Think « Michael Doornbos

11Mar/097

Why is Evernote asking to be paid bad?

One of my most used programs is Evernote. I use it all day, every day. From my Mac, my Ubuntu boxes, my Blackberry and my iPod touch. I'm a premium user which costs me $45/year. A reasonable price to me.

Last night, they updated the Mac client to include a small ad box in the lower left hand corner that serves some ads (and a bunch of really awesome features). It's a small box and as a premium user I have a preferences option to disable it (which I did). There has been a minor uproar this morning about privacy issues and some people using the words "Evernote is adware".

As of right now I have no reason to believe that they are mining my notes information to serve me ads (a privacy issue which would be a serious problem considering what they do as a service).

It's standard practice for web services to have a free add supported version and an ad-free paid for version.

I'm not sure I see what the fuss is all about.

They provide a great service and want to make some money. What's wrong with that?

Filed under: Think, annoying, twitter 7 Comments

9Mar/090

I should know better than to leave home without paper and a pencil

I've been doing a lot of writing lately. I gave myself a deadline of today to finish an article I've been thinking of for a week and spent the whole day having writers block.

As soon as I walked out the door to pick up our Chinese takeout for the evening, 100 ideas came swarming into my head. In my Jeep was a pen, but I cleaned it over the weekend and there was not a scrap paper in sight.

The moral of the story is twofold:

If you have writers block, a simple change of scenery can unblock you
Never leave home without some 3x5 notecards in your car

Filed under: Funny, Hacks, How-To, Think No Comments

3Mar/092

A little perspective

Here's a quote I overheard this week about the economy in the US:

"You have to close your laptop because you can't stand to look at your retirement fund any more."

Let's think about this for a second. This one sentence is very indicative of many of the situations I hear people in. This sentence indicates a few things:

1. You have power in your house (ie, it's warm)
2. You have internet connectivity
3. You have a portable supercomputer ON YOUR LAP that is connected to a global network of computers that allows unlimited communication with almost anyone in the world
4. We assume that if you have the 3 above, you have some sort of food.

For you, it's not THAT bad. You're smart. Really you are. DO SOMETHING. Invent something new. Start that novel you keep saying you're going to write. Solve the world's energy problems. Pick something and DO IT.

And while you're at it. help your neighbor out, I know you know someone who has lost their job and might not eat tonight but would never tell anyone. That is a real problem.

Your retirement will bounce back. And if it doesn't, you're not starving, so keep that in mind.

Filed under: Quotes, Think 2 Comments

27Feb/091

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

Yes, you do have 10 mins today to watch this and you need to. It's okay, Facebook still will be there when you get finished watching.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Filed under: Cool Stuff, Think, video 1 Comment

26Feb/091

Netflix To Offer ‘Streaming Only” Plans

Netflix Inc Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy said on Wednesday it plans to offer its online streaming service on a stand-alone basis.

"We're likely to do that in the foreseeable future," McCarthy said at the Jefferies 5th annual Internet and Media conference in New York.

via Netflix To Offer 'Streaming Only" Plans .

Filed under: Cool Stuff, Think, video 1 Comment

5Feb/092

American Knowledge Workers are in Trouble

I need some research done for a project at Imapenguin.com. We're developing a database of popular Open Source software and instead of starting with a blank database, I wanted to research the top 150 or so projects to kick the database off. This requires at least a working knowledge of the technology space and good research skills. Something the average college graduate can handle just fine.

I asked around my network, no one is really interested in helping out. Mostly because I don't really have much of a budget for this. I considered doing it myself, but before I started, I decided to post a request for research help on elance.com. I figured this would take me 15-20 hours to do myself (so maybe $1500 of my billable time taken up), so looking for a specialist to bid on it certainly couldn't hurt. It's free to request proposals so what the heck.

So on a Wed night, I spent 5 minutes submitting the following proposal:
I need a spreadsheet compiled with the top 150-200 Open source projects in use in the world with a brief
summary of each to include:

Contact information
website
project start date
primary use
interesting facts
mailing list information
current product status.

This list should include at least 35 entries that are Open Source Operating systems such as Linux Distributions, etc.

I would prefer this in a spreadsheet with good formatting.

Excellent written English should be used for the delivery of this research.

I checked the box that said I don't care where in the world this work is performed, but I did specify in the description that excellent written english is important.

In 12 hours I got a few bids. This was the first one from a guy in India:

My bid is $100 for researching 150 open source projects. The info will
be provided in an excel sheet and will list the following fields:

1. Project Name
2. Contact Email/Contact Form URL
3. Website
4. Project start date
5. Software Category
6. Interesting facts
7. Mailing list
8. Latest version

Notes:

1. Project start date may not always be available for all open source
projects/products. In a number of cases it may simply be a year or a
month+year.
2. Since I will be researching the top open source projects, I guess
they will all be in active status(hence no need for current product
status). I have instead put in the version field
3. A number of products are now coming up with online support forums
instead of mailing lists. In that case the field mailing list will
contain the URL of the support forum.
4. I do believe that there will be 35 open source operating systems.
However, it is possible that some are very small. Shall I still note
those small projects to get to the 35 mark?

Tell me what you think about my bid and if you feel that
something has been left unaddressed.

Estimated time to completion = 1 week after the award of the project.

Regards
(name removed by Michael to protect privacy)

There are several things that struck me right away:

1. This proposal was responded to by writing the requirements back to me in his own words. This is a HUGE plus. It demonstrates a clear understanding of what I'm looking for. When I reread my proposal request, he actually better defined my requirements than I did and made some excellent points about the probability of the data I'm looking for.

2. Elance has a feedback system. This person, who is not in the US, has 100% positive feedback on 123 projects on elance.com. 31 of those are repeat customers. This is a VERY good sign. People went back to him.

3. $100 is cheap. This person is going to spend at least the same amount of time I would, 15 to 20 hours, so this is about $5/hour. Given that the requirements were demonstrated to be understood very well he'll probably do a better job than I would and I'm an Open Source Expert.

We're over here in the US bailing out car companies that make cars people don't want to buy, we produce almost nothing any more, and we whine about everything.

The rest of the world is quietly moving up by working hard at a bargain price.

Filed under: Think 2 Comments

15Jan/092

What’s normal to you is probably not normal to me

I've been thinking about what constitutes normal to me lately. Mostly because I don't like normal, or more accurately, static. Not static like in fuzzy sounding(although I'm not fond of that either), but static as in non moving.

I'm happiest when things in my life are moving in a direction. The faster the better. I don't ever wait for the right moment, mostly because there never is one(much to the detriment of my chess game) and frankly I worry that I might wake up at 50 and say "Oh crap, I just spent 50 years waiting and in process didn't do anything at all".

My love of movement and change makes a number of my friends and family VERY uncomfortable. I've even been accused of being addicted to change. I'm almost a little smug about it sometimes. I think to myself, "they're so silly to be afraid of change".

What got me thinking was a note I got from a friend in Israel last night. I was inquiring about the safety of his family in light of what we're seeing on the news in his neck of the woods and he commented that they were perfectly fine, the fighting is almost 20km away and they don't think about it much, plus it's in a different country anyway.

The fighting is 20km away!

This flies in the face of my level of comfort. As an American in Virginia, I'm 500km or more from the nearest country. Couple that with the fact that the threat from Canada is pretty minimal and you can conclude that I can in no way relate to the life my friend lives a mere 20km from real attacks. This may have been somewhat okay in my 6 years in the Navy (I was single through most of that time), but as a father and husband, I'm not too keen on live fire 20km away.

Might be good to think about this the next time I turn my nose up at those silly people who are afraid of change.

Filed under: Think 2 Comments

10Dec/080

I’d like to do something like Omni Magazine

I was looking through some old stuff I've collected over the years and found some old copies of Omni Magazine.

If you don't remember or have never seen it, it was a blend of science and science fiction in one magazine. A place to explore ideas. I loved it.

Publications like this just don't seem to exist these days. Flipping through these old issues I'm struck by how optimistic it is. There are articles like "Immortality: Live forver in a machine". When I go to a newsstand today everything is so cautious.

I'm tired of cautious.

I'd like to collaborate on something like this. Obviously it would be done online .. not in print and could include things like video, blogs, user feedback/forums, etc.

Anyone interested in brainstorming on this idea?

Filed under: Ideas, Think No Comments

19Sep/080

So you think we should tax the rich to pay for all of this huh?

Your thinking is strange to me.

Let's explore this from another angle:

So you're a straight A student in High School. You've worked hard to get these grades. You didn't cheat, and although some do, most good students don't. Maybe you're smarter than the other students not getting good grades. Maybe you work harder. Maybe it's a little of both.

Your friend Terry is a good person, but doesn't do her homework.

Your friend John is a good person and although he isn't terribly bright, he works hard.

Your friend Linda is a cheater. She breaks into the school's computer system and changes her grades. She gets caught often.

One day, your principal calls all of the 4.0 GPA students into his office. Out of the 1000 students in your school, there are only 35 of you in this category. She explains that the other 965 students in the school are in need of some assistance, so the school is going to start skimming .5 of your GPA and giving it to the other students.

After all, the other students really need it, and you have GPA to spare, so it doesn't really hurt you much.

Terry, John and Linda need your help right? You're the smart one, why don't you pitch in?

It doesn't seem very fair in this case does it?

And no, it's not different with money, so come up with a different argument there. This is a point about fairness, not survival. Very few Americans are fighting to SURVIVE anyway. Let's be honest, most who are "struggling" are trying to keep the 200 channel cable instead of the 30 channel cable and to pay off those credit cards they ran up to buy all of that crap they didn't really need.

If you're fighting to SURVIVE, I'm happy to help (I don't happen to be rich at the present time, but I'm SURVIVING just fine). If you're fighting to keep AT+T from turning off your cell phone, well, sorry. It's just a damn cell phone. I love my cell phone, but I don't NEED it, and neither do you.

Filed under: Random, Think No Comments

4Sep/080