ICode At This Girl's House

Zinio has been down for me since March 3rd.  Thursday I visited Zinio Shopping on my ipad, and received the by now, very familiar, Down for Maintenance message.

Zinio is the largest magazine and subscription service on the planet, offering more than 3,000 subscriptions.  I have dozens of magazines that I have purchased from Zinio and several subscriptions.  I pop into Zinio at least once a day, on my mac, my windows pc, or my ipad.  And I’m used to some fluctuation in service.  But I’ve never seen a major web publisher down for more than a day without some type of news broadcast, at lest from the major technical new sources like TechCrunch, Engaget, or All Things Digital.

Still, with no sign of Zinio coming back to life by Saturday, I went hunting for some news.  My first definitive answer came from Twitter.  Lots of people were yacking about the problem and there was a Zinio response that referred to their Zinio blog.  More details could be found there, but suffice to say, the news was not all that comforting. Perhaps they too were affected by the same denial of service attack that impacted WordPress this week.  Perhaps.  I’m just wondering why only users are asking questions.

TechCrunch mentioned that Google had finally released Cloud Connect out of beta, and I thought I would spend some time trying it out.

Right off the bat, I had trouble downloading it.  First I couldn’t find it.  Google always has this odd bent of burying it’s great apps under a ton of other apps that it’s released or it’s working on.  I finally found it here http://tools.google.com/dlpage/cloudconnect.  Then I had troubles downloading it, and I was using Google Chrome.  It took a couple of tries to download, but after that it was smooth sailing.  I installed it, and then opened up an existing document using Word.  Bang, there was the toolbar.

But now what?  How do I synchronize this document with my stash in the cloud?  Click on synchronize.  Wait, you say.  What will happen when I click on synchronize.  You’ll be asked for your google account information.  And once your account has been validated, your document is uploaded to Home in your Google Document Library.

Home is where everything goes.  Once it gets there, you can drag and drop it into a category to help you manage your stuff.  From Google Documents, you can make changes to the document from the cloud.  Select download, and then begin editing using Google Docs.  As you see from the image below, Google does a handy job of keeping track of versions.  I was also able to test the ability to edit a document using Google Docs.  I had no problem editing a document from Google Chrome, but when I tried to edit the document through another browser, if the document was saved as .docx, I was unable to edit it.  This proved to particularly true when viewing through Safari on the Ipad.  However, if the document was saved as a .doc extension, no problem with editing.

And you can share the document with another person or a group, so that they can view, and edit content as well. However I made a mental note to myself, that if I plan to share my document with other users, who may not be using the same software I’m using, save as .doc.

Also announced on the official Google Gmail blog, is that the Google Docs Viewer now includes viewing support for 12 new file formats.  Way to go, Google.

• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Power Point 2007/ 2010
• Apple Pages
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Photoshop
• Autodesk AutoCad (I know some engineers who would be glad to hear about this feature)
• Scalable Vector Graphics
• PostScript
• TrueType
• XML Paper Specification

Just keep in mind the Google Docs size limitations.  Speaking of which, I had a chance to compare the price of Google storage and Dropbox, and right now, I’m feeling really sorry for Dropbox.  I love Dropbox, but Google is offering storage at 1/8 the price of Dropbox, and they have a more varied storage pricing menu.  For example, Dropbox will offer 50gb for $99 a year.  Google is offering 80gb for $20 a year.  I’ve been using cloud storage for a few years now, but I’m starting to spend more and more time managing the free space that’s available to everyone through Dropbox and Google.  I think it’s time that I invest in more online personal storage.  Initially, I’m going to choose the 20gb package from Google for $5 a year and I’ll see how it goes.

I ordered my MacPro this morning.  So excited.  Can’t wait to begin using it.  Strangely enough, my HP laptop just shut off this afternoon while I was working on.  Just overheated.  It still sounds like a helicopter taking off.  I won’t mind still using it as a desktop, just looking forward to having a backlit keyboard, quiet, and cool experience.

So I’ve been having a love affair with Apple this past year; ever since I purchased the Ipad and the mac mini.  Not that I’m unfamiliar with Apple products.  I’m working on my 4th ipod/ipod touch and I’ve flirted with an iphone.  But this was my first real immersion with the company beyond the music/audio expereince and I must say, at the first touch of the mini-mac, the ease of use, why I fell hard for Apple.  Now, I’ve always been accused by my colleagues as someone who worshiped at the feet of Microsoft, so this turn of events was not only new to me, but new to the people who surrounded me. 

Not that I’m about to kick my my old Friend Microsoft to the curb.  Absolutely not.  There will always be room for Microsoft in my life.  They’ve got it going on with the X-box and Kinect for one thing, and I do like the Windows Media Center.  But Microsoft has not exactly been rolling out updates to Media Center.  They’re providing a limited amount of options with that X-box subscription, I’ve been sorely disappointed with what I’m getting from that.  I could just buy a Roku box and that would pay the first year subscription for the X-box live.  Sure they can stream home media, but Roku has been adding private channels that provides that feature and if you want to spend a little bit more I hear that Western Digitial TV Live Hub has got it going on.  So beware Microsoft.  You don’t have me complete sold on the home media experience.  Of course, I use Microsoft products for work, I’m a MSN user, and so I’m in the bed there.  So I’ll be with Microsoft most of the day. 

But since work has agreed to provide me with a laptop, my next personal laptop can be anything I choose to spend my money.  And I’m choosing Apple.  I just want the full Apple experience in my home life and I’m tired of lugging around the Windows laptops that host apps that crash, are expensive, and the physical architecture is just a pain.  I am really looking forward to the backlit keyboard, so please Apple don’t take that feature away from the next hardware refresh.  I’m hoping that this Thursday is the day for the Apple announcement of Mac Pro refresh.  I’ll be right down to Best Buy or on the Apple store (not sure where I’ll get the best deal).

Weekends and holidays usually mean that I’m spending time doing chores. And unlike most people my list of chores extend well beyond laundry, cleaning bathrooms and kitchen. My list will include installing and upgrading software, cleaning up after downloads, reviewing backups and reorganizing data files, purging e-mail and spam, reviewing and reorganizing my dropbox and evernote systems, cleaning my office, etc. If you do IT, organization is key to a well running professional life. Having your tools immediately at ready and functioning properly only happens if you put in time on the backend. And so this New Year’s weekend, while I’m spending time cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry and cleaning bathroomns, I’ve also got the laptop on the kitchen island, and from there I’m managing chores on all my desktops and laptops.

A primary chore is making sure all of the household computers are updated.  Now, I have windows automatic update turned on all the laptops and desktops in the house and garage, but that doesn’t really mean anything.  Often times, you can click on Windows update icon and see that one or more updates has not installed successfully.  To deal with that issue, you  need to identify what updates did not install, and start by downloading the install directly to your computer and trying to do the install.  99% of the time, that trick works for me.  Once you install these updates, select check for updates agains from the Windows Update Control Panel.  You may find a whole bunch more updates that need to be applied.

Another chore is to review my antivirus software.  I’ve installed Windows Essential which is free, but you still need to review it occasionally to make sure your system continues to be protected and if your virus and spyware definitions are up to date.

Next, I clean up my hard drives.  I review all the files that I store in a few key folders (and I only store items in those key folders), and I determine what I need to keep on the laptop and desktops, what can be moved to storage, or what I can easily get rid of.  This step takes a lot more time because you usually end up having to go through each individual file.

Then there are the bookmarks.  Managing my bookmarks is a lot of hassle, so this year I’m going to try Pinboard.  Previously, I’ve tried Evernote, but it’s too difficult to use Evernote to manage and view your bookmarks.  It takes a little work to get Pinboard started but I heard a good review about Pinboard and I’m going to give it a try.

There are many video channels that you can view through your ROKU box, if you have a RSS feed. To enter your RSS feed, select a channel designed to display the feed. For example, CDNTwo will display RSS Feeds. Here’s how to configure.

Connect to CDNTwo.com and register your account. Don’t worry, it’s free. Then navigate to Add Category.

In this case I added a Category called Knitting. Next, navigate to My Feeds. Enter the name of your feed and the url of the rss feed.

Click Save.

WordPress Blog is the iPad app of the week that I would recommend. I love making quick short posts to my blogs without having to find a computer, log in and create a post. All of my blogs are linked from this app.

What I also find fascinating is the speculation on the closed platform. There was a lot of talk on IT podcasts last week that the average user might prefer the “closed” platform where they don’t have to worry about viruses, and just get things done.

I’ve been a fan of the ipod, and then the itouch for years.  But I never imagined getting a Mac until recently (within the last 2 years).  I had a colleague who made the switch to mac in his home a few years ago.  I think he felt that you could never really feel truly comfortable using both systems simultaneously, and at the time, that was probably true.  But with the advances to technology, I was thinking that it might be possible to get comfortable with both apple and windows without being a super geek or genius.  Also, I have not been satisfied with the mobile apps that have come out and I really wanted to play with the technology myself.  You can’t code for iphone without a mac, at least not without a lot of effort.  Finally, when the ipad came out last week, I felt that this was time to make the leap.  Both my son and I made the leap together, figuring that we could help each other and it’s been a wonderful experience.  I wanted to write my thoughts down about the transition before the newness wore off.

Let me start off with the type of purchases we made.  It took me a while but for reasons that I’ll explain later, I figured that I could get by with a mini mac stationed on my desk.  I had just purchased a new windows laptop last summer when my other one broke so I didn’t need a new laptop.  I had an older hp that I wanted to give to Steve to use in his new garage, and my son gave me an older monitor that I could hook up to it, leaving one of my 22″ monitors free.  I purchased a mac keyboard and a mouse to go with it.  My son purchased a mac pro laptop (the smallest one they sell, the 13 inch).  He was torn about the size, but the thing is that he was going to keep his Windows laptop (the 17″ model), which was still in very good condition and had top of the line options, and he wanted to take his laptop to school.  Given his experience carrying his laptop, he was concerned about the weight.

When I bought my purchase home, I set it down on my desk, hooked up the peripherals and turned it on.  I must say, this was sweetest part.  There was no “I need a driver” messages, no messages that it was busy doing something, so go cook dinner or whatever.  It simply asked me a few questions, and I was in business.  This is the reason why I would recommend a mac for anyone.

BenkoBlog has a very good webcast on the changes in IIS 7 that I want to recommend here, http://blogs.msdn.com/benko/archive/2009/02/11/iis-7-0-code-posted.aspx.