ZingIT » Review

Lenovo IdeaPad U1 hybrid notebook

Elph — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:21:19 +0000

I like what Lenovo is thinking with their IdeaPad U1 hybrid notebook. Full power notebook, Win7, detachable screen becomes self-sufficient tablet with 8 hour battery life running minimal OS. Zack Whittaker has a nice rundown of this and the Lenovo Skylight over at ZDNet.

Track your sleep with an iPhone app

Elph — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:10:52 +0000

Sleep Cycle is an iPhone app that uses the accelerometer to detect when you toss and turn as you sleep. After setting the time you would like to wake up and positioning the phone face down on the edge of your bed the software monitors your activity and attempts to wake you at the best time within half an hour of your alarm time – aiming for that time when you are already close to wakefulness.

I have used it for two nights now and the first night it was not picking up much but the second night it produced a classic sleep histogram. Unfortunately I left my normal alarm on and so didn’t get to test the built-in alarm. Price is .99 cents.

Sleep statistics for 08 – 09 Jan (Sat).

Went to bed / woke up: 10:57 PM / 8:00 AM
Total time: 9h 02m

My sleep graph for the entire night:

Dragon Dictation for iPhone

JoeG — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:31:12 +0000

A geek find from last week: Dragon Dictation is an iPhone app (free) that accurately captures voice and converts to text. Press the record button, speak your speak, press done, and watch the text appear. So far the only mistakes I’ve run into are with words like on, in, an being misheard, but that’s probably more an issue with my enunciation than the app. After dictating, you’ve got the options to send your text via email, SMS, or to the clipboard. It’s surprisingly handy.

Ok, something about Google Wave

Elph — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:09:34 +0000

We’ve been playing with Google Wave here for a few weeks. We’ve used it to take minutes of meetings, float an idea and flesh it out, and collect and share information. The jury is still out on whether this is a winner but it is a thought provoking tool for real-time collaboration.

I enjoyed this post over at Daniel Tenner’s blog on understanding what problems Wave solves. If you missed it, and you have over an hour to kill, check out the original full length video from I/O introducing Google Wave. Once you are into it Gina Walker over at Lifehacker has The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

Ringcentral review

Elph — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:38:08 +0000

Today I was playing with some details in the Ringcentral account that we setup for Zingerman’s Press this summer and really enjoying the ease of use and reasonable cost structure. Tonight I ran across a quick review by the good folks over at Web Worker Daily that they did last month. Enjoy.

Why Technology Can’t Fulfill

Elph — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:58:37 +0000

I really like this post by Kevin Kelly titled Why Technology Can’t Fulfill. Kevin muses on what role technology has in personal fulfillment when contemporary dominant culture is contrasted with that of the Old Order Amish. I particularly like the age old question regarding the necessity of modern industry to support the simpler ways, such as the Amish, and the role of choice.

10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy

Elph — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:21:37 +0000

I keep running across references to happiness, and especially the effectiveness of happiness. When faced with coincidences that draw attention to themselves my reaction is to pay attention. Last week I got in a conversation with Paul Saginaw about what we mean by Fun in our vision. He surprised me by saying that Fun was the wrong word. A better word is Joy. To me Joy is the effect and Fun is a cause and that’s when we started talking about studies of Happiness. My friend from South Carolina sent me an article that addresses sustainability and happiness. And then, opening a free copy of Yes! Magazine that I received at the BALLE Conference I read the following article, 10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy by by Jen Angel.

Savor Everyday Moments
Avoid Comparisons
Put Money Low on the List
Have Meaningful Goals
Take Initiative at Work
Make Friends, Treasure Family
Smile Even When You Don’t Feel Like It
Say Thank You Like You Mean It
Get Out and Exercise
Give It Away, Give It Away Now!

Read more of the details in the article. For those familiar with Zingerman’s, a quiz: name the points that are taught as part of our internal culture. In general, what’s missing?

VirtualBox Bests Parallels

JoeG — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:49:39 +0000

A few weeks ago my Parallels stopped working. I’d launch the app and immediately be told it was not responding and to force quit. I restored Parallels (files, prefs, .hdd) from backup, but no dice. I had been unhappy with Parallels for a while – it was a resource hog, starting the VM and booting Windows took a solid 5 minutes – so I was ready to replace it instead of fix it.

Parallels was the first big player in virtualization on the Intel Macs and I had been using it for about 2 years. Craig and others used VMWare, it was serious competition for Paralles and had a better price. I didn’t want to spend any money on a replacment VM; the $75 for Parallels left me bitter. I had heard about VirtualBox after Sun Microsystems got involved in the app’s development. It had a lot buzz in the Linux world and once Sun got involved, VirtualBox was ported to OS X. Knowing that it was free, too, I decided to use it.

I’ve been running Windows in VirtualBox for about a 3 weeks now and am quite pleased. Besides having a great price, it is fast! Starting & booting the VM is about 1 minute (I’ve timed it) and it makes great use of resources. VirtualBox shares a lot of the same features as Paralles or VMWare: guest OS drivers/tools, coherence mode, NAT’ing or Host Interface, shared folders between guest & host, etc. VirtualBox has the added feature of snapshots, letting you save the current state of the VM to revert to later. I haven’t used it, probably won’t, but I can see it being useful if running servers in VM or if using as a sandbox.

Setting up Windows in VirtualBox was straight foward, though required some fine tuning to play well in a domain setting. It’s also not nearly as plug-as-play as VMWare or Paralles when it comes to using USB devices. For VirtualBox you have to create USB device profiles (when the VM is not running) but I don’t have that many devices, so once I created a couple profiles I was all good. I do miss being able to drag-&-drop files from the VM desktop to my OS X desktop, like I could do in Parallels, but shared folders is the easy work around.

Overall, I am happy with the performance & price of VirtualBox. Much happier than I was with Paralles. I look forward to the continuing development of the app.

Skype Usefulness – Take 2

Elph — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:09:49 +0000

Another example of Skype usefulness within the enterprise environment… Today our Deli Chocolate Lady, Duff, called IT wondering if we could install Skype on a computer for her to use, say in the next 20 minutes? We have a reputation for fast response so this was a good challenge. What was more interesting was that she wanted Skype. Duff has been working on a project with Askinosie chocolate in Springfield, MO to craft a special chocolate bar for Zingerman’s and they were in the final stages of packaging – Shawn, from Askinosie, wanted to show Duff the wrapper before they sent it out and he is a Skype video user.

I dropped the Skype installer on a USB flash drive and headed to the north side of town. We used the reception desk computer (an iMac running Win XP) to install the software and got Duff set up with a Skype account. Five minutes later we had a Skype chat request coming in from Askinosie and Shawn full screened. Duff spent 10 minutes working with Shawn on the look of the packaging (it was perhaps printed too high up, or maybe not) and then Shawn gave Duff, and her now gathered group of Deli staff, a visual tour of the chocolate factory with a brief hello to all the staff using his wireless Macbook.

Duff was pleased with the experience and I was left thinking that a lot of relationship just got built within 20 minutes thanks to the technology. There might be a use for it yet.

Skype – is it useful?

Elph — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:00:34 +0000

I think of Skype in the business arena akin to the first fax. The first fax users had few others to fax to and the inherent value in their adoption of the technology was questionable. I try to keep my Skype session up and running but others I’ve strong armed into getting accounts can’t seem to do the same.

Today I found a useful function for Skype in our business environment. I was setting up a virtual phone number for a client with an online vendor who I may talk about later when I realized I needed some authentication verification info from her and Lo! she was on Skype. I text chatted her to get some critical data in order to fill out her app. Worked great. Then I needed to show her what I was seeing on my screen to quickly communicate some choices – I hit Screen Share, selected a frame size and sent the request. She came in on audio with her seeing my screen instead of my fuzzy noggin. I talked her through the choices and we signed off.

Very neat. Effective. Now just need a couple more dozen clients online to make it useful.