my new friend, Jawbone UP

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Meet my new friend, the Jawbone UP bracelet.  I had read about the UP over the past few months on the tech blogs and thought it sounded like a pretty cool device.  And someone tipped me off that they had hit the stores, so I immediately picked one up.  You know I'm a sucker for a new gadget. Especially when it's supposed to make my life better!  I have had the UP for just over a week now and have to say... I love it.  

The UP is supposed to help you 'move' more - it tracks your steps, distance, pace, intensity level and calories associated with those activities.  You can tell it to remind you to move - like when you're sitting in front of the computer working all day, it will give you a gentle reminder to get up and move around a bit.  I find this super useful - it's so good to know what calories you're burning on a regular basis and then you can really  see when you need to pick it up and get moving more.  

The UP tracks your sleep too!  This is probably my favorite feature of the UP.  It tracks hours slept, when you're in deep vs. light sleep, if you wake up in the middle of the night and then gives you an overall picture of the night.  Honestly, I have no idea how it does this, but it does.  And it sure seems to be right!  I program it to wake me at a specific time and it will wake me within a 20-30 min window before that time.  It wakes me in light sleep and I feel Sooooooooooooo much better when I wake up.  See, I had gotten into this horrible rut of setting my alarm and hitting the snooze a couple of times before I actually drag my butt out of bed.  By looking at my sleep patterns, I totally get why this was such a bad thing!  When I fall asleep, I fall direct into deep sleep, so if you wake me up 5 min into that I am going to be much more groggy than if I just get up a few minutes earlier but while in light sleep.  This has seriously been THE. BEST. FEATURE. for me!! 

So the only feature I don't love is the food tracking.  You're supposed to take a quick photo of your food and the UP will ask you a little while later in the day how that food makes you feel (via smiley faces).  The idea is that you can see what foods energize you and those that make you feel yucky.  Well... for me, since it doesn't also track calories and such, I find that I don't really use it.  Maybe they will do something to expand on it in the future that will get me a little more interested ... but despite this feature, the UP has been a fabulous addition to my life!   Snap one up and let me know how you like it! 

hackers f#cking suck !!

I have spent two days working on a hacked gmail account and have to tell you it's been a nightmare!  Just when you think you have it figured out, they noodle back in and figure out something new.  AND Google is very little help.  They give you a form to fill out of the most impossible questions.  Could you name the exact date you opened your gmail account?  Could you name the person that invited you to gmail and provide their email address???  They don't even provide a place for you to explain what you know about the hacker or explain why you think your account has been taken... Insane!  

I filled out the form once and provided only a little bit of information because it was going to require calling people to find out more - that was rejected.  So I filled it out again and gave more info and guessed at as much as possible and finally got the account back.  That said, the hacker still had email being directed to an alternate address.  I had sent a screen capture of my iphone settings to help out my colleague who was having the problems, but think that got sent to the spammer.  Had to call my mail host to see what they could do with that information and as I was on the phone with them, I believe the spammers had compromised one of my company accounts.  Arrrrggggg!  

I now have to change every password for every user to be sure that nothing is able to be hacked - and that means on 10 computers, 10 iphones and etc.   So much work is needed to correct this situation and it sucks that there is no consequence to the person who is causing all of this pain.  SUCKS!  SUCKS!  SUCKS!  

So, after all of this... I'm thinking I may drop gmail and use my own server.  Seems like a much more secure option... anyone else had experience with this?

Thank goodness for Rowmote Pro

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via regularrateandrhythm.com

Just saved my ass w/this one ... major design flaw of the Macbook Air is that it has no IR port and thus will NOT work with any apple remotes. Well that's just genius isn't it?

After 30 min of googling and reading forums I found this baby. Wheew! And I did call Apple who told me there was no solution ... clearly I will never accept no ... someone, somewhere has found a way!!

the new Apple TV

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via store.apple.com

Technology is a funny thing... I feel that I am always behind no matter how quickly I adopt a product. I have an Apple TV and use it to stream my own movies or music, but had to purchase the Wii in order to stream my Netflix to my TV. Now Apple goes and produces this new version of the Apple TV that streams live media ... it is impossible to keep up! I can only hope that they feel pity for the previous version and swing us an update that will allow us to stream live media too...

updated user experience

I have fallen back in love with the Firefox browser!  Two amazing extensions/addons have turned my web surfing space into the most streamlined way to multi-task ... it's dreamy!!

First is feedly - the designer me has just done little backflips off of the couch!!  It integrates into my google reader to pull my feeds into the most beautiful layout that is super easy to use and connects to all sorts of sharing sources (like facebook, twitter, posterous and etc.).  I don't know how I will ever look at boring old google reader in a browser ever again!  
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Then the ultimate in social networking, yoono!!  It puts a column on the side of your browser so that you can stay connected at all times!  It has all of the services I would ever need - facebook, twitter, flickr, linked in, google talk (though it's in beta now) ... Even better is that it weeds out some of the crap you might normally see in a facebook feed (when a friend "likes" something, for example).  Talk about user experience... It even does this crazy thing where you mouse over an image in the flickr feed and it pulls up the image in the main window, pretty cool!!!
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Heaven!

wireless revamped

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via apple.com

I finally gave in and bought the AirPort Express to see if it would improve my wireless situation at home. I HATE having to do this, since AT&T U-Verse is supposed to be supplying wireless via the residential gateway router I rent from them every month for ridiculous money.

I was streaming the slingbox this afternoon while baking and within about 30 minutes was registering less than 1mbps - yes, LESS than!!

Set up the AirPort in no time and streamed for two hours without interruption!! Time will tell if it will stay that way, but we're off to a good start!

magic track pad

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Finally picked up the Apple magic track pad after playing with it in the store ... It's a bit like I thought it would be.  Very cool and fabulous to move around, feels much more ergonomic than the magic mouse, and super clean design.   That said, it's a little difficult for "design" work.  I have a hard time clicking and dragging objects.  It's awkward for me - I'm sure it's something that I could get over, but... even on my laptop I I tend to hook up a mouse when I need to do work.  

... via iPhone ...

att uverse + mac wifi = disaster

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THIS SUCKS!!! I got up early on a Saturday morning to wait on the cable guy to swap out my "residential gateway" (router) because I am having horrible intermittent wireless issues with my laptop. This is the result one hour post-swap. This is unacceptable!!! I pay extra money to have a higher speed come into my home (12Mbps) and I can't even get the base speed. I have spent hours on tech support and scouring the internet for suggestions on settings to no avail. The tech who came today actually SUGGESTED that I purchase the Apple Airport Express and bypass the wireless on the AT&T provided router. Ridiculous!!!!!!!!!

Apple - Magic Trackpad - The Multi-Touch trackpad for your desktop.

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via apple.com

Had the chance to test the magic trackpad at the Apple store yesterday while waiting for my Genius bar appt. and have to say I'm in love. It's fabulous for web surfing and basic pointing and clicking. What I don't know is how it would work for doing actual work - not sure I'd be able to control it the same way as the mouse for working in Adobe apps and such.

Sadly they didn't have any in stock, so I could not take one home....