Tell me, how I can help?

As a rule, the idea of calling or emailing a support service for help with a toaster, a lawnmower or your 1982 Emerson Lilac Purple boombox is akin to having a conversation with a bear at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  You know the metaphor, right? It takes a long time to get down to the bottom of a big endless hole.  Once there the conversation is pretty scary with you pleading that they understand.  More than likely you are left with growling.

Or there’s our way.

In a March 2010 Techlife column, we celebrated with you the reader how RDRR Labs was named a Top Android Developer by Google.  A few notes on this; RDRR Labs is a two person team including myself and a friend. Google’s definition of “top” was more than 3.5 stars and at least 5,000 downloads.  Nice qualifications.  But to us that was not “top” yet. At that time our most popular app, Timeriffic had just under a 4.5 rating and near 10,000 downloads and was available in a few languages.

We made an effort to improve. We added more languages, today we have eleven. We have added features and listened to our users and today have more than 50,000 downloads. Best of all we have increased our app’s rating to 4.56 stars and rising. And lastly we have gone on a customer service campaign and this is where the real magic has happened.

Our app is free.  We don’t need to listen to anyone. We want too. To listen even  better, we have a developed an easy error reporting tool to help us answer our users questions. And that’s where things get interesting.

A user reported our app was broken and would not work on his new Droid X. I should add his tone was more like we had stormed into his home, taken his Droid X and crushed it under our foot. In other words; he was mad. We tried a few calm replies suggesting various options to him. 20 emails later, the app was still not working. Now admittedly we didn’t have a Droid X. Could it be this one phone actually didn’t like our app? It was worth finding out.

Techlife reader to the rescue!  I sent a quick message to a loyal reader who had just been bragging about her new Droid X. She was happy to see if the app worked. She installed it and reported back it was great. I thanked her and now was really stumped. How could our app be showing errors so different from what was expected? I took another crack, with a long email detailing the steps our loyal reader had taken and how the app worked great. The email I got back was the key to the whole mystery.

Our efforts are exactly what you can do when getting or giving help. Stay calm. Look carefully at the problem from the user’s side and above all don’t give up. The email we got back detailed the issue and talked about a specific feature. A feature we didn’t offer! It was then I realized he wasn’t using our app at all! A quick exchange  and he replied how happy he was we had solved his problem. Case closed.

Do you want to know a secret? Online cartography is evolving.  Why do you have to be so fancy? Can’t you just say maps have gotten better? Big changes deserve big words. While Techlife has shared hidden map games; how to make your own maps and why street level details are so valuable; we now want to share the value of immersive photographic cartography.

Cartography is the study and practice of making maps (also can be called mapping). Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.  -Wikipedia

Using Google Maps and Bing Maps advanced features I focused on exploring a single famous monument; The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  Both offer top down satellite views of this famous location.

Google has clearer images than Bing for satellite maps, which comes from a combination of time of day, season and hardware used to take these shots.  Google also has continuous street views for many places around the world, including the Lincoln Memorial. Finally Google has a nice ability to integrate their own street view with user generated photos from all angles of the Lincoln Memorial, with the photo set locations mapped as shown.

Bing’s satellite maps are good enough to get you to move past them quickly to what I think is the best feature of these new digital maps, a bird’s eye multi-rotational view. As you can see the ability to rotate around a building at multiple angles gives a much clearer understanding of the structure than satellite only.  Bird’s eye view, like Street View isn’t available everywhere yet but try out your home or favorite museum and see how amazing it feels to be immersed.

Bing Maps adds one more feature that Techlife drooled over in 2007, PhotoSynth. A Photosynth is a group of photos of a specific object or place that get stitched together to create highly detailed and visually stunning photographic experiences in 3D space. By geotagging user’s Photosynth’s into the Bing maps,  you don’t just see some random snapshots of the outside and inside of the Lincoln Memorial but can take a journey from the outside into the inside and look up and down with amazing detail and spatial understanding.

While I have used Google Maps to get me places and build collaborative maps (something I love). I have used Bing Maps to investigate rental property, research vacations collaboratively, and see quite a few friend’s new home purchases. Knowing how each tool can be used is the key to your own immersive photographic cartography. Share your story with me.

Ok be honest, did the headline scare you?  It scared me.  Did you think Techlife did a 180 degree turn? Well we didn’t.  We still sit squarely in the camp of “where the crossroads of technology and life intersect.”  So again you ask yourself, why is Techlife covering a hundred pushups, two hundred situps and two hundred squats?

One word: Mashup.

We have covered mashups in the past, see the archives.  Basically a mashup is taking two or more separate things and combining them.   In our column we often cover technology mashups so today is something a bit different.

A little over a year ago, Steve Speirs created the website HundredPushups.com.  The concept was simple to inspire and help people achieve a goal that seems difficult to most, to do 100 consecutive pushups. Wait, wait — don’t go.  Don’t stop reading cause, ewww he mentioned fitness and feats of strength. I know this is the holiday season and Festivus is upon us.  But you can do this.

Steve’s idea is something we often pass on to clients.  When you are sharing information, keep it simple.  HundredPushups.com provides an easy to follow six-week plan, some simple printable worksheets and that was it.  The interest spiked enormously due to the simplicity.

Even better Steve’s community of fans stared building mashups.  For regular readers there are three iPhone/iPod touch applications that act as digital tracking tools for people in each of the three programs.  Swedish developer Viktor Nordling created a web app for those regular Techlife readers, pushuplogger.com.  Finally, a fan named Eddie created the mashup for you long time readers, a Pocket Mod of the entire program that fits on a single sheet of paper in foldable Pocket Mod format.  This was my favorite item.

Steve was inspired by the outpouring for his well crafted website that he soon rolled out the sequel, twohundredsitups.com.  Same concept, different muscles, new goal. Most recently he launched twohundredsquats.com.  Steve’s brilliance was to keep all three sites nearly the same.  Fans who understood one program can easily start the next.

Now for mashup, the Techlife challenge.  I sit behind my monitor way to much.  Cranking out good articles for the faithful.  I have started my new year’s resolution early and I want you to join me.  My goal stated publicly, is to achieve the Techlife 500. The goal is to max out with being able to do in a continuous test, one hundred pushups plus two hundred situps plus two hundred squats totalling 500 reps.

Who’s with me?  Add  a comment below if you are joining and feel free to check back here and update us on your progress.

Black border. Large eye-catching photo. Large white text. Smaller white sub-text.

If you are like most readers, you will have already read all four posters before you looped back to the top of this article. That’s ok, because I designed it to happen just like that. As I designed the layout, I realized this column’s regular text would have far less impact than usual. As a writer that’s a tad depressing. As a designer I loved it!

This column is not the history of motivational posters. Nor is it the effect of motivational posters on lazy folks. Apparently the motivational poster’s impact on taking the stairs versus an escalator was so compelling it was funded numerous times over multiple continents. We get it. Enough already!

I created these unique Techlife posters in just a few minutes, using Big Huge Labs: Motivator, to create my own motivational poster. It was easy. Here’s how to build your own motivational poster or de-motivational poster in 3 easy steps.

1. Select a masterpiece - The photo should be eye catching and keep your attention long enough to draw you in.  After you have your photo you click Browse and attach the photo.  You also should review the photo’s focus area, as most likely it will get cropped.  Motivator allows you to designate one of three areas which might be best to keep visible.  You also get to choose a landscape or portait orientation for your photo.

2. Channel your inner Shakespeare - Penning the perfect word and sub-text is no easy task.  Are you trying to be funny or serious?  Will your words live forever or be forgotten quickly?  You may even find yourself selecting a new photo for the ultimate fit with your perfect prose. Perfection is personal.

3. Click and Share – Hit the big blue “Create” button.  A few seconds later your motivation masterpiece is rendered.  After reviewing how you will change the world you can edit, save, upload, email, share and even get a high-resolution version of your image by clicking the associated button.

Techlife Challenge – Motivation is powerful.  Parody is funny.  De-motivation is a form of expression too.  For this challenge share with us your favorite self-created poster.  We’ll see about getting some prizes, but until then we’ll award the famous Techlife Points!  213 for each entry with the best in each category getting 4002.  Judging purely subjective and nonsense.

Note:  The posters shown here are meant to motivate you to read past Techlife articles.  MASHUP for the “Flash Earth – Ultimate Maps Mashup.”  TRAVEL for “Travelistic.com, YouTube with a Purpose.”  CREATIVE for the “Alan Becker’s Animator vs. Animation.”

From where in the world is Matt Lauer to Carmen Sandiego to Waldo this is an age old theme (at least to the mid 1980s.)  And now Google has their own twist on the classic called, “Where in the World?“.

Techlife readers come to learn, engage and discuss at our little corner of the world.  Be it a reader who stops me on the street, emails in a suggestion, or comments on an article in the online site we welcome the interaction.  We have heard from thousands of readers, and while not everyone gets featured in a column, sometimes they get a mention.

Today’s column harkens back to our early days, as our newest find we stumbled upon all on our own.  This little secret game is almost hidden, I would call it an easter egg, yet it is sitting there in the open.  We have always covered neat visual tools here at Techlife. From our review of Picasa in “Picture Perfect” to “Life Poster: A Picasa How-To” to our most recent “How to Create Online Tilt Shift Miniature Photos” we have covered various fun things to do with your photos.  Now we will explore other people’s photos.

Our adventure started one day when a reader sent us trip photos.  Are you a little surprised?  Don’t be.  We get lots of fun things from the great readers of Techlife. After viewing the photos, I noticed the tab, “Explore”  near the Picasa logo, next to “My Photos” and “Favorites.”

Hey I love to explore!

So I clicked, you are taken to a pseudo homepage with a few interesting sections, each of which could take hours of time to Explore.  There are 12 “Featured Photos” which sort of change if you hit refresh, though same stay.  Then there is “Recent Photos” which you can watch in a slideshow format.  There are also 40 of the most “Popular Tags”, which is a method for indicating what a picture contains is about.  Popular tags include, wedding, vacation, lake, house, birthday, beach, flowers, you get the idea.  Then in a small corner is our hidden gem.

Titled, “Where in the world?” and a button stating “Start Game” with this simple explanation, “Check out photos from around the world and guess where they were taken!”  As Sherlock Holmes said, “The game is afoot.”

In a great mashup of their own tools, Google has used Google Maps and Picasa along with Geotagging to create their game.  (Geotagging is a method for tagging a photo with location data, indicating where on the blue marble we inhabit a photo was shot.)  Play is simple, you guess where the photo they show you was taken by clicking on the map of the world.  Sometimes the photos contain clues, subtle or obvious.  Your score for that photo is determined by how close your guess was to the actual location of the photo.  The closer the better.  You get five different photos per round.

The game is strangely addicting.  Five clicks and you get a score.  Then you want to beat that score, then you convince yourself you will beat it the next round.  Then you do!  To celebrate let’s see if we can beat it one more time.  Okay an hour later, this is definitely my last game.  Hey look at that I got a high score!

My high score is 2,597 can you beat it?  Let me know.

Virtual G1: Take it for a Test Drive

How can I possibly buy a phone I have never seen? This is the number one question people ask when talking about the Android G1 or Google Phone with me.  The G1 folks have addressed this with Virtual G1. The virtual 360 degree G1 that rotates and opens to show off the full keyboard.  A guide view showing you where the battery and SIM card will go.  Best of all, an emulator view built in Flash to let you examine the software and hardware of the G1 in action.

The emulator is limited in many areas of function and there is no sound for any action.  It gives a good feel for what the device will do, at least to hold people over until the Tmobile release on October 22nd.

Thanks to Gizmodo and Engdaget for the fun tool.

Techlife had the chance to try out TagCow, an automated photo tagging service, while it was still in beta. TagCow has now emerged from beta and is open to anyone. Automated photo tagging is equivalent to Google Search for your personal digital photos. From professionals to amateurs having quick and easy ways to sift through millions of images that are accurately tagged makes this service truly amazing.

What makes TagCow a bit more unique is the method of tagging, it is automated. Other services such as Picasa or Flickr rely on your efforts to tag photos, while Google is using a pseudo-game to help improve its tagging search results. This is what sets TagCow apart.

Tagcow’s “how” tagging is accomplished is a bit hidden on the website, but in speaking with Michael Droz, CEO and co-founder, he revealed it is part automated and part human-based. I would even venture to suggest different humans were assigned to my photos, as the results were slightly different for each image I uploaded. There was even a typo! Due to this tagging says it will take 24-48 hours, mine took about 55 hours.

(more…)

Techlife has been rocking recently to an easy-to-use music search engine, Songza. Type in an artist or song title and get a choice of various versions of songs that might be what you were searching for.

Google simplifies searching for web content. Songza simplifies searching for audio content. Part of the trouble of audio search is text descriptions might not do justice to what you want to hear so Songza has a flash player that allows you to listen and keep searching. They also use crowdsourcing, which means you can help clarify if a song is what you wanted, and rate it thumbs up or thumbs down which helps make Songza better the next time around.

With Songza’s elegantly simple interface, great search, the ability to build a playlist without even giving them your name or a login, an audio player, crowdsourcing, various sharing options and vast library it is interesting to see where it goes next. Songza’s free, doesn’t ask for any information and right now is really advertising free except for a link to buy the music you are listening.

My only complaint is the very rudimentary music player. I would like to see a fast forward or reverse capability, as other sites that search video, like Techlife TV, offer this.

Overall: Give Songza a Grammy for technical achievement. Songza may sound simple, because it is. But when simple is done right it rocks.

Are you into data? Here’s a funny story, Techlife covered Nick Douglas’s Look Shiny and his first show. Then we covered Taylor McKnight and Chirag Mehta’s awesome mashup Chime.TV. (We have our own channel, Techlife TV – check it out sometime.) So why are these two things related? Good question. In a recent post Nick posted about really cool site, ZipSkinny, a site that provides extensive demographic information by zipcode compiled form the US Census from 2000. Nick in his usual humor filled manner, was commenting at how poor some of the neighborhoods he knows happen to be. And to make this a small world, he mentions Taylor. So in reading all of this I learned about ZipSkinny (thanks Nick) and I learned Taylor and Nick are friends (thanks both of you.)

While ZipSkinny.com has the typical disclaimer that the site should not be used for serious decision making, such as moving or opening a business, and how some data is incomplete or has such a small sample size it can not be considered reliable, this site is a goldmine. It really has taken data exploration to new levels. If you are in real estate, a realtor, or looking to buy a home it is at least a place to start.

With data points such as:

• Population
• Density
• Educational Achievement
• Marital Status
• Household Income with brackets
• Occupation
• Unemployment/Poverty
• Age
• Racial Diversity
• Male/Female with age brackets
• Map of the zip code

And features such as:

• Zip code to US comparison
• Zip code to nearyb Zip code comparison
• Zip code to state to US comparison
• Top 100 zip codes in the state or US by any of the data points
• Ability to compare up to 20 codes side by side data

I think the most interesting thing about ZipSkinny, the lack of credit. Who built it? Anyone know?

This year I happen to be a in few fantasy football leagues (not into fantasy sports, these same tools are used by my company everyday too, so keep reading.) These days most fantasy football leagues are managed online with any number of large and small websites doing the player tracking and record keeping. It makes drafting, managing and setting your lineup each week pretty easy. Last year my team won our league, no small thanks to LaDanian Tomlinson, as he smashed NFL records. Thanks LT.

Last year and again this year we used another often talked about tool, Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Most people in fantasy football prepare for the draft using a spreadsheet application like Excel. It helps sort their rankings of players based on their league’s specific scoring system, but doing it online has a few added benefits. All of which helped the 2006 Fantasy Football Champions prepare in their championship season and in this year’s title defense.

• Auto-saving – While a seemingly small feature, since the document is saved every few seconds remotely, even when we lost power (which happened) we didn’t lose a single minute when power was restored as our data was safe and up-to-date
• Revisions – A few times we realized in our prep that we had made a mistake copying and pasting a formula or row of formulas. Google Docs offers the chance to go back in time to review different saved versions of the documents along the way. This makes it easy to find the place the error was made and correct it.
• Collaboration – No longer did we have to email big files and have a check in/out process. We just both started working even on the same sheet at the same time. This made all the difference when we had conference calls and needed to show different scenarios live to each other.

Will you win your fantasy league if you use Google Docs? No. Will it help? Yes. During the course of working another added benefit was when I was out of town, I was able to access my spreadsheets with ease. Fantasy Football is constantly changing and becoming more and more competitive with more players, more time is spent working on your “lists”. Make it easier on yourself, give Google Docs a try.

Do you have a winning story about using Google Docs and Spreadsheets? Share it with us.

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“Hey can I have a flash introduction on my site?” It is tough answer, but as a web developer who focuses on both marketing and technology, my answer is usually no. I am excited that people know what Flash is and one of its many possible uses, but cinematic introductions for a regular website don’t help most sites.

Flash focuses on interactivity, and engaging the user. Techlife has reviewed quite a few flash projects recently:

• Animated LifePoster
• Bauns
• Chick Chick Boom
• Chime.tv
• Desktop Tower Defense
• Flash Earth
• Geni
• Guess the Google
• Line Rider
• PocketMod
• Ski Battle
• Snow Line
• Stick Arena
• Stunt Bike Draw
• Youtube

Which one did you like the best? Let us know in the comments.

Techlife TV has a great video interview with Hilman Curtis, a flash expert and author.  His newest book, “Creating short films for the web” should be read by anyone looking to be creative online. In the next few years I expect more and more flash projects to be built and used. But I am sure I missed some favorites, let me know which ones.

Did I detect a little spark in David Berlind’s eye? Maybe a hope that he could see his content on a featured Channel? Watch this video where Techlife TV gets the nod in Taylor McKnight’s talk with David Berlind of ZD Net.

Congratulations to Chime.tv winner of the best Mashup at MashupCamp. Taylor, now a two-time winner, sat down and showed David (Berlind) Chime.tv, even mentioning our channel and me by name at the 1:05 minute mark. (Thanks Taylor!)

What’s a Mashup? I will leave it to David to explain that in his video which of course is also on the Techlife TV Channel.

Note to David: Got more vidoes? Let me know and I will add them to Techlife TV.

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A new chapter begins, Techlife TV. Wait a sec, didn’t we just read about Techlife TV with the posts about Steve Jobs and SeaDragon and Star Wars Robot Chicken? Well kinda, sorta.

Here’s the back story. A few weeks ago we wrote about Chime.tv it was also featured in the syndicated column. No extra software downloads, tons of content, a great interface, the list goes on; what’s not to love?

We built Techlife TV and started selecting videos from the column and others we thought readers might enjoy. After our initial post, Taylor McKnight, must have been reading and brainstorming with Chirag Mehta because they contacted me and have asked me to program the new Techlife TV on Chime.tv’s Premium Channel page. (more…)

As a new television channel owner we are experimenting with our programming, and our promos. We are excited to share Star Wars Robot Chicken on Techlife TV. This is the full 26 minutes, including some pre-roll with Seth Green and his team, as they introduce each segment. We had recently covered Star Wars news that George Lucas is thinking about some new Star Wars movies. I am glad he not only put his weight behind the Robot Chicken project but was willing to appear as himself in it.

After you watch the show, there is a lot chatter to read about the show on review sites like Hot Air, The Movie Blog and even Crunch Gear getting in a review. But The Force.net had the best scoop, commentary from the producers about every skit in Robot Chicken Star Wars show. Well worth watching if you liked the show.

Overall: If you like Star Wars as much as these writers do, then all the jokes from Admiral Ackbar cereal to Yo Mama throwdown to the Cantina are really well done. Robot Chicken is a stop-motion, comedy sketch show with reference to many nostalgic toys and shows and airs on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It is in its third season. Did you like it? What was your favorite sketch? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to our reader Dan for sending this. If you find something email us at reviewme [at] dkworldwide [dot] com.

Techlife has had a busy month with client meetings, late nights, more client meetings, building websites, designing all matter of printed materials and developing software. You might say the day job has been “paying the bills.” That resulted in two interesting things occurring. First, again this month more clients contacted us wanting blogs to add to their website and in me seeking some relaxation where I could find it, with online video. We also have last month’s “Who’s Your Daddy?” Geni contest winners listed online.

I started relaxing with John X. Lewis, who’s pop song Love 2.0 was published in a great video. Shortly after finding John’s video I was really excited that I could program my own online television channel with Chime.tv.

(the lead-in for the July column)