Mike Flacy

I’ve had a Wi-Fi iPad for nearly two months now, certainly long enough to gauge how its been integrated into my life.  It’s become my go-to email device at home and at work; primarily for quick responses, quick mass deletion or targeting the important messages for viewing later.  It’s also the first device in my hand when I wake up in the morning, a position formally held by the iPhone.  I can digest all my email, Facebook updates and daily news much quicker than shuffling over to my laptop and booting it up in the morning.  Pulse News for the iPad has streamlined my RSS consumption as well, specifically due to a slick UI and excellent speed.   (I even gave it a coveted spot on my 6-slot taskbar)

I use a handful of tech oriented websites on a daily basis (for my job).  Outside of the realm of strictly tech, here are some lesser known, but extremely useful sites that I utilize constantly during my day.

I manage six different Twitter accounts.  While that may seem like an overload of tweets, it’s actually quite simple.  Five are related to the websites I help manage.  (In all fairness, I can’t lay claim to the nickname inception of Twitmaster General.  It was coined by a couple guys at work in jest to all the Twitter accounts.)

Are you familiar with Ping.fm?  It’s a service that allows you to update all your social networks with one click of a mouse.  I thought this was a brilliant idea when I signed up a year ago, but it’s becoming more evident each day that my “lifestream” is molded differently for every social network I belong to.  Occasionally there’s a smidgen of overlap, but I’m typically writing to very different audiences.

• 30 days ago, I was driving from South Carolina to Los Angeles without a full time job.
• 20 days ago, I was on my first interview at a social networking company in Westwood.
• 10 days ago, I was on my third callback interview with a tech company in El Segundo.
• 5 days ago, I had three different job offers in my lap.

I rarely post about politics, but something intriguing on the campaign front caught my eye today. A presidential candidate is advertising in Burnout Revenge. For those unfamiliar, Burnout Revenge is a car-racing video game owned by Electronic Arts.

- Caught this little indie flick with Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega (the female lead in Spanglish). What a quirky little movie!  Freeman plays an out of work character actor that’s dropped off in an predominantly Hispanic neighborhood to study a grocery store manager for a role in a movie.  He latches onto Paz Vega, the girl running the 10 items or less line.

The whole movie is nothing more than a conversation that continues for about 90 minutes.  Freeman and Vega play off each other in a very human manner.  There are nice bits of comedy interspersed in the film as well.

- The Google / United Airline debacle was an extremely interesting technology screw-up this week.  Basically a single person accessed an article, around 1:30 A.M. last Sunday, about United declaring bankruptcy in 2002.  Since it’s a low traffic time for accessing news, Google bounced it to the Popular Stories section on the main Google News page.  Bloomburg picked up the story as new and the ensuing financial panic caused shareholders to sell a billion dollars worth of stock.  The price on the stock dropped by 75% in a matter of hours.  Yay computers!

- If you haven’t seen it yet, watch the political opening for SNL this week.  The remainder of the show is complete drivel, but the Sarah Palin / Hillary Clinton skit is absolutely hilarious.  Tina Fey nails Palin’s look, mannerisms and accent.

• I enjoyed the premiere of The Shield’s final season this week.  It was a slow start considering the pacing of the previous episode, but it laid some brilliant groundwork for future story lines.  I’m thinking Shane lives, Ronnie goes off the deep end, Vic and Acevada take down the Mexican cartel in a very bloody fashion and Dutch finally goes to jail for strangling neighborhood cats.

• Finding a new place to live on Craigslist has been disappointing to say the least.  Trying to make a long distance connection with a potential roommate is somewhat dampened by the anonymity of the Internet. Ugh…

• I had some of the worst sushi in my life today.  Japanese marinated mushrooms might sound tasty, but the ones I ate were the consistency of rubber and completely flavorless.  Yelp is going to get a mouthful of unhappy words from me this week.

• True Blood on HBO was an offbeat show.  It reminded me the feeling I got when watching Carnivale for the first time.  The oddball choice of setting in the deep south is strangely interesting.  I doubt it will make it past a couple seasons though.  Entourage was excellent as usual.  Eric looks a bit like a clone of Ari though.

• I’m really crossing my fingers for iPhone’s 2.1 firmware this week.  It’s rumored to be coming out with the new version of iTunes on the 9th.  I’d love to see turn-by-turn GPS implemented, but any other super secret iPhone powers will be welcome.

• My favorite Hulu video of the week: Taco bed!

I sat in a coffee shop today and browsed the music on a friend’s laptop. I browsed by albums for a while but eventually found Ben Folds new album by an artist search. I queued up the music and sat there listening to the tracks while sipping my Splenda-filled jolt of caffeine.

Of course all I had was my iPhone. The laptop in question was about 578 miles away.

I downloaded the Simplify Media iPhone app a couple days ago for free. (It’s free for the first 100K users and $3.99 afterward.) Install the SM app on your PC / Mac and it uses iTunes, Winamp or just directories to share music. Sync it up with your iPhone and you can listen to your entire music collection without having to transfer it to the iPhone. It streams the music through the net and the quality is superb. You can add up to 30 friends and share your entire music collection online.

It works great on the 3G network or Wi-fi. Don’t bother using it on Edge though. It also downloads album art, lyrics and artist info. One downside is that it takes a really long time to archive huge collections on the computer. If you have more than 5000 songs, go watch a movie while it indexes the music.  Simplify Media is also having some growing pains due to the massive popularity of the iTunes app as well.

I’m also starting to enjoy Stitcher.  It’s a neat app that organizes a ton of podcasts and broadcasts them in a radio format.  I don’t like the little ads at the bottom of the screen though.  It makes the app seem overly sluggish.  I’ll take a few more days with it before sending it to the App graveyard.

I loaded custom firmware on my PSP today, much to my own technical dismay. I tried using Gizmodo’s method, but it was complete crap.  I delved into the web and found other means. The PSP is easily the most useless of my portable devices.  Besides Skype, I really don’t use it for much else.  I’m going to try and download some interesting apps tomorrow.  Probably nothing as cool as the iPhone though.

I read an interesting article over at ReadWriteWeb yesterday about the release of Moveable Type 4.2.  Very cool information about combining social networks with the blogging platform.   The Action Streams are a self hosted version of Friendfeed or, to a lesser extent, Twitter.  BuddyPress also looks interesting but it’s still in development.

There is a lovely article about Twitter etiquette over at The Morning News.  I totally agree with the first rule.  I’ve been blocking Twitter spammers since the start.  Zero followers is better than 100 spammer followers.

I took Chris Brogan’s advice today and beefed up my LinkedIn page a bit.  I added a bit of a summary and linked out to the RSS feed on this blog.  I also wrote a recommendation for a fellow writer.  I’ve really started to notice an increase in networking lately and I’m attributing it to LinkedIn, especially after adding so many contacts.

I’m happy with the blog design for now.  I keep tweaking it every day just a little bit, so expect to see small changes.  I’m also looking to add something new to the sidebar, but I’m trying to figure out what I should toss in there.  I’m really digging the minimalistic look right now, but I’m still missing something.

I also completed a quick video preview of Friend Book for the iPhone this afternoon.  It’s not out on the App Store on iTunes yet and it’s certainly worth checking out when it hits the digital streets.  Click the picture to the left or the Youtube link at the top of the page to watch the 3 minute preview.

I’ve may have fallen into a Mobius Strip of writing endlessly until it’s time to sleep again.  I’m content to repeat that cycle over and over while my bank account gleefully greets the array of dead presidents being added every day.  The lucrative lifestyle makes me want to move again, perhaps up north for a few months.

I’ve been receiving an inordinate amount of Facebook friend requests lately; many from complete strangers.  No matter how many times I passively hit Ignore, they keep firing pleas at me.  Facebook desperately needs to add more options for my possible response.  Speaking of Facebook, the new look absolutely stinks.  It’s slow to load and I have to browse those stupid tabs to read someone’s page.

I’ve been playing around with the Flip Mino for a week now.  The video and sound quality is really excellent for the size of the camera.  It’s about the height of my iPhone, but skinnier in width.  I wish I had the camera when my sister and I filmed our Rock Band session a couple weeks ago.  Unfortunately Mikey and Gerbil broke up after our three day World Tour in Rome, London and Paris.

I picked up my 3G iPhone last Friday.  The consumer madness was in full swing at the AT&T store.  They had 40 iPhones in stock and about 60 people in line.  I snagged the 8 gig model and spent the rest of the day checking out the applications on iPhone.  Here are some of my favorites:

Shazam: This music app is great for people who are clueless to the names of songs and artists.  It can listen to any song playing on the radio or over a loudspeaker and identify it through the iPhone’s microphone.  You can mark the song for download on iTunes, watch any Youtube related video about it or send a link of the song to your friends.

Box Office: This simple app takes your GPS location and finds all the movies / theaters in the area.  It offers the Rotten Tomato rating for every movie and can be organized by rating or title.  Most importantly, it offers fast access to the showtimes in all the nearby theaters.

NetNewsWire: This is the fastest way to read RSS feeds on the iPhone.  I can rummage through posts on 15 sites when I wake up in about 10 minutes.   Just be careful to keep up with the feeds otherwise there will be a huge number posted on the icon all day.

AOL Radio: Turns the iPhone into a radio with 200 stations of music.  You can bookmark stations and mark songs for download on iTunes later.  The sound quality is extremely good for a web based radio.  Pandora is also pretty good for specific artist preferences.

Tap Tap Revenge: It’s Guitar Hero for the iPhone.  It’s only 3 buttons and four songs, but there are four levels of difficulty and the possibility of downloadable songs in the future.  You can also shake the iPhone to hit the right beats instead of tapping the screen.  Lots of fun and it’s free!

Graffitio: This app uses the GPS to figure out where you are and looks for nearby restaurants, bars, stores, parks, events, etc.  The apps creates persistent online graffiti walls for you to write notes about the business.  You can also read notes from people who have been there before.

• Still up in the air about the 3G iPhone and it’s only a few days away.  It’s going to raise my phone bill another $30 a month.  I really don’t mind that much, but I have plenty of wi-fi access for net browsing.  Maybe I’ll try canceling the 3G data plan after I sign up.  I will get 150 more texts messages though; yet I’ve never broken 40 in an entire month.

• I’ve been looking at apartment sublets in Chicago lately and feel like moving there for a couple months or two.  I picked up a part time gig at Mahalo recently writing guides and it’s fairly lucrative for the amount of “work” I have to put into it.  Anyway, I’m weighing my options while stockpiling money like Scrooge McDuck.  Maybe it would be cool try some sort of urban nomading for a while; limited to cities without the need for a car.

• I’m not going to E3 this year.  I have the press pass ready to go, but flights were ridiculously expensive this year.  It was going to cost me something in the range of $1,200 for airfare, hotel, various expenditures.  Boooooo!

• I totally want a Flip Mino so I can start cranking out some Vlogs.  I played with one at Best Buy and just loved it.  The video quality isn’t HD, but the quality is darn good.  My Canon digital camera shoots average video, but the microphone just plan sucks.  Plus the Mino takes about an hour of video.

• And if my sister is reading this, the answer to your last question is SHIRTS!  I’m completely dependent on your fashion sense and survive from Christmas to late July on whatever clothing items I receive from you.

• Despite my constant workouts, push-ups are my Achilles heel.  That’s why I started up the One Hundred Push-Ups challenge this week.  I just hope my forearms don’t snag like twigs somewhere along the way.

• This one is pure, unadulterated vanity. Check out the Kor One water bottle:
  
  Pretty damn sleek and perfect for those skinny treadmill cup holders.  But more importantly, it’s open / close with one hand.  I want one now.

• I discovered Popurls through Stumbleupon this week.  It’s a web 2.0 type site that collects the rss feeds from popular sites (Digg, Fark, Google news, Youtube, Flikr, etc…) and displays them on a aesthetically pleasing page.  You can move around the order of the sites on the main page or even go with a category layout if you prefer.  Anyway,it’s now my home page in the new super-fast version of Firefox.

• 20 Superfoods to lose body fat and gain muscle; I eat about 13 out of 20 of those on a daily basis and can attest to their success.  I’ll have to pick up some Quinoa tomorrow as well as some fish oil.

• Youtube recommendation for this week: Peep Show.  Not a youtube series at all, but rather a popular British comedy.  It’s about 2 guys living in a flat in London and their successes / failures in their careers / relationships.  Extremely funny and very easy to understand (No thick accents like The Office).