Talking about screen maintenance created enough discussion that I wanted to put out a few more things I’ve found. Here’s the cleaning process when one of my family drops off one of their dead or spyware encrusted machines: Get the dust out. I never used forced air cans anymore, always a vacuum cleaner. They both do a decent job but the forced air just moves the grime to some...

Knowing how to sharpen the saw is one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (which is only $3.99 for the Kindle by the way). Doing some work prior to stepping on the battlefield can tilt the outcome to your favor. For anyone who is a knowledge worker, maintaining your computer equipment is the equivalent of keeping your guns clean. Odds are, as a reader of this blog you are also your...

Second Quarter is gone and we are looking at the back half of the year. Here’s the update: No real movement on the family front, the big goals there are to get the summer vacation in order and visit my brother, both of which are still in the planning phase. I also need to find a huge pile of cash to get back on track with little man’s college fund, that will prove difficult given...

C.C. Chapman was good enough to hook me up yesterday with a Google+ invite (link goes to a post of his initial impressions). You’ll notice it looks very familiar: So far I like it better than Facebook, it has a much better UI for putting contacts into groups. By default when you add a new contact you can add them to Friends, Family or Acquaintances. They call these...

If there was a championship belt for comedy the current holder would be Justin Halpern. His book, Sh*t My Dad Says is the funniest book I have ever read. I’ve probably bought 10 copies of it by now, anytime I start talking about it, if somebody hasn’t read it I just kick over to Amazon and order another. Most everyone has heard the back story, but in case you haven’t,...

I remember when it began, around 1987. I had saved enough money mowing lawns, and managed to talk my parents into driving me to the Lechmere (Best Buy before there was a Best Buy) an hour away in Albany, New York. For $400 I got the second model Discman that Sony made and two CDs – Wang Chung’s Mosiac and Van Halen 5150. I didn’t have enough to complete the 1987 holy...

I saw a link to an article about Persuasion vs. Manipulation and had to click through. This has been a topic we’ve discussed often on Marketing Over Coffee and Dr. Pete has some interesting observations. I was trying to get them to fit with some discussions and ground rules we’ve already laid down. My intent was not to criticize him, but rather to see if I could align what...

Popularity: 2% [?]

A while ago I wrote a post about the best stylus for the iPad. Since then I have run more than 10 styluses through the paces. If you want the backstory check out the other post. If you are just looking for the punchline – here it is: At the time I rated the rubber tip styluses as the best. When you take them out of the box, they have a great smooth feel. The problem is that over time...

Where have I been for the last couple of weeks? Working on this project: Popularity: 2% [?]

I just finished my morning walk with Carter, the special dog. The Marathon Course is coming together. The water crews are showing up to set up tables and the gates are out and ready to be assembled to close off the streets. It’s sunny and cool (mid 40′s right now) with a decent wind going down the course. Hopefully it will stay that way. I saw probably triathletes and race...

With Amazon Prime free shipping, and the savings you can get from subscribing to products (e.g. baby stuff just shows up at our house on a regular schedule and we get a price break for having a standing order), the UPS guy knows us well. The only problem is that the receipts that come with the order often don’t show the total. It’s not like there’s a shortage of white space...

Christopher S. Penn is traveling abroad for a couple of weeks and asked me to be a guest contributor. Click here to read my contribution to Awaken Your Superhero! Popularity: 1% [?]

Sorry to drone on again about running, but this is a good discussion of product marketing and choosing the feature set to go to market with. A couple of months ago I read that Nike was going to be releasing a GPS watch for running that worked with the Nike + running system. The idea is that you wear the watch when you run, and then you upload the data to the cloud where it keeps track of...