gear

Oh man. I am not sure if I am going through some sort of mid life crisis or what but everywhere I look I see new toys that I want to buy. The latest is the ICON A5. I saw it for the first time at JetBlue terminal 5 and instantly fell in love. A 2 passenger plane designed for water that is small enough to be pulled behind my truck? Hell yeah!

New FAA sport flying requirements mean you only need 20 hours of in flight training to fly an A5. At $139,000 it’s expensive but not absolutely ridiculous. For just $5,000 you can reserve one for delivery in 2013. Of course by then you might be able to buy all of Greece for just a few dollars more.

Q: What do you get when you combine an ATV with a Jet Ski? A: The most bad ass thing I have ever seen. Check out the Quad Ski by Gibbs Technologies. This puppy is capable of traveling at 50mph on land and water and makes the transition at the flick of a switch. They aren’t available for purchase yet but I have added this to my wish list (along with a jet pack).

Anyone who has worked with me knows that I am not a huge fan of meetings. I like my meetings short, sweet, small and productive. I think my distaste for meetings came out of my experience running agencies. In the agency business time is literally money. Every minute you spend is either billable (costs the client) or non-billable (costs the agency) and both scenarios can be very expensive. When you have ten people in an meeting for one hour billing an average of $175 per hour your meeting just cost $1,750. You better make damn sure you all needed to be there and actually accomplished something.

Enter Bring TIM!

I stumbled on this product this weekend and immediately placed an order. Bring TIM is a meeting cost calculator. You bring it to a meeting (I am going to leave it in the conference room), dial in the average hourly rate and number of people and hit start. You can see the cost of the meeting in real time so everyone is aware of just how expensive the time is. In my opinion this is a must have for any business, especially those that bill clients based on time (I want to get my lawyer one).

I have no doubt that this will freak out some of my team members but I can’t wait to put it into action. You can order your own here for $24.99.

I have an XBox and a Wii but both rarely get used. I generally don’t have the time to play video games at home. On the rare occasion that I do play I feel guilty that I am not outside or doing something more productive with my life. I am afraid that console games are a thing of the past for me.

However, iPhone games are another story. They are perfect time fillers when I am stuck in line or winding down in bed. Doodle Jump is one of my favorite games because the sessions are quick, fun and completely mindless. The game is constantly being updated with new themes and you can tell the developers are having fun with it. If you aren’t one of the 3 million people who have already downloaded the game I highly suggest you give it a try, it is well worth the $.99 price tag.

Do you have a favorite game you recommend for the iPhone? Let me know and I will check it out.

I hate bills. I don’t just hate paying them…I hate getting them. I hate writing checks. I hate licking stamps. I hate mailing payments back.  It is just annoying. I also travel a ton, which makes managing timely payments challenging to say the least. The solution? I don’t pay my bills. I let Paytrust pay them for me.

I have been a Paytrust customer for about 8 years. I have no other relationship with them, I am writing this post simply because I love the service.  It is the single service I don’t think I could live without. While most banks have the ability to do online payments they don’t do it like Paytrust. Paytrust takes care of all payments, including companies and services that don’t accept electronic funds transfers (EFTs).

How it Works:

When you signup for Paytrust they give you your own P.O. Box. You switch the billing address for all your bills to this new address. When a new bill comes in they scan it and send you an email alert. You can then login to Paytrust and make a payment or set it up to be paid automatically. Paytrust can do EFTs like your bank, but the cool thing is they will also mail a check to companies like your lawn service or doctor that don’t typically accept EFTs. You can view and download all your bills online and you can purchase a CD at the end of each year with all your records in PDF format. Between Paytrust and my ScanSnap my records are almost completely digital.

Paytrust lets you put all your bills on autopilot. It is well worth the $12.95 per month I pay for the time I save (not to mention the cost of stamps). I never miss a bill and I always pay my bills on time.

Have you been looking for a well designed, full featured, Twitter screen saver for Mac OSX? So have I! The good news is I have been able to find a few screen savers for the Mac (some listed below). The bad news is that none of them are what I am personally looking for.

What I want in an OSX Twitter Screen Saver :

• Elegant design
• Utilization of Quartz, maybe with a little 3D action
• Ability to customize the source of the tweets (people, keywords, lists)
• Ability to customize the fonts and colors used
• Display of avatars next to the name of the person
• Integration of geo data if available
• Integration of photos (show me a preview of the link)

I was able to find some decent screen savers for Windows. Flitter looks close to what I was thinking I would find when I first started looking. Damn you Windows. Damn you.

Twitter Screen Savers for Mac

Twistori (3/5 Tongues)

This is the most interesting of the bunch. Twistori is a Twitter screen saver (and website) that displays tweets based on emotional keywords (love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish). It’s funny to see how people express themselves, you can certainly get sucked into this experience.

Twistori is available for both Leopard and Snow Leopard . I am bummed that this screen saver has zero customization options. I wish I could add my own emotions or get rid of certain words like hate. I have no desire to have the word hate repeating on my screen all day… it’s just bad karma.

TweetSvr (2/5 Tongues)

TweetSvr is a very basic Mac screen saver that displays tweets from you, your friends, or the public timeline in floating clouds. I grew board with this screen saver instantly. You can’t customize the font or size of the text. It’ doesn’t display the avatar of the person that made the tweet. The graphics are just blah. The only good news is that it works with Snow Leopard and doesn’t seem to have any technical issues. You can download it here.

If anyone has found a Twitter screen saver for OSX that they really like please let me know. I would love to check it out.

My father introduced me to my first Mac when I was only 8 years old. It was a Macintosh 512k and I remember slapping away on the keyboard like it was yesterday. I would fight my dad for time on it, I grabbed the mouse every chance I could get. I was a MacPaint master. While other kids where making watercolors for their parents I was making bitmap computer art. When HyperCard came out in 1987 I knew I would spend the rest of my life tethered to a computer.

This afternoon Tara and I watched the movie Welcome to Macintosh (yes, I am an iTunes affiliate) and I started to think about how many Macs I have had in my life. I am not sure about the exact number, but through my companies I have bought somewhere between 250-300 Macs over the years. I took a look at apple-history.com to see how many different Macs I can remember buying (or my parents buying before I had my own money). Here is the list:

• Macintosh 512k
• Macintosh Plus
• Macintosh SE30
• Macintosh Powerbook 140
• Macintosh LC III
• Power Macintosh 8500
• Power Macintosh 7200
• Newton Message Pad 2100
• PowerBook G3
• Power Macintosh G3
• iMac
• iMac (Rev.C)
• Power Macintosh G3 (Blue and White)
• PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard)
• Power Macintosh G4 (AGP Graphics)
• iMac (Slot Loading)
• PowerBook G3 (Firewire)
• Power Macintosh G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)
• PowerBook G4
• Power Macintosh G4 (Quicksilver)
• iMac (Summer 2001)
• Power Macintosh G4 (Mirrored Doors)
• Xserve
• iMac (Flat Panel)
• PowerBook G4 (12.1″)
• PowerBook G4 (17″)
• Xserve RAID
• Powerbook G4 (17″ 1.33Ghz)
• Xserve G5
• Mac mini
• MacBook Pro
• MacBook Pro (17″)
• AppleTV
• iPod (many)
• iPod Nano (many)
• iPhone (1st Gen, 3G)

Yeah, I am a Mac. Old school baby! I know there is a lot of buzz about Windows 7 but I will never be a PC guy. The closest I have ever come was a couple of Power Computing rigs in the 90’s. Apple FTW!