Summary

Ken Yarmosh outlines the problem in this post: for efficiency purposes many of us want to turn of the email firehose while still maintaining connectivity for other work.

This hack works for me until Google Labs comes up with a better solution.

In a nutshell, run Gmail in another browser within a virtual machine environment and turn off internet connectivity in that environment.

How I Did It

My Environment
I’m running a MacBook Pro and use Safari as my primary application 95% of the day. I have VMWare installed and run Windows XP. In XP I use Chrome as my primary browser.

Steps
1. Get VMWare and Windows XP if you don’t have them already. Setup XP in a new virtual environment.
2. Download and install Google Chrome in XP.
3. In Windows XP log into Gmail and go to Settings->Offline->Enable Offline Mail for this computer. Install Google Gears.

4. In Windows XP Start -> Control Panel (switch to classic view) -> Network Connections
Drag “Local Area Connection” onto your Desktop to create a shortcut.
5. Double-click “Local Area Connection” shortcut when and Disable/Enable whenever you want to go offline.

It Works…Mostly
There are some annoyances – for instance switching back and forth between operating systems. And dowloading files and clicking on URLs in XP requires some cut-and-pasting.

But in the end it is totally worth it. If you are an entrepreneur time is everything.

Better Ideas?

If you have a better approach – such as how to do it under a real operating system like Linux – leave me a comment and I’ll link to it.

Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body … so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain …
-Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

If you follow my blog you’ll notice that I have moved from twitter skeptic to enthusiast.  And recently I have been struggling to explain why I think twitter is a bigger evolution in human communication than facebook, myspace, or anything else in social media.

“Why should I care that someone is getting up or going to the bathroom?”, they ask, just I originally did. And, quite frankly, you shouldn’t, just as I don’t.  But I think something bigger is happening on Twitter:

Twitter is a human/machine information revolution because Tweets are memes.

By memes, I mean fundamental units of discrete information that can be rapidly evolved, shared and aggregated.

I find myself forced into information compression with Twitter.  Heck, I can even sum-up most of my blog posts with a Tweet and the overall point wouldn’t be lost on the audience just as a Haiku can convey the same point in a fraction of the words of a short story.  For instance, this blog entry in 140 characters:

Twitter= info revolution b/c tweets=MEMES: shared, evolved, aggregated like genes. Bigger/different than MySpace, Facebook..

Actually this is only 124 characters, leaving me 16 characters to spare for a URL link created by is.gd.

When I ask people whether they are on Twitter I typically hear something like the following:

• “I’m not on Twitter but I’ve heard of it and don’t really get it.  What is it?”
• “How is Twitter different from blogging/delicio.us?”

Twitter is a microblog, a quick thought, a digestible blurb that is easy to type and easy to absorb by people who are constantly context-switching.  Of course it isn’t a substitute for a blog post, a novel, a movie or a poem – and I still enjoy all of these.

Tweets represent the fundamental units of human thoughts, and as our tools get better and better for aggregating them and using them practically I predict that everyone will be touched by Twitter one way or another.

Don’t believe me?  Check out what practical things you can already do with these memes.

But this blog post is theoretical and it doesn’t explain why I invest my time and energy into building relationships on Twitter.  I do think Twitter has a very practical purpose and I’ll explain it on my next blog post.

Undoubtedly one of the silliest aspects of these early stages of Web technology is the URL. I’ve always thought that searching painfully for something small, typeable, memorable, brandable, and – most of all – available is an excessively tough way to start a company.

It has lead to all types of bizarre practices including domain name squatting and odd company names based on nonsense words.  Finding a good URL is one of the most frustrating activities in launching a new company, and I was thrilled to find ManyWheels.com available 6 months ago.

The tyranny of the URL may be fading with the advent of Google Chrome search box in the same line as the URL.  I now find myself less concerned about remembering the exact URL for company since typing and searching happen in the same user experience.

Last night I attended what has become my favorite local event for DC-based entrepreneurs and start-up junkies. Frank Gruber pulled off another successful event at TECH cocktail DC 3.

As all of us know, these events are about the people.  I find that the atmosphere at TECH cocktails attracts real entrepreneurs, angels, and people that I actually want to meet.  Plus it tends to be smaller and a bit more personal than many local networking events that mostly attract service providers (nothing against them…I just want to meet a variety of people).

In any case, I’d like to do a quick shout-out for a few of the folks I met:

GeniusRocket:    Might be able to help me build the creative foundation for my new start-up, ManyWheels.

Planypus:  Seems like a good service for organizing an un-conference or SMS mobs.

Great event and hope I can make the next one.
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With Yahoo’s announcement last week that it will begin allowing widgets on its pages we see the beginnings of the formal breakdown of “web site as destination”.

Consumers want the ability to consume data and use services everywhere online and sites will have to buckle to this pressure.  Yahoo’s announcement is clearly a reaction to Facebook’s move towards becoming a development platform.

Historically, sites have built financial models around attracting consumers to a destination, keeping them there as long as possible, and maximizing financial return from this activity.

In the near future all sites will be forced to identify the value-added services they provide consumers and give them the tools to use these services anywhere.

-
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I ran a test on my driving habits by comparing the MPG from driving “normally” and modest hypermiling in my Subaru Outback.

I minimizee the break, coasted where possible, kept distance between cars in front of me, accelerated slowly, and turned off the car at long red lights.  I wasn’t religious about it and on several trips reverted to my “normal” style.

The result?  20% increase in MPG (about $200 a year).  I didn’t notice a duration difference and felt much more relaxed.

I also found myself paying more attention to the road ahead and anticipating upcoming events.  I have no doubt that it is a safer driving practice.

I can’t say that I found a downside to hypermiling, and even if I arrived a few minutes late it is an easy tradeoff for safer, cheaper, more relaxing driving.

Man, I am getting old…
–
Follow Kevin on Twitter

In my previous post I mentioned that I’m now officially a member of the Twitter community.  Since then Twitter has become practically ubiquitous, a mainstream media and social networking channel.  Twitter is here to stay, at least as long as SMS is around and not supplanted by something more flexible.

Some quick advice for my fellow Twitterers:

1. Tweet less.  Seriously.  I am starting to unsubscribe from Twitter feeds for people who simply Twitter too much.  If I log into my Twitter home page and see your icon 5 times on the screen you are unfortunately a candidate for me to stop following.  And even if I don’t unsubscribe from your feed I’ll unconsciously tune-out your truly relevant points when the are drowned out in “…is eating breakfast” Tweets.  I’m guilty of this too sometimes…
2. Think of me when you Tweet.  I follow people on Twitter because I want to learn new things, keep track of the INTERESTING parts of my friends and colleagues daily lives, and laugh a little.  What do I really like?  Hearing where you are.  Links to interesting pieces.  Interesting blurbs and thoughts from conferences that I cannot attend.  Events in your life.  Requests for help.  I understand that people use Twitter for different reasons: some people just have fun with it and (almost obsessively) post social notes; others have very specific discussions with a small work group of people.  I understand why they use Twitter for these purposes…I just don’t want to follow it.
3. THINK ABOUT WHO WILL READ WHAT YOU WRITE.  I cannot believe how much people (even those my age) will mix the personal with professional on Twitter.  I have had co-workers post truly juvenile, obnoxious things on their Twitter feed.  I often read these Tweets while I’m sitting at work.  If you want to make comments about your social adventures, consider making a personal Twitter feed that is unconnected to your professional profile.  Not doing so really says volumes about your judgment.
4. Use Twitter Search (fka Summize) to track the RSS feed of responses to your tweets.  For instance, I have an RSS feed for “@kevindewalt”.  Thus I will catch replies to my tweets that I would otherwise miss.
5. Introduce me to new people on Twitter.  I’ve done this a few times quite successfully and I’m surprised that it isn’t a more popular practice.  Find a good feed?  Know of someone I should meet?  Feel free to drop a “@kevindewalt meet @MadamX.  You guys both…”

Hopefully I’m not giving folks the impression that I’m not excited about their Tweets.  Indeed, it makes a nice break in the daily routine to hear from bucchere, 8of12 and some of the other people I follow regularly.

But a little “consider the audience” goes a long way in Web 2.0 just as it has in the rest of human discourse.

Ok, ok, I hear ya. I’m about 5 years late to the party on this one. But after some advice from a few people who seem to be pretty balanced and productive in their lives I decided to pick up a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD). You can read about it at Wikipedia or Amazon or at one of the many techie bloggers that cover the topic.

In a nutshell, GTD is a fluid personal management process that operates closer to the way most of us work. Most of us deal with a constant influx of new tasks, dozens of disparate projects at home and at work, and changing deadlines. GTD provides a framework for us to deal with this onslaught.

I doubt that I will ever implement all of Allen’s ideas. For one thing, much of the book focuses on dealing with paper. I don’t handle much paper at home or at work. I typically carry a notebook to meetings and use it to scribble down some hieroglyphics ostensibly posing as English that even I cannot read. So I don’t imagine that I’ll be creating tickler files.

But ultimately I come out of these meetings with “to-dos” for myself that need to be tracked and managed. GTD provides the framework for managing and tracking everything.

I also don’t quite see the point of keeping my email inbox empty. I need to review (in one form or another) email as it arrives. But with desktop search I don’t need to categorize everything into folders. I don’t write down everything everyone says in meetings and I don’t see why I need to categorize every email.

But I can understand why GTD has a cult-like following among techies. It provides a practical structure for organizing our hectic lives into the ways we actually work.

So I’m going to give it a shot.

I have to confess that the first time I heard about Twitter I thought it was the silliest service imaginable. And the second time. And the third. Heck, I even signed up for the site and still thought it was silly. More than silly, I actually figured it would add about as much value to my life as playing video games. I had this vision of my cell phone being flooded with “I’m watching TV” messages.

I have to confess that I’m slowly becoming a believer in Twitter. What ultimately pushed me over the edge? I met some new colleagues who are knee-deep in the trenches of driving organizational change with collaborative web technology. In the course of exchanging contact info they passed along their Twitter IDs.

“Excuse me? YOU guys use Twitter?”

Suddenly I felt old. Past my prime. I had become that guy I never wanted to be: the guy who “doesn’t get it”. In a state of panic I vowed to start Twittering that night and prove to the world that I still have it.

So what have I learned? Well, the jury is still out, but I think this service is here to stay for me. Like most people, I have that occasional observation/stray thought/idea that I want to tell people about. YouTube videos and blog posts are great for communicating a certain level of info, but sometimes I just want to blurt out something. Or pass along an article I read in Wired. Somehow email and blog posts don’t work for this type of communicating.

But the best part of Twitter so far is what I’m hearing about.

I don’t really care what most people are thinking about. This isn’t to suggest that I think most people don’t have much to offer – they do. They just don’t take the time and put forth the energy to think critically about the world.

But there are a handful of friends and colleagues that I really want to hear from. I want to know about the conference they are attending. The new web service they just tried. The cool business idea that popped into their heads. The thought they had while standing in the subway. Why they want to reverse aging.

What could be better than a bite-sized gem of ideas from people I really respect? I found myself actually reaching out to these type of people (it is a small list) and asking them to consider Twittering. Talk about the zealotry of the recently converted.

I don’t think tweets (that’s a twitter message as I’ve now learned) will replace emails, blogs, phone calls, lunches or existing communications. I think it is another way to interact, collaborate, and share.

My feed is at my feed is at http://twitter.com/kevindewalt if you want to follow my ramblings.

As I said, the jury is still out. Maybe my recent obsession with Twitter is just a techie’s version of mid-life crisis, a desperate attempt to show the world I still have it.

I get it, really I do…

If you read my last post on Podiobooks, you’ll know that I’m a fan of the new distribution medium for listening to books. It seems that I’m joining the chorus of people who want to be entertained constantly in day-to-day life. Whenever I engage in a mundane household task I try to catch up on my “reading”.

Scott Sigler pretty much created this space and continues to break new ground. His latest novel, Nocturnal, is once again both terrifying and addicting. His novel takes place in San Francisco and you can follow the plot online with Google Maps.

Yet another example of how the creation and consumption of content is changing so quickly.

Ok, I don’t advocate lots – or really any – violence. But I do enjoy science-fiction and thriller entertainment and have to pass along one of the coolest, little-known sites in the Web 2.0 world.

I’ve recently become addicted to PodioBooks, a site that – as it sounds – has podcasts of authors reading their books. The authors and podiobooks site distribute the content freely and ask for donations to support the author and site.

When I first heard about PodioBooks I expected to find piles of lame content written by authors who could never get a real publishing house to take them seriously. Instead, I found some amazing books that rival or exceed that which I’ve found in bookstores.

In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been surprising. The economics of the traditional publishing model force publishers to go with known authors rather than risk promoting and distributing someone new and unproven. And yet does anyone actually believe that a handful of authors like Koontz and King actually create the best of the best?

Indeed, the Internet continues to destroy the traditional content creation and distribution ecosystem. In its place, new models are emerging and newcomers are leveraging them to build a media audience. Which brings us to the following quote:

This podcast contains adult themes, situations, and Lots – AND LOTS – of Violence!

If you recognize this quote you must be a “junkie” of podiobooks icon Scott Sigler. Scott was one of the first authors to begin releasing his books as podcasts. The audience he developed through this medium ultimately propelled him to #1 on Amazon.com’s horror and sci-fi lists. I found his work to be as thrilling and entertaining as popular novelists like Michael Crichton.

But as good is Sigler is, he isn’t #1 on my list. After listening to 20+ podiobooks, here are my favorite authors:

#5 Timothy Callahan – If you like Star Trek, you’ll like Arwen, a similar space sci-fi drama. The creative story and action compensate for some rather flat characters.

#4 John Klawitter – I didn’t expect to like Devils but I’m glad I gave it a chance. It is a great story and Klawitter keeps the action rolling from start to finish even if the ending was a bit lame.

#3 J.C. Hutchins – If Sigler is King of podiobooks, Hutchins is certainly Prince. The 7th Son Series is a creative trilogy about a set of seven cloned human beings who struggle to save the world from their creators. A great story with constant twists and an unpredictable plot. “24″ fans should love it.

#2 Scott Sigler – The man who needs no introduction. Infection, Earthcore, and Ancestor are absolutely and totally addicting. After listening to the graphic (and absolutely disturbing) description of “Scary Perry” Dawsey tearing an alien organism from his flesh in Infection, I don’t think I’ll ever look at horror the same way. Sigler takes the best from Michael Crichton and the Texas Chainsaw massacre to create some masterpieces. And if you’ve ever imagined what pro football will look like in a few hundred years, you’ll want to listen to The Rookie.

and the winner is….drum roll please….

#1 Phil Rossi

Ok, maybe this contest is a bit unfair. After all, Cresent – his first podiobook – isn’t even finished at the time of this writing. But my-oh-my is Phil Rossi talented. Don’t get me wrong, Sigler and Hutchins are masters at their trade. But so far I haven’t seen anyone who leverages this new distribution medium like Phil Rossi.

Cresent is Blade Runner meets Stargate. Scratch that. Crescent is Crescent.

With flawed, multi-dimensional characters who seem to make bad choices at ever opportunity, Rossi weaves a space sci-fi horror that appears to be written for the podcast audience. I hear the creepy soundtrack in my head even when I’m not listening.

Rossi’s slow, deliberate voice adds to the dark undertone of the tale as the characters bumble about the cold, cruel reality of inter-galactic life on the space colony. At times I find myself pausing the podcast and taking a moment to visualize Rossi’s scenes. As much as I’d like to see Cresent on film, I doubt any Hollywood creation could top Rossi’s descriptions and my imagination.

I’m going to continue to follow Rossi’s career as a podiobook author. It should be interesting to watch this new distribution medium develop along with the career of its prodigies.

A lot of people are talking about Facebook and with good reason. The social networking site is getting traction with both business users and teenagers. When I recently asked a business colleague whether he was on LinkedIn, his reply was simple:

I don’t bother with LInkedIn because Facebook is the future.

I’m not on Facebook. I’ve been to the site a few times and I had to register before seeing anything. I’m sure this is an intentional feature and you can’t argue with success. I don’t explore it because I already spend too much time online and have a long list of other things I’m trying to finish.
If you do follow this space I would point you to a great post by Baris Karadogan on why Facebook may become a hugely valuable online property.

This argument reminds me of the principles in The Gorilla Game by Geoffrey Moore. He describes how Oracle, Microsoft, and Cisco became gorillas as a result of leveraging 3 key forces:

1. The development of open, proprietary standards. This clearly holds true in the case of Facebook as Baris points out.
2. High switching costs. This may or may not be true for Facebook users. Clearly this was a great benefit for AOL in its early days since nobody wanted to give up their email address. To date, the social networking crowd has been those fickle users in the 15-25 year-old category; clearly this is changing.
3. Marketplace economies of scale through choosing a single, dominant platform. Given the lower cost of developing online software applications today, I think it is debatable whether this force will apply to Facebook.

I’ve given up trying to predict the future in the online space – or just about anywhere in life – but it seems hard to believe that Facebook cannot reach market dominance without leveraging similar forces.

In any case, don’t be surprised if I write about my experience on Facebook in a future blog post.

Lego Millenium Falcon Stop Motion

This video may be the most creative art I’ve seen on YouTube. Lego always conjures great images of the innocence and creativity of my childhood. The combination of the pace of development and the music brilliantly adds to this experience, and the ending sequence captures the thrill of play and wonder.

Sometimes I long for these simple days…

KQED has a great, brief overview video on Nanotechnology and its promises. “Nanotechnology” is a very loaded, over-hyped term which becomes almost useless in discussions without some larger context.
I like to think of Nanotechnology in two broad areas:

• Creating new material properties from modifying the atomic structure existing properties.
• Building new “machines” from the ground up based on engineering at the nanoscale level.

KQED does a nice job of explaining both while giving a general introduction on the topic.

In case you haven’t seen the recent news, Netflix has moved beyond shipping little red envelopes of DVDs. They are now slowly rolling out a Video-on-Demand (VOD) solution. If you have a Netflix account but don’t yet have the option, try this clever trick to get it working. Here is my experience to date.

The service is a snap to setup on your computer. If you have a broadband connection, Windows, and IE you simply follow the instructions on the screen and everything downloads just fine. In a few minutes – and on the first try – I was able to get “Jackass” running on 3 different computers in my house. On future business trips where I can find a broadband connection, this service is a no-brainer.

Seeking a bigger challenge, I wanted to see how easy it was to get Netflix running on my 32″ CRT HD TV. My expectations were low: I expected a lot of frustration with limited payoff. Actually it was lower than that. I didn’t really expect to get it running at all before giving up. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.

I didn’t buy any new parts or components and used the following:

• Dell laptop (~3 years old),
• 80211g wireless network,
• Broadband cable connection through Comcast,
• An old S-video cable,
• My linksys wireless game adapter (just to boost the signal – my laptop and wireless router are 3 floors apart).
• A pair of old battery-powered external speakers.

After making sure my broadband connection was up, I connected my laptop to the TV via the S-video cable. I also connected the laptop to the external speakers. After flipping through the selection, my wife and I picked Sherrybaby and sat down to watch the flick.

The picture was as good as DVD quality – really. I don’t think I would have believed it myself, but it was amazing. The sound was ok – I didn’t bother to try and hook it up to my stereo system, but this would have improved it greatly. Since this is a relatively easy problem to solve, it doesn’t concern me much.

The only problem was a slight line that scrolled through the picture from bottom to top, an error from the refresh rate I assume. Certainly nothing worse than the quality I get from cable.

The experience was good enough that I’m motivated to finally create a media PC. I don’t relish the thought of dragging my laptop to the TV each time I want to watch a movie, even if the setup was a snap.

Was there a downside? Well, yes, actually. A big one. The selection is currently horrible. I know all VOD offerings have suffered from this problem because studios are still unwilling to release a lot of titles to this channel.

Netflix is definitely on to something, and it is a matter of time before the word-of-mouth starts spreading and entrepreneurs begin selling devices to overcome the hardware challenges. For the service to truly take off it needs an appliance as simple as a DVD.

Given the cost of Netflix, I can’t wait to ultimately dump Comcast and begin watching the movies I want to see, when I want to see them. I suspect it will take several years for Netflix to get the license rights, but the service will be compelling when they get a larger selection.

Comcast should be really, really scared.