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iPhones own SXSW

March 10, 2008 By Bruce Kroeze Leave a Comment

Attending SXSW has been absolutely great for me. I’m feeling inspired and invigorated, really refreshed by taking time off and simply not dealing with clients for a few days.

I can’t help but notice just how deeply Apple has penetrated the cool-tech-people world. Without exaggeration, the ratio of mac to PC is easily 3 to 1.

More interesting to me is the incredible number of iPhones here. Wow. probably half the phones I see are iPhones. Those babies are not cheap, and yet everyone has one.

Better than simply seeing that a lot of people have them is seeing how used they are. People love them, and love interacting with them. Everywhere you see them taking pictures, connecting with LinkedIn, browsing, and texting.

The new LinkedIn iPhone portal is hot, too. It results in me often getting requests to connect on LinkedIn within minutes of me giving someone my business card. Interesting.

[tags]iphone,sxsw,sxswi[/tags]

Filed Under: Equipment

Dell CN 3100 for OSX

January 24, 2007 By Bruce Kroeze 9 Comments

I just got my beautiful new color laser printer from Dell. I did a lot of research, and I really think Dell’s CN3100 is the best color laser currently available for under $400 (if you buy it from delloutlet.com). Besides the 100s of dollars of savings you get from buying from Dell Outlet, you also get full print toner cartridges, instead of starters. That will save hundreds by itself a few months down the line.

I had just one issue getting it to work with my Mac OSX machine. Most of the instructions talk about how to set up on Windows, and there is little information for Mac setup. At least not if you want to print to the network.

A bit of experimenting got me to the answer:

1) Do Install the printer driver that you download from Dell’s support site. Even though it knows Postscript, installing Dell’s driver makes a difference.
2) Install the printer using “HP Jetdirect (Socket)”, not “IP Printing Protocol”. If you need to find the IP address, press “menu” on the printer, then the checkmark when the screen says “print settings”. A page will print (very fast) showing the current IP Address. I always make a label to put on the printer, it is amazing how often you end up needing that information in the future.
3) You can browse to the printer and control most of its settings via a web interface.

Update: Download the driver here

[tags]cn3100, dell-cn3100,osx,color laser,color-laser[/tags]

Filed Under: Equipment, Macintosh, Tips

Getting a Macbook

April 25, 2006 By Bruce Kroeze 2 Comments

WoohooWhen I accepted the job at Dotster, they asked me what kind of computer I wanted, so they could have it ready for me on May 1 when I start. I paused, and said hopefully, “A Macbook?”

Yup. That’s what I’m getting. Woohoo! I use a G5 at home, but I’ve never been privileged to use a Mac at work before. I’ve been a Linux-at-work guy for six years now. I have nothing against Linux, I’m an active contributor to several Open-source projects. But, I love my Mac in a way I’ve never managed to muster for Linux desktops.

I was pleased for several reasons. Firstly, that I won’t have to break my no-Windows-at-work streak. Secondly, that they’d spend that much on a laptop for me, and thirdly that they asked. That’s a good way to start a new relationship.

I think that my favorite new-to-me program, DevonThink will really help me in my new role. I’m still exploring it and making it part of my standard usage pattern, but I can already see how it will give me a great deal of information leverage. That’s going to be crucial in this new position.

New job, new role, great new laptop. This is the most excited about my career I’ve been in years.

Filed Under: Equipment

Endicia for Mac Review, initial impressions

March 15, 2006 By Bruce Kroeze 6 Comments

Snail Mail I’ve been shipping a lot of packages lately. It was a big pain, and now it is not. That’s my basic review of Endicia for Mac.

Manual shipping

When I first started shipping, I’d manually label each package. My handwriting is terrible, so it looked like a retarded monkey wrote the label, and I wasted several bubble-mailers by boneheaded misprinting. It took more time than you might think to label each package. But that time paled next to the time it took to stand in line at the Post Office to mail the things. Ouch.

Automated shipping – the equipment

I purchased a 25-pound USB scale for $85 from Endicia. It works very nicely from within the software. Just put the package on the scale and click “weigh”.

My label printer is a Dymo 400 Turbo from Label city for $109, and I bought a roll of three-part internet postage labels #30387.(Here’s a coupon Endicia for Mac Review, initial impressions) for $15.

It all worked right away on my G5, with no fiddling about, pleasing me greatly.

Endicia Account

To use Endicia, you create an account and pay a monthly fee. I’m using the “premium account” at $15.95 per month. This lets me print unlimited postage, creates customs forms for me, and gives me access to the cheaper-than-USPS Endicia insurance.

Then, I attached a credit card to the account and bought an initial pool of postage. You can add more at any time from the website or from the software itself.

The software

I am pleased to say that the software has performed flawlessly so far. I’ve shipped about a dozen things over the weekend, and been pleasantly surprised at how seamlessly it works.

  • Get an order, copy the address from the confirmation email
  • Paste into Endicia’s address area.
  • Hit validate, this reformats it according to what the post office in that country wants as a standard. (Very helpful indeed.)
  • Select the type of shipping.
  • Click “Weigh”.
  • Put a note in logging area about what this is (so you can look it up later). There is an area for an order number as well.
  • Click print, then confirm on the next page
  • Drop the packages in the bulk-mail bin and the post-office and skip the long, slow lines!

Conclusion

This wonderful, easy-to-use system has cut my shipping time down from 4-5 minutes each to less than 2, and made the drop-off part almost instantaneous. I ship every day, so that alone is saving me 10-30 minutes. Add up all that time savings and you’ll quickly see why this is a complete winner of a setup for me. I rarely give such unreserved recommendations, but so far they’ve really earned it.

[tags]Mac, Endicia, label printing, dymo, usps,reviews,online postage[/tags]

Filed Under: Equipment, Macintosh, Reviews

Selling my Fingerworks Touchstream ST

February 21, 2006 By Bruce Kroeze 3 Comments

Touchstream Keyboard As a followup to my article about curing typing pain, I decided to sell my Fingerworks Touchstream ST keyboard on eBay.

I was quite surprised to find that the company that made the keyboard has been sold and that no more are being made. That means that the excellent keyboards are usually selling for more than they cost new. These keyboards are great, unique, and no more are being made, so I guess I can understand the heavy interest.

If you are interested, here’s the auction. Less than a day after listing, it has twenty “watchers” and four bids, which is quite unusual and pleasing to see. *Crossing my fingers*

Update: It sold for $1580!
[tags]fingerworks,touchstream,keyboards,dvorak,ebay[/tags]

Filed Under: Equipment