My parents recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. So my sisters and I held a celebration at the Four Seasons in Vancouver … and we also created a book showcasing my parents’ lives and our life as a family. I used Blurb to create the book. It was great, but as with all projects...
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Here we plan buildings, developments, roads, and so on. In England they plan forests. Take a look: More details here. Interestingly, in England 850 acres is considered a big forest.
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Who makes their clients heroes? Who makes their clients feel like purchasing a product is a significant life choice? Who makes their clients an instant member of a cool, exclusive, and yet world-wide club … the club where all the smart people, the happy people, the successful people go? Apple, of course: (Whether you...
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From the Google blog: We’ve known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we’ve seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is...
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Matt Rissel interviewed 100 highly successful people, trying to find the tools they used to make themselves successful. Only problem? There wasn’t any tool commonality. However, there was a principle commonality. Here are the top 10 common principles that highly successful people share. They tend to … Have passion for what they do Surround...
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From the somewhat cool and gently gratifying department: I’m in the Shmap. What is the Shmap, you ask? Exploring a Schmap Guide is a uniquely interactive experience: maps and guide content are dynamically integrated, allowing intuitive, real-time access to reviews and photo slideshows for places of interest. They’re available for iPhone and iPod touch,...
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I signed up for a 60-day trial of Apple’s new MobileMe service today only to find it is not currently compatible with OS X 10.4.11, more commonly known as “Tiger.” The latest version of Mac OS X is 10.5.x, or “Leopard.” My home machine runs Leopard; my PowerBook still runs Tiger – and the...
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I love seeing what smart creative people can do …
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If someone could please explain to me why this application is in the “Productivity” category of iPhone applications, I would really like to know. The entire application consists of a “game” of holding a button on your iPhone (or iPod touch) for as long as possible. Unshockingly, “Hold On” is the name of the...
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No time to publish much right now, except that yes, I finally have an iPhone. And yes, I’m pretty pumped about it. It’s unnatural, a grown man being so excited by shiny plastic toys. More later …
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Are high gas prices driving faster adoption of distance education? Distance education has already been growing rapidly over the last few years. But some are now seeing an even quicker uptake … and connecting that fact to higher gas prices. From a recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “It’s getting to the...
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Given the astronomical iPhone plans that Rogers is foisting on Canadian consumers, it’s a good time to support David McGuinty’s cell phone costs petition. (McGuinty is a Liberal member of parliament.) Here’s the petition: Get Connected Fairly Act I’ve signed. 15 people have signed in the last 10 minutes while I’ve been putting this...
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Posting a link that does not go to where a reasonable web surfer thinks it will go is annoying, tacky, and perhaps even dishonest. Here’s what I’m talking about – a recent story at ReadWriteWeb: In fact, in the first paragraph, there are no less than 7 links – and no less than 7...
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US citizens should be worried about this: Hidden deep in the Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision inserted by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America’s small businesses.The provision, which was added by the bill’s managers without debate two weeks ago, would require the nation’s...
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Five times in the past 3-4 weeks I’ve written and published a post on this blog only to come back a day later and see it not actually published and live. What’s going on? The question in my mind is: am I actually publishing the post or just hitting Save? As you can see...
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Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology, social media, education, innovation ... and anything else that catches my fancy.