My Favorite Web Sites and Web Applications December 8, 2008

Let’s be honest: it would be too much work for me to rank-order these.  But I thought it might be helpful to someone for me to just put down, in one place, my current favorite and (in some cases) most useful web sites.  Here goes nothin’:

• Hulu – This, like the wonderful Fancast that follows, is a time-waster.  Hulu is a place where you can watch (for free) episodes of your favorite tv shows.  Missed this week’s “The Office”?  No problem.  Check in with Hulu, and watch it right on your computer.
• Meebo – If you’re like me, you use several instant messaging services – Google Talk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo.  I use instant messaging at work, to communicate easily with other offices or with employees who are traveling.  There are IM clients that will work with several of these, but I find them unwieldy.  Meebo allows me to sign in to all of my IM services at once, see who is online and who is not, and initiate a chat session with anyone who’s online in any of my services.  It’s easy, and it’s free.
• Wikitravel – To research a vacation spot, I think Wikitravel, which is user-contributed like Wikipedia, rocks.  You get good information on what to do (and what not to do) at hundreds of locations all over the world.
• The Online CEO – I just love this interesting take on getting your work done.  List the stuff you need to do.  Then rank that stuff as one of the following: Life-sustaining work (10 points), concrete planning or other work (5 points), social or business development (2 points), or relationship-building (1 point).  Now, try to maximize the number of points you achieve each day.  AWESOME!!
• Nymbler – This isn’t really for me anymore, but I would have loved this years ago.  It’s a baby-namer.  You input some names that you like, and it gives you some options that fit your style.  When I input Reid, Sean, Miles and Riley, it gave me some pretty decent ideas (for me): McKay, Graham, Jackson, Grant, etc. for boys, and girls’ names like McKenzie (taken in my family), Lily (also taken), Logan and Rory.
• Someecards – This is the most purely evil site on my list, but I’m sorry — I just think it’s funny.  Use this site to send electronic greeting cards to friends — but be forewarned that the choices include some of the most inappropriate, rude… and, let’s face it, hilarious, e-cards you’ll ever see.  It’s the stuff you think, but would never say out loud.  A relatively innocuous example would include a card that says, “I love how we don’t even say out loud that I’m your favorite child.”  Hey, I should send that to Mom!!
• Google Reader – The internet is a treasure trove of information, and at the same time a vast wasteland.  Google Reader is a news reader — an application that allows you to designate which sites (news or otherwise — mine includes a lot of blogs) you like to read, and then provides an interface to read any recent updates to those sites.  I no longer receive a paper on my doorstep each morning, as I can get more information faster with Google Reader.
• Gmail – Hands down the best way to handle your email.  No question.
• Google Documents – If you don’t know why I love this, you don’t know me.  You simply must stop using Word, right now.  Applications like this should be online.  Period.
• Google Calendar – I’ve written previously about how dependent I am on Google Calendar’s notifications function — I use Gcal to text message me every single thing I need to do in a given day.
• Evernote – Oh my goodness, if you’re not using Evernote I have no idea how you wake up in the morning.  This is an application that allows you to write down, or clip from the web, anything at all that you feel like you’d like to remember.  Then search for it using any word in the text.  For example, I keep a log of just about everything I do (phone calls, meetings, whatever) during a given day.  Then, three weeks later, I can ask myself, “What was the name of that guy David Johnson told me to hire?”, and I can have my answer in a few seconds.
• Jott – Pick up your phone.  Dial the number for Jott.  Jott asks you who you’d like to “talk” to.  You say, for example, “Google Calendar.”  The phone beeps, and you say, “Staff meeting Friday at 10:30 am.”  Next time you check your Google Calendar, Friday shows that you have a staff meeting at 10:30.  Like MAGIC.  Put simply, you never, ever have to worry that you don’t have your calendar or notebook on your actual person again, just as long as you have your cell phone.
• Mint – A fantastic way to track what it is you’re doing with your dang money.
• Wipeelist – I’ve tried all kinds of to-do lists, and frankly they all try to do too much.  If you’re just looking for a simple place to keep track of what you’re supposed to be doing, and all you want is to be able to write down a list and re-order it really easily, this is your baby.
• YouMail – This does two things: (1) It allows you to assign specific voicemail messages to specified people.  If you call me, my voicemail will say, “Hi John (it will actually use your name), Matt can’t come to the phone right now…” etc.  If my wife calls, it can use my own recorded voice to say, “Hey baby, I’d love to talk but I can’t right now…” etc., ad infinitum.  Pretty cool, actually.  (2) You can use the web to check your voicemails, and you have great control over those voicemails.  Got the message but missed the phone number?  No problem: just back the voicemail up a bit until you get the number and replay just that part of the message as often as you need to.
• Picasa Web Albums -  This is how I share pictures.  Period.  Costs nothing, and I can order prints from any of several services (I just use Walgreen’s, as I have one nearby and can just pick the prints up in an hour) with the click of a button.  Notably, too: whereas most picture-sharing sites will not allow your friends to download the actual picture file (they can only get a small or low-res version of it), with Picasa they can get the original.  For free.
• Tripit – This is awesome if you travel much.  Set up your travel plans using whatever you need: book a flight using Orbitz, get a hotel from Hotels.com, go straight to Avis for your rental car.  When each of those sends you their confirmation, just hit the “forward” button on your email and address it to “plans@tripit.com.”  Voila – when you go to Tripit, your entire itinerary appears in perfect order.  Add activities, places to eat, whatever, while you’re there and you have a complete agenda for your trip.
• Facebook – Sorry, I love it.  Its primary use for adults is two-fold: (1) keep in touch with kids, and with kids’ friends.  They use Facebook all the time.  (2) Locate long-lost friends.  Someone you know, knows where they are and has them as a Facebook friend.  The networking aspect of Facebook can help you re-connect.
• Fancast -  See Hulu, above.  This is for watching TV episodes.
• Omiru – My wife is a bit of a fashion plate.  When you’re as clueless as I am about fashion, you need some help to make any kind of gift work.  Omiru is a sort of “everything you wanted to know about fashion but were afraid to ask” site.  I’ve gotten good ideas by browsing here.
• Tripkick – This is a lot like Seatguru, only for hotels.  Use Tripkick to request just the right room at the hotel you’ve booked.  It will tell you that room 1423 is too close to the elevators, or that you can hear pool noise from 347.  It can be a trip saver.
• Picnik – This is an outstanding way to fix your photos.  Took a photo that’s too dark?  Not for long — one click in Picnik will fix it.  You can fix red eye, adjust colors or brightness, or do just about anything you could do in Photoshop Elements — for free.  To give you an example, a couple of clicks changed the first photo below into the second:

• NexTag – Use this to get the best deals on just about anything.  Before you go to Amazon, go to Nextag.
• Gail’s Interactive Budget – Nobody’s heard of this, but it could be a lifesaver to a young student.  Use this to quickly put together a workable budget.  Then stick to it.
• Brightstorm – This contains hundreds of lectures and even full college courses, on all kinds of topics.  You could get very educated without leaving your home.
• Mathway – I wish I had this in high school and college.  It’s an equation solver, only there’s a great difference: it takes you step-by-step through the process used to solve it.  Get all the answers right, AND learn how to do it yourself.
• Viviti – Viviti is a super-quick, super-easy, free way to put together a website.  Tons of templates make it easy to customize something that represents you.  Seriously, you’re not even half an hour away from having your own website, if you want to use Viviti.
• Zoho Office Suite – If Google Documents somehow don’t work for you (they do for me), then this is your answer.  Zoho Office provides word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, and a ton of other applications, all online (highly recommended) and all free.  Start using an online word processor, or else don’t come to me when your hard drive crashes and you’ve lost your term paper.
• Docstoc – Hundreds, maybe thousands, of online templates for just about any business task.  Want to put together an employee manual, but you just don’t know where to start?  Docstoc is where you start.  Simple.

Let me know if there are any others that YOU like…

Why We Should NOT Bail Out Chrysler December 7, 2008

For just a second, we’ll set aside the question of whether or not the government should “bail out” Ford and GM.  Let’s just stick to this: should the government bail out Chrysler?

No.  Emphatically, no.

See, Chrysler is actually owned by a gigantic private equity fund, Cerberus.  Cerberus’ entire raison d’etre is to purchase troubled companies, infuse the companies with capital and management talent, and reap the benefits of the improvements.  That is what they do.  It’s a risky business, wherein many companies improve but some don’t.  Them’s the breaks.

Cerberus is a $26 billion fund, and has as much as $7 billion to invest in its current portfolio companies, including Chrysler.  That is what they are supposed to do.  Begging us for money is not what Cerberus is supposed to do.

Let me allow Cerberus chairman John Snow make this point himself.  In July of 2007, less than 18 months ago, here is what he had to say about the acquisition of Chrysler:

“Cerberus is one of the world’s leading private investment firms with approximately $26 billion under management. Our investors are primarily made up of pension plans, charitable endowments, insurance companies and other long-term savings and retirement programs, including many state pension funds.

Cerberus fixes up underperforming companies and rebuilds them. Our entire focus is on improving the performance of the companies we buy. We bring real operational expertise to bear on our investments, with a cadre of over 150 seasoned, senior-level proven executives who are able to provide a wealth of advice, as well as supplement management teams to produce superior results. We do this patiently, taking a long-term view on our investments. Unlike many purely private equity firms, Cerberus does not invest with an exit strategy in mind. We invest with a “find, fix and hold” strategy.

The prescription we offer is patient capital. Because our investors – a broad base that includes pension funds, state workers’ programs, and private individuals – have a long investment horizon, we can afford to have the long view…to do things right.

For a starved enterprise with a sound strategy, we can offer much needed investment in products and people, freeing captured value. We are able to inject equity directly, and also efficiently raise capital in the debt markets.

Over twenty-five years ago, when Chrysler faced bankruptcy, it turned to the United States government for assistance. Today, Chrysler again faces new financial challenges. But it is private investment stepping in to inject much needed support. Now, Cerberus has the opportunity to use the tremendous financial innovation of private investment to turn Chrysler around, to restore it to financial success, and to help it be a continuing source of good jobs for many Americans, as well as great products for American consumers.” (My italics.)

This isn’t even a hard call: Cerberus said they’d fix the company, and so they should.  It’s a tough job, and the reason it’s tough is another reason not to bail the company out: Chrysler stinks to high heaven on just about every level.  They make lousy cars, have been making lousy cars for a long time, and no recent announcement suggests that they’re about to improve their position.

Let Cerberus handle this.  They said they would, and now it’s time for them to put up or shut(ter) up.

Calm Down, Weird Guy From Chicago… December 5, 2008

…and get all of your weird friends to calm down with you.

An ad has been running in the Chicago Tribune that attempts to re-ignite the freakoid claim that Barack Obama is not eligible to be President, as he is not (it is claimed) a U.S. citizen.  Robert Schultz, chairman of the We the People Foundation, is behind the ads.

Remarkably, Schultz claims that his interest in Obama’s citizenship is not partisan: “We never get involved in politics,” he says of We the People.  ”We avoid it like the plague.”

Really.

Here we should take to heart what was once said by Hubert Humphrey: “The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.”  These people (and there are more of them than we’d like to admit) are idiots, and it’s time to laugh them off the stage.  Sheesh.

Before we do: let’s review, one last time, just how nonsensical these claims are.  

1. Claim: The birth form released by Obama was “an unsigned, forged and thoroughly discredited” live birth form.  Fact: When this stuff started arising during the campaign, the Obama organization provided a digital copy of his birth certificate.  The actual certificate is kept in a locked vault in Hawaii, of course.  When the digital copy did not quell the doubters, staff at FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, went to Hawaii (tough duty) and came back asserting that they have “seen, held, and examined” the actual birth certificate, and that it is genuine.
2. Claim:  ”Hawaiian officials will not confirm that Obama was born in their state.”  Fact:  Initially, Hawaiian officials claimed (correctly) that privacy laws prevented them from releasing a copy of the certificate or commenting on its authenticity.  In October, though, Hawaii’s health director and its head of vital statistics reviewed the certificate in the vault and confirmed its authenticity.
3. Claim: “Legal affadavits claim that Obama was born in Kenya.”   Fact: Well, umm, yes.  The affadavits to which Schultz is referring are cases filed by Obama critics challenging his citizenship status.  So, technically, I guess this is true, although it’s ridiculous.
4. Claim: ”U.S. law in effect in 1961 [the year of Obama's birth] denied citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age.”  Fact: Well, this is true, and it would matter if Obama had been born in (freaking) Kenya instead of Honolulu.  
5. Claim:  in 1965, Obama’s mother relinquished whatever Kenyan or U.S. citizenship she and Obama had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen.  Fact: In order to relinquish one’s citizenship, one must do so “formally, voluntarily, and with the intention to relinquish (one’s) nationality.”  In most cases, you have to be an adult to do so (or reach some age of volition).  Given that Obama moved to Indonesia in 1968 (at age 7) and moved back to Hawaii while still in grade school, it seems pretty clear that Obama did not relinquish his citizenship.  And in any case, his mother cannot do it for him.  Morons.

Okay.  Can we just end this ridiculousness now?

Why Gonzaga Just Might Make the NCAA Final Four December 1, 2008

A few reasons, actually:

1. NBA-Level Talent.  Gonzaga has occasionally had an NBA-caliber player on its roster: John Stockton (obviously), Dan Dickau, Adam Morrison, Ronny Turiaf.  But those guys were often surrounded by mid-major talent.  Derek Raivio, love him or hate him, was not a high-level talent.  These Bulldogs have a couple of obvious NBA-level guys (Austin Daye and Jeremy Pargo), along with several guys who could play for anyone in the country (Josh Heytvelt, Micah Downs, Steven Gray, maybe even Matt Bouldin and eventually Robert Sacre).  Daye, Gray and Sacre represent a new trend in Gonzaga basketball: the recruit that could have gone almost anywhere.  In short, they can put five guys on the floor at all times that any coach in America would love to have.  This is the first time for that.
2. Defense.  Every resident of Spokane can run a really nice motion offense by now, if they’ve been watching over the years.  Gonzaga has been able to score on anybody for years.  This year, they are playing defense.  Pargo on the perimeter and Heytvelt inside, particularly, are excellent defenders.  Daye can block shots with anyone, and cleans up a lot of messes that way.  But even lesser defensive lights like Downs and Bouldin are getting into the act: these Zags can stop you, as they demonstrated to Tennessee just a few days ago.
3. Coaching.  As usual.  Mark Few is a fantastic basketball coach, and the entire Inland Empire should have given thanks for him over their holiday bird this past week.

What might stop Gonzaga from going a long way?

1. Rebounding.  Tennessee doubled up on the Bulldogs on the glass, winning the backboard battle 46-23.  It was even worse on the offensive glass, as the Vols snatched as many offensive boards as Gonzaga had rebounds of any kind.  Still, to be fair, the Tennessee game is the only game all season that the Bulldogs have lost the rebounding battle, and Daye (9 boards in less than 25 minutes per game) and Heytvelt (almost 7) are good on the glass.  Downs, at 6′8″, rebounds his perimeter position extremely well, with almost 6 rebounds a game.  Sacre will board when he’s healthy.

Bottom line: We’ll see Gonzaga in the Elite Eight, and don’t be surprised at all if they’re still suiting up in April in Detroit.