Using a Laptop as a Personal Heater
Feeling cold and lazy?
Try firing up a browser tab or two with a heavy Flash application. That will get your laptop good and hot, then just hold it against yourself.* Now you don’t have to stand up to adjust the heat or grab a blanket!
My 2011 MacBook Air runs a little too efficiently for this trick. Kind of makes me miss my first gen Air… That old bastard was a furnace. It didn’t run well, but damn it, it was great on cold Winter nights.
*Don’t scorch yourself. You’ve been warned. I accept no responsibility for the stupidity of other’s.
The Rules of Mobile App Design (Presentation Slides)
Last week I had the honor of presenting to the NJ Mobile Meetup group. NJ Mobile is a collection of about 300 mobile technology enthusiasts that I co-organize. While I’ve been one of the groups organizers for quite some time, this was the first time that I actually spoke at an event. Much to my delight the presentation, which was partially based on my blog post The Rules of Mobile App Design, was very well-received.
My goal was to record the presentation and slides and post a video, but I’ve been experiences some technical difficulties of the crashing variety whenever I try to record my screen and voice at the same time. So here are the slides, and I hope to add the full video presentation soon:
Rules_of_Mobile_App_Design (PDF)
Thoughts on Arrington vs Huffington
Michael Arrington and Arianna Huffington are stuck in a showdown where both of them will lose. The difference between the two is that Arrington won’t give a shit.
The idea that Arrington, one of the biggest names in tech writing is going to start a venture capital fund to essentially funnel money into companies that he is hyping so he can profit on both fronts is at the very least ethically questionable. The fact that the guy is shocked that the PR backlash has forced Huffington to put the screws to him is insane.
As Dan Primack pointed out, Huffington is in a lose-lose situation. She either wasn’t paying attention to Arrington’s not-so-secret, secret plans, or she knew and didn’t take the time to think about the implications for her organization. Both conclusions make her look foolish.
Arrington has once again confirmed that he’s unethical.; no shock there. However, I never had him pegged for an idiot. The guy sold his website to AOL. Even if this VC debacle never happened, he was inevitably going to lose control of TechCrunch simply because HE SOLD IT TO AOL!!! AOL’s only great strength is compromising things. They wrecked Engadget.
Anyone who followed the TechCrunch sale to AOL knew that it wouldn’t end well. Near as I can tell it means that Arrington either thought he could:
- Cash-in and out-muscle AOL over the long-haul (Delusional)
- Live with AOL (Also delusional)
- Ride out his contract and start something new like Joshua Topolsky (This is way too reasonable and level for Arrington)
- He was planning on leaving in a PR inferno because he’s an attention whore, and this is a good way to draw attention to his next project (Evil mastermind)
- He has no self-control and is throwing a tantrum because he has to live by someone else’s rules (Giant baby)
I don’t know what he was thinking, but I’m tired of him. I look forward to the day when he is merely a footnote in the history of the Internet.
Rebecca MacKinnon: Let’s take back the Internet!
Rebecca MacKinnon explains why and how we collectively need to take back the Internet from those who seek to control it.
Obama & Social Media
Obama joined Foursquare this week! OMG, this is like totally news!
I can’t bring myself to care about the President’s presence in social media. It’s nothing personal, but he isn’t really on Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook, some low level staffer is on Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook as Obama.
If I thought the President’s accounts were really him, I might follow him, but it’s just PR.
Can we stop treating this stuff like it’s news?
“Please consider the environment before printing this email” & Other Excessively Lengthy Email Signatures
Part II of Creative Uses For about.me is coming tomorrow.
* * *
Work in an office? Then you’ve no doubt seen this old chestnut, or something like it.
Does this really persuade anyone?
Have you ever felt the need to print an email, seen this line and thought, “Oh damn… I was going to print, but I’m not going to now because of a green Webding,” then opened your office window and shouted, “YOU’RE WELCOME SPOTTED OWL, I DIDN’T PRINT FOR YOU!”
What a waste of screen space, bits & pixels.
Email Signature Legal Disclaimers
Speaking of corporate wastes of screen space, bits & pixels, the lengthy mouse-print legal disclaimer in your email signature isn’t just obnoxious, it’s legally unviable and completely useless.
Yes, your corporate attorney is dead-wrong, but don’t take my word for it, the Economist backs me up.
What Should Go in Your Signature
Make your signature useful for your audience (people you’re communicating with).
Try limiting yourself to:
- Name
- Company
- Title
- Phone number & extension
Keep it simple, concise, and useful.
Oh, and don’t put a quote in the footer. It might be interesting once, but it will grow old pretty much immediately after that.
If you must include a quote, try this one.
“Footer quotes waste screen space, bits & pixels.”
~The Geek Whisperer
Finding Uses For about.me (Part I)
I love finding free and code-less ways to help people accomplish their web needs. Specifically for this reason I started to mess around with different ways of using about.me.
Typical about.me
about.me lets you create a single splash page that can link out to other websites. It’s intended for personal splash pages like this little exercise in narcissism… DavidSpira.net (It’s a work in progress, and so is the Behance profile).
That profile is built from the stock stuff that about.me provides, then I purchased the domain davidspira.net from Hover.com, and mapped the domain to my about.me page. It was simple, and took me about an hour… It would have been less if I had been less finicky about the typography.
Eventually I will browbeat Mark Krajnak into shoot a new portrait of me to serve as the background.
Holding Page
Here’s a less typical application of about.me for you.
After many years in education, my mother is starting a new college counseling business.
I’ve been doing my best to help her get it off the ground, but one thing she needed was a placeholder web page so that she could put her URL on her business cards
I don’t code a ton these days, but I could make a single holding page in HTML, the thing is that if my mom wanted to make a change, I would have to change it, and that’s a pain for everyone.
So I threw together a quick holding page in about.me. It has everything you would want in a holding page (StepByStepCollege.com):
- Business name
- Description of the business
- Teaser of what’s to come
- Email button
- When the logo is finished, we can add that too
The beauty of this is that my mom is in complete control of the page, if she wants to make a change, she can do it simply, and without having to ask anyone for help. It makes both of our lives easier.
When we’re ready to launch the real site, we will, but until then, she doesn’t have a dead link.
