Its taken me roughly four months to get here, but three days ago my notebook finally arrived.

I looked for a long time for a notebook with the following:
1. SSD
2. 13.3″ max screen / < 4 lb (basically not too bulky).
3. Docking station
4. A powerful enough gfx card that wouldn't choke on powering dual 20"+ (1600 res) monitors.

Lots of notebooks came close, but unfortunately none sealed the deal. Turns out to make the notebook under 4 pounds requires removing the circuitry that allows you to dock - oh dear. And USB docks are horrible - never get them.

So the specs (click):

So now its all nicely tied in. I can undock my notebook, and all my work is with me. I come home, pop it in, close the screen, and I have a 21″ + 22″ widescreen, with my speakers, printer, mouse, keyboard, keyboard (yes I have two connected, don’t ask why heh) all connected and ready for use. Pop the phone into the cradle and voila contacts notes all synched (I do have bluetooth I just haven’t tried using it yet). I’m not even using a wired connection into the dock - Wireless N powers me here - so bringing it with me into the living room is absolutely cake.

Oh and if you travel, definitely get the ’slim-adapter’ (if they over it). So much less bulky and (with Dell at least) a lot more connection options (airplane, car, etc).

I’m also trying to get used to Office 2007, odd little creature it is.

I am not a fan of technology. I appreciate what it can do (and does!), but I am far from an unbridled fan. Things like social networks and instant messaging, while I can appreciate, also make me angry. People talk about being ’so connected’ and about ‘becoming a source’ but I see it as ‘disconnecting the vital face to face connection.’ Multiple studies have shown that in a conversation, less than 10% of your meaning is conveyed in the actual words spoken. The rest are conveyed in tone and in body language. You can try to replicate tone via emoticons ( *giggles* /sarcasm etc ) but body language is nigh impossible. To make a true connection (one of the top over-abused words in social networking) you must meet face to face. Instant messaging can also be great - but also a curse. Chatting with multiple people, distracted by the ‘next’ conversation - if you want filler talk, sure it works. If you want to direct employees - sure it works. If you want a real conversation - an absolute failure.

Recently, I was talking to a friend, and he gave me a book. He told me to read it - that it was a “fun little book” that waxed between imaginative and philosophical at the same time. I read it pretty quickly (two days, it was indeed a light book), and I felt inspired.

I love books. I am sure print is going down, and newspapers and book publishers are ’struggling’ as their margins decrease. But money is still there. Profit is still there. Nothing beats a nice solid book - the smell of the pages, the texture of the cover, the excitement of turning over a page.

So I read that book, I felt inspired, and then I sat down and thought. I wanted my wife to read this book (she is currently in Argentina for six more weeks). But I didn’t want her to bring back the book. Instead I wanted the book to continue on its own journey. Just like I have my journey, and my wife has hers, so should the book! So I scribbled a little note in the book. The gist was simple:

By chance, this book fell into my lap. I read it, I learned from it, and I loved it. But a book just sitting idly on a bookstand is a sad book indeed. So - I will mark that I’ve read this book, and I will pass it on. And I ask that you, whoever is reading it, do the same. Mark your name, read it, and pass it on. Do not include personal information - reading the book and having passed it on will be our link.

And so tomorrow the book will be on her way. There she will give it to one of her new friends, who will then travel around the world with it. And they will continue this cycle. And the book will continue its journey, connecting people in ways they could not imagine.

I try to read two books a month - one fiction, one non-fiction. But I will only pass on books that deserve to be read again and again. And I hope others can follow this. I have no grand illusions of everyone doing this - in fact, if everyone did do it, it would ruin the magic.

My ultimate goal of course would be one day, 10 years from hence, when meeting someone new, we would share that we once had a book and due to the force of a little inscription, had passed it on. That would be a grand ‘connection’ indeed.

#1 - it is now called iBegin Labs. Unfortunately too many people mis-understood the play on ‘beta’ and going for ‘gamma.’ Lesson learned - don’t be too clever for your own good, go with the simple.

We have the updates here, but the most interesting is the launch of iBegin Places.

I think it will be interesting to see how this pans out. Ideally geo-aware people will add their neighborhoods, and use polygons mapped out by others. The actual creation process is quite simple. But will people do it? I have no clue. But it should be interesting to see in what directions it goes. And to show the system in action, you can see the Zillow neighborhood data mapped out (get the original neighborhood data here).

That you cannot do a JS popup ‘add to bookmark’ for FireFox that you can for IE.

When we launched iBegin Share, this was one of the most requested features - “Do a ‘add to bookmark’ that works in IE, FF, Opera, Safari” Except the problem is that it can only work in IE. FF has something - it pops up and says ‘Add to Bookmark’ - except it really opens it in the sidebar!

So when I saw this page had ‘Favorites’ using the AddThis tool, I had to try it out. And just as I thought - actually click in the bookmark resulted it being opened in a sidebar.

I wonder if the guys running Topix realized this?

I needed to locate a person. I didn’t know exactly who. But I knew what company, and in what area.

I was asking my friend Frank (of Domain Name News) if he knew anybody in that organization, and he pointed out something very obvious - did I search LinkedIn.

It was such a moment of ‘duh’ that the simplicity of obviousness of it missed me. So I search for the company name, and lo and behold, the #2 result is the exact person I’m looking for. The estimated size of the company: 5,001 - 10,000. Even more brilliant? We are three levels separate (a contact of mine knows a contact who knows this person).

So now instead of having a clue about who I need to talk to, I have a specific name. And a location. Now I can call the correct office and get the person I want. Fantastic!

I’ve always been very “ugh” about the entire social network thing, as friendships (to me) are something on a very personal level. To that end I keep two separate Facebook accounts. But this utilization of LinkedIn and the value of my inherent contacts has really opened my eyes.

Anyway, this ranks as one of those “so obvious you might miss it” points. I asked about a dozen people (almost all on LinkedIn), and Frank as the only one to nail it.

A while ago the Flicker.com for sale story made the rounds. It was a simple site - stating what had been offered, and their status (all rejected). If you read the comments, I mention Sahar owns the domain - and he commented denying any ownership.

It now redirects to a site called Assista. A kind of meld between a search engine and Yahoo Answers. A site owned by Sahar. I wonder how Yahoo feels about this?

Mike Boland got to chat with Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman and posted his thoughts.

Some very interesting information, and excellent points about the qualitative factors of a review (which seems to be missing in most UGC conversations).

But I did laugh at this:

Stoppleman is excited about the directions the mobile world is moving …

Is there anyone in local not excited about where the mobile space is going?

So a while ago, I bought a Vudu. It is like an Apple TV - connect it to the internet, hook it up to your TV, and buy/rent movies through the system.

Yesterday, while attempting to watch I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, the thing died. Or it didn’t die per se - it would play the movie for about 30 seconds, before dying and rebooting. A tad bit annoying.

So I posted on the forum, and helpful people swooped in. I called the customer support number, and even though it was 9:30 am PST, the automated system said that customer service opened up at 9:00 am.

Uhoh … this could be bad.

I called back half an hour later, and had customer support on the phone in about 30 seconds. The conversation went like so:

Ahmed: My Vudu isn’t working, *story goes here*
Operator: Sir can I have your name
Ahmed: Ahmed Farooq
Operator: Okay, found it. There must be a glitch with your hardware. You will be sent a new Vudu, and a fedex shipping slip to send back your current Vudu
Ahmed: That was easy
Operator: Have a good day.

The entire conversation lasted maybe 90 seconds. From dial to hang up was < 3 minutes. Color me happy!

In terms of the actual product, some quick thoughts:

• It is damn easy to use. The remote is absolutely wonderful.
• It really needs to remember preferences. Eg I only use it to rent movies. Why it can’t do that boggles my mind
• I can’t see my viewing history through the Vudu. Boo!
• I hate the 24 hour rental period. 48 hours would be more than enough. Too many times something comes up while I’m watching a movie and I have to pause.
• I know this is a licensing issue/headache, but the delay in getting some movies to rental (and the price for some older movies) is annoying. Really annoying.
• I like the HD offerings. I watched 3:10 to Yuma HD and it was absolutely crisp on my 42″
• Some of the categorization is mind boggling. Eg I believe The Hills have Eyes (or similar) was categorized as ‘romantic’. Speaking of categorization, need more (eg animated!)

Overall I’m very happy. Extremely convenient, fast, and easy to use. Right now it’s like a 90% - if they could get release dates fixed and the prices for older movies more balanced, it would be high up in the upper 90s.

So we’ve finally launched what I had touched on before - iBegin Gamma. Consider it our version of Google Labs. Let us know what you think.

I always found Brand Power ads to be super-cheesy, but always intriguing. I pride myself on ‘turning off’ of ads, but I actually respond to those ads.

Turns out I’m not the only one.

Just like sites like Craigslist and 37signals do well due to their emphasis on simplicity (while others go ga-ga over complexity), looks like the simplicity concept works well in TV advertising too.

Has anyone noticed that more than half of the ads seem to ‘hide’ the product until the last 2 seconds? What is up with that?