A friend passed along his latest recommendation for USB sticks, the Patriot Xporter XT Boost 4GB Flash Drive (newegg link). Rugged exterior, and apparently legendary transfer speeds. New Egg is always my first stop due to the fantastic user reviews. I was sold on this one when I read the following review…
**Pros:** Like everyone else says the transfer rates are amazing, but what I look for in a drive is survivability.
I ran into the Youth Minister for my high school youth group at a friend’s wedding a few weeks back, and he graciously offered me the opportunity to write a letter to be read aloud at an upcoming retreat to the high school attendees. I was more than happy to oblige. Below is an excerpt of that letter that I thought would apply to anyone in high school or college, just getting your feet under you, just as life prepares to pull out the rug.
I recently made the decision to store times on Fwd:Vault systems in Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. I decided to do this because I have time-sensitive events happening along several dimensions. Email coming into the system has several timestamps associated with it: the user’s initial delivery, relay from their mail server, and receipt by the Fwd:Vault mail server. Payment receipts come into Fwd:Vault from our billing provider, which gets stored in my system and made available to the user.
After my post discussing how vendor-client relationships are complete crap most of the time — which was really a thinly veiled excuse to post a funny vid — a friend of mine posted a response on my Facebook page:
While you're right that you in essence 'get what you pay for' in this economic climate you'd be surprised how much lower vendors will go in order to keep a customer satisfied (which in turn could bring in more work.
Saw this post come across the community section the official Digg blog today discussing changes to the ads they’re running in the PC Games section. The mind-blowing line:
And if advertising skins just aren’t your thing, one of our users provided this story on how to disable them. They not only acknowledge that people are going to remove ads, but actually link to instructions on how to remove it. Sure, it's a bit of a challenge for non-techies (although installing AdBlock Plus makes this super-easy in Firefox), but the vast majority of the audience in the PC Gaming section is going to be able to figure it out.
This is one facet of business that I simply never understood, and always drove me nuts. My boss would ask me to “get a better price,” and I’d have to go back to the vendor and essentially beg them to drop the price. How often does the purchasing company really have any leverage to ask for anything? The price is the price. You don’ like it, go elsewhere. It’s nonsense. Good to see I’m not alone!
Came across this BusinessWeek article (published on Yahoo!) today discussing companies that “embody the creativity and resiliency common among today’s entrepreneurs.” They do make it clear that it’s a new recurring segment, so maybe they’re still getting their feet under them. That’s what I’m hoping anyway, because I see nothing but a bunch of me-toos and also-rans in this list. Read the article, and see if my summary (and accompanying snarky comments) jive with what you read:
I was submitting a good business-oriented discussion about SEO just now to StumbleUpon and I noticed they’ve changed how submissions of a new site work. Before, you picked a category for the site, offered a description, and included any worthwhile tags. It wasn’t a whole lot, but I have done the internal “groan” when presented with this to-do list. Now, if the page is new to their systems, they simply asked if the site is “Safe for work.
I was quoted in an article over at IT Expert Voice that pooled advice from hardened IT Veterans on the process of rolling out a new OS in a business environment. There’s plenty of great advice on the actual act of a rollout — test-test-test, schedule for downtime, etc. — but obviously the timing of the article coincides with the recent release of Windows 7, and is directed at IT folks considering an upgrade.
There’s a new post on the Fwd:Vault blog discussing a new website I found that makes installing and updating the most common desktop software a breeze. Check it out for a review as well as some program suggestions to get started. In blog meta news, I know that comments were broken for a while. That issue has been resolved, and I apologize if you had a tough time finding the non-existent comments section.
