I’d like to let everyone know that WordCamp Nashville is coming April 21, 2012 to Watkins College of Art, Design & Film (9AM-4PM), and you can now get your tickets, apply to be a speaker, or become a sponsor. I’m very excited about this as I love WordPress, am involved with this WordCamp and Nashville meetup group as an organizer/volunteer. Most of the websites I build (including this one) are WordPress based, and I have been involved in this great community for over 5 years now. And did you know: that as of August 2011 14.7% of the top million websites in the world are run on WordPress, and the latest data shows that 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress? So come on out for a day of WordPress knowledge in Nashville!
Official WordCamp Nashville Press Release:
WordCamp, a one-day event on April 21, will introduce new users to WordPress as well as offer tips for more experienced hands. Tickets are available only from our ticketing page. Tickets are $20 and attendance is limited to 250.
Speakers will address issues for beginners, such as setting up their first site, and advanced users, such as using WordPress for e-commerce.
Local WordPress users and businesses who are partnering with the WordPress Foundation are putting together WordCamp Nashville, one of a series of WordCamps held by fans of the software throughout the world. The local event will be held Saturday, April 21, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in Nashville’s MetroCenter area.
WordPress is among the most popular and powerful publishing platforms available for bloggers as well as companies wanting to make maximum advantage of their online presence. It’s free, and users don’t need to write code to use it.
Recently, with the release of version 3.0, WordPress has moved to help manage and power sites that belong to big, household names, including major brands, country music stars and professional athletes. WordPress powers more than 70 million websites, half of which are hosted on wordpress.com.
For more information on WordCamp Nashville sponsorship or corporate involvement, call John Housholder at 615-618-7287, email him at john@ahsodesigns.com. For camp and speaker updates, check back here and follow @wordcampnash on Twitter.
For more info and to signup to attend, speak, or become a sponsor please visit:
Lastly, for a high level overview on how great WordPress is, here is Matt Mullenweg (WordPress Founder) giving his “State of the Word 2011” Keynote at WordCamp San Francisco last August.
Something that always gets me furious is this debate about taxes, debt and the deficit in American politics. The very mention of increasing any taxes or closing tax loopholes for the wealthy is met with a Republican firestorm of accusations about class warfare, socialism, and job killing. Nobody likes paying taxes. That’s a given. But something must be done about our debt and wasteful spending they say. Taxes and other forms of government income is literally the only way these problems can be solved. Spend less tax money. Bring in more tax money. Pay off debt. Simple. A friend of mine on Facebook recently quoted a statistic that the US government pays $2.1 BILLION a DAY in interest on debt. Wow! Let’s take care of that shall we?
I REJECT the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a teacher or a plumber is class warfare”
-Barack Obama 2012
Compare with:
We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. […] Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?
– Ronald Reagan 1985
Further comparison in video form. Note – video does not include the Obama quote above because that is a recent quote and this video was made sometime last year.
So if Obama is on the same page with the almighty conservative Demigod action hero Ronald Reagan 27 years ago during his presidency of legend, then what’s the problem here? Could it be the messenger and the “Goonies never say die!” climate created by Fox News & Conservative talk radio. Nooo…that can’t be it! Now I don’t like Reagan, and you may not like Obama. But can’t we all just pay our fair share and shut up?
Tonight I became a material witness in a Pinterest debate on Facebook started by Google’s Don Dodge, which ultimately ended up with a screenshot of my inbox on The Next Web. Don is Google’s Developer advocate, and I have a startup, so I befriended him on Facebook a while back. I jumped into the debate on his post with my screenshot.
To boil it down from my viewpoint, it appears that Pinterest, which has now been dubbed the fastest growing site in the history of the Internet, has been using some misleading email practices. What seems to be happening is that when one of your Facebook friends joins Pinterest, it automatically triggers an email to be sent to you saying that friend is now “following” you on Pinterest. My guess is to get you to come back to the site and follow that person, and ultimately spend more time on the site because I’m thinking: “Hey, more friends are on Pinterest! Sweet!” But what was found by Don Dodge, myself and many others, was that we never explicitly followed these people, yet emails were sent to friends saying that we did. It’s just misleading, and a breach of users’ trust. They seem to be trolling their users for lack of a better term.
Ultimately this ‘fakeout’ may be one of the mechanisms that has helped Pinterest grow so big so fast, and that’s why it really feels shady. Couple that with the other scandal that revealed them to be using affiliate link clickjacking for a revenue source on people’s product ‘pins’ and it starts feeling really shady to users who were in the dark even though it was in their Terms of Service. Maybe it’s not Zynga Scamville, Groupon IPO accounting, or Yelp! alleged extortion shady, but it looks bad nonetheless.
Now I want to say that I’m not a Pinterest hater. I see the appeal of the site even through the jokes about it being a site where you waste tons of time, that it only appeals to middle age, midwestern housewives blah, blah blah. The bottom line is that it’s a nice place or way to organize and share links about your interests. It’s feels like what Del.icio.us should have become, but with a better name, prettier design and a focus on sharing. It’s getting huge and driving alot of traffic to people’s sites. And that is great. But as Brad states in the TNW post, these SPAM, and linkjacking issues need to be addressed ASAP to make their users happy. I have not left Pinterest. I’ve only pinned a few things yet and really wanted to just check the site out. I have to know the new hot technology. But for now I have turned off all email notifications on my end. But I do wonder if they’re still sending fake emails to my friends on my behalf?
Pinterest emails from my inbox, clearly showing Don Dodge "following" me when he did no such thing. I doubt any of these people explicitly followed me.
There’s no doubt that what interest-aggregation site Pinterest has managed over the past few months is spectacular. Recently reaching the milestone of 10 million users, the site has …
Since being forced into adulthood a dozen or so years ago, I’ve grown into a foodie & home chef, a beer & wine enthusiast, and lastly: a coffee snob. For a few years of my adult life, I had no idea how to make a good cup of coffee. As a new hire at my first office job I made that awful Folgers/Maxwell House pre-ground crap out of a huge can. 10 scoops, into a paper filter into the Bunn office coffee machine + tap water = a consistently awful pot of Joe. After I started making some money I began frequenting coffee shops like Starbucks just about every day. I love the coffee at coffee houses as much as the millions of us who go to them daily, but about 6 years ago after realizing how much cash I was dropping at the coffee shop, I reasoned that since I can already cook pretty much anything, why not just learn how to make great coffee at home too? I’ve done plenty experimenting over the years and now confidently make coffee exactly the way I like it.
Equipment & Process
First you need proper equipment. As far as coffee makers are concerned, that’s always a debate among hardcore coffee fans. I use a Cuisinart automatic drip* style coffee maker, but you should use what you find suits you best, be it a manual drip pot, french press, percolator, or automatic drip machine like I use. All of which can make great coffee, and have their benefits. Here is an excellent blog post I read recently by Tech Crunch founder Michael Arrington about “A Tech Guy’s Version Of The Perfect Cup Of Coffee“.
I agree with Mike’s solid advice and confess that I was blown away specifically by Philz & Blue Bottle, and also enjoyed Peet’s while visiting San Francisco last August. However unlike Mike I don’t have that sweet on demand hot water system, and I really like my auto drip coffee maker* as it is convenient, and the thermal carafe keeps our daily 10 cup pot of coffee (enough for 2 people) hot for about 2-3 hours without using extra electricity for the warmer that can burn the pot, and ruin good coffee. I have gone through 2 drip coffee makers in 6 years. But as you’ll see, that up front cost is nothing compared to the cash you save by making your own coffee every day.
You need to grind the beans yourself and only do so right before you brew the coffee. If you buy it pre-ground, or grind up an entire bag at once to store, the coffee immediately starts getting stale and losing flavor. Grind as needed. Period. I’m also on my third grinder, which I picked up after Christmas. It is a Cuisinart and is my first burr mill grinder*. I’m very happy with it so far. It consistently grinds the coffee evenly and just the way I want it, is well made and these grinders are the style you see in most coffee houses. I will urge you to not even bother with regular blade style coffee grinders as they are inconsistent, messy, and break. I prefer to grind my coffee somewhere between fine and medium range. I like my coffee pretty strong, but not espresso strong. If you’re using a drip coffee maker like me, make sure you clean it regularly, change the water filter in the coffee maker when required, and always use cold, filtered water.
Coffee
After trying tons of different coffees of all price levels, bean variations, regions, brands, and roasts since starting home brewing, I have concluded that for me, and for the price, Eight O’Clock French Roast is some of the best coffee I’ve found to get my morning going. It’s legit and better than alot of different, more expensive coffees I’ve tested. Sure there are plenty of expensive varieties that are marginally better. But I like medium to dark roasts, and this one is right in my wheelhouse. I’m an Amazon Prime* member and as of this writing, I get a 36oz bag (size of 3 standard bags) delivered once a month for about $13 using Subscribe & Save. Amazon also has many other brands including Starbucks available for Subscribe & Save. I’ve gone Amazon crazy the last few years and save myself time and money by subscribing to regularly scheduled shipments of things I know I’m always going to need such as: paper towels, toilet paper, laundry & dish detergent, soap, shampoo, deodorant, garbage bags, razors, protein bars, dry cereals and more. In addition to free 2 day shipping there are also lots of other benefits to Amazon Prime*. Here is a great blog post by entrepreneur Jason Calacanis about “The Cult of Amazon Prime”
Eight O’Clock French Roast Coffee 36oz*: $13 on Amazon Subscribe & Save delivered once per month, or a $15 one time purchase (free shipping to Amazon Prime members)
Cream, Sugar, Sweetener, Flavored Syrups, Paper Filters, etc.: $20 per month
Total Monthly Expense: $33 per month
Compare to:
A Starbucks Venti Latte Every Day For 30 days: $150 (assuming $5 spent per day) X 2 people = $300!
My Total Savings :
$267 per month x 12 months = $3204 per year!
So after the initial investment of my coffee maker, filter and grinder, I save approximately $267 per month or $3204 per year over a daily Starbucks (or similar) habit for myself and my wife. I could probably get the finest beans I could find and still save a ton of cash, but I think I’ve found a winner with my go to Eight O’Clock French Roast*. Now we do still go out for coffee from time to time and grab the occasional latte, cafe au lait, mocha, or macchiato, at a coffee shop if we’re on the road or have business meetings. But we usually work from home, make killer coffee and have no desire to hit up Starbucks.
So there you go. You just saved yourself up to $3200 a year on coffee with minimal sacrifice in quality.
(You’re welcome)
– Jeff
P.S. Please don’t end up like rockstar/coffee addict Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Them Crooked Vultures) here in “FRESH POTS!”
*Disclosure – These links are Amazon affiliate links (it will help pay for my coffee habit)
Pissed off Obama, Hipster Barista & Drink All the Coffee courtesy of http://troll.me
Chrysler won the all important commercial Super Bowl last night with the stunning and inspirational two minute “Halftime In America” commercial starring Clint Eastwood. They have now gone two for two using the same formula and “Imported From Detroit” tagline that won the hearts and minds of Super Bowl viewers last year with a similar spot starring Detroit’s own native son Eminem (Click Here For Eminem Super Bowl Video). Both commercials were great uplifting, chill inducing spots that convey a powerful message about recovery that most Americans want to believe.
Many noted Republicans have shit all over this commercial on the airwaves and various internets today by labeling it a pro Obama, pro auto industry bailout political campaign ad. Now of course anything pro America has to be construed by Republicans as pro Obama during an election year. Republicans are finding every way to paint the president as a failure. No matter what good has come out of the Obama administration, the Republicans will never give him a bit of credit. That’s just modern left/right politics in a presidential election cycle.
Fiat CEO Sergio Macchione has even roundly rejected claims that the ad was political in any way, but was rather a universal positive message for all Americans about the US, Detroit and auto industry comebacks (Fiat is now Chrysler’s parent company after Daimler-Benz offloaded them in 2009 during the Chrysler bankruptcy). But the CEO’s claims have not kept the wolves at bay. Nor has the fact that Clint Eastwood donated his earnings from the commercial to charity. The right wing media is using this anti bailout quote from Eastwood to attack and paint Eastwood as an Obama loving corporate sellout:
“We shouldn’t be bailing out the banks and car companies,” actor, director and Academy Award winner Eastwood told the Los Angeles Times in November 2011. “If a CEO can’t figure out how to make his company profitable, then he shouldn’t be the CEO.” – Clint Eastwood
Sure this could be considered a contradiction. But the ad is not quite specifically about the success of the auto bailouts. It showed imagery of people from all over America recovering from recent hardships like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, BP oil spill, etc. Eastwood is an admitted Libertarian, but has said that he agreed with the message of the ad. And I for one believe that Clint Eastwood doesn’t do ANYTHING Clint Eastwood doesn’t want to do.
Also to be clear, the auto bailouts have proven to be a success. And to give credit where credit is due, the auto bailouts were initiated under Bush, but molded, negotiated and enacted by Obama as one of his first acts of business in an attempt to save millions of jobs. Both Chrysler and General Motors have paid the government bailout loans back, and the newly reorganized General Motors is now the biggest automaker in the World…again. The same success can’t be said for Bush’s TARP bank bailout plan. But I digress.
Regardless of your political leanings, this was a great commercial with a great message starring one of my favorite actors/directors of all time. Like many Americans, I was genuinely moved. Now the trolls need to STFU and stop ruining this like they ruin everything.
I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that it’s a bad idea to piss off Dirty Harry.
Nook Newsstand Billboard Ominously Perching Above Magazine Rack at Barnes & Noble
We all know traditional print media is dying, but I never thought it was so close to the end of the line until this week. My sister texted me that the product my Father has been working on for the last 3 years which we are about to launch (HammerHeadHousing.com) was featured in the latest issue of GM High Tech Performance. I had to head out for some errands anyway, so I figured I’d grab a copy while out and take some pictures of it for our website and facebook page. This task was easier said than done. Mind you I haven’t bought alot of magazines the last couple years as I am a web guy who knows all the popular car websites and I have an iPad. I live just outside of Nashville and went to a Kroger, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and Target in my neighborhood. I finally broke down and went to a Barnes & Noble nearly a half hour away in Murfreesboro, TN and found no copies of this magazine. They did confirm that the magazine shipped and would be there on Thursday. But I wanted it NOW!
Even though tons of newspapers and magazines are going out of business, in my experience the automotive & motorsports markets or niches traditionally lag behind the mainstream about 5 years. Which I’ve always felt was odd in a sport or hobby that is so technical. But after my 2+ hour magazine hunt proved fruitless, I believe those 5 years are now up. I finally just texted my sister to see if she would loan me the magazine for my photos. Basically my conclusion is that unless you are one of the top 2 or 3 most popular general automotive magazines, you’re no longer going to be on display at any mainstream stores. You HAVE to be subscriber, and advertiser supported and have a killer website to survive. The website is now more important than the print publication and if you really want to remain in the “Magazine” business you NEED to be in the iTunes, Nook & Kindle stores. It is no longer optional or up for debate.
My Industry Experience
As Internet director for the International Hot Rod Association from 2002-2010 I managed the web properties and took IHRA into the world of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and I even made sure @IHRA was the first Motorsports sanctioning body on Twitter. I took our bi-weekly publication Drag Review Magazine online at the end of 2007 using a print to web service called BlueToad. We still printed the magazine, but I really lobbied with management to take it online. After we started using BlueToad for the web magazine, the iPhone, Android phones, and of course the “revolutionary” “magical” iPad debuted and got traditional publications excited and talking about it as their savior. Shortly after IHRA started using BlueToad they had taken all of their customers’ publications and made them touch friendly for mobile devices. That was a huge plus. BlueToad now also offers dedicated apps for publications to bring them into the iTunes appstore, Newsstand, and Android Market. I left the IHRA following the 2010 race season. Without getting too specific I do recall that the readership of the online version of Drag Review was fast closing in on the tipping point of surpassing the print version’s readership with a lot less overhead in both time and price.
In 2004 I also made a deal with motorsports classified site RacingJunk.com to move our classified ads from the magazine to the web before we lost that revenue stream like so many other publications did. Craigslist killed the easy money classified revenue stream in Newspapers and local “trader” type publications. RacingJunk is now a 24/7 global motorsports marketplace. Not only are classifieds dead, swap meets are dying too. Racing Junk, it’s competitors and vibrant enthusiast community sites (forums) have really put the hurt on classified ads and display ads in the automotive niches. Web banner advertising may require more clicks, but it is certainly measurable, and you can speak directly to your customers.
Silver Lining
Blogs, forums, Facebook and Twitter are here to stay. YouTube and other online video options are fast replacing the traditional network and cable models. There is still a place for traditional print style publications, but that place is the iPad and Kindle. Everything is going mobile and away from the desktop. Smartphones & Tablets will become the dominant computing and media consumption environment for the masses. The disruption has already happened and right now we are heading into the next golden age of content. Anyone who wants to talk about their interests online, can do so and reach the entire world instantly and via a mobile device. Publishing has been permanently democratized.
The silver lining I see especially for the automotive, motorcycle, powersport, and motorsport enthusiast niches is that alot of the new professional and labor of love publications saw that the writing was on the wall a while ago and got a head start. There are big general automotive blogs like Autoblog & Jalopnik. In the niche space there are companies like PowerTV Media, who has built a network of 8 sites (so far), and have a robust offering of online display and video advertising options for the performance and aftermarket industry. They also boast nearly 700,000 facebook fans for their properties, which really boosts their syndication. Also Bangshift.com is a bright spot for the future of hot rodding. There are a ton of other great enthusiast blogs, forums, and other websites that fill the needs formerly filled by print magazines. They have risen to power using great daily content, user generated content (comments, forum posts, photos, videos, etc.), apps, online video, social media syndication, and truly measurable advertising systems.
Source Interlink Media (Formerly Primedia, Formerly Petersen), owner of GM High Tech Performance and almost every major print automotive publication, has been in the web game for a while now too, but I’m not convinced they have that technology first focus. It seems to still be about print subscriptions. But they have enough of a following and the power to switch gears to a technology first mindset, and could probably do very well.
This meme image of “Insanity Wolf” boils the SOPA debate down to its bare essentials. OF COURSE it’s a horrible idea to give media companies the option to legally block sites via DNS just because they say so. DNS is what makes the Internet work. Let’s not mess with that. The result of legislation against the open Internet will only create ever more underground activity known as darknets, and the media companies will never really kill piracy. They can only mitigate it. SOPA/PIPA is literally Pandora’s box for Internet freedom. The nuclear option if you will.
What happens when a company decides to invoke SOPA/PIPA on a technicality because of user created content on an up and coming competitor’s site? The door would be open for that to happen. We already have the digital millenium copyright act to protect copyright holders. But if media companies truly want people to stop pirating their content, they simply need to make it easier to get content online. Stop fighting Netflix at every turn. Put all your TV shows up on Hulu/Hulu Plus with no expiration dates, and no device blocking. Make your music available on Spotify, Rdio, Mog, Rhapsody, iTunes, Google, Amazon, etc. The market has spoken. People are willing to pay for content on the Internet, and even willing to endure commercials. Every day you don’t do this, you’re losing money and now you look like an asshole for supporting legislation that hampers the open Internet.
Thousands of sites including Wikipedia are going black today to protest, and show what the Internet could look like if SOPA/PIPA were enacted. It’s scary.
Please check out Google’s info on how to get involved in the fight along with a great infographic today you can find here:
Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful
regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs
already oppose SOPA and PIPA.
In late 2009, like many longtime Verizon Wireless subscribers I jumped into the world of proper smartphones with the original Motorola Droid (after a short stint with the awful Windows Mobile based Moto Q). I had wanted an iPhone, but Verizon didn’t have one. I thought about a Blackberry, but Android was quickly gaining a cult following and I have always been a fan of Google and devout user of Google services. After the iPhone’s awful data issues on AT&T, the Droid was branded by Google, Motorola, and Verizon as the anti-iPhone with the memorable “Droid Does” commercials (voiced by master thespian James Vanderbeek), and it was the first iPhone contender on the reliable and fast Verizon 3G network. If AT&T had their shit together for the iPhone with their data and customer service, Android’s rise to power might never happened. I was in love with the Droid and had a good honeymoon period with my Droid. But then the Nexus One & Nexus S (not on Verizon) and many other newer, better, faster Android phones came out. I rooted my Droid to keep up. Overclocked it. Moved my apps to the SD card because I kept running out of space. It currently have it running gingerbread, but with each software and app update geared toward newer phones my Droid seemed to slow down, get hotter, buggier, and have ever worse battery life. A friend of mine gave me his old Droid battery (after he upgraded to a Droid X) so I always had a spare with me toward the end. All of that being said, I still love/loved my Droid. It still works and will live on at home as a WiFi music player with a few apps.
Then the iPhone 4 came to Verizon in early 2011. As my Verizon 2 year contract counted down I was debating an iPhone 5 or the 4G LTE Droid Bionic. Ultimately the iPhone 4S came out and wasn’t all that exciting to me. The Droid Bionic came out late and I considered it, but then there was the announcement of the Galaxy Nexus. A pure Google Nexus phone. Dual Core. Android 4.0 Ice Cream sandwich. On Verizon 4G LTE. So I lived with my Droid a few months more, and after a big unveiling in China, more rumors, more delays, early reviews, and a European launch, it finally landed in the US December 15th.
G-Nex meets OG Droid (from Droid-Life.com)
Launch Day & Initial Impressions
I had a meeting in Cleveland on launch day and afterward I found the nearest Verizon store where I snatched up the phone, and an extended battery (I just wanted a spare & it was only $25). In the parking lot not 15 minutes after logging into my Google account and syncing up most of my apps, the Galaxy Nexus got a system update from Google. After the horror stories of waiting months for OS updates to other Android phones, I was experiencing first hand, one of the big reasons I wanted a Nexus phone in the first place. And a big reason for Android over iOS. Even the iOS5 WiFi updates on my iPad are annoying. Why should I need a computer AT ALL to update my device? But I digress. The Galaxy Nexus feels leap years faster and is so much more polished in both hardware and software compared to my Droid. The phone itself is super fast. The screen is large and gorgeous. A high quality video on YouTube or Netflix looks amazing. Those software buttons fade away and you get all of the beautiful screen’s real estate. With all the talk about phone sizes, even though it’s big, it’s not too heavy and feels good in my hand. One handed use is not an issue. Ice Cream sandwich is really polished and very smooth. ICS is not necessarily as spartan as iOS, but I WANT widgets and options. It definitely feels like Android is finally maturing. A unified OS for phones and tablets is a good plan moving forward. In that regard iOS excels, and Google knows that.
Galaxy Nexus login screen...last known photo taken with my Droid (North Olmsted, Ohio Verizon store)
4G LTE Signal And Signal Issues
The Cleveland area where I first setup the phone has really good 4G reception (although I did no speed tests), but as I got out of Cleveland to Norwalk, Ohio where we were staying with my in-laws, there was no 4G connection to be had. Same in Muskegon, Michigan when we went to stay with my family for Christmas. I really love the phone, but I had early issues with signal. The lack of 4G coverage seemed to throw it into a sort of confused state. 3G was always pretty good in both of these more rural areas on my Droid, but when it got into 3G areas, it lost ALL data connections at random times. Even WiFi stopped working. The only fix was a reboot, or switch airplane mode on/off to reset the signal. I spent some time in the sticks, but still think this issue needs to be dealt with ASAP as it is their flagship phone. I also now know that over the holidays, Verizon has had several NATIONAL 4G LTE outages. Some of my problems coincide with those outages, but I can’t be 100% sure. Also here is a tip. If there is no 4G signal to be had, turn it off in your data network settings. Nothing is worse for the battery than being on the edge of a 4G/3G network area. You’ll burn it up in 4 hours. We came back to Nashville on the 28th of December and other than 1 of the Verizon outages, I’ve had solid and unbelievably fast 4G LTE service. When connected to a solid 4G signal, I’ve clocked 10.5 hours of battery life with normal use with the stock battery. 13.5 with the extended battery (phone calls, browsing, apps, light video use). I have since been told that my signal problem is mainly because Android baseband problems. It’s not perfect, and is therefore why there is not an LTE iPhone yet. But I can deal with this sometimes if my speeds are almost 20x faster than 3G as seen below:
Ridiculous 3G vs. 4G LTE Speed Difference
Phone quality and clarity is very good, but there is a low volume issue. There is an app called Volume+ that fixes it, however Google should release an update. Also sometimes I hear a vibration. Don’t know for sure if it is the speaker or software. All of the Google apps look and work better on the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich. Games, Videos, everything looks amazing on this HD screen.
Path 2.0
My favorite new app which looks gorgeous on the Galaxy Nexus is Path 2.0. Path is a mobile based “private” social network (as you are limited to only 150 friends). Path was created by former (early) Facebooker Dave Morin, and lets you share photos, location and status. Now that’s not necessarily new, but this really feels like a more human social network. Check it out at: http://path.com
The Beautiful Path App. Hey look it's @Shirls!
Any.Do
Another app that’s new to me is Any.do. It’s a task/to do list/reminder app that syncs seamlessly with Google Tasks from Gmail. It has voice commands, and it will add tasks automatically. Say if you miss a phone call, it will auto create a task that says to call that person back. And it looks great. You can choose a dark or light layout. And when you’re done with a task, you just swipe through it. I know that this will really help me become more productive. It feels like the Google Tasks app that Google should have built. And apparently so does Google’s Eric Schmidt who is an investor in and advisor to Any.do. Find out more at: http://www.any.do
Any.do task list with the dark layout
Google Wallet
Another app that I consider revolutionary that takes advantage of the Near Field Communication feature of the Galaxy Nexus (also on the Nexus S) is Google Wallet. Basically you connect Google Wallet to your Google Checkout and bank account or credit card (also select gift cards plus loyalty cards from retailers and restaurants). The app is blocked by Verizon because of some bullshit reason related to a mobile payment alliance they are building. But if you do some searching you can find it on some of the popular Android blogs and forums. If you download the app, and signup, Google will preload a gift card with $10. Once setup, you can use your phone to pay for stuff simply by waving it at a NFC friendly pay terminal. Most commonly those terminals are known as Mastercard “Pay Pass” terminals which have been around for a few years.
Just before starting our annual New Year’s resolution of healthy eating (lost almost 20lbs last year), I made a late night fast food run around the corner to Jack in the Box. I noticed they had a pay pass logo at the drive through window credit card reader. Now I just installed Google Wallet last week & got a $10 gift for signing up so I told the girl at the drive through that I wanted to test something out. I got out my Galaxy Nexus , put it up to the reader. It vibrated, beeped, and opened Google Wallet without me clicking anything. I entered my pin, accepted the charge and payed for my food in seconds. The girl running the drive through was all like “I’ve never seen anyone do that before. What phone is that?!” I felt like Marty McFly. So thanks for making me the cool kid at the drive thru and for my final holiday cheat meal Google. Which BTW was a Jumbo Jack, curly fries and diet Dr. Pepper (and ultimate cheeseburger for the wife) Very cool. I love technology 🙂 Check it out at http://www.google.com/wallet/
Google Wallet Receipt. Thanks for the Jack In The Box Google 🙂
Google Music
Google Music has been around for a while now, but it just recently came out of beta. My Droid was so slow when not on WiFi (and from running my tons of apps it couldn’t really handle), that I couldn’t make good use of it outside the web interface on my computer. 4G LTE , Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus changed all that. For those not using it yet, Google Music lets you upload up to 20,000 songs from your own collection to Google Music which you can then listen to from the web or your Android device. I’m not sure but I think Apple has it blocked from iOS devices, unless it can be done from the browser. Anyhow I set up the Google Music Uploader to monitor my iTunes folder and it automatically uploads all my music to Google for safe keeping and easy access. Set it and forget it Ron Popeil style. Now I just open the app and all my thousands of songs are right there in the app to stream. 4G LTE streams instantly with no hiccups. WiFi does too. 3G gets choppy. Also Google sells music through the Android Market, and they’re doing some really neat stuff with Artist pages. The app looks amazing on the Galaxy Nexus and I really like how you can create “Instant” playlists based on any given song you might be playing. I also really like how you can control music from the lock screen, which is new to Ice Cream Sandwich. I was using Amazon MP3, but this is now the best Music app I’ve used on Android.
You can signup at: http://google.com/music
Google Music Controls At The Lock Screen
Final Verdict
If you want the latest and greatest from Google, do get the Galaxy Nexus
Some people love iOS and their iPhones and the Apple experience. I was on the fence, but am a fan of both OS’ for different reasons (I do own an iPad and love it). I heavily rely on Google services like GMail, Docs, Calendar, etc., but the things I’m addicted to in Android are Google Voice Integration and Maps Navigation. Giving those up for iOS were a hard sell. And honestly the iPhone 4 was disappointing to me outside of that great camera. Siri isn’t all that impressive to me, and people are falling out of love with it every day. So overall I’m glad I held out for the Galaxy Nexus. It’s a seriously impressive piece of hardware. Ice Cream Sandwich is a nice step forward for the Android OS, and the issues I have been experiencing, I’ve been assured will be resolved. Verizon has the iPhone now, so their hard hitting ‘Droid Does’ advertising campaign is long gone, but if you’re like me and are an original Droid guy that wants to stick with the stock crapware free Google experience (on Verizon), then this is the phone to get. It’s been said by some (non Apple loyal) tech journalists that this is the best phone out there and I would have to agree.
At it’s most basic level, the #OccupyWallStreet movement is a protest against greedy corporations influencing and corrupting politics and government for their financial benefit and many times to the detriment of the 99% of people who don’t control the majority of wealth. Wall Street is where corporate greed “lives” in a matter of speaking, so that is the core of the worldwide protests.
I just wanted to quickly bring this back to the top of my blog in light of people’s freakout reaction to the new Facebook layout which just launched (which happens with every update). I just want to reiterate that while you may want to abandon Facebook, you probably won’t. However it’s still a great idea to control your own content if Facebook falls out of fashion someday (which also probably won’t happen since they’re now closing in on 1 BILLION users).
– Jeff
So this week Facebook launched a couple new features: Subscribe and Smart Lists. I’ve activated both on my profile and they’re pretty cool. Subscribe allows people you aren’t friends with to subscribe to your public updates. This is similar to following people on Twitter and is good for people with a ton of friends or people who have started a fan page to consolidate the fan page into one account. Smart Lists basically groups your friends into predetermined lists automatically based on relationship, workplace, location, etc. and allows you to choose to share to certain lists, or publicly to anyone. I normally just make everything public. It makes organizing friends a little bit easier and both of these features allow you to control who gets to see what you’re posting. Some of this seems like a direct copy of what Google+ is doing with their Circles feature.
Facebook is the biggest player in this game with close to 800 million users at the time of this writing. Things change and Facebook needs to make those users happy, so they must keep advancing the product. Sometimes that means taking competitors ideas and trying them out. Facebook has been known to “borrow” alot of things, and they’ve also been know to try things out and ditch them if they don’t work. The wars between the different social networks make good tech headlines and movies, but are not really ours to fight unless you work at one of these companies.
One of the issues that is of your concern is privacy and Facebook has had alot of criticism and controversy surrounding what they are doing with your data and personal information. I am not going to quit facebook or any of these social sites because so many people I know use them, and they are great communication tools. But if anyone is going to benefit from what I am posting on the Internet, it ought to be ME. I am agnostic when it comes to social networks and long ago decided to use them all to my personal and professional benefit. I will keep the bulk of MY online content here at MY personal website, and broadcast it out to the social networks in hopes of bringing people back HERE. This way I control my content and have a permanent record of it for myself or others to browse in the future. My Facebook and Twitter feeds go by so fast that I don’t even remember what was posted yesterday, let alone a year or two ago. Web companies rise and fall. Who knows, Facebook might go the way of MySpace or Friendster in 5 years? I want to control my destiny with my own site. I’m going to tell you why I think WordPress is your best option to do this.
WordPress started out as a free open source blogging platform that began about 8 years ago. Fast forward to August 2011 and now 14.7% of all the websites on the internet use WordPress as a content management system. Being an open source project as opposed to a for profit company means that the WordPress code belongs to everyone can use it or modify it as they need, as well as contribute to the project. Thousands of people contribute to the success of WordPress because they love it, use it, or make money from it in some way. This means that it’s survival in one form or another is pretty secure, so you can build a WordPress site with confidence. Another thing is that WordPress can import content from almost any other prominent content management system, and you can export as well if you want to leave.
This site here is a WordPress blog with a lightweight theme called P2 from Automattic. I haven’t prettied up the design yet, and I don’t really plan to do all that much to it. P2 turns a regular blog into the equivalent of your own personal Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus profile. When logged in, the P2 theme will allow you to post right to the site without even going into the dashboard, just like you can with Twitter, Facebook, Or Google Plus…except it’s all yours. There are also great Mobile Apps for posting to your WordPress site for iOS, Android, Blackberry, WebOS, Windows Phone, and Nokia. WordPress is also working on responsive design making things even better for posting and viewing on any device without using a dedicated app.
With P2 you can post a status message, a blog post, quote, or link, without getting into the dashboard.
You can create your own WordPress blog easily on most any web host for next to nothing, but P2 is also an available theme to use on your free WordPress.com blog if you choose to build your site there. Keep in mind that if you host your own site, you have more control with widgets, plugins and other aspects of your site that WordPress.com may not allow. But if you’ve never had your own site, WordPress.com is a great place to start. And if you want to move up to your own self hosted blog, you can export your WordPress.com blog and import right into your own self hosted WordPress site literally in minutes.
So let’s say you follow my advice and get a WordPress blog running with P2, and start posting away. Now how do you get those posts into your Facebook & Twitter accounts? There are many ways to do this with different WordPress plugins, external services, etc. But I think that currently the easiest way to do this is with the RSS Graffiti App on Facebook. This app lets you take the RSS feed of your blog, input it into RSS Graffiti and then every time you post to your blog, it automagically syndicates it to your Facebook Wall & Twitter Account. It also works with Facebook pages. There is nothing yet that I know of that does this for Google Plus, but I’m sure something will come along soon now that the API is open. Perhaps RSS Graffiti will build that into their service.
Also if you have a bigger personal site or community site and want to start your own Social Network, WordPress can cover you there too as the WordPress community has also created an open source plugin called BuddyPress that allows you to create your own social network right inside of WordPress. But I’ll save that subject for another blog post… 🙂
![We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. [...] Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?](https://i0.wp.com/jefflee.co/files/2012/02/reagan-taxes.jpeg "reagan-taxes")
After trying tons of different coffees of all price levels, bean variations, regions, brands, and roasts since starting home brewing, I have concluded that for me, and for the price, 
