Web/Tech

  • Market Commentary from June 27th, 2008

    The Dow lost almost 500 points in the last two days.  Longer term, the stock market has been down sharply since May 2; in fact, it has been down five of
    the last six weeks. Several commentators note that the Dow experienced its worst June since 1930.
    Moreover, with this decline, it has also given back all of the gains it made since September, 2006.

    080627 Dow Low Divergence 600p

    Also worth noting is that the Dow just made new lows for the year, entering “Bear Territory” by sinking more than 20% from its October peak.  However the MACD’s downward momentum did not make new lows, even while the index price plummeted. 

    Perhaps more important, though, is that the Index broke below its 28-Year Up-Trend line.

    Dow 28 Year Uptrend 630p

    Also, Bespoke had an interesting chart comparing returns of various international indices.  Here it is:

    0806 Global Return Comparison from Bespoke

    Finally, here are a few of the posts I found interesting this week:

    And a little bit extra …

    • Trading Desks Turn to Video Game Technology to Speed Analytics. (Wall Street & Technology)
    • Your Money and Your Brain (Phil’s Favorites)
    • The Petabyte Age: Because More Isn’t Just More — More Is Different. (Wired)
    • The New Name Game: Internet Naming Rules About to Change. (CNN)
    • Will Brain Downloads will make lessons pointless? (Telegraph)
    • The Philosophy of George Carlin (Financial Philosopher)

  • Snap Shots

    In an effort to make this blog easier to use, I installed a tool called Snap Shots that
    enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia
    articles    , MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and
    Amazon
    products    , display inline videos, RSS, MP3s,
    photos, stock charts and
    more.

    Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having
    to leave the site, while other times it lets you “look ahead,” before deciding
    if you want to follow a link or not.

    Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the
    upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

    Hope you like it.

  • Snap Shots

    In an effort to make this blog easier to use, I installed a tool called Snap Shots that
    enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia
    articles    , MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and
    Amazon
    products    , display inline videos, RSS, MP3s,
    photos, stock charts and
    more.

    Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having
    to leave the site, while other times it lets you “look ahead,” before deciding
    if you want to follow a link or not.

    Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the
    upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

    Hope you like it.

  • Online Meeting Schedulers

    6-12-2008 Meeting Wizard Example 600p
    Have you ever tried to schedule a meeting with one or more people, only to play "dueling calendars"? 

    Even one-on-one lunches can be tough without shared calendars.  Getting groups together is considerably more challenging.

    Most people understand the hassles of playing telephone tag, and email can be the same. To organize a meeting or event, it might seem that it's easy to simply send an email message. But more often than not, you need to know when people are available. For example, if you're inviting six people, you need to wait for six separate responses, manually collate them, and hope you've got a match, then confirm with all the details. If you don't get a match, you have to start all over again. Moreover, there's just too much room for confusion and error in this process. 

    Well, I just found a few tools that help solve these problems.

    MeetingWizard sends the invitations and collates all information and all responses in one place. Another advantage is that it organizes and standardizes the event information so that important details aren't missed, and users become familiar with a standard request-response interface. This makes scheduling go much more smoothly.

    Another tool I found is called "Presdo" and excels at understanding natural language phrases,like: next Wednesday or two weeks from today.

    6-12-2008 Presdo Example 600p
    I also liked Presdo's user interface, which includes the ability to search for locations and include map links in the invitation.  Here is an example.

    6-12-2008 Presdo Example 2 600p

    Two others worth checking-out include Tungle and TimeBridge.

    So, let me know what you think.

  • Online Meeting Schedulers

    6-12-2008 Meeting Wizard Example 600p
    Have you ever tried to schedule a meeting with one or more people, only to play "dueling calendars"? 

    Even one-on-one lunches can be tough without shared calendars.  Getting groups together is considerably more challenging.

    Most people understand the hassles of playing telephone tag, and email can be the same. To organize a meeting or event, it might seem that it's easy to simply send an email message. But more often than not, you need to know when people are available. For example, if you're inviting six people, you need to wait for six separate responses, manually collate them, and hope you've got a match, then confirm with all the details. If you don't get a match, you have to start all over again. Moreover, there's just too much room for confusion and error in this process. 

    Well, I just found a few tools that help solve these problems.

    MeetingWizard sends the invitations and collates all information and all responses in one place. Another advantage is that it organizes and standardizes the event information so that important details aren't missed, and users become familiar with a standard request-response interface. This makes scheduling go much more smoothly.

    Another tool I found is called "Presdo" and excels at understanding natural language phrases,like: next Wednesday or two weeks from today.

    6-12-2008 Presdo Example 600p
    I also liked Presdo's user interface, which includes the ability to search for locations and include map links in the invitation.  Here is an example.

    6-12-2008 Presdo Example 2 600p

    Two others worth checking-out include Tungle and TimeBridge.

    So, let me know what you think.

  • Where Does All the Spam Come From?

    Yesterday I got over 400 spam e-mail messages.  Either I spend way too much time in questionable chat-rooms, or the technologies they use for spam, viruses, worms, etc., are getting better and more efficient.

    As for me, I use an anti-spam product called Cloudmark.  It is the best I've seen; so the spam wasn't a problem … just a growing trend.

    On a positive note, new technology is often exploited first in fringe areas (malware, porn, etc.).  I expect that many of the things we curse about the power and sophistication of these techniques are soon harnessed to solve many problems and issues that we haven't yet thought possible.

    So, on a related note, it reminded me that I just saw a nice piece on where spam comes from.  Here is the graphic.

    Spam_chart_x600
    Source: MIT Technology Review.

  • Where Does All the Spam Come From?

    Yesterday I got over 400 spam e-mail messages.  Either I spend way too much time in questionable chat-rooms, or the technologies they use for spam, viruses, worms, etc., are getting better and more efficient.

    As for me, I use an anti-spam product called Cloudmark.  It is the best I've seen; so the spam wasn't a problem … just a growing trend.

    On a positive note, new technology is often exploited first in fringe areas (malware, porn, etc.).  I expect that many of the things we curse about the power and sophistication of these techniques are soon harnessed to solve many problems and issues that we haven't yet thought possible.

    So, on a related note, it reminded me that I just saw a nice piece on where spam comes from.  Here is the graphic.

    Spam_chart_x600
    Source: MIT Technology Review.

  • Capturing To Do Items and Ideas to Get Things Done

    080606 notepadAn Old Take on New Ideas:

    How many times have you tried to remember something that you knew you
    were forgetting? As I get older, it seems to happen more often. I'm not
    sure if it's because of age, or because I think more and do less.
    Nonetheless, I love having a process to capture, store, and retrieve,
    relevant information.

    For years I've been "a gadget guy." I'm the guy that waits in line to buy the first hot new phone. I always have the best PDA, the newest laptop. And I constantly try different software to capture ideas, produce mind maps, or otherwise give me a creative and competitive advantage.

    Surprisingly, the newest addition to my arsenal of productivity tools is a small pad of paper. Yes, I now carry a small pad of paper in my pocket, and I pull it out to capture ideas, phrases, and to-do items throughout the day. It's quick, easy, and I don't have to worry about it recognizing my handwriting. I recognize my handwriting.

    Throughout the day, I simply write the ideas, phrases, key words – and of course the to do items that I should do, want to do, or want someone else to do.   

    At the end of the day (or when my page is full) I call Copytalk and dictate the whole list into the telephone. A few minutes later, I get an e-mail with all of the items in electronic format. I then copy these and simply paste them into a web application called Toodledo, which is a categorized to-do list accessible online.

    Toodle-do is a great place to help me get things done. It allows me to list each task, categorize it in ways I want, as well as create priorities, due dates, and different tags that you could use for locations or roles. I very quickly ended up with close to 1,000 to-dos sorted in many categories. So when I get an idea on something to write about, or come up with new development projects or things to talk about with friends, I have one place to go.  Best part for me is that when I'm looking for something, this list is easy to search, easy to find, and easy to keep up-to-date.

    All-in-all, it's a pretty good system, and I love how it feels to empty my brain every day.

  • A Better Copy Than the Original

    ClipMate Logo
    ClipMate is a little piece of software that I didn't expect to think much of.
    Someone recommended that I try it, and I did; but without much hope.
    Instead, I find that it's a utility that I use dozens of times everyday.

    ClipMate Window
    The simple description is that ClipMate is a universal clipboard enhancement that works alongside the regular Windows Clipboard and remembers every piece of data (both text and graphics) that you cut, copy or screen-capture.  Once your data is saved in ClipMate, you can select an item and it is automatically placed back on the Clipboard or directly to wherever you select. 

    The author of ClipMate has been updating this program for over 16 years, and clearly
    listens to user suggestions.  The result is mature product that does
    more than I could have imagined.

    For example, within ClipMate you can view, print, edit, reformat, convert to
    upper/lower case, search, rename, and reorder Clip Items.

    There are
    several "heavy lifting" features such as pasting multiple items all at once, using
    Templates, and lots of "clean-up" functions like spell-check, format stripping, removing extra line breaks, spaces and strange
    characters (I call this de-crappifying the document). All-in-all, it does a lot of things well.

    It's a Clip Organizer Too:

    Once you start using it to capture data, you're going to want to find and use it too.  ClipMate allows you to store your clips in different folders, or
    collections, based on how you work, and to set retention rules accordingly. I suspect that many users keep their most-commonly used data in their "Safe" collection, while others spread it out by topic, project, source, etc..  Personally, I have a section for "Templates" that I re-use, Quotes, Things to Purchase, Web Sites, Passwords, Humor, even graphic elements. 

    Beyond basic organization, it is searchable; so I can find
    something that I saved, regardless of where I put it.

    ClipMate can hold tens of thousands of items, and its SQL-based search engine can find them all quickly for you.  Even if you decide to do nothing special with your clips – you'll always have the last 1000 clips at you disposal, ready to paste wherever you need them.  When you're ready to use a "clip", just select it in ClipMate, and it's "loaded" onto the system clipboard, ready for pasting into any program.  And with many programs, you can now drag/drop the clip directly from ClipMate.

    Try it; it's an incredibly useful tool that you'll use everyday.

  • A Better Copy Than the Original

    ClipMate Logo
    ClipMate is a little piece of software that I didn't expect to think much of.
    Someone recommended that I try it, and I did; but without much hope.
    Instead, I find that it's a utility that I use dozens of times everyday.

    ClipMate Window
    The simple description is that ClipMate is a universal clipboard enhancement that works alongside the regular Windows Clipboard and remembers every piece of data (both text and graphics) that you cut, copy or screen-capture.  Once your data is saved in ClipMate, you can select an item and it is automatically placed back on the Clipboard or directly to wherever you select. 

    The author of ClipMate has been updating this program for over 16 years, and clearly
    listens to user suggestions.  The result is mature product that does
    more than I could have imagined.

    For example, within ClipMate you can view, print, edit, reformat, convert to
    upper/lower case, search, rename, and reorder Clip Items.

    There are
    several "heavy lifting" features such as pasting multiple items all at once, using
    Templates, and lots of "clean-up" functions like spell-check, format stripping, removing extra line breaks, spaces and strange
    characters (I call this de-crappifying the document). All-in-all, it does a lot of things well.

    It's a Clip Organizer Too:

    Once you start using it to capture data, you're going to want to find and use it too.  ClipMate allows you to store your clips in different folders, or
    collections, based on how you work, and to set retention rules accordingly. I suspect that many users keep their most-commonly used data in their "Safe" collection, while others spread it out by topic, project, source, etc..  Personally, I have a section for "Templates" that I re-use, Quotes, Things to Purchase, Web Sites, Passwords, Humor, even graphic elements. 

    Beyond basic organization, it is searchable; so I can find
    something that I saved, regardless of where I put it.

    ClipMate can hold tens of thousands of items, and its SQL-based search engine can find them all quickly for you.  Even if you decide to do nothing special with your clips – you'll always have the last 1000 clips at you disposal, ready to paste wherever you need them.  When you're ready to use a "clip", just select it in ClipMate, and it's "loaded" onto the system clipboard, ready for pasting into any program.  And with many programs, you can now drag/drop the clip directly from ClipMate.

    Try it; it's an incredibly useful tool that you'll use everyday.