Alex LuftA piece of the web dedicated to me… by me!

In my shopping for the new 3G iPhone, I discovered something I didn’t know: even the least expensive individual plan for AT&T ($69.99/month) includes unlimited in-network calling for AT&T customers.  The plan doesn’t have unlimited nights and weekends, however.  These realizations came as a big surprise, since I found this out in a situation I wouldn’t have wanted to.  And that’s all I’m sayin’.

By the way, I pre-ordered two iPhones (8GB) from an AT&T store on Tuesday: one for me and one for Ari.  Needless to say, the experience was sub-prime.

I am in the process of redesigning business cards for my personal training business - FunctionAll.  The creative question of the day is whether I should fill the card up with as much information as possible or keep it very simple and intriguing.

If I take route the vebose route, I would be filling the card up with some (if not all) of the following items:

• Company name
• Company logo
• My name
• Physical address
• Phone number
• Email address
• Website
• Information about the company and the principles behind it
• Services provided by FunctionAll

On the other hand, I would like to convey intrigue and curiosity about the company and its services and would do this by only including:

• Compay name
• Company “tagline” (motto)
• Company logo
• My name
• Website

The idea here is that I am able to convey information about my company and its services in much greater detail on the website, thus being the only place to go for the recipient of the card.  This would be analagous to Apple’s press invitations to special events: no details except the location of the event, its date, and an ever-so-slight hint (in “tagline” and/or image forms) about the event’s contents.  Sounds good so far, doesn’t it?  Well, it does have downsides.

As a friend explained to me earlier today, some (if not most) people just want to grab a card, find out what the company is all about, and make the decision right then: are they interested or not in the company and its services?  Do they keep the card or throw it away at the closest possible recycle bin without anybody seeing them do it?

I will try out both types of cards and report which one is turned out to be most successful.  Lucky for me, I can experiment in such ways.

It was dark and we met in an alley.  I pulled out the item and was handed four paper bills: three $100s and one $50.  Holding the cash in my hand, I thought: “What if it’s fake?”  Read on… Read the rest of this entry »

Check out this 2003 email from Bill Gates.  It came as part of turned over material from the Microsoft antitrust suits.

My favorite part:

“So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?  So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.”

I though that last line doesn’t end with “You all should be fired for this.”  It’s good, though, that usability and quality are paid attention to by even the “top man” at the software giant.

Anyway, hit up the read link after the break of this great memo that gives a little more insight into Bill Gates’ personality and management style. Read the rest of this entry »

This falls into the category that everybody tries to avoid on a daily basis (the category of officially sucking): I’m getting a gallery of pictures up on TechNest Report: some awesome pictures of me replacing the hard drive on my aging iBook G4 and having to remove almost 40 screws.  I am looking for a WordPress picture gallery plugin that integrates with Flickr.  You know, one that pulls said pictures from Flickr and displays them using a nice AJAX interface such as Lightbox.  I thought I have found a perfect one: Flickr album by Joe Tan.  But it’s nigh impossible to configure Lightbox with it, even thought the developer states it’s possible.  So my quest for the perfect WordPress Flickr gallery continued and I really have found the perfect one: Slickr gallery.  This one has perfect integration with Lightbox and the entire plugin is super easy to set up thanks to the developer providing all the necessary files on his site.

And this is where it begins: Slickr gallery conflicts with another plugin I have, ShareThis, which adds bookmarking and sharing options to the bottom of posts.  Basically, it’s either one or the other, since Slickr gallery doesn’t load pictures when ShareThis is enabled.  So now I am exploring all options: revisiting Flickr Gallery and looking at a ShareThis competitor - AddThis.  The problem with AddThis is that, out of the box, the button doesn’t align properly with my theme and doesn’t provide easy customization of the plugin with PHP - all things ShareThis does.

If you have any suggestions, please do let me know in the comments pppplease.

P.S. The reasons why I insist on using Flickr for my pictures are quad-fold:

• I don’t want to wake up one day and see that something “inadvertent” happened at my web host and half of my picture albums have been deleted whereas the other half were cut off 3/4 of the way.  Being one of (if not the) most popular photo-sharing service on the web, Flickr can provide me with the peace of mind that my uploaded photos and sets are backed up across multiple Flickr server farms.  I’m sure that many webhosts have this down as well (I use GoDaddy), but then there is the fact that my pictures are available to view from within Flickr by others (friends, family, Flickr users) and they will stay there no matter what happens to my beloved tech site.
• Tags.  Period.  (no other WordPress gallery service offers this)
• For $24.95 a year, the Flickr Pro account has unlimited photo storage and unlimited photo bandwidth.  Compare that to $150 a year that SmugMug charges.
• The Flickr online service is simply awesome.

If you’d like to see Slickr gallery (and Lightbox effect) in action, I have it displaying my Flickr sets here as of this writing (7/3/2008 19:38 EST).  I don’t know how long it will be up, however.  I will post an update on this blog as soon as I find something better.

Visit my Flickr page here.

Update 7/5/2008: I guess I lied and switched to WordPress anyway…  Tumblr was great, but just not flexible and “expandable” enough for my needs.  It’s great for those who want no-frills web presence, but no for me (I want sidebars, plugins, picture galleries, feeds, and multiple static pages… yeh).

I’ve decided to migrate my Tumblelog to a self-hosted WordPress blog a few days ago.  I’ve set up WordPress but one of my prerequisites was the ability to post be email, as I do here on Tumblr.  Well, to my dissatisfaction, WordPress 2.51 plain SUCKS at posting by email and until that gets figured out, I won’t be switching personal blogs.

Update 7/5/2008: I got the coupon three days after submitting the form.  That kind of sucks for me and is great for DQ since I ended up going anyway without the coupon.  This just gives me another reason to go another time!

So I submit this form at dq.com to join the blizzard fan club just to get the “buy a blizzard, get one free” offer (one for me, one for Ari).  I submit my email address and should have the coupon in my inbox what, 30 seconds later?  Well, it’s 2 hours later now and still no coupon.  Does DQ employ mechanical Turks since they can’t get these emails out in an automated way?  Did they give the Turk a vacation?

PS: I got the blizzard anyway - Heath + M&M; Ariana got one too, alas not for free (Oreo + cookie dough + kit kat).  Yum.  Would have been tastier if one was free.  Well, no pigging out ‘till next week.  Hopefully I’ll have the coupon by then.

Oh, for all those who have not tried or heard of DQ goodness, it’s an eatery/creamery - stands for DairyQueen.

Tishka waking up for what must be at least the 10th time today

Has anyone ever wondered why college professors don’t let their students take home exams after their grades have been posted/announced?  In fact, it goes even further in that the professors don’t hand back the exams - a student must request it.

Is it that the professors don’t want to take the time to make a revision to the exam so that current students don’t pass the exam on to those who will be taking the class next?  If that is in fact the case, then the effort (or lack thereof, most precisely)  on the part of the professor takes preference over student learning.

Students do learn from their mistakes, right?  Right?
What do you think?

Me?  Did I already mention that students should have an easier way to look at the mistakes they made on their exams/tests?  Oh did I?

“No standing”!! Really?
Somebody pinch me!  Is this for real?

Duh…  (I’m still confused)