Genuine Curiosity

Resurfacing after a deep dive

I’ve been fairly quiet for the past couple of weeks, but that’s due to a couple of contributing factors:  connectivity (or lack thereof), and jam-packed scheduling at 3, back-to-back software industry conferences (self-inflicted, for the most part). 

Now, as I come up for air, I have a lot of pent up stuff to write about.  Let’s start with some quick updates:

• A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was starting one of my periodic time audits (yes, I finally got it done after my epic fail).  Here are my key takeaways:
• I was successful in carving out and sticking to one of my goals:  engaging in regular physical exercise.  For the past 5 consecutive weeks, I have kept to a 6-day per week exercise schedule (3 alternating days of weights, interspersed with 3 days of cardio, followed by 1 day of rest).  I even managed to keep to this during 3 weeks of travel.  This is a first for me, but something I intend
• I spent too much time working on things that were not directly related to my top priorities. What’s my diagnosis of the problem?
• I wasn’t consistent in writing down my top priorities and “must do” items at the beginning of the week.
• I said “yes” to too many “urgent but not important” tasks (i.e. someone else’s priorities)
• I read a great article by my friend Mike Kanazawa (author of “BIg Ideas to Big Results”).  The article is called “80% Of Companies Are Thinking More Strategically In The Downturn,” and it looks at some data on how companies are reacting to the economy’s chaos.  One of the key observations is one I really agree with: you need to take care of your existing customers and keep them happy.  I don’t know about you, but I find it much easier to stick by the suppliers that have done right by me no matter what, but during lean times I will not only support them – I’ll go out of my way to give them my business so they do OK.  And I’ll readily drop the vendors that have been lame to me.  There’s more to it in Mike’s article – go check it out.
• I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the positive power of “TripIt” (which I wrote about a while ago).  As my travel has picked up, I’ve been reconnecting with quite a few people I haven’t seen in ages.  I was skeptical about how much I’d like TripIt but was intrigued enough to sign up anyway.  I’m glad I did.

I’ve got a few drafts going that I’ll be finishing up and posting soon – including a review of a forthcoming Keith Ferrazzi book that I have a pre-release copy of.  I think you’ll like it.

Thanks for hanging in there during my time under water.

Voice power and your phone

I am in the midst of a switch of phone platforms, yet again.  I’m going back to my iPhone 3G.

During the coming week, I’ll share more information with you about how I’m working around the iPhone’s limitations (I’ve mentioned why I switched away from the iPhone in a previous post).  In the mean time, I wanted to share information about a free “super app” that works on both the Blackberry and the iPhone.  The application is called “vlingo” and it allows you to talk to your phone to make it do stuff.

Voice control is very handy in many situations, such as when you’re driving.  You can use Vlingo to call people, update social network status, do web searches, and more.  The Blackberry version has more functions and is a little easier to access since it maps to one of the “convenience keys” on the side of your phone, but the iPhone version is still very good (I wish I could use vlingo to send text message on the iPhone – I did that all the time on the Blackberry).

Very cool – check out vlingo today – it is free, after all.  Would love to hear what you think.

Want to see a demo first?  There are a couple of cool demo (Flash) videos online of vlingo on the Blackberry, and vlingo on the iPhone.

Pause and Resume

You may have noticed that I’ve been a bit quieter than usual here of late.  You see, I’ve been dealing with the illness and death of my father-in-law, and I pressed the “Pause” button while traveling this past week for his funeral.  He was a wonderful man - we will miss him, and I will be forever shaped by the beautiful example of his life.

While I have your attention, I might as well give you an idea of what you can expect in the near future as I press Play again:

• I’ll share my early experience with Amazon’s Kindle 2;
• I’ll (of course) review a number of books, including one that provides a very intriguing alternative to GTD;
• I’ll review a backup service that provides an interesting alternative to Mozy;
• I’ll be sharing more about some interesting gadgets and travel tips;
• And more.

Also, if you have feedback on what you like or don’t like here (more of x; less of y; etc.) drop me a line (Email Me).

Trippin’ with TripIt

A while back, my friend Phil Gerbyshak (aka. The Make It Great guy) suggested I check out a travel site  called TripIt.  The service allows you to “connect” with people you trust and share travel itineraries.  At the time, I was busy and wasn’t too sure about the idea of yet another social networking kind of thing.

In December, the siren’s call of TripIt pulled me in and I started using it. I’m now hooked.

So – what does TripIt do?  I’m greatly simplifying the power of TripIt, but I think of it as a database that tracks two things about you:  Where you are (or will be), and what you’re doing (or planning to do) while you’re traveling.  It compares your trips to those of other people you’re connected to (more on that in a minute) and lets you know when you’ll be near someone you know.  That makes it simple to plan ahead and arrange a get-together if you so desire.

Let me tell you a bit about how it works…

Getting your trips in

Letting TripIt know where you’ll be couldn’t be much simpler.  You have two choices:

1. (the easiest) Forward a copy of your travel itinerary (or confirmation email) to plans@tripit.com.  They’ll process it and automagically add the trip to your account (they know who you are because you associate one or more email addresses with your account).
2. (only slightly more difficult) Go to the TripIt site and click one of the “Add Trip” buttons.  You then manually provide a few pieces of information about your trip and it will be added to your account.

Pretty simple.  And if you have an oddly formatted itinerary that it can’t handle, you get an email notifying you there was a problem.

Making connections

TripIt is strictly an “opt in” kind of service.  You need to invite others (or be invited by them) to connect and give permission to share trip information.   TripIt makes things easy here, too.  You can invite people manually, use their “find people using TripIt” wizard, or use TripIt’s application in LinkedIn (I’ve used a combination of all three).

TripIt analyzes all of trips you and your connections will be taking, which enables some cool things:

• You are notified when friends are planning to visit your hometown (including telling you whether you’ll be in town that day or not)
• You get a dashboard of what upcoming trips are happening the next few weeks in your network, which allows you to recommend things for them to do while traveling
• You automatically create a history of your travel including a running total of your miles traveled
• You get a pre-trip reminder that your trip is about to start, along with average temperatures for your destination
• and more…

Oh, and TripIt is free.

My verdict

I like TripIt much more than I ever expected to.  I’ve already made some connections I wouldn’t have otherwise made during my travels even though I’ve only been using the service for about 2 months.  The two things that really made it easy for me are the ability to email itineraries for processing (that makes it so easy to use TripIt), and the integration with LinkedIn (one of the few social networks I use consistently).  Simplicity is key.

If you travel quite a bit (or know people who do – remember, it will tell you when they come to your town) I recommend you give TripIt a try.

Better laptop safety on the road

I’ve found a couple of good utilities that can help you improve the security and safety of your laptop while you’re on the road (and one of them will help around the office, too).

Hands off, bud

The first one isn’t free after the trial period, but it’s pretty useful.  It’s called Laptop Alarm, and it’s from Syfer in The Netherlands.  Once you’ve installed (sorry Mac – it’s Windows only) and activated it, Laptop Alarm sits there quietly until someone does something to change the state of your laptop, such as unplugging the power cable; removing the mouse or another USB peripheral; or shuts down the laptop.

When one of the offending events occurs, it make a loud noise to alert you that someone’s messing with your laptop.  This can be handy in an airport lounge, library, or other venue such as that where you may need to walk off for a few minutes to get something.  [BTW – a laptop cable lock might be a good idea if you do that a lot]

You can download a free, fully-functional trial version if you’d like.  The full version is 10 Euros.

Automatic locking

The next one is pretty cool.  It’s called BtProx and it’s a free utility that can automatically lock your laptop (yep, Windows only again) when you walk away.  This is handy if you often forget to lock your computer when you walk away for a meeting (by the way, the shortcut <Windows Key>+L will do it quick if you remember).

How does BtProx do its magic?  Well, it uses Bluetooth (which means both your phone and your laptop must support Bluetooth for this to work).  When your computer loses contact with your phone via Bluetooth, BtProx locks the system for you after a preset time.  Pretty cool.

As an added bonus, you can configure BtProx to automatically launch a specified application when it locks the system.  That could be handy if you combined it with other security programs (such as Laptop Alarm) or wanted to trigger a backup or antivirus scan when you are away from your computer.

So, laptop users – check them out and let me know what you think.

New Year’s Resolution: No more mystery chargers

OK, so sometimes I’m slow.  I’ve had an excellent Brother label make(the linked one at home, and an older one at work) for a looong time now.  I started using one in 2002 when I first drank the Getting Things Done elixir, I believe.  And I’ve had a ridiculous number of chargers and power adapters for even longer.

But it just dawned on me that I can actually use my label maker to mark my power adapters so I don’t:

• throw one away because I don’t know what it’s for (yes, I’ve done that);
• unplug the wrong one while crawling around under the desk (yes, I’ve done that);
• accidentally bring the wrong charger with me on a trip (and I’ve done that once, as well).

So from this point forward, one of my resolutions is to label my power adapters when I first acquire them. 

Learning the hard way is still learning…

Tabasco at its birth

Visiting relatives in Louisiana for Thanksgiving.  My father-in-law is gravely ill, so it was my job to take the kids out and keep them occupied and burn off some energy.  One of their favorite destinations is Avery Island, LA where all Tabasco is bottled.  Here are a couple of shots of the assembly line - pretty cool - they produce 170,000+ bottles per day, and every bottle of Tabasco produced in the world is bottled in this one plant.
 

These pictures replace the grainier camera phone shot I posted earlier - and you can click for a full-size view.

The factory tours are free, and there is an excellent gift shop.  This is about 45 minutes from my parents' farm and we go here all the time, but my kids never seem to tire of it. 

If you find yourself down here in Cajun country, be sure and add it to your list.  Besides the factory, Avery Island is home to an awesome Jungle Garden complete with alligators, a giant Buddha statue, and more birds & beautiful trees than you can shake a stick at.  More info at Tabasco.com.

Speaking of power...

I just walked outside my company's new office building to grab some lunch, and saw this car charging at a public automobile charging station (here in Portland, OR). In light of my last post on finding power in the airport, this brings a whole new issue to mind - I think having a car that's run out of juice could be much worse than having a laptop or cell phone that's run down!

More power to ya.

The other day, when I wrote about the Samsung power trees in Newark Airport, my friend Kevin sent me a link to a Wiki page created by Jeff Sanquist that is devoted to sharing things like power outlets, wifi availability and other travel amenities at various airports.

This looks like a great resource for planning ahead or finding the resources when you need them (you can even look this up on your phone or PDA if you aren’t connected).

If you have any other resources to share, let me know or leave a comment.  And, if you’re so inclined – add your own discoveries to the wiki.

Power now grows on trees?

In the Newark airport a few days ago, I found a place where power grows on trees. It seems Samsung is beginning to install free charging stations in various places, including the Newark airport (this one is near gates 132 & 133 in Terminal C).

I like this idea because it seems it is often hard to find the power oasis in the midst of the airport power desert. I often see travellers wandering the concourses, looking for a place to plug in - frustrated that they are all taken. This approach provides a number of convenient outlets to help travelers (and keep people from unplugging ATM's and other councourse appliances - yes, I have seen that).

Hopefully, this kind of power tree will become more popular - there is an advertisement and a sample of a cool new Samsung phone in the "trunk" of the tree, so they are getting some good branding from this effort.

Oh - and another thing - if you find this (or any outlet) in an airport, it's highly likely there won't be any available sockets. My solution? I travel with a handy travel powerstrip (click here to see my review). This approach makes it easy - I just ask someone if they are willing to share using my powerstrip. I generally find someone who's willing to do that.

Show me the money debacle

Though I've been a bit quiet on the blog due to some time-consuming projects lately, I've had a bit of travel time to get caught up on podcasts. One of them was very illuminating, as it has to do with the economy and does a great job of explaining how the current financial chaos happened. The explanation was on a program called "This American Life," and the episode was number 355, "The Giant Pool of Money." You can download a transcript, or buy the audio podcast for 95 cents (I think the podcast is much more captivating, but the written transcript is pretty good).

The story gets into some of the "behind the scenes" machinations of the credit crisis, and clearly shows the value of business controls. If better controls had been in place, we'd have been able to avoid this crisis. And by "controls" I'm not necessarily talking about regulations - just added business scrutiny and business rules to detect and manage risk.

The root of the problem

In plowing through all the data about what led to this problem, it seems the culprit is something I have written about before: lack of "Tone at the Top." If you're unfamiliar with this notion, "tone at the top" is the tone set by the leadership of any entity. Tone at the top is communicated through policies, principles and, most importantly, actions taken by management. As you might imagine, it also has a huge influence on how the organization will behave - people will often get away with inappropriate actions if they can do it without any negative consequences.

Many of these financial organizations seemed willing to suspend business rigor and accept things that, in retrospect, should have set of lots of common sense alarm bells. They often felt they were doing things "in the name of competition," or for other rationales that (on the surface) seem reasonable. But the bottom line is their management allowed significant business changes without demanding a thorough analysis of the risk involved. And now we're all paying the price for weak tone at the top.

Check out the piece by This American Life, and see if you agree. And by the way - some of the things you'll hear will astonish you at how insane and irresponsible they seem.

Note: You can subscribe to "This American Life" for free on iTunes, but they only keep the most recent episode up there at any given time.

Del.icio.us tags: financial crisis, This American Life, Dwayne Melancon, Tone At The Top

UBrand rocks

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about UBrand - a small business that makes semi-permanent markers that you can use to personalize your luggage, electronics, or just about anything you can stick things to. I mentioned that it provides a good way to make your luggage stand out from the crowd so you can spot it easier.

Well, I just got some UBrand letters and an icon and have applied them to some of my stuff, so I thought I'd post a couple of pictures here and let you know what I think. My first impressions were great - the UBrand stickers look like very high quality items, and they come in a professional package. I decided to put them to use right away.

Luggage marking

My first markup was to apply my initials to my suitcase. I picked a spot for the letters, tested the spacing, then peeled the backing from the letters and stuck them on. That's pretty much it - very simple. The letters feel like they are firmly stuck, and they have a nice depth to them. Since I have white letters on a black bag (my tried & true Briggs & Riley 22" Expandable carry-on) I can easily spot my bag. This came in handy this evening when I was trying to help the bellman find my bag in the bag check room - I just told him to look for the bag with the big, white "DAM" blocks on the side, and he found it right away. Click the thumbnail at right for a bigger picture.

Laptop marking

My other label (a cool, stylized icon of the Earth) was destined for my laptop. Just like luggage, many laptops look alike and I want mine to stand out at the security checkpoint to avoid any mixups.

I have been using bumper stickers but they sometimes tear or get worn. I now have the earth icon applied to my laptop and I think it looks pretty cool. I also feel like the UBrand sticker will last longer than a bumper sticker. Click the thumbnail at left for a bigger picture.

Summary

The bottom line? I think these will be great to personalize my stuff. I also think these will make nice gifts for my traveling friends this holiday season. They have an ever-growing selection of emblems in the UBrand store, and can even make custom ones (in quantity) if you want to provide branded stickers to your customer. Way cool.

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Related items

• Packing tips, part 1 (5/30/2007)
• Packing tips, part 2 (6/8/2007)
• Updated: Don't be the crumply traveler - aka "Wrinkle Free Packing" (11/17/2005)

Del.icio.us tags: ubrand, travel tips, Dwayne Melancon, gadgets, luggage

Find stuff locally on your Blackberry

I've written about Samecell a few times here. It's a free utility to let you know when your friends are nearby, based on the cell towers your mobile phone signals are bouncing off of. The application will also use your GPS if it's available to provide even more accuracy. After using it for about 9 months, Samecell has been very stable and has helped me connect with friends when we happen to be in the same airport, at the same trade show, etc.

The folks at Samecell continue to improve and expand the functionality of their cool tool - and the latest addition is a local search function.

With this application, Samecell builds on its knowledge of your location to add smart searching capabilities to help you find points of interest that are nearby. If you travel a lot, as I do, you'll understand the difficulty of finding a particular type of restaurant in an unfamiliar town. Samecell Search is a great way to get the job done - you simply choose a category or keyword, send the results to the server, and you get the results back right away. The results are complete with addresses, phone numbers, and clickable web links.

And, yes, it's also free. Go check it out today. I run both the Samecell application, and the Samecell Search application.

Enjoy!

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Related items

• How about a Trackberry? (4/5/2008)
• Put your friends on the radar (9/6/2007)
• Blackberry: 1-800-Whatever (12/5/2007)

Del.icio.us tags: gadgets, blackberry, samecell, Dwayne Melancon

Make your luggage stand out

My "Make It Great!" pal Phil Gerbyshak pointed out a company called "UBrand" that makes 3D, self-stick decorations to help you customize your luggage, gear, etc. to make it stand out from the crowd.

I think this is a great idea - how many similar pieces of black luggage do you see on the luggage carousel at baggage claim in the airport? How can you tell your laptop, phone, or music player from someone else's? UBrand provides you with a way to personalize your stuff in a way that reflects your personality. They also sell some professional-looking monogram letters if you want a more dignified look.

Sure, you could use regular stickers, but these are designed to be tough and (as they say) "semi-permanent."

Check them out and see what you think - and if you want a chance (through September 25) to win 3 monogram letters, check out this post at the Business Opportunities Weblog.

Technorati tags: travel tips, luggage, gadgets, Dwayne Melancon, Phil Gerbyshak

Superior airpower

When I boarded my plane this morning, I sat in my emergency exit row seat (next best thing to a First Class upgrade) I was pleasantly surprised to see that this plane, a Continental Boeing 737-800, has power outlets throughout the plane!
Of course, the plane *didn't* have video or audio on board, but I'll take a "bring your own" model with power any day. Now, if only they'd add these to every plane...
By the way, this also gave me an excuse to try out Typepad's mobile client for the iPhone to snap the phot and write this post. Pretty cool little app.