Southwest Virginia Blogs

This morning I received a copy of Joseph Rago's article, "The blog mob."  A subscription might be required to see the article.  I think probably the most interesting of Mr. Rago's comments might well be the subheading of the article on the WSJ main opinion page.

"Written by fools to be read by imbeciles."

That is a fairly generalized and inflammatory subtitle for an article written by someone who seems so concerned about the loss of the "checks and balances" of the mainstream media establishment ("MSM").

Certainly the MSM, such as it is, collapsed itself. It was once utterly dominant yet made itself vulnerable by playing on its reputed accuracy and disinterest to pursue adversarial agendas. Still, as far from perfect as that system was, it was and is not wholly imperfect. The technology of ink on paper is highly advanced, and has over centuries accumulated a major institutional culture that screens editorially for originality, expertise and seriousness.

Perhaps my worldview here on the Southern Outer Banks  might be a little different than that of Mr. Rago's view from his WSJ office. I am certainly no enemy of the printed word. As I admitted in my post, "The morning newspaper," I am a newspaper junkie so I often read the WSJ, the New York Times, and the Washington.  I sometimes read a little farther down the food chain and will pick up copies of The Carteret County Times and The Tideland News.  I would hate to find out what our esteemed Mr. Rago would think of them, but he does offer us some clues.

Nobody wants to be an imbecile. Part of it, I think, is that everyone likes shows and entertainments. Mobs are exciting. People also like validation of what they already believe; the Internet, like all free markets, has a way of gratifying the mediocrity of the masses.

Immediately the assumption that I pick up from paragraph is that the only way we in the masses can be gratified is by subscribing and paying money to read the likes of Mr. Rago.  I wonder exactly what enlightenment I might pick up from Mr. Grasso's writing.  Is it that he is highly educated because he likes to use words like "vastation," "logorrheic," and "fatuities."  I actually come way with the opinion that his writing reeks of elitism.

Perhaps Mr. Rago, who is so unimpressed with the world of blogs, is overly impressed with his own importance as an "assistant editorial features editor" at one of the few newspapers in American which actually brings in enough revenue from its online business to take it seriously and not have to worry very much about firing people.  According to a March 14, 2005 NY Times article, "Can Papers End the Free Ride Online?," the WSJ has a total of 700,000 paying online subscribers including me.  That probably makes Mr. Rago's immensely important job fairly safe.

That's actually a rarity in this day and age. However for those businesses and publications not so fortunate, the Internet and even blogs come to the rescue. The same issue of the Journal which Mr. Rago's article even has an audio post about the Internet saving my small business.

Our latest Internet revolution is all about the localization of content.  Now very little of it may be relevant to Mr. Rago, who appears to be a big fish in a fairly well mapped big and prominent pond.  Yet to those of us who either are no longer in that race or never chose to be there, there is a whole world out here where information is scarce and the mainstream media hasn't seen fit to grace us with their enlightenment.

I am admittedly a member of a significant minority.  I use Macintosh computers. That means that while I have the choice of products from many manufacturers whose products claim compatibility, in reality the products may or may not work with my Macs.  While I might not know as much as about editing articles as Mr. Rago, I can generally make technology hum.  I did a fair amount of research before I went out and purchased a new HP AIO Photosmart C6180.  In the end my purchase was a gamble of sorts because information much of it from the mainstream media was scarce and conflicting, and sometimes tainted by the somewhat obvious need to not offend an advertiser. 

My safety net when I purchase the HP C6180 was that while I wanted the product to work on a Mac,  knew that I had a Windows machine to fall back on if needed.   When I actually got the product to work on my Mac, I wrote up a couple of posts, "HP AIO Photosmart C6180" and "The not so reluctant home system engineer," about my experiences.  Now while these posts might not be of much value to Mr. Rago, I suspect the well over 3,000 people who have read just the first one might disagree that they were written by fool to be read by imbeciles.  I apologize for taking the liberty of slightly altering the subtitle for "The Blog Mob."

Those posts about the HP AIO filled in a little but significant crack of knowledge that the mainstream media had chosen to ignore because it would not draw enough readership that anyone cared to track so that someone could be paid to write the review.  Even more significantly it is likely that no one in the mainstream media cared enough to even think of writing the article.

So if we are to judge by the standard that the only things worth reading are those where people have been paid to write them, I would argue that we make our lives immensely less satisfying.  If paying writers makes content better, then I wonder what happened to television and the writers whose content happens to offend my sensibilities.  I am not so sure that writing for free is something we should discourage.  If I am providing my best judgment on a product, service, or an issue and someone has decided that they would rather have my opinion than one from someone who is receiving money to promote something,  who is Mr. Rago to declare that this is just "gratifying the mediocrity of the masses."  Perhaps reading the WSJ's paid articles is just filling the pockets of wealthy publishers.

I could suggest one article for Mr. Rago, "Let the Seller Beware," which is a WSJ review of a book by that name.  Just maybe it might help him understand what's happening on the Internet a little more fully before the mediocre masses completely take over the world.

While my writing expertise or that of many others on the web might not be as financially well rewarded as Mr. Rago's, that does not mean that our opinions and posts are worthless dribble as Mr. Rago seems to hint.

While Mr. Rago's opinion piece has the benefit of being supported by the likes Fidelity and Toshiba. Mine has to supported by the time and effort that I take from earning money. Generally that means I have to believe that what I write has value before I even start.  Then when I start writing, I take it very seriously.  My considerable good reputation is on the line. 

I often write about small businesses which again is an area which the mainstream media has found unprofitable or at least hard to capture except by the likes of Google.  When I find a hidden gem like Kelchner's Cocktail sauce, The Depot at Cody Creek, or Backpack, I write about it.  By the traffic that I see and comments that I receive, I know these posts have some positive impact.

Do I sometimes get ideas from the mainstream media, certainly.  Do I "ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps?"  I don't think so.  Do I exactly know what my niche is?  Probably I don't even care.  I have written things as diverse as "The Menhaden saga and limits to growth" and "The Dippy Egg."  I even chronicled how to plant and care for tomato plants in the hope that the wisdom my mother passed down to me along with what I've learned might somehow be valuable to my kids. 

I added all the links in the last two paragraphs just as a statement that I believe interactivity in media has great value.  It certainly allows even us mediocre masses to do a little exploring on our own without the divine guidance of the mainstream media.

I would also take exception with the following comment by Mr. Rago.

But there is no inherent virtue to instantaneity. Traditional daily reporting -- the news -- already rushes ahead at a pretty good clip, breakneck even, and suffers for it. On the Internet all this is accelerated.

I would argue that there is a certain rigor enforced by doing it now and trying to do it right the first time with only one set of eyes for a safety net.  I try hard to check for facts and just as religiously correct for errors when I find them or they are pointed out to me.  Just because you have the luxury of doing something slowly doesn't mean that it is going to turn out well.  Those of us writing out without pay would love to have a second set of eyes to scan our works.  Often it turns out that it is our readers who find and report errors and omissions which can easily be corrected in our instant world of blogs.

Long ago I learned that wisdom and beauty are where you find them, not exclusively in a gated community where you have to pay to enter.  The idea that all blogs are "Written by fools to be read by imbeciles," makes as much sense as every article which has an editor and a dollar value attached to it is enlightening.

Finally in stating the obvious, "Journalism requires journalists," let me remind Mr. Rago of the second definition for "journalist" which is "a person who keeps a journal, diary, or other record of daily events."

That sounds remarkably like writing a blog. I wonder if that might be acceptable training for the next generation of professional journalists?  It will certainly require a closer look than the one Mr. Rago gave the world of blogs.

This morning I received a copy of Joseph Rago's article, "The blog mob."  A subscription might be required to see the article.  I think probably the most interesting of Mr. Rago's comments might well be the subheading of the article on the WSJ main opinion page.

"Written by fools to be read by imbeciles."

That is a fairly generalized and inflammatory subtitle for an article written by someone who seems so concerned about the loss of the "checks and balances" of the mainstream media establishment ("MSM").

Certainly the MSM, such as it is, collapsed itself. It was once utterly dominant yet made itself vulnerable by playing on its reputed accuracy and disinterest to pursue adversarial agendas. Still, as far from perfect as that system was, it was and is not wholly imperfect. The technology of ink on paper is highly advanced, and has over centuries accumulated a major institutional culture that screens editorially for originality, expertise and seriousness.

Perhaps my worldview here on the Southern Outer Banks  might be a little different than that of Mr. Rago's view from his WSJ office. I am certainly no enemy of the printed word. As I admitted in my post, "The morning newspaper," I am a newspaper junkie so I often read the WSJ, the New York Times, and the Washington.  I sometimes read a little farther down the food chain and will pick up copies of The Carteret County Times and The Tideland News.  I would hate to find out what our esteemed Mr. Rago would think of them, but he does offer us some clues.

Nobody wants to be an imbecile. Part of it, I think, is that everyone likes shows and entertainments. Mobs are exciting. People also like validation of what they already believe; the Internet, like all free markets, has a way of gratifying the mediocrity of the masses.

Immediately the assumption that I pick up from paragraph is that the only way we in the masses can be gratified is by subscribing and paying money to read the likes of Mr. Rago.  I wonder exactly what enlightenment I might pick up from Mr. Grasso's writing.  Is it that he is highly educated because he likes to use words like "vastation," "logorrheic," and "fatuities."  I actually come way with the opinion that his writing reeks of elitism.

Perhaps Mr. Rago, who is so unimpressed with the world of blogs, is overly impressed with his own importance as an "assistant editorial features editor" at one of the few newspapers in American which actually brings in enough revenue from its online business to take it seriously and not have to worry very much about firing people.  According to a March 14, 2005 NY Times article, "Can Papers End the Free Ride Online?," the WSJ has a total of 700,000 paying online subscribers including me.  That probably makes Mr. Rago's immensely important job fairly safe.

That's actually a rarity in this day and age. However for those businesses and publications not so fortunate, the Internet and even blogs come to the rescue. The same issue of the Journal which Mr. Rago's article even has an audio post about the Internet saving my small business.

Our latest Internet revolution is all about the localization of content.  Now very little of it may be relevant to Mr. Rago, who appears to be a big fish in a fairly well mapped big and prominent pond.  Yet to those of us who either are no longer in that race or never chose to be there, there is a whole world out here where information is scarce and the mainstream media hasn't seen fit to grace us with their enlightenment.

I am admittedly a member of a significant minority.  I use Macintosh computers. That means that while I have the choice of products from many manufacturers whose products claim compatibility, in reality the products may or may not work with my Macs.  While I might not know as much as about editing articles as Mr. Rago, I can generally make technology hum.  I did a fair amount of research before I went out and purchased a new HP AIO Photosmart C6180.  In the end my purchase was a gamble of sorts because information much of it from the mainstream media was scarce and conflicting, and sometimes tainted by the somewhat obvious need to not offend an advertiser. 

My safety net when I purchase the HP C6180 was that while I wanted the product to work on a Mac,  knew that I had a Windows machine to fall back on if needed.   When I actually got the product to work on my Mac, I wrote up a couple of posts, "HP AIO Photosmart C6180" and "The not so reluctant home system engineer," about my experiences.  Now while these posts might not be of much value to Mr. Rago, I suspect the well over 3,000 people who have read just the first one might disagree that they were written by fool to be read by imbeciles.  I apologize for taking the liberty of slightly altering the subtitle for "The Blog Mob."

Those posts about the HP AIO filled in a little but significant crack of knowledge that the mainstream media had chosen to ignore because it would not draw enough readership that anyone cared to track so that someone could be paid to write the review.  Even more significantly it is likely that no one in the mainstream media cared enough to even think of writing the article.

So if we are to judge by the standard that the only things worth reading are those where people have been paid to write them, I would argue that we make our lives immensely less satisfying.  If paying writers makes content better, then I wonder what happened to television and the writers whose content happens to offend my sensibilities.  I am not so sure that writing for free is something we should discourage.  If I am providing my best judgment on a product, service, or an issue and someone has decided that they would rather have my opinion than one from someone who is receiving money to promote something,  who is Mr. Rago to declare that this is just "gratifying the mediocrity of the masses."  Perhaps reading the WSJ's paid articles is just filling the pockets of wealthy publishers.

I could suggest one article for Mr. Rago, "Let the Seller Beware," which is a WSJ review of a book by that name.  Just maybe it might help him understand what's happening on the Internet a little more fully before the mediocre masses completely take over the world.

While my writing expertise or that of many others on the web might not be as financially well rewarded as Mr. Rago's, that does not mean that our opinions and posts are worthless dribble as Mr. Rago seems to hint.

While Mr. Rago's opinion piece has the benefit of being supported by the likes Fidelity and Toshiba. Mine has to supported by the time and effort that I take from earning money. Generally that means I have to believe that what I write has value before I even start.  Then when I start writing, I take it very seriously.  My considerable good reputation is on the line. 

I often write about small businesses which again is an area which the mainstream media has found unprofitable or at least hard to capture except by the likes of Google.  When I find a hidden gem like Kelchner's Cocktail sauce, The Depot at Cody Creek, or Backpack, I write about it.  By the traffic that I see and comments that I receive, I know these posts have some positive impact.

Do I sometimes get ideas from the mainstream media, certainly.  Do I "ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps?"  I don't think so.  Do I exactly know what my niche is?  Probably I don't even care.  I have written things as diverse as "The Menhaden saga and limits to growth" and "The Dippy Egg."  I even chronicled how to plant and care for tomato plants in the hope that the wisdom my mother passed down to me along with what I've learned might somehow be valuable to my kids. 

I added all the links in the last two paragraphs just as a statement that I believe interactivity in media has great value.  It certainly allows even us mediocre masses to do a little exploring on our own without the divine guidance of the mainstream media.

I would also take exception with the following comment by Mr. Rago.

But there is no inherent virtue to instantaneity. Traditional daily reporting -- the news -- already rushes ahead at a pretty good clip, breakneck even, and suffers for it. On the Internet all this is accelerated.

I would argue that there is a certain rigor enforced by doing it now and trying to do it right the first time with only one set of eyes for a safety net.  I try hard to check for facts and just as religiously correct for errors when I find them or they are pointed out to me.  Just because you have the luxury of doing something slowly doesn't mean that it is going to turn out well.  Those of us writing out without pay would love to have a second set of eyes to scan our works.  Often it turns out that it is our readers who find and report errors and omissions which can easily be corrected in our instant world of blogs.

Long ago I learned that wisdom and beauty are where you find them, not exclusively in a gated community where you have to pay to enter.  The idea that all blogs are "Written by fools to be read by imbeciles," makes as much sense as every article which has an editor and a dollar value attached to it is enlightening.

Finally in stating the obvious, "Journalism requires journalists," let me remind Mr. Rago of the second definition for "journalist" which is "a person who keeps a journal, diary, or other record of daily events."

That sounds remarkably like writing a blog. I wonder if that might be acceptable training for the next generation of professional journalists?  It will certainly require a closer look than the one Mr. Rago gave the world of blogs.

For the last few days, when I have had some spare time, I have been working on a movie using some footage that I shot a few weeks ago, along with lots of still shots that I have taken this fall.  I am trying to do a house, neighborhood, and area tour.

I have always been intrigued with creating the feeling of a special place for someone who has never been there.  I think I first got interested in this in the fall of 1970 after a college roommate and I returned from a trip across the west and up the Alcan Highway to Alaska.

If you have lived on the east coast most of your life, it's hard to comprehend the huge open spaces of the west from a photo. Showing someone pictures or even slides on a screen does not really do the job unless the person has a context that helps them understand the setting of the pictures.   It's also hard to really appreciate North Carolina's Crystal Coast unless you have been in a place with as much open water and blue skies.

Today we have far better tools mostly thanks to Steve Jobs and his iLife suite of applications that were the original digital lifestyle tools.  When you combine them with iTunes, you can create an amazing experience for someone who has never visited a place.  I guess the next step in making the experience even better is creating a podcast with interviews of the local characters who can add some color to the virtual tour.

Using iMovie HD, iPhoto, iDVD, and some tunes from iTunes you can create an impressive DVD that can be played on almost any television including fancy widescreen ones. The first DVD projects that I tried, I used a lot of video, now I am much more judicious with my use of video.  Of course if I had an HD video camera, I might use more video, but you can create a wonderful DVD with mostly still shots and a little video to tie it together.  If you can match some great music to it, then you're much closer to giving a person a feeling of place that isso hard to achieve with simple photos even good ones like the ones I have on my Sunrise Mountain photo site.  I haven't done voice overs yet, but they will probably be my next step.

If you're going to try this, you will not find products nearly well as integrated as they are on the Mac side.  There's no question you can do it on Windows, there are just more pieces to puzzle.

We've come a long way in technology the last 35 years, it's pretty amazing that we can suck video, photos, and music into our computers and put it on a DVD that family or friends can easily watch on their home entertainment systems.  I never would have guessed that this would be as easy as it is.  While it's popular to stick movies up on the web, putting up one that is ten minutes long with audio and high quality video isn't something that I would want to try. DVDs are cheap, easy to distribute, and allow you to see the high quality video on large screen high quality components.

A couple of Christmases ago, I took the time to go through our old video tapes and put together a DVD of the kids growing up.  It took a lot of time, but hopefully someday it will refresh some great memories for the kids just when the memories are starting to fade.  It will also allow the memories to be shared with the next generation.

With the power of this technology, I am really surprised that businesses, especially real estate firms aren't taking advantage of the power of this technology which in my mind is far more powerful that desktop publishing.  A real estate firm could easily bring this technology in house as a relatively inexpensive way to market upper end houses.  Based on the one that I'm working, I think that they could be an exceptionally powerful tool for real estate agents in the tough market that we have today.

With my most recent DVDs, I was fortunate to be able print picture labels directly on the DVDs with my new HP 5160 Photosmart Printer which I got on a deal at Staples for $59.95.  It certainly added a professional touch to my project.

The biggest danger I see is that these projects are so easy to tinker with that you end up spending more time than you want trying to perfect them, but maybe that just my personality showing through.

I guess the electronics big box stores think we're walking around in a fog.  Yesterday at Staples I bought a HP Photosmart D5160 for $59.95 after a special store instant savings of $40.  I am hoping to use it to print directly onto to printable DVDs.  I did not buy the suggested USB cable because I knew that I had one at our other house.  I thought I would sneak one from another device until I had time to pick the spare one up.

Today I had some time at lunch between my real estate classes so I decided to go into Best Buy and maybe buy a cable instead of waiting.  It seems that the only USB cables that the Wilmington, NC store is stocking are the "Best Buy Gold Plated" USB cables.  The cheapest USB printer cable was $34.95.  I guess I could imagine that they were out of all the inexpensive USB cables, but I did not see any spaces for cables that had sold out.

I don't know of any study that demonstrates that gold plated USB cables do anything but add extra profit to the big box store bottom lines.  I actually went over to Staples to check their prices.  They had one $17.95 cable in damaged packaging and the rest of their cables were $24.95 gold plated ones.

I guess they all think we are gold plated fools.  It's bad enough we are carried to the cleaners on ink jet ink but why add insult to injury and sell cables at a ridiculous price.  I thought going to USB was going to bring cable prices down since they would all be standard.  I have had USB cables since USB was introduced on the iMac.  I have yet to have one of my USB cables go bad.

I couldn't face Walmart on a Sunday afternoon, or I would have checked their prices also.  Hopefully theirs are more reasonable.

I'm glad I have an extra cable at home.  Buying a $34.95 USB cable is just ridiculous.   I am wondering if anyone has any experience with 123inkjets.   From them  one USB printer cable, 10 feet long, complete with shipping is $11.90.   I would guess they're also making some money on their cables, just not hand over fist like Best Buy.

Now if you're wondering why I didn't check prices at Circuit City, wonder no more.  I have already written them off, "Why Circuit City is exactly what I don't need."

I guess the electronics big box stores think we're walking around in a fog.  Yesterday at Staples I bought a HP Photosmart D5160 for $59.95 after a special store instant savings of $40.  I am hoping to use it to print directly onto to printable DVDs.  I did not buy the suggested USB cable because I knew that I had one at our other house.  I thought I would sneak one from another device until I had time to pick the spare one up.

Today I had some time at lunch between my real estate classes so I decided to go into Best Buy and maybe buy a cable instead of waiting.  It seems that the only USB cables that the Wilmington, NC store is stocking are the "Best Buy Gold Plated" USB cables.  The cheapest USB printer cable was $34.95.  I guess I could imagine that they were out of all the inexpensive USB cables, but I did not see any spaces for cables that had sold out.

I don't know of any study that demonstrates that gold plated USB cables do anything but add extra profit to the big box store bottom lines.  I actually went over to Staples to check their prices.  They had one $17.95 cable in damaged packaging and the rest of their cables were $24.95 gold plated ones.

I guess they all think we are gold plated fools.  It's bad enough we are carried to the cleaners on ink jet ink but why add insult to injury and sell cables at a ridiculous price.  I thought going to USB was going to bring cable prices down since they would all be standard.  I have had USB cables since USB was introduced on the iMac.  I have yet to have one of my USB cables go bad.

I couldn't face Walmart on a Sunday afternoon, or I would have checked their prices also.  Hopefully theirs are more reasonable.

I'm glad I have an extra cable at home.  Buying a $34.95 USB cable is just ridiculous.   I am wondering if anyone has any experience with 123inkjets.   From them  one USB printer cable, 10 feet long, complete with shipping is $11.90.   I would guess they're also making some money on their cables, just not hand over fist like Best Buy.

Now if you're wondering why I didn't check prices at Circuit City, wonder no more.  I have already written them off, "Why Circuit City is exactly what I don't need."

I guess the electronics big box stores think we're walking around in a fog.  Yesterday at Staples I bought a HP Photosmart D5160 for $59.95 after a special store instant savings of $40.  I am hoping to use it to print directly onto to printable DVDs.  I did not buy the suggested USB cable because I knew that I had one at our other house.  I thought I would sneak one from another device until I had time to pick the spare one up.

Today I had some time at lunch between my real estate classes so I decided to go into Best Buy and maybe buy a cable instead of waiting.  It seems that the only USB cables that the Wilmington, NC store is stocking are the "Best Buy Gold Plated" USB cables.  The cheapest USB printer cable was $34.95.  I guess I could imagine that they were out of all the inexpensive USB cables, but I did not see any spaces for cables that had sold out.

I don't know of any study that demonstrates that gold plated USB cables do anything but add extra profit to the big box store bottom lines.  I actually went over to Staples to check their prices.  They had one $17.95 cable in damaged packaging and the rest of their cables were $24.95 gold plated ones.

I guess they all think we are gold plated fools.  It's bad enough we are carried to the cleaners on ink jet ink but why add insult to injury and sell cables at a ridiculous price.  I thought going to USB was going to bring cable prices down since they would all be standard.  I have had USB cables since USB was introduced on the iMac.  I have yet to have one of my USB cables go bad.

I couldn't face Walmart on a Sunday afternoon, or I would have checked their prices also.  Hopefully theirs are more reasonable.

I'm glad I have an extra cable at home.  Buying a $34.95 USB cable is just ridiculous.   I am wondering if anyone has any experience with 123inkjets.   From them  one USB printer cable, 10 feet long, complete with shipping is $11.90.   I would guess they're also making some money on their cables, just not hand over fist like Best Buy.

Now if you're wondering why I didn't check prices at Circuit City, wonder no more.  I have already written them off, "Why Circuit City is exactly what I don't need."

I take email pretty seriously.  It is the way I stay in touch with a lot of people including a number of customers.  I recently wrote  a post, "Some recommendations on email."  I do not think I came out strongly enough in favor of treating your email like the mission critical application that it is for small and medium sized businesses.

Today I was in another real estate course, and we were talking about contracts and how important timely communication is.  I wondered how many email users are seeing their email turn into snail mail?  Do they actually have contracts which do not get done because of email which will not work as advertised?

I only had to think back to a conversation that I had with a small business owner a few days earlier.  He knew I had worked at an email company, Webmail.us.  He also knew that I do not pull any punches.  His small company's email had been shut down by receiving one million spam messages in one day.  He was faced with spending more money on another spam appliance or finding another solution.

He wanted to know if I thought outsourcing email is good solution now that I no longer work for an outsourcing company.  It did not take me long to give him my complete endorsement of the concept and the company.  He went live with them shortly afterwards, I will be very curious to hear his opinion, but I will venture to guess he will be a believer.  Fighting the email spam wars is no longer for amateurs.  You need someone doing it whose job depends on their being successful.

Before outsourcing this small business owner was faced with waiting twenty four hours for a very expensive and relatively new spam appliance to try to handle the deluge of email.  In that period of time, he was losing business and spending money to fix a problem that might no longer be fixable economically in house for a small business.

When we chatted just before he went live with the outsourcing solution, he told me that he could not believe that the email accounts that he needed would cost less than a total of one hundred dollars a year. He told me how close he had been to spending thousands more on top of the thousands he had already spent in the false hope of staying head of the spammers.

I think you have to get to a certain and level of expertise to be successful with email these days. I do not think that level of expertise makes economic sense for a small business.   The days of throwing up your own server or hoping your web hosting company might be able to do a good job catching spam are drawing to a close.

In my recent course I have noticed a lot of real estate agents using free email accounts.  Now I am all for free.  I am playing with MS Live and Google apps for your domain, but I would not depend on either for my customer communications.

Would you run your car on free beta tires where your only recourse if they go flat or have a blow out is to file a bug report?

Well I wouldn't, and I also do not plan to use any free email for communications where my money and career are on the line.

Recently I was attending a North Carolina real estate broker post licensing course.   We had a brief discussion on email.  Though I no longer work in the world of email, being someone with over ten email accounts, I do have some opinions on what works for people.

I have never been particularly fond of AOL mail though I understand you can now use products such as Thunderbird to read your AOL mail.  I personally want the people who provide email services to focus on sending, receiving, and archiving email.  When they get much beyond that, they may or may not be providing services that I want.

Let me state up front that I believe in standards.   If we could all focus on standards  things  would be a lot better.  Of course we cannot even agree on which standards, so a lot is still left to the individual.

Here are my best recommendations.  No matter what you do, you are almost always better off getting an email services vendor that supports IMAP and POP.  If want some information on what IMAP and POP are, I can suggest checking out this support site article at Webmail.us where I used to work.

Assuming your employer doesn't provide you with email or you want an additional email account outside of your employer's email system (normally a very good idea), here are some quick thoughts.

Gmail is probably the best of the free email systems, but if you are really going to do this email stuff right, go ahead and get yourself your own domain and pay for your own email accounts. It is not that expensive.  The least expensive of these solutions that I have personally tried is Everyone.net.  According to the referenced page their solution starts at $35 which is what I paid them last January.

Unfortunately the only way to really know if email works well,  is  to use it seriously and extensively.  I did not do that to my everyone.net account.  I was able to set it up to work with my Mac mail client and to access it through their webmail interface.  So it works, I just do not know how well.

I do have a number of email accounts still hosted with my former employer, Webmail.us .  They continue to do a very good job of  keeping their systems humming.  One of my accounts has been with them over two years and has seen almost no interruption in service.  Their pricing starts at $60 for five one gigabyte mailboxes if you already own your domain.  They have a fourteen day free trial.  Their webmail client is fast, includes a calendar, RSS, contact manager and a task list among other features.  They also have real support which you might well need if this is the first time you have managed your own email.  They do not do web hosting, so they aren't a complete solution for everyone.  That is unless all you want is email.

I am a big believer in owning your own domain.  I wrote about it earlier in a post, "No longer a world of anonymous post office boxes on the internet."

The important thing to remember is that once you get your domain setup completed, you'll probably never have to do anything with it unless you switch to another email services provider.  It is worth the time and effort up front to get your own domain. 

In general the people who focus on email do a better job, because that is all they do, so in the long run, you will get better service

You can rely on your internet service provider, but if you do that, in addition to not having your own domain unless you go through their business services, you may well have trouble sending email remotely unless you use whatever clunky webmail interface they have bought (not to be confused with the company Webmail.us which has a very sophisticated, fast AJAX based webmail interface).

Companies that focus on email have their systems designed so that it does not matter what internet service provider you use.  Usually you will be able to send email using their systems with Thunderbird, Outlook, or Apple Mail unless you get stuck behind a firewall in a hotel which might require you to use a webmail client not matter whose system you have.

The other choice for getting your own email, and this requires even more technical expertise is a contract with a hosting company. It provides you with a hosted domain and email accounts.  I use three different hosting companies, but the one with the best email is Hostway.  They use Sitemail which has one of the best user interfaces that I have seen.  It isn't IMAP and doesn't have flexible mail box sizes, but it works very well, and I do get a very reliable place for my website with FTP access which is something that is important to me.  I believe my Hostway account costs around $150 per year.   I also use IX Web Hosting which has plans as low at $4.95 per month.

There are lots of choices out there, but do not short change your self on something as important as email.  There are plenty of other email providers out there, which I haven't taken the time to mention since I have no practical experience with them.  Each has their own story, but the ones I have discussed are ones where I have had varying degrees of personal experience with a hosted domain name and serious email.  I am currently trying a free hosted domain from Google, but I am not ready to pass judgment on that yet other than you cannot beat the price which is free.

It does not take the technical expertise that it once did to have high quality standards based email.  It you are comfortable using a browser, most of these systems are simple enough for a non technical person to work through with some live help which is unfortunately hard to find with many email companies so make that a priority if you need it.

Just let your inner Geek shine through, or bug one of your technical friends.  The next time sometimes asks you for your email address, you will be glad you went to the trouble to get your own domain with a name which means something to you.

Today marks another special day.  This is the first day of my regular posts to my Coastalnc.org website which focuses on living and moving to North Carolina's Crystal coast.  It would probably come as no surprise if I told you that I have an email account that ends in coastalnc.org.

Recently I was attending a North Carolina real estate broker post licensing course.   We had a brief discussion on email.  Though I no longer work in the world of email, being someone with over ten email accounts, I do have some opinions on what works for people.

I have never been particularly fond of AOL mail though I understand you can now use products such as Thunderbird to read your AOL mail.  I personally want the people who provide email services to focus on sending, receiving, and archiving email.  When they get much beyond that, they may or may not be providing services that I want.

Let me state up front that I believe in standards.   If we could all focus on standards  things  would be a lot better.  Of course we cannot even agree on which standards, so a lot is still left to the individual.

Here are my best recommendations.  No matter what you do, you are almost always better off getting an email services vendor that supports IMAP and POP.  If want some information on what IMAP and POP are, I can suggest checking out this support site article at Webmail.us where I used to work.

Assuming your employer doesn't provide you with email or you want an additional email account outside of your employer's email system (normally a very good idea), here are some quick thoughts.

Gmail is probably the best of the free email systems, but if you are really going to do this email stuff right, go ahead and get yourself your own domain and pay for your own email accounts. It is not that expensive.  The least expensive of these solutions that I have personally tried is Everyone.net.  According to the referenced page their solution starts at $35 which is what I paid them last January.

Unfortunately the only way to really know if email works well,  is  to use it seriously and extensively.  I did not do that to my everyone.net account.  I was able to set it up to work with my Mac mail client and to access it through their webmail interface.  So it works, I just do not know how well.

I do have a number of email accounts still hosted with my former employer, Webmail.us .  They continue to do a very good job of  keeping their systems humming.  One of my accounts has been with them over two years and has seen almost no interruption in service.  Their pricing starts at $60 for five one gigabyte mailboxes if you already own your domain.  They have a fourteen day free trial.  Their webmail client is fast, includes a calendar, RSS, contact manager and a task list among other features.  They also have real support which you might well need if this is the first time you have managed your own email.  They do not do web hosting, so they aren't a complete solution for everyone.  That is unless all you want is email.

I am a big believer in owning your own domain.  I wrote about it earlier in a post, "No longer a world of anonymous post office boxes on the internet."

The important thing to remember is that once you get your domain setup completed, you'll probably never have to do anything with it unless you switch to another email services provider.  It is worth the time and effort up front to get your own domain. 

In general the people who focus on email do a better job, because that is all they do, so in the long run, you will get better service

You can rely on your internet service provider, but if you do that, in addition to not having your own domain unless you go through their business services, you may well have trouble sending email remotely unless you use whatever clunky webmail interface they have bought (not to be confused with the company Webmail.us which has a very sophisticated, fast AJAX based webmail interface).

Companies that focus on email have their systems designed so that it does not matter what internet service provider you use.  Usually you will be able to send email using their systems with Thunderbird, Outlook, or Apple Mail unless you get stuck behind a firewall in a hotel which might require you to use a webmail client not matter whose system you have.

The other choice for getting your own email, and this requires even more technical expertise is a contract with a hosting company. It provides you with a hosted domain and email accounts.  I use three different hosting companies, but the one with the best email is Hostway.  They use Sitemail which has one of the best user interfaces that I have seen.  It isn't IMAP and doesn't have flexible mail box sizes, but it works very well, and I do get a very reliable place for my website with FTP access which is something that is important to me.  I believe my Hostway account costs around $150 per year.   I also use IX Web Hosting which has plans as low at $4.95 per month.

There are lots of choices out there, but do not short change your self on something as important as email.  There are plenty of other email providers out there, which I haven't taken the time to mention since I have no practical experience with them.  Each has their own story, but the ones I have discussed are ones where I have had varying degrees of personal experience with a hosted domain name and serious email.  I am currently trying a free hosted domain from Google, but I am not ready to pass judgment on that yet other than you cannot beat the price which is free.

It does not take the technical expertise that it once did to have high quality standards based email.  It you are comfortable using a browser, most of these systems are simple enough for a non technical person to work through with some live help which is unfortunately hard to find with many email companies so make that a priority if you need it.

Just let your inner Geek shine through, or bug one of your technical friends.  The next time sometimes asks you for your email address, you will be glad you went to the trouble to get your own domain with a name which means something to you.

Today marks another special day.  This is the first day of my regular posts to my Coastalnc.org website which focuses on living and moving to North Carolina's Crystal coast.  It would probably come as no surprise if I told you that I have an email account that ends in coastalnc.org.

Back when I last paid the Apple operating system tariff in the spring of 2005, I asked one of Apple's best system engineers if I could expect some really great software to take advantage of this new operating system.  He assured me that we would see those applications.

They have been few and far between.  In fact I haven't seen any software to excite me in a long time until I ran into Backpack.  The neat thing about Backpack is that being web driven, your platform does not matter.

I divide the world into those who believe their calendar must be integrated into their email, and the rest of us who have not been schooled in the world of Outlook email and appointments.

I like calendars, to-do lists, web pages, and sharing files and photos.  Backpack lets me do all of that.  It also makes me much more efficient when using multiple computers.  I can create a project page and email files to the page.  No matter what computer I am using, if I have Internet access I can get to my files.  I can also create "write boards" which are ways to create content and have other comment on it. It seems to me that "write boards" are wikis without all the hassle.

I was a big fan of the Kiko calendar before it disappeared.  Backpack has a much better calendar, and so far its text message alerts to my cell phone and email alerts have been very reliable, something that was never the case for the free Kiko.  I do not mind paying for a calendar that really works.

In fact I could do some pretty serious blogging from Backpack.  I created this page, "A grinder for the Bodum Coffee Pot" this morning.

What really excites me is that Backpack isn't from a huge company.  It comes from 37signals which seems to have a great portfolio of products.  It is nice to see innovation sprouting on the web. 

I am also very impressed with the user interface of Backpack.  Other than some of the quirks they have for text formatting, I have zero complaints about the software.

I will be testing it with IE7 and Firefox on Windows XP and using Firefox on Ubuntu.  With a good IMAP webmail email client, my Flickr account, Typepad, and a text editor, I am good to go most of the time. I have three different websites with a tremendous amount of information on them, certainly Backpack is a better way to organize it, than my trying to create my own web pages to link various things. 

Backback lets me do it without having to concentrate on the technology.  It removes the need for your own website,  a web editor and a FTP client.

Still, some of the things which I do require more sophistication than Backpack, so I will likely continue to use iPhoto,  Photoshop, Nisus Writer, Dreamweaver, Shutterbug and Fetch for the heavier lifting, but I do not think it is too crazy to imagine what I discussed in the post, "How much longer will operating systems really matter, even to Apple?"

Just maybe with there will be enough photo and web tools with the next operating system releases, that I can live mostly on the web without knowing the technology behind what I am doing. When software achieves that , it makes my life just that much easier.

We are getting closer and closer.  It would be nice to bet on Ubuntu Linux and not have to pay OS upgrades ever again.  Of course there's always that Linux driver issue that has yet to be resolved.

You would not think that it would take two very geeky guys two hours to get to this screen in what should have been a relatively easy change to a home entertain system.

Increasingly I am not surprised when some little problem ends up taking hours to resolve.  In this particular case, my fellow geek who had installed our home video system was just as frustrated as I was.  He needed to be in at least four other places since he had just spent a week being trained on more electronic gadgets which also probably will require lots of extra effort to get working properly.

Our home system is sometimes controlled by a Logitech Harmony remote.  The Harmony is supposed to rule the roost but it doesn't until the Sony quiets down.  After our big flat panel Sony stops saturating our living room with IR, the Harmony usually works.  That usually takes ten minutes which is a little irritating but according to the Sony folks, just something we have to live with these days.

My fellow geek, Mitch, dropped by after I had our cable box replaced with one which had a DVD-R and a HDMI interface.  The hope was the HDMI cable would improve the picture quality of the non-HD television channels.  Mitch managed to get the HDMI cable installed without a lot of problems.  It did help the picture quality on all channels.

After we got the television back on the wall, the only job remaining was to reprogram the Harmony Remote.  Mitch had forgotten his Powerbook which we used to program the Harmony the previous time.  We had tried unsuccessfully to use my MacBook the last time so I whipped out my PB G4.  We logged on to the Logitech site without a problem and downloaded the software.  After some more downloads and updates, we got to the point where we saw a message "no skin available."  The result of the strange message was that we couldn't see what was happening with the controller.  Since I was using Firefox and Mitch had used Safari the last time, we switched to Safari and went through the same process.  We did manage to get the setting done properly on the web, yet we ran into the same problems with Safari that we had with Firefox.  We had no luck updating the Harmony remote.

We then went up to my  upstairs office and went through the same process with my Dell desktop.  We went straight to IE 7 this time and it seemed to be working until it blocked a pop-up and then hung  We eventually got it working on IE after restarting IE.  Finally were able to see  the controller being updated and verify when it was finished.  The process took two hours.  It should have been two minutes.

Technology does not need to be this hard.

You would not think that it would take two very geeky guys two hours to get to this screen in what should have been a relatively easy change to a home entertain system.

Increasingly I am not surprised when some little problem ends up taking hours to resolve.  In this particular case, my fellow geek who had installed our home video system was just as frustrated as I was.  He needed to be in at least four other places since he had just spent a week being trained on more electronic gadgets which also probably will require lots of extra effort to get working properly.

Our home system is sometimes controlled by a Logitech Harmony remote.  The Harmony is supposed to rule the roost but it doesn't until the Sony quiets down.  After our big flat panel Sony stops saturating our living room with IR, the Harmony usually works.  That usually takes ten minutes which is a little irritating but according to the Sony folks, just something we have to live with these days.

My fellow geek, Mitch, dropped by after I had our cable box replaced with one which had a DVD-R and a HDMI interface.  The hope was the HDMI cable would improve the picture quality of the non-HD television channels.  Mitch managed to get the HDMI cable installed without a lot of problems.  It did help the picture quality on all channels.

After we got the television back on the wall, the only job remaining was to reprogram the Harmony Remote.  Mitch had forgotten his Powerbook which we used to program the Harmony the previous time.  We had tried unsuccessfully to use my MacBook the last time so I whipped out my PB G4.  We logged on to the Logitech site without a problem and downloaded the software.  After some more downloads and updates, we got to the point where we saw a message "no skin available."  The result of the strange message was that we couldn't see what was happening with the controller.  Since I was using Firefox and Mitch had used Safari the last time, we switched to Safari and went through the same process.  We did manage to get the setting done properly on the web, yet we ran into the same problems with Safari that we had with Firefox.  We had no luck updating the Harmony remote.

We then went up to my  upstairs office and went through the same process with my Dell desktop.  We went straight to IE 7 this time and it seemed to be working until it blocked a pop-up and then hung  We eventually got it working on IE after restarting IE.  Finally were able to see  the controller being updated and verify when it was finished.  The process took two hours.  It should have been two minutes.

Technology does not need to be this hard.

You would not think that it would take two very geeky guys two hours to get to this screen in what should have been a relatively easy change to a home entertain system.

Increasingly I am not surprised when some little problem ends up taking hours to resolve.  In this particular case, my fellow geek who had installed our home video system was just as frustrated as I was.  He needed to be in at least four other places since he had just spent a week being trained on more electronic gadgets which also probably will require lots of extra effort to get working properly.

Our home system is sometimes controlled by a Logitech Harmony remote.  The Harmony is supposed to rule the roost but it doesn't until the Sony quiets down.  After our big flat panel Sony stops saturating our living room with IR, the Harmony usually works.  That usually takes ten minutes which is a little irritating but according to the Sony folks, just something we have to live with these days.

My fellow geek, Mitch, dropped by after I had our cable box replaced with one which had a DVD-R and a HDMI interface.  The hope was the HDMI cable would improve the picture quality of the non-HD television channels.  Mitch managed to get the HDMI cable installed without a lot of problems.  It did help the picture quality on all channels.

After we got the television back on the wall, the only job remaining was to reprogram the Harmony Remote.  Mitch had forgotten his Powerbook which we used to program the Harmony the previous time.  We had tried unsuccessfully to use my MacBook the last time so I whipped out my PB G4.  We logged on to the Logitech site without a problem and downloaded the software.  After some more downloads and updates, we got to the point where we saw a message "no skin available."  The result of the strange message was that we couldn't see what was happening with the controller.  Since I was using Firefox and Mitch had used Safari the last time, we switched to Safari and went through the same process.  We did manage to get the setting done properly on the web, yet we ran into the same problems with Safari that we had with Firefox.  We had no luck updating the Harmony remote.

We then went up to my  upstairs office and went through the same process with my Dell desktop.  We went straight to IE 7 this time and it seemed to be working until it blocked a pop-up and then hung  We eventually got it working on IE after restarting IE.  Finally were able to see  the controller being updated and verify when it was finished.  The process took two hours.  It should have been two minutes.

Technology does not need to be this hard.

I am beginning to think this is the year of returning to my inner geek. 

First I went to work at Webmail.us where I ended up bringing my own computers, network hub, and even an Internet phone.  Since I was one of only a couple of Mac users, I ended up figuring some of the printing and other technology issues with only a little help.  I actually wrote about that on Applepeels in the post, "Heterogenous Apple nirvana, well almost."  Then we moved the Webmail.us outside sales office to Roanoke, and I ended up setting another office for myself.

Since I do a fair amount of web work, I usually need three machines to survive, a Mac desktop, a Windows box, and a Mac laptop.  When we got a place in the fall on the White Oak River near Cape Carteret, NC, it was obvious that I needed another office.  I decided to leave a Mac at home in Roanoke to drive my big Epson printers, but I felt that I need my dual G5 and my Dell desktop.  My youngest daughter confiscated my Dell laptop for her business classes at UNCC.

I actually enjoy technology when I can make it work.  I'm usually persistent enough to eventually achieve that.  I can move pretty easily from Mac OSX to Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux.  In fact when I want to procrastinate I will often lose myself in technology challenges.  I spent a lot of time in 2004 getting Linux up and running, and experimenting with SUSE and Xandros distributions before settling on Ubuntu as my standard.  When I recently did some upgrades on all three operating systems, I was convinced that Ubuntu was as easy if not easier than Mac OSX.

For my coastal office printers I went with an Ethernet equipped Brother 5250N and a HP AIO Photosmart C6180 which also supported Ethernet.   I installed  a router with firewall and four ports, one of with goes to an Airport Express and another to a small hub.  We are using a cable modem hooked to Time-Warner.  I also have a Vonage Internet phone to go along with our land line.  We are using an AT&T two line wireless phone system which works great.

So far everything seems to be working fine.   The biggest challenge was the  HP AIO which I wrote about in the post, "HP AIO Photosmart C6180 and Mac OSX."  Last night I got the fax working.  Unfortunately I first tried to set it up using the Mac.  That turned out not to work.  I used the Dell to get it going.  The Windows Wizard had another setting which seemed to fix things.  I had already confirmed that the printing works, both text, color, and photo.   Still the HP software for the Mac seems very intrusive.

The HP scanning does work.  Other than the feature to scan directly to iPhoto, which I like a lot, I felt like I was missing my good friend VueScan which I have used in Roanoke to drive my Epson scanner since Mac OSX came out.  I tried to see if VueScan would see the HP C6180 scanner on the network but it did not, even with the most recent version.  Tonight I read through the HP manual to make certain there was no reason to not use the USB port on the AIO while the Ethernet port was active.  I could not find any warning so I hooked up my MacBook using the USB cable from my recently deceased Sony camera.  VueScan saw the scanner and I was in business.

The only thing left is to try is to see how well the printers work with Ubuntu.  There is no rush on that.  That might be a good winter project for a lazy Saturday. 

One of the interesting things that I have run into is that it seems every that every hardware manufacturer, including those who do printers, computers, and cameras has its own suite of consumer digital photo tools.   They're all similar, and it gets a little weird with all the choices of how to manage your photos.  Once you throw in Adode, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, you have to wonder if the market can support this many solutions.  Actually my guess is the market will figure it out. The support people might rightfully view this proliferation as scary.  Just imagine a Mac running Parallels Windows software.  You could have Nikon, Sony, HP, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google software all fighting for control of the same photos.

Invariably the client based software doesn't seem to work nearly as well managing photos on the web as the true web based solutions like Flickr and Picasa Web Albums.  That's the case even in the with the iPhoto, iWeb, and dot Mac from Apple who used to be the digital content king.  I wrote about this recently on Applepeels in the post, "My problem with Apple."

I am not  sure why the companies are spending so much money on this segment.  My guess is that there  will be some shakeout, but that's the subject of another post.

Right now I am proud of my new office, and I would recommend all of the products that I am using.  The only exception would be the Parallels Desktop software which turns the MacBook into a Windows box. The problem is probably caused by the measly 1 gig of ram on my MacBook, but I doubt I will figure that out for a while since I have my Dell box running.

I do not have a lot of tolerance for technology gadgets or companies that fail to meet my expectations so expect to see a post or at least a comment if I run into challenges like the IE crash that I had last night after installing Internet Explorer 7.  I did like some of the new feature of IE, but crashing is not a good way to win my confidence.

The office even looks good since I even ran the cables through the desk.  This is the neatest office that I have ever had.  I must be mellowing with age.  Just getting it working used to be the most important task and often the only thing that mattered.   Just do not ask my kids about my old cable tree.

I am beginning to think this is the year of returning to my inner geek. 

First I went to work at Webmail.us where I ended up bringing my own computers, network hub, and even an Internet phone.  Since I was one of only a couple of Mac users, I ended up figuring some of the printing and other technology issues with only a little help.  I actually wrote about that on Applepeels in the post, "Heterogenous Apple nirvana, well almost."  Then we moved the Webmail.us outside sales office to Roanoke, and I ended up setting another office for myself.

Since I do a fair amount of web work, I usually need three machines to survive, a Mac desktop, a Windows box, and a Mac laptop.  When we got a place in the fall on the White Oak River near Cape Carteret, NC, it was obvious that I needed another office.  I decided to leave a Mac at home in Roanoke to drive my big Epson printers, but I felt that I need my dual G5 and my Dell desktop.  My youngest daughter confiscated my Dell laptop for her business classes at UNCC.

I actually enjoy technology when I can make it work.  I'm usually persistent enough to eventually achieve that.  I can move pretty easily from Mac OSX to Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux.  In fact when I want to procrastinate I will often lose myself in technology challenges.  I spent a lot of time in 2004 getting Linux up and running, and experimenting with SUSE and Xandros distributions before settling on Ubuntu as my standard.  When I recently did some upgrades on all three operating systems, I was convinced that Ubuntu was as easy if not easier than Mac OSX.

For my coastal office printers I went with an Ethernet equipped Brother 5250N and a HP AIO Photosmart C6180 which also supported Ethernet.   I installed  a router with firewall and four ports, one of with goes to an Airport Express and another to a small hub.  We are using a cable modem hooked to Time-Warner.  I also have a Vonage Internet phone to go along with our land line.  We are using an AT&T two line wireless phone system which works great.

So far everything seems to be working fine.   The biggest challenge was the  HP AIO which I wrote about in the post, "HP AIO Photosmart C6180 and Mac OSX."  Last night I got the fax working.  Unfortunately I first tried to set it up using the Mac.  That turned out not to work.  I used the Dell to get it going.  The Windows Wizard had another setting which seemed to fix things.  I had already confirmed that the printing works, both text, color, and photo.   Still the HP software for the Mac seems very intrusive.

The HP scanning does work.  Other than the feature to scan directly to iPhoto, which I like a lot, I felt like I was missing my good friend VueScan which I have used in Roanoke to drive my Epson scanner since Mac OSX came out.  I tried to see if VueScan would see the HP C6180 scanner on the network but it did not, even with the most recent version.  Tonight I read through the HP manual to make certain there was no reason to not use the USB port on the AIO while the Ethernet port was active.  I could not find any warning so I hooked up my MacBook using the USB cable from my recently deceased Sony camera.  VueScan saw the scanner and I was in business.

The only thing left is to try is to see how well the printers work with Ubuntu.  There is no rush on that.  That might be a good winter project for a lazy Saturday. 

One of the interesting things that I have run into is that it seems every that every hardware manufacturer, including those who do printers, computers, and cameras has its own suite of consumer digital photo tools.   They're all similar, and it gets a little weird with all the choices of how to manage your photos.  Once you throw in Adode, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, you have to wonder if the market can support this many solutions.  Actually my guess is the market will figure it out. The support people might rightfully view this proliferation as scary.  Just imagine a Mac running Parallels Windows software.  You could have Nikon, Sony, HP, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google software all fighting for control of the same photos.

Invariably the client based software doesn't seem to work nearly as well managing photos on the web as the true web based solutions like Flickr and Picasa Web Albums.  That's the case even in the with the iPhoto, iWeb, and dot Mac from Apple who used to be the digital content king.  I wrote about this recently on Applepeels in the post, "My problem with Apple."

I am not  sure why the companies are spending so much money on this segment.  My guess is that there  will be some shakeout, but that's the subject of another post.

Right now I am proud of my new office, and I would recommend all of the products that I am using.  The only exception would be the Parallels Desktop software which turns the MacBook into a Windows box. The problem is probably caused by the measly 1 gig of ram on my MacBook, but I doubt I will figure that out for a while since I have my Dell box running.

I do not have a lot of tolerance for technology gadgets or companies that fail to meet my expectations so expect to see a post or at least a comment if I run into challenges like the IE crash that I had last night after installing Internet Explorer 7.  I did like some of the new feature of IE, but crashing is not a good way to win my confidence.

The office even looks good since I even ran the cables through the desk.  This is the neatest office that I have ever had.  I must be mellowing with age.  Just getting it working used to be the most important task and often the only thing that mattered.   Just do not ask my kids about my old cable tree.

I am beginning to think this is the year of returning to my inner geek. 

First I went to work at Webmail.us where I ended up bringing my own computers, network hub, and even an Internet phone.  Since I was one of only a couple of Mac users, I ended up figuring some of the printing and other technology issues with only a little help.  I actually wrote about that on Applepeels in the post, "Heterogenous Apple nirvana, well almost."  Then we moved the Webmail.us outside sales office to Roanoke, and I ended up setting another office for myself.

Since I do a fair amount of web work, I usually need three machines to survive, a Mac desktop, a Windows box, and a Mac laptop.  When we got a place in the fall on the White Oak River near Cape Carteret, NC, it was obvious that I needed another office.  I decided to leave a Mac at home in Roanoke to drive my big Epson printers, but I felt that I need my dual G5 and my Dell desktop.  My youngest daughter confiscated my Dell laptop for her business classes at UNCC.

I actually enjoy technology when I can make it work.  I'm usually persistent enough to eventually achieve that.  I can move pretty easily from Mac OSX to Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux.  In fact when I want to procrastinate I will often lose myself in technology challenges.  I spent a lot of time in 2004 getting Linux up and running, and experimenting with SUSE and Xandros distributions before settling on Ubuntu as my standard.  When I recently did some upgrades on all three operating systems, I was convinced that Ubuntu was as easy if not easier than Mac OSX.

For my coastal office printers I went with an Ethernet equipped Brother 5250N and a HP AIO Photosmart C6180 which also supported Ethernet.   I installed  a router with firewall and four ports, one of with goes to an Airport Express and another to a small hub.  We are using a cable modem hooked to Time-Warner.  I also have a Vonage Internet phone to go along with our land line.  We are using an AT&T two line wireless phone system which works great.

So far everything seems to be working fine.   The biggest challenge was the  HP AIO which I wrote about in the post, "HP AIO Photosmart C6180 and Mac OSX."  Last night I got the fax working.  Unfortunately I first tried to set it up using the Mac.  That turned out not to work.  I used the Dell to get it going.  The Windows Wizard had another setting which seemed to fix things.  I had already confirmed that the printing works, both text, color, and photo.   Still the HP software for the Mac seems very intrusive.

The HP scanning does work.  Other than the feature to scan directly to iPhoto, which I like a lot, I felt like I was missing my good friend VueScan which I have used in Roanoke to drive my Epson scanner since Mac OSX came out.  I tried to see if VueScan would see the HP C6180 scanner on the network but it did not, even with the most recent version.  Tonight I read through the HP manual to make certain there was no reason to not use the USB port on the AIO while the Ethernet port was active.  I could not find any warning so I hooked up my MacBook using the USB cable from my recently deceased Sony camera.  VueScan saw the scanner and I was in business.

The only thing left is to try is to see how well the printers work with Ubuntu.  There is no rush on that.  That might be a good winter project for a lazy Saturday. 

One of the interesting things that I have run into is that it seems every that every hardware manufacturer, including those who do printers, computers, and cameras has its own suite of consumer digital photo tools.   They're all similar, and it gets a little weird with all the choices of how to manage your photos.  Once you throw in Adode, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, you have to wonder if the market can support this many solutions.  Actually my guess is the market will figure it out. The support people might rightfully view this proliferation as scary.  Just imagine a Mac running Parallels Windows software.  You could have Nikon, Sony, HP, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google software all fighting for control of the same photos.

Invariably the client based software doesn't seem to work nearly as well managing photos on the web as the true web based solutions like Flickr and Picasa Web Albums.  That's the case even in the with the iPhoto, iWeb, and dot Mac from Apple who used to be the digital content king.  I wrote about this recently on Applepeels in the post, "My problem with Apple."

I am not  sure why the companies are spending so much money on this segment.  My guess is that there  will be some shakeout, but that's the subject of another post.

Right now I am proud of my new office, and I would recommend all of the products that I am using.  The only exception would be the Parallels Desktop software which turns the MacBook into a Windows box. The problem is probably caused by the measly 1 gig of ram on my MacBook, but I doubt I will figure that out for a while since I have my Dell box running.

I do not have a lot of tolerance for technology gadgets or companies that fail to meet my expectations so expect to see a post or at least a comment if I run into challenges like the IE crash that I had last night after installing Internet Explorer 7.  I did like some of the new feature of IE, but crashing is not a good way to win my confidence.

The office even looks good since I even ran the cables through the desk.  This is the neatest office that I have ever had.  I must be mellowing with age.  Just getting it working used to be the most important task and often the only thing that mattered.   Just do not ask my kids about my old cable tree.

I am beginning to think this is the year of returning to my inner geek. 

First I went to work at Webmail.us where I ended up bringing my own computers, network hub, and even an Internet phone.  Since I was one of only a couple of Mac users, I ended up figuring some of the printing and other technology issues with only a little help.  I actually wrote about that on Applepeels in the post, "Heterogenous Apple nirvana, well almost."  Then we moved the Webmail.us outside sales office to Roanoke, and I ended up setting another office for myself.

Since I do a fair amount of web work, I usually need three machines to survive, a Mac desktop, a Windows box, and a Mac laptop.  When we got a place in the fall on the White Oak River near Cape Carteret, NC, it was obvious that I needed another office.  I decided to leave a Mac at home in Roanoke to drive my big Epson printers, but I felt that I need my dual G5 and my Dell desktop.  My youngest daughter confiscated my Dell laptop for her business classes at UNCC.

I actually enjoy technology when I can make it work.  I'm usually persistent enough to eventually achieve that.  I can move pretty easily from Mac OSX to Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux.  In fact when I want to procrastinate I will often lose myself in technology challenges.  I spent a lot of time in 2004 getting Linux up and running, and experimenting with SUSE and Xandros distributions before settling on Ubuntu as my standard.  When I recently did some upgrades on all three operating systems, I was convinced that Ubuntu was as easy if not easier than Mac OSX.

For my coastal office printers I went with an Ethernet equipped Brother 5250N and a HP AIO Photosmart C6180 which also supported Ethernet.   I installed  a router with firewall and four ports, one of with goes to an Airport Express and another to a small hub.  We are using a cable modem hooked to Time-Warner.  I also have a Vonage Internet phone to go along with our land line.  We are using an AT&T two line wireless phone system which works great.

So far everything seems to be working fine.   The biggest challenge was the  HP AIO which I wrote about in the post, "HP AIO Photosmart C6180 and Mac OSX."  Last night I got the fax working.  Unfortunately I first tried to set it up using the Mac.  That turned out not to work.  I used the Dell to get it going.  The Windows Wizard had another setting which seemed to fix things.  I had already confirmed that the printing works, both text, color, and photo.   Still the HP software for the Mac seems very intrusive.

The HP scanning does work.  Other than the feature to scan directly to iPhoto, which I like a lot, I felt like I was missing my good friend VueScan which I have used in Roanoke to drive my Epson scanner since Mac OSX came out.  I tried to see if VueScan would see the HP C6180 scanner on the network but it did not, even with the most recent version.  Tonight I read through the HP manual to make certain there was no reason to not use the USB port on the AIO while the Ethernet port was active.  I could not find any warning so I hooked up my MacBook using the USB cable from my recently deceased Sony camera.  VueScan saw the scanner and I was in business.

The only thing left is to try is to see how well the printers work with Ubuntu.  There is no rush on that.  That might be a good winter project for a lazy Saturday. 

One of the interesting things that I have run into is that it seems every that every hardware manufacturer, including those who do printers, computers, and cameras has its own suite of consumer digital photo tools.   They're all similar, and it gets a little weird with all the choices of how to manage your photos.  Once you throw in Adode, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, you have to wonder if the market can support this many solutions.  Actually my guess is the market will figure it out. The support people might rightfully view this proliferation as scary.  Just imagine a Mac running Parallels Windows software.  You could have Nikon, Sony, HP, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google software all fighting for control of the same photos.

Invariably the client based software doesn't seem to work nearly as well managing photos on the web as the true web based solutions like Flickr and Picasa Web Albums.  That's the case even in the with the iPhoto, iWeb, and dot Mac from Apple who used to be the digital content king.  I wrote about this recently on Applepeels in the post, "My problem with Apple."

I am not  sure why the companies are spending so much money on this segment.  My guess is that there  will be some shakeout, but that's the subject of another post.

Right now I am proud of my new office, and I would recommend all of the products that I am using.  The only exception would be the Parallels Desktop software which turns the MacBook into a Windows box. The problem is probably caused by the measly 1 gig of ram on my MacBook, but I doubt I will figure that out for a while since I have my Dell box running.

I do not have a lot of tolerance for technology gadgets or companies that fail to meet my expectations so expect to see a post or at least a comment if I run into challenges like the IE crash that I had last night after installing Internet Explorer 7.  I did like some of the new feature of IE, but crashing is not a good way to win my confidence.

The office even looks good since I even ran the cables through the desk.  This is the neatest office that I have ever had.  I must be mellowing with age.  Just getting it working used to be the most important task and often the only thing that mattered.   Just do not ask my kids about my old cable tree.

As loyalty goes these days, we were pretty loyal customers to Circuit City.  For a long time, Circuit City was the only large national electronics retailer in the area.  We bought lots of stuff from them over the years.

I took some sort of strange pride from the long list of products triggered by entering our phone number in Circuit City's computers.

We certainly hadn't been exclusive Circuit City customers, but looking back on all that we had purchased, we were definitely in the list of good customers.  We also felt good enough about our experiences with Circuit City to give them a chance to win our business when looking for new products.

In fact it was only a couple of weeks ago that we visited the Roanoke area Circuit City store in an attempt to find someone who could actually demonstrate one of the all pervasive all-in-one printer, scanner, copier, fax machines that I'm guessing will be hot products this holiday season.   As I wrote in the post, "Attack of the all in one machines & customer service,"  we didn't have any luck finding a competent sales person in Roanoke among the two Staples, Best Buy, and Circuit City stores that we visited.  We ended up buying a HP AIO in a Morehead City, NC Staples purely because we ran into a really good sales person who gave us a great demonstration and answered all our questions.

In the past we had really good luck with Circuit City.  In summer of 2005, I dropped the Nikon Cool Pix 5200 that was what I like to call my pocket camera.   The very critical optical zoom feature stopped working.  Knowing that to have a repair done on a digital camera costs a minimum of $250, I decided it made more sense to buy a new camera.  We looked around and ended up buying a very nice Sony which would easily slip into my pocket.  I believe it ended up costing about $400 because we bought a couple of years of extended warranty.

We did that for some good reasons.  The Nikon was the second camera I had dropped and had to replace. Previous experience with Circuit City led us to believe that they had one of the best no hassle extended warranties in town.  My son, when he was a teenager, went through two or three CD-ROM players that didn't work well.  Circuit City, true to their word then, swapped them out, no questions asked.  We also bought our oldest daughter a music system that had a CD-changer that never could be repaired so Circuit City to their credit also swapped that out with no problem.

My wife and I both heard the pitch when the Circuit City sales person promised that my camera would be repaired or swapped out no questions asked if there any problems with it during the Circuit City protection period.

After my Sony camera stopped working recently, we took some time on a Saturday afternoon to drive to Jacksonville, NC from our second home in Swansboro, NC to take my camera for what I thought would be a quick swap.  We went directly to the service area, where after checking our warranty, the girl at the desk told us we would have to call a 800 number and trouble shoot the camera first. 

That's when I should have picked up the first signal that  Circuit City's no hassle, cover any problem warranty had become something that looks like a scam at least in the case of my camera.

So we turned around and worked our way through some nasty Saturday afternoon traffic in Jacksonville and got home in about 45 minutes.  I called the 800 number and since the camera would no longer turn on, I was told they would send a box for shipment to their repair center.  Of course the box went to our other home in Roanoke, Va and on our next visit there I forgot to bring the camera with me. I ended up having to haul the box to NC and ship the camera from there.

We got back from NC last night, eleven days later, and a message was waiting for us  the phone.  It  was that Circuit City had found corrosion in my camera and the warranty didn't cover that.  They promised to return my camera to me without being repaired.  I am sure there was some fine print in their extended warranty or extended service plan to cover their rears, but instead of increasing their profit, they just permanently got rid of a big profit center, namely me.

The interesting result of this is that Circuit City has turned out to be exactly the kind of electronics store that I don't need contrary to what their currently television advertising is saying.   Instead of getting a customer for life, they've lost a customer for life.

Now I'll still visit their stores to look at products and even ask questions of their sales people, but under no circumstances will I ever buy another product from Circuit City.  I'm done.  Their no hassle extended service plan turned out to be a big expensive hassle that was worse than worthless.  It cost me a Saturday afternoon and money.

In this day of 300 million Americans, I'm sure Circuit City won't lose any sleep over one customer any more than Volvo or Maytag did when they lost me as customers.  Products like Maytag sometimes pay the ultimate price,   Big box retailers usually just reorganize.

The one thing that Circuit City can't take to the bank is any more money of my money for any products no matter how small.  I won't be buying there, and I'll make certain that my kids and wife understand that presents with a Circuit City receipt will not be accepted.

There may not be many choices in local big box electronics stores, but there is enough to make sure Circuit City will never process another charge of mine.  If I run out of local stores, there is always the Internet.

So my new question is that given customer service and products are a real pain these days, will I run out of places to buy things or products that I'll accept before or after I can't figure out how to use most of what they're selling?

I recently wrote a post, "Attack of the all in one machines & customer service," about my purchase of a HP C6180 AIO, printer, scanner, copier, and fax.  The past weekend I had a chance to install it and try most of the features.

As is often the case, it turned out not nearly as easy as one might expect.  There were a couple of interesting challenges, one that was HP's fault and one that was likely mine.

The good news, as is often the case in technology, is that I kept working on it until I got everything working.

First off  I actually read the instructions and followed them.  The HP 6180 can be set up wireless on a 802.x network or wired as part of a standard network.  I just to hook it to my newly installed Ethernet network.   

The network has a cable modem hooked to a router with four ports.  One of the ports feeds an Airport Express.  I am running OS X version 10.4.8 on all the Macs.  The first system I attempted to install the software on was my dual G5 which I admit to neglecting by not upgrading it to at one gig of ram.  The first thing I notice is that didn't get very far in the installation before I was presented with was a drop down menu that would only let me select C7100 as the model for my printer.  Obviously that was not a good sign, but I went ahead an installed the software.  Of course when I tried to set up the printer, the HP software couldn't find the printer.  Being the clever Apple guy that I am, I used Bonjour to get the printing working.  Unfortunately when I went to use the scanner, it wouldn't initialize.

At this point I decided to backtract.  I un-installed the software that I had just finished installing and went to HP's website and downloaded the latest software for the 6100 series.  When I started installing I was presented with the correct choice of printer in the pull down menu.  The picture above is a scan of the disk that was in the box.  Unfortunately it appears that the wrong software is on the cd-rom even though the label is right.

Next I tried to install the software on my laptop wirelessly. It never could find the printer so I grabbed an Ethernet connection and the software installed correctly.  I went back to having my laptop on our wireless network and couldn't print.  It took me a while, but I eventually figured out that my Airport Express was distributing IP addresses so I ran Airport Admin and turned off the IP address feature.

So far I really pleased with the quality of the text.  I also have a Brother 5250DN laser on the network for quality printing but I'm not sure I need it.  The text coming out of the HP is much better than indicated in all of the reviews that I read.  Of course it's pretty hard to beat a laser for being really professional.

The photo printer also works well on the HP.  My wife is pleased with that.  Mixed color and text also looks very sharp.  The scanner works well and can scan directly to iPhoto.  I think my dual G5 might get an upgrade to 2 gigs on ram since the HP apps seem to be memory sensitive.  They work well on my MacBook that has 1 gig of ram but not on the dual G5.  I need another connector before I can test the fax, but I have little doubt that it will work.

Technology continues to get better, but there always seems to be a few glitches which require remembering stuff that I would just as soon forget.  My nightmare is one of these days I'll wake up and not be able to do this stuff.

As soon as I can "borrow" my Windows laptop back from my daughter I see how everything works with Windows and Linux.  I did install the Parallels software and Windows XP on my MacBook but I believe it needs to get upgraded to 2 gigs of ram to be really functional, and I need my genuine Windows serial number off the bottom of my Dell laptop to validate the software.

This stuff is never easy.  By the way, I don't see lots of people using the Parallels solution on a regular basis unless they're sophisticated software users.

I recently wrote a post, "Attack of the all in one machines & customer service," about my purchase of a HP C6180 AIO, printer, scanner, copier, and fax.  The past weekend I had a chance to install it and try most of the features.

As is often the case, it turned out not nearly as easy as one might expect.  There were a couple of interesting challenges, one that was HP's fault and one that was likely mine.

The good news, as is often the case in technology, is that I kept working on it until I got everything working.

First off  I actually read the instructions and followed them.  The HP 6180 can be set up wireless on a 802.x network or wired as part of a standard network.  I just to hook it to my newly installed Ethernet network.   

The network has a cable modem hooked to a router with four ports.  One of the ports feeds an Airport Express.  I am running OS X version 10.4.8 on all the Macs.  The first system I attempted to install the software on was my dual G5 which I admit to neglecting by not upgrading it to at one gig of ram.  The first thing I notice is that didn't get very far in the installation before I was presented with was a drop down menu that would only let me select C7100 as the model for my printer.  Obviously that was not a good sign, but I went ahead an installed the software.  Of course when I tried to set up the printer, the HP software couldn't find the printer.  Being the clever Apple guy that I am, I used Bonjour to get the printing working.  Unfortunately when I went to use the scanner, it wouldn't initialize.

At this point I decided to backtract.  I un-installed the software that I had just finished installing and went to HP's website and downloaded the latest software for the 6100 series.  When I started installing I was presented with the correct choice of printer in the pull down menu.  The picture above is a scan of the disk that was in the box.  Unfortunately it appears that the wrong software is on the cd-rom even though the label is right.

Next I tried to install the software on my laptop wirelessly. It never could find the printer so I grabbed an Ethernet connection and the software installed correctly.  I went back to having my laptop on our wireless network and couldn't print.  It took me a while, but I eventually figured out that my Airport Express was distributing IP addresses so I ran Airport Admin and turned off the IP address feature.

So far I really pleased with the quality of the text.  I also have a Brother 5250DN laser on the network for quality printing but I'm not sure I need it.  The text coming out of the HP is much better than indicated in all of the reviews that I read.  Of course it's pretty hard to beat a laser for being really professional.

The photo printer also works well on the HP.  My wife is pleased with that.  Mixed color and text also looks very sharp.  The scanner works well and can scan directly to iPhoto.  I think my dual G5 might get an upgrade to 2 gigs on ram since the HP apps seem to be memory sensitive.  They work well on my MacBook that has 1 gig of ram but not on the dual G5.  I need another connector before I can test the fax, but I have little doubt that it will work.

Technology continues to get better, but there always seems to be a few glitches which require remembering stuff that I would just as soon forget.  My nightmare is one of these days I'll wake up and not be able to do this stuff.

As soon as I can "borrow" my Windows laptop back from my daughter I see how everything works with Windows and Linux.  I did install the Parallels software and Windows XP on my MacBook but I believe it needs to get upgraded to 2 gigs of ram to be really functional, and I need my genuine Windows serial number off the bottom of my Dell laptop to validate the software.

This stuff is never easy.  By the way, I don't see lots of people using the Parallels solution on a regular basis unless they're sophisticated software users.