Friday, August 29, 2008

My Day Job ...



Here is a link to my day job ... Envir.us ... I am in the environmental consulting area and have included a couple of new features on our website that I will be adding to periodically. Our technologies and commentary are designed to implement environmentally friendly technologies and solutions to solve persistent problems globally ...

The blog will be a commentary on news and developments while the Concepts area will deal with implementation of unique technologies and processes ...

Diagramming Tool ...


I have a constant need to put ideas into sketches that are useable for conceptual presentations and engineering mockups that can be translated into design features. I had posted earlier several posts using Gliffy and it remains a very visual tool for this need.

I just discovered and exceptional program for diagramming that resides on the web and can be used for light duty design work ... great stuff ... Autodesk labs has a great app called Project Draw that allows most light duty diagramming work to be done quickly and efficiently. Notice the export menu showing all of the file types that makes this extremely flexible for diagramming purposes. Another great app in the "cloud" ....

A New Paradigm ...

I have just realized something that may be obvious to a lot of people, but hit me upside the head today .... let me give you a little background .... this past weekend I was anticipating watching the Olympic Basketball gold medal game between the US and Spain ... being here in Hawaii, the schedules of the live broadcasts were all over the map ... kinda like the game, anyway I happened to go to the olympics on NBC website and noticed a live feed of the game ... I downloaded the obligatory Silverlight by MS and proceeded to watch the game unfold ... I noted the quality was so much better than I was used to on the net and how enjoyable it was ... in fact, I called a couple of other people and they did the same .....

The significance of this was lost on me until I read this morning a great blog entry on TechCrunch by Steve Gillmor that talked of the move from downloaded to streaming as the next model of entertainment distribution ... now is makes all the sense in the world ... with recent news that Comcast is proposing to limit download amounts and all the music efforts to quash P2P sharing .. this makes all fits ... the era of streaming is now riding the wave of ubiquitous broadband. Media and events will be streamed live and recorded and we will be able to view on an entirely different model ... like Netflix changed the model on video rentals and Google changed the model on mail and office apps, the era of streaming enterainment represents another shift for consumers ...

Being mobile may take on an entirely differenct meaning with this and the other new shifts into the "cloud" ...

Thursday, August 07, 2008

I have a new backup plan ....

For those of you who have followed my posts, I am a longtime advocate of Foldershare who was acquired my Microsoft and continues to be a solid choice to keeping things in sync on multiple computers ... the process was not without it's flaws, but more than served it's intended purpose that of keeping me from catastrophic failure without backup of current data .. the biggest plus was the real-time backup of changing and new files ... this was flawless and I kept 3 computers as my redundant array of backup.

Enter the new kid on the block ... Dropbox ... discovered this as initial buzz on the net was largely positive and I picked out some things that were clearly superior and items that I had always yearned for in the Foldershare app ... Dropbox did the same things and appeared to do them quicker (simply an observation with no actual data to quantify the statement) ... the one big item was the data was synched to the web rather than computer to computer, so as long as I had internet connection, the backup was being done in the same real-time manner ... now early on this proved itself to be an invaluable item as I mistakenly changed a file and saved the wrong iteration ... well the second big item was saving revisions, so I simply went to the web, brought up the old version of the item and restored it on my computer ... saved my you know what and made me look like a genius all be accident as I had just switched over.

Another nice feature is the ability of my tablet pc to be synced up to my latest data whenever I turn it on. My tablet is my remote and travel companion and data must be up to date to make the work flow for me. Up to this point with the older method, I would either have to leave my desk machine on and perform the synch by having both available on the net or have both on at my desk, let them synch and then go .... not a good flow pattern, especially if you are in a hurry or you simply forget (senior moments) ... with the dropbox, you get to just turn it on with a connection and the synch is done from the net ... way better for my purposes ...

Dropbox is a killer app and takes the pain out of backup for work or critical files, it has other items in it's design that can be explored by going to the website, the app is in beta, but you can leave your address for beta testing and I didn't have to wait when I did it, so drop over and look at the video and leave your name ... just a final note, the dropbox team, in particular Jon Ying are super responsive and a pleasure to work with ... highly recommened app that is used now on my machines

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

My Bad ....

Been super busy as we have formed a new company and things are about to bust loose (hopefully) ... anyway, in the next few days I will attempt to catch up on a lot of things ... I have changed up my use of technology and changed a few of my basic parts, so these next posts will be highlighting the evolution of the mobile methods from mobile musing .... lol ... full of m&m's stay tuned ....