blog.payne.org

I bought a Chumby to play with — I don’t quite get it.  Yet.

It’s an alarm-clock sized device, with a color touch LCD display.  It displays Flash widgets you select in a continuous cycle, typically for 20-30 seconds per widget.  My widget set:  clock, weather widget, stock quote widget, and a few others.  Widgets can be interactive, using the touch screen for input.  You configure things on the Web, and the device downloads the config.

I was attracted to the openness:  full source code, etc.  I have a few ideas for displaying info from my home phone switch, my alarm system, etc.

But as configured, its sort of like a tiny version of the business waiting room display or Captivate displays in elevators, cycling through “stuff” to keep me occupied while I wait.  But in my home or office, that use isn’t  helpful.

Maybe I’m missing something?  More thinking required.

My son bought an iPod Touch today.  If Apple were to add an earpiece and microphone, they’d have all the hardware needed to be a Wifi VOIP phone.

So close!

If you’re a regular blog reader, it’s easy to use your reader as a topic tracker.  You can do any Google News or Google Blog search and subscribe to the results as an RSS feed.  Some readers (such as BlogBridge) have the built-in ability to construct these “smart feeds”.

I use this method to track a long list of interest topics:  news about companies I’ve invested in, competitors, people I work with, etc.  It’s a very efficient way to cover a range of topics.

We’ve got a pretty busy family with lots of moving parts:  three kids, cars, houses, doctors, parents, cats, etc.

We use a private Wiki to keep the collective family notes, and it’s working really well.  It’s accessible from anywhere (access controlled), and we put just about everything in it, including:  kid’s teacher’s name and email, account info & contacts, neighbor info and contacts, my son’s girlfriend’s cell phone #, frequent flyer numbers, notes we need to keep track of for next year’s tax return, the secret number at the power company you can call when the power gets flaky in our town, recipes, genealogy links, contact info for neighbors in NH, etc.

We avoid identifying account info (numbers, social security, birthdays, etc.) in the event it is compromised.  It’s searchable, and it works really well.  If you have a busy family, I strongly recommend it (even my non-tech wife uses it).

(I self-host, but for most folks, I would recommend PBwiki).

VentureBeat is doing a new experiment, linking from their site to VC firm reviews on The Funded.

I’m fascinated by The Funded and the fact that it even exists.  Has venture capital become such as commodity (e.g. in terms of the large number of VC professionals, amount of money available, etc.) that it can support a full-time review site?  Yikes!

One way to discover new blogs is to read shared links from other bloggers. When you find an article you like, go visit the blog.

For example, I find a lot of new blogs from Scoble’s shared links feed.

If you’re not reading Ted Dintersmith’s blog about his family’s 10-month trip around the world, you should. It’s a great story and Ted’s a great writer.

Hello World!

I’m starting a blog, as if the world needs a new blogger, and contrary to my previous notes on why wikis are better than blogs (for some types of content). I’ve since figured out (I’m slow) that blogs are as much about distribution as they are about content.