The Gadget I Really Want.

The new iPhone 3G S sounds cool.  But what I really want is to be able to smash my iPhone together with my Canon SLR camera. In particular, I want my SLR Camera to know the GPS location and direction for every photo I take. I know there are some add-ons, but geeze, they’re not integrated.  They’re a hassle to use.  So usage is low.  The iPhone adds GPS data to photos seemlessly.  Why can’t my $1,000 Canon do the same?

Ask Mexico to be Part of the USA

So much of American foreign policy at the moment seems to be done looking in the rearview mirror.  The news is focused on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba.  As a country, we should be much more focused on China and Mexico and other areas of the World.  Hopefully, we can be friendly competitors with China for eons to come, just as we are friendly competitors with England and Germany.

The situation with Mexico is much more complicated.  During the Bush years, we’ve spent billions “getting tough” by erecting a wall / fence between our southern states and Mexico.  We’ve spent billions more unsuccessfully trying to staunch the flow of drugs across the border.  The effect is to keep pushing our neighbor to the ground.  Why don’t we try the opposite approach?  Let’s extend a hand to Mexico and put the country and it’s provinces, if they want to be, on the path to statehood.

In the process, we would gain access to the huge oil reserves in Mexico and help our neighbors.  After a transitional phase, it will become easier to control our borders, as the border between Mexico and it’s southern neighbors is much shorter than the one between the U.S. and Mexico.

The biggest threat is the rampant corruption in some parts of the Mexican economy.  In addition, there would have to be some sort of phased in approach to wellfare benefits, such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and so forth.  It’s only right that Mexicans help pay for their benefits.

If Canada wants to join the fun, so much the better.  A United North America would be a formidable force in the world many natural resources, creative people, and positive cultural, educational and legal institutions.

Congress Around the Country

One of Barrack Obama’s big themes has been that this is a victory for all of us. This is our government and we’re responsible for enacting the change we want to see. Great point.

To tap into that theme and bring about real change, Congress should go on the road. It should hold session in half a dozen cities around the country. Get the Congress close to the people and the people close to Congress. Let’s stop talking about “those idiots in Washington.” Let’s start talking about how the great people of the state of California, the City of Chicago, Nashville, Seattle, St. Louis and Florida helped bring about massive improvements in health care and education.

Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer now is the time. Let’s have a government that is truly of the people, by the people and for the people. Take the Congress on the road six weeks a year.

We promise to greet you warmly and help get important things done.

American Autobahn — A Hyperstate Highway System

The Obama Administration should use a portion of the upcoming stimulus package to start a Hyperstate Highway System (HHS).  The key goal of the HHS would be to facilitate very rapid transportation between distant states — to jump from California to Texas or Michigan to Florida.

The current Interstate system has become bogged down with too many on ramps and exit.  In areas like Washington DC and Los Angeles, commerce can sit for hours waiting for the LOCAL rush hour traffic to clear out.  What we need today is super advanced Interstate — a Hyperstate.

Key elements of Hyperstates:

1. a very limited number of exits — two or three per state, except for a few very large states like California and Texas
2. only connect to Interstates, no connections to state highways or other local roads; use the Interstates for local transportation.
3. give priority to commerce, especially trucks and other very long distance travelers

By starting the HHS, the Obama Administration can enhance its pro business credentials.  It can create a program who’s benefits will last for generations, much like the original Interstate program started by the Eisenhower Administration in 1956.  It’s pro-jobs stimulus package can do more than fill potholes — which while very important, will not solve our long distance transportation problems.

Start the Hyperstate Highway System today.  Or if you prefer the American Autobahn.

New Year’s Recap of Reggie’s Blogs

Reggie went blog crazy in 2008.  You may want to add the following to your newsreader.  If you’re not sure how to do that, see how to subscribe here.

Charleston Waterways
Dewees Island, SC
East of the Cooper Fencing
Fairchild Family
M24 Charleston – Melges 24 Sailing
M24 Wirelesss – Reggie’s Sailing Team
MC Scow – One (or Two) Person Sailboat
Old Village Online

iPhone Browser windows

It would be really nice if the iPhone automattically closed the oldest browser windows when you ask to open a new one. For example, when you use an RSS Reader, old windows should automatically be closed to make room for new articles.

What I Use

Here’s a quick list of the software, computers and other technology that I use along with some explanations:

1. iPhone – great phone, so-so service from AT&T; see separate list of iPhone Applications below.
2. MacBook – I use my more like a desktop than a laptop because I like having my printer, stapler and other other things close by.  I’ve thought about getting a desktop machine, but I like the occasional mobility of the laptop; I don’t like keeping two computers synced.  I also like looking at a big display.  If I was better at managing my WiFi connections to printers, networks, displays, etc., I might use my laptop in more locations around the house and elsewhere.
3. Apple Cinema Dispaly – visual quality and product design rock
4. Gmail – I LOVE the archive feature.  It’s great to be able to pull up old mail from anywhere whenever I want.  I only delete the junk and stuff that’s a security risk, like passwords.  When I’m mobile, I use GMail via the mail application on the iPhone.  I’m hoping the Google Mobile App for Mail gets better, then I’ll use it.
5. Google Calendar – We use a dozen different calendars inside Google Calendar.  We have one for each family member.  One for Baby Sitters.  The name of the sitter goes in the event slot.  One for each big activity and school.  I wish every organization would publish a Google Calendar that I could automatically suck into my Calendar.  I hate re-typing year long calendars.  For example, I published a calendar for Ted’s soccer team when I was the coach this fall.  I shared the link with all the other parents.
6. Google Reader – I’ve bounced around on RSS feed readers.  Right now, Google Reader is my default and Bloglines Beta is the one I’m testing.  The key feature for me is being able to read it on both my laptop and iPhone.
7. Remember the Milk – for to do lists, I go through phases with how much I use RTM.  Sometimes I use it daily.  Sometimes it just seems like too much.  If you’re going to start using RTM it’s critical to read their How to Use RTM blog posting.  You also need to set up the feature for emailing To Dos to RTM, then program the email address into your email program and mobile phone.  It’s great to be able to email yourself a to do without clogging your email inbox.  I also use MyTaList for somethings, like list of birthday present ideas for other people.
8. Facebook – if you’re not on Facebook, you need to be.  Even my mom likes it.  Sign up today and reach out to two or three old friends.  Before you know it, you’ll be in touch with a whole network of friends.  Using it is a little like reading People magazine about people you actually know and care about.  Key tip: be sure to put up a picture of yourself.  Unless you’re the only person in the world with your name, having a picture up of yourself is critical to enabling your friends to find you.
9. WordPress – WordPress is the leader in blogging software.  Blogger, owned by Google, has fallen off the pace.  With WordPress you get built in stats about what people are reading on your blog.  I have a bunch of blogs up about a bunch of subjects.  See the blogroll on this blog for a list.
10. Blockbuster – we subscribe to Blockbuster.com, although I wonder if I should switch back to Netflix.  I quit Netflix several years ago when they raised their prices.  Maybe it’s time for another look.  Blockbuster seems just a little slow to ship out new movies.
11. Weather Underground – it’s the best weather site.  I particularly like the hourly forecast.  It includes wind speed and direction.  Sailors in the Charleston area, see my blog post on M24Charleston.WordPress.com for detailed local wind and tide information.
12. Amazon – become a Premiere member to get free shipping and go to town.  The credit card is also pretty sweet.  It’s very easy to see the rewards you’re earning.
13. Costco – it’s the best warehouse store.  It crushes Sams on per square foot sales figures, demonstrating that it’s customers are finding lots of value.
14. Lynda – this is a great online software training website.  The small cost is totally worth it.
15. Craigslist – find and sell everything from appliances to cars to jobs.  It’s easier to use than Ebay, especially for heavy, hard to mail items.
16. Firefox – It’s the best browser right now
17. Microsoft Office – I can’t wait until someone else comes out with an office suite that is more widely accepted so I can stop paying these ridiculously high licensing fees.  For now, Office is THE standard.
18. Google Documents - Whenever you’re going to share or collaborate on documents, Google Documents are a great way to go.  I’ve used them this year for punchlists with a contractor, recording credits and debits to my kids money in the bank of Dad, and ideas on new businesses.  It’s much easier than swapping Word and Excel files.
19. iPhoto – if I was on a PC, I’d use Picassa.
20. iTunes – it’s much more than a music player.  You can listen to audio books, download iPhone Apps
21. Paparazzi - great for taking screenshots of websites.  The program captures everyone on the page, not just what’s on the screen.  See Skitch below.
22. Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 – professional website building software, only get it if WordPress can’t meet all your needs.
23. Adobe Illustrator CS4 – professional drawing and illustrating software; amazing powerful, but complicated
24. Adobe Photoshop CS4 – professional photo editing softare; stick with iPhoto or Picassa as long as you can
25. Skype – great for talking to family and friends anywhere in the world; 300 million people use Skype, especially overseas where phone calls are more expensive; excellent videoconferencing
26. Default Folder X – a very nice extension to the Apple operating system
27. HP Photosmart C7250 All-in-One Printer Fax Copier Scanner – It works, it’s pretty cheap, it’s wireless; the software is a little bloated
28. Skitch – my friend Travis Good recommended Skitch.  It’s a great little program for capturing and sharing stuff.  If it adds the ability to capture a full webpage, including the stuff below the fold, I’ll be dumping Paparazzi.  I wish PhotoShop or Illustrator made things this easy.

iPhone Apps

1. Built in phone and address book – on fast access bar at the bottom of the screen
2. Built in Mail – on fast access bar at the bottom of the screen
3. Built in SMS (text) – on fast access bar at the bottom of the screen
4. Link to Google Calendar Online – on fast access bar at the bottom of the screen; I’ve stopped using the built in Calendar because the interaction with Google Calendar is clumsy
5. Remember the Milk
6. Built in Stocks
7. NY Times – I wish it loaded faster; I may switch to Google Reader for news
8. Built in Camera
9. Built in Photos
10. Built in Clock – nice little alarm; I use the stopwatch feature to time Ted (“How fast can you get ready to go on a bike ride?”)
11. Custom welcome screen photo – makes it easy to know I have my phone and not someone elses
12. Facebook
13. WordPress
14. Built in Calculator
15. Built in Weather
16. Built in Google Maps – I wish this worked more like a TomTom or Garmin GPS with turn-by-turn voice instructions.  Still it’s great if you get lost or need any idea of where you’re heading.
17. Google Mobile Apps – I really hope this keeps getting better and loads faster
18. Built in iPod – I find it surprisingly hard to use the iPod on the iPhone, especially to listen to audio books; ever activity disrupts the flow
19. links to Tide information in and around Charleston
20. Bloomberg – this may fall off the list now that I’m using Google Reader more
21. Shopper – grocery application; when someone combines Shopper and RTM like features I’ll switch; Shopper is the easiest to use for now, but hasn’t earned my loyalty.  I want my spouse to be able to email a list and have it show up in Shopper
22. Monkey Ball – the original cool game; I’ve stopped using it lately
23. Brain Challenge – a great game, even my kids like it
24. Now Playing – movie listings
25. Hanoi – a terrific version of the classic logic game; Kate loves this and is VERY fast
26. Trace – a cute free game
27. Wurdle – very cool and addictive word game, well worth the small cost
28. Dots Free - good way to keep a kid entertained before the food arrives at a restaurant
29. Tap Tap – Ted likes this guitar hero like game
30. FSS Hockey – a fun and free air hockey game
31. Slate – was a great poll tracker from Pollster.com during the election; it’s too bad they’ve stopped updating it
32. Say Who – is supposed to be the best voice dialer, but don’t use it much

How to subscribe to Blogs and other web content

I’ve been trying to decide which RSS Reader to use.

RSS Readers allow you to subscribe to blogs — those online newsletters that cover everything from the latest news about your favorite activity.  For example, if you’re a sailor, you should subscribe to Scuttlebutt.   If you’re interested in Dewees Island, you should subscribe to my blog at http://deweesisland.wordpress.com You can subscribe to stories from the New York Times and Forbes.  You can even subscribe to alerts — that is you can set a Google Search to tell you about anything that interests you, such as your own name ask to have it delivered to your RSS Reader.

Using an RSS Reader will give you access to a wider swath of news and ideas without cluttering up your email inbox.  In fact, you should move almost everything you subscribe to out of your email and into a reader.  Save your email box for more important communications.  Use your reader once a day and whenever you have a moment.  Think of it like a magazine in the bathroom.  Readers automatically keep track of what you’ve read.  The next time you look at the Reader, you’ll only see what’s new.  You can flag content that’s interesting and requires further reflection later.

When you first start using an RSS Reader, be careful to only subscribe to about 10 sources of information, called feeds.  Tons of content is being produced every day.  Readers are so good at collecting all that information that it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

You subscribe to a feed by clicking on the RSS icon that appears on the right side of the web address (URL) field in your browser on pages with feeds.  Some pages have an RSS icon on them.  You can also manually cut and paste or type web addresses into your Reader.

I want my RSS Reader to work on my MacBook laptop and on my iPhone.  I want the Reader to sync it’s knowledge of what I’ve reader in either place so I don’t have to mark old articles as read twice.  In other words, I want to read what’s new and only what’s new whenever I want and wherever I am.

Right now I’m using Google Reader as my primary Reader and experimenting with the new Bloglines Beta.  The new Bloglines Beta offers a bunch of viewing options on the computer, but I find it unsatisfactory on the iPhone.  Bloglines is planning mobile phone improvements.  Depending on how those come out, Google might get a run for it’s money.  For now, I use the Google Mobile App as my iPhone Reader.

If you want to try some other RSS Readers, check out the article below by Beck Krystal from the Washington Post.  There are tons of other options.  A friend of mine also recommends Feedly, but I haven’t tried it.

Which RSS Reader Is Right for You?

By Becky Krystal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 21, 2008; N05

It’s fun to play the field online.

Get your mind out of the gutter. We’re talking about the wide world of really simple syndication, more pithily known as RSS. With the technology, Web surfers can subscribe to their favorite sites to keep up with recently posted items. On some sites you may choose to be notified of every update, while on others you can limit updates to areas of particular interest to you.

The subscription possibilities are endless — news, blogs and video, from The Washington Post and ESPN to the Daily Puppy and Knitterella — but the relationship that really counts is the one you have with your aggregator. That’s the software that does the legwork of organizing and collecting the subjects of your Internet whims. Choosing The One you use can be just as daunting as selecting what you want it to aggregate.

We put four aggregators to the test to see how they’d display items from the same six sites. Want to find a perfect match for you? Read on.

Bloglines Beta

Best for: Those who like the initial rush of falling in love.

Get it: http://beta.bloglines.com

The dish: If you’re any kind of RSS veteran, Bloglines Beta will really make your heart race. The best part of this aggregator is the three-pane view, which is similar to the preview feature in many e-mail programs. Click on the “site” tab in the preview pane, and you get the same content you’d see if you visited the site directly. Bloglines also gives you a start page, which you can customize with your favorite feeds pulled out into individual windows for fast scanning. And if you click on an item on the start page, a mini-window with its content (or as much as the source site will allow) appears. The reader also gets bonus points for being clear about indicating which items have been read. The promising beta version continues to be tweaked, so time will tell whether this suitor is ready for forever.

Google Reader

Best for: Those looking for a dependable long-term relationship.

Get it: http://www.google.com/reader

The dish: Leave it to the Internet giant to create something clean, simple and functional that won’t let you down. Feeds are displayed in a manner that will be familiar to users of Google’s search. You can toggle the settings to show only new items, but old posts are saved and searchable. Items can be starred for future reference. The reader’s Trends feature uses charts to show such data as when most of the items in your feeds are posted and when you read them, the percentage of posts you’ve read from each feed and how many you’ve e-mailed. A miniature version of the reader can be embedded in a personalized iGoogle page, which works pretty much the same as the standalone reader if you put it in full-screen mode.

My Yahoo

Best for: Those afraid of commitment.

Get it: http://my.yahoo.com

The dish: If first impressions count, the lack of any clear and detailed help section is the first strike against this reader. You can choose to view your feeds on a personalized My Yahoo page or through Yahoo Mail, but the options are pretty minimal. In My Yahoo, subscribers can choose to see just a headline or a headline and short summary for each feed. And that’s about it. This no-frills reader is perfect for those who like to live in the moment, best used for getting the latest headlines. Being able to go back only a week with 10 items per feed means this reader won’t be useful as any kind of archive. The mail-embedded reader is even more bare-bones, displaying only recent items. You can’t mark items as read or choose to keep them in My Yahoo, though stories in your Yahoo Mail feeds can be e-mailed or dragged into folders.

Netvibes

Best for: Those with a wandering eye.

Get it: http://www.netvibes.com

The dish: Netvibes is a nice middle-of-the-road program that’s attractive and fairly easy to use. As with Bloglines’ start page, feeds appear in individual windows that can expand and be arranged according to your preferences. You can customize the number of items that appear and how they are displayed. Netvibes’ other flashy options may be both its biggest asset and biggest problem. A person’s entire life (e-mail, stock portfolio, Facebook updates, full-length TV shows) can be added as widgets. And that’s not to mention the tabs containing even more content that are put on your page based on your interests. So if, as with us, work is your main reason for subscribing to RSS feeds (really!), the temptation to stray could prove too powerful.

Why America Needs an Economic Strategy

Why America Needs an Economic Strategy
The Harvard Business School competitiveness guru, Michael Porter, offers his prescription for long-term prosperity.

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This is one of the most important magazine articles I’ve read in years. Please read about some of the key strategic choices America needs to make. Share the article with your friends and colleagues. If we work together, we can take the country to new heights.

JetDock

IMG_0810.JPG, originally uploaded by ReggieFairchild.

Emily and Ted played on the new section of JetDock while Bob and Reggie got ready to extend the existing JetDock.

Dewees Marina. August 2008.