Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Monday, October 30, 2006

Chicken Fingles

I just completed an experiment testing the limits of human consumption... I just ate a whole box of 30 freezer chicken fingers. I don't know if my stomack is about to explode or if the shear mass of chicken nugglettes in my stomack is going to colapse into some kind of rooster filling black hole and implode. Mommy.

Nail Problems

"To the man who only has a hammer in his toolbox, every problem looks like a nail."

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Urges: Men vs. Women

A hilarious joke on the "Sexual Urges of Men and Women":

"I never have quite figured out why the sexual urges of men and women differ so much. And I never have figured out the whole Venus and Mars thing. And I never figured out why men think with their head and women think with their heart. And I never yet have figured out how the sexual desire gene gets thrown into a state of turmoil when it hears the words "I do."

One evening last week, my wife and I were getting into bed. Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says, "I don't feel like it. I just want you to hold me." I said, "WHAT???"

So she says the words that I and every husband on the planet dread. She explains that I must not be in tune with her emotional needs as a woman. I'm thinking, "What was her first clue?" I finally realize that nothing was going to happen that night, so I went to sleep.

The very next day, we went shopping at a big, unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on three different, very expensive outfits. She could not decide which one to take, so I told her to take all three of them. She then tells me that she wants matching shoes worth $200.00 a pair to which I say OK. And then we go to the jewellery department where she gets a pair of diamond earrings.

Let me tell you. She was so excited. She must have thought that I was one wave short of a shipwreck, but I don't think she cared. I think she was testing me when she asked for a tennis bracelet because she does not even play tennis. I think I threw her for a loop when I told her that it was OK. She was almost sexually excited from all of this, and you should have seen her face when she said, "I'm ready to go to the cash register."

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, "No, honey, I don't feel like buying all this stuff now." You should have seen her face. It went completely blank. I then said, "Really, honey, I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while."
And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, "You must not be in tune with my financial needs as a man."

I figure that I won't be having sex again until some time after the Spring of 2008 but godammit it was worth it."

Travel Essentials

Love this caption: "travel essentials"



Pretty much sums up the weekend... back to Canada tomorrow.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Friday, October 27, 2006

Godess

I'm not sure how many of you know this, but I'm totally in love with Rachel Bilson. An impromptu interview in her car where she displays her comedic talents:



Yummy. Her new movie with Zack Braff is called "The Last Kiss" and is I believe now out in theatres, here's the trailer:



Do something exciting with your life...

I Am NOT Canadian

Well people seemed to like the refresh of the Molson Canadian beer commercial "I Am Canadian" that I posted a couple days ago so I thought I'd also put in the parody "I Am NOT Canadian" spoof that the Toronto radio station Edge 102.1 did making light of Canada's loveable stepchild Quebec, enjoy :-)

Boing Boing Boing

Bouncing around the Internet:

Death by caffine.

I love Borat and everything Kazakhstan! That goes double for my #1 vodka drinking partner Leo! ;-)

Failed innovation creating profitable innovation.

The crotch of Europe displayed on every Euro coin!



Drinking is good for your paycheck.

I found a picture of my office on Flickr (second foot window from the top right). Actually I have a new office on the other side of the building now. Having a Tim's right at the entrance was a killer for my stomack for the first month before I built up some donut resistance! :-)

Go to all 5 Worldwide Disney Parks. I'm actually going to DisneyWorld Florida for the billionth or so time in about a month :-) I've also been to DisneyLand Cali and EuroDisney Paris. Only Tokyo and Hong Kong to go, but I won't be in Asia until 2008 :-( Of course I'll have to push that date up if this funky stuff is still going on!

France says "non" to 39 hour work weeks, employees must get out of the office not a minute after 35 hours. Part-timers! ;-)

In further confirmation of my "whiteness", I had no idea who Three 6 Mafia was until I (tried) to busta move to one of their jingles. These guys rock!



I laughed when I read the headline for this article: Top ten reasons that men won't commit. Surprisingly, "Girlfriend is compulsive marriage-obsessed nutcase" not among them. There's a few of my mates that I know are in this position (and a few more that have already been reeled in!) :-) There was this site with the recordings from the answering machine of some guy that had a crazy stalker ex, wish I could find it again since it was totally hilarious!

Hilarious, the Russian employee handbook for customer service.

25 best comic strip ever. Period.

Get Dwight Schute from "The Office" (US version) to call your number. Fun stuff.

I'm totally in the mood for that song: "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay"

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Halloween Sights

It's almost time to get all that can-dee! :-) I just bought a bunch of bags for the kids Oct 31st, hopefully they'll still be some left by then! ;-)

Greatest Sports Moments

It's mainly focused on North American sports unfortunatly, but a good montage none the less:

Whores and Whoring and Elections, Oh My!

I guess it's an old cliche to say that as a writer, I'm a whore. I sell myself for money. Or at least I try to. Parts of myself at least. My readers, read "customers," get to buy what's going on in my brain. My body's off limits, usually.

The more traditionally acknowledged sort of whore, doesn't usually sell what's going on in their brain. If they do, they ought to think about getting out of the business.

Now this is on my mind today because of what I did a couple of nights ago. I drove 67 miles round trip to spend an evening with a book club. On the drive there, through rush hour traffic, I was thinking: "The things I do to sell my books. Am I out of my fucking mind?"

On the drive home, singing along with the radio, happy as a clam (I've always wondered how happy clams can be, really) I was thinking: "Hey, that was great. I oughta find more book clubs to hang out with."

What happened, of course, was that my ego got stroked and it was also an interesting, thought-provoking evening. There's an old saying about how whores shouldn't come (an aside here: most porn writers spell this "cum," but in my Oxford American Dictionary of Current English it is spelled "come") with their customers. In a sense I violated, happily, that maxim. (Or in my case perhaps, that canard.)

I spent the evening with 14 or 15 (I lost count) women, ranging in age from about my age to, perhaps, 80, all, or at least most, of whom had read my book THE LIVING ROOM OF THE DEAD and were intrigued enough by it to want to know more about me, the story I told and the issues the book raised. It's a privilege to spend an evening like that, one of the perks of getting a book published. Last night I was one very happy hooker.

Speaking of which, one of the questions that came up, since the book deals with prostitution, was what do I think of it? Is prostitution good or bad? What should be done about it? Since this is my blog and an election is coming up in which prostitution isn't an issue, at least in terms of anything we're voting on, I'll answer that question here:

I think that whether prostitution is good or bad is irrelevant. It exists. It has, near as anyone can tell, always existed and in all likelihood it always will. Even in societies where it is punishable by death, it has continued to exist. Even in societies that aren't terribly impoverished, where women have full rights and where there are opportunities for other types of work, it continues to exist. So, it must, in some way fill some very elemental human needs.

To me it all boils down to issues of consent, coercion and exploitation. I think that every adult has the inalienable right to do with their own being, mental or physical, whatever they damn well please just so long as it doesn't harm or interfere with anyone else. I think they have the inalienable right to do whatever they please along with other informed, consenting adults so long as it doesn't harm anybody else. I think that right extends to things that other people might find morally reprehensible, just so long as they don't force those other people to watch what they're doing. That's a matter of privacy.

If a person, of their own free choice, decides to sell their sexual services, I think that should be just as much their right as it is mine to sell the fruits of my brain, fingers and computer keyboard. If you don't want to buy and read my books, that's your choice. If you don't want to go down to the corner massage parlor and have some sex along with your shiatsu, that's your choice too.

But this all depends on choice, and informed choice at that. Too much of the prostitution in the world is coerced. It is engaged in by people who have been kidnapped, enslaved, tricked or bullied into it. That sort of prostitution is, and ought to be, criminal. But it is not the prostitutes who have committed those crimes, it is the people who have trafficked them, tricked them or bullied them and those people should have the full force of the law brought against them.

Laws against prostitution get in the way of enforcement of the laws against the people who enslave and exploit prostitutes, the victims of those crimes. A woman who has been smuggled into the U.S. and bought and sold by pimps and is now working in an apartment brothel in Los Angeles, is afraid to go to the police because what she's doing is illegal. She's told she'll be arrested and deported and get in even worse trouble than she's already in. And for the most part, that's true. She has few, if any, legal rights or protections.

It is rare, nearly impossible, for prostitutes to get the services they need: health, social, police, financial, etc. Criminalizing their profession contributes to the AIDS and other STD statistics, helps to keep them impoverished, makes it difficult if not impossible for them to get police protection in matters such as rape and physical abuse and generally victimizes the victims, rather than the real bad guys.

In Thailand and China, where prostitution is rampant, open but technically illegal, the men and women engaged in it are fiercely oppressed by the legal authorities, pimps, traffickers and their customers, all of whom rely on the laws to assist their exploitation. The same goes on, less obviously but just as much so, in the U.S., with one notable exception.

Prostitution is legal in most of Nevada's counties. Prostitutes in that state are licensed and regulated. They work in safe environments. They are given weekly health checks. (More than 10,000 legal prostitutes have been tested for HIV in Nevada and not one case has been found. That's a much lower percentage than the general population.) Their money is not stolen from them by corrupt cops and pimps. They have access to social and financial services that in many cases have helped women to get out of the business.

In nearly every place that prostitution is legal, the people who work in the trade are better off, healthier and have greater opportunities to get into other work if they choose.

People don't become prostitutes because they are bad people. They aren't like bank robbers. They get into the business because they dont have an alternative; because someone has forced them into it, or poverty has made it seem like a better choice than other work, or their society doesn't value women or gay men and makes outsiders of them in any event so why not. (There are undoubtedly a few who get into it because they actually enjoy the work or are curious to try it out, but my guess is that that's a pretty small minority.)

Laws against prostitution victimize people who circumstances have already fucked over. We ought to be voting to get rid of them.

We also ought to be voting to tax religious institutions. I just paid my property tax and it was a lot higher than it needs to be. One of the reasons is that the Catholic church is the largest private property owner in the County of Los Angeles. Throw in other churches, Jewish temples, mosques, etc, and there is an enormous amount of untaxed property in this county. That leaves the rest of us to pay for everything.

Recently, October 11, there was an article in The New York Times about the tax breaks given to religious institutions and their employees. For all kinds of things, even paying state unemployment or workers compensation benefits or sales taxes on religous books.

The whole thing disgusts me. Separation of church and state should mean that everybody, even religous leaders and groups, should share equally in the same rights and responsibilities. I wish we were voting on that too.

But we aren't. Instead we're voting on the usual passle of crooks, cretins and assholes and in California we get to pass judgement on the latest round of badly written, confusing and undoubtedly ineffective initiatives and referendums. I'm a great lover of democracy, but it sure does take a lot of work to maintain the relationship.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Who Hoo

Who's watching Who? :-)

I Am Canadian

Fon Customer Service Sucks

Google has given Fon some investment dollars perhaps they can also give them some good customer service practices. As opposed to the untouchable service given by companies like Newsgator, Fon by contrast is competing for worst ever. Here's the result of my question:

-----

Suggested Answer

• I can’t detect any FON Hotspots from where I am
• My ISP use authentication by mac address to connect the FON router to the modem cable
• I have not had any problems connecting to FON in the past but now I can no longer get access.
• I can detect a FON Hotspot but I cannot connect to it
• I can detect a FON Access Point but I cannot connect to it

We have detected that you have not filled in the order number when sending your delivery request. In order to solve your issue on a timely manner please respond to this message indicating the order number.

Regards

FON customer care

----

Useless. No I won't be asking again and therefore will not be a Fonero. Waste... of... my... time.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Gotta Go?

I've got to get back to Germany soon cus sometimes I see something that makes me smile and miss Deutschland in a big way:



Gotta go (zum).... ;-)

The Office BBC Training Vids

Wanna have a mid-week laugh? Go check out the leaked Microsoft UK training vids developed with the manager character from the BBC version of "The Office". Some of the jokes might not go over as well for those of you who haven't seen the original Office series, but for those of you who have be prepared to bust a gut (do not take a swig of pop before watching lest you feel the burn as it comes out your nose!).

Cylon Seed

What better way to celebrate Halloween than with a Cyclon pumpkin!



If you don't know what a Cylon is, pat yourself on the back for not being a total geek and move right along to the next EuroRoss post. :-)

Monday, October 23, 2006

Hide and Seek

Where are we?
What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to fall.
Crop circles in the carpet,
Sinking, feeling...

Spin me 'round again,
And rub my eyes,
This can't be happening,
When busy streets a mess with people,
Would stop to hold their heads heavy.

Hide and seek.
Trains and sewing machines.
All those years,
They were here first.

Oily marks appear on walls,
Where pleasure moments hung before the take over,
The sweeping insensitivity of this still life.

Hide and seek.
Trains and sewing machines (you won't catch me around here).
Blood and tears,
They were here first.

Mmm, what d'ya say,
Mmm, that you only meant well?
Well of course you did.
Mmm, what d'ya say,
Mmm, that's all for the best?
Of course it is.
Mmm, what d'ya say?
Mmm, that it's just what we need,
You decided this.
Mmm, what d'ya say?
Mmm, what did she say?

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth,
Midsweet talk, newspaper word cut outs.
Speak no feeling,
No I don't believe you.
You don't care a bit,
You don't care a bit.

Hide and seek.

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth.
Midsweet talk, newspaper word cut outs.

Hide and seek.

Speak no feeling,
No, I don't believe you.
You don't care a bit,
You don't care a bit...



(click on the pic above for a great unofficial video for Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" from Steve Garfield)

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Comin' Home

I've been down to Georgia,
I've seen the streets in the west,
I've driven down the 90,
Hell I've seen Americas best.
I've been through the Rockies,
I've seen Saskatoon,
I've driven down the highway 1,
Just hoping that I'd see you soon...

I'm comin' home.

I've never been to Alaska,
But I can tell you this,
I've been to Lincoln Nebraska,
And hell you know it ain't worth shit.
I've been through Nova Scotia,
Sydney to Halifax,
I'll never take any pictures,
Cuz I know I'll just be right back.

Cuz I'm comin' home.
I'm comin' home.

I've seen a palace in London,
I've seen a castle in Wales,
But I'd rather wake up beside you,
And breathe that old familiar smell.
I never thought you could leave me,
I figured I was the one,
I understand your sadness,
So I guess I should just hold my tongue.

But I'm comin' home.
I'm comin' home.

I know that we're taking chances,
You told me life was a risk,
I just have one last question,
Will it be my heart,
Or will it be his?

Comin' home.
I'm comin home...



Friday, October 20, 2006

Old Time Acquaintance

Totally out of nowhere I'm awoken in the middle of the night by loud knocking at my door. Dragging my glossy eyed sleepy head to the front door and looking through the peep hole I see there's someone standing at my front door... I must be dreaming, I haven't seen this guy in years.

One word: Eh?



Of course getting up for work and starring at a screen all day certainly wasn't easy! Have a great weekend everyone! :-)

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Rediscover: Milli Vanilli

Girl I'm Going To Miss You

I knew it from the start,
You would break my heart,
But still I had to play this painful part.
You wrapped me 'round your little bitty finger,
With your magic smile,
You kept me hangin' on your lovers cross a-while,
You put a spell on me,
You took my breath away,
But there was nothing I could do,
To make you stay.

I'm gonna miss you...

All the love I feel for you,
Nothing could make me change,
My point of view,
Oh girl, I'm gonna miss ya baby.

Given all the love I feel for you,
Couldn't make you change your point of view,
You're leaving.
Now I'm sitting here wasting my time,
I just don't know what I should do...

It's a tragedy for me to see,
The dream is over.
And I never will forget the day we met,
Girl I'm gonna miss you...

Like a honeybee, you took the best of me.
Now I can't erase those memories.
Like a fairytale, you were so unreal.
You left a scar that's so hard to heal.
When you had a taste of paradise,
The cold earth can feel as cold as ice.
I'm gonna miss you...

Given all the love I feel for you,
Couldn't make you change your point of view,
You're leaving.
Now I'm sitting here wasting my time,
I just don't know what I should do...

It's a tragedy for me to see,
The dream is over.
And I never will forget the day we met,
Girl I'm gonna miss you...

I'm gonna miss you...

I miss you

My Fourth Meal

Just finished my 4th meal, how about you? ;-)

Pic Of The Day

If you're a fan of travel like me and have an internet connection then go add Gadling to your regular website reading list, even if it's just for the picture of the day. Today's gem comes from Mykonos Greece, I know that's one of your favs G. Peter!



What a paradice! I've now officially added it to my 2007 "must" travel list which already has Florida, Chicago and possibly Brazil on for the end of 06' and Winterlude, Germany, France, Ireland and Australia for 2007. So many places, so little time! :-)

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Chained Away

After running outside tonight you really realize one thing: man it's hot! It certainly doesn't feel like fall yet despite the cold spell last week. I could really go for a cold one but what's with the torture of chaining away the goods!?!



Maybe I can knaw my way through this one?



Somehow I'm thinking I might have to find an drink or ice cream somewhere else... :-)

(photo's from Taormina, it's not THAT hot in Hamilton!)

Which Half?

A great flickr post:



Which half indeed! ;-)

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Black Cat

Bad luck for the rest of the day?

Roll Rhe Dice

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

- Sir Ken Robinson


Don't afraid to be wrong, don't be frightened of making mistakes. Take a risk, be creative, explore your limits... you'll be more successful than you could ever possibly imagine...

Monday, October 16, 2006

No Passing

Out on a hike today through some public and some not-so-public trails. No passing you say??


I wonder what's on the other side? It's not really visable but there's a deer running around down by the tree line:



Back into the forest:

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Geo-Score

We got the cache, felt the burn!

CP Roadie

The past few days have been pretty jam packed with some serious partying by the boys including a night out in T-dot, a roadie to CP for the Ottawa-Calgary game, hitting the town in Hamilton and O-fest for yours truely last night in Waterloo.



I never seemed to remember to bring my camera out this week but we were able to catch the most suggestive of sign graphics we've ever seen ;-)



(It was for a massage parlour)

I'm almost glad it's time to go back to work tomorrow!

Gone Geo

It's another beautiful day and after a long, long weekend of partying it's time to get some fresh air! I'm off Geocaching, here's an old pic from my first ever find in Hamilton about 4 months ago:



My Geo-C partner in crime:

Friday, October 13, 2006

Purpose Of...

Stevie J gets in a forward that I just had to post on this Friday early morning. Why women have two hands:



Why men have two hands:



Have a great weekend everyone and if you're going to Waterloo for Oktoberfesting (the largest in the world outside of Germany) then hook up with us either at Rec Centre Sat night or at Mel's early early early Sunday morning!

Ziggy-Ziggy, Ziggy-Ziggy, Oi, Oi, Oi!!! :-)

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Sicily Goodbye's

Well hopefully this last Sicily post will conjure up some warm weather thoughts to drive away the last remenants of this nasty flu/cold thing I've been flemming up for the past couple days! Having left the Aolean islands the last stop was to check out Cefalu and the national park before flying back to Europe.

Cefalu is an amazing city. For hikers there's the castle and church that overlook the entire seaside city from a mountain perk that can be climbed. The views (especially at sunset) are unbelievably awesome. The city itself is no slouch either!

Great restaurants, seaside barscene and bit of the unordinary mark this port. Case in point one night I had to check out the puppet museum and theatre:



The 20 minute show was a bit hokey but the kids (and the kid in me) liked it just fine. The best part was the small room upstairs with all the sample puppets from over the years. Some of them haven't been used in a very long time, like that weird looking one on the end ;-)



Best 5 bucks spent for sure! Ok this next pic isn't even the castle in Cefalu, it's Taormina's monestary which is also located on the top of a mountain overlooking the city (I lost one of my memory cards with a bunch of pics :-(

Anyways the monestary was closed as apparently it's only open weekends... man that was a hot day to be shut out at the top of a long climb!



If you're lucky (and get to know the manager the night before) you can make a reservation at one of the many fabuous restaurants in Cefalu. This pic was taken right from our seaside patio table:



Sicily, what peace, what adventure!

Monday, October 9, 2006

Toronto Weekender

This was the long Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada and since I was going home the week prior and after I decided to take this weekend to just catch up on some work and relax watching the abundance of sports that's going on right now (F1, NHL, NFL, Euro Qualifying, MLB Playoffs, etc.). It all started out with putting my feet up and enjoying a cold Molson Ex with Stevie and Chris:



I couldn't get a good shot cus Steve was squirming too much but basically he was doing vacuming on Saturday night... I'm not sure what's sader, the vacumer or the one watching the vacumer! ;-)



Off downtown to catch the Calgary-Edmonton game:



A very long, long night and another great weekend comes to an end.

Long Weekend

Long weekends are great but sometimes should be illegal ;-) See you guys Tues. after I recover from yesturday, today and tomorrow! :-)

Friday, October 6, 2006

Trash Talk

In advance of meeting up with the lads for tomorrow nights premiere of Hockey Night In Canada (we're meeting at 7 for beers and diner shoot me an e-mail for deets if you're interested) I'm laying the initial guantlet of trash talk down by wearing this t-shirt tomorrow:



Let it begin fuckers! :-)

Proof Is In The Pudding

Now that's customer service! Answers, action items and comments from a human in a less than 24-hour turnaround. I'm telling you Newsgator kicks ass!

I've put the e-mail responce below, I haven't had time to reply with a clarification on the difference between question #3 and #10 with screenshots but I wanted to post the reply now to show the great turnaround time. My individual comments on each item later this weekend... because as the customer I have the luxury of answering if and when I choose ;-)

Thanks Newgator for impressing by doing the little things better than the rest.

----
Hi Ross,

Thanks for the awesome feedback! It great to have customers who are active in helping us make our product better. Let me see if I can try to address your numbered concerns/observations:

1) We haven't actually come across anyone who has asked for this before, but I can see how it would be an advantage to some users. I've created a feature request (74542)

2) As you mentioned, this is actually set by the author. Currently NewsGator Online only displays what is in the source feed. When a posts drops off the source it also drops out of NewsGator Online. HOWEVER, we are currently in the process of redefining what is a current post. I can't give too many details before it is released, but be assured we are working on it ;)

3) Points 3 and 10 are related I think - We actually have this functionality in testing and will be releasing it sometime soon. I don't have an ETA at the moment (it is reliant on some other system parts) but you will be able to add a folder from the context menu of the Folder tree.

4) This is really a performance issue - in order to keep the rendering of the Newspage fast, we restrict the number of posts. Obviously the more posts, the longer it takes to display. In your particular browsing pattern where you open a number of windows and let them load in the background that doesn't really matter, but for the majority of our users they browse in a single window. That being said, it is a good idea, but I can't see it getting development priority in the near future.

5) Whether a post has full content, excerpts or titles is defined by the author, but I think it would be a great idea to make it possible to collapse full content posts to excerpts or titles! I know we have a feature request in the system for this already, but I've created a new one anyway (74543)

6) I see where you are going on this, but I'm not sure how applicable it would be for most users... I can, however, see how some attention reporting could achieve the same results. 2 reports in particular - "Feeds not updated in X days" and "Feeds with my least attention" - Reports are good because they don't clutter the reading UI, but allow you to find what you are looking for. do you think this would suit your needs??

7) There is currently a way to do this!
- Go to My Settings > Edit Locations
- Under the NewsGator Web edition location, select the "Feeds" option
- From here you can de-select the feeds that you don't want to see in your Web-reader. They will still be in your profile, and can be re-enabled at any time.

8) NewsGator Inbox would be the perfect solution for you:
http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct.aspx?ProdID=NewsGator+Inbox
It syncs Outlook with NGO including clippings.

9) You should soon be able to add feeds directly to the Folder tree, and I believe this will go to the URL import screen.

10) Covered above in 3

11) Not likely to happen ;) But if it isn't already, you can add it to the taxonomy. To add your feed to our system, you can go to this page to add your site to our search engine:
http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/Folksonomy.aspx

Once your request has been submitted you will get a response advising you that it has been added and instructions about adding our button will also be provided at that time.

Thanks again for your feedback, and I hope this satisfies most of your ideas. Customers like you help us create a better product!

Regards,

Jonathon McDougall
NewsGator Support

----

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend everyone!



...and enjoy the turkey and long weekend! :-)

Thursday, October 5, 2006

An Open Letter To NewsGator

As many of you may or may not know I am a big fan of Newsgator RSS readers (particulary their online and outlook products) and have set you up (or tried) on their service. Tonight I sent an e-mail to customer support with my top 10 feature requests. Here is the e-mail:

----
Hi Newsgator team,

I’ve been using Newsgator for about 2 years now and I love it (especially the online version). A couple feature requests:

1 – Allow me to open a folder of posts in a new browser. We used to be able to do this when they were regular links but since the remodel when you right click on a folder you get the new options (just add this as one of those options?) This helps because many times reading feeds in a single browser is slow (yes I can also open other browsers and log-in for each and do it that way, but the old way was faster).

2 – Allow me to choose the maximum number of posts to hold for each feed. Each feed is different (ie. Dig is 40, Slashdot 15 etc etc), perhaps the site themselves set this but I don’t see why users shouldn’t be able to set this for themselves.

3 – When making a new folder please set the main feed folder (not my clippings folder) as the default. I never make a folder in my clippings (perhaps others do more often?) and it’s an extra annoying step. Or at least make the default the last folder you created a new one in before.

4 – Allow me to increase the maximum of view per page from 50 so I don’t have to keep clicking each page for some of my bigger folders with lots of feeds.

5 – Allow me to set whether I want titles, partial or full posts for each feed. I’m sure this is probably set by the site themselves but if they set it to full or partial then the user could still have the choice of tapering it down to titles only for that feed (ie. Helpful for sites like digg/boingboing that have lots of partial and full feeds that I’d rather just see titles for.

6 – Allow me to see which feeds I have clicked through on and which ones I haven’t and the time since the last click through. This would help me eliminate feeds that suck or that I don’t click through very often. This really helps those of us with 500+ feeds who are looking for some room for some new feeds (ie. I’ve maxed out time

7 – Allow us to “archive” feeds. There are feeds that I want to stop reading right now, don’t want in my reader list but don’t want to forget/loose the link. Currently I create a separate folder for those feeds but there’s probably a better way.

8 – Is there any other sync with Newsgator Online and Newsgator for Outlook that uses something other than pop as my corporate server masters do not allow outside pop access.

9 – When adding a new feed the default screen is the search feeds screen. This is probably ok for new users getting used to the service but for us old timers it would be great to have the URL input box on that screen instead of having to click through on another tab.

10 – Allow me to create a new folder from the left hand feed list (perhaps as a right click option) and also right after I add a new subscription (currently you can choose a folder to put the new feed into but many times I want to put a new feed in a new folder).

11 – Ok this one is bonus: Include my blog http://www.euroross.blogspot.com/ as a default for all new users (and existing ones if you so incline ;-)

These are just some little suggestions from someone who has tried multiple RSS readers but who goes with Newsgator because of your great product and even more amazing customer service.

Thanks,

Ross

http://www.euroross.blogspot.com/
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Got some suggestions of your own? Mark them down in the comments section!

Who You Goinna Call?

No not Ghostbusters... Banana phone!



That's cool since I needed a laugh today :-)

Panerea

Panerea is the smallest of the Aolean islands and certainly one of the best... but not for the reasons you might think. Panerea is famous throughout the islands for being the "rich" persons getaway with hotels starting 200-300% more than the islands (to start!). Consequently I just took a day hydrofoil to the island, but it's small enough to get everything in under a day anyways.

The best part of the island isn't the lush restaurants (although they are amazing and amazingly expensive), the famous night club (which locals from all the islands come to all throughout the year), the small close-knit community or the absolutely beautiful view... it's the hiking!

This is something very few people actually come to Panerea for as witnessed by the totally overgrown paths, but it's certainly something to experience. Not only is the view exceptional (you can get a full 360 from two different points on the island), but there's also some non-travelled areas to explore (and get into a little bit of trouble as evidenced by the cut up arm I would leave the island with!).

Ok I just realized my pics are all mixed up, this is the view from the ice cream parlor:



I'm pretty sure this is actually Stromboli, not Panerea as I've labelled it:



The docs in Panerea:



The view from the restaurant we had an amazing lunch at:



This is the peak we climbed almost to the top, basically it was totally verticle at the end! A great climb:



The terrain got a bit prickly too... and yes, I did have one of those cactus needles jammed into my hand and arm, not fun!



We hung around the islands for 2 more days and then it was a teary eyed departure back to the Sicily mainland. Tonight I'll post the last of my pics from Celafu and wrap up the trip :-)