Health Calculator
We (http://www.dietsinreview.com) have been working on a new health calculator widget. Here is the latest version -play with it and let me know what you think.
Finally Fios!
The internet connection is completely night & day and the TV service is also top notch, much better than our - shaky at best - time warner setup.
New Mackbook Pro?
Not quite, but I did get apple to put a motherboard into my MBP. It was having some real problems with booting up and the screen flickering and after 3 visits to the “genius” bar they finally recognized that there was a problem. It was definitely hard to go without the computer for a week but it is now worth it. The computer feels more responsive (probably just b/c I have been using my old laptop), appears to boot fine, and more importantly works without issue on my external monitor.
Below is a video of what the video card would occasionally do when using any number of applications - it took me showing them that I had evidence that my laptop was broken stunting their standard “we can’t reproduce it” response to get any movement on the issue.
The part that is listed on the service details from apple is “605-1212 SVC,PCBA,MLB,2.4GHZ” - which after a quick search I realized it is indeed a new logic board.
Who’s gonna do it?
10 bucks for something - who is going to try it? www.somethingstore.com
Tshirts from the internet
Maybe the title should be Tshirts about the internet? Either way, every month I get a shipment of dot.com paraphernalia from startupschwag.com. I just received my 3rd shipment and so far I can only report positive things. I liked all the companys they have sent for the shirts and any cool stickers are a bonus. I believe it to be well priced at $15, especially for a web geek like myself! Below is my latest shipment with a tshirt from lijit (blog stats & search company) and the other three have recently been added to my flickr.
Saved by a time machine
Been having major computer problems today. An apple update wouldn’t install correctly, safari, mail.app and finder all seemed to either be acting funny or stop working altogether. The main issue was Safari as it renders messages for mail.app - I couldn’t even launch safari or mail. The first thing I did was delete the preferences for both applications and restarted my laptop. Nope not it. Then I grabbed another copy of Safari and replaced it with my corrupt copy. Nope not it. All safari wanted to do was crash upon starting up. I then went back into time and replaced all of the preferences with versions from a few hours ago. I did this using time machine, which backs up your hard drive once an hour in the background. After a restart everything was completely back to normal! whew. I was starting to think I might have to do a re-install of the OS - just to get safari and mail to work.
The funny thing is - this morning I was telling a co-worker that I have been using time machine for a few weeks now and haven’t gotten any benefit out of it. Now I have.
Testing Justin.TV
Push Play and you should see a live broadcast out of my window down onto Madison Ave. If not then the service timed out.
Watch live video from jiminthebigapple.com on Justin.tv
sorry again about the keyboard reflection.
Google uses paper?
As I was walking to the apple store to get them to look at my flickering laptop display I noticed a sign on a lamp post. I normally disregard these postings but when I saw the google logo at the bottom of the paper. They are apparently looking for usability testers in the area to come into the google chelsea office to play with some new products. All seems fine and dandy but why didn’t they use the web? Paper? On a lamp post? I figured they would be running geo-targetted ads on all relevant gmail sessions. I know if I was google I would be into using every piece of our technology for completely unnecessary reasons - just because its cool. They should be ashamed. 
Internet Power! - 1995
Discover the world of online entertainment! I found this amazing video over at waxy.org.
Terrible time change
Hit up the parties last night.
- Google Party - line was too long to even attempt. Down and then around the block
- Avenue A | Razorfish Party - Pretty sad. They shut down the open bar before the party was over as the waitress said “They ran out of money.” Not exactly the image you want to give off. I guess the 6 billion bill gates gave them ran dry.
- 16bit Party - Had to sneak in the back as they were doing one in one out at the door and the line was thick. The cool thing was they had a freak show. Girl with no legs, elephant man, lobster girl. Some of them even played in the band there. Kinda weird, definitely different.
The panels yesterday were varied. Went to a nice one on creating SEO friendly rich media (flash, video, audio etc..). Interesting stuff as the guy from google was contradicting some common practices on how to serve up different content to search bots than a site serves up to its users. The practice is called cloaking.
Tentatively for today I am going to these panels.
- A/B Testing: Design Friend or Foe?
- Social Strategies For Revolutionaries
- Keynote Interview with Mark Zuckerberg
- Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users
- SEO 3.0: Optimizing Search & Social for 2008 and Beyond
- SXSW Web Awards Ceremony
Utterz.com Moblog Interview
Sitting down in the hallway - Lee from utterz.com walked up and asked if he could do a few second interview with Jeremy, Mike and I to showcase the service. Below you can play the audio from the interview and see the awesome group shot of us sporting our new utterz.com wristbands. Utterz.com lets you instantly post to the web - audio, video, and photos. The quality is so so but I guess that is the trade off for instant access.
Austin is freezing
Just got to Austin and it is 39 degrees and raining here. I didn’t bring my jacket but did pack my flip-flops. smart. We had a bit of turbulence on the way into Austin and the lady next to me was wrestling with her kids to get their seat belt, at which point she turned to me and handed me her 8 month old baby girl. She needed another set of hands and I was the closest. I held the baby for a bit while she got under control and everyone was safe. whew.
Heading out for some mexican food. I definitely don’t plan on making updates this frequent, but will write when I get the urge. I also, if I find the time, wouldn’t mind doing some video blogging - although I think sitting in front of a camera blabbering away is kind of boring.
Impromptu SXSW interview
I am heading down to SXSW in austin tomorrow for the interactive portion of the show. I somewhere marked down that I was going and that information ended up in the hands of Paul Walhus (see previous comment). He wanted to chat about my company Media Refined Inc and my overall view on the tech geek fest.
On another note I am testing out Vimeo and have uploaded the interview to the service. The video appears to lag compared to sound at times but seems to catch up. I think it mostly has to do with the quality of the original. Makes me want an HD camera.
Video below (warning: video is 15 minutes long). sorry about the opening scene nose pick.
Jim Crews Interview - SXSW 2008 from Jim Crews on Vimeo.
Politics?
Uptime 40 days!
Its been 40 days since I have had to restart my macbook laptop. I use and abuse it - but it just keeps going. The last time my laptop rebooted was September 12th.
