Reviews | VegasGeek

My first week using RescueTime

Posted April 30, 2012 · 7 Comments

I spent a lot of time at my desk. I mean, a LOT of time. I’m really trying to cut down on the numbers of hours I spend at the desk and I’m going for the ‘Work smarter, not harder’ approach. So one of the things I thought I should do was track how much time I’m spending doing different activities. So in order not to spend more time trying out a bunch of different tools, I asked Twitter for a recommendation. I quickly got back a handful of responses suggesting I check out RescueTime. I signed up for the free account, installed the Mac app and away I went…

The first day I installed it, I let it run for about an hour and then went to the dashboard just to make sure it was working. Sure enough, I could see it was recording how much time I was spending in my email client, in a browser, on IM, etc. So, I let ‘er roll.

The following day I checked back and was already really liking the information it was collecting. I did a little research and found that the paid version offered an even better set of reporting, including some custom reports that I’ll talk about later. It was enough to get me to purchase a subscription. I pre-paid for a year, set up some custom reports and went back to work.

The next day I got my first “weekly” report. Since it only had about 1.5 days recorded, I decided to not even bother with it and would wait for another week before really digging in. So here we are a week later. Let’s have a look, shall we?

What I learned

RescueTime will block you from accessing sites that are marked as Very Distracting. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and I’m sure plenty others. But, it didn’t block me from using TweetDeck. It did, however, stop me from clicking on any links that tried to go through the t.co redirect.
I cheated, and it screwed up my stats. Rescue time has a nifty little feature where you can tell it to pause for 15 minutes, 60 minutes or until tomorrow. When it is on pause, you can go to all those great time wasting sites. My problem is, I’d click pause to go check Facebook and then forget to start the clock again once I got back to work. So because of that, my stats for this week are pretty low. For the next week, I’m going to try and not use the pause button for anything other than 15 minute Social Media breaks. I will also try and limit them to a couple per day.
I spend a LOT of time dealing with email. This one wasn’t actually all that shocking to me. Although, I was a little sad to see that my top 2 activities were email and IM. when do I get any work done??? I’m working on some solutions for that issue as well. IM is a vital tool for me since I manage remote developers and that is one of our main communication methods, but I need to lower the amount of time I spend on it.
Custom Reports are awesome! With custom reports you can set up to track time you spend on individual clients by adding a list of keywords that the software will look for. So, if you are writing code and saving it to a directory named ‘client-abc’, you can easily track that time. I need to refine my custom reports a bit, but, I believe over time it will become a way to better track how long each client project takes. This will help with estimating the cost of future projects.

Moving forward I’m going to go ahead and let RescueTime run 24/7 to get a better understanding of how much time I’m spending on the computer and when that time is productive and when it’s not. My goal is to raise the productivity number while lowering the total hours. Although, I have a feeling this next week is going to see a big jump in hours as I try to leave the pause button alone.

Overall I’d have to say I’m really happy with RescueTime. Sure, some of what it’s showing me I already new (Damn you, email), but there have definitely been some eye-openers as well. Now, to use this knowledge to make changes for the better.

Filed Under: Personal, Reviews, Technology, Tools

Shopping at Ikea from Vegas

Posted April 18, 2012 · 7 Comments

Up until two weeks ago, I had never entered an Ikea store for my own shopping purposes. I have been inside an Ikea a couple previous times, but those were always because somebody knew I was traveling to California and asked if I would pick something up for them. I had never even seen the showroom. Just the customer service counter. But that has all changed.

My old desk

For a while now, I have been pretty unhappy with my office desk. It is a corner desk that doesn’t really have enough room to set thing up other than directly pointing in to the corner. Which is pretty darn uncomfortable in a few areas. It would be hard to explain, but trust my, it wasn’t a great desk for sitting for long stretches of time.

We happened to be in So Cal for a few days, and while we were there I made my first REAL trip to Ikea. I had something specific in mind. I was looking for a corner desk that had a rounded transition in the corner, and it was a must that the edges of the desktop were rounded and didn’t have a piece of cheap board stuck to it that would eventually peel off.

Easier said than done.

They didn’t have what I was looking for, so we started looking at some other options. Even though none of the desks they had on display was thrilling me, I was pretty stoked about a nice table top they had on display. It was a thick slab of wood with really nice rounded edges. I loved it immediately. Two problems, though; it doesn’t have legs, and, it was out of stock. Damn.

After getting back to Vegas empty handed, I checked out the Ikea site and found the desktop I had been looking at. On the page they had suggestions for legs, and as alternatives, these spiffy looking shelves. That was exactly what I was looking for. At that point I knew exactly what I wanted. I addeded the items to my cart and calculated the shipping to Vegas. The shipping was actually more than the cost of the entire desk. Ouch! The next thought was to drive back out to Cali. Round trip would be over 500 miles. Between gas prices and the idea of spending a full day on the road, this wasn’t an option either. I needed a better solution. To Twitter I went.

A friend suggested I contact ModernLV.com. They provide Ikea delivery service to Las Vegas. I hit up their site, followed their quick instructions for placing an order (sending an email), and waited for a response. The following morning I got back the details. They charge a percentage of the order price for the service, which, when I considered my other options felt like an absolute steal! I confirmed my order and then began the long wait for the weekend to come and go.

First thing the following Monday, I woke up to an email that my order was here. I scheduled a time to go pick it up, and a few short hours later I had my new desk built and was back to work.

The New Desk

My new desk has a lot less real estate than my old one. I am trying to cut down on the clutter to help keep my mind clear. It has only been 2 days with the new desk,but I feel like the new desk helped me reshape some habits. We shall see what things look like after a few weeks/months, but I am feeling pretty confident that I can stick with it.

I can’t say enough great things about ModernLV. Great service, great communication, friendly. I will definitely use them again.

But for now, back to work at the new desk. Woo hoo!

Filed Under: Personal, Reviews

5 iPad RSS reader apps reviewed

Posted August 23, 2010 · 5 Comments

I have been on the hunt for an iPad app for reading the 100+ RSS feeds I’m currently following. With so many feeds to deal with it’s important that I find one that meets a few critical features:

It must pull in my feeds from my Google Reader account where I manage them all
It MUST sync back the items I have read on the iPad
I want to be able to share the stories (perferably back through Google Reader)
It should have an intuitive & comfy interface

So far I’ve tried 5 different readers on the iPad. Some are free, others cost a couple bucks. The price of the app isn’t considered during these reviews.

Here is how each stacked up to my feature requirements above and my personal review of each.

Google Reader

Note: I almost didn’t include this in the list because the Google app isn’t a native app. When you click on Reader it simply opens up Safari and takes you to a mobile version of your Google reader account. But, since I AM able to read my feeds using it, I decided to keep it on the list.

Pulling feeds:
Obviously it is able to pull my feeds from my Google Reader account. If it couldn’t, I’m sure some programmers at Google would be looking for new employment.

Syncing read items:
The sync is virtually instant. When I click on an article on the iPad, I can hit refresh on my desktop browser and the unread message count is updated. The fact that it happens so quickly isn’t really that important, but I thought it was at least worth noting

Share Stories:
If you are familiar with how the share/like/share with note/email functionality works on the desktop version of Google reader, well, this one is virtually identical. Sharing is a simple index finger tap away.

Interface:
The interface is pretty basic. It has the standard Google Reader obtions to view all, starred or shared item, people you follow, recommended items plus all the folders you created yourself. Tapping one of your folders brings up a list of all the feeds in the folder. Tapping the folder name again shows you a list of all unread items from all feeds in that folder listed chronologically.

My review of Google Reader:
Based on how well it does everything above, you’d think I really like it, but I don’t. Yes, it handles all the Google-centric functionality just fine, but from a user experience standpoint, it feels very sterile. I’m a bit of a Google fanboy, so I really want to like it. I think a lot of it stems from it being a browser based service rather than a standalone app. That’s probably just me being weird, I know.

If you are simply looking for a no-frills way to read your feeeds, this is going to do the trick nicely. If you want a little sexy to go with the muscle, keep looking.

River of News

Pulling feeds:
During the inital app setup, you give it your Google login information and it retreives your unread articles from your feeds. It keeps them nicely sorted in the folders you create in Google Reader.

Syncing read items:
This one stumped me for a while. It didn’t seem like there was any way at all to sync the feeds. No matter how many articles I would read, it would never update my Goofle account. A little more digging and I found that in the settings there is an option to toggle “Mark items as read while scrolling.” I turned that on and from that point forward it worked like a charm.

Share Stories:
As far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to share back to Google Reader, but you can share to Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, Tumblr and a couple others.

Interface:
The interface is pretty simple, but I definitely like the 2 column, list/content format.

My review of River of News:
This app is pretty decent. Like I said, I like the 2 column layout, but I’d like to be able to see the title and brief intro (maybe on the left after I select a feed) instead of having to scroll through the entire articles on the right. The main reason being, if I’ve activated the setting to mark items as read, I don’t seem to be able to easily mark an item as unread if I want to save it for later reading.

Pulse News

Pulling feeds:
You have the ability to provide the app your Google account info, but that doesn’t mean you are ready to start reading all your feeds. You have to scroll through your list and individually select which feeds you want to add to the app.

Syncing read items:
Yes, it syncs the items you read in the app back to your Google account.

Share Stories:
You aren’t able to share to Google Reader it appears, but you are able to post to Facebook, Twitter, Instapaper or send via email. Now, insert a heavy sigh. There is a heart icon on the page that lets you add the article to your “pulse.” While messing around with the app I did this a few times before figuring out what exactly it was doing. Before I knew it I had signed up for an account and now have a new “blog” of shared items. You can check it out at http://vegasgeek.pulsememe.com. Or don’t, I won’t be updating it.

Intuitive Interface:
I understand what they are going for, but for me it just misses the mark. You scroll up/down to see your feeds, you scroll left/right to see the posts in a feed. Each feed takes up a pretty sizeable chunk of screen realestate.

My review of Pulse News:
I don’t really have many good things to say about this app. I don’t like having to select which feeds I want to read in the app. I don’t like that it shows the last 10 items for each feed no matter if I’ve read them or not. If you have a bunch of feeds, it’s not real simple to find the unread post. The only visual clue is the title is written in white for unread and grey for read. I can appreciate what they are going for in this app, but it completely misses the mark for me.

NewsRack

Pulling feeds:
It sure does. Store your Google login information and it pulls your feeds and folders.

Syncing read items:
Yes, it does sync back to Google and it seems to happen instantly.

Share Stories:
This app lets you share stories to Google reader, Twitter, Delicio.us, Facebook and has an in-app send-by-email function, too.

Interface:
The interface is pretty straight forward. It uses the 2 column layout as well which I like. I also like that when you select a folder it slides in all the feeds for that folder. Clicking on a feed brings up the title and very brief intro for each post.

My review of NewsRack:
Up until recently, this had been my default RSS reading app. I like but don’t love the interface, and it has a ton of options in the setting page. But, I had been having a lot of problems with my feeds not syncing back and forth with Google. It was also requiring that I manually click the update button in order to sync my read items. These issues are what sent me in search of a new RSS reader a short while back. And of course, while working with the app doing the research for this post, it worked better than it ever has before. Ahhh, timing…

Reeder

Pulling feeds:
When you first install the app you give it your Google Reader login and it automatically pulls in your feeds and keeps them sorted in your folders.

Syncing read items:
As with Google Reader itself, the sync is basically instant. There’s a handy circle icon in the top right to mark an article as unread if you’d like to keep it for desktop viewing as well. That feature is also virtually instant.

Share Stories:
Not only can you share your articles to Google Reader (one tap on the rss icon in the top right corner), but it will also let you send the post to a number of other services like Delicio.us, Instapaper, ReadItLater and Twitter. There wasn’t the ability to share to Facebook, which I found a little odd given the rest of the services available.

Interface:
Every screen on this interface has what feels like the right amount of functionality. They have one touch buttons down the left side and across the top to perform specific actions based on the page you are on. None of it feels out of place.

My review of Reeder:
I can sum this one up pretty easily, I love this app. Love it. When it comes to reading articles, the Reeder interface has been the best of the lot. I really like the two panel layout and being able to quickly click between articles and having them displayed in the larger right hand column, still offering me a few of the list down the left.

Conclusion
While there really aren’t any losers in this list, they all serve their purpose nicely, for me there is definitely a clear cut winner. Reeder stands out as the best of the bunch. I’ll keep the others installed and will check them out again when new updates become available, but until then, Reeder is my reader of choice.

Is there an RSS reader app I should include on my list? Tell me about it in the comments. I’ll gladly check it out!

Filed Under: Reviews, Technology Tagged With: app, iPad, rss reader

RoloPress review

Posted August 15, 2010 · 13 Comments

Since starting 9seeds back in October, we’ve collected a fair amount of contact information for clients and prospects. The trouble is, we don’t really have a single place where we can keep that information and share it between our geographically diverse team. I’ve tried a few CRM programs like Sugar CRM and Highrise, but a CRM is way more than what we need. I’m just looking for a simple way to store my contacts and make them available to the people in our company.

I entertained the idea of building my own contact manager as a theme for WordPress using Custom Post Types and Taxonomies. But before I wrote my own, I sent a request on Twitter asking if one already existing. That is when I was introduced to RoloPress.

From their About page:

RoloPress is an Open Source Contact Manager, licensed under GPL v2, and built on the WordPress platform (also, Open Source). That means that you can download it, modify it, do whatever you want to it. Isn’t Open Source great!

I took a quick look at their demo site, and at first glance, it appears to be exactly what I’m looking for. So far, so good. Time to test it out myself. After downloading the core theme and the child theme I was ready to get started!

Installation:
I had a little trouble, albeit self-inflicted, with the installation when I tried running the theme on an existing WordPress install on my development server. It did not care for the existing content in my database. So to install it, here is what I suggest:

Set up a fresh install of WordPress
Delete all default pages and posts
Upload the RoloPress core and child theme
Activate the child theme

Side note: If you are planning to run RoloPress on a server accessible via the internet and don’t want to give everybody access to your information, you should install a plugin like Force User Login.

Setup:
RoloPress is VERY customizable. After the install the first you need to do is select one of the many (13) page layout options by going to Appearance -> Layout from the WP dashboard. I messed around with a few but settled on “2 columns, primary on top right, secondary on bottom right” which looks something like this:

The content for each layout is handled by widgets. Again, there are many to choose from and you’ll likely want to play around with the placement and order of the widgets. After you have a few contacts in the system, try moving the widgets around and viewing the results to find the configuration that works best for you.

After the install and setup are completed, you won’t be back to the WordPress dashboard unless you want to tweak more settings. Everything else from this point forward takes place on the front end of the site.

Adding Data:
When you first install RoloPress, it creates a few pages automatically. Two of those are used for data entry; Add Company and Add Contact. When I first viewed the page I instinctively clicked Add Contact. The Add Contact page is really straight forward. It has all the requisite fields you’d expect in a contact management system, including a field marked Company. I’ll come back to that in a second.

I filled in all of the contact information for one of my clients. I clicked the Add Contact button and then headed back to the home page to check out my handy work. Here is what my results looked like:

The form saved my contact just fine, but it also created a record for a new company. The trouble is, the company record was entirely blank. I clicked Edit for the company, updated the information and saved it and everything was fine. This is obviously just a bug and I expect they’ll clean this functionality up in a future version.

One other small bug I found on the Add Contact page also has to do with the company field. I entered 9seeds, LLC as the company name, and when I saved the page, it assumed the comma was a delimiter and it created 2 company records. I removed the two blank company records and decided to try the Add Company page first. I filled in all of the information about the company and saved the entry. I then went back to the Add Contact page to test it out again. In the screenshot below you can see that the form auto-suggested the company name. This worked perfectly and was really simple now that I had the process down.

Finding Contacts:
Once I had a few contacts in the system, I was really curious how well the search functionality was going to work. If you have a ton of data in the system, how good is it if you can’t get to it easily? I have to say that the search functionality in RoloPress is excellent! I tried a bunch of different searches; first name, last name, part of an address, city, on and on and on. Here’s an example of a search I ran for “hen”. It returned 3 results where ‘hen’ was found as part of a street name in the first record and part of the city name in records 2 and 3. You’ll also noticed that it returned 2 contacts and a company record.

In Summary:
From a developer’s standpoint, since RoloPress stores contact data as metadata attached to posts, building add-on functionality that uses that data for things like mass emailing your contact list would be pretty straight forward if you are already comfortable building WordPress plugins that interact with post data. And, if you can’t find a layout that matches your exact needs, taking the existing parts and creating a new template would also be pretty simple.

RoloPress isn’t ready for enterprise level Contact Management, but, if you just need a place to store some contacts, it does a solid job. I’m definitely going to continue using it as it fits my needs perfectly. The small bugs I found have easy workarounds so I don’t see them being any trouble whatsoever.

Filed Under: Reviews, Themes, WordPress Tagged With: contact manager, plugin, WordPress

Review: Underwater Housing for Canon PowerShot S90

Posted June 29, 2010 · 4 Comments

Last year we went to Jamaica during Thanksgiving and spent the entire week in or around the water. I was really bummed that I wasn’t able to take my camera with me while we did many of the activities that week. As we were getting ready for our trip this week to Lake Tahoe, I knew I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. So, I did a quick search and found the Canon S90 Underwater Housing. I placed my order on Tuesday and it showed up just in time to come along for the trip!

They camera fits in easily and once you close the case, your camera is held in place perfectly. The case does have a bit of a bulky feel to it, and it was a bit heavier than I was expecting. Not uncomfortably so, but it does have some weight.

The case has buttons and knobs for easy access to all the camera’s functions. If you were planning on taking the camera diving and you are wearing diving gloves, some of the buttons may be a little tough to access. But for bare-hands, you’re not going to have any troubles.

Here’s a photo and video taken at the lake.

At about $175, the waterproof housing isn’t exactly a cheap accessory. But, after having it at the lake and taking photos of my family while splashing around in the water, I couldn’t be happier that I bought it and only wish I would have done it sooner.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: camera, Photography, review, waterproof

book review: Rework

Posted May 26, 2010 · Leave a Comment

In the span of a week, two people both recommended I check out the book Rework (Amazon affiliate link). That would normally be enough to get me to pick up the book all by itself, but when I found out it was written by the guys from 37 Signals, the developers of BaseCamp and other kick-ass web applications, I was sold.

Rework is a book of advice for new business owners. Somebody else I saw online said it has “Little gems of common sense.” I couldn’t agree more. Most of the topics in the book are things that, if you sat down and thought about it, you probably already new. You may even apply many of the tips to different parts of your day-to-day life, no matter if you own a business or not. But, for small business owner (like me), getting a reminder from time to time is never a bad thing.

For me, this book was all about timing. After recently quitting my job to start a new company, many of the topics covered in the book really hit home. That’s most likely why it was suggested to me by my friends.

One thing I really enjoyed was the real-world examples they gave, many of which had to do with things that took place in their own office. Hearing how they dealt with issues and how they came to decisions reminded me that our problems aren’t unique. We are facing some of the exact same issues they were. No company becomes successful over night, and seeing how other companies have struggled, but come out the other side to succeed is reassuring.

If you are looking to start your own company, or if you’re working in a start-up, you should check out Rework. You aren’t going to find any Earth shattering secrets, but you may just find a gem or two that helps you take that next big step.

Filed Under: General, Reviews Tagged With: book review, rework

Review: Superbad

Posted December 11, 2007 ·

A common theme among movies aimed at teens these days is to release R rated clips from the movie months ahead of time via YouTube. With any luck the videos go viral and everybody and their brother has seen the clips a dozen times before the movie is even released. Unfortunately, as often happens, the hype build-up is greater than the movie can possibly hope to be. This was never more clear for me than with the movie Knocked Up. I LOVED the videos that were being passed around before the movie came out. Then, I went and saw it at th theater and I can hardly remember laughing during the entire movie.

When I first saw the R rated trailer for Superbad on Youtube, I laughed my head off. I could not wait for the movie to come out. I tempered my enthusiasm hoping that I would not have a repead of my experience with Knocked Up. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. I saw the movie the first week it was out in theaters and I loved it. Seth Rogan as Officer Michaels and Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Fogell (McLovin) absolutely made this movie for me.

The characters in the movie are all likable. You find yourself rooting for the three unpopular guys (Evan, Seth and Fogell) who have their chance to hang with the in-crowd and hopefully get laid so long as they can use their new fake ID to obtain alcohol for the party. Of course everything that can go wrong does go wrong. When they finally make it to the party with alchohol in hand, they are the hit of the party. The girl Evan likes has way to much to drink, takes him upstairs to a bedroom and is throwing herself at Evan. Evan, being a really nice guy, won’t take advantage of her in her drunken state and narrowly avoids getting thrown up on when she pukes on the bed. The chick that Seth likes won’t make out with him because he’s drunk, and Fogell gets cock-blocked by 2 cops who burst in the bedroom seconds after he starts going at it with a little hottie.

There are plenty of funny scenes in the movie and the DVD has a decent gag-reel, line-o-rama and some other extras that make it worth picking up.

A very funny movie that I’m sure I’ll watch a dozen or so times.

Click Here to buy Superbad from Amazon.com

Filed Under: Reviews

Review: Fuji Finepix Z5fd 6.3MB Digital Camera

Posted December 10, 2007 ·

Recently I dropped and broke my digital camera so it was time to head to the store to pick up a new one. My requirements were pretty simple. I was looking for a pocket sized camera with a decent sized viewing screen and at least 5.0 MP. After checking out several cameras, I decided on the Fuji Finepix Z5fd 6.3 MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom.

finepix

Like I said, my requirements weren’t very difficult to meet. So when I got the camera home and started using it, I was pleasantly surprised by all the extras that came along with it. The 6.3 megapixels capture enough detail that you can print photo-quality pictures up to 14 x 19 inches in size. The 8 x 10 prints I’ve made from shots taken with this camera are amazing.

The viewing screen on the back is a 2.5 inch scratch resistant LCD. This was an absolute must! The big screen makes it easy to use all the menu options, and when viewing the shots you’ve already taken it’s easy to see which shots you want to save and which you want to delete. I’ve been carrying the camera in my pocket most every day and there are still no scratches at all on my screen.

The Finepix Z5 also shoots video. When you are out with your friends and somebody is about to do something really stupid, it’s nice to have a video camera so quickly available. I have a 1 GB Xd memory card in my camera and can shoot about 15 minutes of video at 640 x 480 resolution. Once I get home it’s a piece of cake to grab the videos from the computer and upload them to YouTube.

The sliding lens cover makes for a super quick on/off switch. If you are putting the camera in your pocket, you will want to be careful not to slid the lens cover open.

The camera performs better than expected in low light situations. Here’s a photo I took at an awards show.

The camera can also be set to several different modes depending on what you are shooting. The “Natural Light” setting takes two photos in rapid succession, one with flash and one without. Then, both images are displayed on the screen. This is great for shorts where you aren’t positive if the flash is going to be needed. I also like the “Continuous” mode. When using this setting, the camera will keep taking photos one after the other for as long as the shutter is held down. For capturing natural looking shots, this mode is fantastic.

The camera comes in three different colors. I bought the silver one for myself. My wife liked my camera so much she had be buy her the wine red model. It looks pink if you ask me. There is also a chocolate colored version as well.

Overall I’m thrilled with the Fuji Finepix Z5 camera. It far exceeded my expectations and would happily recommend the camera to anyone looking for a compact digital camera.

You can purchase the Finepix Z5 from Amazon.com. Or, if you would like to see all the technical specs for the camera, you can find them at fujifilmusa.com.