Slideware

This dropped into my inbox http://blogs.msdn.com/atwork/archive/2009/02/11/death-by-powerpoint-giving-better-presentations.aspx

Now I am in 2 minds about slideware. I believe it should be simple, however most of the corp UK want detailed bullets over 20 slides. Great. What do you do?
R

Monday Morning

Its Monday and its half term here on the south coast.

Just thought I would jot down a few of my favourite iPhone apps. Its not many but to me they are worthy of appearing on my delightful Apple device (battery life grumble grumble)

1. Tweetie - Awesome Twitter Client. I just prefer this one to the others. They are all good but this one has the edge for me. It has a little bit more depth. It makes it very simple for me to write tweets on the go and see other peoples pofiles. I like the nearby feature too.
2. Weather Pro - Right lets get this straight, here in the UK the Met Office rule when it comes to weather. Although Weather Pro does not appear to take data from the Met office it appears to be most accurate out of all the weather apps. This was invaluable a couple of weeks ago when the UK had snow I was able to see the satellite and radar animations to determine what was going to happen. I checked the pressure and temp with a real weather station and they were pretty accurate.
   
3. Feeds - In the world of RSS readers on the iPhone there is a lot to choose from and it is extremely difficult. I have 4 currently and I watching them all carefully overtime to see which one is going leap in front. Feeds currently has some great functionality that provides full sync with Google Reader. Brilliant!!
4. Instapaper - Ahh man I am dead jealous of the developer for this very simple app who must have been following the KISS methodogy. What is even better is that both Tweetie and Feeds have functionality to clip to your Instapaper account for offline textual reading later on.Which is really handy when you are following 20 tech reporters who are all giving out URL's of articles to read, just simply hit the instapaper option and the pages is saved to your cloud account for reading later. This has been great when I am researching a company I have an interview with. If there is any last minute info I need I can use instapaper to give a nice iphone sized textual version of the the pages of their website. Couple that with the tilt scrolling which is soooooo cool.
   
5. Nuevasync - Although not an app it is allowing me to have my Google Calendar and Plaxo contacts sync'd wirelessly. Yes Google Sync is now out for the iPhone, in my opinion that still has some way to go before getting close to Nuevasync. Especially in the contact area where the fields are not replicating the Outlooks.

Look out for all of these in the iTunes app store
R

Signing On

Just created a new blog which is a little more professional rather than my personal stuff.

You will find links to my LinkedIn profile and Twitter accounts as well as some of my favourite websites.

I will add more stuff as and when.

Playing Catchup

Phew nearly a year since the last update. Oh my
So first of I am writing this on a Samsung NC10. Its a lovely beast bar the position of the right hand shift key. I keep typing "\" its so anoying but. As with the new iPhone I will get used to it and it will become part of my life.

So on this short post I thought I would list out some of the things I am liking from a consumeriste point of view.

Online
1. Gmail/google calendar - Never ceases to amaze me. The calendar is coming on in leaps and bounds and is extremely flexible. I have 2 other calendars plugged into the main one by ical feeds from Remember the Milk and Tripit
2. Google Calendar - Is just plain cool and flexible and very transportable. I use it natively, as an active backdrop on the home main PC and pushed to my iphone via nuevasync.com
3. Mindmeister.com - Online mindmapping app which has helped me in numerous areas of my life for jotting down and expanding ideas through to planning sales presentations
4. Rememberthemilk.com - Extremely flexible online todo app. I have a pro account and have it on my iphone as well so what ever i do there gets replicated to the online version seamlessly. Its the bollocks. Todo app is being polite, its more of a multidimensional hierachical todo app.


ahhhh wife is demanding the netbook. will post more later.

Back in SF

I am sitting here. Here being my room in the spanking new Intercontinental San Francisco hotel in........

I am sitting here in my luxury fluffy robe with my iPOD docked in the clock radio next to the bed belting out some Brit tunage. The Massive HD flat panel on the wall with zillions of channels currently tuned to MSNBC HD. Me chomping on a tube of large cashews slurping a Diet Coke looking at the Nortel IP phone wondering what to do this evening.

Yes its Kick Off time again in SF.

Flight was ok. The new Virgin check-in area in Terminal 3 Heathrow is all very nice, and easy with minimal queues. However the take off was delayed due to a technical issue and a spare part being ordered and fitted. Oh well another bottle of beer to consume. Nursed a headache on the way over and watched Juno. Cool. Like it, it was not what I thought it was going to be. Worth a watch. Its a amusing. Tried to watch The Seeker and The Golden Compass, but stopped half way through both.

Was hemed in on the plane as my preferences on my Virgin are set to window seat. Nice views but you do get hemmed in. I did my numerous under chair leg stretches and tried to get some kip. But ended up playing God of War on my PSP. A Dammed fine game.

The views of Canada on the way over are amazing. Just plain spectacular. Shame I did not have my camera on me.

Arrived at the airport just over an hour late. Passed through customs/immigration again a breeze and then caught the BART to town instead of a taxi. Then walked 2 blocks trying not to look like a tourist. I wondered why all the enterprising homeless people were pouncing on me, but then I realised I was dragging a suitcase. Dammmmmmned what a give away
Damm I am out of Cashews..... Roooooooomm Service!!!!!!!! Lobster please!!!!

Now I just need to work out how I can stay awake for the next 8 hours. uurrggghhh.

I feel a trip the Clift Hotel for cocktails is in order.
R

Work

Monday - Up at 4am do some emails and stuff and then hit the hotel restaurant for breakfast.

Now in the evening the whole hotel restaurant and bar (Asia De Cuba and the Redwood room) are one of the town's coolest locations to hang out in, but at breakfast time it is all quiet. Very weird. The food though is excellent. Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon is a top choice and very filling. I can see why there is a lot of over weight Americans.

Boss had rented a Nissan 4x4 thing to take us to the office which out of SF across the bay so like tourists we were snapping away at anything that resembled Americana.

At lunch the CEO took us all out to a brew pub (micro brewery) for some more deep fried crap to clog up the arteries with. I tried to be healthy and have a TBA (Chicken, Bacon, Avocado type sandwich) with fries. ;-)

Then at 4pm we all jumped back in the car and drove off to the Golden Gate Bridge for some more tourist action. It was at this point I was kicking myself that I did not have the big camera, but I managed to fire off some shots on a colleagues camera. It was an amazing view and thankfully amazing weather, very clear.

Driving around in SF seemed all too familiar and then I realised that I too had driven these streets in Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas and almost felt compelled to start doing driveby shootings and going to the club by the GGB to do some missions. It was so familiar that I was actually able to give directions and remember and see the real locations. Was very spooky.

Got back to the hotel and decided to have a quick teatime cocktail on the roof terrace of Macys in Union Square. Shame so did loads of other people. Shame that the bar is actually a chain of Cheese Cake Factory and shame they dont know how to make a Mojito and shame that they decide it decadent to put blobs of squirty cream on an already over sweet cheese cake (mine was White Chocolate and peanut butter). I managed to eat half before realising that this was not good.

The rest of the evening was spent at the hotel meeting other fellow colleagues as they flew in from various US locations.

Bed at midnight.
Up at 5:30am deal with some calls to the UK
Ready to go!!!
Perhaps I might just go downstairs for some breakfast.

Any Given Sunday

Burrrrp
Its not big nor clever.
So I woke up on Sunday at 4am and then at at 6/8am.
Did some stuff on the laptop and had breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
You will be surprised to know I order eggs benedict on a bagel. Nice.
The rest of the day was spent showing a colleague around SF.
First beer was at 11:30am. Lunch was a serious mexican at place which served over 250 types of teckila.
Sorry pissed atm.
Need sleep and its only 10:30pm.
Photos to follow and congrats to Andy and Hazel on their new arrival.
Sorry cutting short this blog as I have just found myself sleeping upright at the laptop in my bedroom. Time for bed
Blimey
L8r