Hansel Dobbs's Weblog

My wife and I are leaving for Vegas tomorrow for a week and this vacation is very much due. Kid free for a week and I’m going to a state where I can legally play some Texas Hold ‘Em. While I am there I will be attending a photographer party that happens there every year during WPPI. I am also going to check out the tech scene in downtown Vegas on Thursday at a meet up.

If you want to find out more about the up and coming tech scene in downtown Vegas you can check it out at DowntownProject.com. The founder of Zappos has a big part in it this rejuvenation.

If you want to find a local tech meetup you should check out this site called jelly!.

I found some really cool new stuff and happening that I am really interested in.

I went to Big Omaha last year in Omaha Nebraska. It’s a big tech conference that is full of great information and networking opportunities.

I found this really cool watch that I really want called the cookoo. It basically connects to the your iphone and gives you updates without having to take out your phone. You just look at your watch.

Google Glass : what can say about this? It’s awesome! I think it will be a little weird to have such funky glasses on your face at first, but I guess people would get used to it at some point. You have to watch this video.

Subtask is a new startup that helps you visually organize projects. I have started playing with it and I really enjoy it!

This is one of the best and most watched TED talks of all time.

Check out this article on the NevBlog.  It really describes me, but I am still waiting for success.   However,  I am really excited about the steps I am taking on weddingvenuebook.com.  I have a user-interface and graphic designer all ready to go and he is going to start the process of putting the wireframes together for the site.  I am also bringing in a marketing consultant to help with some strategy and ideation for the site before we begin.  I’ll provide an update in a week.

It is just incredible all of the technology that is coming our way.  To think that people are scared about the world ending and our economy collapsing is just absurd.  For the people out there that can adapt and acquire the necessary and needed skills for this new economy there are so many opportunities.  I can only imagine all of the ways these new technologies will be utilized.

Get your own motion controller HERE

This video just makes you feel good.  Good job Coca Cola!  This is a great way to market yourselves and give us something we can enjoy watching at the same time.  I hope all advertising goes this way.

You can take a blurry pictures with the new Lytro Camera.  You can literally re-focus the image after the fact.  This is serious technology that I think will be incorporated into Photoshop at some point in the future where you can fix poorly taken pictures.

Quib.ly is a new website for parents raising children in the digital age.  There is a lot of cool stuff to read on here for us parents.  I’m glad someone made a website like this.

Check out this video about something that needs to be taught in every school in this country.

Now that you have watched that check out this website where you can learn to program without going to a school called Thinkful.com.

Now for something funny…

It is so hard to invest in the market right now for the long term.  I can see the case for short term investments, but that is so hard to do with a day job.  I try to get into stocks at major pullbacks where I feel great companies are for sale, but even then the market is pretty scary for the average Joe that can’t watch things during office hours.

Check out the picture below and you can see just how cyclical the market is and where you should have bought stocks if you weren’t certain the world was ending.  Kind of hard to know what to do right now other than just sit on a bunch of cash.  Even with a cool chart like this though the market will probably find a way to surprise us.  I’m just wondering if the market will touch that upper trend line before the nose dive or some incredible catalyst that sends this market crashing through all the trends identified in this chart.

A great resource worth checking out is StockTwits.com.  Check out this feed from today below.

“Why many entrepreneurs are privately suffering, and what to do about it”

“Pitching Sequoia? Here’s the big question you’ll need to answer”

“Andreessen predicts the death of traditional retail. Yes: Absolute death”

“Nothing Succeeds Like Persistance”

“Business Productivity: 47 Tools You Shouldn’t do Business Without”

Check out this video by Jason Calacanis.  This is just a short piece of a longer speech to a college class where he organizes the world into two piles.

1.  Samurais

2. Rice Pickers

I thought I would share some tools that I have found that have revolutionized my email productivity and media management.

To start things off are Gmail and Evernote.  Gmail is without a doubt the best email service out there that is free.  If I find something else that is better I will let you know.

And then there is Evernote.  Evernote takes some getting used, but once you start using it and you really learn how to use it then you’re hooked.  It allows me to store everything I don’t have time to read in one place in an organized fashion.

I use Gmail, Evernote, and the other services provided below to make managing email easier and more efficient.  The combination of these services and using Gmail filters/labels allows me to pretty much always have less than 10 emails in my inbox at all times without much work to it.  Things just kind of go where they need go until I am ready to process them.

Next is IFTTT.  IFTTT stands for “If This Then That”.  Basically, you can create little automated recipes such as, if it is going to rain tomorrow THEN email me telling me so.  Or, if it is December 24th, THEN post to my facebook account “Merry Christmas”.  I use IFTTT to watch some of my favorite blogs so that when an article comes out I have it emailed to myself and then sent directly to a folder for that blog to be read later.

Next up is Powerbot.  Powerbot is a third party integration for Gmail where it adds a bunch of tools within Gmail so you can send things to your Evernote account.  Basically, I can send attachments or emails to specific folders within Evernote or share folders/files within Evernote within emails that I am sending to people.  It’s a great tool that I use daily.

HelloSign is a Gmail integration as well that makes it easier to sign documents without having to print and scan like you are probably used to.  Check it out; it’s pretty cool.

FollowUp.cc is a Gmail integration that allows you to reschedule emails to come back to you at a specific time in the future.  It’s kind of hard to explain, but totally worth checking out since it’s free.

Attachments.me is a gmail integration as well that scans all of your emails and databases your attachments so you can search through them easier and find the attachments you are looking for.  It has a lot of really cool features.

I really like maps and the information that can be applied to them for a better visual consumption model.  The simplest example I can think of is a picture of earth at night and you can see where the biggest population centers are by the clumping of light.  There are all kinds of info-graphic maps and I really dig them. If you are ever interested in making your own I found some tools for doing it.

Mapalong

EverPlaces

MapBox is the most powerful tool of these, but I have found it to be a little difficult to figure out.  I will take time to be able to really make an awesome map.  I also don’t like the idea of paying a monthly fee so people can see the map.

You can see a little sample of what you can do with MapBox below.

It’s just too funny…