Jake Ludington’s Digital Lifestyle

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When I review new computer hardware, I try to first use it “as is” and then make configuration changes based on the way I’d use a computer if it were actually mine. One of the key components of “as is” configuration is the software that comes pre-installed. For instance, on the HP dv2 I received from HP for testing some of the pre-installed software includes a Norton Internet Security trial, a Microsoft Office trial, Slingbox Sling Player, and muvee reveal. Then there are the paid links to services like ebay, a Quicken and Quickbooks trial download, NetZero, and Juno.

Some of these pre-installed features are actually useful and some of them are downright annoying. Take Norton Internet Security for instance. While I’m all for a secure computing experience, I don’t particularly want to use Norton’s products. Everytime I power on the HP dv2, I get nagged to activate the Norton trial. Once I get past the “as-is” experience, Norton will be the first thing on the list to get uninstalled.

Other software I might actually want to try if I knew what to do with it doesn’t ever make itself known. The Microsoft Office trial doesn’t ever do anything unless you open one of the applications. Since I’m not informed of a situation when I’d want to use Office, I don’t ever have a reason to try it out. Of course, I already know what Microsoft Office is for, but that doesn’t mean everyone who gets a new computer does. muvee reveal is a fun application for making quick movies from your video recordings. If I wasn’t already aware of muvee’s software, I would never know that it’s for video from the information provided on by this HP dv2. The Slingbox Sling Player is definitely an advertisement for buying a Slingbox, but it also sits quietly on your computer, so if you never bother to look at it you won’t ever know why you would or wouldn’t want to use it. If you already have a Slingbox, it is nice to already have the software ready to go.

Presumably either the software companies are paying to put this stuff on new computers or HP is paying to have access to the software. In either case, if I never use the software, the financial transaction involved is a waste. Even worse for me as a customer, at retail places like Best Buy encourage me to pay for an optimization service that removes trial software so I lose and so do the software companies. In a better customer experience, I’d get some education about the benefits of the software so that I might make an informed decision about what I want or need.

But my real question is, what do you do with the software that’s pre-installed on your new computer? Do you use it? Do you uninstall it? Is there software listed in your start menu that you’ve never tried? Would you use more of the software on your computer if you knew what it was for?

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Buzz Corps, the company that’s behind some of the amazing giveaways I participate in, like 31 Days of the Dragon and the HP Magic Giveaway, are changing their name. As a result they need a new logo for the new company. They could have hired a designer to do the new logo, but instead they are reaching out to the community that supports them to look for a great design. As they put it:

“We have always been amazed at the level of talent, smarts and expertise that come from engaging with passionate people. In fact, communities and influencers convinced us to start Buzz Corps (our old name) and helped name us and create our first logo. So, in keeping with our business model and our philosophy the only logical thing for us was to once again work with the influencers and their communities to develop our new mark.”

I’ve seen other logo design contests in the past, but most of them are small potatoes when compared to this. The winning designer gets $2500. There are also some great prizes for 2nd and 3rd place. Entry deadline is June 12, which should be plenty of time to create an awesome new logo. Complete Details are available from Ivy Worldwide (the new name for Buzz Corps).

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I keep thinking about ditching cable altogether and using something like PlayOn to get television from the Internet back to my HDTV. So far the steps are still too many to completely kill my cable television service. Couple that with Comcast offering the best high speed data option where I live and I remain a customer. That doesn’t mean I like paying for it. So I called customer service to see what I could do to lower the price.

Most of the Comcast advertisements are for deals aimed at new customers. If you’ve been with them a long time, you generally don’t qualify. That doesn’t mean you can’t lower your cable bill. I had several components of my bill that were more expensive due to the length of time I’d been a customer. The cost of DVR service dropped in the 4+ years since I subscribed. The level of high speed Internet I currently subscribe to was on sale. New channel bundling drove down the price. By the end of the phone call, my cable television plus Internet bill was less than 50% of what it was before the call.

A couple of the price drops are only for a few months, so I’ll be closer to 50% in about 6 months, but I may call in again and see if there are any other specials. Bottom line here is Comcast will offer you deals on service, but only if you take the time to call and ask.

How about you? Got any tips on lowering your cable bill?

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We lost the keys to our riding lawn mower - not just one, both of them. While it crossed my mind that hot-wiring the lawn mower should be fairly easy, for the long haul, replacing the key makes more sense. The question becomes, where do you get a replacement lawn mower key? Direct from the manufacturer? If they sell one, sure. Maybe I can buy a lawn mower key from Home Depot where I bought the mower - not according to employees at two different stores I checked. If you can find a lawn mower repair shop in your area, call them and they may have a lawn mower key in stock. The keys are universal across most brands and even extend to snow blowers. My solution turned out to be the Arnold #1K-100 Universal Ignition Key. Problem solved for under $2.00. I’m expecting to find the original key any day now after finding a replacement.

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Somewhere in the midst of all the excitement around having a new baby arrive, I missed the memo that I was supposed to be announcing another giveaway yesterday. This time around the giveaway is a brand new Pantech Matrix Pro cell phone (pictured below) paired with a $100 gift card to ATT Wireless, which happens to be the carrier associated with the phone. If you live outside the U.S., you’ll likely want to skip this one, since the phone is locked and the gift card won’t be particularly useful to you either.

I’ve had a review unit of the Pantech Matrix Pro at my house for a couple of months and found the dual slide keyboard to be quite handy. The Matrix Pro does not have a touch screen, but I honestly didn’t miss it, which could be due to my years of using other Windows Mobile phones. I definitely find it easier to enter phone numbers (especially alphanumeric ones) on a traditional telephone keypad rather than attempting to dial from a QWERTY keyboard.

How to enter the giveaway? I’ll keep this one simple - all you have to do is be a fan of my Facebook page (which is different than being a friend on Facebook). I’m doing a talk on Facebook for businesses on May 15 and this will help me with some additional research. The recipient of the phone will be selected at random from all fans (which are listed in the sidebar on the Facebook page) who live in the United States. Be a fan to qualify.

I was originally supposed to announce the conclusion of the giveaway on 1 May 2009, but I’m extending it by 24 hours since I got a late start. You have until 7pm Pacific on 2 May 2009 to qualify. The lucky person who gets the phone will be announced on Facebook, on my blog, on Twitter and in my email newsletter shortly after that.

If you aren’t lucky enough to get the Pantech Matrix Pro I’m giving away, Smart Phone Thoughts, Mobility Minded, The Gadgeteer, Geekzone, Techie Diva, Boston Pocket PC, Gear Diary, MobilitySite, Absolute Windows, Mobilejaw, Experience Mobility, Hack College, and Gear Live will be announcing a new contest each day (in that order) starting today as well.

As part of the promotion, there’s also some special pricing on a Jabra BT4051 headset package not available anywhere else.

UPDATE: Katie Yang was announced to all Facebook fan participants on May 2, 2009

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I placed a 911 call from my house last week (don’t worry, everything is fine now). Nothing unusual about that except that I’m in my 5th year as a Vonage customer. As a VoIP service, Vonage has the advantage of allowing me to connect the hardware to any broadband Internet connection and place or receive calls to the same number. In theory, I could take my Vonage hardware to China, connect it, and receive local Seattle area calls with no one on the other end being wise to my location. The downside to this mobility is needing to manually enter your location into the Vonage system for the purpose of 911 call routing. I had entered the correct address for our old residence, back when 911 support first became available, but hadn’t updated it when we moved to Bainbridge Island in 2008.

This illustrates an important difference between landline phone service and VoIP. With the landline service, the phone carrier knows the exact physical location of call routing because the phone carrier owns the network from their central office all the way up to the point of demarcation on the side of your residence. With a VoIP service like Vonage, all they know is that somewhere out on the Internet there’s a box with a specific IP address and MAC address combination associated with your phone number. When a call comes in to Vonage for your, it routes that call out to your box.

For purposes of 911 service, the phone company provides location information for phone numbers, so the 911 operator can use caller ID functions to identify your location. I believe they still verify this data when you call them, but it is seldom wrong for traditional phone service. With VoIP, the providers rely on you to keep accurate data in the system. Failure to provide accurate data may slow down the ability of the emergency services to respond to your call.

In my case, this simply meant a transfer I barely noticed while on the phone to the Bainbridge Island 911 operator, which translated to quick service in a small community setting. For places with traffic congestion and greater geographic spread, it could be more serious.

Bottom line: take my failure to update the 911 address in my Vonage service as an opportunity to make sure your VoIP phone service is updated with the correct physical address for your location, so that when you need to call 911 they know where to find you.

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I follow lots of searches on Twitter and happened upon one denying some guy his right to learn how to lie on a resume. His grievance is none of the search results for How to Lie on a Resume actually turn up any advice. He’s absolutely right, learning to lie on your resume is a tricky thing. The key to any lie is the truth it contains, so use your language skills creatively and you’re sure to succeed at lying on your resume.

Brandon has some great thought provoking phrases in what I would call the ultimate guide to lying on your resume. I don’t think that’s what he intended, so I’ll analyze a few of his gems as a great starting point:

Trying to downplay your lack of employment or temporary self-employment in your quest for a sales job, try this: “Worked with a constricted budget was careful to leverage sales”

Need a temporary PhD? A search engine won’t notice the period (or the rest of the word) when you randomly add the sentence, “Tested water Ph.Determined amount of chlorine to add accounting for the volume of water.” Bonus reference to accounting helps you rank better in resume search engines too.

Under-qualified for that Java programming position? Make up for it with clever keyword usage: “Played Elf Bowling and other Java games.” I’m going to co-opt this one and suggest that rather than admitting to playing games, you might state you did “scalability testing of Java applications through hours of rigorous testing.” This not only sounds better, it gets away from admitting to game play.

Notice that none of these things are outright lies, they are merely creative uses of language. Think of them more as positioning statements, not lies, however, if you are caught lying, it’s not my fault. You simply weren’t creative enough. ;) Go forth and update your resume.

Feel free to share your resume lies in the comments below.

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After seeing the Cash4Gold.com commercial with MC Hammer and Ed McMahon on the Super Bowl, I’ve seen Cash4Gold Instant Cash for Gold offers numerous times on various Comcast cable television stations. My initial reaction to the ads was why would anyone want to attempt to get cash for gold watches and gold jewelry by sending it through the mail? My next thought was how do people using Cash4Gold get a good deal? As someone who makes a living from an ad supported publication, I pay a great deal of attention to advertising in all mediums, much to the annoyance of my wife and her preference to skip commercials.

It seems likely the timing of the commercials is due to the lousy state of the U.S. economy, but I can also see scenarios where you might simply want to sell your gold jewelry without the hassle of taking it to a pawn shop or trying your hand at an ebay jewelry auction. Maybe you’re a guy who bought some jewelry for a girlfriend and she gave it back when you broke up - it’s not like you can just pass it on to the next girl you meet. I’ve used a similar service, cellforcash.com, to get some money for old cell phones. I didn’t get the same price for my cell phones I’d have gotten if I sold my cell phones on ebay, but I also didn’t have the hassle of dealing with managing the auction, shipping the phone, and then waiting to see if the person on the other end was actually happy with it. Cash4Gold seems like the same convenience for gold items, with a similar trade off cash for convenience.

How do you maximize your return when selling your cash for gold?

The best way to maximize your return with Cash4Gold.com is to read the fine print. When you send in jewelry, their terms and conditions state:

“Except for small diamonds, prices for Jewelry are based solely on the weight of your Jewelry and karat grade contained in your Jewelry, not on its potential value if resold intact.”

What that means to me is if you have precious stones in a jewelry piece, you don’t get paid for them by Cash4Gold, so you either need to accept that or find another way to sell your jewelry. They recommend theestatebuyer.com as an alternative for fine jewelry with precious stones, however, Cash4Gold doesn’t forward your stuff, you have to send it to the right place. Knowing where to sell your stuff makes all the difference in getting the best price.

Another thing to keep in mind is by sending in your jewelry, you are agreeing to sell it for whatever price Cash4Gold determines. In some cases, you might be better off to have them assess your gold before you commit to selling. To do this, according to their terms and conditions, you have to request the quote in writing or by phone at the time you send in your gold. You also have 12 days to send the check back and request your jewelry back, but it seems more proactive to get a quote before you have them send a check rather than jumping through hoops if you change your mind.

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I’m fairly confident I’m going to miss my weight loss goal of 30 pounds by 1 May 2009. I’m currently down 12 pounds from my starting weight, with 8 days remaining. While I’m sure there’s some “miracle diet” I could follow to drop 2+ pounds per day for the rest of the month, starvation doesn’t seem like a healthy alternative. I’m fairly confident I’ll finish the month of April with a total loss of 15 pounds.

What derailed me from my goal? I got sidetracked initially by the arrival of Robin’s parents. My eating habits were corrupted by morning breakfast options I don’t normally entertain, which put me over my daily calorie budget. That’s my own fault and I should have planned accordingly, but didn’t. Two weeks with a new baby has meant my primary focus of any spare moment has been on sleeping not exercise, which accounts for more of the delay. I am closer to my goal than I was 30 days ago, which is a good thing, but a refocus on eating appropriately and getting a normal exercise routine back should move things along. I’m targeting a new date of 15 June 2009 for the remainder of the weight to be gone.

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Since I’m mentioning my love of the RoboForm password manager again, I thought I’d take a moment and talk about why I don’t use a couple of free alternatives. I don’t pretend to be the world’s leading expert on password security. I do have over 100 passwords I keep track of and I some strong opinions about the most convenient way to manage them.

Each time I mention RoboForm I usually get several emails from people asking why I don’t use the password manager in Firefox or the extremely popular password manager LastPass. Both are free, both use encryption, so why aren’t either of them good enough for me?

Firefox has a solid password manager. I like it in situations where you have less than 20 online passwords to keep track of. I hit a point where I felt like there were too many situations where the Firefox password manager simply didn’t work effectively for my needs. If you use Firefox as your password manager and are happy with it, keep using it! The one thing you should do is set a master password to protect all your Firefox passwords. Not because someone might discover them, but because they aren’t protected with any kind of encryption if you don’t set a master password. If your computer is ever compromised, by a virus or a person, not using the Firefox master password feature means anyone or any software can read your Firefox passwords. The

LastPass is a tougher one for me to defend against. It has features very similar to RoboForm. LastPass works great. LastPass is free! And if you use their online password synchronization feature, you can access your passwords from Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux. Many people I respect use LastPass. The one thing I don’t trust about LastPass is the thing that makes it great - online synchronization. I don’t like the idea of storing my bank password on someone else’s server. The data is encrypted on the LastPass server, so in theory it’s safe, but my credit card account is also supposed to be encrypted and that hasn’t prevented employee theft issues being reported at several banking institutions. The human wildcard of someone possibly accessing and using my data makes the convenience of LastPass to risky in my book. Paranoid? Maybe. For the record, I won’t use the new online version of RoboForm for the same reason.

For the time being, I’m sticking with RoboForm, storing data on a local drive I keep in my possession at all times.

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