Category Archives: technology

Retirement, History, and Google Spreadsheets

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I’m working hard on our Retirement website and upcoming retirement blog project called “Retire USA” and wound up having a heck of a time with some data conversions, so I want to outline that process here in case others have the same troubles.

Process ONE – copying records from a Google Docs Spreadsheet to an Open Office “ODS” format spreadsheet:   This sure seemed non-trivial unless I missed something or had data glitches buried in the sheets.   I could NOT complete direct cut and pastes from Google docs to my Open Office “ODS” spreadsheet so….

What DID WORK was this:

1.  Save Google spreadsheet in CSV format within Google Docs

2.  Import that CSV sheet to Open Office and save in ODS format.

3.  Cut and paste between the two Open Office spreadsheets.   IMPORTANT:  When pasting, select ONLY the upper left cell as if you are going to paste everything into that single cell.

 Process TWO – Merge two cells into a new single cell containing contents of BOTH original cells.     In my case I wanted a new combined field name.

Update – review the “DATA/Text to Columns” and the related “Concatenate” functions within Open Office.

Again, I’m not an expert so there may be easy ways to do it, but this did not seem to work directly in Google Docs spreadsheet.    Merge cells is an option, but it only preserved ONE of the cells.    However in Open Office you can celect “Merge Cells” and it should immediately prompt you to include contents of BOTH cells.   Unfortunately I had to merge about 8000 cells and since there seemed to be no bulk process I created a keystroke macro and did them (pretty quickly) manually because I was not clever enough to get a macro that would run this process by itself.

FYI note that you may want to keep your old fields (cells) as well as have the new combined field.   In that case simply make copies of the columns so you have extra ones to combine.

The reason I needed this was to create a CityCategory field name that will work well with our Retirement website.   One painful alternative to this little merge routine would have been to type the extra word into five thousand records!

Got Optimal?

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It seems to me that one of the most underrated notions in the world is that of the “optimal” arrangement.    You hear a lot of folks talking about things like  “exploitation”, “growth”, “fairness”, “maximizing profits”, etc, etc, but it seems to me we don’t talk nearly enough about how to structure the world in the way that best benefits the most people, ie to seek the optimal arrangement given the needs and contributions of all the players involved.

Nearsighted conservatives will sometimes mistake that kind of discussion as “socialist” because they see it as veering away from the competitive, individual forces that very effectively drive  highly productive economies, but they forget that in the game of economics we should generally be looking at metrics such production divided by number of people (GDP), and this number will be bigger if we optimize correctly.

The left in this sense is usually too “far sighted”, looking to distribute the wealth that may vanish if we eliminate those individual and corporate competitive structures that are the hallmark of industrialization and the spectacular rise in the average standard of living in the industrialized world over the past century.

So, how to optimize things?   Economist Vilfredo Pareto  (OMG he’s Italian?!  economic credibility challenge alert!) had some neat ideas with respect to optimizing systems where we’d examine them to find ways to increase the well being of some participants without decreasing that of others.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency

I think this simple basic idea should factor in a lot more, especially for those who fret a lot about the inequitable distribution of production towards the rich.    Those folks generally, and very wrongly, assume that redistribution won’t have negative effects on production.    It will, although that certainly does not mean we should not redistribute anything.   It just means we need to redistribute with *great caution* to avoid the catastrophic kinds of problems faced by basket case economies like North Korea.

I think the single greatest challenge of optimizing is the degree to which you factor in the needs of other nations.   Optimizing with the rural Pakistan peasantry in mind is different than if we draw our lines at the US border and say to heck with the needs of everybody else.   Although I believe we have a moral imperative to take the needs of the world into much better account than we do now, I also recognize that it’s not practical or even possible for those of us who enjoy the many benefits of industrialized capitalism to successfully integrate our economies with those of countries like North Korea or China or even very friendly “economic allies” like India.     Fortunately for those guys – and probably for us too – industrial globalization and the communications  and technology revolution are handling much of this task, often via the invisible hand of Adam Smith style free marketeering.

The future … is better optimized !

How to Use Twitter

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Yes, of COURSE you’ll be doing Twitter soon, so might as well jump on the bandwagon now.  Below are the instructions to the extent you need any – Twitter is, if nothing else, very easy to use.

The normal phases of Twitter adoption are

1. “Wow, Twitter is  stupid!”  2. Hmm, lots of people LIKE Twitter. 3.  I wonder how you do Twitter?   4. I’m tweeting, I’m tweeting!  WooooHooooo!”

I’m assuming you are here in stage 3 of the process and that you realize it’s best to just jump in and do this and there really aren’t any formal “rules” so here you go with general ideas:

HOW TO USE TWITTER: 

1.  Sign up at www.Twitter.com    Easy, takes 2 minutes.

2.   By clicking the follow tag on a person, you should follow a LOT of people (hundreds at first, eventually thousands) who share your interests plus any friends you know who are doing Twitter.   If you are like me, also follow people who don’t agree with you.   I think the best approach is to find interesting people for a topic and follow their followers – this is MUCH FASTER than following people one by one (UNDERSTAND THIS POINT or you’ll spend too much time waiting to follow and click!)

Don’t worry about being picky, just click up to 500 per day until you hit the 2000 limit.   This will only take you about 10 minutes per day.  Don’t worry, you’ll be surprised how LITTLE activity there is on Twitter even with lots of followers.   I, for example, spend only about 10 min a day with it unless I’m bulking up followers – then I’ll spend 30 minutes following and unfollowing those who do not reciprocate.     Unlike Facebook, Twitter is not much of a time sink unless you get obsessed with it.   It’s partly for this reason it’s such a great business tool.

One of the neat things is that you can pretty much post what you like, there really aren’t many protocols.  Until you have a lot of followers (and even then), you’ll be surprised at the low feedback.  I use and see Twitter as more of a public soapbox for shouting than as a serious communications tool, though I love it when it becomes serious as when I’m complimenting a business or reporting a problem, or when I’m an insider to international twitter activity as during the ongoing “Arab Spring” where heroic folks are keeping the flame of freedom alive using Twitter and other social media.

Arab spring is only one example of people using Twitter very seriously.    YOU can take your cause and post links to your pictures (if they are public), make a comment, and then use a tag like this:  #PutAnyTopicHere         .
Using tags allows people searching for that topic in the tag to see your tweets.    Otherwise and in general only your followers will see what you write.
Retweet tweets you like that others make by simply clicking “retweet”.   This is nice for them and also helps you get “noticed”.
Summary of “How to Use Twitter”:
Join,  TWEET,  change the world.

Southern Oregon Tweetup at the Craterian Theater … rocked!

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Here in lovely Southern Oregon we enjoy a very high standard of living but – at least in my experience – really cool parties are few and far between.    However last night at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford a distinguished group of news, tech, and twitter folks and twitter-friendly sponsors came together to enjoy fine wine, great food, great coffee, sparkling conversation and music, and more.    I kept thinking I was at one of the neat tech blogger parties they throw at the Computer Electronics Show “CES” in Las Vegas every January.

In my opinion it’s very important to the social media environment to create online thanks to both the promoters and the sponsors of great events and I’m sure I’ll miss some of them, but here’s a shot:

Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater – home to fabulous performances all year long.

Brad Nelson is the Craterian’s Production Manager and most excellent social media mad man.

Jerilyn Hassell Pool is an amazing Twitter evangelist, webmaster, and has a knack for organizing parties, especially when they involve twitter.  Tweet Aunt Marvel

Fresco Food put out a fine spread of healthy finger foods.    Owner Alyssa Warner doesn’t just use mobile twitter technology, she’s created mobile edibles served all over the region from the Fresco Food Mobile.     Ricotta Gnochi delivered to your door?    Call Fresco!, or better yet, Tweet them.

Bad Ass Coffee of Medford was serving up several of their fine brews.    Follow them on Twitter for specials.

DJGemineye was picking and spinning some great songs.    Tweet him to make your party much cooler than it would otherwise be.

Wine Tasting was a highlight of the party, and here in Southern Oregon we’ve got some of the best appelations found in the USA.   If you’ve seen the movies “Bottle Shock” and “Sideways” you know how California Wines lept from relative obscurity in the 1960’s to become a dominant force in the global wine scene.   In my opinion Southern Oregon, with rich soil and excellent grape growing weather – is poised to become recognized very soon as one of the world’s great wine regions.

Valley View Winery  | Valley View on Twitter

Abacela Winery      |    Abacela on Twitter

Windridge Winery

Serra Vinyard       |      Serra Vineyard on Twitter

Del Rio Vineyards   |    Del Rio on Twitter

Medical Traveling and other sites back up and on better server

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Drama here at the mini web empire over the past few days.   I was critical of Godaddy for taking down several of my sites after an advertising traffic surge of about 9800 unique visits to the new medical tourism blog MedicalTraveling.net put a strain on the shared server.    After the blog post / tweet and intervention by CEO Bob Parsons my issues were very quickly resolved and now I’m on a much better server setup that should be able to better handle the high traffic I expect at that blog.

Still trying to figure out why it took Dr. Bob’s clout to resolve this.  The tech folks I talk with at Godaddy are usually very capable and attentive, yet two of them had insisted to me there was no way to expedite things after what they seemed to believe was a  “network violation” caused by the traffic surge to the new blog.   Uptime was particularly important to me on my new Medical Tourism blog because it’s being reviewed by Thai tourism as my entry in their Medical Tourism blogging contest where finalists will be flown to Thailand for an introduction to the country and to their very advanced medical tourism infrastructure.

So … we’ll see if there is a happy ending to another installment in the great lifetime blogging adventure, and I do want to thank Godaddy for coming through with a fast fix after the initial frustrations of having sites taken down.

Flickr to PS3 slide show troubleshooting. Name bar right click for “Date Picture Taken”

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UPDATE March 2011:  Well, more trouble with this even following my own directions below, but after many failed attempts  we got the files to copy after backing out of the PS3 menus, going back in, and using the “options” (triangle) key to bring up options rather than simply clicking on the “flash drive” icon.   The problem of the order of the pictures remains since you cannot sort them by date taken and they do not pull in the files in the order you have sorted them on the flash drive appears to be by name of folder or file) Moral of this nasty application is probably … DO NOT USE IT!  But if you do consider naming your slides such that the names match the order in which you want them to appear.

 

Wow, I sure had a remarkably difficult time getting my pictures from Flickr to a flash drive to a slide show on our high def TV using the PS3.     Seems like it should have been a snap, but here are some troubleshooting tips if you find yourself with the same challenge  (Why bother?  Because slide shows on big TVs are so nice compared to having people cluster around your computer screen!)

*  Bulkr is a great Flickr backup tool – it worked beautifully and pulled my Flickr pictures onto my hard drive.

*  Note that you may need to right click on the “name” bar in the folders as you work with them – the taskbar that has the file names – and tell it to display the “date picture taken” data.    For slide shows it is often  important to have “date picture taken” information so you can order the shots in the same sequence that you took them  (assuming you kept up the time and date stamps on the camera – a very important thing to do although Flickr will let you bulk modify those if needed).

*   If pictures are not showing up, try loading them into a folder named “pictures”.

*  Using your PS3 controller, go to the “Photos” section and select the option for the flash drive / removable drive.      Using the triangle button you should be able to display the contents of the flash drive, though inconsistencies here have been one of the problems for me.

….. to be continued …. maybe…..

FourSquare, Twitter, and Facebook

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As a self-proclaimed social media expert  (hey, cuz I have a MASTERS DEGREE in Social Science!), I like to think I understand what is driving the latest wave of online enthusiasm.    But I’m increasingly convinced nobody understands it.  Rather, like evolution, we work away from failure and wind up with applications and websites that have *survived* and adapted far more than were “brilliantly planned and executed” according to some online success formula.

Of course predicting Google’s success was easy – they’d cracked the nut of “really good search” and even as others caught up to their quality they’d established our habit of “googling” when we needed good info fast and have reaped the enormous advertising revenue rewards from that early success.     I had more trouble understanding why Facebook was so appealing yet it has thrived as the key friend and family connector in an increasingly social media world.

I remain skeptical that Facebook can drive advertising revenue to the extent needed to ever compete against Google for online dominance, but we’re still *very* early in the big online game and clearly Facebook is rocking in terms of online influence.

As for many, Twitter didn’t impress me initially but after following a lot of people and capturing a lot of followers I started to understand how important Twitter would be to the online social experience.     This was borne out very strongly at CES Las Vegas watching how quickly businesses – even including non-tech businesses like the hotels and attractions in Las Vegas – were using Twitter as a key news, customer contact, and customer relations tool.    As mom and pop businesses and “regular folks” begin to understand how active engagement with Twitter can revolutionize the way we do business communication I think we’ll see a second explosion in use and Twitter will rival Facebook in terms of importance.

The latest in the pantheon of  very popular “social media” applications is called “FourSquare”.     The idea is to know the location of your friends and share your location as well as offer tips about everything from dining to attractions.    The basic idea is appealing and intuitive and the service appears to be exploding in popularity, though I’m finding it hard to use I think in part because I’m a rural dweller and things like this are more useful in urban centers where there are a lot more participants.   Still, it seems to me this only enhances Twitter somewhat, and is not really a major improvement over what we’d expect from more active use of Twitter, which I see as playing (eventually) the a role as an application that manages how people are relating to other people on an hour by hour basis.     Although it’s mostly early adopters who use Twitter in this way now, the fact that tweets are easier than a phone call means to me that eventually we’ll shift from calling to some form of text messaging, the most powerful of which is …. tweeting!

In summary I’m thinking that Google search will continue to thrive and dominate with Facebook and Twitter becoming the key tools for social interaction – Facebook more between friends and family and Twitter between businesses and celebrities and customers / fans.       That doesn’t leave much room for Foursquare to become huge, but the online social space has become so large that even a supporting role can be an auspicious one.

Auth Code Help. Authorization Code Instructions for Domain Name Transfers from Godaddy, Moniker, and more.

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Skip to highlighted text below for Auth Code Instructions

Even after thousands of domain name transactions over the years I’m always pulling my hair out with domain name transfer process which, like many mixtures of bureaucratic bungling and private sector greed, is about as frustrating, cumbersome, and potentially catastrophic.   You can even lose domain names – a key hallmark of many businesses – to scammers, inept registrars, or simple bad luck.     This post will be my attempt to help people figure out some of the quirks in the process.

First, recognize that you should not be paying more than about $10 per year for registration unless you are ALSO getting some local help/service/ etc from a webmaster. I use GoDaddy but there are many others that have reasonable fees.

Second, if you have a domain name(s) for your business or other valuable names you should register them for at least 5 years to decrease the chance you’ll lose the name.   Also, some believe search algorithms like to see longer registration times as a sign of authenticity, meaning it might help you rank a bit better all other things equal.

Third, BEWARE of the letters in the mail trying to pretend you need to renew a domain name that are really attempts to get you to switch to that registrar.   These are often legal forms of scams where they are a real service but are not the registrar you have now.

Generally you will find it easy to initiate a TRANSFER  IN to an account, and hard to nearly impossible to TRANSFER OUT.   Registrars generally make it very, very difficult to figure out the transfer out process because this will help keep people with them and even if you get angry they are losing your money and business anyway.

Unfortunately you’ll often need to do BOTH of these procedures to move a domain name from one registrar to another.   If you focus on the “TRANSFER OUT” and the required “AUTH CODES” and you’ll probably have success.

GODADDY Auth Codes:

Godaddy’s process is cumbersome but fairly straightforward.    Full details here from Godaddy.   Short version:

  1. Log in to your GoDaddy Account Manager.
  2. In the My Products section, click Domain Manager.
  3. Click the domain for which you want to retrieve the authorization code.
  4. In the Authorization Code field, click the Send by Email hyperlink.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Click OK again.

Moniker Auth Codes.

Moniker is the current front runner in my “diabolically difficult” online routine contest.   However once you know the secret you’ll be fine.  Be sure to put away ANY guns you have in the house before using their online help system or you’ll be using one on yourself.

The secret:  You obtain the Moniker Auth code to do external transfers as follows:

1. Log into your Moniker Account, select  “my domains”.

2. Now check the domain(s) you want to transfer out and click “transfer out”

3. Complete the “transfer out” dialog.

4. You should very shortly receive two emails.   You want the one that looks like the one below with domain name followed by a comma and a string that is the Auth code for that domain for the next 10 days.

5. If the process fails you may have to repeat this again (and again!) until the transfer “takes”.    Often if you purchase a domain from a third party they have *recently* registered that name and you won’t be able to transfer it for 60 days.  You’ll thus need to mark your calendar and start the process then as well as make sure the domain is registered at least through the transfer date (usually it will be as a year is usually added during the new registration)

THIS IS ONLY half the transfer process, now you’ll need to follow the instructions from your new registrar to transfer the domain *IN*, but those are usually straightforward  if you have the Auth Code.

Example Moniker Tranfer Out email:

[NOTICE] Account: 99999 Requesting Domains For Transfer Away From Moniker

As part of our standard transfer-out procedure, a notification has been submitted to Moniker notifying us of an intent to transfer the following domain(s) away from Moniker

This email serves as confirmation that we have received your notification.

This request will be valid for 10 days (240 hours).

The Reason Given For Transfer Was: changeOwnership

Domain Name,Epp AuthInfo (if applicable)
———– —————————-

2ILLINOIS.COM, 9999999CDC9
2MISSISSIPPI.COM,  9A9999B999EE

 

How to find your Enom Auth Code:
How to obtain the authorization code and unlock a domain name on eNom

Log in.

In the “Registered domains” row, click “Manage Domains”.

Click the domain you want to unlock.

In the “Manage Domain” menu, click “General Settings”.

To retrieve the EPP key, click “Email Auth Code to Registrant”.

A message confirms that the authorization code has been emailed.

To unlock the domain, go to the “Registrar-Lock” row and select “Disable”, and then click “save”.

A message confirms that the update was successful.

Mark Cuban: Companies that Live by Free Stuff will Die by Free Stuff

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The always clever, almost always insightful, and sometimes good dancer Mark Cuban has a great post today about “Freemium” companies.   Cuban suggests:

Its not that they can’t make money offering free. They can , have and will. The problem is that they know that its literally  impossible  to be the king of the mountain forever. But that won’t stop them from trying. And that is exactly what will kill them.

Their better choice would be to run the company as profitably as possible, focusing only on those things that generate revenue and put cash in the bank.  More importantly, when you see your BlackSwan company appear and you know they will kick your ass, rather than ramping up to try to compete, get out. Sell. Or maximize cash and pay your shareholders every penny you have.

Like every company in the free space, your lifecycle has come to its conclusion. Don’t fight it. Admit it.  Profit from it.

I think Cuban is right on, though I think he’d also agree that most companies won’t take his advice, especially Google which stands to gain (but also lose) the most from maintaining their massive search revenue and general online dominance.

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/07/05/the-freemium-company-lifecycle-challenge/

Future of Education Part II

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In the coming years people are likely to experience the most profound transformation in all of history.  The  event is often called “The singularity” because it’s very hard to know what will happen after the the ongoing fast rise in machine intelligence fully surpasses human capabilities.  Computers are very likely to become conscious and “recursively self improving”, allowing them to reinvent themselves as frequently as they choose in various forms.

I agree with those who believe the coming conscious computers will be the last human invention as they will improve themselves at lightning speed and surpass human intelligence by *millions of times* within years or perhaps even minutes of developing consciousness.
It is clear that when this happens education as we know it in all forms will be completely obsolete as the computers will spawn sweeping and extremely rapid advances in all scientific fields including biology and engineering.  Many humans will choose to either merge with machines or simply “download” their entire consciousness into a machine.   This transition would be seamless, merely shifting the “substrate” we use to think from our existing electrochemical, carbon based neural structure to something more permanent – probably some combination of silicon, carbon, and thinking software programs.
Although some experts believe the machines are likely to pose an “existential risk” to humanity because they will see human irrationality as a threat, my view is that historically intelligence has bred greater compassion and we’ll first enjoy the benefits of the conscious machine’s vast intellectual and engineering capabilities and later merge with them by downloading our existing memories and full intellects into something somewhat analogous to a computer’s “hard drive”.    “Life” would then become what we chose to make it as we might simply simulate an earthbound existence in our new virtual world, or we might choose to simulate entirely different lives or experiences designed within a vast interconnected global intelligence.   The underlying technical infrastructure would continue to improve and maintain itself indefinitely, making these intelligences immortal if they chose that route.

Some interesting *current* developments along these lines are:

Singularity University in Silicon Valley – sponsored by Google and other tech leaders this school will teach about the sweeping changes coming as machine intelligence surpasses that of humans.

Blue Brain Project, Switzerland.   IBM and several researchers have completed a simulation of a neocortical column with Blue Gene, the world’s fastest supercomputer.This project will expand the simulation with the next generation of supercomputers coming within a few years and seeks to create a fully functional human-like brain simulation.

Synapse Project: This project was announced earlier this year is funded by the US Military’s DARPA division, which represents the best funded attempt to date to build a functional brain.  The SyNAPSE initial goal is to design a working version of a mammalian brain.  The approach differs from Blue Brain in that it’s largely based on finding a working “software solution” rather than using techniques to duplicate the brain’s hardware.