Tretakoff Musings

Precipitated by a rapid degradation of my longtime Subaru, I recently indulged an early midlife crisis, replacing the all-wheel drive workhorse with the realistic car of my dreams, the Pontiac Solstice GXP . This 2-seater convertible is a blast to drive, and makes days that I don't make it onto the bike a commuting joy. In fact, the only downside of the Solstice is the wind noise: having a cell conversation is nearly impossible at highway speeds. I know, you are saying "get off the phone!" However, there are days I need to do early conference calls, and having to be trapped until the call ends is not my idea of fun. So, what to do? First up, the Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth Headset from Amazon. Of the traditional BT headsets, I had already tried the Jawbone, as well as BlueAnt's offerings, all of which claim to have the ultimate in wind protection, and all of which most definitely do not. But the Plantronics was willing to go one step beyond: a video from the ...

For those of you who follow my feed in Google Reader , you may have seen a few of these latest posts. This USB-enabled replacement for the humble wall outlet is one of my recent smack-on-the-forehead "Why didn't I think of that?" Moments. For a measly $10, you can replace your wall outlet with a source for your vampiric gadgets, especially the Dracula of the power hungry, the iPhone 3GS. I've had sporadic luck with these USB slots at airports and planes with Apple's tether, but with a whole house of power available, I'm fairly sure it can force the ravenous appetite to be sated.

Twitter continues to impress me. Not the service, per se, but the ways it is used, how it's connected, and so on. For instance: - Want to track a package? Sure, you can use the web, and "pull" from a page to find out the status of your package. But what if you could get a Twitter message (a "tweet") at every step of the package's journey? You'd know if you need to be home to accept a package the next day, without having to remember to visit a webpage in advance. Just send a Direct Message to TrackThis with the tracking number (any carrier) and a name you want to refer to the package by, and you'll get updates on every movement of the package. - The Bay Area is famous for the weather phenomena of microclimates. Up in San Rafael, for instance, I can get an update every 30 minutes on the weather. - Twitter is actually useful for discovering new people, as well. For instance, MistyKhan saw I was struggling with some Microsoft Outlook issues, and offered...

I do love my iPhone, but sometimes the restrictions are asinine. Take ringtones, for instance. Can you ask for a more prefect device for ringtones? And yet, Apple insists the only way to have ringtones is to buy them from iTunes. Period. Now, I grant you, the ringtones they ship with are exceptional, but I have some ones that are quite specific and highly unlikely to be on iTunes. What to do? Leave it to the power of the Internet. In browsing this forum , I found one solution that actually did work: 1. Take any song in iTunes and if you don't want to mess with the timing, right click and choose "convert selection to aac" and a new version of the song will appear just below the old one. 2. Right click the song, select Get Info, and go under "Options" and "Start Time" as well as "End Time" and pick which part of the song that you want to make into a ringtone. (It seems the general consensus with this is under 30 sec.) 3. Once you've selecte...

I have an admission: I hate paper. From printouts of emails, to handwritten notes, I detest paper in almost all forms. It has become the trash and detritus of our daily life: credit/debit cards have nearly replaced paper money, but they leave behind the droppings of indecipherable receipts that we, as a society, are terrified to leave behind for fear that our entire identity will be stolen from that innocuous pizza payment. As we have moved to a digital world, complete with multifunction scanner/printers and both enormous hard drives and online storage, paper is simply a crutch to be finally snapped in favor of bits. It looks like the New York Times is noticing. The article points out how a Google engineer has already eliminated paper from his family's life; I have been fighting this battle for nearly a decade. My weapons of choice? Visioneer's line of sheet-fed scanners and both CD burners as well as Moxy . I scan EVERYTHING: receipts, photos, notes, legal documents, even r...

Firefox's Bookmarks toolbar is invaluable. To allow for more links and more efficient use of real estate, I usually kill the name of the bookmark, as the favicon is more than enough for me to be able to know what site I'm clicking on. However, one annoyance I've had is with Firefox's Live Bookmarks: the ability to add an RSS feed as a bookmark that is updated with the articles in the feed. Useful for browsing sites with lots of interesting content, like digg or headlines on the NFL , without having to wade through the pages. However, they lack favicon support, meaning they take up a lot of toolbar real estate. Enter LiveClick , a Firefox extension that allows you to bring the joy of favicons to your Live Bookmarks, as well. While also offering a ton of micromanagement for these bookmarks, I really love it for the favicon support: it's automatic, slick, and lets that real estate stay valuable. Now, if I could just figure out why some bookmarks actually pay attention ...

As a professional with over 8K contacts and over 2K appointments, I am a hopeless Microsoft Outlook addict. However, as any power user of Outlook will tell you, it becomes massively bloated, slow as molasses, and utterly frustrating with even the slightest extended usage. Worse, there is no way to make it go back to even resembling a responsive application once the damage has been done. Why, then, you ask, do I continue to use it? - It is still the best email application, with it's MS Word integration with the only true inline spell correct on the market. - It is the defacto standard for corporate mail and appointment requests. - It is the best all in one application. However, like any Outlook power user, I have found that I need to add things on to it to make it usable. This is where it gets fun: each of those add-ons makes Outlook massively harder to use. For instance: - Spam control. Outlook's spam filters are laughable. I could use our server's draconian spam controls, ...

This holiday, I was struck by an attendee at our house for the annual holiday feast, who watched the frenzied opening of gifts. See, most of the folks who were opening gifts were delighted to see items that they had asked for on their Wishlists, mostly from Amazon, so they were not just excited to have the gifts, but which of their wishlist items they were. My friend watched the excitement, and hear the constant cries of, "oh, good, you got me THAT one!" She asked, "Wait a minute: you all bought each other things off of lists you all made?" When we laughed and said yes, she shook her head and admitted it was a pretty good idea. Wishlists: only took us 5000 years to tell each other what we want. As fate had it, my wishlist item arived:my very own Doomsday USB Hub. Now, I can end a meeting in style. Thanks!

As you may have noticed, I've been become more and more fascinated with the evolution of Web 2.0 to harness the "cloud" of the Web to make the online world more relevant. In other words, using the web to enhance the social nature of interactions. This hearkens back to my early days as a BBS sysop, and actually has the potential to make the web ubiquitous. I've been quite congratulatory towards Plaxo for recognizing one of the key tenets of this, the ability to automatically discover interactions, and display and classify them, in the form of Plaxo's Pulse , which gives you a "news feed" of what your connections are doing, all over the web. I've also mentioned that Plaxo sometimes, rightly or wrongly, gets a bad rap as being a Facebook imitator or worse, but I have to tell you, the Pulse is addictive: like all good "push" applications, it keeps you up to date on everything. But what if you could have Pulse, without Plaxo? Enter Spokeo , whic...

It only looks that way. Work has been brutal, but the end is nigh: I have hired two new staff members, and one has already started. With trips to Chicago and NY coming up, the extra help could not have come at a better time. I've also been logging a lot of biking and other fun exercise, so blogging (and calls to my mother, father and friends) have suffered. I've been reduced to Facebook status updates and occasional snippets...but hopefully, I'll be back in a regular publishing groove soon. I owe a big post on Plaxo , as they worked through my issues to get me fully working. And man, is it sweet. Look for it shortly. I also need to point out the best PC deals ever in the Dell Outlet ; top of the line PC's for under $400. Plus my recent solution for podcasts on the Treo, syncing with iTunes. And that's not mentioning my recent transition to Skype . And finally, a review of Madden 08 on the Wii: the results will surprise you. For now, I leave you with an image of the ...

Ever wonder what makes a traffic light turn green? Some people think it's timing; others are sure there are weight sensors in the road. Still others claim it's some sort of camera system. But actually, it's magnetic field detectors: coils in the road detect large metallic masses over a plate by the stop line, and the traffic light begins its cycle. No cross traffic, no need for a light change. Slick, eh? Except if you ride a bike. See, those carbon and aluminum frames are great for speed and lightweight...but not for telling magnetic sensors you are there. Result? Every morning, I face the ethical dilemma of either waiting for a car to pull up to a certain light so I can turn left...or run the light. Guess what wins most days? However, my lawbreaking may be at an end. The Green Light Trigger pumps out a strong enough field to fool those sensors into believing my Fuji Robauix is a Ford F-150. No, it doesn't override lights like emergency vehicles, but mounted to the bas...

A warning: Vegans, vegetarians, and folks who don't care for red meat, if the title of this post and the photo don't give it away, skip this one. The rest of you? Welcome to the world of food hacking. I'm not talking advanced chemistry here, but simple, easy ways to make your food taste better. And today, we're talking about one of the few foods I can actually cook: steak. See that steak? You think you're looking at a $5 steak, covered in salt, right? Wrong. You are actually looking at the metamorphosis of a $5 steak into one that you'd weep with carnivorous joy at consuming in Morton's or Smith & Wollensky. T hanks to this amazing blog post, we are that much closer to beef heaven. Fellow meat lovers, I share your joy at the treasure we are aboutto behold.The world...and the grill..will never be the same.

Thanks to a clever link from my new favorite travel site, TripIt , I found SeatGuru.com . Ever wondered whether the seat on the plane you are choosing is any good? Does it fully recline? Are there power outlets for the laptop? Does it suck? No more guesswork: SeatGuru has the answer. A service of the always great TripAdvisor.com , SeatGuru has a hell of a mission statement: "In October 2001 frequent flyer Matthew Daimler launched SeatGuru.com with a single color-coded interactive airplane seating chart. Having realized the vast differences between airline seats, he was determined to build a repository of this useful information and share it with other travelers. Over ten million visitors later, SeatGuru has enjoyed incredible success and has expanded to over 275 airplane seatmaps from over 40 different airlines." With it, I was able to book seats for an upcoming Texas trip on American Airlines, avoiding the "Poor Seats" and "Be Aware" seats with complete c...

A while back, I blogged about how a person in my company was using his blog as a good tool to help better position himself and his job satisfaction in the company. Today, while perusing my Google Reader, I read his latest entry. This excerpt caught my eye: "I hope some of the candidates I interview run into this blog entry. In reality, the ones that are curious enough to try and Google some information about my company or SQL Server DBA interview questions will run into lots of more useful information before coming upon this blog. Unfortunately, those are few and far between." Damn, that's smart. I never thought to use my blog to define my perfect new hire. It makes sense: why not demystify the process, and let people know just the kind of person you are looking for? Hell, I know people Google me before an interview; why not see just how good and smart they are by leaving them the tips they need to ensure I understand they are the right person for the job? Thanks, Ed. ...

Pretty slick and simple walkthrough on creating a desktop shortcut to lock your Windows computer with a simple double click. Easy. Should be built in.

While I'm on the road, I use my laptop vigorously. I choose hotels based on their WiFi coverage and inclusiveness. This trip, I noticed my email from my corporate server can be downloaded, but not sent. Why? My IT guy reports that many WiFi ISP's block port 25, to prevent spammers from " wardriving ," finding a free hotspot, and blasting away. So, thanks to Palm, Bluetooth, and my Treo, I wired up to my Treo 680 as it's own Bluetooth hotspot. Sure, it's no WiFi, but my mail gets out. Damn, that was easy.

I know, I'm still overdue on two reviews: one for my Jawbone headset, and another for my Treo 680. Suffice it to say, for the moment, I am impressed with the Jawbone, but have reservations on the fit...more will come, I promise. The 680, on the other hand, is more than I hoped for, and is truly a worthy pre-iPhone device, with actually a lot more going for it. I will be sitting down to devote some serious time to share the joy. For the moment, I will instead pass along one of the many surprises I've had since becoming a Treo owner. and it's about my least sexy topic, backups. Palm has released a beta application for backing up most of the essentials for your Treo, automatically, every night, over the air. Yup, like Mozy , the app comes up, contacts a Palm server, and backs up your contacts, Favorites, and more. You do need a significant data plan from your carrier, and you have only vague controls on the timing, but it just works. And, of course, it's free...for now. ...

As many of you know, Uncle Sam and I have a rather strained relationship. I take a rather Libertarian view of most government services, and nothing exemplifies that more to me than the annual ritual of paying income tax. Of course, I used to treat them as a minor annoyance, but the Dot Bomb implosion and the wonderful world of Alternative Minimum Tax (see Lani's recent post on this) turned my tolerance to outright antagonism. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, as well as a surprisingly cooperative IRS, I am no longer paying for income I never saw, but I still grind my teeth at the approach of April 15th (or this year, April 17). However, last year I found hope. TurboTax , Intuit's answer to the horrific nightmare that is income tax, always promised the "easy, fast and painless" that all software does. However, despite being a Quicken addict for years, I never put much faith in it. Last year, with the deadline approaching, I surfed over to the site, to see if I c...

We're in the process of moving, which means it's time to make lots of to do lists. Utilities to transfer, subscriptions to update, things to buy...all the property of the standard to do list. Yet we have different jobs, different schedules, so syncing two different lists to make sure we don't overlap is a pain. Surely, I asked, the web has a better way? Yup. From 37signals, the folks who make free to inexpensive purpose-based solutions for project management and scheduling, comes Backpack . Simple: create your to do list, using multiple categories, and the easiest Web 2.0 controls, and share with another Backpack user. One of you thinks of something to add? Log in to your Backpack page, and with a few clicks, done. Check one off the list? Done. Add some details to a previous to do? Easy to edit. 37 Signals focuses on delivering simple, purpose driven applications, and for this, it's ideal. With a paid account, you can add calendar links, images, and more, but for dealin...

Hello. My name is Josh. And I am a workaholic. Those words have been uttered by me since I was 13 years old. I preferred work over school, work over relationships, and work over fun. At 13, I was working, literally, 80 hours a week in the summers. In college, I had not one, not two, but three jobs, simultaneously. In retrospect, it seems fated that I would be drawn to Silicon Valley, where we have made an art form of transforming our social lives into our work lives...and feeling content with it. It never used to be this way. Sure we had the distorted view of the nuclear family, replete with images of "Leave It To Beaver" bliss. But remember the influx of happy hours, which fortified the men (since that was who was primarily working) for their familial obligations? As time went one, the happy hours went away, and the Blackberry took its place. The ultimate distortion of this came when I worked for Inktomi. Great company, great people. The culture was summed up in one phrase: ...