Technology Blog

My 74 year old father has been involved in technology for over 55 years. His patience for technology “advancement” however is wearing thin, let me tell you, I tend to agree more and more with his observations and frustrations.

“Logic has disappeared.” I think anyone who’s ever choosen a PC over a Mac can well understand this. Anyone who’s worked as a technical support person can WELL understand this as well. Beta test software anyone? I have. You’ll KNOW all types of logic are disappearing.

Maybe I’m not making any sense. Many might disagree with me (and the thoughts of my old man). However, this week I feel like I’m putting myself through a crash course in audio visual concepts that just *boggle the mind*. With all the “advancements” these days, we’re also dealing with many incompatibilities, many file structures, formats, conversations, encoders, decoders, codecs, … whatever techy techy catch phrase you feel like using, it’s all there.

Is it ANY wonder why my wife’s eyes start to glaze over when I get even remotely techy with her? My late mom used to say to my father “one of these days I’m just going to get a hammer and smash everything into tiny bits.” I really feel like she was onto something there.

So I’m in a sea of .VOB files, painstakenly ripped out of corrupted mini dvd’s from my dad’s camcorder that weren’t finalized properly. And it dawned on me what these camcorder manufacturers are trying to do. They have mini DVD cams for people who want to record, finalize the disc, and plunk the mini dvd’s into theorhetically any dvd player out there to share with friends and family. A perfectly simple concept: unless you have errors.

The bundled video editing software that’s included in the package doesn’t happen to read the DVD files (.VOB) format outright. you have to convert to mpeg or avi and THEN reauthor to dvd. If you’ve followed through this far, let me know because I’m confusing myself just writing about it all.

Sometimes the intent to be simple ends up being more complicated and the discussions that have ensued since with my father have been enlightening to say the least. We speak the same techy languages but just with different experiences and perspectives. As the appetite for technology of the average consumer increases, the dysfunction between hardware and software and “standards” will continue. As a quasi tech support person (because I still provide a lot of free technical support to friends and family) this frustrates me even though its this very dysfunction that helps me earn a living.

My dad has a lot of conspiracy theories about the manufacturers having built-in inconsistencies and incompatibilities. After the hellish week I’ve put myself through this week, I’m inclined to believe him. In the meantime, my personal crash course continues.

I landed on a website today that looked pretty promising. If you’ve been on the net for a while you know there’s tons of online greeting cards. Personally I like to send the odd one when I’m a little too lazy to do otherwise.

Sometimes though, a real greeting card is in order. I love good quality photo cards the best. Scenic greeting cards are great when you want to show an online friend an area close to where you live that you love to visit.

There’s a great selection of black and white as well as color greeting cards here. Check it out next time you’re in the mood to order some quality cards to send out to family and friends. My particular favorite is Banff at Dusk. I’ve been to Banff a couple of times now, and this photo really captures Banff nicely. Beautifully done.

Are you a gamer? I’m getting into that headspace again. Surprisingly I’m starting to get into MMORPG type games which surprises the heck outta me.

In any case if anyone is bored today and not quite sure what type of game you’re interested in playing during your … ahem “downtime”, check out this site that has some decent ratings of online games. I picked one that was a flash game because they tend to load quickly. Not too sure but I think I was blowing up eggplants. Who wouldn’t enjoy doing that?

Wireless security is very important for home based internet users. Although more and more people are becoming net saavy, this area is still something that’s not addressed by most people. A user connects to highspeed for the first time and their main interest is being connected and stop at making their connections more secure.

How To Secure Your Wireless Network is a comprehensive article that help guide users how to secure their connections.

While you’re at it, you might want to take a look at this contest the blogger is promoting until the end of June. The winner will receive a Wireless Router. Cool!

A few days ago I post about paid survey sites, and my experience at trying to get even $10 out of one site that was free with nothing but links to other survey sites (and so the circle jerk went). One of the sites I landed on asked for my personal info in case I was interested in “legitimate earn at home” opportunities, oh and get this… specific to CANADIANS.

Now, I’m a bit of an american-phobe when it comes to “business opps”. I have this belief (since I am Canadian) that the scams come from south of the border. SO NOT TRUE.

If you’ve ever been trapped in an Amway call, by say, a sister, a brother, a brother-in-law, an uncle, a cousin, or some other close relation, then I strongly urge you to AVOID THIS WEBSITE NOW: canadianhomebusiness dot ca. I hate their tactics so much that I absolutely refuse to give them a direct link. Considering the methods of operation and communicating is so INDIRECT, they deserve nothing from me, except this negative commentary.

I made the mistake of providing my cell phone while filling out the info for a “survey site”, completely forgetting that I’d be using my cell phone quite a bit while visiting family in Toronto. I received about 2-3 calls, one as late at 10pm EST on a Sunday from a number I didn’t recognize. Not only was it a private number, but they left no voice mail. Shortly thereafter, I received an email from these guys asking me to call them to discuss this “wonderful opportunity” blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, etc etc etc. No details on what the company/opportunity is actually about.

To my anger, surfing to their website was also a waste of time because once again no details are provided.

I’m reminded of the time a good friend of mine was encouraged by his work buddy to attend a “meeting”. My buddy knew I was looking for potential opportunities for self employment and suggested I give this a try. He was busy with work, but figured I could go and check it out for the both of us. His work buddy, a very nice guy and programmer was quite enthusiastic about this business “opp”. Very enthusiastic. Ok, so I bit.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the hotel was that there were no signs, no company logos, no brochures, no reports, not even a single page handout. In fact, the conference room sign was not labelled announcing the name of the company that had rented the room in the first place. RED FLAG #1. The next thing I noticed was my friend’s work buddy up on the podium talking about the business opportunity in very broad general terms without announcing the name of the company. RED FLAG #2.

I sat in that chair in frustration as my confidence in these characters was quickly slipping. After about another 15 minutes, the “final reveal” took place. The “opp” was for distributing skin products for none other than: NuSkin international.

I felt completely had by this guy that I was somewhat friendly with since I’d met him a few time previously. Naturally, to be polite I stayed for the entire schpeel about NuSkin, the whole time wholely aware that I was suckered into listening to these clowns talking about their obvious pyramid scheme.

Now, my opinion on MLM (multi-level-marketing) is somewhat mixed since my foray onto the internet for employment. I believe people should be rewarded when they refer other people to business opportunities. But when a scheme is almost entirely about creating sub groups or seller underneath you and the general jist about the opportunity is nothing but referring other people to your “pyramid” we might as well start talking about the circle jerk again. I’ll say this much, J. did not have any luck in recruiting me to this scheme. My hope is that he never quit his day job.

Although I mention Amway in the title of this blog, I would like to say that I did visit their website to compare it to the canadian business opp site that I went to. To my surprise Amway was very upfront about their MLM, and discussed their model of people buying products, everyone buying products from the same suppliers thus sharing the profits/savings amongst themselves. That’s pretty much the jist to most MLM’s that I’ve seen.

I think I’m done kvetching about this on my blog for now. The one site I will share directly however is this one: http://www.falseprofits.com/MLM%20Lies.html

This is a good read if you’re looking for work or if you feel like someone is trying to get you interested in an opportunity that appears too good to be true. As for me, this is just continued validation to trust me gut more and be very cautious as to what information I put out on the net.

I should pay attention more to tech news (funny considering I’m starting this blog).

I’ve been a happy Vonage customer for over a year. I’ve been an internet ‘phone’ enthusiast for 12 years. Watching the technology of voIP mature to the arena of regular use has been a dream come true. My wife and I are able to stay in touch since we live in separate countries. Vonage has saved us literally thousands of dollars in communication costs.

While I’m sure other companies will continue to spring up, I do hope that Vonage will continue. I don’t want the dream to end.

Vonage Chief Resigns; Company to Cut Marketing Costs (Update2)

… or are they?

Are they so powerful, and so believable that people get suckered into the ultimate April Fool’s prank by the biggest search engine company in the world?

I’ll admit, I was almost suckered in. But when my friend showed me the link to GMail’s paper service I cracked up.

Yeah ok Google, you’re funny.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html

Google’s Free broadband service

I do wonder… how long will these links have a PR that’s higher than 0?

In any case, happy April Fool’s Day.