Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

links for 2008-05-06

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

After Quicken?

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

Web-forward people, particularly iPhone users, what’s the next thing after Quicken? Mint? Wesabe? Quicken online? I’ve tried all of these, and I have some complaints about each. Quicken no longer affords me the convenience it used to before I had an iPhone, when I used Pocket Quicken on my Treo to record expenses as I transacted them and could sync them up back at my laptop whenever. Now I have a stack of receipts piling up and no motivation to do anything with them, but I miss the granular visibility I used to have into my finances when that system was working well for me.

So what now?

links for 2008-04-27

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

links for 2008-04-18

Friday, April 18th, 2008

Not to brag, but…

Monday, April 14th, 2008

After reading Mike and Jon’s laments about being “off the grid,” I did a little ego-surfing on Google Maps street view, and, hey whaddya know, we’re on it. They must have driven by before our transom and sidelights went in on our doorway, so it looks a little unfinished, but we’re there!

googlemaps.png

So, um, yeah. That was really important to determine. And now back to work.

links for 2008-03-23

Sunday, March 23rd, 2008

This blog now iPhone-ready

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

beehiveblog-iphonetheme.pngThanks to the fine folks at ContentRobot, this blog is now equipped with an iPhone-ready theme. If you view www.honeybowtie.com/blog from an iPhone, it will automatically show up in a minimalist iPhone format.

And thanks to Dan Dickinson’s simple explanation, the whole honeybowtie.com site now has a custom webclip icon if you add it to your home page.

Whee!

Things that probably deserve their own post

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

Yes, each of these probably merits a post of its own, and my blog has been sorely neglected of late. But since I’m powering through my to do list, I’m giving them each a bullet point, and I may choose to come back to one or more of them later.

  • I’ve been working very, very hard. If you visit Magazines.com over the next few months, you may see some cool changes start to take place.
  • I’ve been traveling a lot. Since the beginning of February, I’ve been in San Francisco, New York, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Chicago, and Boston. And not in Nashville very much, clearly.
  • My 17-year-old cousin (well, first cousin once removed) has lymphoma. But she’s got a great attitude and a lot of fight in her. I’m thinking a lot about my cousin and her family.
  • My coworker’s 10-year-old nephew just died from cancer after 9 months in the hospital. And then, at the funeral, the same coworker’s mother-in-law collapsed, had a heart attack, and died. I’m thinking a lot about that family.
  • Karsten and I are about to go on our first cruise. It’s a vegetarian cruise.
  • This weekend is the fifth anniversary of the crazy little experiment Karsten and I performed that we like to call “getting married.”
  • I finally convinced Karsten to join Facebook. We’re now married on Facebook! I feel so hip.

links for 2008-03-16

Sunday, March 16th, 2008
  • My buddy Joe Hendricks just launched a new web site for wine comparisons and education.
    (tags: wine)

links for 2008-02-24

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

links for 2008-02-21

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

Haven’t thought about that in a while

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

Oddly enough, a Google news alert for “kate o’neill” brought me to this topic in the bisexual community over at LiveJournal. Turns out no one was talking about me — the “kate” came from “Kate Winslet” and the “o’neill” from “Chris O’Neill” — but in a way, they kind of were, in a strange coincidence.

The discussion was around the list of movies in the Bisexual category at Netflix, and whether the titles constituted a good set, or were just stereotypes. Some commenters had already made the case that they were, for the most part, a good set, which I appreciated… since I’m the one who put the list together.

I left the following comment:

I’m the person who initially put together the list of bisexual movies for Netflix. I was the content manager there in 2000-2001, and I created the Bisexual subgenre within the content database, gradually populating it over time with titles that I (as a bisexual person) recognized as pertaining in some way to bisexuality, because they either feature an openly bi character, have some fluidity of sexuality within the story, are mentioned in Wayne Bryant’s wonderful book “Bisexual Characters in Film,” or seemed relevant in some other way.

I certainly understand if they seem random; I thought it would be preferable to have a broader category than one that missed the breadth of representation of bisexuality, for better or worse.

The internet is such a small world.

links for 2008-02-11

Monday, February 11th, 2008

links for 2008-02-10

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

Is there such a thing as Twitter etiquette?

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

We got talking about Twitter etiquette at the Geek Breakfast, and I decided I was going to do a post about the emerging dynamics of being polite while micro-blogging.

Jackson seemed to think that was pretty ironic, though, since I’m apparently violating the #1 rule of Twitter etiquette: don’t post daily recaps of your Twitter updates in your blog. Or at least don’t make it the only content you post for a week or more.

In my defense, I said, I’ve been modifying my Twitter updates since I started doing that so that they’d be somewhat more substantive. That got a mumble of support, but the message was clear: daily Twitter summary posts do not make up for real blog content.

OK, so there’s rule number one, and I’m public enemy number one, and now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on to number two, shall we?

The ability to track topics is one of Twitter’s most useful features. I track several keywords, and when I find myself reading updates from the same people multiple times, I decide that they must be worth following. I don’t just start following them, though — I send them a direct message letting them know I saw their posts about magazines, say, or songwriting, and am now following them. So far no one has acted like I’m stalking them, and most of the people I contact that way end up following me back.

So rule #2 is: before you follow someone you don’t know, send a message and let him or her know why you’re following them. If nothing else, this will let the other person know what content is most interesting to other people, and that’s always handy to know.

Alright, so there are the first two rules: one of which I’m bad about, and one of which I’m good about. What would you add to the list?

links for 2008-01-29

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

links for 2008-01-28

Monday, January 28th, 2008

links for 2008-01-27

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

links for 2008-01-13

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

links for 2008-01-07

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Sorry about all the movie-watching

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

Check it out:

“The anonymity of the Netflix Prize dataset has been broken by a pair of computer scientists from the University of Texas[…]. It turns out that […] it’s straightforward to find a match by comparing the anonymized data against publicly available ratings on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)[…] in the process possibly working out their political affiliation, sexual preferences and a number of other personal details”

Oh no! Someone’s going to figure out I’m a bleeding heart bisexual liberal/progressive.

I suppose I should consider this a privacy violation of some sort, since I’m almost certainly represented in the data set, but whatever.

For that matter, my ratings data may very well have been one very useful data set in helping the computer scientists crack the anonymizing code.

Whoops. Sorry I’m such a movie geek.

In honor of my likely indirect contribution to this situation, I offer my first-ever LOLcat.

sorry i watches so many movies

Twitter Updates for 2007-11-30

Friday, November 30th, 2007
  • it’s only 10:30 but i’m already having a no-good very bad day. rethinking this whole “being awake” thing. #

Twitter Updates for 2007-11-24

Saturday, November 24th, 2007
  • standing in line at Baja Burrito behind Craig Wiseman #

What constitutes a kickass song?

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

I’ve got a playlist on my iPod called Kickass Songs. I’m listening to it right now. Right now what’s playing is “Guarded by Monkeys” by Cracker. And I just listened to “Cowboy” by Kid Rock, but I’m wondering what for you constitutes a kickass song? There are so many other ones that are on here — lets see, “Dirty Laundry,” “Hard to Handle,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Sweet Emotion.” listen

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Hey, I’m testing out…

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Hey, I’m testing out posting to the blog from Jott. Let’s see if this works. If so, it could be a real time saver while I’m driving home on my long commute. listen

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