Thank You America

Dear America,

Thank you for making history.

Thank you for finally turning the page on the last 8 years.

The next 4 years will not be easy but thank you for taking a major step in the right direction to repair the damage of the last 8 years that arguable should never have been.   It has been a long night these past 8 years but tonight we take a step back into the light.

Dear America, thank you for restoring the world’s faith in you.

Sincerely, 

Alvin

 

Vacation in Maui – Google Maps Shows How

First off, I had an amazing 30th in Maui.  Props to my amazing wife Katy for putting it all together.  And yes, I am now officially at an age where, according some, I cannot be trusted. C’est la vie.

Second, Google just released their neato Google MyMaps functionality which incidentally allows you to post pics (flickr) and video clips (youTube) on your maps.  The upshot is I got to build a really amazing  map of my recent vacation to Maui.

Is this the future of the proverbial vacation photo album?  I dunno but to quote the youngin’s – "it’s hella really cool."

Check it out: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=104840024099532798430.00000111c3b9e72427882

Of course this "Web 2.0-ization" of geography will have all sorts of interesting applications to the business world too but for now, let’s just bask in the coolness that is Web 2.0 Google Maps mashups.

Cheers,

Alvin

 

Getting Stuff Done

Getting Stuff Done by David Allen

Basic Principles:

1. record tasks as soon as you think of them
2. review progress weekly
3. immediately tackle anything that can be done in 2 minutes or less

 

Gadget Freak

The long march toward gadget nirvana continues.

The other day I picked up a Motorola Q after 6 months of anticipation.  For those of you not up on this stuff, the MotoQ is the high anticipating, highly hyped and long delayed ‘RazrBerry’ that is supposed to marry the producitivity features of a RIM Blackberry with the slim and sexiness of the Moto RAZR.  That’s the hollywood pitch.

As expected email is not quite nice as the Blackberry and battery life is a little short (needs to recharged every day) but otherwise its working pretty good.  It’s a Pocket PC so I get MediaPlayer – i.e. it doubles as my iPod and video player (as soon as I can get a good sized miniSD card.)  My contacts and appointments sync over the air (very cool!).  Now if my company would just get around to getting corporate e-mail up and running on it…

Not done yet , I also picked a pair of the new Oakley stereo bluetooth sunglasses today which look like the dorky ski glasses Ahnuld wore in Terminator 1.  Still, it’s passable on me and now I get to consolidate my device count from 4 (phone, ipod, shades, bluetooth headset) down to 2 – MotoQ and Oakley shades.

Sound on them is pretty good thus far, I get Oakley lens so I’m pretty stoked.  Only interesting this is this line on the user manual "Do not wear O ROKR during prolonged periods of perspiration."  I dunno, that mean I can’t take them running?  I guess we’ll see how they hold up.

Here’s one for trendspotting – I think Oakley is on to something with the bluetooth integration.   Burton recently released an embedded bluetooth stereo speakers built into their high end jackets.  Expect a lot more wearable electronics offerings in the future.