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Never Did Quite Make the Switch (Back) to Safari

November 11, 2011 in Technology with 0 Comments

Firefox 7 About Window

Firefox 7.0

It seems that I never did quite switch (back) to Safari on my Mac.  There was too much invested, if you will, in Firefox, and quite honestly, I was just used to using it.  Eliminating some of the plug-ins and upgrading to version 7.0 seemed to help some of the issues with performance.

The additions of Instapaper and Evernote on the Mac have pretty much eliminated the need to bookmark things in the browser.  Saving or clipping things for later reading and reference allows me to read both on the Mac and iOS devices, without worry about the bookmarks not being synced between Firefox and Safari.  For those things that do need to be bookmarked, importing them into Safari from Firefox is fairly simple, and they are updated on the iOS devices when they are synced.  Firefox also released an iOS app to automatically sync the bookmarks.  It is helpful, but requires an additional step outside of Safari.

So, I never did quit using Firefox on the Mac.  Version 8 was just released, so I’ll see if that reinforces my decision.

Switching (Back) to Safari

December 6, 2010 in Technology with 0 Comments

“Switching (Back) to Safari” may be a bit of a misnomer.  I have a hard time remembering if I ever used Safari for any appreciable length of time.  Safari may have been the only browser of choice for OS X when I first switched to the Mac, but I am pretty sure that it wasn’t long before a stable version of Firefox was available.

Switching off of Firefox hasn’t really come to mind before.  What I did remember of using Safari way back when, or during the infrequent times that I have used it on OS X, was that it was (is?) slow and there weren’t a lot of plugins or add-ons available.  I had enough add-ons added to Firefox that made it quite comfortable to use.  I looked at Google Chrome when it came out, but other than it seeming to be a bit faster than Firefox, there really wasn’t a compelling reason to switch.

Now, I have been giving some serious consideration to switching to Safari as my main browser on OS X.  There reason?  The iPhone and the iPad.  Not that the Safari experience on either has convinced me to switch.  Far from it.  But it turns out that the best way to manage Safari on both, especially the bookmarks, is to use Safari on OS X and let iTunes sync the bookmarks.  This is especially handy in setting up the bookmark toolbar to allow quick access to frequently visited sites.

This step probably wouldn’t be necessary if there were an easy way to sync bookmarks between Firefox and Safari, but there isn’t.  So it looks like, for the time being, that I’ll be using Safari as my main browser on OS X.

Similarities in Building a Digital and Physical Storefront

October 8, 2010 in Site News, Technology with 0 Comments

Store Front

Photo Credit: Randy Hage

Putting up a digital storefront is a lot like putting up a physical storefront.  You need to acquire or rent the property, put a building up if one doesn’t exist or remodel the preexisting one.  Once the building is ready, it needs to be decorated inside to make it attractive to customers.  Then of course you need to decided what inventory to pick and acquire it.  Once you get the product in house, you need to get it ready for sale and then display it.  Finally, you need to get all of the systems in place to actually sell the product to someone and deliver it to them.

Most of this is taken for granted when you’re selling items on eBay and Amazon.  Obviously you need to acquire and list the product, and then eventually get it to a buyer, but everything else is already in place.

It’s a bit of an eye opening experience when you go to build a digital storefront from the ground up.  There is a lot of “Oh, yeah, I’ve got to do that…” moments.

The Best Buy nearest to us is currently being remodeled.  Literally, you feel like you are shopping in a store that is under construction. The building that the store is in is still under construction, and the store itself is under construction.  If you want to kind of get a feel for what that is like, you can take a look at the online storefront that I am putting together.  It’s called Tentmakers By Trade Marketplace.  The overall site, called Tentmakers By Trade, is still under construction, but I wanted to get the ball moving on the eCommerce site.

The corresponding eBay and Amazon storefronts are in a little bit better shape.

Connecting via Social Media

June 7, 2010 in Social Media, Technology with 2 Comments

iPhone Social Media

Photo Credit: mcritz

Sometimes it’s nice just to throw a quick post or two out on some other social media sites to get a conversation going.  If we haven’t connected yet on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, please click on one of the icons in the upper right to make a connection.

I like to use the three sites for somewhat different purposes:

Facebook – To me, this is more for social connections, family, friends and Church members.  While I do have some business contacts on there, I primarily use it to keep updated on people that I know.

Twitter – I tend to read Twitter more than I post to it.  It is actually an excellent way to keep up on news and events, as well as to get updates on acquaintances.  The tweets that I post are either brief updates, or most likely a link to an article that I found interesting.  Twitter automatically feeds my tweets to Facebook.  If I think that the tweet may be of interest to my business network, I’ll add the #in hash tag so that it gets picked up by my LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn – This is primarily used for business contacts.  Most are people that I’ve come to know over the years, and it mostly a online business contact list for me.  I try to post some interesting articles from time to time, but use it mostly to keep up to date with business associates.  I try to keep the communications on here strictly business, although I do have some non-business related contacts on LinkedIn.

Bible -vs- Cell Phone

May 6, 2010 in Faith, Technology with 0 Comments

There is a new meme going around via email and Facebook that asks the question “What would it be like if we treated the Bible like our cell phones?”.  It looks something like this:

Bible -vs- Cell Phone

This will definitely make one think!

Ever wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like we treat our cell phone?

What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets?

What if we flipped through it several times a day?

What if we turned back to go get it if we forgot it?

What if we used it to receive messages from the text?

What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it?

What if we gave it to Kids as gifts?

What if we used it when we traveled?

What if we used it in case of emergency?

This is something to make you go….hmm…where is my Bible?

Oh, and one more thing.

Unlike our cell phone, we don’t have to worry about our Bible being
disconnected because Jesus already paid the  bill.

Makes you stop and think ‘where are my priorities? And no dropped calls!

When Jesus died on the cross, he was thinking of you!

Olivetree BibleReader

My question would be, what if you had your Bible on your cell phone?  Most of the items would still be true if you never called up the Bible app on your phone and used it.

Focus on what can be done

April 26, 2010 in Technology with 1 Comment

Most of my career has been spent managing one project or another.  Prior to the start of working on any project, regardless of the organization that I was working for, there was usually a fair amount of time spent describing what work would and would not be performed.  Most of this would be written in some for of proposal or statement or work. Inevitably, someone in Legal would review the document and suggest blocks of “CYA” changes that needed to be made. I wa reminded of this after reading Seth Godin’s post on Deniability:

Deniability

How much of the time you invest in a project is spent preparing excuses, creating insurance, seeking deniability and covering your ass just in case things go poorly in the end?

At some point, that effort becomes so great you never actually ship anything, which of course is the very best protection against failure.

Inevitably, it seems that if you focus an inordinate amount of time on what will go wrong, it probably will.  I believe in defining scope and coming to a mutual agreement on what success will be defined as, but I’ve found that the best projects to work on are the ones where both parties are striving towards what can be done.  The worst projects were the ones where both parties were constantly going back to the defining documents to argue about what was to be excluded.

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