A day later: Issues with GrandCentral

Ok, yesterday I posted about GrandCentral.  I think it’s a really good idea.  For a more complete rundown of all the stuff it can do, you should read Lifehacker’s post about it.  Despite being a REALLY good idea, I’ve discovered a few things that are going to prevent me from jumping head first into the deep end:

- GrandCentral does not support text messaging.  It does, however, look like they may be looking to change this soon based off of reading their help section.  What does it mean?  Well, if I tell all my friends I’ve changed my number to 555.555.5555, if they try and send me a text message it wouldn’t make it through to my cell phone.  I don’t want people to have to keep two numbers for me (one for voice, and another for SMS).  That doesn’t simplify my life.

- Caller ID doesn’t work the way you want it to.  For example, if I call my wife from my personal cell phone, the number of my personal cell phone will show up on her caller ID, not my GrandCentral number.  This will do nothing but confuse people.  If I send out an email to my contacts saying, “My number has now changed to 555.555.5555″, and then later I call them and it shows up as my cell phone number, 333.333.3333, they’re going to want to change the number back in their cell phone contacts.  Confusing for someone who doesn’t know what’s going on (i.e., you).

- In-network calling isn’t a two way street.  My wife and I both have Verizon Wireless.  If she calls my GrandCentral number and I pick up on my VZW cell phone, I will not be charged for out-of-network calling, but she will.  You see, she dialed a non-Verizon cell number (GrandCentral), which is how the cell companies determine in-network calling.  Of course, if you talk during your “unlimited anytime minutes”, this isn’t an issue.

Like I said, I think this is a really good idea, but these few things are keeping it from the big time, in my opinion.  So, you ask, how will I use it?  Well, in our household, we don’t have a local, landline phone number.  This can be a pain in the neck when you’re trying to order a pizza, or someone from town without a cell phone wants to call you.  It’s also a pain when people want a joint number for our family (like at church).  Solution?  With GrandCentral, I simply set up a new local number and associated both my and my wife’s cell phone with it.  So now, whenever anyone calls it, both of our phones will ring.  To your average Joe, it will seem that he’s calling a landline phone.

The other nice thing is that we can give the number out and if a telemarketer starts bugging us, we can just mark him as a “spam caller” on the GrandCentral website and block him, just like in email!  Furthermore, any time we get a voicemail, it will be sent to our joint Gmail account that either one of can check from anywhere (or we could do it the old fashioned way and just call in to listen to it).  Genius!

Technorati Tags: grandcentral

All about GrandCentral

Mobile post sent by ndbutter using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

Ok, so I had to cheat a bit to post to my blog.  Unfortunately, WordPress.com won’t let you post flash to your blog, so in order to get this up here, I had to go through Utterz.  I’m a sneaky kid.  Just press play above!

Get Mobile with Swift

I know, I know.  I haven’t posted here in over a month.  Well, tough.  Big whoop.  Wanna fight about it?

I’ve got a new website for you to check out called Swift.  Basically it’s an online tool that allows you to create a mobile site for all your content.  Here’s how it works: you go to the site, register, and create a site in the format http://username.swiftmob.com.  Then you design your site.  Thankfully, no prior HTML knowledge is required.

The real backbone of service lies on the utilization of RSS feeds.  Think of Swift as a mobile pot to throw all your content for easy access from a mobile phone.  So for me, I threw in my Twitter feed, my Flickr feed, my blog feed, and the feed for my shared stories from Google Reader and Swift produced this.  Swift pulls all those feeds together on one page and formats to show up correctly in a mobile browser.

The whole design interface is easy-to-use AJAX, so there’s a lot of intuitive dragging and dropping involved.  There looks to be a pretty decent stats system that I presume is built on Google Analytics, so that’s nice as well.  There’s also a bunch of stuff you can do to actually design your site like photo headers, footers, background/text colors, etc.  I haven’t played with any of that yet.

I’ll keep playing with it, but mobile is definitely the future of computing so it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Technorati Tags: swift, mobile, ajax

Google Reader Shared Items

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here before, but since I started using Google Reader, I’ve been sharing stories from the feeds I read that I find particularly interesting.  You can see an RSS feed of the latest 5 things I’ve shared in the sidebar to the right, and also on my Facebook profile (via the Feedheads application).

Alternatively, you can actually go to the “Matt’s Shared Items” page here for a blog-like layout of all the stuff I find interesting.  Right now I follow about 200 feeds (each with multiple stories per day), and I share a couple a day max.  So maybe you’ll like something that I like!  Enjoy!

Get rid of ads in Lifehacker Feeds

Of all the feeds I read, Lifehacker is probably my favorite.  There’s always something interesting there.  Recently they’ve taken to using ads in their feeds, which I find a bit annoying but up until now have put up with because I enjoy their content so much.  Then I said to myself, “there’s no reason why I should have to look at these when I can filter them out with Adblock”.

Adblock is an extension for Firefox that, as the name implies, can block ads on any webpage.  So if you’re me and you’re reading Lifehacker in Google Reader, all you have to do is click on Adblock at the bottom of the browser, and find the links that start with http://www.pheedo.com.  This is where the ads are coming from in the Lifehacker feeds.  All you have to do is set up your filter as http://www.pheedo.com* (* is a wildcard that will filter out any text following the “.com”), and you’re golden.

As I said, Adblock can be used on any webpage, and is particularly nice on sites like ESPN and Scout.com.  This isn’t revolutionary news to people that use FF heavily, but I’m guessing that some people that read here might not know that you can do all this stuff.

New Flickr RSS Feeds

I just noticed that Flickr now has KML feeds for each user.  Very cool!  This should play nice with Google Earth, no?  That’s fantastic.  I’ll get back to you on that!

Technorati Tags: flickr, feeds, rss, kml, google earth

Google Maps Now Feature Embeddable Content…doesn’t work on WordPress.com!

Google Maps is now offering a new feature that missed: embeddable maps. They do it with an iFrame so you can embed a map on your webpage or blog. Pretty slick. Best of all, it’s still drag-able just like normal. What’ll they think of next?

What’s the problem?  Evidently WordPress doesn’t allow iFrames on its blogs.  For those of you who don’t know, WordPress is very strict about what they will allow you to embed on your blog (unlike Blogger).  They have developed systems to allow you to post YouTube video and a few other things, but there is generally no Java or Flash embedding allowed for security reasons.

So when I try and post a Google Map of my office, all you get is the link below.  I imagine WordPress will eventually develop some way to embed maps on your blog like they did with YouTube, but it’s a bummer that you can’t just do stuff like this out of the box.

View Larger Map

One of the many reasons Facebook is better than MySpace

I hate MySpace.  Absolutely hate it.  It’s nothing but a spam-invested, pre-teen, time vacuum of a website.  Facebook is much more mature, in my opinion.  A nice, clean interface that isn’t hideous, but is informative.  I have never had a spam message or friend request on Facebook.  Never!  With MySpace, I get about 4 bogus friend requests and/or messages a day.  It’s ridiculous.  That’s why I almost never go on MySpace.  Here’s a screen capture of my friend requests.  Ridiculous!

It never ceases to amaze me how many scantily-clad women want to be friends with me.

Technorati Tags: facebook, myspace

WordPress Facebook App

Thanks to Robert Scoble, I just discovered that there is now a WordPress Facebook app.  That means I can show all my blog posts on my Facebook page as well.  Previously I had been using the Notes app to pull my blog’s RSS feed into Facebook, but this is a bit nicer.  Sweetness!

Sorry for the lack of posting…

I haven’t been posting on here much lately, and I think there’s a reason why.  It is very uncommon for me to have a full and cohesive thought that is worthy to post here.  That was in the past many of my posts have been short pieces of drivel that no one is really interested in.  Many times I just enjoy posting a funny clip that I know my friends will appreciate when no one else does.  Actually, why don’t we just get that out of the way right now:

Ok, I’m glad I got that out of my system.

Lately I have found Twitter pretty engrossing.  Blogging is awesome, but Twitter allows me to quickly throw up silly little thoughts I have, or things that are happening to me right now.  For example, I just bought concert tickets online and got raked over the coals by TicketMaster.  That sort of pissed me off, but it wasn’t worth writing an entire post about on the blog.  Instead, I posted my quick gripe on Twitter.  Twitter is quick and easy, and I can do it right from my Firefox side bar using the TwitBin extension instead of having to go the actual site every time I want to post.  Additionally, thanks to the Twitter Facebook app, all my friends on Facebook can see what I’m up to automatically.  Their mobile site is very usable from my Motorola Q as well.  I can check it out and send updates from there, or just use my old phone and send an update via a text message.

So if you ever decide to check it out, check me out.

Technorati Tags: twitter, blogging

Remember the Milk

I wanted to let everyone know about a great website that I think could be useful to a lot of people.  It’s called Remember the Milk.  Remember the Milk is a task management site that utilizes some pretty nifty Web 2.0 features and reminder applications.  It has a whole slew of uses, for example:

- Let’s say you’re married but normally one person does the grocery shopping.  If you’re like me, as you go through the week you think of things you need to pick up at the store, but you aren’t near the notepad on the fridge at home to write it down.  Enter Remember the Milk.  It’s great for grocery or other shopping lists because you can add things wherever you are, and you can share lists with another user (e.g., your spouse).  That way you have one master list that is accessible from wherever you are (more on that in a moment).

- Let’s say you’re a person and you have a crap load of bills to pay.  Some are due at the beginning of the month, some are due at the end, and some in between.  Remember the Milk makes it easy to create a list of your bills and their due dates so you never forget when you have to pay something.  If you do forget, Remember the Milk will send you incessant reminders until you get it taken care of.  Also, all tasks are able to be set to recurring so they’ll all pop up again next month for you.

- Let’s say you’re married and have household chores that need to be done every week.  Remember the Milk lets you make a list for that too so you won’t forget to vacuum and have your wife pissed at you.

- Let’s say you’re a mid-20’s white guy with very little rhythm who enjoys playing the guitar sometimes.  You’re driving to work in the morning and hear “Meet Virginia” on the radio and think to yourself, “Hey, that’s kind of a catchy tune…I should learn how to play that.”  You can quick grab your phone, make a list called “Guitar”, and add “Meet Virginia” as a task so you remember to learn that song at some point.

In terms of interaction, Remember the Milk offers you a whole variety of options.  Obviously you can get at via the web, but they also have a mobile site that is fairly slick.  You can add tasks via email, via a Firefox bookmark that opens in your sidebar, or the latest addition, via Twitter.  You can also set yourself up to receive reminders via all of those services.

Obviously there is a crap load of other stuff that you can do with Remember the Milk, so you should just check it out.  I’ve only been using it about a week, and it’s already making me more organized.  This morning I got a text message on my phone telling me that I had to buy Toby Keith tickets for the wife today.  Done and done!  Now when I go home tonight, everyone will be all smiles.

Technorati Tags: remember the milk

Another (more useful) use for Twitter

Today I just noticed that Newark International Airport is a Twitter user.  That means you can get up to the second info on delays and such via Twitter.  Genius!  Check it out here.

On the way to work this morning, I was actually thinking Twitter could be useful for traffic updates.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be driving to work in the morning and get a message from a fellow commuter saying there’s an accident up ahead and to take a different route?  Now, I know that radio stations have traffic updates every 10 minutes or so in the morning, but I still think it’d be cool to have up to the minute updates generated by other users.

Technorati Tags: twitter, ewr, airport, traffic

Twitter Followup

In a follow-up to my post on Twitter the other day, check out Robert Scoble’s rundown of Twitter and a few other Twitter-like services.  I think it might make more sense than what I wrote.

Technorati Tags: twitter, scoble

The Beauty of Photoshop

I just wanted to show people a little bit of what Photoshop can do for you people who have never used it before.  Take a look at this picture I took last weekend when Kel and I went to Gettysburg.  This view is from on top of Little Round Top looking down on Devil’s Den:

Now take a look at this Photoshopped version from the same picture and try and pick out what I changed:

Now, obviously I cropped the picture and made it kind of a sepia tone, but what else? Check it out:

- You’ll notice a small building on the left side of the untouched version. That is a bathroom the park installed some years ago that they are eventually going to remove. I did it for them.

- Got rid of all the roads the tourists use to get around the park.

- There are a few monuments way in the background.  Outta here!

- There are numerous cars in the parking lot, and a tractor over by the bathroom.  I got rid of those guys too.

- If you look closely, you’ll see there are a couple of dozen people climbing on the rocks in Devil’s Den.  Had to get them out.

- There are various walkers, bike riders, and joggers both on the road in the foreground, and back behind Devil’s Den.  Gone, baby!

- There are two different birds that flew through my shot that I nixed.  One on the left, and the other on the top right. 

This just goes to show you how Photoshop can take a normal, “touristy” photo and help turn it in to something more.  Now, I’m not one of those guys that normally likes to Photoshop his stuff to death on every shot.  In my opinion, the truly great photographer is one who can capture a shot and not have to doctor it up afterward to make it decent.  But Photoshop can be a very useful tool.

Technorati Tags: photoshop, flickr, gettysburg, civil war

What exactly is Twitter?

You may notice the right side of my blog now sports my Twitter RSS feed, but you may be wondering, what exactly is Twitter?  Some have called Twitter a “micro-blogging” service.  Basically it allows users to go on and update their status for other users to see.  Think of it as a more encompassing IM away message.  Once you update your status, your friends are notified (if they choose to be) of what you’re up to via an IM message, text message to their cell phone, or simply by viewing your page on the web.

Instead of having to go to the Twitter website every time you want to update your status, there are several easy ways to do it, both from the computer and on the go:

- You can send updates to Twitter via a cell phone text message
- You can send updates via an instant message from all manner of IM clients
- Twitter now has a Facebook application, allowing you to update your status from within Facebook
- You can get a Firefox extension such as TwitBin to update from within your browser

I think it’s a really ingenious way of keeping you connected with people.  Say you go to see Transformers and think it’s freaking sweet.  You can send a quick text to Twitter like, “Transformers is freaking sweet”, your message will get sent to your friends via their medium of choice (web, IM, or text message), and they will then know that Transformers is freaking sweet from an authoritative source.

Twitter is also fairly customizable in that you can send Twitter messages to single individuals, decide how and when you want to receive messages, and put Twitter into “sleep” mode to stop receiving messages for a certain period of time.

Twitter is quick and easy, and it helps to keep people in touch.  If this post has persuaded you to try it out, feel free to add me as a friend by visiting my Twitter page.

Technorati Tags: twitter, twitbin, facebook, micro blogging, firefox

Social Cameras

Dave Winer has a cool idea for a “social camera“.  It’s kind of a neat concept, really.  I wonder if anyone has made something like this.  One concern I would have is keeping people from passing off pictures I took as their own.  What would be really cool is if it could somehow be integrated with Flickr.  Your camera would store your Flickr info in the file’s EXIF metadata so that if you transferred a photo to someone else, the file would have your info embedded in it.  It would help prevent you from uploading the photo without proper attribution to its true owner/author.

I’d also want an easy way to choose which photos I wanted and which were trash.

Wouldn’t it be nice to go on vacation and get some pictures of yourself without having to ask some stranger to take a picture of you with your camera?  Someone smarter than me, invent this, please!

Technorati Tags: winer, social camera

Flock

Since I’m a big time lover of Firefox, yesterday I decided I would give Flock a try since I’ve heard so many good things about it.  Well, you know what?  There’s not really an easy way to get my Firefox bookmarks into Flock.  What’s the deal with that?  The two browsers are built on the same architecture and you can’t move bookmarks between them easily?  That’s ridiculous.

Flock has some cool features, including integration with WordPress (and other blogs), Flickr, and deli.ciou.us; but I’m going to stick with Firefox.  To me, the combination of extensions ScribeFire for blogging, Flickrfox for browsing Flickr in my sidebar, and Sage for RSS reading beat out anything Flock has to offer.

Technorati Tags: flock, firefox, flickr, scribefire, wordpress, bookmarks

Google Maps Street View

Not sure if everyone has seen this or not, but Google recently released a new feature in Google Maps called “Street View”.  To check it out, go to a map of San Francisco and click “street view”.  Streets that have a street view show up in blue, and if you click anywhere on the blue street, it will give you a street-level picture of what is at that exact spot.  Now that is cool!

I’m assuming Google is doing this by driving around and taking pictures of everything.  I’m not sure how feasible is for them to do this on a national level without some sort of user-generated content.  However, if they open up that can of worms, how will they police it?

Either way, it’s pretty cool stuff!

Technorati Tags: google maps, street view, google

Google acquires Feedburner

I must have missed this due to my busyness last week.  I wonder what Google will do with Feedburner?  There are a lot of “geeks” out there that tend to decry Feedburner for whatever reason, but it’s a service that I’ve always liked.  It came in especially handy when I moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress last year.  I didn’t have to worry about giving everyone a new RSS feed for the new site.  Instead, I justed changed everything over in Feedburner and walla! 

It’s just like when the law changed a few years ago allowing you to keep your same cell phone number when you change between carriers.  You didn’t have to worry about calling 100 people to tell them your new number.

Sweetness.

Technorati Tags: feedburner, google, rss

Ballhype is a cool site

Attention sports fans: check out Ballhype.  It’s a Web 2.0 sports site that I’ve been playing around with this morning that is actually very cool (thanks as always to Techcrunch for linking to it).  You can join and set preferences for what you’re interested in.  Then you read through sports news stories and interesting links float to the top based on voting (think digg for sports). 

For example, I’ve set my favorite teams to “Notre Dame” and “Cleveland Indians“.  I also added “Charlie Weis” as one of my favorite coaches.  That way I can just view stories relating to those teams.  If you’re interested in a sports as a whole, you can view stories about the NFL, NHL, or whatever as well.

It’s a pretty cool site that I recommend checking out if you’re at all into sports.

Technorati Tags: ballhype, sports, news, site