| Producing Water From Air |
| Realizing that water will become the most valuable commodity, I've often remembered hearing that in some of the older forests in California, the trees get their water from the fogs that roll in regularly, rather than from rain. I've stumble across this French company that is extending the water-from-air idea in unique ways: http://www.eolewater.com/gb/our-products/range.html  |
|
No Comments Yet Add a Comment |
| All-In-One Online Organizing |
| I've been testing out my new online tool for organizing information called Extended Tribe. There are lots of online tools out there for project management, information management, document management, password management, to-do lists and contact management, but Extended Tribe includes all these tools, plus a really handy calendar. I've been using it for quite a while now and find it incredibly satisfying to get to all my digital assets from anywhere (as long as I have an internet connection or I have my iPhone with me). I use the Extended Tribe vault to store my log-ins and passwords, and I feel safe doing so because there are two levels of security at work. The site is protected by SSL or HTTPS and also by 128 bit AES encryption. The whole service is password protected with a salted hash, which is about as good as you're going to get.  |
|
No Comments Yet Add a Comment |
| Computers and Users |
| I used to work for a small company with 30 employees. I was in charge of all the IT, the HR, and a couple of important accounting functions as well. My background is in both IT and accounting, so the company I worked for felt they had killed two birds with one hire. I tend to agree. Every now and then an employee would turn in their laptop for a replacement (we always kept a couple of replacements on hand because of the adverse conditions our laptops were exposed to) and I'd get a crack at finding out what made the user think the computer was no longer working. At least half the time there wasn't anything at all wrong with the computer. Sometimes the little switch that turns off the wifi had accidentally been switched off. I don't know why they even include such a switch. Other times the machine appeared to be working, but sluggishly, which can often be attributed to the ubiquitous MS, Adobe, and Java updates being downloaded and installed. Other times the machine just wouldn't boot for the user, but after being transported to my office seemed to work fine. I loved it when all I had to do was enter the room. Sometimes the machine really had gone wonky, probably because the fan got too dusty to work any more and the CPU fried. Often users would get frustrated with a machine that refused to work the way it used to. This just didn't seem logical to them, and they blamed the manufacturers. I tried to tell them how complex their little toys were, but they didn't see any moving parts, and programming is just typing, isn't it? How can re-installing the software suddenly make it work the way it used to? It just didn't make sense to them. I have gained patience over the years, which is a nice soothing feeling, sometimes. Other times I, too, want to throw the damn thing out the window. |
|
No Comments Yet Add a Comment |
| Working On Ventures |
| I've got a few projects in the works and I need to keep track of what I've been doing, so here goes. Last Desires is up and running, waiting for people to discover it (sure). I've outsourced some copy writing for a rack card I want to supply to Estate Planners and Funeral Home Directors. If that works out I'll outsource the copy on the site itself as well as some press releases. I'll probably also outsource the copy for an email I plan to send to some independent oil and gas producers, pitching my production database application as well as custom work. I continue to work on Extended Tribe as an HR management tool and have started perusing the SHRM forums. It looks like there is a solid market out there, so I'd best get moving. |
|
No Comments Yet Add a Comment |
Archives