Category Archives: Internet

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Have You Ever Forgotten to Send Someone a Gift on a Special Occasion?

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I have a terrible time coming up with gifts to send to people. The main reason for this is that I might think of a gift for someone for Christmas or their birthday, but I will think of it months before the occasion. By the time the date rolls around I have forgotten what I wanted to send. I am also in the bad habit of not remembering other people’s birthdays or anniversaries until the day of the event.

Fortunately, Amazon.com has come to my rescue with their new feature Amazon Gift Central.  Amazon’s gift organizer gives you a great place to keep track of both gifts that you have given to people as well as gifts that you would like to give to people in the future.

Setting up the organizer was a piece of cake. I simply went to the site and clicked on add recipients. Amazon then looked at the people to whom I had already shipped items from Amazon and offered them as the first choices as possible recipients. I could then add additional recipients and, if I wished, I could add all or part of their birthday. This is so Amazon can remind you to buy something to send to them.

Once you have this set up, if you are browsing through Amazon and you see something you would like to give as a present, you simply click on the drop down arrow beside wishlist and chose which recipient’s list to add it to.

I live far away from all but my immediate family. Thus, any gifts I send, I would have to ship anyway. Because of this, I have used Amazon for years to send gifts to friends and relatives. Also, I have found shopping at Amazon much more convenient, and generally cheaper, than shopping at brick and mortar stores. Thus, this a great option for me.

Even if you do not shop at Amazon, however, this organizer could still be a great thing for you. As the post at 43 Folders explains,

Now, the cool part of all this — even if you don’t use Amazon very much — is that Amazon.com is friggin huge. Which means that they (or their “Marketplace” partners) carry a ridiculously high percentage of the purchasable, shippable items available in the consumer universe. So, if you start using the Gift Organizer today — even for stuff you have no intention of buying from Amazon — your life is going to be much easier the next time a gift-giving occasion rolls around; you’ve capitalized on several months of passive, half-assed attention to actually do something useful.

Thus, relieve the stress of gift giving from your life and set up your Amazon gift organizer today.

Disclaimer: I know that there may be privacy issues related to this, especially if you are entering your recipient’s full birthdays. Whether this convenience is worth the privacy risk is up to you. In my case, I am sure that Amazon already knows more about me than I do.

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Could Someone Please Tell the Daley Center that it is the 21st Century?

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Daley CenterYesterday I had a court appearance at the Daley Center at 9:30 and then a noon meeting in the Loop. A perfect chance for me to go to court and then run upstairs to the law library on the 29th Floor of the Daley Center.

I love going up there. The views are absolutely wonderful. There are windows galore and, because of the number of windows, the library is well lit. Also there are lots of chairs and tables to work at.  It is a great place to work, as long as you are stuck with the 19th Century concept of researching only by books and taking notes only by hand.

The law library is missing two things that every library should have. First, it has no wi fi access. Peter Olson asked this same question almost two years ago. I agree with him that it makes no sense that the law library has no wi fi access.

Second, and this may even be worse, it has no electrical outlets. Thus, even if I were content to do all of my research via books (which the library has lots of), I am limited to taking notes on a legal pad, or on my computer only until the battery runs out. Is it too difficult to wire a few tables with electricity so people can practice law efficiently? Is this just too much to ask for from Cook County?

Instead of doing research in a comfortable setting with a beautiful view, I ended up in a Starbucks looking at the street. It certainly was not the best view. However, it did have wi fi and an electrical outlet.

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Stop the Music

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One thing that I absolutely hate is a webpage that starts playing music when I navigate to it. This is one (of several) reasons that I avoid My Space pages like the plague. Haineault.com has a great post on this very issue.

He gives a few reasons that you should not have autostarting music on your webpage. My two favorites are:

  • your music choice most likely sucks, if not, it will be outdated soon enough.
  • if your visitors want to listen music they will listen their mp3, your site is not a jukebox. In fact they most likely already are listening music and yours is only mixing with it, creating an unbearable and unwanted musical chaos.

If this too drives you crazy, I recommend an extension for Firefox called Flashblock, which blocks all flash media from loading. You can then manually start the flash items. You can also white list certain pages so that the embedded flash works normally.

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Favorites: Fictionwise

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FictionwiseI love ebooks. I love the fact that, on my Treo, I can carry a several books with me as well as a multitude of short stories. If you enjoy reading, I cannot recommend highly enough that you check out ebooks. Also, if you have a PDA (or at least if you have a Palm PDA) you can easily use that device as your ebook reader. If you already have a PDA, you have no need to purchase a separate e-reading device.

Of course, having a reader is only the first step. You now have to find the books. Free books (those no longer protected under copyright law) are available at Project Gutenberg. Manybooks.net also is a great place to find free books. Additionally, my public library allows me to “borrow” ebooks, just as I would borrow a dead tree version of a book. Plus I can do this from the comfort of my own home, or anywhere else I happen to be with internet access.

My favorite source for books, however, is Fictionwise. I have been using Fictionwise since early 2003. They have a huge selection of books in a wide variety of genres. Fictionwise also allows you to subscribe to magazines such as Analog, Asimov’s, and Interzone.

Fictionwise also has a reward program that gives you a percentage of the purchase price of a book (sometimes up to 100%) to be deposited into your micropay account. The micropay account allows you to accumulate money in order to purchase items that cost less than $5. Fictionwise has plenty of these, in that its short stories often sell for about a $1. In fact, as of the writing of this post, Fictionwise has 2633 items for less than $1.

Although I love Fictionwise, that does not mean that I think it is perfect. The key thing I would like to see is a version of the website that allows me to easily search and browse the website and purchase books from my Palm. Right now, the website if virtually impossible to view and purchase from on my Palm. If they would correct this, I would really love Fictionwise.

My other complaints about Fictionwise/ebooks are directed more toward the publishers than to Fictionwise. For example, the publishers will make some volumes of a trilogy available but not all. Often this involves offering volumes 2 and 3 of the trilogy but not volume. Why would people want to read the first book in the series? The last two should take care of everything.

More comments on ebooks can be found at Rob Sawyer’s Blog in posts where he talks about Fictionwise buying eReader, Manybooks.net, and purchasing books over the air.

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Helpful Reminders

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Do you sometimes have trouble remembering to make a call at 2 pm? Do your client’s forget your meetings? Do you fail to follow through on your new marketing plan?

Last week, two different bloggers pointed to two different tools to help with reminders.

First up is a service called Oh, Don’t Forget and it was mentioned by Matt Homan at the [non]billable hour. Oh, Don’t Forget allows you to send a text message to any phone at a predetermined date and time. This is great for reminding you to make a call or leave for a meeting if you know you are going to be in the middle of something. Of course, you could also use it for more interesting purposes, such as setting it to go off during a meeting that you fear will be boring and drawn out.

The second reminder service was mentioned by Julie Fleming-Brown at Life At the Bar. This service is called HassleMe. HassleMe explains their service as:

Not eating enough fruit? Forgot to feed the fish again? Need a little help keeping your New Year’s resolutions?
Tell us what to hassle you about, and we’ll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals.

This is a great opportunity to have someone remind you to drink enough water, go to the gym, or call a referral source every week just to say hello.

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Who is Your Computer Talking To?

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DishI picked up an interesting tip from Tom Mighell the other day. He explains that you can create a log file to see what programs on your computer made an internet connection. You do this by:

— Bring up your Windows Run box.
— Type “cmd” in the box.
— When the command prompt comes up, type “netstat -b 5 > activity.txt” and press Enter.
— After a few minutes, press Ctrl+C, and the type in “activity.txt”

This is an interesting exercise, just to see what programs on your computer are contacting the mothership.

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Good News From You Send It

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You Send ItNot long ago, I wrote about You Send It and how much I liked using it to transfer a large electronic file.

Since then, the kind folks at You Send It have provided me with a promotional code for my readers for a free month of service  on the Business Plus plan.

The code is RHORBP07. The email from You Send It explains:

 Business Plus offers additional security features and options- perfect for dealing with sensitive material.  The tracking feature also provides absolute assurance that you file has been received and downloaded.

Simply create a free account, then go to “my account”/”account details” and enter this code. Accounts will be upgraded for 30 days, then revert back to the free version when it expires. No credit card info is collected.

This is a great opportunity to give You Send It a try, if you have not done so before.

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Christmas Around the World

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A few days ago I received an email that began:

Guten Tag,

unser Logistikzentrum hat den unten stehenden Artikel verschickt!

Unser Hinweis:

Sie koennen Ihr Kundenkonto jederzeit ueber “Mein Konto”
http://www.amazon.de/mein-konto einsehen und verwalten.

Ihre Bestellnummer 028-2384921-6012345 (eingegangen 16-Dezember-2007)

Surprisingly enough, this was not spam. Despite the fact that I do not speak German, I was quite happy to have received this email written in German.

Last year my family hosted an exchange student from Germany. For Christmas this year we wanted to send a present to her. However, if you have ever had to send anything to a foreign country, you know what a frustrating and time consuming process that can be. It can take weeks just to send a card to Germany. Further, any gifts that we sent would require us to make sure that they complied with applicable customs rules. Also, there is possibility that the receiver would have to pay a tax upon her receipt. This seems like a lot of work just to send a Christmas gift.

Then, I had an idea. Why not send the gift from Amazon. However, I would not send it from Amazon.com, but instead from Amazon.de (Amazon in Germany). Sure, I had the problem that I don’t speak any German. But, any problem is solvable with the internet. Right?

Anyway, using Google Translate and Babel Fish I was able to understand enough to make sure that I was ordering what I wanted. Further, the great thing about ordering from Amazon is that its website looked the same in German as it did in English. Thus, despite the fact that I could not understand the words on the page, I could navigate the page and complete the required information because, based on my experience with Amazon.com, I knew what information they were looking for.

In sum, I think it is amazing that we like at time where I can send a gift to someone in a foreign country with only minimally more effort that is required for me to give a gift to someone in the house with me. If you want to send a gift to someone in a foreign country, I recommend that you check out that country’s version of Amazon. It may save you time, money, and frustration. Further, it won’t be nearly as difficult as you think, even if you don’t speak the language.

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I Sent It Via You Send It

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You Send ItI had some discovery that I had to deliver to an opposing attorney. It was a construction case. This meant that almost all of the original documents actually existed as handwriting on paper. The remaining documents were letters and other similar documents. Thus providing evidence that not all cases are headed down the electronic discovery path.

As is my standard practice, I had all of the documents scanned so that I could Bates Stamp them and work with them electronically. Knowing that I needed to deliver these documents to opposing counsel, I was faced with three options.

  1. I could print the 800 pages and have them physically delivered to the attorney–thereby incurring both costs of printing and costs of delivery; or
  2. I could burn a copy of the documents to a CD and mail that to the attorney–thereby incurring costs of delivery (admittedly only $0.41); or
  3. I could electronically transfer the documents electronically–thereby incurring no costs.

I chose option 3. I used a service called YouSendIt. YouSendIt uploads a copy of your document to their server and sends an email to your designated recipient with a link where they can download the file you uploaded.

As long as the file is less than 100MB, the service is free. With the free service, the link is good for seven days. If you want to deal with larger files, you can also sign up for paid accounts. The paid accounts also give you the ability to control the maximum number of downloads for a file, give you file tracking, and give you the ability to password protect the file.

The one thing I would caution about the free service is that the file is not encrypted. Thus, you would not want to send confidential information through the free service. In my case, the documents that I was sending contained no such information.

The best part of the service was the call I received from opposing counsel, who absolutely loved the way that I delivered the documents. He inquired about how the service worked and was interested in trying it out as method of sending the same documents to his client.

As I noted above, this service should not be used with all types of communications or documents. However, if you have a big file that you need to send to someone, YouSendIt is a great, free option that allows you to transfer files virtually instantaneously.

YouSendIt is just another example of how we can leverage technology to make our lives easier (as well as to save us some overhead costs).