I was sure they’d be on the bad-guy spy list, but they’re not ..
Think Your Internet Provider Might Be Spying On You? Just Check Our List
Little or no tracking at all:
Wow. What are they waiting for?
I was sure they’d be on the bad-guy spy list, but they’re not ..
Think Your Internet Provider Might Be Spying On You? Just Check Our List
Little or no tracking at all:
Wow. What are they waiting for?
State of the Art - Your Photos, Off the Shelf at Last - NYTimes.com:If my prints are lost, I can scan the negs.
... ScanMyPhotos.com ... says it will professionally scan 1,000 photos for you, the same day it receives them, and put them on a DVD for $50.So what’s the catch?
Actually, no catch, but lots of fine print.
ScanMyPhotos relies on a certain commercial Kodak scanning machine, which processes hundreds of photos a minute. There’s no reason other companies couldn’t buy the same machine and set up similar services. Indeed, some have, although most charge 12 to 16 cents a photo, compared with the 5-cent ScanMyPhotos rate.
Because it must feed your photos through this machine, ScanMyPhotos has set some rules. Photo sizes can range from 3 by 3 inches (Polaroids) to 11 by 14.
The photos must be put into similar-size bundles (4-by-6 prints together, for example) with rubber bands. The only way to label the batches is to write on [same sized - jf] index cards, which are scanned along with the photos like title cards. If you want the bundles scanned in a certain sequence, you can number the index cards...
There is also, however, the terror of sending away your valuable photographs. ScanMyPhotos asserts that it has scanned more than eight million customer photos, and has never lost or damaged a single one. But there’s always a first time; consider the fate of DigMyPics.com, a rival company. In May, a fire burned its headquarters to the ground, destroying almost everything inside — including some customers’ original photos.
Yet there’s a risk of doing nothing, too. Photos kept in a dry, cool and dark place don’t deteriorate nearly as quickly as audiotape, videotape and film reels. In fact, properly stored, they can last a century or more. But because photos are still susceptible to a wide variety of destructive or negligent forces, the ScanMyPhotos service could turn out to be the best $50, plus shipping and optional services, you’ll ever spend...
Toodledo :: A to-do list to organize your tasksHeck, even if it doesn't work I give them points for caring!
...If you already use a task manager, you won't want to type in your tasks all over again. Toodledo can import tasks from many sources, including your Palm OS PDA, Microsoft Outlook, Apple's iCal, and other online todo lists...
Macworld | Review: Basic to-do apps for iPhone and iPod touchSince then he's added Zenbe lists and ToDo.
... a quick stroll through the list of productivity apps in the App Store shows you how many developers have stepped up to the plate: earlier this week I found 13 to-do-list programs; five more-advanced task managers designed around the Getting Things Done (GTD) system or aimed at complex project management; seven apps focused on keeping shopping lists; and a handful of apps, such as Jott (), that use voice-recording and other unique approaches to help you remember the myriad tasks you need to complete in your busy life...
This post, reused from another setting, is a bit more complex than I typically do. I think it might be of interest to heavy-duty users of Outlook tasks. It’s also a marker for comparison to the plethora of iPhone/OS X task/gCal/project mgt tools that are emerging.
Obviously I push Outlook tasks into the domain where I ought to be using a lightweight Project Management tool; there are reasons for my sticking with Outlook …
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This mini-tutorial is really a guide to what’s possible with Outlook task management. For more details on how to do things, I’d recommend the Outlook Help file. It’s pretty good once you know what’s possible. Google will usually point you to Microsoft tutorials on these topics as well.
The first three topics are relatively basic, but the Views take some getting used to.
Create a task by drag and drop email or appointment or contact on a task icon, such as an Outlook Shortcut to your task folder.
If you create a task by dragging and dropping an email, you’d normally file or delete the email. You can always find it by search.
If you use Task Views (below), you can drag and drop to change Due Date (including remove), Priorities, and add categories.
You can drag and drop tasks on a calendar to create appointments with matching dates..
Ignore the “start date” field, it’s worthless and behaves oddly. Just use the Due Date.
Before you drag and drop an email to create an appointment, task, or note, first click in the subject line and make it something useful. That way you kill two birds with one stone – you have a descriptive subject to help with search and replies and you have matching descriptive subject in the task. The fact that they match also helps if you want to do full text search to locate an email you’ve dropped in your “save” folder.
I’m not always consistent, but this is the meaning I give to Task priorities in Outlook.
High priority: must have due dates. Move forward if not dealt with. Assign to categories. Often has a calendar slot reserved for associated work.
Normal priority: may have due dates if quick or topical, otherwise do as available. Assign to categories. Some may be abandoned. Rarely has a protected calendar slot.
Low priority: never have due dates. Mostly keep as a record of “like to do”. Tend to discover on searches. May have categories.
An Outlook task doesn’t have much structure. I use the Subject, Category and Due Date attributes, but I follow a convention of my own for the Task note:
“next steps” as bullets at the top so I can quickly see what to do next
History items (past actions) with a date stamp
Notes and emails that get attached to a task
I take a loose approach to Categories. You need to know that Outlook 2003 stores it’s “master category list” in the registry (!), when you change machines you lose it! Happily the Categories are just strings stored in the tasks, so they don’t go away.
Because of this I just ignore the Mater Category list. Examples of my categories include:
- Product names
- Release numbers
- People names
- Project names
- Customer names
- Business partners
You can use Outlook’s canned Task Views, but they’re feeble. There’s no “due date’ view, for example (amazing!).
Once you define your Views (see below) the easiest way to select them is to configure your Outlook toolbar to show your Views in a drop down list.
For example, here I have “jf_Priority_DueDate” selected as my View. I have the headings collapsed so you can’t see the tasks, but if you opened the heading you could drag and drop a task to change priority or due date using this View.
From this drop down list of Views you can chose the “Define Views” item to create custom views.
If you choose to Define a View, I recommend copying from a default view rather than editing it. I prefix mine with jf_ to differentiate the ones I’ve created:
Here’s an example of a Custom View screen:
Outlook 2003 has a major bug with Category views. So does Outlook 1999, 2000, XP, etc. This bug was only fixed in Outlook 2007.
If you view by category, then sort on any header, your custom view loses the category setting. You have to recreate it. The hundredth time you do this you learn not to sort when in category view. It took Microsoft 8 years, from Outlook 1999 to Outlook 2007, to fix this.
Tasks: View by Priority and Date
I’ve just started using this view but it’s quite powerful. I can assign tasks to both priorities and dates in a single move.
Yep, Apple melted. They flew too close to the sun. They need to stabilize things then give every engineer and analyst a three week vacation and a free flight to Hawaii. They have the money, might as well spend it on a good cause.
In the meantime, an essential article on iPhone troubleshooting …
Macworld | iPhone Central | Troubleshooting iPhone and iPod touch issues
…Your only solution at this point is a full restore of the iPhone. Hold down the Home button on the iPhone, plug it into your USB cable or dock, and wait until you see the special screen shown at right, then release the Home button.
iTunes will then tell you it’s found a phone in recovery mode, and you can then begin the long process of restoring it. First iTunes will reinstall the latest version of the iPhone’s operating system, then it will restore your applications (including data you’ve created in those applications) from your last backup, and then—eventually—you’ll be able to sync your music, videos, photos, and other data back to the iPhone…
I didn’t know restore would also bring back application data, though I’ve hunch data isn’t being synced for Apps that can’t update.
Great article, keep it by your sync cable for regular consultation.
Parenthetically, Macworld is doing surprisingly good work these days.
Update 8/14/08: Yep. As I expected doing the unsync/sync hack for non-updateable Apps does not restore any data.