be backed by investments in actual company stock.

"Steal My Book" Jonathan Lethem

I read an interesting article about a week ago in Forbes that I wanted to explore in more detail.  Jonnathan Lethem an author and would be movie writer, has been hoping to break his novels into Hollywood movies.

He has attained a modest level of success as a writer, but none of his movies have made it successfully into a movie yet.  He had one book optioned off, but it never made it to the big screen. 

So he is taking a new approach.  He is encouraging writers to steal is books and rewrite them for a movie.  He is looking for acknowledgment in return.

Books that are made into movies often times pay big dividends to the authors after the fact.  Its not the money they receive for the book up front from the movie studios, but the increase in sales of the original book after the movie comes out.

Movies like Forest Gump pushed sales of the book Forest Gump and its sequel into the stratosphere for Winston Groom.  The movie of course was very very different than the books.  The movie was like a Brady Bunch rendition of Jackass the Movie.  However, it sold lots of books for Winston Groom and put a great book into much wider circulation.

This model has legs in my opinion not just for authors but for other artists as well from clothing designers to musicians.  Movies are a way to market a product globally and if your product is a Coke, or a song, or a new fashion dress or even the story behind the movie, a Movie can push the envelope on your potential new market.

CoverMyTravels

This week I've been reviewing several travel insurance, insurance companies.  This time I'm turning my attention to CoverMyTravels.co.uk.

They offer a fairly comprehensive set of travel insurance policies and price structures designed to fit the needs of sometimes travelers, senior citizen travelers, and excessively regular travelers just to name a few.

They offer medical travel insurance in the following categories:

  • Travel Insurance for Pre-existing Medical Conditions
  • over 65 travel insurance
  • Single trip travel insurance
  • Annual travel insurance
  • Family travel insurance
  • Long stay travel insurance

Travel insurance can be very useful when you need to cover your foreign medical expenses, cover losses of personal belongings such as luggage or clothing, replace passports and cash, and even cover your personal liability or legal costs if you should happen to fall into legal trouble while traveling.

Travel insurance premiums will vary from person to person depending on their age and medical conditions and more.  But to give you up in the ballpark look at what some travel premiums cost, it look that their example premium sections which list premiums for different age groups ranging from £29  to just over £400.

I have reviewed several travel insuranc sites and this is one that caught my attention with their offering of Family Travel Inusrance plans in particular.  Some business travelers are individually covered by their companies, but that coverage does not always extend to their spouse and children.

Corporations trying to Avoid Obscene Protests while Capitalizing on SecondLife

If there is money they will come .

SecondLife is creating for virtual economy made up of real money with real paying customers.  These customers purchase things in virtual reality and oftentimes take those things back out to the real world with them or are just the real items in the real world.  In this way SecondLife can sometimes be used as a staging area.

However doing business in SecondLife is not easy.  At least it's not easy to do business in SecondLife in a way that you would do business in real life.  In real life it's very unlikely that your customers will break out into an orgy in your retail store.  When protests happen in real life, they can cause real damage and sometimes even heard people.  In SecondLife, they caused virtual damage intend to embarrass people and corporations.

Forbes recently covered an article on SecondLife to talk about some of the pranks that occur there.  For example, a virtual helicopter crashed into a virtual Nissan Corp. building.  The crash erupted into a fire at Nissan, but no workers were armed.

A separate incident involved American Apparel which was bombed within SecondLife.  Bombing a virtual reality retail store fortunately will not harm any shoppers.  It can be embarrassing for corporate image managers.

Many corporations hope to make big bucks fast in SecondLife.  Many are not having much success with this for a couple different reasons.  There are only so many things that lend itself to purchases in SecondLife today, music videos or music might be good examples.  Many other things don't lend themselves to a virtual shopping experience unless you're purchasing those items just to enhance your virtual experience.

Corporations are also somewhat stymied by the lower than expected numbers of people actively participating in SecondLife at any given time.  That number seems to hover around 30,000 people logged in and doing something in SecondLife throughout the day or night.  There are millions of registered users, but that's different than millions of people showing up every day.

It's likely that corporations will continue to dabble in SecondLife until somebody finds a way to make it work.  At that point in time more people will come for the SecondLife experience and the shopping and the corporations will be there to take their money.

Forex Social Networking Website Review

This week I have been reviewing a new Social Networking Website targeted towards Forex traders and investors. 

Social networks on the internet are often linked with sites such as MySpace, but networking is a time honored business tradition and social networking online is just a fancy way of saying online networking utilizing new internet tools of communication.

This site, is located at FXGround.com, and it is setting out to fulfill a very useful networking niche in Forex trading.  Foreign Currency Exchange trading can be a complicated business.  It gets more complex as you attempt to understand the tools available in different foreign jurisdictions and markets.

This Forex Site is setup to serve the function of allowing the professional traders, brokers, and firms the ability to review the available products, services, firms, brokers, theories, tools and investment strategies.

This enables people to get a group perspective in reference to all of these items.  On the site I've seen it help people identify which services are good or not so good and in the world of Forex where things are not necessarily binary, they can more importantly ellaborate on the situations when a given strategy or trader might be best employed to achieve the desired results.

That is the important thing about this tool.  It's very easy to find someone online that will tell you yes or no or promote a product or not promote products.  Social networks are extremely useful because you can find people that will tell you yes or no and maybe then they will often elaborate to support their position.  That position may get amplified or buried if they provide you good advice or bad advice.  The other members of the form will often jump in and either attack bad advice or support good advice.

In addition to networking, social networking forms essentially allow people to network ideas and concepts and knowledge.

When Green is Not Green - Biofuel Plants May be just as Bad for the Environment

 We like to think that if we start to produce biofuels that can be renewed or regrown that is that we will be doing the environment a favor.  The truth is that growing our fuel is not as clean as many people are making it out to be.  Just because the plants are green doesn't mean that were helping the environment.

British Petroleum and Associated British Foods announced that they are going to build a joint facility to refine biofuels and open by 2009.

The Saltend facility, on an existing oil refinery site, will make 420m litres of ethanol a year when it begins production in 2009.

Source: BP and Associated British Foods join forces to build £200m biofuels plant | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

This project will essentially grow wheat and turn it into a biofuel.  The problem with this concept is that farming is not always good for the environment.  Farming requires the elimination of trees and it often requires a great deal of chemicals and fertilizers.

Cutting down trees is bad for air quality and chemicals and fertilizers often run off and contaminate the water supply.  Plus the cutting of plants also contaminates the air so when the wheat is harvested at two will have an impact on air quality.  Plus at the end of the day burning biofuels made from plants is not that much cleaner than burning gasoline made from oil that was made from plants millions of years ago.  At the end of the day we're talking about putting more carbon in the air.

Putting more carbon in the air is bad for people that need to breathe the air and it's bad for global warming.  Growing biofuels made the good for countries that are trying to reduce their dependence on oil, but don't kid yourself into believing that it's good for the environment.  It satisfies a partial problem related to the energy crisis, but it doesn't satisfy the problems of global warming crisis.

More Battery Recalls - Toshiba is up to Bat

I kind of missed this one, but there are more Sony Laptop batteries being recalled.

Older Toshiba laptops are now being hit by the recall.

The new recall is impacting the following Computer Models or Accessory Batteries:

  1. Portege M300
  2. Portege M400/M405
  3. Portege S100/S105
  4. Qosmio G35
  5. Satellite A50
  6. Satellite R10/R15
  7. Satellite R20/R25
  8. Satellite U200/U205
  9. Tecra A2
  10. Tecra M3
  11. Tecra M4
  12. Tecra M5
  13. Tecra M6
  14. Tecra M7
  15. Tecra S3
  16. PA3191U-4BRS
  17. PA3191U-5BRS
  18. PA3356U-2BRS
  19. PA3356U-3BRS
  20. PA3475U-1BRS
  21. PA3476U-1BRS

Fortunately for Toshiba and Sony there are only about 830,000 batteries that are impacted by this recall that now totals close to 7 million batteries recalled.

In case you forgot how this started, a Dell computer caught on fire during a conference while it was video taped.  A Dell recall followed soon.

Then an IBM laptop burned up and almost exploded according to some witnesses at LAX.  Fortunately, airports these days are pretty easy going about fires and near explosions.

Then Apples were recalled and several others and its just been one long drawn out recall ever since.

Hey iPhone, Its the Keyboard Stupid!

Apple always tries to make their products more intuitive and cool.  They seem to have missed the boat on a lesson that was learned many years ago by Palm.  So here's my free tip to Steve Jobs.

Handheld users like keyboards.

There are many reasons why people like keyboards, one of the reasons is so that they can feel the keys with their fingers.  Fingers are those long skinny things that hang at the end of the your hands.  They have a bunch of nerves in the fingertips that enable people to feel things.  They can feel things like buttons.

If you have a device without a button, your finger can't feel it.

IPhone has no buttons and so your fingers won't be a little feel it.  That means you'll always have a look at your iPhone whenever you want to do something.

That brings up the second problem,

it's called Grease.

Slime on face gets on phone I'm not talking about the musical and I'm not talking about the movie and it has nothing to do with John Travolta.  I'm talking about the grease that comes off of your skin and rubs onto the side of your phone.  If you wear makeup, that I'm also talking about the makeup nor rub off on your phone.

It gets kind of hard to see your phone if you've got grease all over it.  I already mentioned that with the iPhone it's very important to see your phone because you can feel your phone.

Then there is a third little problem comes in to play as well and it kind relates to being able to not see your phone.  You see when you have a mobile phone there's this thing that tends to happen to the mobile phone that obscures the screen over time. 

It's called scratches.

screen protector like a pocket protector for your pocket device-not cool Mobile phones get scratched, it happens to all phones.  People are hard on their mobile phones.  We carry them in our bags, our backpacks in our pockets, our belts.  We throw them in our cars and on her desk and on her nightstand and in tables. 

I still have some left over screen protector things from the 90's.  They were not cool, they were down right dorky but necessary if you didn't want to scratch up your $500 palm.  Kind of like the pocket protector I guess.

They fall off of things and slide across floors and across parking lots.  For those of us with kids, our kids tend to slobber on them and scratch them and play with them.  Regardless they always get scratched.  Now if you can't feel the buttons on your phone because there are no buttons then you have to see to use the phone and if your phone is all scratched up and if it's a little greasy, you might have built a see what you're doing and perform a right function as easily. 

You'll have to stare at the phone a little bit more and a little bit harder.  You may wonder why the big phone manufacturers aren't too concerned about the iPhone.  The reason is that they learned all these lessons along time ago.  Don't get me wrong they had to beat beat over the head with a stick a bunch of times to learn this lesson.  Palm almost went out of business because they had a hard time learning this lesson, and only learned after they brought the Treo line of phones back into the company. 

The special thing about the Treo was its keyboard.  Before the keyboard people used to have to use the silly little adhesive stickers that went on a Palm to keep it from getting scratched and to keep it from getting greasy.  Of course they also obscured your view of the screen and made it that much harder to see what you're doing.  And putting a plastic patch on your cool iPhone like you might put a birth control patch on your girlfriends shoulder just isn't that cool.

Yahoo looses Sales Chief to Martha Stewart

Yahoo's longtime chief sales officer left the company this weekend to take a job as the president for media at Martha Stewart Living.  Yahoo has been struggling to revamp and reorganize its company for the last several months.  They keep missing the hot trends in web technology and can't keep up with Google.

He took a wrong turn several years ago when they thought that they wanted to be a media company instead of a search company and an advertising company.  Google didn't make that mistake until it recently purchased YouTube.  However Google is very one deeply entrenched as the king of search and advertising online right now.

Many people don't even understand that Google is an advertising company.  They only understand a Google is a search engine company, they don't appreciate the fact that Google gets paid every time someone clicks on one of their suggested links in a Google search results page.

There are several new transit been popping up on the Internet over the last six to nine months that have the potential to spoil Google stay on the top of search and on the top of Internet advertising.  Yahoo may be thinning out their ranks, but they don't seem to be identifying these new trends and they don't seem to be acting on them at all.

Asked.com seems to understand the changes in search that are necessary and they are making some interesting inroads into potentially flanking Google.  However they too have not yet identified many of the new advertising trends online.  It's possible that the next time an Internet search company rises to the top, they might not take the top position as the Internet's chief advertising company at the same time like Gould did.

Google seem to see the house marker on the street to prosperity via the Internet when they rose to the top climbing up the shoulders of Yahoo among others.  Google seems to be losing their way these days even as some of their earliest employees leave the company with the millions of dollars that they've earned.  It's possible that Google has lost some of its vitality as it's turned more and more corporate.  They can hire the best brains in the world, but when you hire a brain and set them into a corporate environment it's difficult to extract the lifeblood of creativity.

 

I suspect that Google will probably suffer through a five to 10 year long decline, and someday go through a reorganization of their own much like John do is experiencing today.  Maybe they will rebound 15 to 20 years later, when all that brainpower gets a little bit more concerned about retirement.  All those brains weren't smart enough to get on the bus with Google in the early days and they're not as rich as they could've been, and working in a corporate shell such as Google today means they're not going to get as rich as average people dating Google in the early days.

That all points to innovation occurring outside of Google.

Apology for TheNewsroom Technical Problems

I would like to make an apology for the newsroom videos that are running on this site and some of my other websites.

These videos are very good and it provides some very good information and news.  That is why I put them on the site.  The problem is that some of the videos are running automatically.

They are not supposed to run automatically.  I've sent several notifications to theNewsroom and their tech support group, but I have not received any response as yet.  If they don't get this technical problem fixed that I will stop putting their videos on my websites.  I do hope they get it fixed because they make a good complement to the websites as they allow me to pick up related tech news in video form.  That makes it easier for me to deliver content to you without having to pepper this blog with lots and lots of articles.  Sometimes a video can sum up a topic much more efficiently than text can.

So again I apologize if you're stopping by the website and you start to hear a sound and realize later that it's the video playing automatically somewhere lower on the screen.  Hopefully this will be fixed very soon, and it may be annoying me as much if not more than it's annoying you.  I definitely don't want to annoy my readers and for that again I apologize one more time.

Move a Train with your Brain Waves

Now Doesn't this look fun?

Seriously, its not really supposed to be used for fun yet, so don't expect this to come with your Wii version2. This is currently intended for rehabillitation purposes someday in the future. Obviously, we can't expect these things to be developed overnight. About a year ago we covered a similar device that allowed a person to manipulate a cursor with their mind as well.

Improving Technology Series - Stair Lifts

I am fortunate to be young and in good health.  Over the last few years, my grandparents have experienced a great deal of bad health.  Before their health began to decline they anticipated their future needs and went to the significant expense of having an elevator installed in their home.

They were lucky because they had the means at the time to afford an elevator.  Plus, they had the foresight to act when they had the means.

Many people are not that fortunate.  There are however addtional alternatives besides elevators and besides selling your home to move into a single story ranch or a nursing home. 

Many people can now benefit from utilizing light weight, efficient and relatively inexpensive stair lift

These devices have been around for ages, but technolgoy has improved making them more reliable, lighter and safer. One of the most importat factors however is that they have become more affordable too. This is very important for the elderly living on fixed incomes or on diminishing savings and can literally give them the means to continue living in their home happily and safely for many more years.

Hi Tech Boats Chasing down Green Peace Activists - Straight out of a Neil Stephenson Book

Check out this first video clip of a government boat (some European government I believe).  They are chasing down Green Peace activists trying to get a message (of protest) to the G8.

Anyone that's ever read Neal Stephenson's book Zodiac could probably appreicate this scene. I know nothing about the open seas but this looks like pretty hostile maneuvres against these rubber zodiac boats to me.

When will someone invent Self Packing Boxes?

I am moving this summer and for the most part, my wife and I are going to be doing the packing ourselves this time.  Its been a couple moves since we had to pack things ourselves and I'm already starting to dream about a technological solution.

I want a self packing box.  A simple and sturdy box, with some sort of arm that reaches out, wraps things up nicely and packs and seals the box.

The reality is that its hard enough just to find boxes.  I found a site in the UK that sells cardboard boxes and many other packing supplies, but we don't have much of an equivalent here in the US. There is a UHaul store but they don't give great rates. They are in the van renting business and so they just provide the boxes as an after thought. Anything you buy as an afterthought is always going to be marked up significantly and that seems to be the way things are there.

Today's Tech News in Video form

Do You Have a Blogging Problem?

Maybe this top  10 list will help you make that determination.  It is the Top 10 Warning Signs of Blogging Addiction.

Here's Items 4 and 9, you'll have to drop by the site to see the rest of the list.  ;)

 

... 

9. Your friends tell you that you need to stop blogging so much and get out and socialize more. So you take your laptop to Starbucks and logon to Digg, StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog, Reddit for the evening

...

...

...

... 

4. On your resume where it ask for references, you include your Blogroll.

...

...

...

Poker Tables in Space Tourism

I'm sure it will be many years may be decades before space tourism becomes passé.  Going into outer space and looking back at the planet Earth seems to be almost a religious experience for the people that have had the luxury of space travel.

But someday space travel will will be as common as flying to Vegas.  In fact it will probably become tedious, hundreds maybe thousands of people crammed into a small space journey from one place to the next taking days maybe weeks to get to their destination.

Gaming Industry Opportunity

Diva from Fifth Element performing in space with planet in background

There are no laws in space.  The moon is under the jurisdiction of the United Nations, but space is an open frontier with no laws or borders for that matter.  It could definitely become possible that space might become the next haven for gamblers.

The gambling industry makes billions of dollars off of gamblers every year, and much of that money goes back into investing in gambling infrastructure from massive hotels and real estate investments to restaurants and other attractions all the way down to endless rows of poker tables.

It's not that crazy to consider that the gambling industry could drum up the funds to make space tourism a reality as they search for a new and novel place to entice their customer base.  People sometimes scoff at the idea of the Russians excepting space tourists, however when the Americans catch on to the idea and the gambling industry identifies the potential and the legal freedom, the world of space travel can change significantly.

Who knows you might even be able to get comped a free trip to Venus . . .

or Catch a show with the latest alien diva . ..

The Show Us Your Big Digg Review

Top 10 Tech- Show Us Your Big Digg! On one of our sister websites, we are running a cool little program.  We are gathering of examples from people that have successfully submitted stories to Digg.com.

To participate all you have to do is drop a comment at Top 10 Tech Web Tips on their article 'Show Us Your Big Digg!' with a link to your most successfully dugg story.

Top 10 Tech is going to write up a future article on successful digg stories and their characteristics, plus a few other articles on the stories that didn't fair so well.  Top10Tech is a do follow site so you will get the benefit of a one way link back to your own site, plus another reference in the final article.

You never know what you are going to find on Digg but at least it will have been tested by many other readers.  You might think that the topic of truck accessories might be rather tame, until you read about an 18 wheeler that was pulled over for a truck accessory on the front of his rig (5372 Diggs!).  Turns out the truck accessory had a person on it.

Real Estate Technology Sites

For the last couple of weeks have been looking into a number of different websites the cover real estate.  I studied real estate when I was in college, I've taken enough credit hours to sit for real estate exam in the state of Illinois.  Previously had also taken some real estate courses and I could probably still sit for the exam in Georgia as well.  I may or may not do that someday, but for now I am going to be developing some interesting sites and capabilities.

We're preparing to put our own home on the market and I recall back in 2002 would we purchased it I had a number of different tools that we utilized to find and purchase in size up our home.  At the time none of those tools existed on the web.  I've been checking in none of those tools exist on the web today either.  Act then I didn't know as much about the web as I do today so I plan on doing something with those tools this time around.

When we moved this time are going to be staying in corporate housing for short while, but it's possible that we may release a place for a few months until we find the right place for us.  We're looking to settle down permanently and not endure any additional moves.  Were basically looking for the home that we will retire in and were only in our 30s,

this time around will probably end up purchasing either a steal of a deal for closure might be a fixer-upper or project house, but sits in a fantastic location on a lake somewhere or it's possible we may attempt to pick up a luxury home in a fire sale when an existing owner falls into a financial distress type of situation.  Given the mortgage market the way it is these days that's entirely possible.  Too many people are over extended with zero interest loans and second mortgages and a number of other problems.  I'm not looking to capitalize on someone else's pain, but someone has to bail out the banks.

So as I start to move into some real estate related web work, I will probably start with a real estate blog. I already have a blog that focuses on home mortgages that I've just recently begun.

I'm probably also going to establish something of a financial planning/credit counseling blog.  I've been providing that type of advice since the early 90s and that like to do something useful with it on the web for posterity if for nothing else.  I did some work as a ghostwriter last winter for a credit site, and I still have about 10,000 words I wrote on several topics that were never published.  It got a lot of material to use and capitalize on.

The Maven Mapper's Information Domain

I recently purchased the domain for Maven Mapper's Information at http://www.mavenmappersinformation.com

As of the writing of this article, there is nothing to see there, its just parked.  I will be forwarding visitors from that domain to the Maven Mapper's Information - The Light page on Softduit.

I am not changing the domain again, but did want to have control over the domain.  In the future if you happen to type in that domain, you will automatially be routed to Maven Mapper's Information - The Light.

MIT harenesses Harmonic Resonance - Appliances Living in Perfect Harmony

Do you remember the concept of harmonic resonance?

Back in the late 1980's, a bunch of new age types, got together and thought that the earth and planets and people could start resonating together and well, um share energy efficiently and be happy and stuff.

Well, that may have seemed a bit like pseudo science meets astrology, but an MIT professor and his harnessed team of Real Genius students have found a way to make a charging device and an appliance resonate at the same frequency so that they can share energy.

Appliances Living in Perfect Harmony 

I guess you could say that this development is just swell.  I hope they perform some studies to determine whether or not this harmonic resonance of energy electromagnetic radiation will have any surprising side effects on honey bees.  Otherwise, we might just out smart ourselves out of existence.

Here are the details

The concept of sending power wirelessly isn't new, but its wide-scale use has been dismissed as inefficient because electromagnetic energy generated by the charging device would radiate in all directions, the report said.

One advance was announced last fall, when MIT physics professor Marin Soljacic said he had figured out how to use specially tuned waves, according t the report.

The key is to get the recharging device and the gadget that needs power to resonate at the same frequency, allowing them to efficiently exchange energy, the rpeort said.

Source: MIT shows power over wireless technology - Americas Network

 

FAA Computer Glitch - Starting to seem Dangerous

The FAA experienced a 'computer glitch' again today.

You know one of those simple little gitches with the computers that route thousands of planes through our nations airport all day long. The computer that makes sure that no planes play bumper planes in the sky. They aren't really made for that.

This is not the first time its happened, and fortunately nothing tragic has happened, but this problem seems to happen fairly regularly these days. If they can't get a handle on this problem, something terrible is going to happen and then we are going to be looking at something kind of like a mix between Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. The result will be worse than both, because once again our government will have failed, but instead of blaming it on a natural disaster or crazy terrorists, they will only be able to blame themselves and their own incompetence.

Synchronizing Wedding Cameras at the Reception

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Our sponsor Shopforweddings.com recently provided a press release about their cheap wedding favors.  These are the presence that the guests at the wedding party and sometimes the guests at the reception receive from the couple is getting married. 

If chosen wisely these can make a wedding much more memorable, then if something is just randomly picked because it looks cute or goes with the decorum.

Our sponsor also provides wedding cameras and it strikes me that the technology hasn't caught up to the wedding party yet.  Wouldn't it be cool if technology allowed people to take those random pictures and snapshots and have them automatically synchronize via bluetooth to a computer or server which could then display the pictures digitally or projector or TV your something in an almost live fashion.

The disposable camera works great at these events, but there is usually a least one that is lost and working with manual film seems to be a bit of a waste of time.  Pick a deadly be something interesting about running live or semi-live pictures, someone may want to edit out some of the inappropriate pictures that might get taken.  Regardless it probably won't be long before these things go a little bit more high-tech.

Of course all of this might require a chief technology assistant or something to be hired by the wedding planner and increase the bill by another couple thousand dollars . ..

Dream Search Tool for Relocating Newbies

This summer I have to move and I'm moving a few hundred miles away from my soon to be former home. I'm moving from the Atlanta area to the Charlotte area of North Carolina and that means I have to learn where everything is all over again.

There is an intangible costs of moving when it comes to knowing where things are. You have to invest and spend time to figure out where things are and you get to invest and spend time figuring out where the good buys are too. I'm going to have to start the process all over again and I'm not really looking forward to it. I have moved enough times to know that it is costly!

When and as we move we will have to identify where to get the cheap gas, the cheap milk, the cheap diet coke, the discount office supplies, free Internet access and many many more things. There are lots of online tools to help you find things, even price comparisons but nothing that shares a true local knowledge and possibly reasoned justification describing where the good deals are.  Seems like this would be a good tool that could be implimented using some of the social networking web designs.   Kind of like a digg for local shopping!

Folding Tables for Using Laptops in Cars

As I become more and more portable with my computing capabilities and powers, I'm constantly looking for new ways to improve my portable office environment. After just completing a 1500 Mile Road trip, I was once again confronted with the fact that it's very difficult and tedious to use a laptop in a passenger car.

I in fact was driving in a minivan with more room than your average car but possibly not as much room as the largest SUVs. Still it was not easy to use a laptop, let alone my 17 inch wide monster laptop from Toshiba.

Right now I'm working outside on a fishing dock as I write this article. I could be working anywhere.  Regardless, of the location I always need a flat, sturyd and fairly safe location for my laptop. Tonight it's sitting on some outdoor furniture from some home improvement store.  It is the cast-iron variety and it looks a bit like an outdoor bar complete with barstools.

There are times I would settle for simple folding tables, as I do not have to have something fancy. That makes me wonder if there's some way that someone could create a small folding table or attachment that would enable me to work with my laptop in a car. Think of it like a TV tray or TV stand that you could set your laptop on in the passenger seat of a car rooted in the backseat for that matter. It can't be that hard and I promise to turn the airbag off.

No Replacing Business Cards Yet

Every time I order business cards, I always think, "There's got to be a better way!" Something more efficient,  something a little bit cheaper, something that helps provide information in an exchange better than the business card, Something!

But the truth is there really isn't anything that works better yet. Cell phone manufacturers and PDA manufacturers have toyed with things like infra red transfers of information or vcards through Outlook.

Those tools do work but they're not quite as easy as handing someone a business card in the meating. Some tools such as business card scanners also help make things easier but they still rely on that old fashion calling card technology. New base services like LinkedIn, worked to rely on the social infrastructure of people that as a group contribute information about contacts and small or large changes for the contact information that occurs.

They are even companies such as Forbes.com that sponsor people to share information about companies to accumulate details about organization charts or structures and many other things about the inner workings of the company.  This information is then shared on the internet for the world to see and access and for their reporters to get to the bottom of things faster too.

The bottom line is that nothing has yet replaced the business card nor become as ubiquitous as the business card. It is still the standard used in business today.

Steve Jobs Practices CYA with your A

If you thought it was safe to start buying tunes from iTunes and sharing them for free with your friends and family and a million people on the internet after purchasing a 'DRM' free tune from iTunes, then you have woefully misunderstood Steve Jobs.  Just ask his former CFO, Steve Jobs, protects Number 1 first and foremost.

That means he is not going to expose himself to liability by turning the flood gates loose on downloads.

It was revealed this week that Apple hides some information about You in its iTunes files.

It hides your name among other things in the coded file.  This would enable Apple to track an illegaly shared 'DRM' free itune back to the original purchaser that lost control of their tune(s). 

Link to Information hidden in iTunes music files sparks privacy fears-Business-Industry Sectors-Technology-TimesOnline

Alliance-Leicester Awarded Best Current Account

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Our sponsors A&L were recently awarded "Best Current Account Provider" in 2006.  We strive to gather great sponsors to Maven Mapper's Information so that we can keep bringing great stories information and insight with absolutely no subscription fees or donations.  Our sponsor Alliance-Lecester of the United Kingdom provides excellent Bank Accounts service for many of your potential banking needs.

We welcome their support as one of our sponsors and wish them the best as they work to take the top awards this year.  Of course they can not achieve that goal if they do not provide great service and in that our readers and their customers benefit directly. 

Setting up a new bank account is not difficult.  The true challenge for most people is changing over their account from one bank or credit union to another.  I have never been able to drop one banking partner entirely and instantly switch to another.  I do recommend that you slowly transition, or add an additional bank.  I tend to open up a new account and as it makes sense start to route my activity to the new institution.  Sometimes you get free checks up to a certain number at one bank.  Use those to best advantage and then use the free checks from another bank if you regularly have more.

For many reasons it is always wise to diversify your banking needs across multiple institutions.  In the US and UK there is not much risk of bank default these days.  However, there are times when it is convenient to have multiple accounts at different institutions.  This can save you money on ATM fees sometimes if you travel to an area not covered directly by your primary bank with ATMs.  There are many other ways this can help as well so diversity is always a positive option to consider.

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