April 2012

Post image for Get Freedom from Pollen this Spring with the Honeywell HPA-150 HEPA Tower Allergen Remover

With Springtime comes change. Hills start getting greener, trees start having leaves emerge from their dormant branches, flowers start opening, eyes start getting scratchy, noses start running, sniffles replace tabletop conversation, sneezes disrupt the normal flow of life. Yes, with Spring comes pollen and allergies. It’s pretty hard to get away from it unless you live in a desert or the arctic or on the moon, or magically aren’t bothered by allergies.

When Spring rolls round in our household, the share price of Kleenex and allergy medicine consequently goes up! We all have varying levels of allergies in our household, ranging from fatal peanut allergies that my youngest has, to general cat allergies to dust particles and finally including the massive pollen of spring and summer.

I think that our kids would not be surviving the spring if not for the help from some Honeywell filters. Up until a few weeks ago, my wife and I kept alternating which of my kids’ rooms held the Honeywell HTT-145 (see my review of it here). The problem is, all of my kids (and my wife and I) were all suffering pretty badly from allergies, and to cap it off, my oldest daughter is asthmatic. We needed to have a really strong solution for her room.

That’s where the Honeywell HPA-150 came into play as the savior from dust, pollen and air-born allergens. The HPA-150 is a true HEPA filter that is in a form factor that works in just about any room. The dark color blends into the room and the tower design make it be able to be placed just about anywhere.

Honeywell-hepa-filter

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Post image for Behind the Scenes: Filming My LG Techorating Home Entertainment Living Room Makeover

It’s been a few months now since LG contacted me to find out if I was interested in participating in a head-to-head competition with another “daddy blogger.” It wasn’t a challenge of wit or writing or sports (well not really) – it was a challenge to see whose living room could be “techorated” better by a professional technology designer (Janna Robinson). The makeover would be filmed by a professional film crew as well.  LG supplied the technology, the script writing, the coordination, the furniture, the film crew, sound crew, lighting crew, and a bunch of other crews that I don’t know what their technical names are, while I just supplied my old technology, my home and my natural good looks (sorry). Oh, LG also managed to get ESPN’s Stuart Scott to be the narrator of what was to be a fully produced video of both daddy bloggers’ home entertainment makeover.

stuart-scott-techorating

Sounds exciting, right? Well let me tell you. It WAS exciting. But doing video production work is really not for me. I’m going to stick with my own quick Handycam videos and my writing, at least for now. The amount and level of coordination is simply staggering, and I am not sure how many showings of Murphy’s Law we had, but the process was definitely interesting. Kudos to all of those crews for their particular expertise, LG’s PR firm (LG-One) and the others who pulled this entire process together.

The video that was produced, narrated by Stuart Scott and hosted by Janna Robinson, was used on the LG Facebook page as well as in advertisements appearing on ESPN. I had old high school friends and people who I hadn’t seen in ages contact me to tell me they had just seen an ad with me in it. It was all for this LG Techorating Home Entertainment Makeover Challenge on Facebook.

ESPN-041912

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Post image for Using Cloud Computing to Test, Develop and Innovate

Are you using cloud computing yet? If so, that’s great. If not, what is holding you back? Do you know enough about it? Do its capabilities confuse you? Have you not found a good use for it? I would guess that you are using cloud computing without even knowing it.

As I work in the cloud industry, I get to see the trends as they happen and what innovative ways people are using the cloud to drive business success. Honestly, I think that developers and companies are only just starting to tap the vast potential of cloud computing. While many of the early cloud adopters of (gasp) 3 years ago most likely now have fully vetted out business plans, products and services that hinge on the elastic scalability of cloud infrastructure, for example, we now are seeing the next round of innovators who are living and breathing the tech industry revitalization via the successes of their peers and colleagues.

red-zeros

And the business possibilities are only growing because of the successes of others. Think about social media, social sharing and community services that appeared a few years ago (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and the like). Also think about longer established product and service delivery sites like Amazon or Netflix. Those have communities tied to them as well. As these services grow, their data store of user preferences, likes, purchases, and interactions grows as well, exponentially, in fact. In order to accommodate this huge influx of social and personal data as well as to build recommendation engines and inter-networking with social data, new technologies are coming to light (think Big Data, for example).

weed-grass-cloud

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Post image for Get Those Cleaning Supplies Out & Roll Up Your Sleeves – How to Clean Your Digital Home!

It’s Springtime! Leaves are appearing on the trees, the sun is starting to gain dominance over the rain, and my eyes are teary, not only from the pollen in the air, but also from the fact that I need to start doing my spring cleaning around the house! It’s time to put away the winter clothes, coats and blankets, throw open the windows and air out the house. Guess what? You probably need to do this with your digital home as well.

HTD-cleaning-gift

Wait, what? My “digital” home, you ask? What the heck is that? Well, while we typically live in one place and work in another, we probably have a single “digital home” – a place where you go do all of your digital, online work. This could be a desktop at home or a laptop that you carry around. And your digital house typically extends to your smart phone as well. Basically, it is anywhere you live your digital life.

My digital home, being a bit of a gadget freak, is pretty extensive. This means that I will have a lot more spring cleaning than my wife or kids do. So what that means is I have to be extra diligent and have a plan of attack when I do all of the digital cleaning. And I’m going to map that out at bit further in this article, but first, you might be wondering why you would need to do any type of cleaning in the first place!

key-online-fraud-stats

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How To Fix Adobe Fireworks Hanging After Launch on MacOS

April 23, 2012
Thumbnail image for How To Fix Adobe Fireworks Hanging After Launch on MacOS

Adobe Fireworks is the lifeblood of many web developers, artists and bloggers so when it stops running, I envision all of these groups running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Recently, I ran into an issue where when I launched Fireworks, it would run through the splash screen, loading extensions and the like [...]

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Just How Weatherproof & Rugged is the Samsung Rugby Smart Android Smartphone? I Tested It Out!

April 23, 2012
Thumbnail image for Just How Weatherproof & Rugged is the Samsung Rugby Smart Android Smartphone? I Tested It Out!

You know that if you expose your smartphone to water, most likely, you are going to damage it. And, on top of that, you will probably void your warranty with your carrier. In many if not all smartphones, there are moisture indicators to determine if you accidentally dropped your phone into the sink or toilet. [...]

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Celebrating our 50th Cast of Dads Podcast! “Draining the Snowblower”

April 20, 2012
Thumbnail image for Celebrating our 50th Cast of Dads Podcast! “Draining the Snowblower”

It’s really hard to believe that over 2 years ago, a group of dads who worked together on a project would now be celebrating their 50th podcast together! But yes, we have. Personally, I think that is a major accomplishment, especially given all of the other family and business responsibilities that tug us in each [...]

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CEO & Co-Founder, Brad Jefferson, Discusses Animoto & Lets Out a Mother’s Day Secret in this Exclusive Interview

April 18, 2012
Thumbnail image for CEO & Co-Founder, Brad Jefferson, Discusses Animoto & Lets Out a Mother’s Day Secret in this Exclusive Interview

Animoto was created to complement the emergence of rich media and video within the consumer marketplace. Back when it was founded in 2005, consumers didn’t have smart phones nor HD camcorder and high video production quality was something to envied, only coming from studios. When Animoto brought their product to market, it was revolutionary. Started [...]

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