While in Colchester England, I saw a key ring bearing the name "Mackenzie" on it. Seeing as McKenzie is my middle name, I couldn't resist buying it. Yes that is right my middle name is McKenzie, it comes from my Dad's mothers maiden name I think. It seems like a bit of tradition if you look at my family history of maintaining the mothers maiden name as a middle name for the eldest son.
Anyway, On the keyring is the Mackenzie clan motto "Luceo non Uro" which literally means "I shine, not burn". Apparently the saying came from blacksmithing or smithing in general, where one had to make sure that the metal you were working with didn't get burned, but shone in the heat. [1]
I think that is quite a cool motto when applied to life, We need to balance the hardships/heat in our lives so that we continue to grow and to shine but we also need to make sure we don't let life burn and scar us. The motto reads like it is a choice, which I think it often is. We do choose how we react to circumstances.
Are you going to allow yourself to burn or to shine?
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Friday, December 15, 2006
5 things Google should give us all for Christmas
Like all good ideas, more than one person has them :)
Panda Search Engine News beat me to the "google christmas presents" idea...
Here are mine anyway:
Like many avid google users I use the google personalized search feature, this has benefits in that you are able to look back at what you searched for and found, but it has the disadvantage that the link you click on in the search results isn't the real link. It redirects through google's tracking servers.
The problem is now that you can't look up a site then right click copy url and paste it into an email. You can select the url under the result and copy and paste that, but you have to add your own http:// to get the mail client to recognise it as a link. Since Yahoo also seems to do that same thing there may well be a very good reason for not displaying the http:// but it would be good to atleast hear it so that I can think of all the people I am helping each time I type http://
I'm sick of waiting seeing "waiting for ssl.analytics.google.com" in my firefox status bar. It is also the reason I don't use it on my blog. I trialled it for a while but it just seemed to slow everything down. If it was me I'd go for a minimalist approach. Just get people to but a really small image on their site and record the hit at the server end. We don't need the fancy javascript stuff...
When I heard about picasa web albums I was excited. This was going to mean I could create and manage albums in picasa and publish them on the web. Hoorary! The reality
left something to be desired. Picasa basically is just a tool you can use to upload files to picasa web, what we really need is something that will keep the same albums synchonised, eg. you say put this album on the web and as you add or remove files they magically appear in the right place on line.
I often get emailed other peoples email addresses, or see people I need to email cc'd into an email I get. I would be great if there was an easy way to add these people into the address book.
People have been asking for this for a while, and some people have even developed some work arounds, but none of the ones I've tried work reliably for me. I think this is something google need to develop before Google Calendar really takes off in the business world.
Update: Syncmycal provides an excellent and free solution for this! Thanks Vaibhav.
Have a good break, and come up with a whole lot of better ideas to do next year...
Update: Matt Cutts likes my list!
And see Pandia again for a round up of blog posts on this topic.
Panda Search Engine News beat me to the "google christmas presents" idea...
Here are mine anyway:
1. Put http:// back in the urls
Like many avid google users I use the google personalized search feature, this has benefits in that you are able to look back at what you searched for and found, but it has the disadvantage that the link you click on in the search results isn't the real link. It redirects through google's tracking servers.
The problem is now that you can't look up a site then right click copy url and paste it into an email. You can select the url under the result and copy and paste that, but you have to add your own http:// to get the mail client to recognise it as a link. Since Yahoo also seems to do that same thing there may well be a very good reason for not displaying the http:// but it would be good to atleast hear it so that I can think of all the people I am helping each time I type http://
2. Speed up google analytics
I'm sick of waiting seeing "waiting for ssl.analytics.google.com" in my firefox status bar. It is also the reason I don't use it on my blog. I trialled it for a while but it just seemed to slow everything down. If it was me I'd go for a minimalist approach. Just get people to but a really small image on their site and record the hit at the server end. We don't need the fancy javascript stuff...
3. Make Picasa Web Albums manageable with picasa
When I heard about picasa web albums I was excited. This was going to mean I could create and manage albums in picasa and publish them on the web. Hoorary! The reality
left something to be desired. Picasa basically is just a tool you can use to upload files to picasa web, what we really need is something that will keep the same albums synchonised, eg. you say put this album on the web and as you add or remove files they magically appear in the right place on line.
4. Add a "grab contacts" button to Gmail
I often get emailed other peoples email addresses, or see people I need to email cc'd into an email I get. I would be great if there was an easy way to add these people into the address book.
5. GCal Outlook Sync.
People have been asking for this for a while, and some people have even developed some work arounds, but none of the ones I've tried work reliably for me. I think this is something google need to develop before Google Calendar really takes off in the business world.
Update: Syncmycal provides an excellent and free solution for this! Thanks Vaibhav.
5.5 Rest
Have a good break, and come up with a whole lot of better ideas to do next year...
Update: Matt Cutts likes my list!
And see Pandia again for a round up of blog posts on this topic.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
2007 Technology Pioneers
The World Economic Forum has just announced the technology pioneers they have invited to their annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Apparently getting to davos is every entrepreneur's dream.
So congratulations to those companies who made it:
http://www.weforum.org/en/about/Technology%20Pioneers/SelectedTechPioneers/2007TechPioneers/IT/index.htm
WEF, might need to hire one of these to technology pioneers to updated the titles on these pages so it doesn't display as "(untitled)" in the web browser...
So congratulations to those companies who made it:
http://www.weforum.org/en/about/Technology%20Pioneers/SelectedTechPioneers/2007TechPioneers/IT/index.htm
WEF, might need to hire one of these to technology pioneers to updated the titles on these pages so it doesn't display as "(untitled)" in the web browser...
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