Yesterday I exchanged my normal cable box for one that handles HD signals. I didn’t need to do it before now because until my birthday recently I didn’t even have an HDTV and rarely watched a “channel” at all. First thing I noticed with the new box is that stuff looked *really* different. In a good way. Clarity and vibrant colors. The trade-in was definitely worth the extra $8 per month. As cool as the enhanced picture is, during my TV watching session yesterday I noticed three things that made me realize (once again) why watching TV is mainly just a waste of time. 1st Stupid...

I’ve been the owner of a Kindle Fire for just about 12 hours now so I don’t have a lot of experience, but my initial reaction — overall — is that it’s the wrong size. At the risk of being called a fanboy (or even fanboi) I think Steve Jobs was right about 7″ tablets not being a good size. (Now watch them come out with one…) Here’s why: If I’m in a “mobile” situation, stopped at a red light, standing in line, etc., my iPhone is the perfect size. And if I’m in a “settled” situation like sitting in bed or on the couch,...

On his parislemon.com blog MG Siegler said (in a post about commenting on blogs): “If you’re saying something that you think is great, why would you want to do it as a comment on another site anyway?” Obvious answer — because I want to have a conversation, not give a speech. While a conversation can consist of a post on one blog, a couple Tweets, a post on another blog, etc., that’s not usually very satisfying. Or efficient.

Laptops are outselling desktop machines (by a huge margin) and tablets (iPads, specifically) are being used to replace laptops by more and more people. I can see a time within a couple years (yeah, that soon) where the only computer most people will need will be an iPhone. Sidebar: Yeah, someone using Android could pull off what I’m suggesting, but Apple has a proven track record of doing more cool things. Sorry, just a fact. A “home computer” could consist of a monitor and a keyboard — and your iPhone. Sit down in front of the keyboard and connect your iPhone to the monitor...

A few years ago I met my family for lunch after they’d taken off to get me a birthday present. During lunch I was making guesses about what they might have gotten me and my son said, “Well, we didn’t get you a ukulele, that’s for sure.” My wife and I busted out laughing and he didn’t get what he’d just done. He was only about 9 years old, so you have to cut him a little slack — and that’s been the punchline for many family jokes over the years. But birthday presents aren’t the kinds of secrets I’m talking about — you can keep those...

I’ve written a LOT of tools over the years but the ones I use day in and day out are the following (and you’ll notice these are all aimed at creating and promoting products): Article Architect – While I don’t do tons of article marketing anymore (I do it, but it’s very focused — no more shotgun approach for me) I create content all the time, and I still do most of my writing in AA. It’s one place where I can find all my content and then auto-post it to my WordPress blog or export and upload as an HTML web page. Sonic Sneak – I’ve been cloaking and...