Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

News in full spectrum

A friend of mine just introduced me to an interesting way to interact with the news of the day: it's called "Spectra" and it is a very nice, free, web-based app from MSNBC. You select the categories you want to view, and Spectra begins to create swirling orbits of news headlines, color-coded by category. When you see a story you want to read, you click on it and you're presented with that article.

My Spectrum of News from this morning - Click the image for a Zoomed view

Not sure it will take the place of things like Google Reader or my favorite offline reader Sharpreader, but it is very fun to play with!

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“Free” pictures for you

I use quite a few pictures, both on the blog here and in presentations I put together. Since I want to "do the right thing," I pay for all the pictures I use or get them from royalty-free sources.

Father holding baby
I was intrigued by a service called "PicApp" that is very cool for blog and other web images. It is easy to use, and has a lot of advantages:

  • You can search for a wide variety of images and select from previews, so it's pretty simple to use.
  • Images on PicApp come from agencies such as Getty Images, Corbis and SplashNews.
  • The ads on the photos are non-intrusive - no distracting watermarks.
  • Themed creative images are available in addition to celebrity photos and news and sporting events.
  • If you become a registered PicApp users can create RSS feeds for your favorite searches.

You can find some pretty cool pictures here with their search engine, and the ability to turn a search into an RSS feed is pretty interesting.

There are a few limits, as you must use their "embed" codes to use the image but they let you choose the image size, alignment, etc. and the code is automatically adjusted for you. That, and user interface is a bit quirky sometimes, but the images are pretty good. And, that being the case, these aren't the ones to use in presentations per the agreement you enter into to use the content.

As you can see by the pictures I've included here, free has some strings - since you use their embed code, you get a link back to their service as part of the bargain and (as in the cow picture) sometimes some interesting additional content or the occasional ad. But hey, it's free.

Sales In Cider Top One Billion Pints A Year

To give you a sample, here are a couple of pictures I found by searching for "curiosity" on this service.

If you write about celebrities and current events, you'll be pleased to know that this service has plenty of pictures of people like Paris Hilton, shots of things happening at the Olympics, and things like that.

Sound interesting? Check it out at PicApp!

Related items:

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Cool news roundup

I've been a bit busy lately but, in cleaning up my inbox I found several very cool news updates that I want to share with you:

SameCell is now at Version 2.0!

I've written about SameCell in the past (here and here) and still think it is a very cool app for the Blackberry. It is even cooler with their version 2 (full list of new features on the SameCell web site).

Beyond some nice interface improvements I think my favorite new feature is their new Events feature (example at right), that lets you create new events (and even new event categories) and broadcast them to other SameCell users nearby. You'll notice an intriguing "Speed Trap" event, for example. You can also customize how you broadcast any event to others - including whether you share your contact info, your location, etc.

They've also added some tagging and rating features to you can tag favorite locations, rate restaurants, and things like that. Very nice additions to an already powerful application.

And it's still free. Find out more or sign up at the SameCell site if you're interested. I've already dropped my hints there that I'd love to see an iPhone version, by the way.

Free photo calendar creation tool available

Thanks to Kathy for telling me about a free online tool to create calendar pages with the photo of your choice. You can print any month's calendar with an image you upload on the page size you select. In a few seconds, you have a PDF of that month's calendar that you can print or share. Perfect for hanging at work or around the house.

My kids will have fun with this one! If you want a sample, click here to download an August 2008 calendar page I made. It features the picture I used to create the current Genuine Curiosity banner background (it's one I snapped of a museum in Cannes, by the way).

You'll note there is not advertising or anything else on the calendar - just your stuff. Pretty cool.

Corporate Change Manifesto at ChangeThis!

My friend Mike Kanazawa (author of Big Ideas To Big Results) has published a paper at ChangeThis called, "People Don't Hate Change, They Hate How You're Trying to Change Them." I worked with Mike and a team of others on a corporate transformation at Symantec Corp. back in the 90's and really admire his perspective. This manifesto is no exception. My favorite section is "Do More On Less" - which is a great treatment of the power of focus in a corporate context.

Download Mike's manifesto today - it's great reading. And watch for my review of Mike's book coming soon.

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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.

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iPhone 3G battery life, part 2

Yesterday I wrote about how I extend my iPhone 3G's battery life (using Kensington's Mini Battery Extender and Charger for iPod and iPhone).

Iphonebattery_little Well, I've got another day under my belt with both the phone and this device, and have some additional thoughts:

  1. The battery on my iPhone 3G seems to last a bit longer each day, and was noticeably better today. Maybe it needs some "breaking in" through a few days of use, or something like that. I am assuming it will level out soon since it can't continue to get better forever, can it?
  2. I decided to try recharging my phone with the Kensington battery extender today, and I find that it will charge the phone very quickly - much quicker than I'd expected. In less than an hour, it brought my phone from approximately 25% charged to fully charged.

I still haven't fully tested its effect on talk time (i.e. live use of the Kensington battery as a power source while talking vs. just as a charger when I'm not using the phone) but I'm still quite pleased with this device as a way to keep the juice flowing in my iPhone 3G.

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