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p div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry" pa href="http://www.paulmyoung.net/2010/03/my-parents-doctor.html"From Paul Young's blog/a:/p blockquote class="posterous_medium_quote" p...today, the family doctor needs to have the ability to ldquo;fixrdquo; everyday problems, but even more importantly, to know when it is in everyonersquo;s interest to engage a specialist for the good of the patient./p pIn the care of people, the family doctor is a highly skilled diagnostician, excellent basic caregiver, and able to coordinate treatment in the same way a conductor leads the orchestra. Thatrsquo;s the role for the person who was once a generalist in regards CRM systems./p pIf yoursquo;re a specialist, I salute you and your dedication to your craft. If yoursquo;re like me however, donrsquo;t be ashamed. Just like a hospital full of surgeons, oncologists, and ophthalmologists isnrsquo;t the optimal mix for life long health care for people, integration specialists and coders need people like us who can see the big picture. Hold your head high and go read the new release notes so you can keep everyone on the same page!/p /blockquote pGreat post. Even though I'm not a Salesforce consultant and only serve as an administrator for one organization, I can so relate to this./p /div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/seize-the-future-by-the-throat-my-parents-doc"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/seize-the-future-by-the-throat-my-parents-doc#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=6wcmbwRRJVY:gGKzrqJCNrs:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=6wcmbwRRJVY:gGKzrqJCNrs:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=6wcmbwRRJVY:gGKzrqJCNrs:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/6wcmbwRRJVY" height="1" width="1"/

p a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/a1tSTR8TPwV9gwgxCWvhV5U6QcKlCwm0XlaIDV1iGfsjO6qaSTl8kCFJ3fue/IMG_0839.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/8D3HD38SMhjzE7XpOuKkVHqPLHwjl63ZY9BefpZRoOeAmcVMp2056m8RijiC/IMG_0839.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="666"//a /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/irony-in-the-morning-paper"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/irony-in-the-morning-paper#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=ZWON_KWTlOk:dW95iLRDTNE:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=ZWON_KWTlOk:dW95iLRDTNE:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=ZWON_KWTlOk:dW95iLRDTNE:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/ZWON_KWTlOk" height="1" width="1"/

p pimg src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEyNjU1NTcxODE4NTgmcHQ9MTI2NTU1NzE4Mzg5MCZwPTAmZD1qUURGbG82NElJcmJCR*RRJmc9MiZvPTMxZWQzYjk2/ZDQ*ZjQyNjRhNjVmYjYzZmYzNzQzMWIzJm9mPTA=.gif" border="0" height="0" alt="" width="0" style="height: 0px;" / object height="248" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="221" param name="movie" value="http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/load/jQDFlo64IIrbBGDQ.swf" / param name="quality" value="best" / param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" / param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" / param name="wmode" value="transparent" /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/load/jQDFlo64IIrbBGDQ.swf" height="248" wmode="transparent" width="221"/embed /param/param/param/param/param/object /p pIn 2005, I naively accepted an offer to run operations for a new nonprofit. I was always comfortable in technology, I was comfortable working with nonprofits. What else did I need to know? Ha. I didn't have a clue./p pNow, nearly 5 years later I am confident in my ability to help C3: Colorectal Cancer Coalition achieve its mission with the aid of technology. I'm proud every time someone marvels at how much we've been able to accomplish despite the fact that our budget is still under $1 million. I owe most of that confidence to my association with a href="http://www.nten.org"NTEN/a over the years. I'm forever grateful for the friends I've made and the technologies I've been exposed to. I love that I'm at the point in my career where I can pay it forward and help other nonprofit techies./p pYou can get a lot out of NTEN without attending their annual conference, the a href="http://www.nten.org/ntc"NTC/a. Attend webinars, get to know the movers amp; shakers through Facebook and Twitter. Participate in an affinity group. But the NTC is different. It's really like no other conference. The collaboration andnbsp;camaraderienbsp;is on a whole new level.nbsp;/p pLast year, I received a Convio/NTEN scholarship to attend NTC in San Francisco. This year, I consciously decided not to apply for the Atlanta NTC. I want to make sure other folks have their chance to attend when they otherwise wouldn't be able to. I got an e-certificate from United so my flight to Atlanta cost under $100 round trip. That balances out in my mind. The money I spend on NTC pays itself back for C3. I couldn't imagine not going at this point./p pI just made a small personal donation to the fund, and I'd like to urge you to do the same. It adds up. Think of all the good that small nonprofits are doing and could be doing if they had the right tools and connections. The NTC is their chance. a href="http://nten.org/blog/2010/02/03/2010-ntc-scholarship-campaign-your-chance-embarrass-entire-nten-staff"Help them get there./a/p /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/help-more-nonprofits-go-to-ntc"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/help-more-nonprofits-go-to-ntc#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=fMH6XeoyrSs:js9A_KWqpEQ:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=fMH6XeoyrSs:js9A_KWqpEQ:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=fMH6XeoyrSs:js9A_KWqpEQ:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/fMH6XeoyrSs" height="1" width="1"/

p div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry" blockquote pThe buzz in our biz is that you have made enormous strides over the years in the areas that count – client service, product usability, and bringing the promises of the salesforce and the realities of customerhood into an acceptable equlibirium. Vinay continues to be a major thought leader in fundraising, and an inspiring colleague. You’ve turned some of the hardest-to-please folks I know in the space into some of your most passionate supporters. That’s all good. Really good./p pBut here’s what’s gonna happen the day after the IPO. Your new “customer base” will be Wall Street. The shareholders won’t give a tinker’s damn about customer service. Your most senior people will be preoccupied with Sarbanes-Oxley and other bizarre and twisty bureaucratic nightmares that come with being public./p pI get it, you need to do what you need to do. Your operations are built on borrowed money, and the lenders need to be paid back. All well and good. But please, please – take stock now of what it is that makes you the best choice in the space right now, and do everything you can to make sure that your true north continues to be offering an excellent product and great service to the thousands of organizations you serve who spend every waking minute trying to change the world./p/blockquotediv class="posterous_quote_citation"via a href="http://seachangestrategies.com/blog/2010/02/06/an-open-letter-to-convio/"seachangestrategies.com/a/div pVery well said. Be sure to read a href="http://seachangestrategies.com/blog/2010/02/06/an-open-letter-to-convio/"the entire letter./a/p/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/an-open-letter-to-convio"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/an-open-letter-to-convio#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=-evidKWZdIw:YYNBDc0ke3A:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=-evidKWZdIw:YYNBDc0ke3A:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=-evidKWZdIw:YYNBDc0ke3A:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/-evidKWZdIw" height="1" width="1"/

p Eric has a Kindle and loves it. p /divOne of the things we both love most about his Kindle is that he can get most books for $9.99. p /divMe, I prefer audio books. I can read while I#39;m knitting and doing things around the house. Even though Apple has an easy way to get audio books in iTunes I don#39;t do that. Instead, I get my books from a href="http://www.audible.com"Audible/a where I can get a $25 audio book for a credit that only cost me around $15 a month. Apple would charge me $25 for the exact same audio book./div p /divApparently, a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/amazon-pulls-macmillan-books-over-e-book-price-disagreement/"Amazon is now getting push back from publishers, starting with Macmillan, who want them to charge more than $9.99 for e-books./a As a result, Amazon pulled Macmillan books from their US store:/div p //divblockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"divdivI’ve talked to a person in the industry with knowledge of the dispute who says the disappearance is the result of a disagreement between Amazon.com and book publishers that has been brewing for the last year. Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of electronic books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon is expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books, said this person, who did not want to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the matter./div /div/blockquotedivp /divApple#39;s new iBook store gives more leeway to publishers to set their own prices on books. From last week#39;s demo, looks like that price is going to be around $15 per book. Coincidence? Yeah, right./div p /divRemember a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-to-pull-nbc-shows-from-itunes-citing-price-dispute"when Apple faced off with NBC over similar issues/a back in 2007? /divp //div blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;" Apple said NBC#39;s demands would have raised the price of NBC shows to $4.99 an episode from the current $1.99 price tag./blockquoteblockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;"  /blockquoteblockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;" quot;We would not agree to their dramatic price increase,quot; said Eddy Cue, Apple#39;s vice president of iTunes, in a statement. quot;We hope they will change their minds.quot;/blockquotedivdivp / divAt the time, the public saw Apple as the hero fighting to keep our costs down, even if it meant the loss of NBC shows from iTunes. Apple held its ground. NBC came back./divp /divNow, Amazon is fighting what is essentially the same battle. Apple is entering the market that Amazon already has a foothold. You would think Apple would have fought to at least matching Amazon#39;s pricing, if not beat it. The market can already bear $10 eBooks the way they do $1 songs. But no. Apple is perfectly happy to price their books at where the publishers want so they could get their deal, and then let Amazon fight alone to avoid iraising/i their price to match. Thanks for watching our back, Apple./div p /divThat#39;s business. That#39;s competition. I get that. What burns me is the arrogance of Apple in assuming that because they are entering a market, they will control it. Which is all well and good if it#39;s in all our best interests. If the customer wins by getting a better value for our money. But in this case it#39;s not for us. Far from it. In this case, we lose because we#39;re going to pay an extra $5 per book for absolutely no good reason./div p /diva href="http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100129/the-entire-boomtown-video-on-the-mossberg-jobs-chit-chat/"From Walt Mossberg#39;s conversation with Steve Jobs at the iPad launch/a (emphasis mine):/div p //div/divblockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;" In the video, Mossberg asked Jobs about the iBooks application and the price of e-books, bwith Jobs insisting the price would be the same on Apple as it was on Amazon./b/blockquoteblockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;" br //blockquoteblockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;" “The prices will be the same,” said Jobs, before getting in a little dig at the maker of the Kindle e-reader. “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon, because they’re not happy with it.quot;/blockquote blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"p //blockquoteOne could a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/steve_jobs_ipad_to_offer_word_support_10_ebooks_6_days_of_music.html"optimistically read that to mean that Apple#39;s books will match Amazon#39;s $10./a Watch the video linked above. No way. Jobs knew his entrance into this market was throwing Amazon#39;s pricing under a bus, and he#39;s happy to do it.p /divIn other words...now that we#39;re giving competition to Amazon, we#39;re more than happy to let publishers bully Amazon into raising their prices to match ours and we#39;re perfectly okay with consumers paying more as a result.p /divI can hardly wait until Apple decides they#39;re not making enough on audio books due to competition from Audible and they get publishers to bully them too.p //div/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/amazon-ebook-pricing-war-thanks-for-being-evi"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/amazon-ebook-pricing-war-thanks-for-being-evi#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=F0au6kqCTEw:Z6A-FZ8ht5s:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=F0au6kqCTEw:Z6A-FZ8ht5s:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=F0au6kqCTEw:Z6A-FZ8ht5s:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/F0au6kqCTEw" height="1" width="1"/

p pI'm not buying an a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad"iPad/a, nor am I buying into the hype about it. I love that with Apple products, folks don't realize that they can't live without something until Steve Jobs tells them what they can't live without./p p / divAt this moment we have 5 Macs in active use in our home, 2 iPhones and one iPhone without SIM that's essentially an iPod Touch. But I'm a realist, not a fangirl. I didn't buy an iPod until its 5th generation. I bought my first iPhone at round 2.br / p / divI do see the iPad's potential. I do understand Apple's move to break free of the keyboard/monitor/operating system way of doing things. I can even appreciate the value of a closed system where you know that everything will have a consistent look and feel.nbsp;/div p / divThe fancrowd is saying that the iPad isn't for geeky-tech types like me. It's for the casual consumer. Someone like my Mom who uses her not-the-latest-and-greatest computer for email and web surfing and keeping track of her finances and buying stuff on Amazon. She'd love an iPad, right? Nope. Not yet. And it has nothing to do with the price./div p / divHere's why I won't recommend an iPad 1.0 to my Mom:/div p / divApple needs to make up its mind. strongDoes this device sit alongside a regular computer or replace it?/strong It makes sense if it replaces the casual home computer. It can be used in any room of the house and is so pretty and convenient. I'm continually amazed at how much use I get out of my iPhone when I'm away from home. Yet the iPad has to be synced to a computer for content. Yes, the iPad has its own iTunes store and Mom can manage her email and contacts in the iPad without syncing because she uses Gmail. But then how would she back it up? If an iPad isn't being synced to a computer and it gets lost, it gets corrupted or gets dropped and you're out of luck. Apple needs to untether the iPad from a "regular" computer for it to really take off for home use. Otherwise, it's an add-on luxury device and nothing more. The joke that is still MobileMe doesn't count./div p / divMom has her computer at work, and she has her computer at home. She gets her books, magazines and newspapers on paper.strong If she's going to read her content on an iPad, that content needs to be on the iPad./strong And that means her local newspaper, not emThe New York Times/em. While it's nice that Apple has deals for books, I want to see many more deals with content publishers beyond books, and in such a way that it makes it worth giving up paper. Or more apps that provide that content. I get all my magazine subscriptions I can on a href="http://www.zinio.com"Zinio/a now. A big reason is because a Zinio subscription is often cheaper than a mailed one. A big part of a Kindle's appeal is that you can buy a $25 bestseller for $10. The deals have to make it worth people's while to make the switch. Otherwise paper will always be "good enough" for the masses.nbsp;/div p / divstrongNot all websites work./strong I don't care how fast and gorgeous the browser is. The lack of Flash is a problem no matter how Apple spins it. Mom doesn't know or care that it's Flash that's making her favorite websites do what they do. She doesn't care it's the reason for most of her computer problems. She doesn't care that HTML5 is the best thing on the horizon. The websites she likes just won't work. Apple is being stubborn when it comes to their desire to kill Flash, and they've done this before. Remember the bruhaha when they only included USB and removed the floppy drive from the first iMac back in 1988? I had that first iMac purchased on Day 1 of its release and I was able to buy a little USB device that plugged in to my computer and it let me get data off my old floppies. Not ideal, but there was a workaround. There is no workaround if a site doesn't work on the iPhone/iPad and blaming it on the site is so not the answer. Neither is expecting every website to create something for the App Store instead./div p / divBottom line is that the iPad 1.0 is a device that isn't for the techy-geeks, yet I think only the techy-geeks will really appreciate it./div p / divBring on iPad 2.0./div /div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/the-ipad-will-probably-be-a-great-device-some"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/the-ipad-will-probably-be-a-great-device-some#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=_ZX7SJSSZkw:pY-IVypXQ_c:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=_ZX7SJSSZkw:pY-IVypXQ_c:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=_ZX7SJSSZkw:pY-IVypXQ_c:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/_ZX7SJSSZkw" height="1" width="1"/

p pI had a a href="http://www.asge.org/PatientInfoIndex.aspx?id=398"therapeutic ERCP/a this morning to finally deal with biliary tract issues that have been bothering me since 2003. The fact that I'm still coming off Propofol and Dilaudid is the only excuse I have that I nearly fell for this. I know better.nbsp;/p p / divLike I needed to be spending the time I should be relaxing in bed and enjoying time with my online friends instead resetting my Facebook password and cleaning up every single authorized application? p / divSo even though tons of folks are getting hit by Facebook and Twitter viruses and spam and information for combatting them is widely out there (I hope), I thought I'd share this as a public service./div p / divIt started when I logged in and reviewed recent notifications:/div p / divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/ETyWL88a7J1SFMgS4TexACO9QptM77Uz7qFqe68p6Af1rtvDQ7rp9pxCJKdv/facebookstatus.png" width="218" height="300"/ br //div p / divWhich one of these is not like the other? They all look like typical "so and so commented on your/someone's status" alerts.nbsp;/div p / divBut check again. The 2nd one has no icon. And "your status" is the link instead of just the word "status."/div p / divI should have stopped there and realized what was going on, but no, I clicked on the link and got this:/div p / diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/jtH6e6ybHdj9arBRjZmCuLmwT8o1X423QmKKITlgLVVMqxYFgSWXanq243He/feed.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/681p3onIlHiPb2CfrIdn1RxkYOVB9aPce4nqen6GZA7Zz3zOhaKTtvwz1vPC/feed.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="251"//a br //div divAnd before my drug-addled brain could stop my fingers, I forgot what I was doing and clicked "Allow." Where I landed might as well have screamed "Gotcha!!!" I think it did./div p / divYes, there's a reason the nurses left me with instructions not to make any major decisions or operate machinery today./div p / divSo I quickly changed my Facebook password to another secure/unguessable combination of letters (thank you, as always, a href="http://www.1password.com"1Password/a...you rock). I went through every single application that I've authorized in Facebook and removed anything looking even slightly suspicious (and trashed a few legit stupid/useless ones while I was at it)./div p / divIt appears that a href="http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=269188566369"this app is more annoying than malicious/a, but I'm not taking any chances...especially since the friend who "sent" me the notification does not appear to be using it. Maybe she got wise to it as well. Apologies to any of my Facebook friends for whom my actions weren't fast enough. Hope this blog post serves as explanation./div p / divBack to resting away from the keyboard before I hurt someone./div /div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/facebook-fake-status-spam-alert"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/facebook-fake-status-spam-alert#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=2YJErNC5WuI:HyDNlIFL4jI:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=2YJErNC5WuI:HyDNlIFL4jI:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=2YJErNC5WuI:HyDNlIFL4jI:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/2YJErNC5WuI" height="1" width="1"/

p divThis weekend, the winners were announced in the a href="http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/" target="_blank"Chase Community Challenge./a /divp /divOn paper, it seemed simple enough. Chase gives $5 million to nonprofits based solely on the votes of regular folk on Facebook. quot;Their money, our votes.quot; In reality, the challenge illustrated exactly why these quot;vote for mequot; contests in the nonprofit world have got to go away. Businesses can do what they want, and while I applaud the move towards philanthropy, it#39;s my opinion (disclaimer: and not necessarily the opinion of the nonprofit that employs me) that this is bnot/b the way to do it. Please look at the 1+1+1 model that a href="http://www.salesforcefoundation.org"Salesforce uses/a (and Google as well, I think) for a better corporate giving program./div p /divThe Chase Community Challenge started with an open nomination round. Each Facebook user, after authorizing the Chase application, got 20 votes to distribute among their favorite charities. The top 100 vote getters got $25K each, then competed for the $1 million grand prize, with 2nd-6th place getting $100K each. /div p /divWhat#39;s wrong with this picture? A lot. Beth Kanter a href="http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2010/01/chase-giving-contest-winners-announced-amidst-controversy-.html" target="_blank"summarizes some of what went wrong/a. Chase disqualified some charities without being transparent as to why. Allegations of fake profiles being created to drum up votes. I#39;m not going to rehash all that here. Beth does a wonderful job. Read it./div p /divMy main problem isn#39;t necessarily about Chase. It#39;s the whole recent crop of quot;vote for the king amp; queen of the promquot; type challenges for nonprofits and is what Beth says best in her post: /div p /blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;" a href="http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/2007/03/killing_the_mis.html" target="_blank"Scarcity thinking/a assumes no growth and heightened competition.  Contests that are designed to select winners based on popular votes only and huge dollar amounts inspire scarcity thinking. bMuch like throwing some fish food into a pond filled with starving Coi fish./b/blockquote p /divI hated watching our supporters eat the fins of other organization#39;s supporters while they lobbied for votes for their favorites. Each charity had a page for comments, and those pages were filled with quot;use your spare vote for...quot; pleas. In other words, this was a contest where the success of your pet organization to make it to the top 100 was dependent on the failure of millions others. To win in round 2, your charity had to be content with 94 other charities losing. How do you decide that an organization#39;s mission to provide help for Jewish families dealing with Autism has more or less value than an organization that fights a rare childhood disease or takes care of animals? That a local organization is more deserving than a national one?/div p /divSome organizations put incredible thought and time and resources into trying to win this contest (there goes that $25K). Time and effort that they maybe weren#39;t spending addressing their core issues if they#39;re really small or mostly volunteer run. It wasn#39;t about mission, it was only about getting into larger networks and getting a click that I would argue was ultimately meaningless. That doesn#39;t feel right to me. Will those votes translate into viable support and advocate engagement later? Does it really raise an organization#39;s profile to be in the coi pond? I#39;d love to see some data a year from now./div p /divSupporting nonprofit organizations that are working to make the world a better place isn#39;t a Miss America contest. Shame on any corporation that thinks otherwise./divp /divHere#39;s a community challenge I want to see: bReward nonprofits for projects that require collaboration and networking./b /div p /divAn example straight off the top of my head: A cancer support organization working with a meals-on-wheels organization and one that helps people with job skills designing and implementing a program to make sure that patients are eating right after treatment and can get back into the workforce after a long health-related absence. /div p /divI think the possibilities are endless if we can get out of our silos long enough to consider them./divp /divExtra points to the projects that require the most diverse organizations to actually work together towards a common goal. The general public can view and comment on the proposed programs, maybe even make suggestions of partners. Community insight and transparency is wonderful. Yet ultimately the funding decision is by a team that will evaluate based solely on the viability of the project and what will have the most benefit for the population it will serve. Not necessarily which will serve the largest population. Not necessarily which has the largest mailing list or Facebook fan page./div p /divNice dream. /divp /divIn the meantime, all I can do is beg corporations to think it through before the next challenge. If you sprinkle food at the top of the crowded pond, the fish aren#39;t going to say, quot;you know, I#39;ve thought about it and I#39;m not really that hungry to fight for it.quot; They#39;re going to eat each other up like it#39;s their very last meal. It#39;s the fish#39;s nature. It#39;s ours. It#39;s up to you to design your giving programs to make sure we#39;re ihelping/i each other to the next meal and we#39;re all being fairly judged on our own value, not purely in competition./div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/nonprofits-have-we-had-enough-of-vote-for-me"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/nonprofits-have-we-had-enough-of-vote-for-me#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=V4K--fvVkos:OoFKBlMoFYo:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=V4K--fvVkos:OoFKBlMoFYo:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=V4K--fvVkos:OoFKBlMoFYo:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/V4K--fvVkos" height="1" width="1"/

p I#39;m dealing with some medical issues again. When under personal stress some people eat. Some people smoke or drink. I buy and play with tech. Can#39;t help it.p /divAfter months of debating all the mobile broadband options, and getting ithisclose/i to a href="http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Learn/HighSpeedInternet/high-speed-2go.html"Comcast#39;s mobile 4G option/a (which would have saved me $10/month until I found out it couldn#39;t be used at all on a Mac and canceled my order), this morning I picked up aa href="http://nextelonline.nextel.com/NASApp/onlinestore/en/Action/DisplayPhones?phoneSKU=SWW8013G4Gamp;language=ENamp;INTCID=CM:AB:20100110:UHP:Masthead:Overdrive:1000x190" Sprint 3G/4G Overdrive/a. It#39;s a wireless modem/router just released this month that can allow up to 5 remote connections and works over 3G and 4G networks. Next time Comcast goes down in our home like it did this morning, Eric and I can both be online at the same time rather than passing the USB modem back and forth. /div p /divI couldn#39;t see myself doing another 2-year contract for anything that wasn#39;t 4G, even though the network is only currently available in some major cities. Thankfully, I live near one of them./div divp /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/sWIVwKliF0IvTMUxS9O2YGO5B5OJYXMimu2n9tvLUMQBNZH9Xw5uHePDHgqG/overdrive.jpg" width="329" height="438"/ br / p /div$99 for the device after rebate, same monthly fee as I was paying before ($68 with fees amp; insurance). Seems like a lot when I don#39;t use it, worth every penny and then some when I do. p / divThis one will get a lot more use. /divp /divI live about 30 miles outside of Philadelphia which has 4G coverage. I knew I was taking my chances since it was hard to tell from their coverage maps if my home was in the 4G zone. I#39;m happy to report that yes, indeed I can get 4G from my home. Sprint says that Washington, DC will be on 4G at some point in 2010.p /divUpgrading from an USB 3G AirCard is kind of like going from a black amp; white TV with rabbit ears to an HDTV. Whoa./divp /divFor starters, setup was an absolute breeze compared to the activation hoops I had to jump through last time. Turn it on. Join the network. Set your own SSID amp; passwords. Done./div p /divWhen you connect via wifi, you simply go to a href="http://overdrive"http://overdrive/a in your browser to configure/monitor. There#39;s an LCD screen on the device itself, but as the router may be buried at the bottom of a laptop bag or in another room, the LCD is helpfully recreated and dynamically updated on the configuration screen. It works perfectly from my iPhone and my MacBook./div p /diva href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/r1QYaJndPfdKcMxnfyY4Lfy3cbVu5BcrB2k45P0qkHsc4EENMZTOT3TYPjiy/Overdrive-home_page-1.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/h1gLhdJHukaxF0FGJnVrVpjHCcjIundXObVeQsQmb6wGGAMXFZdYWehxKrng/Overdrive-home_page-1.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="287"//a br / /divp /divI didn#39;t try watching movies with it, but surfing around on my laptop for a bit I had to double check to make sure I didn#39;t slip back over to the cable modem. Respectable speed (for some reason Speedtest.net thought I was in KS by the IP) for access on the go./div p /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/atoQyUdUMyMjUKcKw2P79QFt2CezcYMNwyCtCKYv79o9NEkhrh3TaiFXRqQD/Speedtestphilly.png" width="315" height="186"/ br / /divp /divWe#39;ll see how it does away from Philadelphia, particularly when I#39;m Amtrak and hit areas in Delaware that the old AirCard always gave up. For now, I think I made the right choice./divp /p /p //div/div/div/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/sprint-3g4g-overdrive-is-worth-the-upgrade"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/sprint-3g4g-overdrive-is-worth-the-upgrade#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=AFz__v2rGvk:EJIjnqTePKY:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=AFz__v2rGvk:EJIjnqTePKY:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=AFz__v2rGvk:EJIjnqTePKY:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/AFz__v2rGvk" height="1" width="1"/

p div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry" img src="https://boxmarketing.box.net/shared/static/se782m3xer.jpg"/ div class="posterous_quote_citation"via a href="http://blog.box.net/?p=1467"blog.box.net/a/div pFinally! Box.net has always had the ability to preview files, but it was through their Open Box system so 1. it sent the file to a 3rd party and 2. it was too slow. /ppThis new file viewer works right in Box.net and is quite fast. /ppI can't count how many times I downloaded files from Box.net just to see what it was, only to have to dump them from my Downloads folder later. This is a much better solution./p/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/awesome-file-viewer-in-boxnet"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/awesome-file-viewer-in-boxnet#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=EF1Wk5cYHSc:NpTyddc2z5k:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=EF1Wk5cYHSc:NpTyddc2z5k:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=EF1Wk5cYHSc:NpTyddc2z5k:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/EF1Wk5cYHSc" height="1" width="1"/

p img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/rWEOuomtG9qSKs8oxb9Ek7gGJkKdiHY9SIsOkrRNqJyz9udnAFj4T4KcS1sM/pwned.png" width="320" height="480"/ pI was sitting in Washington, DC#39;s Union Station on Friday, waiting for my 7 pm train home and available networks popped up on my iPhone as I was checking email./pp /divI feel sorry for anyone whose laptop is set to auto-join available networks, because apparently they#39;ve been pwned. Bummer./div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/the-lesson-my-friends-is-to-know-where-your-w"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/the-lesson-my-friends-is-to-know-where-your-w#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=I4PPeSQ7x18:WaPfuGWYTdw:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=I4PPeSQ7x18:WaPfuGWYTdw:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=I4PPeSQ7x18:WaPfuGWYTdw:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/I4PPeSQ7x18" height="1" width="1"/

p As rumored, ATamp;T a href="http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-plan-details/?q_sku=sku3830293amp;q_planCategory=cat1370011"unveiled new unlimited plans/a last week that went into effect yesterday. $69/month for unlimited voice. If you have a smartphone, tack on another $30/month for unlimited data. Strangely, this still doesn#39;t include SMS so you#39;ll need another $20/month for that. Still, compared to the price of a metered minutes plan, it#39;s not a bad deal. p /divHowever, the pricing for family plans is ridiculous: $70 for the main plan, $50 for each additional line./divp /divbi$50 for each additional line!?!? Are they insane?br //i/bp /divCurrently I have a family plan with 5 phones. My iPhone, Eric#39;s iPhone, one kid#39;s LG Neon, my mother#39;s RAZR and a 5th line for my other daughter who only takes a phone in emergencies (she has high functioning autism and therefore isn#39;t as interested as her sister is in phone conversations/texting). /div p /divEric and I pretty heavy data users, moderate SMS and under 500 minutes per month each. My Neon daughter is big into texting with her friends, moderate voice, minimal data. My mother uses maybe 50 minutes a month and no data/SMS. The 5th line is hardly used, but worth it for $10/month if it#39;s needed./div p /divOur monthly bill is currently $255./divp /div$80 for 1400 minutes/divdiv$10 each for the extra 4 lines = $40/divdiv$60 for two iPhone data plans/divdiv$10 for data on the Neon - too easy for it to go online, and didn#39;t want to get killed on accidental charges/div div$30 for unlimited family SMS/divp /divThe rest is all fees and taxes./divp /divIf I have a 700 minute plan for $60, the additional lines are $10 each. If I have a 6000 minute plan for $310/month, the additional lines are $10 each. That#39;s the beauty of a family plan...the bigger the family, the bigger the savings on shared services./div p /divConsidering that we typically use around 900 minutes a month as a group, it#39;s practically an unlimited plan anyway. Right now we have 6763 unused rollover minutes. I wish there was a 1000 minutes plan which would be perfect for us. I never worry about minutes, so I wasn#39;t planning on the unlimited voice plan anyway./div p /divBut if I were using the full 1400 minutes each month and seriously considering an unlimited plan, I would have to pay $50 per line regardless of how much use the phone gets? In other words, bATamp;T is penalizing accounts like mine with more than 2 phones in the quot;family.quot; /bThere#39;s no other way of looking at it./div /div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/atandt-nation-unlimited-is-rip-off-for-larger"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/atandt-nation-unlimited-is-rip-off-for-larger#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=REXQNyeOACs:X3KcCAByIrk:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=REXQNyeOACs:X3KcCAByIrk:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=REXQNyeOACs:X3KcCAByIrk:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/REXQNyeOACs" height="1" width="1"/

p div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry" blockquote class="posterous_long_quote"pBut Google is selling the phone directly to end-users. That means many users are turning to it first, and the search giant doesn't have the kind of customer support that mobile-phone users are accustomed to. /ppGoogle appears to be only accepting e-mail customer queries, to which it pledges to reply in one to two days -- far too long, say most people who are complaining online./p/blockquotediv class="posterous_quote_citation"via a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/186399/google_faces_deluge_of_nexus_one_complaints.html"pcworld.com/a/div pIf Google is supporting the phone the way they support their online services, you couldn't pay me to buy a Nexus One. /ppWhat if you have an issue getting access with it when you're on vacation and the only way you have to get online is the phone? How are you supposed to ask for help?/p/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/google-faces-deluge-of-nexus-one-complaints-p"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/google-faces-deluge-of-nexus-one-complaints-p#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=WVPAP13yh90:Fobsr5Clizc:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=WVPAP13yh90:Fobsr5Clizc:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=WVPAP13yh90:Fobsr5Clizc:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/WVPAP13yh90" height="1" width="1"/

p I#39;ve been so waiting for this. I really like a href="http://www.google.com/chrome" target="_blank"Chrome/a. It#39;s been my default on the Windows side of my Mac for some time. It#39;s fast, stable and I just get more done when I#39;m working in it. br / p /divI have a tendency to keep a bunch of apps open at once, and when of those applications is Firefox my entire system quickly drags to a crawl. With Chrome taking less room in RAM, everything seems to run faster./div p /divWhen Chrome Mac beta first came out I tried to make it my default for a while, but the lack of extensions sent me back to Firefox. Not being able to organize/sync bookmarks was a bit of a deal breaker./div p /divNow, finally, the a href="http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel#TOC-Mac" target="_blank"dev channel of Chrome/a has extensions and I#39;m happy to be back. I know a href="http://www.chromium.org/Home" target="_blank"Chromium/a has had extensions for a while. That#39;s a bit too on-the-edge for me. Too much updating. Frankly, the way Google does quot;betaquot; it#39;s more like the dev version is the beta while the beta is a release version./div p /divI spent a day or so playing with available extensions (love that you don#39;t have to restart the browser in between) and here#39;s some of my favorites of the 12 I#39;ve installed so far. Only thing sorely missing from my toolbar is a href="http://www.1password.com" target="_blank"1Password/a. I#39;m cutting/pasting my logins and manually updating them which is a bit of a pain. iCome on AWS, the water is only a tiny bit chilly now...it will warm up. Jump!/i/div p /diva href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gffjhibehnempbkeheiccaincokdjbfe" target="_blank"bGoogle Mail Checker Plus:/b/a/divp /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/zAgwFehF9cUnAmX2E9FhdAajBjMAxd4ycsBPQhI3SsnUpFfqIClWNYlhZ5qd/emailchecker-2.jpg" width="495" height="192"/ br / /divp /divI#39;m neurotic about inbox zero, and I like this so much better than any of the Google notifier add-ins I tried in Firefox. Google Apps friendly. I don#39;t have to keep an email tab open all the time anymore! Badge shows the message, making it easy to delete/archive messages without going to full Gmail interface. Only glitch is that it appears to be using UTC time zone with no option to match the time stamp to my clock./div p /diva href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ajpgkpeckebdhofmmjfgcjjiiejpodla" target="_blank"XMarks:/a/divp /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/c3aWmN41YTZxsjCymJco27foAAeTpdoy09LRWQNenYzvHSsyDK65KAwjI15B/XmarksSettings.jpg" width="215" height="225"/ br / /divp /divChrome Mac still doesn#39;t allow for reorganizing bookmarks. That#39;s okay. All my bookmarks were already in XMarks and now they#39;re syncing with Chrome. When I want to reorganize/edit my bookmarks, I just log in to the Xmarks site and do it there. I prefer this over Google#39;s built-in bookmark sync because this way I can easily go back to Firefox or Safari at any time. And I even have synced bookmarks in Internet Explorer on the Windows side, although I rarely use it./div p /diva href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/encaiiljifbdbjlphpgpiimidegddhic"Chromed Bird/a and a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lkdedmbpkaiahjjibfdmpoefffnbdkli"Facebook/a:/div p /divGreat for quick sneak peeks to the social networks. I don#39;t seem to get as distracted if I can just peek as opposed to loading the full interface. I tried a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fafnphfmggfjfjgoahpnfkpbmgpfcofk"Brizzly/a, which looks prettier, but it was slow and had more quirks. These two very simple extensions more than do the job for quick glances. When I want to spend more time in Twitter, I#39;ll log in to a href="http://www.hootsuite.com"Hootsuite/a. I long gave up on desktop Twitter apps because they took up too much precious RAM./div p /divimg src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/adAq7ydMnrSLAZoSraEZqylHpBHedQzyp00uKTRNIsKtX8W8eyOnmWSQP6ve/extensions.jpg" width="360" height="30"/ br / /divp /divMy wish at this point is for a way to arrange the icons on the toolbar./divp /divFellow Mac users who have moved to Chrome...what extensions do you like?/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/extensions-at-last-in-chrome-for-mac"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/extensions-at-last-in-chrome-for-mac#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=Zd2pXBKCzuE:b4dtwkF1-P4:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=Zd2pXBKCzuE:b4dtwkF1-P4:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=Zd2pXBKCzuE:b4dtwkF1-P4:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/Zd2pXBKCzuE" height="1" width="1"/

p div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry" img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/lHqCmoIAwbiIxgesgghzfCclefiDHtslxEmttizBnEkawdvcfexiFEqwoijd/media_httpwwwpaniccom_fskpl.png.scaled500.png" width="421" height="346"/ div class="posterous_quote_citation"via a href="http://www.panic.com/unison/"panic.com/a/div pWow. Folks are debating whether RSS is dead and there's a new Usenet reader. Not really new...a 2.0 update of a application that frankly felt too-late when it first came out years ago. /ppUsenet?!? For $30, plus a monthly fee for a service if you want something usable. Seriously?!? /ppI was big into Usenet circa 1993-96. I have friends to this day that I first met on comp.sys.mac.* and misc.kids.* groups. There's a fond place in my heart for community so simple, concise and text-based. /ppBut come on, today is there more there than warez and porn? I'm not sure I want to find out./p/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/unison-20-really"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/unison-20-really#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=Efk5rE7PhDw:CncLWISCHYo:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=Efk5rE7PhDw:CncLWISCHYo:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=Efk5rE7PhDw:CncLWISCHYo:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/Efk5rE7PhDw" height="1" width="1"/

p pI just got this email to C3's general inbox:p /a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/LqMNkNhDrALYNYxu0aMrXLCkdI5cYGktFq9f6r8ftuaOP1hh1MblemrU2SlK/senateemail.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/btcEhPgvlVBjbwUuqd8IIjU3kuSKlVdgZ67Z3ovvhCInLUHm9GCyzOemXZiY/senateemail.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="129"//a br //p blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid #cccccc; margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"Hello,br / Iacute;m the webmaster of a href="http://senate.gov" target="_blank"senate.gov/abr / We are moving our website and want to request a change of your outgoingbr / link (a href="http://www.fightcolorectalcancer.org/" target="_blank"http://www.fightcolorectalcancer.org//a) to our new website,br / you would help us very much to make the change sucsesfull. Our newbr / webadress is a href="http://govsenate.com/" target="_blank"http://govsenate.com//abr / Kind Regards Webmaster of a href="http://senate.gov" target="_blank"senate.gov/abr //blockquote divbr /What's this "new" site? It's just the real a href="http://senate.gov" target="_blank"senate.gov/a site in an iframe (loaded on a Mac after logging out of Facebook and Twitter, of course):p / blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid #cccccc; margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"lt;htmlgt;br /lt;headgt;br /lt;/headgt;br /lt;bodygt;br /lt;iframe src="a href="http://senate.gov" target="_blank"http://senate.gov/a" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto"gt;lt;/iframegt;lt;/bodygt;br / lt;/htmlgt;br //blockquote br /More fun to take a look at the a href="http://who.is" target="_blank"who.is/a - Registered by a Turkish registrar and name server in Hong Kong.p /I guess the idea is to get unsuspecting organizations to actually make the change, and then switch for spam/ad site? Or hidden malware? p / Who falls for this stuff?br //div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/when-did-our-senate-move-to-asia"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/when-did-our-senate-move-to-asia#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=mxk8J3DrhdM:fAkgzKyHiwQ:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=mxk8J3DrhdM:fAkgzKyHiwQ:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=mxk8J3DrhdM:fAkgzKyHiwQ:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/mxk8J3DrhdM" height="1" width="1"/

p div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry" a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/zDvqJioJzgghoyssuivHhacJrmCBnvyexgwnaFIBcwkfByhzckzndgHlCxCf/media_httpvladalexaco_Efzhj.png.scaled1000.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/zDvqJioJzgghoyssuivHhacJrmCBnvyexgwnaFIBcwkfByhzckzndgHlCxCf/media_httpvladalexaco_Efzhj.png.scaled500.png" width="500" height="392"//a div class="posterous_quote_citation"via a href="http://vladalexa.com/apps/osx/magicprefs/"vladalexa.com/a/div pI already love my Apple Magic Mouse. This freebie utility helps me love it more./p/div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/magicprefs-14"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/magicprefs-14#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=O3LhOh2rqlQ:38bz6-bNC2E:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=O3LhOh2rqlQ:38bz6-bNC2E:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=O3LhOh2rqlQ:38bz6-bNC2E:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/O3LhOh2rqlQ" height="1" width="1"/

p On Tuesday, a href="http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=famp;um=1amp;cf=allamp;ned=usamp;hl=enamp;q=nexus+one+january+5"Google is expected to publicly announce their Nexus One phone/a running Android. This is addition to a smattering of other Android OS phones out there, like the a href="http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-DROID-US-EN"Droid/a, with many many more to come if you believe the techie sites.p / Considering how much I love Google Voice (just wish there was a way to use it with two different Google Voice numbers and the same cell phone), and that all my email, contacts and calendar entries run through Google servers, you would think I#39;d be one of the first to jump on Android.p / Not so fast.p /For starters, every carrier has or will have an Android phone available except ATamp;T. No, I#39;m not an ATamp;T fangirl. They suck. But so does Verizon and Sprint and every other wireless carrier. For every good thing anyone has to say about any carrier, there are at least 50 horror stories. a href="http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/verizon-responds-to-consumer-complaints/"Even Verizon./a When all is said and done, I have a family plan on ATamp;T of 5 lines and I don#39;t want to think about how much it would cost to switch to any other carrier. With rollover, we#39;re never worried about running out of minutes (about 7,000 rollover minutes available on our account last I checked) and we have unlimited data and SMS on the phones that use it. I#39;ve had my issues with ATamp;T over the years, but I#39;ve always been able to get them worked out eventually. The hell you know.p / And second, it#39;s the apps. My iPhone is more than just a phone and web-enabled device. I literally live on it. I manage my diet (recently went back to Weight Watchers), pay bills and manage my finances, handle all my logins and passwords, read books, measure my knitting and so much more. At this point, I can#39;t imagine rebuilding all that functionality on another platform.p / And unless I#39;m missing something, none of these phones are a bargain even in a quot;if it#39;s Google it#39;s cheaper or freequot; world. a href="http://mashable.com/2009/12/29/nexus-one-price/"Rumor has it/a that the Nexus One would be over $500 unlocked. Ouch. Using a subsidized plan makes the phone much cheaper, but locks you into a single user $80/month plan for 500 minutes. Ouch again. I#39;m paying much less than that for my iPhone because it#39;s sharing features with the other phones on our family plan.p / The iPhone isn#39;t perfect, but it#39;s getting better. Calls aren#39;t dropping nearly as much as they used to. And if I forget to plug my phone in at night it#39;s still quite usable the next morning. It took me over a year to jump on the iPhone bandwagon from my beloved Blackberry. Let#39;s see if Android ever draws me in, but for now I#39;m staying put. /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/why-im-not-interested-in-an-android-phone-yet"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/why-im-not-interested-in-an-android-phone-yet#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=wvUFf9qFuQw:ugRdeKklV1g:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=wvUFf9qFuQw:ugRdeKklV1g:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=wvUFf9qFuQw:ugRdeKklV1g:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/wvUFf9qFuQw" height="1" width="1"/

p Happy 2010 everyone!p /3 years back on the Mac fulltime and I#39;m still trying to find task nirvana. I need more than a simple to-do list or just starring my email, less than a full blown GTD system of complex contexts and next actions. My mantra: if it takes longer to keep my tasks organized than it takes to do the tasks, then it#39;s the wrong solution.p / Last year I bounced back and forth between a href="http://www.rememberthemilk.com/"Remember the Milk/a and Google#39;s built-in task management. RTM is great. But it#39;s very browser-dependent. It wasn#39;t in my face enough outside of the browser. And I was tired of how often the integration with Gmail stopped working (not RTM#39;s fault that Google keeps their code a moving target, but still). This eliminates other cloud-based task managers in my mind, such as a href="http://www.toodledo.com/"Toodledo/a. Google Tasks doesn#39;t have recurring tasks, and with more than a handful of tasks I was losing focus on what was most important to do. Simple sorting isn#39;t enough. Context does matter. p / So for 2010 I think it#39;s time to move back to a desktop solution. But which one? As a Mac user, I#39;ve narrowed it down to 3 main contenders: a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/"OmniFocus/a (which I already have a license key buried somewhere), a href="http://culturedcode.com/things/"Things/a and a href="http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/"The Hit List/a.p / My priorities:br /ulliEach morning, I look at all my tasks and decide which ones have to be done today, while allowing wiggle room for the fires that I know will pop up. For the most part, I try and end my day with a clear quot;todayquot; task list. I want software that works that way too without my having to fight it. If I complete that list, I want to see what I need to do next without being distracted by someday or quot;can#39;t do this until...quot; tasks./li liI want to be sure I can get email messages in it easily. I#39;d say 80-90% of my tasks come from email messages./liliI have a MacBook, an iMac and an iPhone. I want to get at my tasks no matter where I am./li/ul I took a second look at OmniFocus and once again, dismissed it. Too complex and fussy. I typically have no more than 3 or 4 projects on my plate, the rest of my tasks are broader. I can look at OmniFocus with 40 open tasks and have absolutely no idea what I should be doing next. I do have to say I like that it does Bonjour syncing which would make keeping things aligned between computers a lot easier.p / So for me it#39;s between a href="http://culturedcode.com/things/"Things/a and a href="http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/"The Hit List/a and I can#39;t decide between them. They#39;re both around the same price. Both written by single developers or very small teams who have real lives and have taken hits for not working as fast as their user base wishes. The Hit List is still in a so-called public beta/preview release, with the iPhone version coming soon.p / bComparison points/b:p /I like the quick entry box in Things. If you hold down control-option-space it will look at what you have in the active application or selected and include detail in the task notes. If I#39;m on a Gmail message, a link to the message is automatically included. That works for linking my task application to my email. I could also drag any file or URL to the Things dock icon to create a task. p / a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/M0INiohGkmvlPDq1raozDPAOqohrl0ykqkpRDDO2eI8qrlYjhKOqnGfsxgIt/things.png'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/s34k5AkRSAOaHRAlrxlJmgsmS0maD0XEOg6UTfPGC4caKDlkv8kBGE8e4sRl/things.png.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" height="155"//a p / The Hit List works in a similar way, but the quick entry box doesn#39;t read the context of where you are, requiring an extra step to get the URL. A better way of dealing with URLs is to drag the icon from the address bar to The Hit List dock icon, and then you get a task that automatically is quot;Look at...quot;p / img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/w9U95VhTgRIPYW7gQp2BqqaX8uE34nd83eRq2DrHXo2a3XD5KyOWHW17Cbrd/lookat.png" width="372" height="86"/ p / In both applications, the inbox is the place where items are captured unfiltered. On a regular basis, you are expected to go through the inbox and decide what to do with each task. Is it something to be done immediately? Part of a project? Scheduled? Repeating? The idea is to deal with it once on collection, then not think about it until it#39;s time to actually do it.p / Things and THL handle the inbox differently. And it#39;s this difference that is giving the edge to Things for me. In Things, as soon as you make any kind of decision about a task it#39;s out of the inbox. You can give the task no tags, no projects, nothing special and just drag it to Today and it#39;s out of the inbox. Or, if it#39;s something that you know you can#39;t deal with for at least a week, you can drag it to quot;Scheduled,quot; decide when you#39;ll be ready to look at it again and it#39;s gone. With THL, a task is only out of the inbox when it#39;s assigned/filed. You can set it as a quot;todayquot; task, but it still sits in the inbox with a blazing quot;deal with mequot; badge until you assign it to a list of some sort. I like a very clean inbox, but don#39;t necessarily want to categorize every single thing into a bucket. If I#39;ve decided I#39;m going to do the task today, it shouldn#39;t be in the inbox.p / Overall, The Hit List#39;s interface is a little cleaner and uses simple Start/Due dates. Things can get a little confusing between scheduled and due dates. Both have repeating tasks and handle them nicely.p /Both handle multi-Mac sync in the same way. Both have a library/database file that was easy enough to place in a href="https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE1OTkzNDk"DropBox/a so I can get the same view of tasks on both my iMac and MacBook. Both have the same limitation in that the applications must only be open on one machine at a time. I#39;m going to try and remember to quit my task manager on whichever machine I#39;m on before I walk away, but that#39;s not my habit and may be a challenge. I much prefer how a href="http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password"1Password/a does it...the shared keychain file is updated when it#39;s updated, so I can have it running all the time on both machines without a problem. Things and THL only update their database when the application quits, which could mean lost work if the application crashes.p / Things has an iPhone application which syncs with the desktop version over wifi, similar to 1Password#39;s solution. I can#39;t test that until I#39;ve committed to the desktop version as I don#39;t want to spend $10 on an iPhone app I may not keep. THL has been promising an iPhone app for a while and the developer seems to be actively working on delivering on that promise.p / Longer term, it#39;s harder to figure out which is the safer bet. Both applications are by very tiny companies. Things seems to have a bit of a small team behind it, while THL seems to be a single-person shop. The guy goes on vacation or stays quiet for a while, and the users wonder if the app is still actively developed/supported. Things is further along, but it seems to be more about being out of the gate sooner than a fair comparison of commitment to the project.p / It#39;s going to be a bother, but I think I#39;m going to try and use both applications equally for the next week, then decide which one gets my $50. /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/getting-it-done-in-2010-things-or-the-hit-lis"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/getting-it-done-in-2010-things-or-the-hit-lis#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=1OZhuFue0lM:9m7WoshET54:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=1OZhuFue0lM:9m7WoshET54:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=1OZhuFue0lM:9m7WoshET54:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/1OZhuFue0lM" height="1" width="1"/

p pa href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/AsqfxxAlBElFuzmGuemqdJodehrJvqHGHphAJcohkizxDAdxwpkixfgwzGpD/IMG_0004.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/AsqfxxAlBElFuzmGuemqdJodehrJvqHGHphAJcohkizxDAdxwpkixfgwzGpD/IMG_0004.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"//a a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/HEtrAmIcolquDfnHtrbiztHIlqpvGocymEcFnrgeunBvvsfCuGFrtweaHFef/IMG_0005.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/HEtrAmIcolquDfnHtrbiztHIlqpvGocymEcFnrgeunBvvsfCuGFrtweaHFef/IMG_0005.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"//a a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/EnhIyqseBhGfxCdJmzplqebwpqefaCiDIszavtwjDtmvnJdvFIpAtJxdFibl/IMG_0006.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/EnhIyqseBhGfxCdJmzplqebwpqefaCiDIszavtwjDtmvnJdvFIpAtJxdFibl/IMG_0006.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"//a a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/HnamJcxCakmcdiqwCvjhlilpfddsigqxwlgFhlnpkHJaxrxetbkxmmaexAEe/IMG_0007.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/HnamJcxCakmcdiqwCvjhlilpfddsigqxwlgFhlnpkHJaxrxetbkxmmaexAEe/IMG_0007.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"//a a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/bmjagIecxqomofuwacoftErIxsfBCjdkfCnodpHAlfntDiFtweGHcsjohbre/IMG_0008.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/bmjagIecxqomofuwacoftErIxsfBCjdkfCnodpHAlfntDiFtweGHcsjohbre/IMG_0008.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"//a a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/fgHhqBepHtfrfbuujbrHGCCwldsfcpvsbEkBHiJDzeIdozgvvofqEACCDEFr/IMG_0009.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/fgHhqBepHtfrfbuujbrHGCCwldsfcpvsbEkBHiJDzeIdozgvvofqEACCDEFr/IMG_0009.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"//a a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/fpnJonnHxyvrGAeccEtHoJmkJBEhffkHHIEgHjcsDivbjdnAizyqzmGComsI/IMG_0010.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/fpnJonnHxyvrGAeccEtHoJmkJBEhffkHHIEgHjcsDivbjdnAizyqzmGComsI/IMG_0010.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"//a a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/odIxzDolBcelbcdnIdvcClnkGbzlFnliirhFpweHdJEoslBrtjubHmocHhDk/IMG_0011.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/judisohn/odIxzDolBcelbcdnIdvcClnkGbzlFnliirhFpweHdJEoslBrtjubHmocHhDk/IMG_0011.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"//a diva href='http://judisohn.posterous.com/newseum-in-washington-dc'See and download the full gallery on posterous/a/div/pA museum devoted to journalism. Despite an overall theme of "reporter can do no wrong if First Amendment is protected" it's very well done. /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/newseum-in-washington-dc"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/newseum-in-washington-dc#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=9VIk4SpI0Mo:jz5GAGYiwVM:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=9VIk4SpI0Mo:jz5GAGYiwVM:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=9VIk4SpI0Mo:jz5GAGYiwVM:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/9VIk4SpI0Mo" height="1" width="1"/