Reading, writing, blogs, media and the new workplaces

Since sometime in early 2000 I have been an entrepreneur, at times with employees and an office and for the past few years with no fixed office and either only a handful of people working with me, at present just one co-founder who also has other active projects.

In the mid-90’s I bought my first laptop, with the money I made selling off my first computer I had bought for myself, a NeXT Cube which was my computer for the first two years I was in college. It still remains both the most expensive and in many ways the best computer I have ever owned. I bought the NeXT secondhand, and even then it was about the cost of a very nice used car (if memory serves I think it was about $6000 but this was some 17+ years ago). As it turns out since owning it taught me Unix, launched my career in technology and much more it was also perhaps one of the best purchases I have ever, even to this day, made.

But the next computer I owned also had a major impact on my life, in an equally important but vitally different manner. That computer was a Compaq laptop, I think it was a 486 but I’m not actually certain now, in any case it was that laptop which granted me mobility, which allowed me to work off campus, to work portably, which started my lifelong habit of working from cafes (and while still in college from desks in libraries - do less of that now however). In short that laotop also in many ways sparked my writing habit and fit better the direction I was headed academically.

When I had bought the NeXT it was because having started to use Mathematica while a summer intern at Argonne National Lab I wanted to own a computer which was capable of running Mathemica and at the time all NeXT’s came with a copy of Mathematica pre-installed. My plan entering college was to be either a math or a physics major (or possibly a history major, even entering college I was torn in multiple directions).

However that summer at Argonne National labs working with research physicists followed by the first quarters of university level phsics and calculus somewhat convinced me that my passion wasn’t fully in either field. I loved science and math, but I was also too interested in the humanities and too interested in being rooted in the reality of the world and other people (not that academic history is all that rooted either as I would also learn later). So early in my first year at the University of Chicago I changed my courseload considerably and started along the path to a history major, not a science major. Though it didn’t fully take for a few years (in part because I had a scholorship which I anted to keep for a year or two).

But getting back to the point of this trip into my past history of computer ownership.

In the past few months I have been reading once again at my historically common pace, a pace I haven’t been keeping up for much of the past few years. Historically since I learned to read (at a fairly young age) I have read multiple books a week, some weeks at nearly a book a day pace or even faster. As a child I would go to the library and return with a bulging backpack full of as many books as they would allow me to check out at one time, and before they were due back in a few weeks I would have read them all and on returning them would check out still more books. Or I would spend hard saved allowances or money from lemonade stands and holiday presents in the aisles of the local used bookstores where I grew to know the owners and even started my serious book collecting while still young and in high school (I entered high school at the age of 13 and graduated at the age of 16).

However for the past few years I have been reading more and more content online, reading a lot of individual articles and research papers offline (printed out) but fewer and fewer books for much of the past few years. This year, however, that has shifted.

Two years ago when I moved into my new apartment, connected up a new DSL connection and bought my iMac desktop I ended up owning a printer which though networkable is both no longer configured correctly for my internal network and doesn’t have a working driver for the Mac OS X. And I haven’t yet replaced it, instead I have managed to mostly live without printing out anything for the past few years. In turn this has, perhaps somewhat negatively, meant I no longer spend as much time printing out and reading academic papers, dissertations, and other long form articles.

And in the past few years my online habits have changed many times over. A few years ago I mostly read individual blogs directly at the blog sites, or I used Bloglines to skim a vast collection of blogs I had subscribed to - but which I was never caught up with. I switched to Google Reader which remains my primary means of reading most blogs.

A year ago when I bought my iPhone I started using my iPhone and the versions of Google Reader which were made for the iPhone to read my feeds, now I read more feeds via my iPhone than I do via my regular computer browsers.

What this means, most crucially, is that while I am keeping up with my much edited down collection of blogs I read plus the posts which some of my friends share via Google Reader, I am only rarely also seeing and reading the comments which form such a vital part of many blogs. I’ve also mostly stopped participating in online discussion forums, which for many years while I was in Chicago in particular, were a vital part of my online activity.

In recent months in addition to Twitter which I started using two SXSW’s ago, I have also to a lesser degree started using Friendfeed. There I do see more discussions, though I only dip into them myself and only very rarely does anything I share in my feed there spark a discussion (even spark a single “Like” or “Comment” at all).

And my blogging which had for a while now been mostly only here at this blog has bifarcated. I’ve been blogging for Centernetworks, for the Conversation Hub of SuperNova, at the MeshWalk blog for MeshForum, and at my new blog Slow Brand.

I no longer quite know how or where to define myself online, perhaps I should start using a service such as FriendFeed but even that doesn’t capture the multiplicity of my online identities or the many different ways I work, read and play online.

So all this is to say, what do you use as your workplaces today? Now I have shifted to my primary tool being my iPhone, my secondary tool my laptop, and my desktop though useful is my third option, though keeping my media libraries and the like in sync across my many devices is also increasingly difficult.

The Passage of Time and productivity

I have been too busy the past few weeks to blog as frequently as I would like, but as I sit this afternoon in a new cafe I just discovered (my Yelp Review of Coffee Bar) I have noticed that my perception of how time is passing varies. The past few days have been highly productive, lots of things to do, calls to take, emails to send, meetings to schedule (and reschedule) all as follow ups from many weeks of conferences and evening networking events.

Today time seems to be passing slowly, though I am thinking deeply, reading, writing, and researching, all things and modes which frequently involve me blinking and seemingly discovering that the day has passed me by and I’ve missed lunch and may not have budged from my computer for hours. Instead today I have found that I look at the time and though I expect it to be approaching evening, it is still only mid-afternoon and have lots of time to finish my other tasks of the day.

This got me to thinking about how we perceive time - and how this perception of time impacts our productivity - especially as an entrepreneur.

Like many tech people I have the ability to focus deeply on a topic that interests me, focus to the extent that I can skip meals, stay up all night, and avoid/procrastinate other important tasks. By no means is this a uniformly positive trait. I don’t, however, have Asperger’s Syndrome, but I have been know since childhood to at times forget about all else while deeply involved in a particular activity.

But in the interest of Getting Things Done (and yes, I’ve read the books) I have in the past few years learned a few tricks which appear to finally be paying off, at times in big way. In the past few weeks, I’ve been finding my productivity has been increasing (and in turn that feeds back on itself).

Here are a few of the tips and tricks which seem to be working, which are helping me get into that productive flow state where not only do I get a lot of work done, I do so without wasting a lot of time in the process.

1. Dress for success. This may seem trite, but I have noticed that those days where I just wake up, toss on a t-shirt and sit at home very casually in front of my computer, often without shaving, though I do get work done, I’m not usually all that productive. In contrast, today I am well dressed, in a very nice (and in this case also expensive) designer shirt, good jeans, great shoes, even a matching belt. It is a small thing perhaps, but knowing that I at least look put together and at least reasonable successful helps me be, in fact, organized and successful. The key here is not purely outward perceptions of how you dress, rather it is finding a style that makes you feel confident and successful and comfortable at the same time.
2. Stay hydrated. Another seriously basic tip, but one that I have noticed has a very real and deep impact on when I am very productive and when I am not. At home it is all too easy for me to sit down in front of my computer and five or six hours later get up, having neither eaten or drunk anything during that time. In contrast when I am out and about and pay attention, make sure that I am drinking many glasses of water at regular intervals over the course of the day, I find I am far more productive.
3. Vary your posture and pay attention to your surroundings. At home I can sit mostly still and move only very little as I focus intently on my computer screen. Today at this cafe (and before getting here) my environment and posture has changed frequently. Every few minutes I have looked up, looked around, refilled my water glass, moved to the other side of the table and more. In short by giving my self mini-breaks every hour, I am more aware of the passage of time, am physically far more comfortable, and by being aware of my surroundings (more on this below) I am also considering myself in them.
4. Surround yourself with others who are getting things done. This doesn’t have to be co-workers or even people who are working on the same things you are, but being around many people who are having meetings, closing deals, studying intently, writing rapidly and in short working and accomplishing things rubs off. It helps me, at least, focus on keeping up with the others around me. They are being productive, so I feel pressure on myself to also be productive.  This is a good form of pressure, not too intensive but enough that it keeps me from drifting into too many LOLcats or floundering at what to do next.
5. Have to-do lists that you refer back to on a regular basis. A key aspect of GTD, at least for me in my rather casual practice of it, is in the keeping of task lists. The knowing that I have a list (or more usually multiple lists) on which I have braindumped all of the many, competing tasks that I have to accomplish. By knowing that I have these lists (and further that I have the lists with me, very important if rather basic) I know I can always refer to them if I find myself stuck for what to do next.
6. Cross off at least something from your to-do lists every day. The difference between a productive week and an unproductive week can be as simple as going for many days without crossing anything off your lists. For one, this suggests that your to-do items are too broad, require too much time and work to complete. Consider breaking down big tasks into the incremental steps that it takes to get them done - if before you can clean your house you have to replenish missing cleaning supplies, that shopping task should be on your list ahead of the cleaning task. Knowing that you have accomplished something, even as “small” a task as getting to the post office and buying stamps, starts you down a positive trend of getting tasks done. I have a list which I generated after an event last week on which I wrote down everyone from that event with whom I need to follow up, in the past couple of days I have crossed most of those names off that list - have followed up with them and have meetings with most later this week. That continual progress inspires me to finish those tasks, to follow up and track down everyone else on that list as well.
7. Snack and eat healthily. Again, rather basic, but it is very true that you are what you eat. When I find myself stuck at home eating fast but not very good for me foods, often with lots of carbs (cereals, candy, etc) while I may get a short term boost of energy I find myself later that day crashing and seriously unproductive. In contrast, today I have eaten quite healthily with meals that have a good balance of carbs and proteins, with very little sugars and a good balance of foods. As a result going into the time I am usually crashing (3pm-5pm) I am being highly productive and alert.
8. Get some physical exercise every day. This is advice I do not keep enough myself, but today, for example, I walked about 2 miles after lunch to get to the cafe where I am at the moment. On my way here I made a lot of phone calls, replied to emails via my iPhone, and caught up with many other emails and news, so it was not “wasted” time (I also listened to some great podcasts) but the seemingly simple act of getting even that light amount of physical activity was energizing. I really should do more and more intensive physical activity on a daily basis (a long swim, rock climbing or the like) but even just walking a few miles every day is very helpful.

As I noted, many of these tips are rather basic and all might be helpful for everyone. My perspective is that of an entrepreneur, working a job which does not require me to be in the same office every day, a job that I could (perhaps) equally do from home, from an office, or from cafes. My personal choice is to spend much of my time in cafes, I like the buzz of people around me also working and accomplishing great things. As my company grows I do anticipate having an office of our own and that I will spend more time in that office.

My ongoing issues with MSFT Vista

I hate Vista.

Hate it. Since I have had my Lenovo ThinkPad with Vista my productivity has plummeted. By far this has been the most painful and worst computer owning experience of my lifetime. And I have owned a lot of computers in my time, run a ton of different versions of OSes and I’ve had some seriously bad machines in the past.

What makes this especially painful is that technically my laptop should not be bad, in fact it should be a near dream machine. A very high resolution tablet screen (1400 x 1050), the fantastic keyboard and trackpoint of Thinkpads (more on why I love the trackpoint later). I have 3GB of ram, a dual core Intel chip (not the fastest model but for my uses - mostly web browsing, iTunes, and light other apps should be more than plenty), and a 120GB HD. All in a form factor that weighs just a bit more than 5lbs and has a 9 cell battery that should give it 6+ hours of use.

But since I waste between 10 minutes to upwards of 1 hour whenever I try to wake the computer from sleep and resume my work, I don’t count this has a very useful computer.

It manages to blue screen itself while theoretically “sleeping”.

The wifi is unreliable after waking from sleep, not infrequently failing to detect even strong signals. (but yet reporting itself has functional so Vista just insists that it is seeing only weak signals)

At least every third time or so I wake my laptop from sleep it decides that my screen resolution is much lower and resets itself to a lower resolution, someimtes it does this after I login, often then quickly detecting the problem and reseting itself to the right resolution (but leaving my windows resized as a result). Occasionally it flubs things before I can even enter my fingerprint or password and I then have to try to reset the resolution - which can be tricky at times as it sometimes insists on a spinning cursor while I try to click on the “okay” button to confirm the resolution change.

I have reset my power management settings frequently. I set them how I want them (wifi when plugged in at maximum performance for example) yet a few weeks later they will have reset themselves to different settings without my intervention. Very very frustrating as then my laptop has started to seemingly randomly (and rather quickly) turn off my wifi card by itself.

I have given up on running Outlook on this computer as when I try to do anything in Outlook (latest version, fully patched) more times than not it just freezes and every step is complicated (all I would likely want to do is update my large contacts files which are still in Outlook) but even that seems impossible yet increasingly critical.

Shadow Backup means that overtime my disk has been filling up rapidly yet I can’t configure it to only autobackup the portions of my disk I would care deeply about restoring, and perhaps not to backup portions I would not care in the least about (my frequently changing firefox cache for example, or my also frequently changing iTunes directories for at least my podcast subscriptions which I typically delete after listening)

From a general UI perspective more times than not, generally at least once a day (sometimes many many more times than that) Vista just freezes, spinning my cursor and being generally annoying. And this is on a computer, I remind you, with 3gb of ram and a dual core processor. I’m sure if my laptop had a dedicated video card it might function slightly better, but that’s not an option and I (foolishly I guess) figured that Microsoft and Lenovo would have made sure that the drivers for ThinkPads worked flawlessly - and that the video drivers for Intel graphics would work well as well.

But I guess I was quite wrong about that.

Why I love the trackpoint and hate mice or touchpads

I am a touch typist. On a computer that can keep up with me (which I foolishly figured should be all modern computers but that’s not the case) I type close to 100 wpm or faster. More crucially I do that without ever looking at the keyboard, my hands just know where the keys are and I can type without looking, my eye remains focused on the screen or on materials I am working with, not on the keyboard or what my hands are doing.

With a trackpoint (that little nub that on ThinkPads is located on the keyboard between the G H B & N keys I can navigate and move my cursor all around the screen without moving my hands. All I need to do is shift my (right) first finger a bit to the left and with a bit of pressure can move the cursor anywhere I want it and I use my thumb to select the left or right buttons (I use the right mouse button features extensively)

In contrast to use a trackpad (such as is found on all MacBooks) I would have to physically move my hand, shifting considerably my focus from what I am doing, moving my hands and arms physically and breaking the rhythm of what I am doing (just now I used the mouse to correct the spelling of rhythm and could do so with almost no break in my typing, just a moment of attention to which suggestion was correct and a bit of pressure to move the cursor back to the right location). I do it without even thinking about it, it is just a natural motion incorporated into how I work today.

And even to use a physical mouse, such as the Mighty Mouse I have on my iMac desktop I have to move my hands off the keyboard and on the mouse. Then I am still usually very very frustrated by the significant efforts often needed. For whatever reason I find myself frequently having to physically pick up the mouse and move it up then pull back down and repeat to get the cursor and items on the screen where I need them. In contrast with a trackpoint I can just apply continual pressure and the cursor keeps moving in any given direction (ideal for scrolling through long lists, though a scroll wheel can be useful for that as well but sometimes a scroll wheel is not sufficient for a given task). Perhaps there are settings I could adjust that would make the mouse a bit more function for me (as it is I try to avoid it as much as possible) but that would not avoid the primary issue.

To use a mouse or a touchpad you have to move your hand from the keyboard.

There is not getting around that fact. The trackpoint is the only mouse alternative (at least that I’ve ever seen) which allows you to use it without needing to lift your arms or move them from the keyboard. In turn this means I can position my hands comfortably and leave them there even as I type extended amounts of text without pain (this blog post for example has been typed without my needing to move my hands at all).

If you are not (as perhaps most people are not) a touch typist this may not seem all that important. And if you don’t write 1000’s of words nearly every day (and I need to only keep on writing ever increasing amounts) then you might not see what a big deal this is, but I am a touch typist and I do probably average well north of 5000 words a day (often far more).

And in the next few weeks and months that will only increase as I have to write actively online to market myself and my new ad network, and as I write emails to follow up from the 100’s of people I have met in the past few weeks and who are in many cases prospective publishers, advertisers, investors or others with whom I may need to be in ongoing and active communication (press, potential employees and partners etc).

I am an old NeXT user, I would love to have a great Mac laptop. But the touchpad is seriously a dealbreaker for me it requires a very significant reduction in my workflow and productivity. And further my other issues are that the form factor I most like (the MacBook Air) has a lower resolution screen than my current laptop (lower res means less content on the screen, thus more scrolling, so more use of the touchpad and even lower productivity. I read 1000’s of words of content every day - 100’s of emails, blog posts, twitters and more. Plus the hard drive is smaller than my current one so incapable of holding my media library (and the cost for the SSD version is quite high and the disk space even lower). Thus I would need to use an external drive to hold my media library but with only one USB port I would also need to use a USB hub if I wanted to have my media library and my iPhone/iPod connected at the same time (i.e. so I could sync it). That means a bunch of devices I would have to carry with me, reducing the value of the thin form factor and light weight.

And the larger MacBook or MacBook Pro which are available in resolutions that are nearly as high as my current machine or in fact higher (on the largest versions of the MacBook Pro) are heavy (nearly 7lbs for the 17″), physically large, and do not have great battery life (less then 4 hrs by far). Though I would appreciate the screen resolution, I would not appreciate the lack of the trackpoint, and with a larger screen would be even more need to use the mouse. (and I am also not a huge fan of the single button, even knowing the multifinger tricks to get the right mouse button functions - I use that menu on a very very frequent basis perhaps 100 or more times in a day in many cases).

And though the keyboard on the pro does have the sexy illumination feature (though as a touch typist that isn’t so critical) it is not, in my opinion, a comfortable a keyboard to type on as the ThinkPad keyboards which I think are some of the best ever made in the world, at least for laptops. I type fast and quite accurately on ThinkPad keyboards (which I’ve been using for nearly 6+ years now).

Who we are is what we follow

Robert Scoble says the secret to Twitter success is who you follow.

And I agree with him (though I only follow a fairly carefully selected ~170 people on twitter at the moment, that is growing every week.

But this post is not about that meaning of “follow”, rather I have a theory that is a bit broader, related to a past post of mine about Time & Attention.

This afternoon as I left my apartment and picked up my mail on my way out the door, I had a new issue of the New Yorker magazine waiting for me, as I took it out to take with me I had the thought “now I’m three weeks behind on my New Yorker reading” in short in the unit of time “unread New Yorker magazines” my count went up one to three (or four if you count an issue I “only” haven’t yet read the fiction story. I have been a New Yorker subscriber since college, reading almost every issue cover to cover, skipping only the event listings and for the most part the poems. And yes, that’s a lot of words and a fairly significant amount of time I’ve invested into appreciating the magazine.

Which got me to thinking - there is a group of fellow subscribers and readers of the magazine with whom the unit of measure “how many weeks worth of the New Yorker you haven’t yet read” would be a common bond. A bond of a unit of measure which in turn, is a bond that reflects something important about us - namely one shared aspect of what we pay attention to, what we follow.

At the moment March Madness is in full swing here in the US, a few days ago my friends were buzzing about setting up their “brackets” today my friends at times are complaining about their partner’s obsessions with the games (or about the wins and losses of the teams they selected). In contrast, however, I have paid almost no attention at all to March Madness, I don’t know who is winning or losing, who made it in, who was favored, or what has been happening in the first series of games. Here is a place where I am not following what a large number of my friends are following - either directly or indirectly as a result of their partners (I use partners to be gender neutral here).

But I am deeply aware of the political calendar, in the past few months I’ve been paying active and close attention to each primary election, and likewise a fairly large portion of my circle of friends has been doing the same - some of us working directly for a campaign, some following actively via Huffington Post, some via DailyKos, some like myself via Andrew Sullivan and some by more mainstream news sources. All of us also using various social mediums - twitter, facebook, email, our own blogs and podcasts, to help raise awareness and share stories and bits of news or speculation which we find compelling. In short with the US presidential election there is a strong and common thing many of my friends and I are following. And yes, some of us at least are long time political junkies, we did much the same things the past few election cycles.

For many people in the US and more broadly in the “Western” world this past weekend was Easter and one set of my friends and family was paying attention to that, preparing for the Holy Week celebrations, buying hams for Easter Sunday dinner, painting eggs and hiding them for their children etc.

For another set of my family and friends last week was Purim, a Jewish holiday and occasion for fun and drinking and the baking of Hamentashen.

I’m not religious so I was caught a bit unaware this year by Easter and by Purim. Made aware of Easter in fact by the signs in my neighborhood butchers shop that they would be open on Easter Sunday. Shopping at a local Safeway (large supermarket chain) I also noticed that Safeway had set up as they do each year a section of kosher for Passover products and across the way had their Easter candies and products. So naturally I assumed that Passover was also soon to happen.

In a call last week to my business partner, who is also Jewish but more practicing than I am, he informed me however that Passover this year is not until April due to the once every seven years additional month which is added to the Jewish Calendar to keep the lunar calendar generally in sync with the seasons so major holidays don’t fall in the wrong seasons.

I suspect, however, that someone at Safeway had some fairly simple set of rules for the buyers - when you start putting out the Easter products also start stocking Kosher for Passover items.

Via Twitter, though also via my friends blogs, Facebook statuses, personal emails and other communications I am noting even more acutely what (and at times specifically who) they are following, what Holidays they are celebrating, what conferences they are preparing for, speaking at, planning, what albums they are waiting to be released, what performances musical or otherwise they are attending or at times what they have just bought tickets to in advance. In short I can see the many ways in which what we are paying attention to overlaps and as interestingly more and more I can see some of the multitude of ways in which it does not overlap.

And via tools such as Facebook, Upcoming.org, and yes, Twitter, I can choose to start to follow, start to pay attention to some of the same things as my friends and I can signal out to them what I am following.

My shared stories on Google Reader, I suspect, paint a different picture of me than many people might assume. Via Google Reader for the past year I have, perhaps, mostly been signaling my political views - sharing a lot of stories from Andrew Sullivan, sprinkled with an occasional tech story. I do not, however, share everything that I am paying attention to, for instance, I don’t always share every story about advertising which I am reading and following - those instead I star for my own future reference, those I might share in a more manual fashion with my business partner or some trusted advisors.

At present I am a part of, following and paying attention to many different yet sometimes overlapping worlds. Professionally I am entering into the advertising world, so I am spending more and more time and attention following that world - and I need to find more and richer sources, subscribe to more print magazines and blogs, attend even more industry related events. I continue to be interested in the wider world of the Internet and “Web 2.0″ and that too is a professional as well as personal interest, so I am aware of many of the upcoming conferences, read and subscribe to many related blogs, and frequently attend events. I’m also quite interested in the future of music and more broadly in the future of media and to that end I follow and participate in some industry discussions, attend events, read blogs, etc.

I’m also a science fiction fan of select TV shows, occasional movies but mostly of novels. So I’m also paying some attention to when various authors I like have books published, I attend a small set of science fiction conventions each year, and I am a fan of a few select TV shows (mostly Doctor Who and Torchwood). I am not, however, as tied into this world as many of my friends, friends who subscribe to monthly magazines (which in many cases they also publish and write for), friends who attend not the one or two conferences I attend but far more, friends who aren’t just fans of but are professionally engaged in the world of science fiction and fantasy.

And I could go on, I’m a foodie so I pay some attention to the weekly farmer’s markets, to restaurant openings and closings, to special events related to food, but I don’t follow it as closely as I might like. I missed, for example, that a major restaurant I had been told about a few months ago was finally opening this month in NYC, had I been paying closer attention I would have timed a trip to NYC in time to get to be there for the “friends and family” previews (my sister’s boyfriend is writing a cookbook with the chef so I’m fairly sure had I known to ask I could have gotten in, along with the “VIPs” for as one food blog called it the hottest ticket in town). Now I’ll have to try for a reservation along with everyone else each time I’m in NYC or might be.

My point with this post is to suggest that what and who we follow shapes us, it helps to define us in a very deep and powerful manner. Whether it is the calendar of events of our religion, or the publishing schedule of our favorite magazine, the rhythms of our lives are set by what we follow.

And in turn when our rhythm is in sync with that of another person the chance of our also being friends goes up. 

I would prefer, strongly prefer, to date a woman (and if you are reading this via a feed etc, I’m a man and yes, I’m single at the moment) with whom I had many overlapping rhythms. Though as well I would hope that we were not entirely in sync, that she would follow and pay attention to some things which would be new for me, and likewise that I might follow and introduce her to new events and sources. For that, I think, would be ideal - ongoing new discovery and mutual sharing of passions and interests. Over time we likely would overlap more and more - would schedule ourselves to do things together - but hopefully as well we would constantly be discovering the new as well - new people to suggest new ideas to us, new sources of information, even entire new fields of study.

Evaluating a new laptop vs refreshing old - MacBook Air vs ThinkPad X60

If you have been reading my blog for a while you may know that I have a ThinkPad X60 as my current laptop and that I have been seriously unhappy with the laptop and Vista (as well as Office 2007 and related software). At the recent SXSW conference where I mostly went without using my laptop at all (as a bit of an experiment in being highly mobile and not carrying a bag at all) when I did try to use my laptop I was seriously frustrated - in one instance it almost literally took 15+ minutes of work before I was able to actually start doing anything - and I had to shut down 5 minutes later.

While at SXSW I was also emailed an opportunity to purchase a friend of a friend’s MacBook Air - he’s decided to buy the MacBook Pro instead. Buying it from him would save me sales tax and would include the external superdrive. But it is the lower end, 80GB edition. And there are more than a few things I would have to add to the system package (AppleCare more crucially).

So in this post I am going to look at the pros and cons of my current options - and most likely won’t reach a clear conclusion. Please add a comment if you have solutions to any of my issues/concerns or if you have suggestions for alternatives I should be considering.

First note, my laptop is an extension of me - I’ve had a laptop as my primary computer since about 1994. Historically I kept most of my machines until they almost literally fell apart - driving them hard though I also have tended to buy very close to the peak at the time I could buy (not as ‘full desktop replacement” but as best weight-to-performance-to-battery-life. So each time I’ve replaced my laptop I have spent up to about $3000 - that said, I don’t really have the spare money to buy a new computer at the moment - but then neither can I afford to be unproductive or to continue to have serious issues on a daily basis.

My use of a laptop

• heavy and frequent web browsing and research. I am “online” for many hours every day, much of which is spent with many tabs open in my browser (typically Firefox) in which I am researching, writing, and monitoring
• syncing my iPhone. Most critically with my full contacts database which is, in turn, also synced up to Plaxo. Slightly less critically (since I rarely use Outlook these days) syncing my iPhone with my calendar (this is an area I hope to improve). And I do sync about 6gbs+ of music and the occasional tv episode or short film to my iPhone for later viewing. Most crucially this must include my most recent podcast subscriptions
• syncing my iPod, especially when traveling. I have 100gb+ of my music (and a few tv shows I’ve bought) on an external HD, I have about 30gb of podcasts on my local disk, I synch about 30gb of my library to my 30gb iPod Video (3gb of new content such as recent podcasts, 16+gb of content I haven’t played recently, and a careful collection of my favorite content I want to have with me)
• preparing and giving presentations. I speak at conferences, I pitch to investors, advertisers and partners. While I don’t love PowerPoint, I do have to present on a regular and increasingly frequent basis. I do not, however, do much in my presentations which couldn’t easily be done with Keynote (perhaps even could be done better)
• manage my digital photos. I don’t take enough digital photos (or videos) but I am trying to increase the frequency with which I take photos - and I have a growing collection of photos I’ve taken. I don’t yet have a Flickr Pro account (probably should do that soon) but even with one, I would still want to retain the full resolution, local copies of every photo I’ve ever taken (perhaps stored on an external drive but everything - or at least the stuff that is good enough I might use it - should be at my fingertips at any time
• manage my contacts. I have something close to 6000 contacts in multiple Outlook contacts files. While this is far too many and many are generated contacts from the testing of various systems (which analyzed my email traffic looking for people I should have as a contact) I really do know a ton of people. My contacts data about them is one of my most precious resources, in many cases complete with photo, bio, notes on when/how we met etc - and in many cases updated via sync with Plaxo (and in some cases LinkedIn as well)
• manage my email archives and search them. I currently have email going back at least to 2005 and I think with archives back to 2000 on my current laptop (in a collection of Outlook files). Like my contacts data, my email archives are key data for me - data about when I met someone, what our past interactions have been on etc. Overtime I am slowly weeding and culling my archives of the cruft (old mailing lists, commercial solicitations, spam, updates from various websites etc) but even with that process done (which it is far, far from being so) my email past holds much of my memory.
• keep up with my current email. I mostly use gmail these days, and almost entirely viw the web or my iPhone. I have multiple gmail addresses I watch (my personal address and various emails aliased or forwarded to it, and my professional email address given to only a very few people at the moment but those numbers will rapidly increase) For this as present I use Thunderbird as Outlook is far, far too flaky for me to rely on it
• Read PDFs. Mostly as part of my ongoing research and product development, I end up with a lot of PDF files to download and read. With more arriving every day. My preference these days is to “print to PDF” rather than to paper for about the past 2+ years I have almost gone without printing anything - just occasionally a travel document or contract needing a physical signature. On my ThinkPad I have a useful but not great “print to PDF” application, Macs have this feature built into the OS.
• MindMapping and notetaking. Historically I have used MindManager a great deal (but almost not at all for the past year+). More and more I have just taken notes down in simple text files when offline or when online in various applications (including as draft posts for this blog). This is far from ideal, especially as my needs will be growing exponentially in coming weeks and months. Whether I stay on Vista or migrate to a Mac laptop, I will need to get a great note taking, brainstorming, and task management/project management tool or tools.
• Offline HTML writing. I occasionally blog for other sites than this blog, when I do that I tend to write my posts in an offline HTML editor and then send the editor an HTML file instead of retyping the post or trying to compose the post online (since many conferences where I might be writing from have poor to non-existent and flaky internet access even for the press). Currently I use Microsoft Expression for this, though mostly out of inertia and from having a full copy (actually multiple copies) given to me by Microsoft at various conferences I have attended over the past few years.
• Very rarely but likely to increase spreadsheet analysis. I can crunch numbers with the best of them, but I’ve never been a spreadsheet junky. My tools of choice start with text and flow out from there - but as I grow my company I will have to make more and more use of spreadsheets over time. And likely web based alternatives won’t fully do everything (currently at least) which I need to do, though for basic collaborative tasks they are great). At least once a quarter, if not more often, I will, however have to present numbers to my board (currently small but as we close our first round of funding likely to grow). On my ThinkPad I have Microsoft Office, on a Mac I’d likely start with iWork Numbers (which I already have on my iMac) and will only buy Excel if I truly need it.
• and that is about it really. I don’t have games installed on this ThinkPad (just the basics which come with Vista but haven’t used them in years). I have other software installed but almost never run it (Visual Studio for example). Running at boot I have Skype and Google Chat - but actually rarely use either (and for that matter they are both available for the Mac as well). I have Microsoft OneNote (my laptop is a tablet) but I actually almost never use the tablet functionality - silly I know and a bit of a shame, but also very much the truth. I kinda wish I did use it more often, but in actuality I don’t (and apparently I’m far from alone). I also almost never use video playback on my ThinkPad - I think mostly because the experience even with a local file is quite poor. Instead I watch any videos (including video podcasts) on my iPhone or on my iMac desktop - which is also the machine I’ll use mostly when I buy any video content or when I test/use a service like Joost or Hulu.com or another video service.

So with all that said, how can I decide between my various options.

Scenario One - keep ThinkPad but try refresh/reinstallations

At SXSW I spoke with friends who work for Microsoft. One suggestion was that the OEM installation of Vista, especially on ThinkPads unfortunately, is not very clean or well functioning. His suggestion was to get a full install disk of Vista and do a complete wipe and reinstall everything from scratch.

This would require I backed up all my data. That I made a very complete list of all of the software I have installed (antivirus software, firefox, thunderbird, MSFT Office 2007, MindManager, etc) and made sure I had all the relevant license keys for each product as well as the current installer (or at least how to get the latest versions - or in some cases the versions for which I have a license). Then I would have to reformat my disk completely (likely wiping the IBM special partition as well) and reinstall Vista. Then install MSFT Office 2007, FireFox, Microsoft Expression, Thunderbird, anti-virus software, Skype, Google Pack, some of the key pieces of IBM software (password manager using my fingerprint scanner perhaps, power management software etc) and then migrate back my key data (iTunes, Outlook files, recourses/research, writings, photos etc.

All in all that would likely require 1 to 2 full days between the full backups, reformats and very significant post-installation patching efforts.

But as a result I also quite likely have a much cleaner installation, less cruft, likely a much better performing laptop, and might take the opportunity to structure the laptop to also dual boot with a linux installation (Ubuntu?). If I can use the full license to Vista Microsoft gave me a while back the cost for this would be minimal - but the time and effort could be considerable. And almost certainly there would be one or more issues around licenses with something I want to install.

Scenario Two - I buy the MacBook Air (used) from a friend of a friend 

This would cost me about $1800 for a MacBook Air + external superdrive. On top of that I would probably buy additional AppleCare (another $250 or so) so as to have support into the future.

It would have to be shipped from the east coast to here on the west coast - or I might pick it up in person on my next trip to the east coast in a few weeks.

To make the MacBook Air functional for me I would have to install an office suite (iWork? - which I do have a copy of for my iMac have to check on the licensing for whether I can also use that on a laptop). I would likely buy a small bit of software to help migrate my data from Outlook to formats importable into the Mac built-in applications (though I’m not sure if I want to use those apps or not - haven’t ever used them so don’t fully know if I would like them or not).

I would then have to migrate my iTunes library (always painful) and connect an external drive with my music library to the Air, probably connect via a USB Hub so I can also connect my iPhone and/or my iPod. For the iPhone I owuld have to do this AFTER contacts have been synced and I would have to set up the new connections for data for the iPhone (not sure if I also have to reformat it to work smoothly with  the Mac).

If my iTunes data import works smoothly I should have everything set up, but it not I’ll have to spend a lot of time getting iTunes set up for my use (rebuilding smart playlists etc) and I may lose a lot of key data such as timestamps of when I added data to iTunes, playcounts of files, ratings of songs, podcast subscriptions.

Likely I’ll also need to replace my current, 120gb external portable drive with a much larger but still very small external drive. Ideally at least 300+gb but very lightweight. I’d expect the cost for that will be at least $100, likely closer to $150 but I’d be happy to find that’s high. In setting up my podcast subscriptions as well as my subscriptions to tv shows via iTunes I’ll have to decide where those files come from and are stored (ideally I can do this is in a way usable via my iMac as well - but that might be tricky and some files likely should be local to the Air so I can use them when not online)

Very likely I’ll also have to spend $99 a year to get a .mac account so I can use the “back to my mac” feature to reach my desktop iMac and perhaps use the .mac account to do some data synching (though Plaxo may be sufficient for much of what I actually need done.

I’ll also then need to install a variety of useful Mac software - Skitch for example is a big draw for moving to the Mac laptop, a tool I’d expect to use fairly frequently. I knwo there are dozens of other applications which friends would suggest I use and which I would test out and decide amongst over time - apps for productivity, apps for business/brainstorming/notetaking etc. All told I would like spend a fair chunk of change on new software for the Mac laptop - whether I get an Air or another model. But, for the most part, these would also be tools which pretty clearly would be helping me get more done and be more effienct.

In the case of the Air however I almost certainly won’t install VM Fusion or Parallels as there likely simply isn’t the diskspace to use either effectively. In my current home network configuration this means that I have to give up entirely on using my current printer (for which there are not OSX or Linux drivers). So though I don’t print a lot, likely I’ll have to also plan on investing in a new printer.

Scenario Three - another model of a Mac portable 

I do like the Air’s multi-touch trackpad, I can see myself using gestures frequently. So that rules out (for now) the lower end MacBooks or a used/refurbished MacBook Pro. But I would have to give the other MacBook Pro models serious consideration. The 15″ laptop has nearly the same resolution as my current ThinkPad (one of my major concerns with the MacBook Air is that the resolution there is lower than on my ThinkPad - and my ThinkPad’s resolution isn’t high enough for me - I really like be able to have a lot of information on the screen at once. That said the clarity of the Air’s screen is fantastic and the performance of the graphics is better than my ThinkPad so video etc likely will look much better (be playable in fact).

A 15″ MacBook also weighs around the same as my ThinkPad does with the extended life batteries which I have. However the battery life is a bit lower (3 hours or is what I’ve heard but I’ll be checking with people on that). But overall it would be a great machine and would cost not a lot more than the MacBook Air (less perhaps if I can get a discount from a friend who works at Apple which is a serious possibility).

Scenario Four - another model of PC laptop - running Vista 

Least likely, as there are aren’t many other models I might want to buy but this is a consideration.

Heading to SXSWi - parties, networking and hallway chats

I fly out very, very early tomorrow morning (flight at 6am, leaving house before 4am). Like many of my travels, I have made the arrangements for this trip at the very last minute - I haven’t yet, in fact, registered, I’ll do that onsite when I get there tomorrow.

But then I’m not going to Austin for the SXSWi sessions - sure, I may stop by a few friend’s panels (or may not) and assuming I do get a pass I’ll spend some time in the exhibit halls and at the official parties.

However the reason I am going back to SXSWi is not for the formal conference. Rather I am returning for the chance to spend an intense 4+ days and nights with my peers across the geek/tech world. Friends have described SXSWi as “geek spring break” and there is certainly an element of that. If you want to spend the next four plus days seriously abusing your liver, that is certainly an easy (and popular) option.

For me, however, I am most looking forward to long conversations in hallways, conversations which start with one or two friends and quickly blossom into small groups. Last year powered in part by effective twittering groups of us roved from party to party or, at times, created our own parties when that evenings more official gatherings had ended, were full, or deemed not worth trying to get into. Most evenings (and many afternoons) this year I have parties to attend which friends of mine are organizing and hosting, but I expect to spend some part of most evenins in small group conversation.

My focus all weekend will be on discussing how new forms of advertising could work on the web - how the advertising that I want to deliver via my new company, Nearness Function, should work to offer the best value for individual users and for the developers at our partner companies. I’ll likely also be talking with a few investors over the course of the weekend, with many potential clients, and hopefully with a few potential advertising partners - there certainly will be some people at SXSWi who are at digital agencies.

SXSWi is an intense, jam packed conference. Covering all things interactive and running alongside a film conference and just before one of the biggest and most important music conferences and festivals in the US. In short for this weekend and next week Austin is where much of the creative “class” in the US (and indeed from outside the US) will be found. Friends are flying in from Scotland, Miami and most part of the US and Canada.

This year the weather reports are not entirely pleasant - quite cool and a chance of rain on a few days. So I’ll be packing accordingly, lots of layers and my first purchase after checking into my hotel is likely going to be an umbrella (all my other umbrellas have been destroyed by San Francisco wind gusts this year).

There are countless communities and guides to SXSW, I won’t try to duplicate their advice here but a few reminders - as much as for myself as for you the reader.

1. Have fun. Should go without saying but though a big, long conference is work, don’t forget this should also be fun.
2. Introduce people to each other and don’t be shy about approaching people you don’t know - or people you don’t see often enough. If you get in the habit of introducing people - even people you just recently met, it encourages others to do the same.
3. Try not to eat any meal alone. If you find yourself in danger of doing so, ask some strangers to join you - one plus of a big conference, very likely there are others who likewise don’t yet have dinner or lunch plans (or for that matter breakfast - though you’ll find at SXSW many people sleep in).
4. At the same time if you aren’t an extrovert, give yourself some time alone, some time to regroup and mentally review the activities of the past day. If you are a runner go for a run (though you might do this with fellow attendees as well). I hope that my hotel has a pool and my current plan is to try to get in a short swim each morning - exercise plus a chance to mentally regroup. I also found that at times I might be leaving one party and meeting people at another - instead of taking the fastest path there (a cab) at times walking, even if it is a mile+ away would give me a great chance to refresh and relax.
5. Perhaps it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Get enough to drink (water) and try to eat as healthily as possible. Yes, I plan on eating a lot of BBQ. However I will try to vary my diet, be sure to get some fruits & veggies along with my smoked meats, and I’ll be sure to drink a lot of water. This is especially important if, unlike me, you plan on drinking a great deal of the free/cheap booze that flows freely.
6. Have something to give people to be remembered by - but in turn when you get something from someone whom you want to stay in touch with try to quickly get back to them digitally. At any convention it is far too easy to end up with a large pile of stuff and have little memory of who you need to send what to. My plan is to carve out a part of each day (probably in the mornings) to process my notes and contacts from the past day and at least send people my contact info. Jotting a quick note on the back of someone’s card (and/or in a small notebook you carry with you - I’ll be using my Creative Commons Moleskin) can also be a good starting point.
7. Travel as lightly as possible. I am lucky, the hotel room I’ll be sharing is across from the conference center. As such I plan on dropping off my bags there frequently, as much as possible I hope to carry with me as little as possible (sometimes just pocket planner, notebook, iPhone, may even leave the laptop behind)

And above all keep in mind my first point.

Hope to see many of you in Austin tomorrow!

Holiday shopping for geeks - the XO laptop (OLPC)

In three days the One Laptop Per Child project will be opening up their Give 1 Get 1 limited time offer. For $399 you donate a laptop to the developing world and get an XO laptop delivered to you.

I had planned on buying one since the rumors that they might come up with some program for individuals here in the US to get one started months ago.  My biggest debate has been do I buy one or do I buy two (for myself + guests).

But now what was always an amazing offer has only gotten even better (and even more of a no-brainer).

T-Mobile has partnered with OLPC and has offered a full year of wifi hotspot access to everyone who participates in the Give 1 Get 1 program.

I already spend $40/month on t-mobil wifi hotspot access (or $480 a year).

So this is a complete no-brainer. I get a truly amazing tool and hackable device (everything is open source and the source can be viewed and modified with a simple click from nearly any screen in the OS) and I actually save $80 next year.

And I give a laptop to a child in the developing world.

Oh, and $200 of my purchase price is a tax-deductible donation.

So if you have not already, go sign up for the mailing list reminder and then sometime before Nov 26 order your very own XO laptop. And for the geeks in your life, consider ordering one as a gift for them (and don’t worry, if they already have one the XO laptops are actually more useful in multiples - collaboration software is built into the DNA of the OS).

Syncing iPod on Two Computers

[this is a shortened version of my original post, that post was lost while trying to post it]

I can sync my iPod to BOTH my Vista laptop and my old XP laptop (which is now a Parallel’s virtual machine on my mac desktop).

How did I do this?

Bonus Tip: If you have playlists which depend on DATE ADDED, do a select all on the tracks in that playlist, then right click, select “get info” and add label to the Grouping ID3 tag. Then rewrite those smartplaylists to work on the Grouping ID3 tag instead of date added (assuming that you are say tracking all the music you added in 2005, not something like “music I added this past week)

Step 1. Copy files from the old computer to the new system. In my case 3/4 of my 120+ GB library was already on an external drive (so it was just a matter of getting the drive letter the same on my Vista system), but the other files I had to move over. Note: Vista does not allow you to create C:Documents and Settings which was the root of the path to user folders on XP, instead you have to use C:/Users/username/Music.

Then select Export Library inside of iTunes. Save this XML file and copy it to the new computer as well (I put it on my external drive).

Step 2.  On the new computer navigate to the iTunes folder.

Rename the file “iTunes Music Library.xml” (I add the date to the file name).

Copy the .itl file (if you want to recover). [if extensions are not showing, change that view option for this folder, will make life easier for you]

Open the .itl file with wordpad (NOT Word). It is a binary file. Select all the contents (control^a) and then delete them. Save the file (you should now have a 0 byte .itl file).

Copy the exported XML file from your old computer to the iTunes directory, rename it to “iTunes Music Library.xml”.

Open it in WordPad (again NOT Word).

Now come the tricky, detail orientated bit. Look for the file paths which point to your old file locations. Search and replace them with the new path. Make sure you get this exactly right - no extra spaces, no missing /, nothing mispelled.

Note, all the above assumes your new computer’s iTunes is a fresh, unused installation - i.e. you don’t already have any content on the new machine. If you do, you will have to first export that data and instead of copying one file with the other, you will have to combine them - which is a much trickier task - not impossible, just tricky as the file has two main sections - individual track details and playlist details and you have to merge them. I have not tested this and I suspect in some cases you might also have to watch for overlapping “unique” ID’s for tracks.

Step 3.  With all external drives attached and with the correct drive letters, open up iTunes. It will complain that the .itl file is corrupt and will rebuild it. When this completes (may take some time on a large collection), you will have iTunes with all of your old playlists, play counts, and ratings in place.

Note: this does overwrite the “Date Added” field with the time you do this import. This means that as I noted above, any playlists which depended on the date added field may now be broken.  Your tracks, however, will be in the same order as before (I kept my in date added descending order usually). If you do the trick I noted, you should have the same functionality as before.

The result is you can plug in your iPod and it will sync with your new computer without a whisper of a complaint. You will, however, have to activate your new computer with the iTunes music store before syncing any protected conten (or playing it).

I have not tested this extensively. I assume that over time if the two installations of iTunes change, each time you plug in your iPod it will “sync” with the current machine’s iTunes, but will not add files it holds not present on that machine (i.e. a podcast I download on one machine) and I’m not sure how changes to play/skip counts will be tracked.

I am also working with two Windows machines - not sure if the same solution would work across Mac & PC (since the underlying file system of the iPod might be different).

Travels and June conferences

Later this week I will be attending the Future of Online Advertising conference in NYC. I fly to NYC Tuesday night (taking JetBlue so I anticipate fewer problems than with my recent United travels). I am looking forward to this conference as a chance for me to learn deeply about the current state of the online (and especially mobile) advertising worlds. In the next few months NELA Partners will be turning on and opening up to other publishers our advertising network. This week will be a chance for me to learn as well as to network with others in the industry.

I will be staying in the New York area for a few days after FoOA working as well as connecting with friends and family in the NYC area.

Then I have a few days here in the Bay Area, a weekend birthday brunch to organize and host, and then in the following week I will be actively participating at Supernova 2007 here in San Francisco. My hope is to organize a talk/session for the open space day on June 19th, and to be an active participant throughout the week.

Following Supernova I have a few weeks of work, probably mostly here in San Francisco, though I’ll likely also be spending some time in Palo Alto.

In mid-July I plan on returning to Chicago for a non-work conference, Think Galactic, a science fiction convention put on by a bunch of my friends in a political science fiction reading group I was part of when I lived in Chicago (though not as active as I might have liked as I often had conflicts on the nights they met). A bit left of my political leanings perhaps (though I’m pretty difficult to place on a left/right spectrum and in general think that politics is far more complex than just left vs. right). And yes, I’m a capitalist which is not a label many of the organizers would accept for themselves. But still, it will be a weekend of intelligent conversations with very smart people.

I may also return to Chicago for BlogHer at the end of July. Still trying to decide, I’d like to go, but two trips to Chicago in one month… (though given that I have so many friends and family in Chicago I’ll probably go).

Then in August I will probably be going up to Seattle for Gnomedex. For which I probably should register very soon if I want to go.

Somewhere in July or early August, scheduled around these travels, as well as other related events here in San Francisco and in Silicon Valley, I hope to hold the next MeshWalk. This time in Palo Alto along Sand Hill Road. Still working out the details (and the sponsors) but the basic plan is to work with a number of VC firms and companies to have a conference that is in motion, with lots of places to stop during the day. Stops ranging from small startups, to places of historical note, to VC firms. We may start with a “traditional” breakfast, likely will have lunch somewhere notable, and will end with a party. I hope to have the basic details set within the next week or two.

If you are interested in attending the MeshWalk, hosting it and/or sponsoring it please leave a comment or contact me directly.

And that takes me through August. I do not think I’ll be going to Burning Man this year, too much else going on, though I may go to something over Labor Day weekend (probably not the WorldCon this year either however - Japan is a long way to travel). Already I have plans for a week+ trip back to Oaxaca in the fall, along with likely many trips to NYC.

In and amidst all of this travel and conferences, my primary focus for the Summer will be the continued growth of NELA (and likely the launch of a few related projects).  In a few weeks after we complete some major bug fixes and feature enhancements we should be opening up NELA to many more beta users.

Joost enough?

As I have mentioned in the past, when I moved to the Bay Area in 2006 from Chicago I left behind in Chicago my TV. And since being here, I have not yet replaced it. My intention in not buying a TV was in part to save money (both the cost of the TV and subscription to some source of channels) and in part to save time, time I expected I would spend catching up on the many books I had and wanted to ready.

For the most part this has mostly worked. I have not spent the ~$1000 (or so) for a decent HDTV (and easily much more), nor do I have a monthly bill of $40-60+ from a cable company. I do have a very high monthly phone bill for my DSL - but that is also a very direct business expense.

In the past year I have read about 70 books (yes, at least one a week, often more) and some 100 magazines, not to mention 1000’s of pages of writing online. And though I read quickly, I am buying books faster than I read them (yes, a slightly bad habit of mine). However, I am probably still net ahead - were I subscribed to cable I’d still be buying many of the same books (about a quarter or more of which are books by friends of mine plus books by authors I’ve met).

But this post is not about my book buying habit (that will be the subject of a later post when I finish adding my collection to LibraryThing) rather it is a post about Joost.

A few months ago I was sent a Joost invite. I downloaded it, tried it out on my large screen iMac (24″), generally enjoyed it, but then found I had not run it in months. A few days ago I updated my installation of Joost to the latest version.

As I write this blog post, I am watching Joost, streaming quickly and smoothly, in a window to the left of my screen. I am listening to some of my favorite music on the Warner Channel. Earlier I listened to some great (and then some not-so-great dance songs on another channel, and before that got a bit of a poker fix via the poker channel). I see that another channel has Lexx, one of my favorite sci-fi series and I’m looking forward to catching up/seeing if there are any episodes I haven’t seen. I’m also curious whether or not Joost will be showing censored versions of Lexx, I seem to recall that there were some episodes which were more revealing when shown outside of the US.

But for the most part my entertainment viewing on my iMac have been from other sources - so for the moment at least Joost is not enough (for me). I still use other means - dvd’s I buy, iTunes, and other sources (the later generally for stuff that is unavailable). I subscribe to some video podcasts - but actually rarely view them - generally watching video podcasts, when I do, by going directly to the site (such as Ask a Ninja).