General

Two Celebrations of Life on the Same Day – Birthday & Memorial

by Michael Sheehan on January 23, 2011

in Family, General, Opinion

Today is an interesting day for me. For starters, it is my 43rd  birthday. But it is also a somber and reflective day as it was a memorial service and celebration of life for a neighbor of mine that passed away much too early in her life at 41. So my thoughts are mixed and introspective today.

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I woke up this morning with lots of expectations. I was waiting for my wife to give me a kiss with a birthday wish on her lips (which I got). And I was waiting for my 3 daughters to come running in to my bedroom, with hand-made cards clutched in their hands. The day unfolded much the way I had expected. My middle daughter brought me a cup of coffee in bed and I now have 3 creative and beautiful hand-made cards to take into my work to showcase. And there is a pile of kid-wrapped presents sitting on the dining room table. It’s sort of funny how when kids wrap presents, they can practically hermetically seal the present with a roll of scotch tape. (By the way, scotch tape makes a GREAT gift for kids!)

I was happy. I was surrounded by family who were (almost) catering to my every need (I still couldn’t get them to pick up their rooms, despite me saying – It’s MY birthday, do it for ME!). Then my wife and I  headed out from my own celebration of life to another, much different one…that of our neighbor.

Our neighbor passed away a few weeks ago after losing a courageous fight with breast cancer. She was 41 and left behind 2 daughters and a husband. The gathering was touching and packed with friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, neighbors and other people who were affected by our neighbor’s life. We heard stories from childhood friends and saw photographs from all parts of her much-too-short life. It was a thought-provoking and a celebration containing many varieties of emotions from tears to laughter.

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Using Twitter is like Fishing

by Michael Sheehan on December 12, 2008

in General, Review, Software

twitter_fish_on I’m an on and off fisherman, mainly fly fishing; I worked in a few fly fishing shops in my youth (gasp, I’m not THAT old, should I say “youth”?). Also, recently I installed Flick Fishing for the iPhone and have spent numerous hours on my commute trying to hook fish. Well, that go me thinking. Since part of my job as a Technology Evangelist is to grow my social network so that I can do my job even better and reach even more people, I spend a couple of hours a day (in fragments) working with Twitter. (For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, watch this video as it explains it well.)

As I try to communicate about various technological items from software to hardware to other services, I find that sometimes people understand things better through analogies. So here is one to ponder: Using Twitter is like Fishing. Here are some ideas why I think this is:

  • Size matters
  • You have to choose the right “gear”
  • Lures & Baits
  • Catch & Release
  • It’s a challenge and a sport
  • It’s a social yet individual activity
  • “Casting” is an art
  • Landing the “big fish”
  • Practice makes perfect
  • Navigating the waters
  • Ponds, streams, lakes, oceans

Let’s go into this a bit more, shall we say, go into deeper waters.

Size Matters – with Twitter, there are always people who are jockeying to get to the top and catch the most fish (have the largest Twitter follower count). Some of the big fish out there are Barack Obama (146,500 followers), Kevin Rose (78,000) and Leo Laporte (66,000). These “fishermen” have really forged their way to the top using a variety of techniques in order to land the most “fish.” Some have simply thrown dynamite into the water (Obama & Kevin Rose) because of their high visibility, while others like Leo Laporte have used skill and dexterity through quality posts and content to catch their followers. The more fish caught (followers you have), the better you are equipped and experienced to do some of the other items on this list.

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iPhone Question: “Unlocking” and “Jailbreaking” the same thing?

by Michael Sheehan on September 24, 2007

in Apple, Cellular, Gadgets, General, Hardware, iPhone, Software

Apple today released a statement that said the following:

CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple has
discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs
available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s
software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming
permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update
is installed. Apple plans to release the next iPhone software update,
containing many new features including the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
(http://www.itunes.com), later this week. Apple strongly discourages users from
installing unauthorized unlocking programs on their iPhones. Users who make
unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their
iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty. The permanent
inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not
covered under the iPhone’s warranty.
    (C) 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac,
Mac OS, Macintosh, iPhone and iTunes are trademarks of Apple. Other company
and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

So, the critical words, as I seem them, from this statement are “unauthorized,” “unlocking” and “unauthorized modifications”. We all know about the various tools (free and pay) that allow you to unlock your iPhone to use different networks. This is a huge can of worms, but is, actually very commonplace in the cellphone marketplace. You can buy all sorts of unlocked phones from eBay that work on a variety of carriers. Also, with Google potentially jumping into the cell phone market with the “gPhone” and buying up bandwidth soon, it makes me think that Apple might dig its own grave with this breaking of unlocking.

But that is not the nature of this post. For several weeks, I have been enjoying the ability to add, use and delete 3rd party applicaitons on my iPhone. So that makes me ask, with the new version of the firmware (1.1.1) coming out “this week,” what does this mean to the emerging new community of 3rd party developers of native iPhone apps? If I were to make a decision here, here is how I would define “Unlocking” vs. “Jailbreaking.”

Unlocking – the process of changing the firmware and/or hardware of the iPhone to allow it to be used with other carriers

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Blog: WordPress version 2.3 scheduled to be released Sept 24, 2007

by Michael Sheehan on September 24, 2007

in General, Open Source, Software

A fairly significant update to WordPress is slotted to be released today (09.24.07) with some interesting new features, including:

  • Plugin Update Notification
  • Tags!
  • Improved Post and Draft Management
  • Pending Review
  • Advanced Visual Editor Buttons
  • Pretty URLs
  • Updated Default Blogroll
  • Other “advanced user” stuff

More details on the features/changes are below:

Plugin Update Notification

Not only are you now notified about new versions of WordPress, you now get notified of new versions of plugins. The only caveat is that the plugins must be hosted on WordPress.org. I personally wonder how this will work in conjunction with a GREAT plugin that I use called “PlugInstaller” which lets you check for new version, activate/deactivate but also fully DELETE a plugin from your plugin directory. This is a great way to easily clean up your old plugins.

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Blog: New tweaks to my WordPress Theme now live!

September 22, 2007

Well it has been a long night but a few beers later, I think that I have some things that I like. CSS has never been my strong point, nor some of the newer HTML tags (I’m a bit too used to seeing “div” and “class” and “id” for now!) So, before I go to [...]

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Fix-it: SBS 2003, 16 gig Exchange Limit, Event IDs 9175 and 445

September 20, 2007

Ran into a complicated emergency today. An office that I support suddenly could not connect any of their Outlook clients to their Exchange Server. It was very weird and I got sidetracked by the fact that my own ISP was having email issues with my domain (turned out they were completely unrelated). Before I get [...]

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Tech: I need a DOOVDE Player!

September 19, 2007

More humor based on an actual phone call:

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iPhone: New “Pirate” app for TLAPD

September 19, 2007

Just in time for “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” a new application was released for the iPhone that lets you snap a picture of a person/thing and let you “piratize” it. It’s at version 0.2 as of this writing…pretty fun! Just press the START button and your phone snaps a picture. Then drag the 3 [...]

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