I especially liked the tagline – “if the barn doors are wide open, why look for mice holes!”

I will admit it that I have responded to emails without completely reading the thread, or glossing over details. This can lead to embarrassment when someone calls you out on asking a question that was already answered in the previous emails.  Not only that there are times when I look at an article online and gloss over it taking in only some of the details and not others. This is not good and does not help when I am working with other people. The problem with myself, I believe, is that I am programmer. I have trained myself to look for patterns in code, or try and follow along with the flow of the logic behind it. Does programming contribute to the e.A.D.D.? Or is it that I just need to slow down a bit to process things.

So what can be done?

There are multiple site online that talk about how to improve your reading comprehension. Some of which refer to kindergarten, however I don’t think I need to go back that far. Some however are useful and here are a few tips that I found here.

• Location - Find a place to read that isn’t too busy or distracting.
• Sound - Much like location, noise can be a huge distraction too
• Read Something That Interests You - Read something that is interesting to you.
• Put away other devices - Of course phones notifying you of messages and iPods with music can take your focus from what you are reading.
• State of mind - Keep a relaxed mind and focus on what you are reading rather than the events that happen during your day.

If you haven’t guessed it yet this is all part of my New Years Resolution(s). Hopefully, a couple of changes and taking a little time for myself will help with my own problem. In the year to come, I plan to take small breaks from the electronic world and disconnect, and I also plan on more creative reading in 2011. (See this post here)

Do you experience e.A.D.D.? or do others you know experience this as well?
Also, what have you done to reset yourself?

Like most folks I moved my MobileMe to iCloud.  Turns out starting Dec 21 the pop3 access quit working. Best I can tell is iCloud is now only supporting IMAP syncing.

So how to restore my backup.  After talking with @johnfbraun I gave the forwarding option in iCloud a try.  It works when paired with an appropriate filter rule in gmail.

1. In iCloud go into preferences via the web page once logged into mail at iCloud.com.
2. In the general tab, check the box to forward and enter your gmail or google apps email address.
3. Do NOT check the box delete after forward if you want to still interact with that mail through the iCloud account on your devices.
4. Next go to your gmail.  Go into the Mail settings and filters.
5. Make a filter based on the TO: matching your @me.com address.
6. Use the actions to Skip Inbox, Mark as read, Apply label

You want to use a label so you can quickly jump to all mail that came to your iCloud account.

That is it.  Works fine for new mail, though we have noticed a few delays in mail making it over to google.  Perhaps Apple is batch processing forwards.

In the previous post I mentioned you can use two factor authentication with Paypal, World of Warcraft and Google. There are a few new places that have added the feature.

Logmein for remote access lets you set your account to send a code by sms to your cell phone. This even works with the iPad application Logmein Ignition. Just start to log in normally. As soon as you enter your password it will send a code and prompt you to enter the code as received on your phone.

** UPDATE CORRECTION** Logmein lets you email a code.  Just tell it the email address matching your phone’s sms address and you have SMS based codes.

Yahoo just added sms code authentication to your account as well. You need to log into Yahoo, on your name and choose to enter your account settings. Once in scroll down to the Sign-In and Security section. Click the Setup your second sign-ing verification. Now you can tell it to send to your phone as an sms code and even force prompt you for the answers to your secret question instead of the code. The point of two factor though is to tie something you know (password, question answer) to something you have (your phone). So I opted to use only my mobile phone number for verification. From now on when you log onto Yahoo from a new device or computer it will also send a code to your phone.

Personally I like Google’s two factor implementation best out of those targeted at the non uber geek set. But even SMS is better than passwords alone.

I have been playing a lot with IFTTT.com and Yahoo pipes.  But what if we want to monitor some site and web service statuses directly and have it show up on our Mac desktop all the time?

That is where GeekTool comes in handy.  Just add a couple of Shell Script objects to your desktop.  Make sure to set the display status to feedback image, choose a reasonable refresh period and a suitable title via the override text fields as seen below.

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Here are two shell scripts.  One monitors status for a WoW Realm I made for some friends.  The other is the example of monitoring the FiT Web site status via downforeveryoneorjustme.com.

WoW Realm Status:

curl –silent http://us.battle.net/api/wow/realm/status?realms=thorium-brotherhood | grep -m1 -E ‘status’ | awk -F “:” ‘{print $5}’ | awk -F “,” ‘{print $1}’ | grep true

FiT Site Status:

curl –silent http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.friendsintech.com | awk -F “</span> is ” {‘print $2}’ | grep up

• Swiss Army Victorinox SwissTool

We accidentally let the friendsintech.com domain name expire briefly.  Fortunately I noticed it fast enough to get it renewed.  So I wondered how could we detect when the site is not available.  I am sure you have seen www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com for checking if web sites are really down or is it just a problem on your end.  A great way to check site status.

So it made me wonder. Can I scrape downforeveryone for site status using a yahoo pipe and feed that to IFTTT for automatic alerting?

The answer is yes.  The real work is all in the yahoo pipe.  You can find the FiT pipe: HERE at Yahoo.

Now for the explanation:

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Area 1 is where you can customize the site you are monitoring.   Be sure to change the contents of the URL and String fields in each box.  The fetch page object actually gets the status page of the site we want to monitor.

1. You can just copy the url from your web browser when you check your site on downforeveryone.  Paste the same url into the top left string builder. This ties to the link field when we generate the RSS article entry later.
2. Change the String Builder replacing your email and your name in parenthesis.  This is needed for RSS feed validity in the author field.
3. The last String Builder is simply how you want the site name to show in the rss article title.

Area 2 is where we scrape the status results page from downforeveryone.  We cut the site status from between html title elements, push it into the needed RSS article description field.  Last we build the RSS article title around that.

Area 3 is where we wrap the RSS article in a valid RSS feed.  From there it simply goes to a filter to drop out the Up status and to output. Thus giving us an RSS article only when the site is down.

We do that because for some reason IFTTT doesn’t react as the unique RSS article ID and publish date change. (those come from the Date Builders on the top right)  So over in IFTTT just paste the RSS Feed URL to your finished Yahoo Pipe into a New RSS Item trigger. Then send the type of alert of your choice.

Sure the alerts have a time delay when you combine the refresh periods of the Yahoo engine and IFTTT but you will still know your site is down.  It seems to be about a 30-45 delay in my testing. But the solution is free and seriously geeky!  Enjoy!

I  recently asked this question on Google+ to see if people were doing it different from me. I mean to say..if RSS is dead (not true) like some have said I wanted to know what everyone else was doing then. Of course it looks like most everyone is much like me, I use RSS feeds for sites that I want to make sure I read regularly, Social Networks for more immediate, timely, or “Breaking News” information that can come and go, and some Google Alerts for things like searches of my day job company and of course myself.

I am going to assume that you know what RSS, Google Reader, etc. is. No need to reinvent the wheel here.

My primary use for Google Reader is to share out stories that I think are interesting enough to use in my Podcast Technorama. Chuck Tomasi (my co-host) will look at the things I have shared (see here) and will look at things he has shared (see here) also and grab items to put together our shownotes. I have a list of about 159 sites that I currently read (its been as high as 200+). Some I read infrequently and others I take notice when they post things. I found most of these sites by seeing what others were reading, and just finding them on my own. Google Reader can help you with both.

Google Reader has a section at the top left with information about your stuff. One of the options is Browse for Stuff, this is where the rubber meets the road and you will get ton of feeds to read. Here you will find bundles to get you started such as News, Sports, Staff Picks as well as bundles from your friends if you are also following people with Reader. Above the bundles, you can search for feeds and look at recommendations. Recommnedations are “new feeds are generated by comparing your interests with the feeds of users similar to you.” (quote from Google). There should be plenty here to get you going.

Also note the People you follow section. Once you start sharing items and you have a share items page (see my link above) others with Google Reader accounts can follow you. This gives Reader a little bit of a social network feel. If you start following people you will see when they share and like items in the articles themselves. This section, once you follow some, will also let you only see items that others have shared so if you follow people that are similar to you there is a good chance you will see topics that you are interested in. You can also filter out and see items that they commented on and not just reshared!

As you end up with a lot of articles popping up in your reader, you will find that you just don’t have enough time to read them all, and that is ok (remember to breathe!). I regularly Mark All as Read when there are a ton if items especially after I have been on vacation or not been on reader for a few days. Remember, if something is important and happening and you miss it the first time around, it will come around again. So don’t try and kill yourself thinking “What did I miss!”

I know you have seen, as I have, comparisons of IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari talking about which one is faster and what features they provide, but I think some of this charting is a little off balance. I find that my time is divided between several OSes including Windows, Mac, and Linux so if I was choosing a default browser that would leave IE out of the question. I know that Windows (collectively) is the most popular desktop, but IE only runs on Windows and for some IE is not an option. (IE9 is not an option if you run XP even)

With the OS a factor, IE is out of the question and has been for me at least for quite some time. So, I am left with Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Safari isn’t a bad choice, but if you are not running a Mac or an iDevice, it feels like an app that is running in an emulator…sort of the same way I feel when I run Windows apps on Linux with WINE. I like a native feel, and I just don’t get that.

Now I am down to two, Firefox and Chrome. I really see these as mostly equals at this point, with a couple of differences that sets them apart. First off, and I know not everyone cares about printing, but I have to give Firefox an edge here. Chrome does not provide print previews, so at print time you have to choose wisely. I do have some apps that rely on printing at work, so this is something I noticed. I read somewhere that Chrome does not provide previews because of licensing of the PDF engine is problematic (citation needed) I am not buying that, Goole includes Flash in Chrome as a partnership with Adobe, certainly they would get this done. (Update: I just read that print previews are coming in Chrome 11)

Both Firefox and Chrome are both pretty much feature peers I almost have to call this a tie. I really love them both. Firefox is very flexible and configurable. Chrome is smooth and polished, it’s hard to choose. They both have syncing services which is important to me now. However, I will give Chrome a slight edge because to me it seems a little quicker.

Note: I am not an Opera hater! I like Opera, but just never really used it for day to day.