Jason Purdy's Virtual World

Elon Musk Is a Badass

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:48:31 -0400

Elon Musk is a badass. He starts pay pal, then moves on to change transportation on Earth with Tesla (and a solar company to boot) and finally space travel. He makes a great point with this Ted interview that the vast majority of the cost of getting to space is the rocket itself. The fuel is a fraction of a percent, so if we can reuse the rockets, than we can get to space very cheapily. So what are they buildling…? A rocket that lands. Crazy stuff.

For more crazy space stuff, check out Mars One: A company funding a one way trip to Mars. http://mars-one.com/en/

Mad Men Theme #ringtone for your iPhone or Android

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 21:28:00 -0400

Who watched the episode of mad men last night? Soooo good. Celebrate the last season with this ringtone for iOS devices and Android and other phones

6 Time Saving iOS Tips You Aren't Using

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:09:20 -0400

I love saving time by making the common place more efficient, especially when it is with something I use for hours everyday. Here are a few quick iPhone tips I have found to be super helpful.

Back to drafts

For my personal Gmail I use Mailbox, which can’t compose drafts, but for work I use Apple’s default mail app. I write a lot of drafts on the subway in case someone has already responded while I’ve been underground. When I get service again, I check my latest emails and then, instead of going through a myriad of folders to find previous drafts, I simply hold the compose button. Easy and quick.

Recent Browsing History

Similarly, if you hold the back button in Safari, you will be able to jump to all your previous pages. Very useful when you’re jumping between links from Facebook, Twitter and email, but then not sure which tab you were on.

Custom Vibrations

Simple, quick and unique vibrations are easy to make and extremely useful. I set my wife’s to three quick pulses. Now I know when my phone buzzes in my pocket who it is. I just wish I could do it for apps too.

Speak to Me

Your iPhone can speak highlighted text to you. Go into General settings -> Accessibility. Very useful for long text, like emails or webpages. For a fun afternoon, try highlighting emoji text (which if you haven’t activated on your mom’s phone you’re missing out).

Panorama from left to right

There’s been a few times when I couldn’t quite record a panorama from the left to the right as it is by default. The light wasn’t right or I wanted to make sure something to the my right was in the shot, but could be more flexible to the left. Tap on the right side of the panorama area and the arrow will flip over.

Take a photo while recording

Notice after you start recording a video that you can take a photo with the camera button in the top right of the screen.

Hope these were useful!

h/t MacWorld

Boss Button!

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:00:22 -0400

NCAA is streaming the games live from http://www.ncaa.com/ (a legal streaming option for a pro sports event in the USA, imagine that). On their full screen option they are offering a “Boss Button” in case your boss walks by your desk. Pretty funny.

Review of Mailbox After One Month

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:32:00 -0400

The proof is in the pudding…or in this case, the home-screen: I am still using Mailbox as my default gmail client on my phone after over a month. I wrote my initial thoughts on Mailbox after using the app for a few hours, I figured it would be good to get a thorough review down, especially considering they were just bought by Dropbox (which I’m very excited about because they aren’t getting shut down via acquisition like the last great email app, Sparrow). So, some thoughts on Mailbox. Going to skip all the “I am an inbox zero email user” stuff as I’m sure you know this by now!

I left my last review with a mention of “32,000 open conversations” in app. I was asked to archive all and felt squeamish as I didn’t know what that meant. DO NOT FRET, your email will be fine. All they are doing is moving your “inbox” folder to the “archive” folder. It will still be searchable as it is now. If you dismissed the box like I did, you can get the box to show up by clicking the “help me get to zero” at the bottom of your inbox. I do recommend having one last review in Gmail before installing Mailbox in case you have any urgent flags or unread emails. If you have flags just make a note of them and come back to it after you install Malibox, once you start you aren’t going to go back.

Swipe for all

Mailbox allows you to control your email like never before. Although simple, the app is very fast and very powerful, allowing you to categorize your emails quickly and to get to #inboxzero as fast as possible. Here’s a typical interaction with the app:

Let’s say I look at my inbox in the afternoon and see 12 emails. Based on the subject and sender I am going to read 4 of them now, so I read them and keep searching through my email. I know that 3 of them I don’t have time to read today, so I swipe to right and set one as remind me next week and two as remind me tomorrow and poof, they are out of my inbox. Now here’s my favorite part of the Mailbox app, for all of the rest of my emails, including 5 I have no interest reading, and the 4 I already read, I simply swipe the inbox as complete and BOOM, inbox zero!

Now, the app isn’t perfect and I do have a few suggestions.

Desktop App Please

The main frustration I have with Mailbox is that it is only mobile. A desktop app would be great for all the content that requires a full browser: dentist site that is flash only, documents that require a full computer, or a web form that isn’t laying out on mobile.

More Remind Me When Options

The “remind me when…” feature needs a lot of tweaking. It’s part of the core functionality that makes this so powerful, but reminding me to look at an email three hours from now does not help. Reminding me to look at it over the weekend does, which works great. How about swipe to remind me Monday or to unsubscribe from that subscription. Gmail’s “spam” button does that very well. Not only is that content marked as spam, but they take care of unsubscribing you from the list as well.

Since I’m going between Gmail and Mailbox so often, I wish Mailbox had a better ‘remind me when I’m in gmail’. Flags did this well for me before and I try to just leave emails in my inbox to check up on later, but then I can’t do the ‘inbox swipe’ mentioned above.

So, Is This a ToDo App?

The company first built Orchestra, a fantastic sharing to-do app, but felt that email was a big to-do list. So why can’t I create a to-do in Mailbox, or somehow create an entry that uses all the ‘remind me when’ alerts that are built into the app? I have emailed myself from my work account multiple times for this purpose.

Really, No Drafts?

Lastly, how does this app not have drafts? Very strange thing to miss out on.

All those things said, I still love the app and would love to have this for my Outlook exchange as well. Congrats on the acquisition and look forward to it only getting better!

One more idea…Unsubscribe from Threads

Here is another idea for Mailbox to try out: unsubscribe from thread. Don’t you hate it when you get into an email thread with 40 people regarding an event that you can’t go to? You still want to get emails from your friends in the future, just not these emails.

My Bracket! Sign up for the contest...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:35:21 -0400

My Bracket! Sign up for the contest at http://sportsillustrated.collegehoops.upickem.net?xid=em_marmadness, then, after you log in, click on the “My Groups” tab, and then click on “Join a Private Group,” and submit the following:

Contest URL: http://sportsillustrated.collegehoops.upickem.net?xid=em_marmadness
Group Name: Road to ATL
Group Password: si.com

The Black Swan (Book Review)

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:52:25 -0400

My wife and I recently took a vacation down to Mexico and although we had a rough start to the trip thanks to American Airlines, we enjoyed a very relaxing week of books, food, ocean and sun.

On our vacation I re-read Ender’s Game, definitely one of my favorite books, and Let My People Go Surfing by the founder of Patagaonia, which is an enjoyable easy read on how to run business in an environmentally friendly manor.

I had been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan off and on for the past two months. One of my favorite parts of vacation is the uninterrupted reading session in which you can get really engrossed in a book. The book is a condensed read and not easily ingested in 10-15 minute increments on a subway commute, but I very much enjoyed it once I could sit down for 2 hours and think through some of his concepts.

The name of the book comes from the idea that until European explorers landed on Australia in the 18th century, swans were thought to only be white. So much so, “seeing a black swan” was a similar saying as today’s “when pigs fly”. The likelihood being so unlikely that it must be impossible for a swan to be black.

Similarly, consider the story of a turkey who wakes up every day for several years without any worries, for why should he? His set of evidence for not being butchered on any given day is to compare it with every other day he’s lived, and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Well, unfortunately the next day, the turkey is brought to the slaughterhouse and that’s the end of him.

The point of both of these stories is that we do not know what we do not know. Or, said even better by William Goldman, “no one knows anything”. To Mr. Taleb, risk related to anything in life is about the uncertainty with which we don’t know what we don’t know. Black swan or the turkey.

So what should we do about it? Protect yourself from the unthinkable, especially when the cost is low and has return value is high. Diversify your portfolio, never trust a financial adviser who says something is a zero-risk investment, and most importantly, remember that just because something has never happened, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

A large part of the book is also about how most people think that what makes the human mind so unique is our ability to anticipate events. This may be true for physicists knowing that an apple will fall from the tree at a specific velocity, but the mind is actually terrible at forecasting when it comes to real life. We are as wrong about the stock market as any major event next year. The mind instead does a fantastic job of reasoning out why something was so obvious in hindsight, also referred to as the fallacy of the narrative.

We tell ourselves stories to reason the past. For instance, someone may have been successful and got very rich. As we try to determine why he was so successful we might say it’s because he went to a good school, had the right connections or worked hard, and if you do those things, you can be wealthy too. Unfortunately, in reality, he may have just got lucky and been in the right place at the right time. You never know!

The Black Swan covers a large spectrum of topics including history, philosophy, statistics and finance. Mr. Taleb can be long winded at times, and I wished he had an editor to simplify some of his points, especially with his statistical proofs, but I mostly enjoyed the book for the anecdotes and stories dispersed throughout. I should have taken notes while reading the book. Here are a few off the top of my head, there are at least a dozen others. I definitely recommend the book and let me know if you come across any that I can add to the list below!

What’s more valuable, a library full of books you have read or ones you have not read? Although a book you’ve read has reference value, the amount of value in a new book is much higher.
Let’s say there’s two hospitals in a town. One very large hospital and one small hospital. On any randomly chosen day, which hospital is more likely to have had 60% of the babies born be boys? Answer: the small hospital because they have a smaller sample set, therefore the averages swing much more widely, while the larger hospital, with a larger sample set, will have a much closer distribution between girls and boys. Put another way, think of flipping a coin 10 times and a coin 1,000 times. Much more likely to get 60% heads if only flipping 10 times.
If I asked a set of people how likely it would be for a major town in the US to flood and they answer with X%. I then ask them what the likelihood is for a town in California to flood after a major earthquake, the percentage goes up despite it being a smaller sample set! Take another example, online flight brokers offer general travel insurance on trips that includes everything from weather to terrorism, but if they offer specific terrorism insurance, for the same price and less coverage, conversions go up. The mind works better when things can be explained.
Lastly, don’t ask a barber if you need a haircut.

You can also view other book reviews at my Goodreads account.

American Airlines Sets New Low in Customer Service

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:23:00 -0400

Below is a letter I sent to American Airlines via their online form for some of the worst service I have ever witnessed, let alone experienced. I hope others continue to let them know why customers will pay extra for Virgin America whenever possible.

——

Dear American,

My wife and I flew on your airline on February 23, 2013 from New York to Cancun on flight 1671. When we arrived to the gate, I introduced myself and asked if there was any availability in business class for my pregnant wife. If there is anyone who deserves a bit of extra space, I would think it is a woman who is 7 months pregnant, right?

The gate attendant asked my name, pulled our reservation up on her computer, and then explained, “We do not give out business class seats.” I can understand that – no problem, but I was not even asked if I wanted to pay for an upgrade. Slightly taken aback, I returned to my seat, somewhat frustrated, but was quickly called back to the desk over the loudspeaker.

The attendant asked, “How many months did you say?” I confirmed that my wife was 7 months pregnant, and she proceeded to tell me that my wife would not be allowed to fly and that flying while pregnant was unsafe. Luckily, our obstetrician gave us a formal written note “just in case,” and my wife had looked up the formal policies by both the FAA and AA.com’s own website (see excerpts below).

Then another attendant named Jordan decided to chime in:

“Why on earth would take your wife on a vacation when she is 7 months pregnant? And to Mexico no less! That’s a terrible idea, what if something happens?! I mean, you can do whatever you want, but I’d never…” At which point she trailed off and I couldn’t make out what else she said. I certainly was not going to ask.

I get that someone has a different opinion, but how on earth is it your place to say that? I would not say that to a friend at a cocktail party, let alone a customer in an airport. I would also think that if caring for passengers was your job you would know the FAA guidelines.

Unfortunately, the story does not end there. As we boarded the plane, the flight attendant Jordan saw my wife and I approaching, and said, “I checked the airline policy, and you (to my wife) can still fly. It’s just not allowed within 30 days of your due date. But I would never do it. You know, I have a friend whose water broke the minute the plane took off because of the pressure! And another friend who started having contractions the plane hit cruising altitude. So you know…I would NEVER fly if I was in your condition.”

What should my wife and I have done at that point, turned around and deboarded? And then how would we get to Mexico to enjoy the hotel and vacation that we had already paid for? To us, especially to my wife, this was the worst part. You are not telling a fellow New Yorker who walks into a restaurant, “Don’t eat here – I just found a mouse in my hamburger.” To which the potential patron can judge for him or herself, turn around and choose any number of other restaurants within a short walk or cab ride away. We were getting on to a plane to take a trip to a destination that was already settled. After my wife had to hear these awful anecdotes from the flight attendant, she had to sit through the plane taking off, and then hitting cruising altitude, wondering if she might go into labor at any point in time. The additional worry added by the flight attendant was entirely inappropriate and unnecessarily stress-inducing.

Thank you American for making our decision to fly in the future that much easier as we will not be flying AA again, no matter how much cheaper your rates are.

Sincerely,

Jason Purdy

——-UPDATE AS OF 3/15!——

Thank you everyone for all the support, glad I’m not the only one who’s had to endure such bad service. A few people have asked if American Airlines responded.

I have to say I wish their actual service was as good as their socail media service teams. After posting the article on Twitter @AmericanAir responded after less than 5 minutes:

@jasonpurdy We expect our agents to be polite and helpful, Jason, and we’re sorry that isn’t what you experienced.

March 14, 2013

We went back and forth, I gave them my ID number from the email I sent it via a DM (quickly unfollowed them) and then I even got a personal call from a very apologetic representitive.

They were nice, professional and just about everything their fly attendant was not, but thing is…does all of this really make me want to fly American ever again? Absolutely not. So with that, let me ask you a question, what would they have had to do for you to fly American again?

American Airlines Pregnancy Policies

Domestic:

Doctor’s letter required if traveling within four weeks of delivery date.

Travel within seven days before due date or after delivery requires doctor’s letter plus clearance by AA special-assistance coordinator.

Restrictions based on honor policy.

International:

Doctor’s letter required if traveling within 30 days of due date, signed within 48 hours of travel.

Travel within ten days before due date or after delivery requires doctor’s letter plus clearance by AA special-assistance coordinator.

American Airlines Travel Information - FAQs

Number 14. Traveling While Pregnant

Q: What are the guidelines for traveling on American while pregnant?

A: A medical certificate is required if travel is within 4 weeks of the delivery date in a normal, uncomplicated pregnancy

For domestic flights under 5 hours, travel is not permitted within 7 days before and after the delivery date. If you should need to travel within 7 days before or after delivery, a medical certificate is required as well as clearance from our Special Assistance Coordinator.

For International travel or any flights over the water, travel is not advised within 30 days of the due date, unless the passenger is examined by an obstetrician within 48 hours of outbound departure and certified in writing as medically stable for flight. Travel within 10 days of the due date for International travel must have clearance from our Special Assistance Coordinators. Travel within 7 days after delivery requires clearance as well.

For more information, please contact a Special Assistance Coordinator through AA Reservations at 800-433-7300.

The Case of the Stolen Fruitcake

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 21:22:12 -0500

Two weeks ago, I got a call from the NYPD that a known thief in the area was apprehended walking out of my apartment building with two packages addressed to me. I told them I did not know this person, nor did I give him permission to enter our building and take our packages.

I can only imagine how many other packages he has stolen until he was finally caught. I testified before a grand jury, and he was found guilty. I then left the next day for a vacation abroad.

When I came back, I found that a NY Times reporter had left a voicemail on my cellphone and my wife’s cellphone, an @ reply on Twitter, a LinkedIn message, emails in my personal and work account, as well as an @ mention on one of my Instagram photos. Persistant eh? I ended up talking with him twice, including meeting him for photos, and you can read the article here.

Honestly, I am pretty disappointed with the article. Yes, it was only fruitcake, but this man has committed over 40 misdemeanors (not 30) over the last 10 years, including this exact crime during the recent holiday season. I appreciate Mr Wilson’s need to write for an audience and make light of the fact that what was in one of our packages was only fruitcake, but I assure you that I have taken these recents thefts seriously. I have spoken with building management and a security system has been installed.

Mostly though I am frustrated by how rarely people press charges. I didn’t have to testify before the grand jury, I could have just let him off, like half of the solved crimes in Park Slope—they are simply dismissed. I will say it again: over half of the victims of crimes that are solved in Park Slope do not press charges. And that is just the crimes that are solved, i.e. the perpetrator is caught. Think of all the crimes that are not solved.

I had a lot of time during the proceedings at the court house to talk with the arresting officer and a few of his fellow policemen. Every single day they track a thief down, whether it be for stealing a computer, jewelry or an iPhone/iPad (so common in NYC it has its own name among thieves: “Apple Picking”). “About half” of the time, they deliver back the stolen items, the victim decides not the press charges, and the criminal is released. Insane. I asked him the officer why, and he said the most common response was “I’m too busy”.

For instance, the day before our hearing, a police officer sees a young man taking a woman’s phone from her stroller while she was attending to her baby. He chased him through Prospect Park, scratches from the branches still evident the next day, and caught the guy. He handcuffed him and brought the phone back to the mother, who decided she didn’t want to press charges.

I understand that people are busy, want to give someone a second chance, and the criminal system has its issues, but I do not think that this is right and that is why I agreed to speak with Mr. Wilson from the Times, in the hopes that he would bring this situation to the attention of others. Instead we got a cute story about my mom’s fruitcake, which, as much as I love it, was not what I was hoping for.

Initial Thoughts on Mailbox

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:42:00 -0500

This morning I was granted access to the elusive startup Mailbox, wait list now over 700k and growing, which is an iPhone app that has promised to reinvent how we use email. I’ve written before how I’m an ‘inbox zero’ email user and this seemed right up my alley.

Immediately upon entry you’re given a set of instruction screens that make the app easy to use and understand. The core of Mailbox can be summed up in one of their instruction screens: “swipe to snooze”.

Mailbox is all about allowing you to view your inbox and immediately and quickly sort your mail. Read what you need to read now, delete/archive what you don’t need, and most importantly, snooze what you want to read/respond to later. Options include tomorrow morning (a cute coffee cup icon), later today, ‘after work’, ‘this weekend’, or ‘someday later’. I love that each of these is customizable. What time does your morning start, are you done with work, and what time to remind you on the weekend. I suggest David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done”, for why this will make you more productive.

Since this is only for Gmail, I will now have two separate email apps on my phone. The standard ‘Mail’ app for my work exchange email and then Mailbox for personal. I’ll post an update below after using it for a week, but the initial interactions are promising. I love the use of swiping inside a table view row, similar to the the ‘Clear’ todo app, which I highly recommend.

One minor issue I’m having upon setup is that Mailbox is showing 32,000 open conversations, despite having zero unread emails. I was given a “archive all unread” or “archive all starred” emails, but I had both upon installation, so I couldn’t do either. I now read my unread emails and had to email their support team to see how to bring that message back up.

I wrote last year about how i use email and the wonder of an app...

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:11:45 -0500

I wrote last year about how i use email and the wonder of an app that was Sparrow. Well, Sparrow got bought by Google and is now gone, but a new app, Mailbox, looks great. Can’t wait to try it in the yew year! All i can say is, anything that makes this easier, I’ll try:

Inbox zero. Daily.

parislemon:

Back in August, I wrote a post teasing Mailbox, the new app from the team behind Orchestra. Today, they’re ready to reveal a bit more. The video above offers a taste, but I’ll have more thoughts to share later on.

Put simply: this is the most excited I’ve been about an app in a long time. I’ve been testing it out for a few weeks now and it’s already the app I use most often. I say this, of course, as a happy investor, but I shit you not: if you hate email, you’re going to love this app when it comes out in a few weeks. It’s fucking amazing.

My Advice to RIM: FOES

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:00:28 -0500

As you may know, I talk to random people about their phones…a lot. People on the subway, in the elevator, people in the row in front of me at halftime; you name it. My latest obsession is asking people who have either a Windows Phone or a BlackBerry whether they like it and whether they are considering switching. Most of the time it’s because a corporate account pays for them, but I’m increasingly finding that a lot of BlackBerry users are sticking to their BlackBerries by choice, addicted to their well crafted keyboards.

There are some Android phones out there with a keyboard like the Droid, but these keyboards are horrible and the phones fall apart. Everyone I know who got the original Droid phone had to replace it within 6 months. Windows Phone had an opportunity to take the lead on enterprise level hardware (keyboard) and software (email) but they are too focused trying to fit a gaming console into the metro paradigm, while integrating with the launch of a tablet and a redesign of the largest desktop operating system in the world, all coming out at the same time.

And so this brings us back to Research in Motion, the company who makes the BlackBerry. Even our own President of the United States loves his BlackBerry. Why? Because he loves getting emails while on the go. Consultants always talk about listening to your customers. Their best customer in the entire world is showing them what the future of their company should be, and instead they throwing it all away, trying to compete with Apple and Android with their latest operating system BlackBerry 10 (BB10).

I’ve watched enough demos and used the early versions of the beta software enough to know that there are a few nifty features in BB10. RIM has developed an international keyboard that automatically recognizes different languages as you type. The camera has a feature called time shift, which allows the user to choose the best of a several photos taken just before and after the user hit ‘snap’. Balance allows the user to easily swap between work and personal environments including apps, contacts, calendar, etc.

These are all really cool features, but they are not enough for anyone to consider switching from iOS or Android and at best maintains the current RIM market share.

So here’s my advice to RIM: Stop paying developers to port Angry Birds, further showing your customer how inferior their experience is compared with his friend who has an iPhone. Stop trying to merge content and be an all inclusive device.

Instead, double down on what you do best: the best enterprise messaging device ever made. Focus on your keyboards. Focus on your contacts list and salesforce integration. Focus on BBM. Focus on being secure and available for all government agencies. But again, more than anything, focus on what you do best: a great email inbox. Otherwise, if skimp out on the hardware and the first BBM 10 phones have a crappy keyboard and your new BB10 “Hub” inbox gets muddled with LinkedIn notifications, RSS feeds and app updates, your company is toast.

Going Cloud

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:00:00 -0500

This post was originally written for the November 13th issue of Inside Mobile.

Every year between Christmas and New Years I spend a full day organizing and backing up all my data. Thousands of photos and videos, hundreds of music albums, and any personal documents I’ve created throughout the previous year. After doing this for over a decade, I’ve developed somewhat of a system for how I organize and then backup my data. Once I’m happy with how my data is sorted in its place on my local computer, I backup to an external hard drive and then, just in case, I backup my hard drive to another hard drive that I keep in a different location that, luckily, I’ve only had to use once.

This allows me to know where my data is, have instant access to any file I may need, and the reassurance that even if my computer hard drive fails, I have a backup. After I recently changed jobs, I decided to make the switch to the “The Cloud”. I have resisted moving to cloud services as I care more about my data than any other physical possession I own and having it out of my hands was a scary proposition.

Let’s start out with what “The Cloud” is not. The Cloud is not services such as photo editing or a music player. These kinds of ads by Microsoft are misleading and downright false.

Think of the cloud as simply a giant hard drive that you can access remotely - a hard drive that you can plug into via the internet. So when you talk about using the cloud to store your information, what you’re really doing is obfuscating yourself away from the reliance of a local disk drive, and uploading your files to access later via an internet connection.

Cloud storage services are not all alike and largely depend on the type of content you’re using. I do not recommend trying to use one cloud storage service for all your different types of content. I’ve identified five types of digital content that I use: 1) eBooks, 2) documents (such as Word docs, Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations, etc.), 3) music, 4) photos, and 5) videos.

eBooks

Here is the best cloud device ever built:

eBooks are the perfect content for cloud storage services because they take up very little data (1/10th the size of a song or photo, 1/1000 of an HD video) and rarely change. The copy of 50 Shades of Grey that my wife has is the same one that your mom has. We’ll come back to this aspect of differentiation, but the size of the eBooks means that you can set up a simple touch nook or standard kindle eBook reader, download your entire bookshelf and pop up right to the page of the last book you were reading in just a few minutes. That’s really incredible when you think about it. When you’re nook or Kindle is synced, you’re using cloud storage services since the books are stored on the internet and then downloaded to your eBook reader.

The same is true for more advanced tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet as far as their management of eBooks is concerned.

Documents

There are many great online cloud storage services for backing up documents online. My dad wrote about this in a previous Inside Mobile column (“Protecting Your Digital Assets, April 4, 2012). Carbonite and Microsoft SkyDrive all provide excellent ways to store, backup and share your documents. I use Google Docs for documents that are actively edited by multiple people and is the easiest service for sharing documents, but my favorite Cloud service for documents is DropBox (although box.net is good too). DropBox’s initial demo “hacked” the Apple OS X operating system and allowed a small snippet of code to automatically sync one specific folder on your Apple computer to the cloud. Add in a word doc or make changes to a PowerPoint presentation that lived in that folder and without having to do anything, they were automatically synced to DropBox and accessible by another computer or a smartphone within seconds. Steve Jobs was so impressed he offered to buy the company for 9-figures, but CEO Drew Houston declined (Forture’s history on DropBox is worth a read.) They have since grown to be a billion dollar company and are the best at automatically backing up your documents.

Music

I have almost 200GB of music spanning rock, hip-hop, and lots of electronica including very rare live DJ sets. I decided to try iTunes Match, which uploads your entire music library and then allows you to stream them on any of your Apple devices including iPods, iPhones, iPads and computers running iTunes. I was weary of deleting any music, so I did a full backup to my hard drive just in case. Except for 3-4 albums being “unavailable”, it worked great! I’m now able to use iTunes Match for around $2.00 a month ($25 a year) to maintain all of my music in the cloud. And, Apple didn’t have to transfer all of the music. Rather, iTunes transferred the names of the songs and then matches my version to their own copy of the song if they have it, which they hold in their iTunes Match cloud storage.

Although most of my usage now is simply streaming songs from the cloud, my only complaint about iTunes Match is the offline capabilities when I take my phone on the subway, where I do not have internet access and can not stream. I have to download the files before going underground and there’s no easy way to “un-download”. I have to go to Settings->Storage and clear all the music downloaded and then re-download the music I want to keep. Besides that one issue, I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised how well this works. When I got my new work computer, I logged into iTunes and boom: all 200+GB of my personal music is accessible, with full album art and organized with the same playlists as I created in my personal system.

Photos

There are dozens of photo storage services out there that are focused on creating and managing your online photo album, promising that you’ll never have to worry about having your computer losing all those precious memories. SmugMug, Flickr and ThisLife all have premium accounts focused on photos (and videos), but I went with Picasa (from Google) as their Auto-Uploader is fully dynamic, identified all my folders and created albums for each automatically. I did not upload my videos, as that would max out my storage very quickly. Even without my videos, I’m looking at about $120 a year.

You might be wondering, if photos and music files are about the same size, why is storing photos 500% more expensive? The reason is the differentiation we mentioned earlier with eBooks content. For music, my Led Zeppelin IV album is the same data file that everyone else has and Apple only has to store one version across all their servers; they don’t need to store millions of copies of the same music. Photos are each unique files, which must be managed for each user, costing much more money to store. Google+ and Gmail have an opportunity to take advantage of this incredibly valuable data. I wish that the new Gmail Compose screen would include Google+/Picasa as an option to make it easy to include a photo in an email.

Video

Backing up video is a whole other thing all together. My friend John deGuzman said it best, “My solution for your video cloud research, where you pay less than $25 a year for unlimited uploads and access for HD video is to freeze yourself and wake up in 5 years.” Enough said, the Internet just simply isn’t ready for automated, unlimited storage and video plays of HD video.

As a result, for now, I simply keep my videos on my two external hard drives.

Summary

Overall, I’m enjoying the switch to the cloud for all of my storage besides videos. No longer will I spend hours sorting and organizing data. Everything I do is completely automated now, with iTunes organizing my music in the cloud and Google Plus automatically uploading my photos to G+; an option in their iOS application that I highly recommend. With the exception of videos, I no longer have to worry about backing up my important information to an external hard drive.

There is one downside to the cloud though that I mentioned with music: you lose access to your information without an Internet connection. Although my wife and I have been very lucky to be largely unaffected by Hurricane Sandy, many are still without power, or worse, losing their homes completely. My heart goes out to them and I encourage everyone to join me in making a donation to Red Cross relief efforts.

Virtual Purdy now has an Email Newsletter!

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:33:21 -0500

A few months back my Dad asked how he could read my blog since he’s not on Twitter, doesn’t use Facebook often and didn’t know what a “Tumblr” was. I walked him through RSS and a solution using FeedMyInbox.com. It works to an extent, but formatting fails often and I have no way to control it or let others sign up.

Recently my sister texted me saying that she was sent my post about volunteering for the Obama campaign and that she didn’t even know I had a blog! I shouldn’t be that surprised, after all, posts on Facebook are only seen by 10-15% of your Facebook friends. I like to think that my Twitter following is a bit higher as I have significantly higher referral traffic from Twitter than Facebook, but it’s still probably less than 25%.

I am doing some work professionally on newsletters and a light bulb clicked. I have no idea why I didn’t launch this years ago, but starting today you can now sign up for VirtualPurdy posts delivered right to your email inbox. Either click the “Newsletter” button in the top right corner or “Get Posts via Email” in the right navigation. Let me know if you have issues signing up and enjoy!

Why I Volunteered for the @BarackObama Campaign and What it was Like

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:10:00 -0500

Back in August I went to Pittsburgh to visit some friends who were finishing graduate school. While I was there, I spent some time with one of my best friends that I grew up with, who is the South Slope Field Manager for the Obama Campaign. After seeing the office I thought it might be fun to volunteer for the campaign, as I’ve always had pretty strong political opinions, but did not know the first thing about how political campaigning actually works. I told my friend I was interested in volunteering, but did not think too much about it until this Daily Show episode profiled the Republican Party’s attempt to implement voter ID laws in Pennsylvania, which would adversely affect minorities and lower class voters likely to vote for Obama.

Between having a very good friend to help me get situated, an interest in politics and generally being pretty pissed off that this kind of stuff happens, I went on Kayak and booked a flight to go out to Pittsburgh the weekend before the election.

I got off the plane and had a local taxi driver (and volunteer), Val, pick me up. This is at 5pm on a Friday, and one of the busiest times for her, and she took the time out of her day to pick me up and drop me off at the campaign headquarters. Thank you again Val!

What exactly does volunteering encompass? Can I really help the cause?

One of my biggest questions I had was what exactly do volunteers do? Do they just sit around the phone and call people? After saying hello and meeting other volunteers, I was put to work within 10 minutes. We had giant rolls of stickers 10,000 long. Each volunteer who was going to be canvassing over the next 4 crucial days needed a packet of stickers with information to hand out and some to leave at the door for those who did not answer. It was grunt work, but it had to get done. We also put together canvass packets with details of which house to go to, their name, age, sex, and which party they were registered with, selected by a very complex data mining project, that I’m sure we’ll be reading more about depending on how the election is decided.

Having spent the last 8 years building mobile products I’ve spent my fair share of time around large collections of phones. It was great to use that experience to activate dozens of phones, and organize them with associated chargers and a sign out sheet. There’s always more to do and the campaign is amazing at finding the best way to use everyone’s services. I encourage you to go volunteer tomorrow, even if it is for only 30 minutes. They will benefit from you being there and it’s a lot of fun!

Canvassing

You’ve probably heard about the “ground game” and having thousands of people out “canvassing”. Canvassing is kind of like trick or treating, although instead of literally going door to door asking for candy, you have a very specific list of which houses to go to along with registration data, and a detailed script with which to ask them questions. This is where Obama’s race will be won or lost: the technology involved in choosing the right houses, while having the volunteers on the ground, ready to talk with voters in the most efficient way possible. My typical conversation went something like this:

“Hello, my name is Jason Purdy and I am a volunteer for the Obama Campaign. Have you decided who you’ll be voting for on Tuesday?”

- Obama: “That’s great! The biggest thing we’re doing today is going door to door and asking people to commit to a time on Tuesday. This gets voting on the mind and helps plan your day around going to vote. Do you think you’ll be voting in the morning, afternoon or evening?” <answer> “Fantastic. Really appreciate your vote. In 2000 the election was decided by just 500 votes and this year will be just as close. Romney is now pouring millions of dollars into Pennsylvania in attack ads and we know this state is going to be crucial for the President. Is there anyway you could help us out for just 15-30 minutes on Tuesday to help get out the vote?” [Side point: GOTV is a common acronym for ‘Get out the vote!’]

- Undecided: “I understand, it’s been a very long campaign and you must have heard a lot of conflicting information. Is there anything that you’re more concerned about that we could help answer?”

- Romney: “That’s ok, I’m happy you’re voting and would love to answer any questions you may have about the President or his policies”. I was pleasantly surprised how polite even opposing voters were, some even offered me Halloween candy!

Lastly, we made sure they knew where their poling location was and if they needed a ride. Even if they said they would be voting for Romney and were confused about how to vote I’d let them know where their poling location was and what they would or would not need to vote; it’s just the right thing to do. As Evelyn Hall wrote, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Purposefully lying and intimating voters isn’t just wrong, it’s un-american, and conservatives who do such things should be ashamed. Which brings me to my next point…

Electoral Fraud, Voter Intimidation and Misinformation

It’s one thing if the Republican Party wants to hide behind their attempt to pass the ID law to eliminate voter fraud, roughly 1 in 15 MILLION votes. It’s another thing to blatantly lie, start rumors and intimate voters. Throughout Virginia’s urban communities door hangers were distributed with November 7th printed as election day, one day after the election. In Ohio, billboards were put up that read “Voter fraud is a felony”.

In Pittsburgh, trucks were driven around with billboards that read “Don’t forget your ID on voting day” and rumors were spread that if you voted your entire ballot Democrat, or only for Obama, then your vote wouldn’t be counted; THIS IS FALSE, YOUR VOTE COUNTS!

I spent the majority of an afternoon canvassing Knoxville, an impoverished neighborhood in Pittsburgh, with 2,324 registered voters. I had over a dozen people come up to me on the street and ask me “is it true that I can’t vote just for obama?” or “I heard there are these laws now that I have to vote for a certain number of democrats to have my vote count.” Unfortunately, these tricks work and I had to tell more people these rumors were not true. After one gentlemen asked why he could not vote all Democrat I followed him into Sunday Church, took communinion with the community and spoke after the sermon, telling everyone not only to vote, but that it was just as important to tell everyone they knew about these lies coming from the Republican party to disfranchise voters and that there wasn’t any risk of a felony by coming out to vote.

Policies and Endorsement

The past three days have been amazing and I had to show that JFK quote twice. There’s the aspect of reading it before you try, and then there’s the realization that’s it’s not that hard. Like starting anything, the decision to give it a go is much harder than actually doing the work. It is the same with volunteering and I can not say enough about how great it is. I have learned a lot about our political landscape, met some very smart people, and, more than anything, interacted with such a wide variety of voters that showed me what America is, and always will be. Living on the coasts my whole life I’ve had this sense that there isn’t an undecided voter left in the country. That we’re more polar than we’ve ever been, and although that’s probably true, that does not mean that every person is either a hippie liberal or a crazy conservative. In my experience, talking to over 500 people this weekend, dozens were undecided voters who did not know who they could trust or who would empathize more with what they were going through.

I spoke with Republicans, some of which had never voted for a Democrat. One of them was a young professional who, after getting laid off in 2010, went back to school and got her masters. She now has an advanced degree in children’s psychology, but tens of thousands of dollars in debt and no recent work experience. We talked about how a Romney campaign claims to help her by cutting taxes for the rich, and hopefully spurring job growth, but for her Obamacare will be a great service to those in need of mental health care, especially for the lower and middle class. For instance, young adults can continue to get health care under their parents plan until 26 years old. We also talked about her serious concerns over the debt levels and she noted that cutting taxes across the board, with no defined way to increase revenue, made no sense, and that even Romney would probably not vote for Romney, which made me laugh. She committed to voting for Obama on Tuesday in the afternoon.

Lots of Democrats hoped for more from Obama, and he was never going to be able to deliver as the savior everyone dreamed him to be. Folks agreed that he had an unfair start to his presidency, with his first 18 months being more about preventing things from imploding than implementing new policies. This is a very hard sell, to convince someone that you understand things are rough, but they could be much worse. It still feels pretty bad to the voter today. One thing that usually sealed the deal though was an agreement that life would be better over the next 4 years with Obama than the last four years, which is likely true for both candidates really, and that he deserves a second term. I usually did not even need to go into other aspects that I feel very strongly about including women’s health care, gay rights, gun control, drug policy, immigration, or foreign affairs.

Obama hasn’t been perfect, and I agree with a lot of what the Economist notes in their critical, but fair endorsement of Obama, but I’m proud to say I’m voting for Obama on November 6th and I hope you do too. And if you don’t, that’s ok, we’ll still be friends and I look forward to more lively discussions, our freedom of speech is one of the things that makes this country so great.

With that, I’m signing off from Pittsburg and flying back to vote in NYC. I leave with you a Pittsburg favorite, regardless of party affiliation everyone loves a good Primanti sandwich.

The Arsenal Baton

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 07:56:59 -0400

Today I am launching my latest side project, the Arsenal Baton!

The Arsenal Baton will show how fans experience an Arsenal Matchday in different cultures around the globe. Each Matchday a new person “holds” the baton, which are the credentials to the @ArsenalBaton Instagram account and capture’s their typical Matchday, including getting ready for the day, heading to the pub/venue, and the experience both during and after the game. Over time, the global community of Arsenal fans will be shown in a unique collection of photos never seen before!

@KevInterrobang started us off with a trial run last Wednesday in London at the Emirates. I am taking the baton today in New York City and handing it off for next week’s match. So far we have interest from fans all over the globe, from Sweden to Chile to China!

Interested in taking the baton? Visit the sign up page, find a Matchday that does not have a fan assigned (marked with “Baton: @NAME”), and email ArsenalBaton@gmail.com with the event details and date, your full name, IG username, city, country and email address. We look forward to having as many fans take the baton as possible!

Our photos will be shared on Twitter @ArsenalBaton, Facebook, Tumblr and of course, on Instagram @ArsenalBaton. Looking forward to hearing from you, come on Arsenal!

A big thank you goes out to John DeGuzman for creating the original @NYCBaton, and without whose help this would never have been possible. Thanks, John.

Ditching Cable & Getting HD Local Channels for Free

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:00:00 -0400

Headline: Don’t spend $80 a month to cable or over $50 for a digital antenna. All you need is one “balun”, which is just a 75 to 300 ohm matching transformer, about $5 on amazon.

——

After my wife and I moved out to Brooklyn, the first task was geting internet up and running. After a brief trial with Clear Wireless that didn’t quite work out, we had Time Warner internet blazing away at 30MB/s.

Next up, was setting up TV. I wouldn’t say we watch that much TV: a few shows a week, every Arsenal game and an NFL game here and there. With how easily we can watch our favorite shows online, we decided to cut the cord and not have a TV package. It wasn’t just the $80+ we were saving, we didn’t feel the need to have 500 channels and watch TV just because it was on.

That said, not having live TV can kind of suck sometimes. For example, the Olympics or the presidential debates. Yes, there are options available online, but even with Time Warner’s fastest internet package, the quality of massively watched online streams is horrible. Not only are they not HD, they sputter and are inconsistent. After a week or two I remembered the free, over the air channels, like the rabbit ears of old. I went down to Radio Shack and got a cheap $14 digital antenna, came home, plugged it in and got….3 channels, consisting of two channels in spanish and low quality CBS. I live in the largest metropolitain area in the country, so i’m sure it wasn’t from lack of signal. Frustrated, I went back to Radio Shack, returned it and upgraded to their highest end $65 antenna. Now up to 12 channels, adding in a Korean channel and a handful of local access channels. Still no FOX, NBC or ABC, let alone in HD. In frustration I went back to Radio Shack, returned it and gave up.

Fast forward 3 months later and a friend showed me this YouTube video:

My reaction was, “woah, this might actually work!” I spent a few hours Googling and came across http://www.tvantennaplans.com/ which has great blueprints and the more professionally done video via Maker Workshop.

At this point I was sold. Just one issue of course…I live in New York City. I don’t have a workshop, let alone a single power tool, drill, or access to “spare wood”. I even tried to go to Loews and they couldn’t cut me wood, wanting me to buy a 4x4x4 and a hand saw. Ridiculous.

So, I said, “fuck it, I can do this” and walked out of Lowes empty handed. The only thing you will need to buy to build your own antenna is a high end 75Ohm to 300 Ohm TRANSFORMER. Do not skimp out on this, get the gold plated high quality version. I went with the $7 gold tipped one at radio shack. Back at home I grabbed 6 coat hangers, some tape, and a box. That’s all you need.

Here’s my first version, laugh as you may, but after running the TV’s auto-channel menu, 64 beautiful HD channels came right through.

Now that I proved that it works I talked with my super who cut me some wood and drilled some holes. In 10 minutes I used the coat hangers and the transformer and we were set.

One additional note, is that where the wires cross you should use electrical tape, which I didn’t have so i used a bunch of tape.

We then mounted it to the back of the TV with some yarn and it’s out of sight completely. Done and done!

Hope this was helpful and let me know what you think!

The Summer 2012

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:51:00 -0400

A bit late this year but here’s my annual Summer mix. Eclectic mix from Khalifa to Gangnam Style. Grab a corona and enjoy. Full mix: http://gum.co/GCqS Singles: http://gum.co/kuGS

Track List:
Passion Pit - Carried Away
Calvin Harris - Feel So Close
Wiz Khalifa - Young Wild and Free
Miike Snow - Paddling Out
The Whip - Secret Weapon
Owl City - Good Time
Sol - The Times
Hot Chip - These Chains
Fun - Some Nights
Electric Guest - This Head I Hold
Psy - Gangnam Style
Flo Rida - Blow Whistel
Carly Rae Jepson - Call Me Maybe
Gotye - Somebody I Used to Know
Santigold - This Isn’t Our Parade
Digitalism - Encore

Soccer is growing in the USA

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:17:52 -0400

More info here: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/blog/_/name/relegationzone/id/262?cc=5901

NYC Startup Community: Density and Opportunities

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 13:52:50 -0400

After growing up in Silicon Valley and living in San Francisco I moved out to New York three years ago. I am frequently asked how I like New York and what the technology and startup communities are like.

First off, let me say I love NY. What does that mean? As much as I miss my friends and family, I gauge a city on its own merit, and no city in the U.S. comes close to the plethora of opportunities that New York offers. From theater shows and concerts to restaurants and bars and everything in between, nothing comes close. Don’t even get me started on public transportation. Yes, getting crosstown can suck, but the upcoming bike system will fix that. In contrast, San Francisco’s MUNI is a joke. I like visiting Chicago, Austin, LA and others, and will likely live in SF again, but New York has quickly become my favorite U.S. city.

Maybe it’s not a fair comparison, as New York is a much bigger place, with the five boroughs alone accounting for over 8 million people, and a population density of 27,243 people/sq mile. San Francisco isn’t even a million people and has a population density of only 17,179 people/sq mile. If you include the general bay area there are 7.15MM, but the density is barely 1,000/sq mile. So why does this matter to a tech scene? The strength of a technology community is based on the amount of interactions and access to well-educated graduates combined with experienced technology veterans. The history of Silicon Valley has resulted in plenty of experienced technologists, some with the financial means to become seed investors, along with two great universities in UC Berkeley and Stanford, but events are spread throughout the valley and only a few places in SF.

What makes New York so great is the diversity and density of talented professionals in almost any field, and the technology sector is growing faster here than anywhere. People want to live in a city, as evidenced by the fact that cities grew more than suburbs for first time in over 100 years. Young professionals are not enchanted with homeownership anymore, they need public transit, and have a more discerning palate for food and culture. These recent grads are the backbone of startups, and the best talent will continue to flock to New York, along with dozens of great universities in and around the tri-state area.

New York companies do specific verticals much better than others, especially around finance, fashion, advertising and entertainment. You won’t see the next chip company come out of NYC, but the networking and experience that startups have in New York for specific industries allows for business minded professionals to build stable businesses in specific markets.

The New York City Mayor’s office is taking this seriously and has created a website which details all the growing tech startups, along with links to the company’s hiring page to help you find a job. Some will even pay $5,000 in relocation expenses to get you here.

So, where do I see things in two or three years? We’re already starting to see more incubators and accelerators, which give early startups valuable Manhattan office space and cash in exchange for equity. Also, note that many of the fastest growing and successful high tech startups which are now public like Google, Facebook and others are opening up offices in New York.

The culture of Silicon Valley still reigns in venture capital, but the talent in New York is great and getting better.

New Yorkers have more money than anywhere else in the country and a new generation of tech savvy investors are looking to take part. With more money ready to be invested, combined with more experienced advisors and the new $100MM state-of-the art Cornell Engineering School, New York will be ready to become the premier tech center in the U.S by 2017.