InvestorBlogger

I do, I do.

I’ve been busy these past few days, one of the reasons I don’t post much on this blog. What have I been doing?

Needing Photographs

In the effort of building my own product site (click to see the post about that), I realized that I needed very specific photographs for my site, far more so than I had anticipated.

I had originally thought that I would be able to get by using photos purchased from Istockphoto.com but I didn’t realize that the photos were merely depictions of generic items.

For many of my upcoming review and profile pages, I needed specific products that had been photographed: eg, Columbian Coffee Beans or Instant Coffee Powder or whatever.

It’s okay to use some of the generic pictures available, but if you want to be specific, you just can’t use generic photographs of products: there’s no way you can be sure what is being photographed.

I’m not sure of the legality of using pictures taken from places like Amazon either. Even though I’d be using the pictures to promote Amazon products, I wouldn’t be using them in EXACTLY the way they intended.

While I could use product manufacturer’s pictures without too much of a problem, I guess that part of the problem is that I can’t photograph or portray exactly what I wanted.

So enter the Light Tent

I know it’s not exactly impressive, but I thought I needed to take a first step rather than just sit twisting in the wind! So I did.

The exact instructions are here. I followed them as best I could. But I had to make up the part about the lamps I need. I ended up using 2 x 15W white light CF bulbs in each of the smaller lamps, and a 23W white CF bulb in the top light. There’s also a lot of ambient light from the room lights.

The other part where I had to improvise was the camera: I just used what I had, my Lumix LMC-DX30 which could do small and reasonably close up shots of products. I’m not exactly sure how I will be able to take photos of beans yet. That may require some artistry on my part, esp. if I can’t get a decent close-up.

First sample photographs

When you start taking photographs, it is merely testing the waters: take a look. Any feedback would be appreciated!

This picture isn’t well cropped, but that’s because I cropped it too closely. I know that. What do you think about the sharpness? The color? The background?

I’m making it up as I go along. I do believe the next few shots will be better but the background seems troublingly gray. I’m not sure why yet. The background is why, so perhaps there’s an overcast of shadow on the back.

Having fun!

We’ve been running our new banner for a couple of weeks now, and if you look you’ll see that the URL is different for our school banner than our website. Why? It’s in Chinese!

Today’s post looks at whether your site is mobile ready, and how to do it. The mobile web is beginning the growth phase and could be even bigger a phenomenon than the current web, as the number of mobile units out in the market, many of which are mobile internet ready, is huge!

The results are pretty good, too, if you take a look.

Of course, this is fortuitous because it means I can figure out if people are actually seeing the sign in our target area and visiting our site from the URL or not. But the risk is if you are on the street, and you want to check the details before you call, and your site isn’t mobile you’ll likely discourage the visitors because of what they might see.

What do they see when they get there? Well, before they would have seen a busy site in mini-view with lots of places to click, and not suited to the mobile experience at all. But I installed one plugin called WordPress Mobile which …

WordPress Mobile Edition

A mobile/phone/PDA friendly interface for your blog with progressive enhancement for advanced mobile browsers.

This is a combination theme and browser checker that delivers a mobile view if one of the user agents matches the list of mobile browsers. With so many mobiles out there, the list of browsers is quite diverse, but the user experience is great.

Once you install the WordPress Mobile Edition, and activate it, it’s pretty smooth. You can test your site at Ready.Mobi to see if it is compatible.

The stats are meaningless without taking a screenshot of the site in mobile view, but that’s a little tricky! Any suggestions how to get a pc to view a mobi.site? Are you a mobi developer? Do you have a mobile site? Do you have a regular site and are you getting it ready for the mobile world?

Would you like to own this ‘thing of beauty’? Isn’t it amazing? Wonder what the gasoline bill is?

After all, how you get about town is as important as getting about town! Right?

My online office: I’m going increasingly cloud based as the pile of hard disks on my desk at school is more redundant. In fact, I was looking at my USB key-ring that held (only 4mb of space) and it was bigger than one of my old hard disks from about 10 years ago! The hard disk still works, too. Wonder if the keyring will work in seven years time.

Nowadays, I use…

Google Docs – for straightforward document creation and sharing. I especially like the spreadsheets options, and the fact I can share stuff easily. I use the standard version AND the hosted version with a domain or two of mine.

USB Key or Flash Drives – I use a lot of apps for the USB key, courtesy of PortableApps. There is stuff for most needs there, including Productivity, Internet, Media, and more. Most of the stuff is open source, and even after so many years, there is no sign that Microsoft has created any portable applications at all. Why would they?

EverNote – I’ve experimented a great deal with EverNote, and I really like the features for note creation, and sharing. I also managed to install the software (from inside the main App) on a keyring and use it without any problems. I think the transfer portions even for the paid version are awfully scrooge like, esp. in these days of 10mb of images (and that’s small).

WordPress – I created a couple of private blogs to host the development of my new sites (the Coffee One and another one to come soon). I find it combined with LiveWriter a great way to write notes, posts, stubs, notes, store research, upload photos I want to use, etc.. If anything, I am finding it much more useful overall than EverNote as it makes everything easily accessible.

To create a private blog, simply install one of the Member plugins that restricts access, turn off the publicity, close the registrations, and voila! One secure, private area.

Flickr – Although I don’t post ALL my photos on Flickr, I find it really easy to share the stuff I want, and to post it to my blog or wherever. It’s not free for unlimited usage. But at $24.95pa, it’s a real steal.

Skydrive – I have 25GB of space from MS courtesy of the LiveSpaces Program. I’ve tried to use it but I find the whole idea of uploading a bunch of stuff from a browser pretty clunky, esp. since I’d like to use it for serious cloud storage (not backup!). But the system isn’t fully mature as copying and pasting files or folders doesn’t really work.

So, I am now using DropBox to help with this. It pretty much works as SkyDrive should. The free space is smaller, but you can upgrade to 100GB of space.

Having your own hosting is also part and parcel of this Cloud computing era, and I run a number of sites that reflect my differing interests. No need to brag here about them all, but it definitely helps with the FTP applications, hosting on your personal domains, and much more.;

Lastly, I spend a lot of time listening to Internet Radio in different formats, esp. I like the Radio?Sure software and XMplayer, both of which work as USB apps or can be installed regularly! (In fact, if you use these a lot, simply copy them to your desktop, run them – all faves saved – and delete them when done.

And, I’ll let you into a secret: I’m beginning to like NOT having to install apps and reboot XP (yes, it still happens) each time I want to use them. I can just copy the folder, and it works! It’s a little slower than running an installed app, but it’s a huge timesaver if you’re testing software.

Now, if I could only figure out how to make money in the cloud… then I could travel the world! Anyone?

Could this be the one I buy?

Image via Wikipedia

I was pondering this question today when I was reading the announcements of the Amazon Kindle for International Sales. Which of these would make a better reader?

Pricing: Kindle 1 vs. T91 0

The Kindle is at least $240 cheaper than the Asus Eee PC T91 series, so on price alone, the Asus T91 would lose, except…

Power: Kindle 1 vs. T91 1

The Asus Eee PC T91 is, in fact, a TABLET PC! Yes, it’s a fully fledged PC that can run software, browse, send email, read books, and a whole bunch of things that an ordinary PC could do. Even more, you are not tied to one reader or one e-book store, esp. if you buy PC software for reading ebooks, or install the Kindle for PC. So, in short, you avoid serious customer lock-in.

Features: Kindle 1 vs. T91 2

The Kindle is totally grayscale, while the T91 offers a touchscreen interface with tablet functionality, and even note taking features.

Size: Kindle 2 vs. T91 2

The T91 offers much in a small space, but the Kindle can easily slip into your bag or purse, without additional cables, power points, etc., unless you are going on a longer journey. The batteries will keep you reading for quite a while, certainly more than the T91 can ever do.

Dedicated: Kindle 3 vs. T91 2

The Amazon Kindle is in fact a dedicated machine, with simpler and more robust features. So it is designed to fulfill one function well. Unlike the Asus Eee PC T91 which is a flexible, and therefore, perhaps less reliable machine. So it boots faster, closes down quicker, and gets to the main function faster than any PC ever could.

Of course, in a perfect world, one would have both. At a combined price of less than $800, this is actually feasible. And avoids one of the pitfalls of an all-in-one type machine. You don’t have to rely one machine for EVERYTHING. Always a plus, in my book.

What would you buy? The Asus Eee PC T91 or the Amazon 6" Kindle or both or neither?

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know why people waste their breath on the traditional PC vs. Mac wars. It seems rather ‘fruitless’ to me. A computer is a computer, after all.

What do you use it for?

A PC of any kind is only as good as what it’s used for. Most people will only surf the blogs, download music, and browse the occasional jobs ads or facebook. A mac is sufficient for that kind of internet. For sure. A PC, too. Even a netbook.

A broken Mac is useless

If I were smart, I’d have both. Trouble: a broken Mac is a huge pain, and rotten piece of fruit. A broken PC is easily repaired, again and again and again, if needs be. I will challenge anyone to say that a Mac is as easy to repair outside North America as a PC.

We have a regular PC store across the road. When things go wrong, they can replace a motherboard, a hard-drive, a CD-drive, a video-card within 48 hours (at most). They can reinstall Windows in about 24 hours. I challenge any Mac lover to get me service as good as that, anywhere. Granted, I have to pay for the changes to the system; but I can have it fixed near my home for basic costs.  Oh, and that’s despite the hardware on Mac being the same (essentially) a a PC!

Overpriced but flashy

Nice graphics, too, on the Mac. But when it comes down to it, do the graphics really help you get things done? Do they? I challenge anyone to say SnowLeopard helps them be more efficient than Windows 7 any day.

Software, Software, Software

The fact remains: Software on the PC is really the widest, most affordable range of commercial software on any OS. There are a few things on a Mac that you can’t find on a PC, but who uses them? I don’t. I can, however, run any number of commercial, free, and opensource software programs on my PC, and I don’t have to wait for Steve Jobs’ imprimatur or the latest update from the Apple crew.

And, yes, even Mac’s can run Windows. Congratulations, welcome to the world of interoperability! Now, when we can install SnowLeopard on our PCs as a virtual machine? Oh, we can’t.

In fact,

Windows runs on the widest range of hardware, has the largest range of software, in the most languages allowing users to do the whatever task they need to. And, the hardware or software is usually the best value available. What more can you say? Apple tried to do the same thing, and failed miserably. Yet, the Apple cult goes on. At least it gives me fodder to post…

So what do you use? Are you a Windows User or a Mac Fan? Or do you use both, like any reasonable user?

Related articles for you to chew on!

Having just tried out several music services and products, I happened to come across this piece of software, called RadioSure. It’s a simple player that sits between your PC and 12000 online radio stations, including many of my favorites.

RadioSure: A Great New Alternative

It’s easy to install, easy to use, and it plays the stream just as Windows Media Player would, but it seems to use a lot less resources on my PC. Always good.

I’ve been trying it out for a couple of days, it includes multi-format playback, buffering and a record feature that records in MP3 format at different (and high quality) bit-rates. I’m not sure where it pulls the station data from, so it’s not immediately obvious how up-to-date it is. It would be nice to see some station list update feature. Otherwise, it’s on my hit list of great music software, now.

There are a couple of other neat design features: click on the graphing window, and it goes silent; right clicking on station produces a table that you can update yourself with feed type, details, etc.; and a copy URL feature on right clicking to make those long URLs much easier to enter.

Do try it out. There’s even a simpler no-install Portable version which is the one I’m using. Perfect for your Eee PC, your USB Stick, or even no hassle install on your regular PC. Sorry, not available for Mac or Linux.

I’m amazed (or should I say, Amazoned!) in the IP debate, we’ve slowly seen the music industry erect IP firewalls around all the music content that they can possibly control: EMusic, Pandora, Last.FM to name but three of the recent victims of overly assertive lawyers and seriously compromised CEOs. It’s been too often that I have written about such hopelessly backward looking companies. It’s rare that a US company literally takes your breath away for the audacity of its vision: and Amazon did that today. How?

Amazon recently announced: the International Kindle with integrated Wireless! I can’t do it any better than Jeff Bezos… so, here goes. Click to check out the device itself, if you’re an international reader, then you need to read this page, otherwise US readers can go here.

So, if you have been waiting or wanting a Kindle reader but couldn’t because it didn’t serve the non-US market, now you’re in luck. Good luck on getting one before Christmas though! I wonder what demand will be like! I’m so glad that Amazon recognizes the importance of its non-US readers by agreeing to serve them in this fashion. Up until now, I had been largely dismayed by the increasing IP restrictions on internet music listeners by the big four music companies. I’m so glad that there are business people who understand that there lots of non-cash strapped customers in the rest of the world (yes, 6 Billion of us!) who would love to purchase music and books from the US. I wonder if the Big 4 music companies will take note. Jeff Bezos, I applaud you and your company. Well done.