John K. Davis, Executive Director

A New Business Model

I love coaching people, both individuals and business teams, to learn new ways to get organized, be productive, stay connected and have fun by using various technologies. But I do not seem to be able to find the time to send invoices. I would much rather assist a client or charitable organization or do research about a new device or software application or read a book or learn something new than to go through the drudgery of keeping track of my time and sending an itemized bill to the many people I assist.

I have been feeling overwhelmed lately because I'm busy, having a great time, but I am over three months behind on sending invoices. Well, I am not going to worry about it anymore. So, do not expect an invoice from me; I've decided to stop sending billing statements. I will assist you for whatever you think is fair and can afford.

Some people pay me well and I enjoy working with them and I will prioritize my schedule so that I will be there when they want me. I also assist a few non-profit organizations without any expectation of payment--doing volunteer work has always been an important part of my life and I will continue to make contributions to causes and institutions that I believe in enough to donate my time and energy and sometimes even my financial resources.

Friends and family have not received invoices from me in the past, so this is nothing new for them. A number of my friends have sent me a check or funds via PayPal and I appreciate their support. In fact, it is their support that has inspired me to work this way with others.

I have billed $60 an hour in the past for my services. I suppose that is what I think I'm worth. But from now on I will accept whatever you want to pay me.

You can send me a check via snail mail (my mailing address is available by clicking on the "About" link under my Webcam image at the top of this website's left column), or you can transfer money to me via my Tip Jar.

You do not need a PayPal account to make a payment via the Tip Jar with a credit card, but you will need a PayPal account to make an electronic transfer from your bank account. In either case you can initiate Tip Jar payments to me by clicking on the Tip Jar icon at the top of this website's right column.

When you send me funds via the Tip Jar, I get an email notification of the transaction that contains the payer's name and a short message (the message is optional). No other information is given to me.

If I have assisted you in the past few months you will get a personal email message from me about this change in my "business model" soon. I hope everyone will respond well to this change--it is a big relief for me and I suspect that the pay-whatever-you-want arrangement will work out fine for me.

Gmail Filters

I have been using Gmail a lot lately. The reason I am steadily increasing the use of the service flows mainly from a unique feature of Gmail: filters.

Gmail filters can be used in many ways. I’m using them to identify the source of email messages that are sent to me. Whenever I register online when I purchase something or I want to use an online service, I use my Gmail email address when completing the registration form. When I enter the address I add an identifier. Then, whenever I get an email message using that identifier, I know where the sender got the email address.

So, let me give an example. I recently rented a car using Priceline dot com. When I registered at the site, I used "jkdmail+priceline@gmail" dot com for the email address. The "+priceline" is the identifier. Then I went to my Gmail account and added a filter I called “Priceline.” This filter captures every email message coming into my inbox that has the +priceline identifier. I can view new and archived messages using the filter.

This works great, but I have run into an occasional problem. Every once in a while I register at a website that will not allow the identifier in the email address. For many months this has not been a big deal, I would just email the company and asked them to change their validation criteria so Gmail, with an identifier added, would be accepted. Everyone was glad to do so. The new Glide dot com website is an example of a site where I got this kind of quick response.

There are companies that will not change their email validation criteria. One such company is DHD Media, a company that provides website registration services, credit card processing and billing, streaming media and DRM, and managed hosting for a number of companies. When they refused to change their email address validation criteria, I sent them this message:

Catching Up

The past few months have been a rush. My computer's motherboard fried mid-October. It took awhile to diagnose the problem and the repair required building a new computer system. Reloading all of my software, configuring it and organizing my data in a new more elegant way has been time consuming, but I took advantage of the opportunity to upgrade most of my hardware. I love the new system.

We visited Stephanie and her family early in November for a week. We had a great time. Here is a short movie showing Jamison at his karate lesson:

Download Karate Game Action

The game involved whacking someone with a foam staff. When you get whacked you have to stop playing the game and do a kata before you can resume whacking people.

By the time we got home from Michigan we had only a week to prepare for Thanksgiving. We did something special this year--we invited members of the military who where away from home for the holiday. The news media found out about our plans and interviewed Janet for the local NBC affiliate's evening news. I recorded it on our TiVo. Here is the clip:

Download Janet's news interview aired on November 23, 2005, at 5:00 PM on KNSD 7/39

Thanksgiving day was a lot of fun. It worked out that we picked up five Navy sailors at 10:00 AM that morning. We returned to Brittany Tower where three twenty-pound turkeys were roasting and too many side dishes were in the final stages of being prepared. We had six pies for dessert and wine, cold brew, soft drinks and juices to drink. Joan came two days early to assist with the preparations, so the cooking had begun the day before.

Diggdot.us

Link: TechCrunch Instantly Hooked on Diggdot.us.

If you are a news junkie, this is for you.

Michael likes Diggdot.us, but I prefer a similar service; SearchFox.com. The advantage of SearchFox is the ability to choose the RSS feeds that are merged by the service. This allows integration not only of Digg, Slashdot and del.icio.us/popular, but other favorite sites as well. SearchFox takes the additional step of using AI to prioritize the stories in order of your reading preferences, so I get what I really care about filtered to the top of the feeds whenever I log on to SearchFox.

Using Qumana

This is the first post to my weblog using a new tool called Qumana. It is a blog post editor and publisher that offers awesome features and makes editing, adding and managing blog posts easier while also expanding significantly the quality of the content of the post.

 

Adding images to the post is so easy. I can move images in various ways to Qumana and then have excellent control of the appearance of the image. For example, this is the Qumana logo copied from their website and pasted here:

I also easily added a hyperlink to the image so you will surf to their website if you click on it.

 

Qumana works with all of the major weblog publishing sites and it enables posting to multiple blogs. I think it will enable me to post here more often. I can drag-and-drop content to a see-through icon that floats in the corner of my desktop and this opens the Qumana editor placing the content (including images and formatting) into the tool automatically. Then all I need to do is post it here by clicking on the "Post" button.

 

There are many bells and whistles, too. It has a spell checker. I can add Technorati tags by simply clicking a button called "Technorati Tags:" Using, Qumana. The content of my post is analyzed and the tags are automatically inserted--it is that easy. I can even add in-post ads by clicking an advertising button:

 

 

 

(I'll try to keep this to a minimum, but there are times when an ad can be helpful--like when I'm posting about a cool gadget that I'm excited about)

 

I'm new at this, but Qumana seems like a great new tool. And, by the way, it is free.

Tip Jar

TypePad, the weblog hosting service I use, has created a new feature called "Tip Jar." I have long had a PayPal link in the right column for those who want to pay for my services. The Tip Jar is a more elegant solution and I'm pleased to use it instead of a direct link to PayPal.

I bill $60 per hour for the technology coaching services I offer, but I only bill for the time I am on site coaching a client. When someone asks for assistance by posting a comment here, sends me an email message, calls me because they are having a problem or to ask a few questions, I assist without billing for my time.

You can use the Tip Jar to make payment on an invoice and you can also use the Tip Jar to give me a small tip. If you have a PayPal account, you can use it via the Tip Jar. If not, you can handle the transaction with a credit card. I appreciate your support of my efforts.

Consolidated

In an effort to focus my time and effort in posting to my blog, I have moved all articles from my other blogs to this one. I will not be renewing the domain registration that will come up in a few months for the other blogs, so they will disappear then.

It is still easy to see only the articles that interest you by clicking on the appropriate category in the left column (Digital Rights, Gadgets, Knowledge Management, Tech Support and Transhumanism).

Broadcast Flag

I have decided to consolidate my musings into one blog--I am not able to keep current publishing six blogs now that I am working full-time. So, I am posting everything here from now on.

"The broadcast flag rule forces manufacturers to remove useful recording features from television products you can buy today," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. "The FCC has decided that the way to get Americans to adopt digital TV is to make it cost more and do less."

This means, among many things, that HDTV recorders and other PVRs will be delayed in going to market and it might even prevent such products from ever being sold if they don't obtain approval form the FCC. The biggest shock is that public affairs and news programming are not exempt from the rules. So it also means that public domain programming like CSPAN and PBS will need to be encrypted so they cannot be recorded and viewed at a latter time without expensive new hardware and software. This is nonsense, especially when the Broadcast Flag was designed primarily to protect Hollywood movies.

The only way to avoid this limitation is to purchase equipment before the rules become effective a year from now. I am beginning to research the market and will let you know how I proceed.

For more information check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website.

Audio Post

Via my wireless phone:

Audio Post

Via the BlogRecorder at my Audioblog service.