I got upstairs to discover a copy of Avatar and Mad Men: Season 3, Disc 4.  Seeing as how the new season of Mad Men had started up – I was excited to catch-up.  The only problem was I couldn’t remember what in the world had happened on Disc 3, or even 2 for that matter.  “When was the last time I watched Mad Men?” I thought – as I recalled having a rather solid video-rental routine at one point.

I logged onto netflix.com – and checked my order history to find out.  It turned out the two videos I’d just sent back had originally arrived the first week of May.  A week later, my dear friend Kendra passed away.

Sometimes you don’t realize what you’re doing and what is happening until you recognize something is very out of place.  It appears my habits took a radical change that second week in May. I seem to recall that I was going to the gym every morning for five months prior.  I have been there four times since. The company was on a major up-swing in productivity and sales.  I’ve been apologizing WAY too much lately.

Weight loss… gone.
Financial stability… gone.
Structured life… very gone.

Now of course, it hasn’t been all bad.  In fact, it’s been quite good.  I can’t say I’m depressed – I got to go to Ireland with my Dad for two weeks on one of the great trips of my life.  But when you know the type of life you want to be living, and you suddenly discover you aren’t currently living it – it’s a jarring moment.  It’s not as if I’ve been laying on the couch growing a beard in the dark – quite the opposite.  This is probably a main reason I hadn’t realized just how far from the target I was. I was living in between – going through the motions and just sort of half existing.  Responsibilities seemingly lost meaning, and excuses seemed plentiful.  Never did I associate a starting point with any of this – the moment simply seemed as it was – that this is how I lived.

However – the first step is always the realization of what is occurring.  The Netflix incident opened my eyes and provided a moment of clarity – a glaring “this isn’t right” that made me wonder, how long has it been wrong? Suddenly other hints are starting to shine as I try to account for the past couple months.  Knowing the starting point helps clarify the mis-steps – but doesn’t always define a root cause. And certainly Kendra wouldn’t cut me much slack for a three month pity party – so no excuses there! There is some major clean-up ahead. However, the pathway back to where I want to be isn’t hard to find.  Occasionally tough to walk – and it’s understandable if personal tragedy slows down the pace. But time will not wait, and neither can I.

I miss you Kendra!

Last week I had two occurrences which made me contemplate the information revolution and how it might effect our lives in some unique ways.  Sometimes the technology comes at us so fast we forget that it hasn’t been with us for very long.  I can hardly imagine myself without a cell phone – but less than a decade ago I had never held one – let alone an iPhone on which I check my email while taking the Max into work.  So it’s equally challenging sometimes to imagine how radically different our lives will be a mere decade from now.

On Tuesday I was sitting in the corner of the Green Dragon pub having a pint with a friend when I decided to get up to use the restroom.  While heading to the men’s room, I happened to bump into an old colleague of mine who I hadn’t seen in probably four years.  We chatted for a few minutes, exchanged business cards and agreed to meet up for coffee soon. It was a great coincidence that our paths had crossed.

I’ve always been fascinated by the “bump-in”.  Not so much by the folks I bump into on occasion, but moreso by all the countless folks who must have been close – but I never noticed.  On any given day – how many friends are only a block away?  How often am I at an event in which someone I’d enjoy seeing is there – but I just never happen to realize it.

It seems to reason that in the near future – those sort of situations will be greatly assisted by software.  There are already sites like FourSquare where people check-in at various locations. Of course, there are also sites like Please Rob Me that take that data and use it against you (albeit in a funny manner).

While I don’t think I would be comfortable posting my whereabouts to everyone – I can certainly see myself allowing a select group of folks to know my location at certain times.  It could be useful in an office so co-workers know where you’re at in the building. Useful at concerts to find friends (expected or unexpected).  Suddenly you have a whole new insight at networking events – you can see the entire crowd indexed by your contact list.

As smartphones with GPS become more the standard – all types of information about WHERE you do, what you do will become available – and entirely new types of software will be developed to make use of all that data.  Just as police might now investigate phone records when a crime has been committed – in the near future I wouldn’t be surprised if GPS data of where a defendant was will become standard evidence in a trial.  By looking at entire collections of data – irrespective of the individuals – we will be able to learn volumes about how folks migrate around a city or community.  This information could greatly assist city planners, event organizers, or even transportation officials.

The second occurrence that struck me as funny occurred while riding the #70 bus in the morning.  I looked over at the passenger sitting across from me and noticed he had a name-tag hanging from his waist.  Anytime I see a name tag I’m immediately brought back to my mom’s teaching about kidnappers (whom to my young mind were all about – and ready to pounce at any moment).  Anytime I had a name-tag on, she cautioned – be extra careful that you know an individual, if they say your name. A solid lesson in fear – but wise words none the less.

And indeed, at one time, I suppose an unscrupulous type could approach an unsuspecting person and could possibly con them into believing they were an acquaintance – but for how long?  Today, however, a name can get me a lot further.  As I have no desire to lay out a full stalking of an unsuspecting fellow Tri-Met rider, I will reverse the cards and look up “Greg Spies, Portland” in Google.

Well hello.  Looks like I have some info.  In fact I have:

• My company name, what my business does and most of my clients
• My bio and entire resume from LinkedIn
• Names of fellow past co-workers from LinkedIn
• The college I attended and degree from LinkedIn
• All my Twitter posts, discussing numerous aspects of my job and life.
• Some of my friends and the groups/pages I’m a fan of on Facebook

And that’s just in the first 4 links.  With some effort I’m sure there is more (no, seriously, I’m sure there is more – I Google myself regularly… I admit it).

Now how long could someone keep a conversation going with me?  It’s a bit scary. However it’s also pretty interesting. Information is neutral – it’s what we do with it that counts.

Social media is going to expand beyond just sitting at your computer reading Facebook posts.  It will continue to infiltrate smart phones – and then eventually iPads and all the touch-screen devices that will follow.  Now if I’m in a Group on Facebook – that Group can exist in the non-virtual world as well.  If there is someone else in the coffeeshop who thinks that poodle with tinfoil on it’s head can get more fans than Glen Beck – the two of you could opt to chat about it over a latte.

I already choose as many do, to show that I’m online with Facebook.  I occasionally mention I’m going to an event or a bar.  It’s not a far leap for me to add a bit of GPS data from time to time to pinpoint my location when I’m out and about.  I would certainly GPS my photos so folks could see where they were taken.  I think as we begin to dip our toes into the hot waters of the information age, we will get used to sharing what at one time seemed personal.  Much of what folks share on Facebook and Twitter were moments we would have considered private a mere decade ago.  I have witnessed break-ups, engagements, babies, death and all the tiny details in between from hundreds of people who would be little more than strangers if we weren’t modern day friends of the information age.

Maybe privacy is the bi-product of a lonesome, isolated age – where a lack of communication forced us to suffer and celebrate in small, if not singular parties.  In this new age, we can be connected not only virtually with those around us as we are today – but also in person.  We can discover our old friend is only a few tables over – we can make a lunch decision by seeing where co-workers are at – and we can discover others nearby who share our interests.  Striking up a conversation with a stranger perhaps gets a bit easier when you have some topics to start with.

Or, as always, we can press the off switch and take a few hours to ourselves.  The key, as always, is moderation.

When I was a freshman in high school I began making a lot of observations and conjectures about what was actually going on here.  While most boys my age had girls on the mind – I became obsessed with the nature of reality. I had become a devout atheist in middle school, but being unsatisfied with silently disagreeing with those around me – I decided my time was better spent trying to figure out what was actually occurring – why I was here and why thing were the way they appeared.

A particular observation that haunted me occurred one evening at the little league field in my home town.  While I was a right-fielder in every sense of the sport when suited up – and thus have always disliked the game immensely – going to the little league field in Cornwall NY was just about the only fun thing in town – and many summer nights were spent at the complex walking between the various fields.  From certain spots you could witness multiple fields, and multiple games over the complex.  On one particular evening I began taking notice of the separation of time between seeing a batter make contact with the ball and the sound of the crack of the bat.  This was not a new phenomenon, and I knew that light traveled faster than sound. The only problem was that I had no idea what that meant – it was just an expression.  As I sat there, I realized that the time between the sight and the sound was different depending on which field I was looking at.  The further the baseball diamond, the greater the separation in sound.

Suddenly I imagined myself on an endless field.  I put the action of the batter a certain distance away and in my mind recreated the scenario I was witnessing at the complex – filling in the rough data I had regarding distance and the perceived difference in time.  I then began pushing the batter further and further away – to extreme distances not possible in the park – and began to discover larger gaps in time between action and sound.

I had just explored what is often referred to as a “thought experiment”. A famous example being Sir Issaac Newton’s thought experiment in which he imagined a cannon placed on the highest mountain on Earth.  If it shot a cannon ball at a certain speed it would go such a distance and then fall.  Faster speed, further distance.  At what speed would it have to reach to never fall?  Our modern day satellites fly at that speed – Newton was a bit ahead of his time.

In my mind I stood there on the endless plain – with the player still moving further and further away – the time between visual and auditory contact growing further and further apart. Suddenly I began racing away in the opposite direction.  I was now speeding away from the batter just as he was departing from me.  At first both the visual and sound could reach me – but the duration between seeing the swing and hearing it just grew longer and longer.  But as I reached greater speeds I eventually surpassed the speed the sound was traveling at, yet not quite the speed of the visual.  Now here my mind had to consider a few options.  Would all sound cease… as certainly the crack of the bat hitting the ball would now never reach me.  Was it possible I would begin to hear the previous swing?

As I continued to speed up I began to wonder how much faster were the visuals than the sound?  Could I accelerate to the speed of the visual – and if so what would happen?  And if I went beyond? That was about all my mind could ponder at that point – but it kept in the back of my mind for years.

In college I would discover that I hadn’t been pondering these thoughts alone – that others had come before me – and some of the questions I had been asking were answered. It turns out sound travels at a rather leisurely 1,125 feet/second.  What I could only think of as the visuals was actually light – and light travels at an outrageous speed of approximately 983,000,000 feet/second.  So it turns out the light was going about 874,000 times faster than the sound.  No wonder I could notice the change in such a short passage of time at the park.

I learned in college that Albert Einstein had discovered in 1905 that the visuals – light – and the speed at which they approach us as the observer, is the only true constant.  That time was relative.  That one’s experience is relative – and that the duration of the time between two events can be different for two separate observers. Your experience is different from mine.

While this of course took a few weeks to fully settle in – what was even more astounding than Einstein’s theory of special relativity and all the consequences it lay forth – was that this amazing realization was less than 100 year old.  That for all of human history man had lived on this Earth, unaware of such an amazing truth.  That most people still walk around unaware of this amazing fact.

What we label as science, is in fact, the truth.  What is so terrifying about that statement is that we know so little.  The big secret is that we have no idea why we are here, or what is going on.  For most of human history we have made measurements and observations of the world around us – only to discover as time went on that those observations were biased because we are not the focal point – we are not the scientist looking through the telescope – we are not outside the Petri dish.  We are part of the experiment – no matter how much we’d rather play observer. And for all the thousands of years humans have walked on this planet – the millions of minds that have had the capacity to think – we’ve hardly scratched the surface. We have had to fill the void of knowledge with an endless array of stories and myths and faiths, because a believable lie provides more comfort than the fear of the unknown.

But the unknown is a curious thing.  There is room to ponder…  And while deep reflection on complex thoughts might hurt the brain at first, that’s just the warming up of brain cells yet untouched.  There are wonderous things to contemplate.

How small or large can things be? I say infinitely.  At one point it was Atoms – then we found Proton and Neutrons.  Then “whoops” there are some quarks inside of there.  Now scientists postulate a concept called “String Theory” that takes us even smaller.  Wouldn’t it make more sense that you could go infinitely small and infinitely large – or perhaps even better, it loops at some point. Think about it.

Everything Repeats. I would argue that one’s capacity to notice variety is directly related to one’s scale in relation to the object. So things on my scale – people, dogs, buildings, trees – I can tell the difference between them.  Looking at the tree from afar I might think all the leaves are the same.  Upon closer observation I would find they are all unique – but obviously the plant cells are the same.  Under the microscope… no.  If this is the case – and the plant cells replicate with variation, and humans replicate with variation – and clearly planets replicate with variation – at what point would this replication with variation stop?  Why would it suddenly stop?  Would it not make as much sense to have multiple universes with variation?  Or multiple microscopic elements smaller than a quark with variation? Attempts to find a solid state – a final solution provide no real answers.  So you bring me to the big bang…. big deal – I’ll just ask you what was going on shortly before it.

The fact is, we’ll never know everything – but we live in a time where we know far more than ever before – and the more minds focused on answering bigger questions – the better. Never forget this is actually occurring – and that we don’t know why. Religion is a simple way out, but what fun is that? Science isn’t the job of scientists – it’s the truth about the nature of reality – and every intelligent person should have an interest in that. Last year for my birthday I purchased a gyroscope after watching a lecture regarding some of their unique properties.  The questions that bizarre device has provided me have been endless – but so has the fun in discovery. While friends that stopped by probably thought I was crazy – some things are too interesting to just let the “scientists” play with them.

Don’t just memorize the facts – contemplate the unknowns. Wonder why things are they way they appear – find out if your observations are even correct in the first place. When was the last time you did some science? Life is more fun when you realize it’s happening.

Be curious.

This week Apple announced their highly anticipated iPad – a revolutionary new device that creates an entirely new category someplace between the laptop and smart-phone. While the media and pundits may have been more focused on the name – my mind has been on fire the past three days thinking of nothing but the potential. I have never been more convinced that The Interactive Dept. and it’s partners of creative designers and developers – as well as photographers, videographers and writers, have a long and exciting career ahead of them. I have also never been more convinced that now is the time to work for yourself or with a small collective of creative types – because the publishing revolution has begun!

The title of this blog post comes from the title of a book by Bill Gates, written in 1995. I was a senior in high school at the time – and Bill Gates was the richest man in the world. It seemed unlikely that a dork such as this would be the richest man in the world, so a dork such as I was quite fascinated, and ran out to purchase this book the moment it hit the shelves. In it, Bill Gates explained his vision of the content revolution – of an internet that everyone participated in – video cameras and interactive touch-screens allowing for instant access to knowledge from anywhere and instantly.

“For more than 500 years, the bulk of human knowledge and information has been stored as paper documents. On the information highway, rich electronic documents will be able to do things no piece of paper can. The highway’s powerful database technology will allow them to be indexed and retrieved using interactive exploration. It will be extremely cheap and easy to distribute them. In short, these new digital documents will replace many printed paper ones because they will be able to help us in new ways.”

While a statement like this seems trite today – one has to remember that 15 years ago, the declaration that paper documents would be replaced was almost ridiculous.  Let’s recap technology for just a second:

1995 I use my parents IBM Aptiva Desktop with a 386processor, a 4800-baud modem and a dot-matrix printer and I go online for the first time with 5-hours of overpriced internet via AOL.
1996 I go to college and get a Gateway Desktop with a ginormous monitor, a bubble-jet color printer and a T-1 line
1997 I buy my first scanner – a giant flat-bed that takes up my whole desk.
1998 I buy my first digital camera.  Under 3-megapixel and a battery life of about 5 minutes it seemed.
2000 I purchase my first cell phone that just makes calls, sometimes…
2002 I get my first laptop – where I can take my computer with me. A giant, heavy Dell.
2007 I get my first smart-phone, the iPhone.
2008 I replace my broken iPhone with a new iPhone.

When Bill Gates declared I wouldn’t need paper anymore – if I had wanted to bring a map with directions on a drive, I had to go down to the basement of my house, fire up the Aptiva – connect via the phone line to Poughkeepsie ($0.35/minute at the time) – wait for Webcrawler to load up – find a mapping service via the search engine – and then try to print the map on my crappy dot-matrix printer. Today I would simply turn on my iPhone, pull up the map, and have it find me or any other location in the world and easily map the route. No need to print it either, as I can simply bookmark it and take it with me.  I haven’t had a printer setup in my apartment in 5 years. Bill was correct.

Along the way Bill obviously got side-tracked, because Microsoft certainly hasn’t been on the cutting edge of this revolution.  I like to think Bill’s philanthropic desires overshadowed his otherwise prophetic business mind – but regardless, it has been Apple that has carried the torch of this great evolution in information to our current moment.

It was Apple that changed the music industry forever – by allowing me to put every song I could have ever wanted to hear in a device I can carry along anywhere.  While Sony Executives were bragging about the endless bounds of their CD-Discman’s Skip-Protection capacity (”We’re up to two whole minutes of shaking!“) – Apple realized folks might wish to carry more than a single CD’s worth of music with them.  Oh – and while we’re at it – why not create a marketplace that makes the purchasing of music a gazillion times easier. I can now listen to music from bands who have never stepped into a corporate recording studio, whom I have never seen live.  The transaction, if any, can be conducted between us.

It was Apple that changed the telephone forever – by creating an entirely new interface and experience with a phone that for the first-time ever made having a cell phone truly useful. I could now listen (or not) to voice messages in the order I wanted to, with actual useful controls that didn’t require me to remember bizarre number combinations.  They created a phone that could be used for all the things you never imagined a phone could be used for.  And again they created a marketplace where I could easily purchase or download thousands and thousands of applications to make my life easier or more fun.

With the iPad – I truly believe Apple has created a device that will change the way we interact with tons of things we take for granted today – especially all those documents that still require paper.  For example, I still bring a notepad and pen into meetings. I don’t like the sound of typing or looking at my screen when I’m trying to discuss a project with my client so the laptop doesn’t work for me.  I would however take digital notes, or even record the audio of the meeting with a device like the iPad.   It would result in less scraps of paper around the office – I could immediately sync it with the clients files – and the ability to pull up samples of work or other websites right there in the meeting would be huge.

At home – I can finally see myself using an eReader.

I’m sorry Kindle fans, but when I look at one compared to the iPad, I think “how 90s.” I’m psyched that Amazon has had so much success, but the market for a solid eReader was WIDE-OPEN, and I think Apple has just taken over. Not only does the color screen allow for supplementary photography, video and audio – but once again they have created a solid marketplace for purchasing and downloading books from the comfort of your bed – and I’m particularly interested to see what happens to the publishing industry, as lessons from the music industry are learned, and new under-discovered writing talents begin creating their own marketplaces for selling their writings directly to the public. There is no art-form that requires so little to produce, but so much to share, as writing – and a solid eReader has been the last hurdle for unleashing the full potential of the publishing revolution.

Imagine students no longer having to lug around text-books. Think of a world where you can search for thoughts or ideas through endless epochs of written word, find something of interest, and begin reading it in its entirety – all while sitting on the train during the morning commute. Imagine a world where our need for paper is diminished, and our forests flourish.

The way scientists perform research, students study, academics write papers or even simply how a child writes a book report is going to change gradually but profoundly. Upon completion of a book, rather then a written page of “other books by the author” – those will be links – and those links will have links – and a new type of dewey-decimal system will develop of its own design based on our informational needs as knowledge is reorganized and rediscovered.

I look forward to playing video games in my hands – watching movies from my bed – and showing large and gorgeous photos and home movies to my parents.  I look forward to the next round of devices that will expand upon what Apple delivers.  I anticipate shared touch-screen applications in all sorts of places and locations we don’t experience them now. I look forward to seeing the ways we replace old technologies and concepts with touch-screen applications.

In this new world, a screen on the wall could be my light-switch, my music remote, my phone, my weather, my recipe, my security, my door bell or my art work. Apple has made the first step, with an earnest attempt to remove the keyboard and mouse. How will we develop products and interfaces that have no bounds?  That first digital camera I bought in 1998 looked like it still had film inside of it. They wanted it to feel like a camera still.  Now most digital cameras are slim and have redefined how a camera should look and work.  With the iPhone – the camera took on a whole new shape.  So many other devices still cling to their industrial heritage – but as the iPad begins to acquire their tasks, new applications and interfaces will be devised to create efficiencies that were impossible in a physical world.

Steve Jobs said in his speech this week that there will be a new gold-rush.  While I agree that there will be plenty to be made producing applications and tools for these devices – I disagree with the terminology of a Gold Rush.  Yes, there will be some wave of success at first – but this isn’t some new patch of territory that is going to be quickly discovered, claimed and cleared.  Rather – this is a new economic era.  For thousands of years, man has traded goods and services.  These primarily have been tactile items – foods, clothes, tools, etc.  Over time, things like education and knowledge became prized.  The arts flourished, and someone could be paid for their creativity.  However, there could only be so many books published, so many painting painted, so many students taught.  With the publishing revolution – that changes.  Suddenly there is an endless supply of a whole new world of products never before imagined.  I can design and build a game of my own imagination – produce it myself – sell it on the App Store – and make a full-time living having never left my home or created anything tactile.  The more our money chases virtual products of the imagination – the quicker our economy will have to evolve.

The solution to unemployment isn’t getting the old jobs back – it’s awakening to the new economy.  It’s acknowledging the publishing revolution has begun.  It’s educating the next generation of children not simply how to memorize, but to learn. I was lucky that Bill showed me the Road Ahead when I was 17. It shaped my path through college, it gave me focus in my 20s as I bounced from various start-ups.  It gave me the confidence to start The Interactive Dept – and it fills me with overwhelming excitement when I see a product that will transform the way we communicate and share ideas.

I have seen the road ahead – and it is beyond exciting.

As someone who spends a good deal of his time in front of a computer (that coincidentally is next to another smaller computer) I spend a lot of my time online.  While there are a whole variety of websites I might use on a semi-regular basis to manage my life, inspire my imagination, or simply pass the time while I’m waiting for a .zip file to download – there are a handful of sites that have become so valuable to me, that I can’t imagine going through a single day without them.  Similar to the way I ponder how anyone managed to find a particular location before GPS or at the very least MapQuest – I’m beginning to forget how on Earth I accomplished any tasks before I started using these website.

LogMeIn
www.logmein.com
cost: FREE

In a perfect world I would have one computer in a mystical realm of the internet, and at home and at work and everywhere in between, I would just have monitors and keyboards that could connect to my computer – and so all my files and applications would be available from any location, any time I needed them.  While that world is rapidly approaching – in our current moment I would often find myself getting home only to discover I had forgotten a file I needed back at the studio.  I have struggled with .Mac accounts, MobileMe accounts, and iDisk accounts – and nines times out of ten the file I needed was never where I needed it.

With LogMeIn I simply register my various computers (currently three of them) with my account – and once logged in, I can control the desktop of any of those machines through the web browser.  I close down applications I may have left running – I can post or email files that are only on one machine – I can even use software that I only have a single license for.  I’ve converted video files, for example, using my Mac Pro in the studio, from a web browser on my MacBook at home.

There is also a paid version of the website that has more features – like being able to drag files onto the browser to place on another machine – or creating a virtual network between all your machines online.  However – I’ve been fine with the free version.

FunctionFox – TimeFox
www.functionfox.com
cost: $35/month

Time is money as they say.  Never is that expression more true than when you run your own services business such as myself. While we typically quote a flat price for larger projects such as websites or branding packages – much of our time is actually spent making smaller updates to websites and applications we’ve created for clients in the past.

On any given day I might do work for 6 or 7 different clients.  Some of these might be multi-hour tasks, while others might take as little as 10 minutes.  However – over the course of a month those smaller tasks add up – and if you’re not counting them, you’ve just lost a good deal of revenue.

There are a lot of Time Tracking applications and websites out there and I’ve used a variety of them over the years.  But I haven’t found anything that works for my needs like Timefox.  It is purposely under-designed and under-featured, to handle the one thing I need it to do – record my time for various projects from numerous clients. It is then super easy to generate a variety of reports, so I can quickly determine what I need to invoice each of my clients – or how we are doing on a particular project based on initial estimates, and what time we’ve put in to date.

Plus – about a year ago my colleague Jessica and I were contacted by the CEO of the company, Mary-Lynn Bellamy-Willms because she was going to be in Portland and wanted to take a few of the long-time customers out to breakfast at The Heathman.  Now I’ve spent a lot of money on a lot of services over the years – and never received so much as a thank you – let alone a complimentary breakfast and some great conversation.  Take a tip from a Canadian company – that simple breakfast not only made me a customer for life – but also a part-time sales rep, as I now recommend FunctionFox even more than I did before.

Mint
www.mint.com
cost: FREE

While I can’t say I’ve been the best accountant for my ever growing small-business (and as of 2010 have handed most of those reigns over to a spectacular new CPA) I have always been good about keeping track of every expense and income the business made, using Quickbooks.  It is a pain sometimes to muscle my way through it, but since the very beginning I have known exactly what my business made and where that money went – and that knowledge was vital.

When it came to my personal life, however – that was another story.  The closest thing I had to records was my monthly statement from my bank – and when I went paperless a year ago – I all but lost any record of where my money was going.  I was like the federal government – only without the capacity to print more money. That’s where Mint.com stepped in.

Mint is like a very slimmed down version of Quickbooks (and as of late last year, is owned by the same company).  You attach your various personal checking and savings accounts, any credits cards or investments, car payments, etc. – and Mint.com does most of the rest.  I was able to quickly create a monthly budget by entering in the various recurring bills (rent, cell phone, netflix, etc.).  When those transactions occur – Mint.com updates my monthly budget so I know how much I’ve spent in the various areas of my life.  Once you’ve identified what type of an expense each transaction is (and it actually does a pretty good job guessing) – the next time you go back to that vendor, it fills in that information for you.

Best of all, Mint.com is free!

So now I can very easily determine how much I’ve spent on food, or utilities, or even beer.  It’s a lot easier to understand what you’ve been doing (or at least spending your money on) when your personal life is broken into a pie chart.  Other tools on the site help you to create strategies for working off debt, building a saving and more.

Smashing Magazine
www.smashingmagazine.com
cost: FREE

There are a lot of great websites out there to gain inspiration from in my field.  I’m lucky to be a part of an industry that is rapidly changing at every moment and in almost every facet.  New trends form in web design almost every day – and the trap of falling into your same style or layouts is always present. That’s why I start out almost every day checking out Smashing Magazine.

Not only does their Twitter feed drag me to their site several times a day – but anytime I find myself hung-up on a technique, or trying to find a simple design solution for an eNewsletter or campaign site – their lists of “Best Of”s always have something that solves my dilemma.  And no – I’m not just saying this because they featured our website for Aviation Gin on a blog post about websites for the alcohol beverage industry.

Some of my favorite posts have been:

25 Mac Apps That Will Boost Your Productivity

50 Fresh Portfolio Sites For Your Inspiration

Web Design Trends for 2009

Expecting Rain
www.expectingrain.com
cost: FREE

This is probably the site I go to every day that would be the least useful to anyone else.  That is unless they happen to be a fanatical Bob Dylan fan.  Expecting Rain takes its name from a line in Dylan’s classic “Desolation Row” (Everybody is making love. Or else expecting rain.) The site is a collection of all Bob Dylan news stories and ramblings from across the internets.  On any given day, 15-20 links will appear, ranging from blog posts on obscure bootlegs to concert reviews from German press outlets.  It never ceases to amaze me that one man could have so much written about him on a daily basis – but apparently the world of Bob Dylan never stops.

The site also posts links to stories about Dylan collaborators, cover songs and great YouTube clips (which are usually removed from YouTube a few days later at the request of Columbia Records).  Certainly not for the casual fan – but for those with a bit of a Bob Dylan obsession – this site is a life saver.

Last week I decided it was time to make an appointment with the eye-doctor and freshen up the old prescription.  It had been about two years and I had a suspicion my sight wasn’t as strong as it had been. Losing your sight, as I have been for over a decade now, is sort of a bizarre experience.  It’s not like spraining an ankle or catching a cold. It is a far slower and more gradual awareness that overcomes you.  One day you notice you can’t read a street sign, but have a sinking suspicion that at one time you could have. When you get your new glasses it’s like being in some sort of fantastic hyper-realistic dream – everything is so sharp and you notice items in the distance you never knew you could see.

This time however I wasn’t going to get a new pair of glasses – I had decided to make the switch to contacts.

My reasons were two-fold:

First, having given up my car over a year ago – I now walk or bike just about everywhere.  With the winter months approaching, I was not looking forward to another mist-filled season of walking to work blind.  While the rain isn’t enough to really get me wet, it does cover my glasses pretty instantly, and I’m forced to either keep wiping them free of drops, or abandoning them altogether and just walking in a blurry haze into downtown.

Second, I was tired of choosing which accessory to wear every day.  If I had some budget to throw-around, perhaps I could purchase a dozen pairs of glasses and enjoy some creativity in my presentation.  But I only have two pairs – my slightly broken but highly functional metal pair, and my Portland-hipster thick framed ones.  While I certainly enjoy both – wearing one or the other every day was as unbearable as having to wear a uniform to work would be.

So why hadn’t I made the switch years ago?  Simple… I’m a human being.  And as such I had filled my mind with a whole handful of insurmountable fears and reservations.  For example:

- My eyes are sensitive, and thus I wouldn’t want a piece of plastic jammed into them.
- It would be too much of a pain putting them in and taking them out each day.
- I’m going to get laser eyes surgery SOMEDAY, so why do anything TODAY?

The typical collection of excuses and misconceptions that lead to inaction.

My sister Jillian helped calm my first major fear: that I suffered from ultra-sensitive eyes and my precious peepers couldn’t possibly handle this thick piece of plastic shoved inside of them.  Her response was, “What are you, an idiot?  Who do you think likes having pieces of plastic shoved in their eyes?” I suddenly realized that I had no idea what a contact lens actually was.  I had never touched or really seen one up close.  At Lenscrafters I discovered what they are actually like and realized my fears had been completely incorrect and based on false concepts – these weren’t “lenses”, they were more like a thin film.  Not only that – once in, they were completely unnoticeable in my eyes.  In fact, I realized that it’s not contact lenses that are uncomfortable – it’s a giant lens contraption hooked to your ears and strapped across your face that is the uncomfortable solution. Contacts aren’t MORE uncomfortable than glasses, they are far LESS.

The second fear that it would be too difficult and thus a pain to take them in and out is already proving to be false.  Taking them out is a snap and just an added minute to my typical night-time routine.  Getting them in is still a bit of a trick, but each day I get better and this morning was rather easy.  It’s fascinating how the mind learns new activities. If you just trust your mind to it and don’t try to force your own solutions, the body quickly learns how to do what you want.

The final reason – that there is a better solution that I will eventually use, so no sense in taking this first step – is a major problem that I’ve been trying to work on recently.  While it is always important to keep a focus on where you want to get to and the life you wish to lead, day-dreaming is no substitute for improving your current state.  In the words of Bob Dylan, “When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?” It’s a bit selfish to be living in this modern time, with all the gifts I’ve been afforded – the sort of life almost no human being on earth could have dreamed of a mere century ago – but to say “This isn’t enough yet for me to be happy or to enjoy this gift. Sure I have a nice apartment, but I want a house.  Sure I have my own business, but I want a full company. The things I have are nice, but I want better.“  Seriously? So because there is something better out there, I can just ignore the current situation, or worse, look down upon it?  That is a rather foolish philosophy, but it serves its purpose, albeit a negative one. By placing the bar too high, we can easily ignore all the smaller steps we could be taking to improve our situation.

I’ve recently tried to take each of these major tasks or life goals and create smaller steps or solutions that I can begin tackling immediately.  Fixing my sight, which eventually will lead to laser eye surgery suddenly had some smaller steps.  Some included researching the laser procedure and pricing, which I have started.   But the other steps revolved around improving my sight in its current state with an eye exam and to explore contacts as a middle-ground.  That exploration took very little time, and now I get to see things massively better than I did before and I’m further down the road when I eventually have the money (or health insurance) to tackle the major goal of fixed sight.

So beyond the fact that I can see remarkably better than I could before, and I’m no longer forced to wear the same accessory each day like some sort of cartoon character – I have also learned an important lesson about moving forward in life and business.  When faced with a perceived obstacle, make sure your fears are grounded in reality, research and find out the facts, and remember that small steps take you a lot further than doing nothing at all.

This past weekend I decided it was time to turn my Samsung television back into an entertainment system.  Having disconnected from all forms of Comcast – I had no “TV” for the past few days. In fact, for the moment, I’m actually connected to one of three open wiFi connections here in the lower SE of Portland that I get in my apartment – so I have zero cost for internet.  Soon I might get my own connection, but for now it’s hard to beat – and a welcome relief from $45/month internet bills and $85/month cable bills.

I am by no means a “tech” guy – and there may be other (possibly better) ways to accomplish this, but because folks have been asking, here’s basically what I did.

To connect my Apple iMac to my Samsung I needed to purchase two cables (as well as some audio cables to connect the iMac to my stereo).

The first cable is a MINI-DVI to DVI Adapter Cable

This just plugs into the back of the iMac – and connects to the second cable, the HDMI to DVI-D Cable:

This cable then plugs into the back of my television in the HDMI slot. As I mentioned, I also hooked up my iMac to my stereo through the headphone jack.

At this point, the television now becomes an additional monitor for the iMac.  You can manage all of this by pulling up the SYSTEM PREFERENCES panel, and selecting DISPLAYS.

On the ARRANGEMENT tab you can determine the placement of your new desktop.  I personally keep mine to the middle-lefthand side.  It’s a bit bizarre using the mouse with two monitors, but you quickly adapt (definitely time to purchase that wireless mouse). You’ll notice that when you pulled up the DISPLAYS window, a similar window appeared on your television’s desktop.  The settings for screen resolution on your TV are different than on your computer, and you can adjust these as you need (mine worked fine in the default settings).  Also, under OPTIONS, make sure OVERSCAN is NOT checked.

You can now slide whatever windows or applications over to this new desktop. And prepare to dust off that Apple Remote – you now finally have a real use for it.  Control the volume and interface with the apps listed below from the comfort of your couch.

Okay – so now I have a computer screen on my TV – but that’s sure as hell not cable television.

So now that you have internet on your television – it’s time to grab a few applications to make experience complete.  While it’s certainly not the HD quality I was getting with cable, that whole “free” thing really makes up for a bit of pixellation. Plus the variety and on-demand nature of the content is hard to beat. There’s lots of great content out there – but below is a list of my favorite apps and sites. I’ll post more when I find them – and feel free to comment with your own.

BOXEE – www.boxee.tv {FREE}

Boxee is a kick-ass application that grabs content from all the best online services (some of which are listed below) – and manages everything for you in one simple interface.  They also make improvements to the existing interfaces of many of my favorites, like Pandora and Netflix.  By saving all my accounts and logins, I don’t have to keep signing into sites – and I can search across all my providers.

It also does a pretty good job of managing local media files as well – and while it hasn’t replaced iTunes as my source for music – it’s definitely replaced Pandora.com. It’s also got a good selection of video streaming services I hadn’t discovered previously.

HULU - http://www.hulu.com {FREE}

For those of you who haven’t yet discovered Hulu – prepare to see the first glimpse of what life without Cable could be like. All your favorite shows – when you want to watch them.  What a wild concept. Now granted, it helps that they have Simpson, Family Guy and Futurama and I’m a nut for cartoons – but they also have a pretty solid (and growing) collection of “real” shows too.

In addition to their website, Hulu is available through Boxee – you simply have to provide your login details – and you can begin browsing the entire online selection of shows.  Personally, I think the Boxee version of Hulu is easier than the website version.

NETFLIX – http://www.netflix.com

I was never a “video rental” sorta person – and the notion of having 3 DVDs mailed to me seems insane.  But when I discovered they now had 12,000 movies available to stream from the website – I took notice.  I got the most basic plan (and the DVD has been sitting here for about a month now) – but now I can search through tons of movies I haven’t seen. Granted, there aren’t as many new releases as you might like (although I imagine that will change) – but when the cost is almost nothing – you can take a chance on some older fare.

The Boxee interface for Netflix is really great – and being able to browse the movies from the same main interface window on your TV, rather than having to work with a web browser is great.

TED TALKS – http://www.ted.com/ {FREE}

Anyone who follows me on Facebook probably already knows about Ted Talks – but it’s definitely one of the best websites out there for amazing presentations about absolutely fascinating topics. Scientists, philosophers, artists and like share their observations on a variety of topics from cutting edge science to rewriting history.

Always inspiring – the talks range anywhere from two minutes to thirty minutes, and can be an excellent break at work when you need to think about something else for just a few minutes.  The menu on the site does a great job of breaking up presentations into their general themes, as well as connecting presentation you’ve already watched to other areas of interest.

If you’re looking for a place to start, three of my favorite are:

Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight

Janine Benyus shares nature’s designs

Ramachandran on your mind

and if that ain’t enough entertainment – there’s always YouTube.

For awhile now I’ve had the modernworkweek url and for almost as long, it has sat dormant with a “COMING SOON” sorta look, waiting for some type of content or purpose.  There’s a lot I’ve wanted to say about the workweek in its current state, and even more I want to say about where it could evolve to – but all those thoughts and notes and scribbles seemed like sub-chapters in a book – not the sorta thing one starts a website with.  Tips for traveling – reasons one should walk to work – the importance of controlling your time – how to use technology to make you more efficient and profitable.  All great ideas to explore – but not quite the launching pad needed to position the purpose of this site.

Then today it happened. I canceled my cable television.

There are various reasons that led up to this afternoon being the moment I unplugged from the most expensive and time-consuming distraction in my life:

• I was paying $85/month ($1020/year) for my HD Cable package from Comcast
• I spend 3 hours a day, maybe 6 days a week watching TV.  This adds up to 900 hours a year, or two full months of waking hours dedicated to TV each year.
• I find myself watching History Channels programs about Nostradamus when I should be… well… living.

However – these are merely symptoms of the disease that was my Comcast cable subscription.  The cause of death… INTERNET. While I may be psyched to have an extra grand in my pocket and some of those 900 hours a year of life back in my control – the simple fact is I have not freed myself of my media addiction – I have simply found a better dealer.  One who gives me what I want, when I want it – and get this… asks for almost no money in return!

While pundits and CNN spokes models have been lamenting the slow death of newspapers and even going so far as to suggest a survival strategy – they have been ironically missing the hidden headlines and the story of the day.  The internet has already killed the newspaper. It has also slaughtered the radio… and has its sites set on cable.

IT’S NOT TV I HATE… it’s cable providers (or dish providers if that’s your fancy).

First off – lets seperate the content from the provider. The fact that newspapers are clunky, smudgy and require the slaughter of thousands of trees to distribute the out-dated information they provide isn’t a criticism on “news”, just the poor and outdated distribution method those systems use. Anyone who has acquired an iPod or discovered Pandora at this point has very little need for corporate run radio – even though it’s provided free of charge.  It doesn’t mean I’ve grown tired of music – just that I’ve realized it’s insane to listen to DJs and commercials when I can listen to all the songs I ever wanted to on my terms.

Cable television had control of the content – but it has slowly trickled out to the INTERNET in the form of Hulu, YouTube and the like.  Comedy Central distributes its own content – and more and more you will see television content providers going directly to consumers, and avoiding Cable all together.  Eventually movies will sell directly to the consumer – as will musicians, poets, concerts, sports leagues, anyone who has content someone would desire.  Where will you get the money to pay for all these various media streams if they decide to charge?  From the $85/month you are saving by not having Comcast.

Isn’t it a bit curious that each time a rumor spreads that Facebook or Twitter might charge a fee for their service, the users who spend the most time utilizing it are the first to be in outrage by the notion they should pay money for something they use hourly.  $85 for cable television… fine.  $45 for internet… cool.  $75 for my cell phone… obviously.  $15 for Facebook… WTF!!!

At some point the future media that is the INTERNET needs to merge with the overpriced, underfriendly “offline” world.  I for one have started walking down the path.