Oh, and happy 30th to me! As I’ve been telling my wife, 30 is the new 20… hahaha.

Anyway, tomorrow I head to New Brunswick (eastern Canada) for a few days, so posting will probably be light. But, since I rarely post with any predictable schedule, most of you won’t notice any difference. So there!

I’m putting this link here mainly as a reminder to myself.

Hat tip to Brendon Connelly of Slacker Manager.

I just read a productivity tip on Jason Womack’s great blog (he’s a Getting Things Done coach on David Allen’s team) that completely flabbergasted me: To read a large book quickly, he tears three chapters of the book out at a time. I just had to post a comment on his blog about this, and here’s what I posted:

Wow - your trick to read a big book fast has completely thrown me for a loop. I have no doubt that it helps speed up the process - making reading the book less cumbersome, and making the book seem much more “finishable” (i.e. less of a psychological mountain). I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of actually tearing out pages. Respecting books was one of those things that was instilled in me by my parents almost as strongly as “don’t hurt people or animals”. In fact, I was probably taught “don’t hurt people, animals, or books”.

I love the idea of it - the efficiency in reading something big quickly. I just can’t make that leap. Argh! Darn you, Mr. Womack. How can I read a large book again without knowing there’s a better way to do it that I can’t let myself do?!

What do you think of this trick?

Well, it isn’t the first time I’ve gone off half-cocked, and it surely won’t be the last. It turns out that it was clearly stated that my Pro account would only last for three months when it was first created. Of course, I didn’t remember that, but I have not doubt of its veracity. Anyhow, I must give credit where credit is due. The folks at Flickr responded to me within minutes when I complained, and made sure that I understood the situation. For that they deserve recognition.

For what it’s worth, here’s the email exchange I had with them (read from bottom up, you know - like email):

Fair enough. Thank you for the clarification.

—–Original Message—–
From: Caterina Fake
Sent: January 10, 2005 3:06 PM
To: Jason Clarke
Subject: RE: Flickr Pro Account Expired

The free pro account you received in exchange for invites was a three month pro account. We have stated very clearly that pro accounts expire, they either revert to free accounts or the user decides to upgrade to a pro account.

The mistake on our end was that we didn’t send an email to let you know your account would end prior to its expiration date.

Sorry if you misunderstood, but this is the way it has worked for all users who received free pro accounts during our beta period.

Caterina

—–Original Message—–
From: Jason Clarke
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 2:55 PM
To: ‘Caterina Fake’
Subject: RE: Flickr Pro Account Expired

I appreciate your response, but what you’re telling me is that you indeed dropped the ball, but that I’ll need to pay to reinstate a Pro account that I had previously *earned* by rapidly signing up my friends to your service.

The personal communication is nice, but your response offers no concession for what you admit was a mistake on your end. That’s no way to foster an open trusting and supportive relationship with your user base.

I can’t believe that the only solution you can offer me is for me to pay for what I had previously earned. I provided value to your company - by your own rules. Please help me to stop regretting that I did that.

Thanks,
Jason

—–Original Message—–
From: Caterina Fake
Sent: January 10, 2005 2:47 PM
To: Jason Clarke
Subject: RE: Flickr Pro Account Expired

Hello Jason,

We are very sorry you weren’t informed in advance of your free Flickr Pro account expiring. Indeed, most of us hadn’t taken a vacation for a year — my husband and I hadn’t taken a vacation in two years, since we started the company — and that is how this email was delayed until
*after* your free pro account expired.

So, we did indeed drop the ball, and for that we apologize. All your photos are still there, and if you upgrade to pro all photos are archived and displayed. In the future this will be automated so emails go out in advance.

Best regards,

Caterina

Well, since it’s been ages since I’ve posted, I figured I’d start up again with a relatively light one. Marc points to this Digital IQ test. My results in the image below:

Ugh, Microsoft. Why can’t you just admit that Firefox has you beat at the moment, and leave people alone about their personal browser choice?

From beta.msn.toolbar.com when viewed with Firefox:

Warning! Your browser does not meet the minimum system requirements. You are recommended to use the MSN Toolbar Suite with Internet Explorer 5.01 or later.

I’m not saying that you should give up the fight - I’d love to see a good browser come out of Redmond - but right now you are asking your users to use an inferior, less secure browser. I can’t trust you when you do that. Integrating desktop search into my browser is not a big deal to me, when I can put a search box on my taskbar with any of the major desktop search vendors.

Just lay off the IE pressure. Internet Explorer sucks right now, plain and simple. Yes, even the SP2 version. Here are the three strikes against IE:

I’m sure you’re working on it, and eventually it will be better, but right now it just sucks. And I don’t recommend that anyone use it.

Jeff Jarvis over at the very popular blog Buzzmachine eloquently says ‘Fuck the FCC‘.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Bonus link - Eric Idle’s song Fuck You Very Much the FCC.

Isn’t it frustrating when you know you have something on your computer, but you can’t find it? Microsoft wanted to solve this problem with WinFS, but a few other companies have been working on it, and have created some very functional solutions in the mean time. Since WinFS is still at least 2 years away, this is a very good thing.

When LookOut first came out, I was a huge fan of it, and encouraged everyone I know that uses Outlook to use it. It’s a simple and elegant solution, and it’s sort of surprising that this kind of functionality isn’t already built into Outlook. But the more I used it, the more I could see why it’s not built in. LookOut makes Outlook slower. I didn’t notice it much at first, but LookOut runs as a plugin right inside Outlook, and therefore works through the Outlook.exe process. I started to have troubles when shutting down Outlook, and became frustrated with the overall lag I was experiencing with LookOut installed.

My other complaint is that although LookOut can also index any folder on your computer, it’s really not intuitive to go looking in Outlook for a file that is somewhere on your file system. It also doesn’t have any particular ability to handle special file types, such as music or image files. And XP’s default file searching capability is both anemic and broken.

About two weeks ago, I learned about Copernic’s new Desktop Search product, a free program that puts a search bar right on your taskbar, much like the Google Deskbar. (That feature can be disabled without losing any functionality, if you prefer).

Copernic’s Desktop Search gives me all the functionality of LookOut, but with a smarter indexing engine, better handling of different file types including email, files, music, pictures, video, contacts, favourites and history (if you use IE… blech!), and of course web searching, and does it all with a much more user-friendly interface than LookOut provides.

For a free product, you couldn’t ask for more than what Copernic is offering. If I have one nitpick, it would be that I would like the option being able to perform a Google search through the web search functionality in Desktop Search. Copernic offers AllTheWeb as it’s web searching option, which is okay, but not my first choice.

I heartily recommend that anyone looking for a much easier way to find files on their system download Copernic’s Desktop Search.

Right now I’ve got “bitches” by Rory Blyth in heavy rotation on WinAmp. While it’s not notable that I’m fixated on a song, it is notable that the song is by someone who is more known for his writing and speaking in the technical world (and who happens to work for Microsoft now) than he is for music.

This makes me realize I should get my act together and post some of the recordings I’ve played on.

Thanks Yves for pointing to the direct link to download it from Rory’s site.

Chris and I had an informal competition to see who would give their blog a facelift first. I win!

My dad sent me an email today asking what a blog is. I’m guessing that he heard of them as many people did through the Democratic National Convention coverage. Here’s what I told him:

The word “blog” is actually a short form of the word “web-log”, which is a website that is continually added to in chronological fashion. Some people use them as online diaries, some use them as a place to list interesting websites they’ve come across (mine is like that - www.jasonclarke.net) and some are used to start online conversations in very focused groups. The last one is most common for software developers and the like.

Basically, a blog is the latest form of a “homepage”, but the format of a blog encourages and expects content to be added to it on a regular basis. Some mainstream media types and journalists see bloggers as “wannabe journalists”, but that’s not the case at all. Blogs are almost always very partisan, very opinionated, and rarely attempt to be impartial.

I read a lot of blogs - often the most interesting stuff (particularly in high-tech) comes out in blogs weeks, months, and sometimes years before the mainstream media picks up on it.

I’m sure this description is sorely lacking, so if you have anything to add, please make use of the comments.

If you are having trouble figuring out who to vote for in the upcoming Canadian federal election, try the Vote Selector Quiz over at PoliticsWatch.com. I have to admit that I was mildly surprised at the result I got, but on reflection, I can see how it came to that result. (Hey, who doesn’t want to pay less in taxes? ;-))

That being said, I have to admit that I don’t know anything about Politics Watch, so take any recommendation you get with a grain of salt.

Thanks Brenda for the link!