Loss for Words

www bn com

robmansfield — Sat, 07 May 2011 03:16:16 +0000

http://www.bn.com

Just messing around

robmansfield — Sat, 07 May 2011 03:15:59 +0000

Yep, it is cool

Here I am with a new status

robmansfield — Sat, 07 May 2011 03:15:40 +0000

Here I am with a new status

Time launches technology blog Techland

robmansfield — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:40:22 +0000

Time Inc just launched their new mainstream technology blog at Techland.com. The site covers gaming, gadgets, tech news and a few other general geek categories.

iPhone requires .NET? Really?

robmansfield — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:35:20 +0000

I am in the middle of developing an iPhone app and in order to get the app onto my phone before it is in the Apple store I need to work through the iPhone Configuration Utility process. Barely got through step 1 in the process when i got this notice. Sort of odd that a Microsoft framework is required when installing a Apple utility.

EverNote: Forget Me Not

robmansfield — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:08:04 +0000

One of my biggest problems in a typical day is keeping track of the seemingly endless list of things I need to remember. The truth is we live in a fast paced, adrenaline fueled society that demands we juggle 50 things at once. I will also admit to be less than perfect in the self organization department. Despite my endless attempts at writing notes on the nearest piece of paper, leaving myself voice mail reminders and emailing thoughts out as soon as they pop into my head I still manage to loss some piece of information from time to time. Until now……

A few months ago I read an article about a service called EverNote describing it as a ubiquitous note capture tool. The description and review seemed to place it in the category of just another attempt at retaining bits of information much like most email clients offer as a peripheral function. But over the next few weeks I continued to hear good things about the app and so last week I decided to give it a spin. It wasn’t long after signing up that I found myself using the free service for pretty much everything I need to capture during my day. And I mean I use it everywhere for pretty much anything I can think of needing to hold on to. Here are some examples:

With the desktop app on my laptop I can drag and drop emails from Outlook into Evernote.
The mobile web interface allows me to jot down notes on my BlackBerry.
I started using the Web Clipper Bookmarklet which is smart enough to save only the content you have highlighted on a web page into your new note.
The service gives you a custom email address you can send notes to.

Needless to say I am impressed by the flexibility of the service. It is simple enough to use but there is quite a bit of “smart” underneath the hood of Evernote to make the app a powerhouse as a productivity tool. For example, yesterday I discovered that the service actually indexes content in images and therefore makes them searchable. How cool is that? Just snap a picture of a whiteboard with notes on it, upload it to EverNote and the content is now searchable as if you typed it into a document. The screenshot on the right is my simple example of what I am talking about. I took a picture of my Blockbuster card, uploaded it to Evernote, logged in and searched “membership”. It pulled up my image and highlighted the search content! Pretty amazing stuff.

So, if your like me and find it tough to keep track of everything that comes your way in the course of a day this service may be just what you need. Hey, what do you have to lose? The basic service is free.

It will be getting cold out soon…..

robmansfield — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:25:26 +0000

Every year about this time I start thinking video games. Probably because like most people (and bears) I tend to hibernate in the colder months. Nothing better than finding your game for the winter months and spending the next few months of downtime getting better and better. Sure it is still August but before you know it I will be shoveling snow off my driveway and wearing wool hats to keep my head from freezing. Hell, regular season football is two weeks away!

So it was pretty nice when I read this morning that their seems to be a console gaming price war going on. Looks like Microsoft is dropping it’s price on the XBOX 360. Now I understand that I am late to the game (no pun intended) when it comes to upgrading to the current console platform. In my defense the past 4 years I have been a little occupied with the birth of my two kids and therefore my gaming skills have suffered. On the rare moment when I did have a half hour to sit down and play I was more than happy to fire up the old PS2 and get 9 innings of baseball in. But with the recent drop in price on the XBox and PS3 I may need to step up and start gaming again. Need to practice quick since my son will probably be ready to compete in the next few years.

View This Poll

The value of online social relationships

robmansfield — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:38:33 +0000

If you missed it Business Week had a great article on the gold rush that is going on around online social networks. Everyone agrees that being able to tap into the power of common interests is huge. As the article points out our friends are “our trusted sources”.

What is easy to forget is the business model around harnessing this power is still undefined. Even the largest online communities like FaceBook and Twitter have yet to define how they will turn social connections into advertising dollars. That being said there certainly have been some promising studies correlating our social circles with behavior. This article has no great theories on the right answer but does give a good sense of the different efforts that are happening.

Personally I find the current “wild west” of social media fasinating. Sure I enjoy getting updates on what my family, friends, coworkers, etc. are up to but that is not what keeps me engaged. The potential of mining our personal choices and being able to customize how we live, work, shop, etc. is vast. Imagine knowing that the next book you buy or DVD you rent is the result of carefully calculations which consider multiple factors about you. Chances are the quality of that experience will be higher than the “hunt and peck” methods we use today.

SuperBowl Tweet Tracking

robmansfield — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:51:00 +0000

Got a very cool link (thanks to my coworker for this) to a NY Times time line of the Twitter messages during the Super Bowl. This is a great example of how aggregating social content can have a useful application. Of course, you can apply something similar to track activity on a number of things (products, movies, music, etc.).

Site of the week – Blip.fm

robmansfield — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:51:46 +0000

Maybe it is because I am a former party/club DJ. Perhaps it is my frustration with the suggested songs that Last.fm and Pandora give me. Plus, I haven’t updated the playlists on my iPod for so long that I hardly use the damn thing anymore.

Whatever the reason, my newest addiction is Blip.fm.

So what is so great about this site? Well, here goes…..

Of course, there is the access to any song under the sun.
The “Twitter like” interface (which includes mirco-blogging) is minimalistic and easy to use.
Speaking of Twitter, you can link your Blip account to your Twitter account so that every time you add a song a “Twit” is posted.
The social aspect of the site is fairly intuitive which opens up the door to discovering new tracks.

It might take you some time to really “get” the benefits of Blip since on day one you won’t have a network of friends to share music with. But trust me, a week later you will wonder how you lived without it.