Projects Possible

I have moved my cell service to Sprint… there will be another review of what an absolutely AWFUL transition that was… This review will focus on my new phone - The Mogul.

This device is made by HTC and I must say that when I was with my prior cell provider I had a very early version of this phone.  Perhaps this review may be tainted with just a little bit of familiarity bias.

I use my cellular phone for work.  In fact I rarely carry it unless I travel for work.  When I am using it there are two primary modes of operation.  As a phone for communicating with customers and employees, and to help me manage my email mess.  (I get a couple hundred pieces of email daily.)

Setup for me was pretty straight forward.  As I said I was already familiar with the basic operations of Windows Mobile 6 and the interface of contacts and email.  I had the phone fully synchronized with our corporate Exchange (Webmail) server in a matter of minutes.  (before I left the mall)

Active Sync is not my favorite application in the world but one that is a necessity if you want to send data to the phone.  In my XP environment I have had difficulties getting Active Synch to recognize when the phone is connected and IF the phone is connected when I boot it will sometimes keep my PC from booting.  Since I don’t actually use it to sync my email, calendar or contacts I hardly ever have it connected but of course I do use it to send music to the device, programs, etc.

The Mogul seems to be much more stable than my 8125 was.  I have been using it for a few weeks now and I have never had to force a reboot.  (Power Off)  I also find that it moves between applications much quicker.   

I find the buttons and roller knob to be positioned well although I would have preferred the buttons on the keyboard that perform the menu actions to be positioned below the text on the screen instead of at each end of the keyboard. 

Speaking of the slideout keyboard this is the PRIMARY reason I ended up with this phone.  When I first moved over to Sprint I tried the “Touch”.  This phone is also by HTC but it did not have a keyboard at all and I found it very difficult for me to use the phone to type email on the touch sensitive screen.  I then moved to the Motorola Q and found that the keys were a bit too small and I was spending more time correcting spelling errors than actually composing the email.  The buttons on this keyboard are a bit larger allowing my thumbs to perform the typing.  Again maybe it is a familiarity thing but I really struggled with the other two choices.

Couple of things I am concerned about…  First the sliding screen to reveal the keyboard seems already to be getting a bit weak and it appears that from just normal wear and tear in the case, etc.. that it is slightly askew when it is closed.  I decided to carry the phone “insurance” due to this sliding screen and prior experience.   I’m also a bit concerned about the coverage and while I understand this has a lot to do with the service provider - Sprint - but both the Touch and the Q that I had prior to my Mogul were able to get cellular coverage in my home.   My Mogul is unable to get coverage. 

Overall, I am quite happy with this phone and I would put it on my recommend list.  You have touch screen capability as well as a decent sized keyboard… it is “zippy”, it takes advantage of many (not all) of the Sprint features like Sprint Navigation and Phone as Modem (If you want Sprint TV you will have to use a different device). 

It was pointed out to me by a reader via email that I haven’t really kept you all in the loop with my Xobni saga… So this brief post will hopefully get you all up to speed and give you some insight of what I am working through and still hope to get resolved.

Unfortunately, I still have Xobni uninstalled.  There are two primary hurdles that still present themselves which I am currently unable to get past on my primary work machine.

First, I periodically use a Satellite connection through a VPN to connect to our corporate email Exchange server.  When I operate in that environment with Xobni installed, my Outlook become unbearably slow.  What is unbearably slow… well let’s just say that I could type a complete sentence pick up the phone, look up a phone number and dial that number and when I look at the screen the sentence will not be visible in its entirety.  (In all fairness to what I consider to be a great application this slowdown does not seem to exist on my high speed (DSL) connection when connected through our VPN.)  Since I spend about 40-50% of my time in that satellite environment I can’t deal with the extreme slowness.

Second, is that I still have the issue of improper shutdown of Outlook.  This causes corruption in my mailstores which take absolutely forever to rebuild when I restart Outlook.  Things that I have tried to do to resolve this problem…

Archive messages - I have nearly 100,000 messages and I have now broken them all into separate mailstores by year to get their file sizes down.

Upgrade to Outlook 2007 - Recently I made a change to Outlook 2007 thinking perhaps there may have been an issue with 2003 an the interaction with other applications.  (I had another selfish reason - I wanted the ClearContext beta and right now it only runs on 2007)

Rebuild the mailstores with ScanPST - I have rebuilt each and every one of the mailstores (archives included) thinking that any errors that would be found and corrected may ultimately resolve the shutdown problem.

Uninstalled other Outlook applications - This would include my most favorite application of all ClearContext.  The problem doesn’t seem to be tied to addons because I had the same result.

In fairness again, you should know that I have a second machine that I use for personal mail and it does not have this Second problem.  I don’t carry this machine up to the lake house so I have no idea if it has the first.

I have been in email contact with the Xobni support department on these issues and have tried multiple things believing that there may be a solution in place.   Support for the most part is quite responsive unfortunately they just can’t seem to figure out how to resolve these two showstopper issues for me.

So the bottom line for me is to periodically install the app and see if I am able to close down Outlook without either a C Runtime error or an Outlook error indicating that things didn’t close properly.  Once I consistently get shutdown happening then I will try it on the Satellite connection.

On a side note, even though I have these two problems I would encourage you to try Xobni if you haven’t.  The search capability is absolutely incredible, and the contact information and management is what Outlook should have done!

They just entered into open (non-invite) beta so the application is available to all.  (Make sure that if you experience either of my two problems that you let their support department know about it!!!)  You can see their press release here or better yet just go to the Xboni website and download it.

You know I am always looking for productivity tips and tricks, particularly in the area of email since I am literally inundated with hundreds of them a day.  In the area of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) - 43 Folders shares their 5 tips.   Elegantly simple yet absolutely right on track…  I can honestly say that I practice all of these and with great success.   My favorite is 1 and 5.  Check less often and if you have no intention of doing anything with the email just file it! - either the circular file (ie. delete) or into a folder.

1. Shut off auto check
2. Pick off easy ones
3. Write less
4. Cheat
5. Be honest

When you are there you might also check out the little Related area just to the right of the article.  You will find a couple of other great nuggets of email productivity information there as well. 

Remember that email should be a tool that enables communication.  What I am finding in this day and age is that while people certainly communicate it is becoming ever more difficult to get things done as you read through the avalanche of email with useless, unnecessary communication. We’ve reached communication overload because it is so easy now.   Stay productive by incorporating a few of these useful tips.

Projects Possible is a pretty young blog.  We don’t have high Google rankings and we don’t get thousands and thousands of hits per day (at least not yet) but we certainly seem to get a fair share of comment spam.  These are the spammers that want to post comments to my valid postings to get you to go to their porn site, or their prescription drug site or any myriad of other non appropriate or sales related Internet destinations.

WordPress allows me to block this spam in a number of ways including Akismet (their spam filter plugin) and options to not post comments automatically but to wait until they have been approved by me.   Unfortunately, I do not have the time needed to review every piece of spam so Akismet has been a lifesaver for me.   I can periodically just load up my comments and see that Akismet has already flagged them as spam.   With one click they are gone and if I never do anything with them in 30 days they are automagically gone.

Bloggers beware…  If you are new to blogging you need to get yourself protected and sooner rather than later.  I found when I first started the blog that I very rarely received a piece of spam but now it can be literally a hundred or more in a weekend and as I continue to post additional content and opinion it just gives them that many more messages to latch onto.  Do yourself a favor, get your spam protection in place early!

I have updated the blog to the current version of WordPress. I have also modified the theme and have removed most of the widgets (these will be coming back) I just need to work through HOW I want them to come back.

If you have any problems with anything on the site please let me know and I will get it corrected as quickly as I can. You may have to search for a few things as I begin a major cleanup of Categories and Tags. As I’ve learned more about what I want to write about, my original structure just doesn’t make sense so you will see changes here as well.

Enjoy the blog!

As many of you know, WordPress is now out with their 2.5 version.  There are a number of plugins that I use that are NOT going to work so I thought now might be time to do a thorough review, clean up the old, make way for the new, reclassify things.   Call it Spring Cleaning for Projects Possible.

There may be times over the weekend that the blog will be unreachable as I work through things.  I might even play with a new theme or two.  I’m finding that I’ve had a couple of comments about things being somewhat difficult to find so I might simplify.   I love 1Blog (my current theme) but if you aren’t using the features it doesn’t do any good to have them right?

Stay tuned… we’ll see what happens!

Stumbleupon is one of the many many social bookmark sites that are available to the Internet surfer.  These bookmark sites allow you to save/remember sites and posts that you have visited or read.  You can then share those posts with others on the same network and in some cases offer additional insight about the post.

I mention Stumbleupon in particular for a couple of reasons…  First, I am intrigued by the concept and I really enjoy “stumbling” from site to site in the categories that I enjoy.  Stumbleupon has been likened to “channel surfing” for the Internet.  The second reason is related to site traffic.  I can usually tell when I have a post that has been bookmarked on one of the social bookmark sites.  Site traffic soars!  But what is the quality of the visitor.   I think in the case of Stumbleupon, more than the others, you get a reader clicking into your site, they read the title or see the picture and then stumble on if you don’t immediately capture their interest. 

All of this has me asking the question… How important is Stumbleupon to me?  Should I be building my posts specific to that crowd?  How can I build my posts to work for ALL (or at least most) of the bookmark sites?

Do you have a story to tell?  Do you want to get it published? Maybe Self Publishing is the answer!

Many years ago my mother wrote a children’s book.  I just loved this book.  It was a take on “Row Row Row Your Boat” and was a journey that the child was taking down the stream and all of the things that he might see.  We submitted the book to multiple publishing companies for consideration and they all came back with rejection letters.  At that point I just kind of let it die.

As I think about that little book, I now can’t help but wonder if perhaps self-publishing might be an option.  If you look at an Internet site like Author House it just seems so easy.  I do my little bits of writing here on this blog and I would probably never publish a book… but I think I might like to revive my mother’s children’s book ambitions.

Have you ever self-published?  I would love to hear of your experiences…

I recently read an article about blog and website promotion where the author was offering tips for bloggers to help increase their traffic.  One of the simplest of suggestions was to simply ask readers to link to you and you do the same for them.  So the purpose of this post is to layout the offer for you to do a shameless plug of your blog or website in exchange for allowing me to do the same.  (Reciprocal linking.)

The ground rules are going to be pretty simple…  I’m going to periodically create a post that will have a direct link to a page on your blog.  All I ask is that you do the same.   Give me a link in a post on your blog. 

What do you need to do?   Simply leave a comment on this thread with the following information:  

1. The URL you want to link to. (your domain URL is fine)
2. Some text the describes your post the post I am linking to in #1. (your site focus if linking to your domain URL)
3. The URL of a link-back to me… www.projectspossible.com - A general purpose blog where the author shares things that he WORKS on, PONDERS, and ENJOYS!

Exclusions:  I won’t post adult sites and/or sites that condone illegal activities or topics.  I also reserve the right to NOT post content that I do not believe is approprite for my general family audience.   

Just for future reference I am in the process of creating a TOPSITE for Weblogs for the purpose really of sharing links.   I will let all of the commenters know when it is fully operational so you can add your site

It’s the same old story… You just sit down for dinner or you settle in to watch your favorite program on television and the phone rings.  It’s one of those pesky telemarketing firms wanting to sell you the latest and greatest things since sliced bread, or the carpet cleaning company offering you some great deal on the newest dry technology carpet cleaning available.  I get so tired of it and I want it all to just stop.  I didn’t ask you to call me and when you do you are now on my list to NEVER BUY from.

But you can start playing hardball with these guys… You need to “Get off their List”, “Detail the Violations” and “Sue”

First - Get off their list… 

In the US there is a national Do Not Call registry.  You can put your telephone number(s) - both landline and mobile - on this list and telemarketing firms are not supposed to call the numbers that are listed. Registration is free, and while it certainly isn’t foolproof it has helped to cut down tremendously on the robo calls (calls made by a computer) that I was getting from the satellite television providers.  

The general idea here is that telemarketing firms have 31 days from the date of your registration to remove you from their call lists.  There are however a number of exemptions that you should probably be aware of…

• The registry is for personal numbers only, not businesses. 
• Calls on behalf of political organizations, charities and telephone surveys are excluded. (surveyors can not try to sell you something)
• Calls from companies in which you had a prior business relationship are allowed to call you for 18 months from the date of your last purchase.
• You can authorize a company in writing to call you even if you are on the do not call registry.

To register you just need to go to the website and enter your phone numbers… you do need to have an email address if your register on the website because you MUST respond to the email that is sent to you.

Second - Detail the Violations…

The best thing for you to do here is to keep a notebook or piece of paper by your phone.  When you receive a telemarketing call you should log the phone number (if you have caller-id) as well as the date and time, the company that called, and the person you were talking to.  

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