billso.com

I enjoyed watching Randy Pausch’s lecture on Time Management. It’s 87 minutes long, so start at the 12 minute mark to get to the actual lecture. Slides are available here.

I found this set of documents on Lifehacker, in an article called Randy Pausch’s Time Management Tricks. The Lifehacker link came through an article called Pausch’s time management tips on Sandee Oshiro’s excellent blog, Hawaii Hacks. This is one of the better blogs that I’ve seen from the Honolulu Advertiser, and I hope she posts more articles like this!

When you know your time is limited, time management should become a major priority. I doesn’t matter how you track your time… although using LEGO bricks to track tasks would make work seem more like play, I think. This tutorial called On LEGO Powered Time-Tracking; My Daily Column has details. I also found it on Lifehacker in this article called Time tracker: Track Your Time with LEGO Bricks.

The retirement of Bill Gates from daily duty at Microsoft prompted bloggers and journalists to write long articles about Microsoft technology. It’s summer, and we have to fill the pages somehow. 

This Engadget article called Bill Gates: top ten greatest hits (and misses) has some details and product photos. Two of the “misses” are interesting.

The AutoPC was a voice controlled system that connected the driver to music, GPS and Outlook services. It went on sale in 2000 and died a quick death, but many auto manufacturers are offering systems with similar features in 2008. The same Microsoft business unit that developed the AutoPC also developed the SYNC system for Ford. 

The second “miss” is another example of pervasive or ubiquitous computing. It’s interesting that both of these products were championed by Bill Gates himself. 

I have worn my Suunto N6 HR SPOT watch almost every day for the last 2.5 years. Yes, the watch is a little large, and I have to clip it to a USB charger every 2 or 3 days to freshen up the battery. I never got the heart rate monitor feature to work properly, though. 

Microsoft partnered with Clear Channel to distribute news, sports, stock market and other data to users via Clear Channel FM radio stations.The silvery rim of the watch face is the FM antenna. It’s a one-way device that receives broadcasts, so it’s impossible to send information from the watch.

I don’t use Outlook, so I never use the appointment and messaging features. But the baseball scores are usually up to date, as long as I’m in a Clear Channel city, and I never need to set the time. It’s synced by an atomic clock somewhere in the cloud. 

Sadly, Microsoft discontinued the SPOT watch line in April 2008 - see this Engadget article called SPOT watches R.I.P. - 2004-2008. The cloud service still works on MSN Direct. I just go to the web site, log in, and select the information and faces for my watch. 

I see fewer wristwatches on wrists these days. Many of my friends rely on their mobile phone’s clock instead, as they carry their phones with them everywhere. Most modern mobile phones sync their clock to their carrier’s system. 

Image courtesy of billso through a Creative Commons license. 

From tomorrow’s New York Times comes a sobering examination of the dominant blogging business model.

“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”

“This is not sustainable,” he said.

I discussed blogging for a living on 27 March 2008, but I didn’t discuss stress. Two prominent technology bloggers, Russell Shaw and March Orchant, have died in the last 5 months.

Some bloggers have decided to chase the headlines, and post up-to-the-minute comments about news events. For a solo blogger who is also managing their own comments and web site, the duties can pile up. Another blogger mentioned in the Times article, 22-year old Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo, sleeps about 5 hours a day, and drinks protein supplement lattes to stay buzzed.

“There’s no time ever — including when you’re sleeping — when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Mr. Arrington said.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific time and dawn? Then we could all take a break,” he added. “But that’s never going to happen.”

One advantage of blogging in Honolulu is that I can check the news later in the day, before the East Coast bloggers really get rolling.

Exercise also helps me a lot. I go running early in the morning, partly to get away from the computer as the US news cycle is full swing.

On Tuesday, 8 April 2008, I’ll post an article about how I manage billso.com and avoid some of the issues I’ve discussed in this article. When that a

I’m knee deep in paper grading right now, but here’s a quick post with some April Foolishness.

Patrick Altoft has a live blog of April Fools pages and pranks here.

Planning to take over the world? Read the Evil Genius Guide to Business. I’m talking to you, Hank Scorpio!

ThinkGeek and Amazon are selling a book on silly Internet RFCs. A Request for Comments is a document that describes proposed Internet standards and technologies, and there is a long tradition of joke RFCs.

Google continues its annual tradition of gags, as reported on Cnet. This year’s crop includes Gmail Custom Time, a feature that lets Gmail users send thir email messages into the past.

There are almost a dozen Google hoaxes this year, including Google Australia’s gDay, a search engine that travels 24 hours ahead in time.

Google also announced Virgle, a joint venture with Virgin to develop an open-source expedition to Mars. Google’s co-founders describe the project in this YouTube video.

Yesterday, the Honolulu Advertiser published an article about digital TV conversion. On 17 February 2009, US television stations will stop broadcasting analog television signals. On that date, anyone in the US who uses an antenna to receive their television signal on their analog television will need a digital converter box to receive broadcast signals. Cable and satellite subscribers have or will get converter boxes as part of their service agreement. All televisions manufactured for sale in the US after 1 March 2007 are required to have a digital tuner, so these models don’t need a converter box. The AP has an article with additional details.

I’ve discussed the FCC’s 700 mHz auction on 18 March 2008 and 30 January 2008. When the analog television channels are abandoned, AT&T, Verizon and other companies will use those frequencies for mobile phone and data services.

The US Department of Commerce has a web site with information on the DTV conversion, as does the FCC. Government regulators and consumer activists fear that cable and satellite companies will use digital television to scare up new subscribers. Another AP article states that Hispanics are the ethnic group most likely to lose television service after the conversion, even as the Federal government gives away several million coupons for digital converter boxes. Hawaii has a diverse population, and getting the message out in multiple languages will be challenging. I expect to see more articles in the local papers, especially in early 2009, even though the Advertiser claims that only 5.5% of the state’s television viewers rely on broadcast signals.

Digital TV converter boxes won’t turn an old analog set into a higher-definition TV, of course. These boxes have a digital TV tuner that passes its output to an analog TV on channel 3 or 4, like a video game console would do.

Yahoo reports that broadcasters will be required to run public service advertising, in an effort to notify viewers well before the cutover. The coupon request page uses reCAPTCHA – the same system I use to screen out spam comments on this blog.