@Pogoplug Kicks Up a Notch or Two

I've posted about Pogoplug several times before (here and here).  This is a device/service has just made my life so much easier.  They basically give you a drop-dead-simple-no-brainer means of accessing your data on your computer from just about any internet connected device.  No need to upload your precious data to a remote server owned and operated by someone else - leave it on your computer and get it there.  Did I say simple? No network knowledge required.  Honest. 

Originally this was done using a Pogoplug device which acted as a file server and connected a USB drive to the internet via your router.  Plug in a drive, plug it into the router, plug it into the wall - it was that simple. For a one time cost of about $100, you had universal access to your stuff from anywhere in the universe. 

Now Pogoplug has kicked this up a notch. You don't even have to buy the box now!  They have implemented the whole thing in software.  Download the Pogoplug app and install it on your Windows, Mac or Linux computer.  Set up an account at Pogoplug if you haven't already, tell the Pogoplug app which drives and folders you want accessible and now you can get to your stuff from anywhere where you have a connected web browser. Access your data, upload files to your PC at home, share files with others, let them upload stuff to your drives. If you want to. 

Your data stays on your computer.  Pogoplug essentially acts as a traffic cop to tell the remote system where to go to get to your data.  Access is password protected and the connection is made over SSL (i.e. https://) so its probably as secure as about anything else on the Internet.  About the only time they'll see any of your data is if you do a file preview from the web application.

Oh, did I mention that all of this so far is FREE!

If you pay Pogoplug a nominal one time fee of $29, you get the premium version of this goodness. With that you can stream audio and video from a Pogoplug enabled drive to a remote machine. So now you can listen to all 90 Gigabytes of your music collection or watch any of the videos and movies you have on your computer.  Anywhere. And if you have an iPhone or Android phone, there's an app for that.  No longer worry about running out of memory trying to get your music collection on board. 

This also opens up the possibility of sending your music collection to any room in the house. If you have a spare laptop - doesn't have to be a fancy high powered machine - simply set it up with some speakers in a second room and access your music collection residing on your main machine over your household wifi network.  Plus, you can listen to one set of tunes while the other person can listen to their favorites on the other machine in the other room. And if both computers are on the same local network, you can even do this with the free version of the software. 

Pogoplug has really been a lifesaver to me as I work on different computers in different locations all the time and often need to access files residing on my home machine.  Instead of trying to anticipate the files I might need and copying them off to a flash drive, I can access what I need from just about anywhere.  Pogoplug's service is first rate - real people on the other end of customer support that respond quickly and with the right answer.  In other words, this whole thing just works. 

Not an employee, investor or stockholder - just a very satisfied customer. 

Posted via email from greg-c - on the go....

The times are a changin'....

"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee...."

                           - Opening line of "Okie from Muskogee" 

The co-writer of that song, Roy 'Eddie' Burris, died this week in Tulsa at the ripe old age of 70. That song was made famous by Merle Haggard in 1969. Burris was the drummer in Haggard's band.  Long time ago.  The story of Burris' passing was coming across the radio about the same time I saw this billboard on the way into OKC this morning.  Wonder what ol' Roy and Merle would think of things today.... 

Posted via email from greg-c - on the go....

One more reason not to read the NY Times...

As if their biased and shoddy reporting and slanted editorials weren't enough, the NY Times is going to start charging you to read their stuff on the web. Article from ABC News says that the Times is struggling with their business model as their readers move to reading the paper on the web.  So the Times is going to sock it to you with $15/month charge if you read more than 20 articles a month. $15/month?  You gotta be kidding me.  Arthur Sulzberger says this should be considered an investment in The Times, "one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism..." Well, that would be a nice change - high quality journalism. 

Seriously, $15/month is ridiculous. That's half again as much as what the Wall Street Journal charges for both their print and online editions.  And I don't want to pay for that either. Most of the news available on the NY Times is available elsewhere at no charge.  

I'll probably still check in occasionally.  I like David Pogue's column and some of the Tech articles are interesting, but its nothing worth that kind of coin. Its not that I expect to get everything for free.  Its just hard to understand the arrogance of the NY Times that thinks they can charge an outlandish price for something that is so easy to get for free. 

If the NY Times is having trouble with their business model, even with all the ads, and they think its because readers are moving to reading the paper online, I think they need to re-evaluate where their readers are really moving to - and its probably away from reading the NY Times. 

Posted via email from greg-c - on the go....

What would Will Rogers think?

Howdy, 

In Oklahoma, like most places I'm guessing, "food stamps" are now distributed on a pre-paid debit card with a Visa label on it. I think this accomplishes a couple of things. 

1. It helps the self esteem of the recipient that they have a Visa card just like everyone else and when they're buying something at the store, they don't have to suffer the indignity of handing out real "food stamps". 

2. It lets the recipient purchase his/her liquor easier. Most liquor stores take Visa and probably prefer it over cash which can be lost in a hold-up. 

3. It lets the recipient re-fill their casino cash card easier so they can get back to playing the slots quicker. 

All of this has been well documented in the local papers. 

For a while, there was talk about how the use of this card would cut down on fraud and such. But I think items 2 and 3 above kind of dispel that notion. 

This weekend while I was standing in line at the grocery store checkout, I noticed a poster at the register that was alerting the users of these cards that the days on which their card would be "re-filled" by the state would be changing to help ease the burden on the grocery stores (probably the liquor stores too).  The poster had a picture of the card with an explanation that the new "re-fill" date would be based on the card number. 

What struck me was the irony of the image on the card. Does anyone else see this? 

The card features a picture of Oklahoma favorite son Will Rogers, a well known pundit of his day with his home spun common sense editorials. ("I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Republican")  Now the pic of ol' Will has him scratching his head, almost like he is thinking "Now what the heck did you say this card was for???  Where does this money come from and where does it go???" 

I have no problem helping those that need it until they can get on their feet. But when I'm standing in line at the grocery store and the lady in front of me is fishing out 3 or 4 of these cards from her purse to pay for her groceries, I'm kind of like ol' Will scratchin' my head. 

Posted via email from greg-c - on the go....

@Google wishlist...

Google Wish List....

When I'm using a computer, I pretty much live in the Google ecosystem.  I think GMail is about the best implementation of an e-mail system that I have used.  Google Docs has more than enough functionality to serve as my "office suite" most of the time. And over the last several years of so, I find myself working more and more on multiple computers, at multiple locations on multiple networks. So Google's tools provide ubiquity not only for my data, but also for the applications I need to work with that data. 

But - and there's always a "but" - Google's tools aren't perfect. And I'm not talking about the necessity of having a net connection to access your data or apps, but things that get in the way of being productive, missing features that require you to duplicate efforts, things that actually impact the security of your data by forcing you to download it to what may be computer you have no control over and some features that could take Google's applications to a step above what is out there.  

Here are some of the changes, improvements and old features I wish they would bring back. 

GMail

GMail is the hub of my electronic communications. I have multiple personal and business e-mail accounts and they are all routed through my GMail account. GMail lets you send out messages using multiple "identities" and "reply-to" addresses. Incoming mail from multiple accounts is easily filtered, labeled and archived. And like any other e-mail application you can e-mail attached files located on your local computer. 

The rub comes when you want to send someone a file you have stored in your Google Docs account. You cannot send that file out as an attachment to a mail message you create and edit in GMail.  You can send a file as an attachment from within Google Docs using the sharing feature. However, you lose many of the features of the GMail editor. You can't access the HTML editor, you can't use custom signatures and most importantly for me, you cannot specify the From: address that should appear in the e-mail header.  So if I am sending a file to a business client, they are expecting a message from my business e-mail address but instead they get a message from my default GMail account. Confusing to the recipient to say the least, the message may get lost depending on the filtering and spam setup the other person has set up. 

Another limitation is that you cannot send multiple files as attachments from Google Docs. You have to send each file individually in its own e-mail message. 

The only way to get around this is to download the file (or files) to the local computer and then upload it as an attachment in GMail. That's fine if its your computer, but if you're using a computer at your employer or at a friend's house or at an internet cafe, you can leave traces of your activity and files that you may not want to.  Even downloading to a USB flash drive can leave footprints in the "recent documents" listing on the local computer.  So come on Google, let us attach files in GMail directly from Google Docs. 

Contacts (Address Book)

Google is big on letting you share your data between other Google users, whether it be Google Docs or pictures in PicasaWeb. I'd like to see sharing extended to the Contacts application as well.  Here are several use cases:

• You have several GMail accounts for personal mail, work mail, and so on. Rather than having to maintain separate address books for each account, maintain one central address book and share that with your other accounts. 

• You are working on a project with other Google users and you all will be contacting many of the same people.  Instead of each person having to maintain separate address books, enter the contacts into one address book, include them in a group and then share the group or individual contacts with the other users. Then if one user finds out there is a change in phone number or e-mail address, the change can be made once and everyone has the updated information instead of circulating it via e-mail. Users in the group could also include notes on conversations with the contact in the notes field of the entry and those notes would be available to everyone in the group. I think some of these features are already available in Google Apps for Domains accounts, but it should be made available for all Google users and work across all Google accounts. 

• Google Voice works with your contact list for managing greetings, messages and dialing. However, for a long time, Google Voice was only available to "Standard" Google users.  I got my Google Voice number using a standard Google account.  I later moved my stuff to a Google Apps account with my domain name. But.... there was no way to move my Google Voice number to the new account. I had to maintain both accounts and both address books for my Google Voice number and my Google Apps e-mail account. It would have been nice if I could have just shared the contact list on one account with the other. 

Google Docs

Google Docs is Google's online file management and office suite application.  You can upload just about any kind of file to Google Docs, making it a great place to backup critical files offsite and having them available anywhere. You can also share those files with others, either by giving them access to the file in your Google Docs (if they're a Google user) or by sending them the file as an attachment. If you are sending the file as an attachment, you have the option of sending it in a variety of office compatible formats - MS Office, Open Office, RTF, CSV, etc. Or as a PDF. 

What I would like to see is the ability to save or "print" a file in Google Docs to any of these formats. I would really like to be able to have a file I create in Google Docs be available as a PDF. One use case that I have not found a way to deal with in Google Docs: 

I use a spreadsheet to create invoices to my clients. Currently I use MS Excel and then print the final invoice spreadsheet to a PDF file which I then e-mail to the client. One thing I need to be able to do is to print the spreadsheet without showing the grid lines.  I can do that from within Google Docs by choosing Print and then selecting "No Gridlines" from the resulting dialog box. I then have a document on screen that I can print locally or to a local PDF file. But I still have the problem of having the resulting PDF file on the local PC instead of having it go directly to "the cloud". And then I need to be able to e-mail it as an attachment and we're back to the first item of this wish list. If I try and share the spreadsheet as a PDF from Google Docs, I cannot do so without having the gridlines show up in the document. FAIL!

There are a couple of features that used to be in Google Docs that I wish Google would bring back.  One is the ability to link to other files in Google Docs from within a Google Docs document.  This goes beyond simple web links. This would let you create a link to a document that only exists in your Google Docs without it being published to the web.  A use case would be where you have created a summary document that refers to a number of other more detailed documents that you have saved in Google Docs. Clicking on the link in the summary document would open up the referenced document.  All of the documents remain within your Google Docs and are not out on the web for anyone to see if they have the appropriate URL. This feature was available previously for word processing documents created in Google Docs, but has since been removed. 

I would like to see this linking feature available in Google Docs spreadsheets as well. The use case that comes to mind is one where I track projects in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet tracking would reference various documents such as proposals, specifications, invoices and other billings. These referenced documents might be in a variety of formats including spreadsheets, word processing documents, PDF and JPEG images, all of which would be stored in Google Docs. It would also be nice to be able to link to external web pages as well. 

One more feature I would like to see brought back goes all the way back to the web app Writely that Google bought out as a foundation for Google Docs. This feature is one where you can e-mail an attachment to your Google Docs account and the attachment shows up in Google Docs. A use case might be that you have created a .doc file on your smart phone and want to finish editing it in Google Docs. You could e-mail that file in to Google Docs. Same thing with pictures and other file types.  A work around is to e-mail the file to your GMail and then open the file and save it as a Google Docs document. Sorry, that's a bit of a kludge for something that has been available before. 

If anyone at Google is listening, I hope this provides some food for thought on how to improve an already important part of my digital life. Maybe some Googler could take on some of these as part of their "20 percent time".  Surely they would be useful to those folks using the Chrome OS. 

Posted via email from greg-c - on the go....

Healthcare - thank God for Obama - Not so much!

I am so glad we have a president that is so wise as to make sure the insurance companies will not cancel my policy when I get sick, exclude any pre-exisiting conditions I have or put limits on the amount of coverage they will pay out.  And he is going to do this in a way to "bend the cost curve down"!

 

Instead he has created an environment that is going to force the insurance companies to pull out of the business and drive employers to drop their health care options to retirees and radically raise costs to employees.  And eventually you are going to be stuck with a government run, single payer health care system that will provide lousy service, decreased benefits for care, dump more people into Medicaid, pass more of the expenses on to the states and will eventually break the bank of this country.  And the only thing that is going to be bent down is you and me!

 

Sorry, no thanks - I've been there, done that and didn't even get a t-shirt when my wife was insured under the state's high risk pool.  High premiums - three times higher than mine, high deductibles - twice as high as mine, and coverage for a "medically necessary" procedure arbitrarily declined with no explanation.  So this is not just some conservative whack-o parroting talk radio - this is out of personal experience.  You don't want the fertilizer Obama is peddalin'  THIS IS BAD FOR THE COUNTRY!

 

 (“Insurer Cuts Health Plans As New Law Takes Hold,” The New York Times, 10/1/10)

 

(“Harvard Pilgrim Cancels Medicare Advantage Plan,” The Boston Globe, 9/28/10)

 

(“3M To Change Health-Plan Options For Workers,” The Wall Street Journal, 10/4/10)

 

(“Caterpillar Raising Health Care Premiums,” Peoria Journal Star, 10/28/10)

(“Citing Health Care Law, Boeing Pares Employee Plan,” The Associated Press, 10/18/10)

 

(“Citing Health Overhaul, AARP Hikes Employee Costs,” The Associated Press, 11/4/10)  -  And these were the guys telling the seniors how great this was going to be!

 

The above links are not from conservative, anti-Obama web sites - anything but! Check out the New York Times, Boston Globe and the AP.  The Wall Street Journal is in there as well for a little balance.

 

Pass this on - The Republicans are not doing a good enough job in getting the word out just how screwed everyone is going to be once this thing kicks in.

Posted via email from greg-c - on the go....

FollowUpThen - to-do's via e-mail

FollowUpThen is one of those web apps that is simple and just works.  

I have tried a good number of the digital "to-do" lists out there to try and get on track and get the stuff done I always seem to let slide by. For me, most of them are overly complicated for what I need or they miss the one piece I need to get the hint to do a specific task NOW.  I don't need a complicated taxonomy of categories or a multi-level prioritization system - just basically a simple reminder to call Joe next Tuesday, follow up wih a client on Monday, pick up the dry cleaning on the way home from work next Friday.  I really don't want to clutter up a calendar with this stuff and a to-do list won't give me a head slap when I need it to go do it. 

Enter FollowUpThen. This is a simple web app that will send you an e-mail reminder when you tell it to.  This is perfect for me because whether its my computer or my phone, I am always hooked into my e-mail. And it is so simple to use. 

Just fire off an e-mail to followupthen.com where you specify a time interval in the user-name portion of the e-mail address.  For example, if you need a reminder to take the garbage out tomorrow, send off an e-mail to "tomorrow7am@followupthen.com" with an appropriate subject and detailed instructions in the message if you need 'em  and you'll get an e-mail tomorrow morning at 7 am with the text you sent them.  The system is really pretty smart in figuring out the time interval - you can specify a day, a date, time, or a combination of day and time. Or something general like "next Wednesday". Or a general time interval (i.e. 2weeks).  If you need recurring reminders, you can send a message to "EveryTuesday@FollowUpThen.com" and you'll get a weekly memory jog.  The site does a really good job parsing what you type in for the time interval.  I've tried a number of different things and so far, they all have worked. 

If you want to see what all you have sent off to followupthen, just send a blank e-mail to "pending@followupthen.com" and you'll get a list back. You can even cancel pending reminders from the returned list. 

Aside from remembering to take the garbage out, I have found this app to be really useful to follow up on correspondence that is usually sent out via e-mail anyway. I put the followupthen address into the bcc: field of the e-mail and have automatically given myself a to-do entry to touch base with the other person.  One thing I would like to see added is to include attachments in the reminder e-mail. That way the reminder I get back would have the documents I need to discuss in the follow up.  The guys at followupon.com have indicated this might be something they could include in a future version. 

Oh, one more thing - all this goodness is free.  Give it a try. 

Posted via email from greg-c - on the go....

Now that's Hope and CHANGE!

http://plixi.com/p/68015131

sent from the phone....

Posted via email from greg-c - on the go....