Awesome Clients!

Today was one of those weird days. I had phone calls set up and payrolls to try to rush out of the door and just all kinds of funkiness going on. And then my son comes in while I'm on the phone and stands there with his finger over his lips to tell me he knows I'm on the phone and to be quiet. He stood there and waited for me to get off the phone and then ultra politely asked me to help him put new batteries in his toy. He was just SO cute that I had to load up and go buy some batteries for the kid. I try to reward good behavior like that - especially phone manners. I work at home and the kids are here a good bit of the time when school is out.

Anyway, so I come back and find this on my porch. It was from a client and read, "Candy, For the days we drive you to drinking. ;) Thank you for all that you do!"

How nice is that! See, I LOVE frozen drinks, especially margaritas. Oh, I'm not some alcoholic or anything, but I love even just frozen lemonade.

Some days, I love what I do so much. This is one of those days.

And to my son who showed what a polite little child he is, we will use it the first time tonight to make frozen lemonades. (Pina Coladas later for Dad and I!)

Options for Going Green in Your Business

AccoutingWeb recently had a great article about simple ways to go green by safely recycling electronics and reducing the waste paper in the office by eliminating unwanted junk mail. Check it out here.

OffAssist has been moving toward a paperless office since January of this year, and we encourage others to go green for everyone's future.

Hands On!

I am a notebook user. In fact, outside of my backup systems, I use a notebook computer exclusively. I haven't owned a desktop computer since sometime around 2000, 2001. (speaking for myself, Dy, not OffAssist as a whole on this one).

Keep that in mind when I tell you that even when traveling, I have almost NEVER used my notebook in the position required for IBM's new patent to have any relevance in my life.

See what I mean here.

Mobile Mozilla by Year's End

Last October we reported that Mozilla was working on a mobile version of the Firefox browser.

Mozilla has recently announced that they expect to release mobile Firefox versions for embedded Linux and Windows Mobile by the end of the year. We think that's great.


Now if only we can get Candy to stop pouting in the corner because they won't have a version for Morris (i.e. Palm OS) this year...

Google Rising

Seems we're all about the G-word right now.

Word on the street is the Google is diving into the mobile browser market--with an Open Source platform.

I'm not geekalicious to competently pass all the scoop on, so check out this article on Financial Times' website for all the skinny.

Makers! Following a dream...

Sunday I had the great pleasure of attending Maker Faire here in Austin. What the heck is Maker Faire, you ask? It's this festival of sorts where do-it-yourself types come out and show us what they got... and they got some cool stuff! Okay, and some really weird stuff too. My son got to make a transistor thingy (yes, the technical term) on a business card. We got to see the coolest new toy, Pleo, in person. We had a chance to paint a pumpkin, see robots - a lot of robots, play video games by jumping on a trampoline, finger paint on a touch screen, and yes folks, I got to see the EepyBird dudes do their Mentos and Diet Coke fountain show - and may I saw it's awesome.

Okay, some of it was serious inventor type stuff, some of it was just downright silly. I mean, really, a robot thespian that sings "The Hills Are Alive With The Sound of Music"? Cool, but useful? I hated that movie the first time I saw it! But that robot was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's a robot! That acts! Probably better than some actors out there ;) Plus if I'm gonna get a robot, I want it to do my filing or laundry or fetch me a cup of coffee (with sugar and cream, darn it!)

But, you know, the first guy we saw when we came in probably made the biggest impact on me as far as work-related thoughts that swirl in my head... his name was John Funk and he is making a movie, folks. His movie is called Mary Lou Turbine and the Quest For the Dark Planet. Say that 10 times fast, I dare ya.

I'm not even 100% sure what the movie is about - and I even watched the trailer. But he has basically made or made use of old toys and stuff - I take it this is some sort of "no humans in this movie" thing - yeah, there's a name for this, but whatever. Anyway... what struck me was this. This guy has been working on these elaborate scenes (seriously, I wish I had a picture of his city scape - amazing workmanship) for *YEARS*. How many people do you know that find a dream, a dream that probably makes his friends go, "Huh? You build toys in your garage for your movie? HUH?" and keeps following that dream after all this time?

Yeah. That many, I thought so. So, Mr. Funk, my hats off to you. Everyone should have a dream in their lives and in their businesses and follow it. I think your movie is sci-fi - not something I watch on a regular basis, but you know what? I'll buy it when it comes out because darn it, I think you were a pretty cool dude and you made me smile.

One more thought... if two guys can make a name and business for themselves simply by dropping candy into a bottle of soda and letting themselves get soaked by all of that... anything really is possible. Go for it. Follow your dreams. I'll show up next year to cheer you all on.

Go Go Mozilla!

Not surprisingly, the huge success of the iPhone and its advanced mobile web functionality is making a lot of developers take another look at this growing market segment.

Mozilla, developers of the Firefox browsers, announced last week that they are working on a mobile browser with a planned release in 2008. For more information, check out this article at CIO.com. Even more details can be found on Mozilla Engineering VP Mike Schroepfer's blog, here.

CD Celebration!

Okay, so the party is probably over now, since the official anniversary was two months ago.

What am I talking about? The 25th birthday of the compact disc (aka CD)! That's right, 25th!

I had no idea CDs were that old. Of course I was *ahem* only 8 when the first one was made...

In all fairness to other forms of music media, the CD may be two and half decades old, but it has not been in common use that long. When I was in high school in the early 90s the cassette section at the music store was still 2-3x as large as the CD section and they were prohibitively expensive for a teenager selling popcorn at the movie theatre after school. Heck, when I was in college a couple years later you could still get current tracks on LP. You had to go to grungy stores in Houston's museum district, but you could get them.

I didn't even own a CD player til 1995...and had to get married to get it because it technically belonged to my now-husband!

Anywho... Happy birthday CD!

Philips' official press release about the CDs birthday

Amusing post from NetworkWorld on the same.

Bonus points if you know the name of the artist recorded on that first CD without following the links!

Mobile Visual Voicemail

Okay, I admit it, I just don't get what all the fuss is about. I have a friend who works for AT&T mobile, the company with the exclusive airtime contract for the iPhone for the first three years, so I heard all about the bells and whistles early on from someone who had to know. I admit, the visual voicemail feature sounded neat, but not likely to give me iPhone envy.

Apparently I am in the minority. Check out this article from internetnews.com about new VV alternatives on the horizon.

Not-Seeing Spots - Color Laser Tracking

Did you know that your color laser printer may be telling tales?

Apparently many of them print tiny yellow microdots, invisible to the naked eye but that show up under blue LED light in a dark room, on your documents. It is supposedly security encoding, but no one knows what information is encoded in the dots, other than the device serial number.

According to what little has been said by printer manufacturers and the government (both in the US and the EU), the dot identifiers are intended to be a counterfeiting deterrent and a way to help the government locate and prosecute counterfeiters.

The big problem I see with this is that no one will talk about it. No one will come out and say "this is the mark - this is the information encoded in it". There is too much unknown from the consumer end. It also deprives people of their anonymity.

Technically, anonymity is not a guaranteed right, but it sure as heck encourages free speech--how many of you read (or write!) an anonymous blog? One where the writer can unload about life or work in a way that will protect them from reprisal. That is the glory of anonymity and THAT is what this printer watermarking takes from people.

Seriously. People have been faking money for as long as nations have been making money, color printers aren't really the problem Big Bro!

There are a few really good articles out there on this, so I'm just going to give you a list, starting with the first one I read:

Seeing yellow over color printer tracking devices at LinuxJournal.com

Seeing Yellow - official web home of the campaign to stamp out printer tracking

Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents at PC World's site - one of the first articles to report printer device tracking

Texting for Dollars

This article is about a guy who lost a text messaging contest at a state fair due to a missing exclamation point.

A silly bit of news in and of itself, but a slightly scary sign of the times. TEXTING contests at a state fair? I mean, I guess it is slightly healthier than all those old eating contests, future carpal tunnel surgery aside, but it seems a bit sad.

I wonder if people with full QWERTY keypads were handicapped...?

As Long As We're Picking on Handheld Users...

"Blackberry Addiction" is a term slowly sliding into our collective consciousness. Basically, a Blackberry addict is someone who finds herself compulsively checking their email and sending text messages via a hand held device (aka "Crackberry"). It has a few different permutations and repercussions.

The first is health-related. Similar to carpal tunnel for typists and "mouse wrist", handheld device addicts are developing strains and sprains, primarily in the joint at the base of the thumb, and are even losing partial functionality in the affected hand in some cases.

The second is, believe it or not, legal. Apparently technology addiction is getting so bad in sectors where employees and executives are required to be tethered (albeit wireless-ly) to the office via devices that a recent Rutgers University study indicated lawsuits may be next. Compulsive workers who cannot unplug from the office wake up and realize they are unhappy with their lives. Rutgers associate professor of management Gayle Porter theorizes that they will start looking for someone to blame and will start at the office.

Finally, there is the stress factor. A device that is supposed to free up time and increase efficiency slowly becomes a leash, tying people to their job all the time. No matter how much people love their jobs, they need time away, too. There's a reason many major employers require people in high-stress positions to take a sabbatical every few years - reduced stress results in increased efficiency when people come back; if they never get away, thanks to their handhelds, efficiency decreases.

Just a little something to think about...

Pay Attention to the Road!

How many times a day do you find yourself saying those very words, especially when you are stuck behind drivers paying more attention to their cell phones than the traffic they're in? It could be worse! At least they aren't text-messaging and driving. You hope.

Texting and driving is becoming a bigger and bigger problem as more people find themselves "unable" to drive from point A to point B without using their wireless device to check email or text messages.

There is a bill in the Washington State Senate (it flew through the House) to ban texting and driving. While there are a number of factors driving this law, the big push came after a man caused a pileup on Interstate 5 outside Seattle that shut the highway down for over an hour. He was checking his email while driving.

Texting is not specifically banned anywhere, but Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, California and the District of Columbia have all outlawed the use of handheld phones while driving.

Texting is not the only distraction drivers face, but after a 2006 study showed drivers on cell phones are as impaired, if not more so, as drunk drivers, well... Maybe it's time to turn the ringer off til we get where we're going. Or at least pull off the road.