Putting My Two Cents Worth In...Rather - Taking My Two Cents Worth OUT

I have a nefarious plan to become a professional blogger, hence, these Google Ad-words sprinkled throughout my blog.

However, something is telling me not to give up my day job yet, I'm managing to reap on average a whole 2 cents per month.  Scrooge McDuck I ain't!.  Based on the fact that they don't pay out until you've accrued $100 in  your account, it seems to me that it's highly unlikely that I will see any payout from Google.

Oh well, I certainly can't be accused of doing this for profit reason's only.  Let me see, if I average 10 blogs a month @ 10 minutes per blog, that's 1.5 hours (roughly).  2 cents per 1.5 hours work, hmm, I'm thinking that I should not be counting on this as part of my retirement portfolio!

It Kind of Seemed Like a Good Idea...

As I was blogging last night, I noticed an ad in my editor which caught my interest.

This ad was for a service where you can take your blog and this company will go and produce a book of one's book - very much a vanity-publishing sort of thing.

My first reaction is that this is way-cool.  How neato would it be to be able to flip through the pages of TecHumanity?

Then - a little voice popped up in my mind and said "Hmmm, is this such a practical idea?  Blogs by nature are dynamic.  Granted that the frequency of additions to it depend solely on the author, but geesh, it's going to take all of a week or so for the book to be "out of date".

Where this could be a very good idea is as it relates to eReaders and the such, but only to the extent that it must be automatically update the content.  That having been said, what's the difference from just browsing to the link.

Oh well, maybe when I "retire" from TecHumanity and post no more, I can revisit this.  Man, when I had them do a preliminary copy of my book, it was in excess of 80 pages.  It seems like a lot of blogging to me, but then again, I'm not the most active blogger out there :)

I'm So Excited - Okay - So This Totally Makes Me a Nerd - Not Like There Was Any Question

Recently, I had posted a blog entry about OtherInbox and how it has a nifty feature in conjunction with Yahoo to eliminate SPAM.

I was VERY tickled that my piddly blog entry was actually noticed by the company that wrote OtherInbox.  Further, one of their employees tweeted about my article.  I didn't realize that all of this happened until I was reviewing my blog visitor stats and noticed a (relative to me anyways!) explosion of 100+ hits on this one blog entry.  How totally exciting that my ramblings existed in the Twitterverse for an twitter-eternity (aka 24 hours).

Taking a real  long shot, I'm going to blog an open letter to Heather of Indigo saying how much I would love to receive a complimentary Kobo for my 'evaluation' and reading pleasure.  I am the all-mighty and powerful TecHumanity and what I say goes from my 'mouth' to the ears of - oh - maybe a dozen readers.  Surely that has to count for something!

I Yam What I Yam

As I was listening to the radio tonight, this Popeye quote came to my mind almost immediately.  There was a news story on how one of the growth industries in the school picture industry (and I would imagine by extension, the "professional head shot industry") is how one can pay extra money to photoshop out one's little imperfections such as acne, braces, pimples etc.

The commenator went on to quote a psychologist who claims (rightly to, I think) that this might not be the best idea.  The story went on to hypothesize that this ability to so easily crop out one's imperfections sends the wrong message in society, that one's worth is based on how "perfect" one's hair/skin/teeth/etc.. are.  Spot right on, on that one, he is absolutely right.

What on earth are we doing and encouraging?  Indeed, what kind of message does this send to our children.  I'll tell you the message.  The message is this "I'm so sorry, darling son/daughter that you're upset that you have this 'glitch' in your class picture.  Don't worry, your concerns are legitimate, let's use technology to 'repair' you, to make you into a more acceptable person".  That is EXACTLY the message that we are sending and frankly, this concerns me very much.

Great Caesar's Ghost! Do we really want to be part of a society where one needs to be electronically fixed/manipulated/revised?  I don't know - maybe I'm too out of touch with the whole "I need to be accepted by my peers" thing.

Oh, by the way, could someone please photoshop my picture at work and (a) remove the wrinkles (b) darken the hair and (c) give me an electronic lipsuction?

Good gravy - the madness never ends.

Now, let me see, I would like to see "http://techumanity.blogspot.com" to go right THERE *points*

This is too strange to make-up.  A gentlemen in Quebec is raising money by decorating his body with tattoos.

Gasp #1 - he is committed to covering his body with 100,000 tattoos in one calendar year.  If I'm not mistaken, there is a world record at stake here.

Gasp #2 - okay - so you're thinking "where's the tecHumanity context here, dude?"  Well, said tattoos are URLs.  Yep -he's proposing selling space on his body to advertise 100,000 domains and URLs.  First of all, that's an average of 273 per day.  That can't be possible - can it?  Man, how teeny is this writing going to be and where exactly should I sponsor "http://tecHumanity.blogspot.com".

The one thing that I've never figured with the heavily tattooed.  Not that I have a problem with it - I'm a very open minded chap and if this is something that someone wants to do, then all the power to them, but heck - what are the tattoos going to look like when said "walking billboard" is 75.  Wrinkles galore - can you imagine trying to unfold a wrinkle to find a particular URL?  The mind shudders.  But then again, how do I come up with this crap? :)

The "Going to Hell in a Hand Basket Award"

...otherwise known as "this use of technology is just freaking nuts".

Two totally abysmal stories in the news.

The first is a Canadian couple who have canvassed Facebook users to...get this...choose the name for the child.  Seriously - as in "no matter what name they come up with - we'll go with it".  I'm sure that the $40,000 promised by the sponsor of the event had something to do with it.  Sure enough, baby WWW is born and they register the name that "won" the Facebook derby.  Say what?  Really? And this doesn't concern them that something that will stay with this person for years, was chosen, not by parents, but by a group of strangers?

The second story concerns me even more.  The article stated that a US couple who is preggers was trying to decide if they should abort the child or not.  They claim that this is legit, that they'll put it to vote.  I can't say for certain how legitimate this was, or what became of it, but the second that someone even considers letting strangers decide on life and death...this one rocks me to the core.

Merry Christmas - From TecHumanity & Rick

http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/XVpcRozp7k6qWBSvGzDm

This is a safe link, but as we all practice safe computing, copy and paste the link instead of clicking on it.

A very Merry Christmas and Seasons Greetings to everyone!

Rick

An Experiment - If You Will

Okay - I would ask this.  If you read this post, do me a favour.  Leave a comment as to what city you are from.  As I've approached...more than a year (?) with this blog, I am inordinately curious as to how many of you are real peeps - where you are from (and tell me your favourite dessert - that I MUST know!) and to determine that you are not a 'bot - venturing into the world of TecHumanity.

Consider this as a favour - as a "one hour before the dude turns 50 (argh!!!!)" favour to yours truly.

You Go, Girl!

News story today suggests that Groupon has rejected a $5-6 billion bid from Google.  Wow, too much.  Amazing that anyone has the audacity to deny the monolith of Google.  I can just imagine the apolexy with the ne'er do-wells of Google.  They must have felt not unlike the Empire not being able to withstand The Force.  Can you imagine?  I'd love to have been in the room when Google heard that it was a no-go.

God - I hate monopolies.  With every fibre of my body, I offer up a WOOT-WOOT to Groupon.

Yahoo! And OtherInbox...to Borrow from Monty Python "NOSPAM...NOSPAM...NOSPAM..."

I have been using the Yahoo! OtherInbox Application for awhile now. OtherInbox is an optional application that can be setup and configured to automatically create common folders and redirect common (and related) emails to that folder. For example, OIB may create a folder called OIB Jobs and it has some intelligence to redirect emails from sendors relating to Jobs to this folder. This is a great way to clean-up one's Inbox. One of the disadvantages of not having any limites on Yahoo! mailbox size anymore, is that there's no real incentive to organize and clean-up, so searching can be a mess.

I ran across a very nifty tip today. You can a folder called "OIB Unsubscribe" and then manually drag an drop SPAM that you no longer want in this folder. OIB will then pick up the ball and recognize that you want to be unsubscribed from this list and it will eventually hook-up with Lashbank - a global email compliance provider and will attempt to remove you from the list in question. I'm sure that it's not fool-proof, but then again, any little bits of SPAM that I don't have to deal with, is definitely a blessing.

My "Good Way to Use Technology" Tip of the Day (Or Whenever I think of Something!)

I am chronically bad with keeping paperwork and being able to find it.  I am just horrendous at filing and I spend way too much time sifting through piles of papers.

I have developed a little 'trick' which helps me out immensely.  What I do is use Yahoo! Mail as my filing cabinet.  When I get a paper or document or bill that I know that I will need at some point in time, I will scan it and send it to my email address.  Further, with the printer, I can specify the subject line for the email, so I will put in something like [Records] ING Statement for October 2006.

For those that don't know, Yahoo! no longer has a limit on the mailbox size, so go crazy, scan and email as much as you want.

Further, I have folders setup in my Yahoo! in conjunction with rules in my email.  So - when my Yahoo! receives an email with the subject "[Records] ING Statement" at the beginning, it automatically files in into my [Records] ING folder.  Cool and nifty.  I will not have to sift through mountains of paperwork to find that elusive bill.  Everything is not only in my email, but it is also automatically grouped together.

Of course, storing content online, is this a good thing - or a bad thing?  The good in this case is that you receive a wonderful benefit of being to review these documents from anywhere where you have access to a web browser or interface of some sort.  The very logical "bad" of this technique is that having these (assumedly) confidential document in one location, and if you're on a public computer, one can never be too careful about spyware, inadvertantly saving one's email password, etc...  As is this case, common sense should prevail and one needs to way the advantages against the disadvantages.
As Austin Powers might say "easy-peasy lemon-squeezie"!