This phone served me well for about 8 months (when I upgraded to an AT&T Tilt). It saved our butts when my boss and I were on a business trip in Texas and we got lost — this little beaut not only found us, but told us how to get from where we were to where we were going (GPS navigation software not included).

Windows Mobile "Pocket PC"

First and foremost it’s a Windows Mobile Smartphone running Windows Mobile 5. It’s got a 520MHz PXA270 processor 64MB of RAM (50.45 available) and 128MB ROM (that means it’s plenty fast and has a bunch of room to install your own Windows Mobile applications).

If 128MB isn’t enough storage space for you, it’s got a full-size SD card slot in it, so you can upgrade your storage to 2GB just by popping in a card (and since it’s standard SD, they’re cheap — if you’ve only got MicroSD cards (like me) I’ll even throw in a MicroSD to Full-Size SD adaptor free!). NOTE: SDHC isn’t supported, just standard SD.

GPS Receiver

Its built-in GPS receiver has been tested to work with CoPilot, Google Maps, Windows Live Maps, and Tom Tom (software not included, but the Windows Live and Google apps are free downloads).

Cell Phone

In addition to being a killed PDA and GPS unit, this little guy is also a tri-band GSM phone, unlocked and ready to work on virtually any GSM network in the world (T-Mobile and Cingular in the USA work great with this phone). Just pop in your SIM and you’re making phone calls.

Camera

Comes equipped with a 1.3 megapixel camera.

Mobile Internet

With it’s GPRS radio and a data plan from your cell-phone provider this phone can get and send your email from an Exchange server, or over POP/SMTP. It’s not as fast as EDGE or 3G speeds, but it gets the job done quite nicely. If you’re worried about speeds, just set it up to get/send your email every 5 minutes, and set up and RSS reader (not included) to pull your RSS feeds in every couple hours.

Condition

This phone is used, it has a few minor cosmetic blemishes, but functions great and looks really stylish (I get asked if it’s an iPhone all the time).
This phone originally sold for over $500, you’re bidding on it starting at $99+shipping. It’s a killer deal because (1) it’s used, (2) being sold as-is, and (3) Windows Moble 6.1 is out (this is Windows Mobile 5).

What you get:

• The phone/PDA (including its 1320mAh battery),
• a USB cable (doubles as the charging cable),
• a MicroSD to standard SD adapter

Specifications from the Manufacturer

Specifications can be found at http://www.mio-tech.be/en/gps-navigation-device-Mio-A701-specifications.htm, detailed pictures are available there as well.

What are you waiting for?

You know you want it… and at this price you can’t afford to pass it up! BID NOW!

CSS Box Model

Let’s face it, if you’re not familiar with the CSS Box Model, you’re probably not a web developer (or, if you are a Developer, you need some remedial education). The CSS Box Model is one of the most misunderstood patterns in CSS.

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):

The CSS box model describes the rectangular boxes that are generated for elements in the document tree and laid out according to the visual formatting model. The page box is a special kind of box that is described in detail in the section on paged media.

In plain language that means the CSS box model specifies the way a web developer should place a box on a web page.

“But that’s not hard to do, you just drop a DIV on the page and you’re done, right?”

That’s the way to get you started, sure, but there are some things you need to keep in mind, each block-element:

• has an over-all width(measured differently in different web browsers, just to make your life more interesting).
• can have a border on each side (optional)
• can have padding (on each side) between the content and the border (optional)
• can have margin (on each side) between the border and the element that it sits next to (optional)

The following diagram from the W3C shows how these components relate to each other and the terminology used to refer to pieces of margin, border, and padding:

Here’s a tip for you that will save you countless hours of headache

When using DIV’s to layout a page (see diagram), don’t forget to use display:inline; to work-around MSIE’s annoying “double margin” issue. You can thank Anthony Short for this tip.

What you want: What you get in MSIE:

Another tip for content layout with floated DIVs

When you want two DIVs to sit next to each other (like above), under some circumstances you’ll end up with one of the two DIVs being forced below the other. To correct this, first make sure you’re using the display:inline; attribute (see above) to get rid of MSIE’s double-margin issue, the add overflow:hidden; to both DIVs. This will hide any content in the DIV that is too wide to fit and would mess with the layout. This is especially helpful if you’re pulling content in dynamically.

Don’t forget to break

After all is said and done, if you’re using floating DIVs for content layout if you want anything under the floated DIVs don’t forget to add clear:both; to that block-level element to tell it to fall under the floated DIVs.

You can thank me later.

I’m a fan of using ASP.NET’s web.sitemap feature, but I’m less impressed with the level of control that you have (rather, you DON’T have) over the menu controls that consume the web.sitemap datasource (http://www.BuyLifetime.com uses three menu controls that consume the same sitemap from MS Commerce Server 2007, which look 90% like what we want them to).

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just make it into a navigation list? We all know (or should know by now) that a navigation list (whether ordered or unordered) should be just that, a hierarchical (“nested”) list of pages in your site.

To do this we can use a Repeater control and use the web.sitemap datasource as the contents.

It’s easy enough to make a one-level-deep list, and not too much more difficult to do a two-level-deep list.

   1: <asp:Repeater visible="false" runat="server" ID="siteMapAsBulletedList" DataSourceID="SiteMapDataSource1">

   2:     <HeaderTemplate><ul></HeaderTemplate>

   3:     <ItemTemplate>

   4:         <li>

   5:             <asp:HyperLink ID="HyperLink1" runat="server" NavigateUrl=‘<%# Eval("Url") %>’ Text=‘<%# Eval("Title") %>’ />

   6:             <asp:Repeater runat="server" id="SecondLevel" DataSource=‘<%# ((SiteMapNode) Container.DataItem).ChildNodes %>’>

   7:                 <HeaderTemplate><ul></HeaderTemplate>

   8:                 <ItemTemplate>

   9:                     <li><asp:HyperLink ID="HyperLink1" runat="server" NavigateUrl=‘<%# Eval("Url") %>’ Text=‘<%# Eval("Title") %>’></asp:HyperLink></li>

  10:                 </ItemTemplate>

  11:                 <FooterTemplate></ul></FooterTemplate>

  12:             </asp:Repeater>    

  13:         </li>

  14:     </ItemTemplate>

  15:     <FooterTemplate></ul></FooterTemplate>

  16: </asp:Repeater>

Basically, you throw a big hard drive (RAID5, anyone?) and a TV-Tuner or two (I have 2 digital tuners, one analog tuner in mine) into a computer and with Windows Media Center you can record all of your favorite TV shows, listen to the radio, listen to your music collection, and more… either through your monitor, or on your big-screen TV. Cool idea. Works pretty well, too.

The most common Extenders for Windows Media Center are Microsoft’s own XBOX consoles (the XBOX original worked with Windows XP’s Media Center Edition, the XBOX360 works with the Vista version; the XBOX original cannot connect to the Vista version, which ticked off most early adopters).

The “old” XP MCE had a few set-top style boxes that worked as Extenders (which don’t work with the Vista version, which ticked off those early adopters). Now, the Vista version of Windows Media Center has Extenders – a few of which are even built into the TV set itself… pretty cool.

I clicked an ad and checked out the new Extenders for Windows Media Center… They have a menu item for “experience,” so I clicked on it.

Hmmm… “Buffering…” for 3 minutes isn’t the experience I was looking for… Maybe MythTV?

After a few hours of trying I was finally able to pull the 7.14MB W32/EN-US version from Mozilla’s ftp site.

The install was very fast with one firewall prompt for access. Due to the number of downloads being served the default two pages that normally open with a new Firefox install resulted in in error pages.

That notwithstanding, the  browser is fast… very fast. The address bar now has a drop-down-list beneath it that features an auto-complete that I assume pairs your browsing history with search engine results… The speed of this feature blew me away.

It is? Where? Is it hiding behind the box with nothing in it?

• ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/3.0/
• http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/?from=getfirefox
  • still linking to FF2
  • says FF3 is available, but the version listed is 2.0.0.14

UPDATES:

• If you have confirmed any mirrors, please comment with them to help with the distribution! Thanks!
• Direct Link to Win32 EN-US:

• ftp://mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/3.0/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 3.0.exe 
• http://snipr.com/2jyyx (internap.com mirror; thanks to Mike Dopp for finding this mirror!)

• Oklahoma declares Sovereignty! MUST READ!

• goldismoney.info — "A Joint Resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates…"

• huffingtonpost.com — The Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country," McCain said. The decision in question? Affirming the right of habeas corpus: the right to appear before a judge in a timely manner, and not be locked up indefinitely because a king (or president) says so.

• eyesonobama.com — John McCain has a problem with Republicans. GOP comments are telling of personal opinions of the Arizona Senator. I’ve got news for you, people: McCain is a Republican in NAME ONLY! He’s more a Democratic Socialist than a Republican. Barack Hussein Obama, on the other hand, he’s a Socialist Democrat.

• wired.com — First, we all had mild Asperger’s. Now, Internet addiction disorder? Give a geek a break. In the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Jerald Block proposed that Web abuse be added to his field’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

• arstechnica.com — Those early termination fees (ETFs) that consumers pay for switching cell phones in mid-contract are a great deal, an attorney for AT&T told the Federal Communications Commission yesterday. However many customers beg to differ.

• cleantechnica.com — Though many states and localities are waking up to their water shortages and taking steps to plan for “peak water”, people generally continue to waste water and to ignore the energy-water link. More at source…

• msnbc.msn.com — Police killed a 27-year-old man as he kicked, punched and stomped a toddler to death despite other people’s attempts to stop him on a dark, country road. Sounds like appropriate use of force to me. It’s a shame the “other people” didn’t intervene soon enough to save the toddler’s life. More at source…

• www.37signals.com — Designers who work directly with the materials (CSS and xHTML) rather than through simulated environments (like Photoshop) are at a distinct advantage for making a design feel native.

• noupe.com — Without a doubt, a logical and structured layout is the best way to go. Not only because your layout varies between browsers, but also because CSS has a lot of ways to position every element you have. Today we wanted to share with you some quick tips on how to avoid easy pitfalls when creating your CSS layout.

• arstechnica.com — IE8 should make things a lot better—but it will still fall far short of the standards set by Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Some of these problems are technical, but others are cultural. Where the other browser developers are open and communicative, Microsoft is still leaving web developers in the dark. More at source…

• hothardware.com — Google has been very vocal on its stance for net neutrality. Now, Richard Whitt–Senior Policy Director for Google–announces that Google will take an even more active role in the debate by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs.

• spreadfirefox.com — "Mark your calendar, wrap a ribbon around your finger or write a little sticky yellow note. Download Day will start on June 17, 2008." As received in my Inbox.

• devicedaily.com — A partnership between Duke University and Boston College turned out to be very beneficial for the science world, as they obtained a metamaterial that absorbs all the light it gets (yes, it becomes invisible) and that is supposed to generate energy more efficiently than the solar cells.

• gas2.org — As part of a push by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to make plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) cost competitive with other cars by 2014, Ford has delivered a plug-in hybrid electric flex-fuel Escape to the DOE to join its test fleet of other PHEVs currently undergoing research and testing.

• guardian.co.uk — Ireland vote of no to ratifying proposed EU treaty puts the project in jeopardy around Europe.

• aol.com.au — The Greek island of Lesbos is attempting to stop homosexual women from calling themselves lesbians. "Until 1924, according to the Oxford English dictionary, a Lesbian was a native of our isle. Now, because of its new connotations, our womenfolk are unable to call themselves such and that is wrong."

I decided to hop on to the Zune Marketplace today and buy a couple albums, namely Leaves’ Eyes, and noticed something interesting: a pink triangle with a white “no” symbol in the bottom-right corner of some album covers…

Digging deeper I found this means that it’s not available.

Nice… Now we get to see what we CANNOT buy?  

Where’s AllOfMP3.com when you need them?

I’m a web geek, I rarely see the sun, I’m not what you’d call HWP… I’m not terribly large, but I could stand to swap some lard for muscle.

Yesterday I got a disturbing email: Joe, we’d like to come and take your picture for the corporate blog. I’ll be by Thursday or Friday.

Great.

So, today I was subjected to to an embarrassing onslaught of shutter clicks and flashes, and now there are about 20 more pictures of me in existence somewhere… 

If you happen to see one of these, please accept my humble apologies. I know that there are some things in life that one just can’t “un-see.”

X10, The Beginning

Years back I fell in love with the idea of home automation and X10.

No, I’m not talking about the spy camera that we’ll never be able to forget.

I’m talking about the home automation technology and hardware that let light switches, dimmers, times, and various other gizmos and gadgets talk to each other over your home’s electrical system.

Unfortunately, after spending a couple hundred bucks on a “starter kit,” some “lamp modules,” and trying it out, it didn’t really work as advertised.

Let me clarify: homes have a lot of wring in them, and sometimes a lot of “noise” on the power lines. This introduces a distance issue (signals degrade over distance), and a signal corruption issue (the more “noise” on the line, the weaker the signal is).

There’s one other problem: homes in the USA are typically wired up to two “trunk lines” or “legs” of power, basically, you have 240V that comes in to your house (your dryer and oven probably run on 240V if they’re electric). Your outlets are 120V, so the 240V is split in two (or 2 * 120V combined into one, however you want to look at it), effectively diving your house into two zones. Signals from one zone can’t cross over to the other zone. They have devices you can put in your breaker box or on your oven/dryer outlet that will bridge the two legs, but they’re expensive and then you’re right back to the distance problem mentioned above (the signals have to go from one leg to the bridge and through the other leg, which means more distance).

Some people and some applications worked great with X10. If X10 works for you, great! It didn’t for me. So my initial investment sat on a shelf and collected dust.

Introducing Insteon

Insteon picks up the baton where X10 left off.

No longer do you have to manually set an ID for each device on your home automation network (it’s got one assigned at the factory, similar to a MAC in computer networking).

No longer do you have to worry about distance: the more Insteon devices you have, the better, they all act as repeaters.

No longer do you have to worry about “did my request to turn on the lights/close the blinds/etc. get to there?”: the devices report back an acknowledgement and their state (on/off, percentage of dim, etc.).

Both technologies, when used in switches, for example, don’t function as a normal switch. Well, they do, and they don’t. They sill turn the light on or off (or dim to a certain percentage), but they’re wired a little differently.

Each switch has a ground, black, white, and red wires. Ground obviously goes to ground, black goes to black, and white goes to white. The red wire goes to the load; it’s your switching wire and controls the state of the circuit (open/close, percentage, etc.). Typical switches just have two wires (usually black) and serve to open or close the circuit. White and ground are handled by the load (the light, for example).

Multi-Way Circuits

I’m not an expert in home wiring, so don’t take anything I say as scripture (or “code”). 2-way and 3-way (and more-way) circuits have always confused me. Ground, black, and white are hard enough for me to follow, throw in a couple reds and a blue and I’m totally confused. Insteon makes multi-way “virtual" circuits” easy.

Simply put, you have one device that controls the switch, that’s it. The other device(s) that you want to control the lights just get hooked up to ground, black, and white (no red, cap it off). Once it’s getting power, you can pair the device to the switch pretty easily. Then when you press the device, it signals the switch to turn on/off/dim, and that device takes care of it. It doesn’t matter if you have one “virtual switch” or a hundred, they are simply telling the one switch what to do, and it does it. That also means you need to run fewer wires (no more travelers!). The caveat here is that you MUST have power to each switch, in some cases you won’t have a “hot” box for a pre-existing switch box, just a traveler, so you might have to run power to the remote switch box (or wire up your traveler wires to be power wires instead of travelers). If that just confused you, best consult an expert or a professional.

The Plan

I plan to replace most of my light switches with Insteon switches, some will have Insteon timers, and I have a couple power outlets that I think I’ll replace with Insteon outlets.

Once that’s all done I’ll hook the whole thing up to my computer at home (and likely open some ports on the firewall/router) so I can view the state of the lights and be able to turn them on and off remotely. Yeah, I’m a geek.

Progress so far

I order my first dozen switches and replacement box covers (I’m going from toggle-style switches to paddle-style).

Phase one was proof of concept. So far I’ve wired up two “virtual” 2-way circuits and 10 or so direct control switches. Nice and easy.

Phase two is completing the few more direct controls and adding in the four timers and outlets.

Phase three entails replacing my 2-way and 3-way switches that control the core of my home (exterior, entry, front room, stair well, kitchen, dining, and front room lighting). That’s a total of 9 switches, 8 of which are multi-way.

Once phase three is done, then it’s on to phase four: automation. Automation comes in two types: buttons and computer stuff.

The computer software will tell the exterior lighting to turn on at dusk for 3 hours, then turn off; and turn on 3 hours before dawn and off at dawn.

The buttons will let me be lazy and with one button push I’ll be able to turn off all the lights in the house before bedtime. I won’t have to go hunting down where the lights are that have been left on and take care of them one by one.

I’ll keep you posted.

Windows Live Writer does that. It’s a desktop application (that runs on Windows, obviously) that lets you publish content to virtually any blogging engine. I’ve personally tested it on

• WordPress 1.x
• WordPress 2.5.x
• BlogEngine.Net
• Community Server 2007
• SubText

What’s more, you can configure any number of blogs in it, so you can write an article and publish it one blog, then write another article on another topic in the same UI, and publish it to another blog. Quick. Easy. Fast. Consistent UI. Just the way I like it.

It also has a plug-architecture that allows developers to write “stuff” that makes doing “things” easier (is that generic enough?). For example, you can have a plug-in that allows you to insert a Windows Live Map object, or a YouTube video object. Cool.

So what would I like?

Here’s my wish list:

• Add the rev, class, and id attributes to the anchor dialog box

• add common XFN, license, common MicroFormat values, etc. to the field’s drop-down lists

• Devote a section to the in the right-channel
• Add an hCard (with or without Geo)
• Add an hReview
• Add an hCalendar / event
• Markup with abbr

How about you?

What would you like to see included in Windows Live Writer?

Establishing a Brand without looking online first

As web developers, we’ve all had clients that say they want their website to be named something they shouldn’t.

I’ve had clients get all their production, tooling, letterhead, stamps, fliers, posters, and just about everything you can think of already produced and then say “we want this website” only to learn that their domain name has been taken by someone else (often-times a competitor) who won’t let it go for any price. “That’s okay, we’ll just slap ‘my’ in front of it and people will find us.” Sure they will… or they’ll find your competitor… or the domain squatter than has links to several of your competitors.

Picking bad domain names

Some domain names are just bad. The brand-name might not have been bad, but put it in the context of the web, and an entirely different landscape is painted. We’ve all seen the lists for notoriously bad domain names out there, but I never thought I’d get my own clients asking for equally bad domain names.

A client may pick a domain without seeing what come up in search engines when words in that name are searched. Do you really want mothers of young children going to Google to look up swing sets based on your brand name, and being met with “alternate lifestyle choices and activities” or atypical examples of anatomy. Forever after they’ll associate your brand with what they saw in that search. In this case it was like setting up a daycare in the red-light district. Take these for example:

• www.myBigStuff.com
• www.ExtremeSwing.com

Using an available name

Another client had established a few storefronts, had print material in circulation, lighted box signs hung on the building, lighted pole signs in the ground, and wanted to offer a B2C e-commerce site with the same name. The domain name was available, but we kept getting hung up ordering the SSL certificate from VeriSign/Thawte. Why? The business running the store was a different name. That’s usually not a problem, you can file for a DBA (doing-business-as) certificate for just that purpose. Or, you can just get a business license in that name.

The problem? Another company in the state had a similar name, and they wouldn’t issue a DBA certificate, and without signoff from the State, the City wouldn’t issue a business license in that name either. Either one is needed to get an SSL Cert in that name. We ended up having to use the parent company’s name for the purposes of the SSL certificate, which isn’t what we wanted, and cost us an extra week+.

An ounce of prevention

Like the old adage says: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

It’s probably been more than 30 days and the store you bought it from won’t take it back (or you lost the receipt – or left it in your car and it turned black).

You call customer support, but there’s “nothing” they can do for you. Now what?

Time to write a letter (not an email or fax)

Do a little research (that’s the tricky part). Find out who the President or CEO of the company is, if you can’t find that, go for the Chairman of the Board of Directors. You probably will find their name/title on the “About this Company” page on their website, but you might have to dig. Many publicly traded companies but their Financials online, guess what’s in there? Yup, the names of the people that can actually do something for you.

How should you write your letter? Take this real-life story, for example:

I purchased a half-dozen Sylvania brand compact fluorescent vanity bulbs for my bathroom in September 2004. Recently one decided not to turn on anymore. I tried it in a different socket, no-go.

I called Sylvania: “sorry, nothing we can do.”

I wrote a letter to the president of the company:

Dear Sir:

I purchased some of your vanity CFLs in 9/04. Today one of them failed. Their packaging said they should last for 5 years. The bulb has the following numbers on it [every scrap of detail I could get off the bulb]. The local retail won’t replace the defective lamp because it’s been more than 30 days since I purchased them.

Since it has been less than the advertised 5 years, please send a replacement lamp to the address listed above. If you would like the defective lamp returned please include a pre-addressed, postage-paid mailing label and appropriate packaging.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

That’s it. A few minutes of your time, forty-some-odd cents in postage, and then you get to see if they do anything about it.

In this instance, sure enough, Osram Sylvania sent me a hand-addressed box with an apology letter it in and THREE CFLs to replace the one that failed. All I asked for was one, but they went the extra mile.

Now, you might ask, isn’t that taking advantage of the company? Not in my opinion. I notified the person responsible for the operation of the company about a defect in one of their products and detailed how he/she could make it right. They (or their staff) decided what would be the best way to do it. One replacement lamp would have worked, but they sent three. What company name am I going to look for next time I’m buying stuff? You guessed it: Osram Sylvania.

Another example

I had the same problem with some early model GE CFLs, the big, ugly ones. When one failed within the 5 year advertised life span I wrote their president a similar letter. The response: here’s a coupon for $5.00 off. That’s not bad, but my local reseller doesn’t sell GE bulbs in anything less than a 3-pack, which costs more than $5… and I have to make a trip and find the bulb… oh, and look, there’s all their competition’s products, too… such as: Sylvania… hmmm, why don’t I pick up some of those, too. Which led to the story above…

What did Sylvania do differently? “We’re terribly sorry, sir. Here’s a replacement, you don’t have to go to the store, you don’t have to buy more of our stuff just to get a replacement (and you won’t see any of our competitor’s product while you’re out there)."

From a business perspective, which tactic worked better? GE’s or Sylvania’s? I’ll let you form your own opinions on that one.

Another example

I got a Remington shaver/trimmer for father’s day a while back… It would “bite me” and leave nick marks (a row of neat little scabs all in a row). Needless to say, that hurt. The local reseller wouldn’t take it back without a receipt. I decided rather than junk the whole thing to package it up and send it to the president of Remington with the request: Please refund my money and take this shaver off my hands. Their response: sorry, here’s another one. Guess what, it “bites” too. At least they tried, but I won’t be buying Remington again.

Summary

To all the companies that I’ve named herein, thank you for your attention and assistance in "resolving" the various matters that I’ve detailed. Even those that didn’t resolve my issue in the manner I would have liked, just paying attention to the customer is a appreciated. Thank you.

To my readers, when you’ve been wronged, don’t just take it. Spend some time, let the head-honcho know, and tell him/her what it will take to make things right. Ultimately this will help the company (at least it gives the company the opportunity to take corrective measures, whether they do or not is up to them).

At the end of the letter state you request for resolution in a non-retaliatory manner: "To rectify this situation please send a replacement to the address above. If you would like the defective unit returned please include a pre-addressed, postage-paid mailing label. Thank you for your consideration in this matter."

You’d be amazed how sending a paper letter to the head-honchos office will get results more than talking with the trained monkeys.

Additional Reading:

• http://msmvps.com/blogs/alvin/archive/2007/06/21/kitchenaid-architect-ii-electric-double-oven-fraud.aspx
• del.icio.us Tags: customer service,activism,warranty,replacement

Here are my tips, in no particular order:

• Don’t drive: No, seriously. If you can walk or ride your bike instead, do it. If taking the train/bus/trolley/monorail is an option, do that. Combine trips, etc.
• Track your MPG: If you don’t know what your miles per gallon are, how can you improve? www.FuelEconomy.gov is the government’s answer, but you’ve got to log in to their site to record your fill-ups. Try www.FuelFrog.com instead; they let you send a message via Twitter (SMS, email, etc.) to @fuelfrog (with your miles, price, and gallons) and they’ take care of the heavy lifting for you – easy and quick.
• Inflate your tires: Take a look at the sidewall of your tire, it’ll tell you the tire’s maximum PSI. That’s the amount you want to put in. Don’t worry about what your auto maker says, go with the tire manufacturer. This might give you a little harder of a ride (you’ll feel more of the road) and your handling might be a bit sloppier, but you won’t be pushing “squishy,” gas-wasting tires across the pavement.
• Get rid of baggage: the more weight you have in your car, the more gas per mile you’ll gobble up. Take out the golf-clubs, the backpack, the salt, anything that you don’t need for 90% of your trips should go. This includes the baggage that you’re carrying around your mid-section. If you’re 50 pounds overweight, your car has to haul that around too. Why not loose some?
• Get the right gas: Your car might ask for “premium fuel” to be used. See if regular old 85 octane will work. According to Wikipedia, the octane rating of a spark ignition engine fuel is the knock resistance (anti-knock rating), it is a measure of the autoignition resistance, or, to put is less techie, it is a measure of anti-detonation of a gasoline or fuel. That means if you put gas in your car and the engine “knocks” or “pings” you need a higher octane fuel. If it doesn’t knock or ping, try the next level down and repeat the process (just make sure you do it on a near-empty tank so you’re not getting some half-and-half octane mixture). If you’re running on too low an octane it’ll hurt your fuel economy. HOWEVER, if you’re running too high an octane you’re effectively throwing money away.
• Use the right oil: You wouldn’t think this would make a difference, but it does. The heavier weight the oil, the more resistance your pistons have (and the lower your fuel economy when your engine block is warming up). Using the lowest weight oil that your car will take will minimize the friction and warm-up time. They even have some zero-weight oils that you might be able to use in your car. Some people have seen better efficiency with synthetic oils their "standard" counterpart. It’s a bit more expensive, but can last up to 3-4 times as long (especially when coupled with a filter that’s designed specifically for synthetics).
• Coast when you can: pay attention to traffic and traffic lights. When traffic is slowing take your foot off the accelerator but don’t press on the breaks. If you have to use your breaks to slow down you didn’t take your foot off the accelerator soon enough — or that jerk just cut you off. Try not to use your breaks, even with regenerative breaking, you’re still losing energy.

Let me know how that works out for you!

Additional Reading:

• http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Get_More_Than_40_Miles_Per_Gallon_Without_a_Hybrid

What some were calling a UFO has been “officially” deemed a “Daytime Fireball” (a very rare phenomena) over the mountains between Salt Lake City and Tooele: A meteor big enough and close enough to be spotted when the sun’s still out.

KSL (a local news agency) had several e-mails, and so did NASA’s ambassador to Utah, Patrick Wiggins.

I don’t know what’s scarier:

• a meteor so big and so close that you can hear it
• an actual “flying saucer”
• the fact that NASA has an ambassador to Utah

According to Wikipedia, “Overclocking is the process of forcing a computer component to run at a higher clock rate than it was designed for or was designated by the manufacturer…”

The theory behind overclocking is that any physical component has the potential to run faster than its original specifications given certain precautions are taken.

For example, if I want my 3.0GHz processor to run faster, I can do that. However, it will run hotter than it’s designed to, which means it will burn out quicker. I can account for that by getting a more effective heatsink/cooler. This helps pull the excess heat from the processor so it doesn’t burn up. I can take that further by lapping the processor and heatsink to help dissipate the heat from the processor into the heatsink more efficiently… and use a more efficient thermal compound between the two.

The concepts between that and “employee overclocking” are similar. Whether I work an extra 10 hours/week, or extra hard for the 8 hours/day that I’m on the clock the effect is basically the same: more work is accomplished, but at what cost. More than 40 hours/week costs my employer 1.5 times my normal pay for each hour worked. There’s a disincentive to my employer for working me more than 40 hours/week.

Pushing for more productivity out of a single 8 hour day, however, carries no fiscal disincentive with it, it just causes the employee to “burn out” faster. Hopefully the employer lets the employee accrue vacation- or personal-time (PTO), and covers a good-deal of health insurance expenses.

What’s more, once overclocked, a process starts to do some “weird” and “funny” things. It throws random errors, can hang or lock up, some processors have logic built into them that deliberately down-clock (or “under-clock”) when they get too hot. Due to the interconnected nature of the processor to other components on the motherboard, an overclocked processor can effect RAM, the video card(s), and other system components. Eventually, it can cause data corruption on the hard disk.

An “overclocked employee” can “malfunction” the same way. The more “overclocked” an employee is, the more PTO that employee will need to “cool off” and eventually, that employee will use up more health-benefits than a non-overclocked employee. Technically, these are fiscal disincentives to the employer, but they’re so far removed (cause from effect) that more often than not, the employer will see this a shortcoming in the employee(which can cause the cycle to repeat more frequently) rather than a problem with timelines, management, processes, expectations, etc.

Back to the original analogy: when you overclock your processor to get some extra speed (“productivity”) out of it, you MUST take preventative precautions (lapping, etc.) or you’ll burn it out.

When it does burn out, who do you blame? The person that overclocked it, or the chip?

A man wearing a T-shirt depicting a cartoon character holding a gun was stopped from boarding a flight by the security at Heathrow’s Terminal 5.(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7431640.stm)

Okay, I can see being suspicious about someone if they have a picture or phrase depicting a violent or offensive act, but honestly. If I had a Glock t-shirt on that shouldn’t be considered offensive. If I had a picture of a person, neck in a noose, hanging from a tree that said "one less (insert racial category here) to worry about," then yes, that would be offensive/inappropriate.

The wearer, one Mister Brad Jayakody said "It’s a cartoon robot - what threat is it to security or offensive to anyone at all?"

Yes, that’s right. It was a picture of what looks to be Optimus Prime from the Transformers. Was he fighting Megatron? No, he was just standing there, weapon in hand. That’s it.

A BAA spokesman said there was no record of the incident and no "formal complaint" had been made.  "If a T-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it, for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it," he said. "We are investigating what happened to see if it came under this category. If it’s offensive, we don’t want other passengers upset."

If I were them, I’d be more worried about pissing off a 40-foot alien robot that can camouflage itself as a vehicle.

Watch for yourself at http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=104763

This is a fun, fast-paced design position working with other creative professionals.

The ideal designer will be proficient in Flash and Actionscript, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Premier, Encore, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, plus additional skills in HTML, JavaScript, XML or PHP and must be familiar with web design protocol.

Silverlight/Expression Designer knowledge is a plus.

A good working knowledge of, Audition, Encore and Cinema 4D is a plus. You need strong conceptual abilities and typography skills.

You must