Tech I Use

I’m finding myself using Google+ more and more. I recently decided that the long game Google is playing is absolutely brilliant. They are being understated about it but doing exactly what business strategists talk about when they describe the long game as the one to play. Rather than making a bunch of sweeping pronouncements, struggling to jam together a bunch of random crap in a big bang release, and then worry about staying involved in a feature race with a competitor, Google is continually experimenting with new functionality, rolling it out broadly in a fully integrated fashion on a continuous basis, and providing it as a core part of an ever expanding thing that is getting more and more useful by the week. ...

I love apps that do one thing extraordinarily well and become part of what I use every day. Captio is one of these apps. And I have Dave Tisch to thank for turning me on to it about a year ago. Here’s how it happened. I sent myself email reminders on my iPhone constantly. I hate paper and don’t carry any around with me. In general I don’t take notes (I have an excellent general purpose memory) but if I want to remember to do something specifically, I send myself a short email to do it when I have time. Then, as I grind through my inbox I do all of the quick tasks that have piled up during the day. ...

I’ve tried to aggressively shift to video conferencing instead of audio conferencing for anything longer than a 15 minute call. I’m also giving a lot of talks around the world, especially on Startup Communities , so rather than travel and burn a day (or more), I’m doing 30 minute videoconferencing things remotely. And, as anyone who has ever asked me to speak to a class of students knows, I have a huge weakness for always saying yes to this so I’ve been doing this via videoconferencing as well. ...

On day two of my 14 day visit to Miami Beach, I realized that the hotel WiFi at the W Hotel was not going to work for me. Once again I was at a Starwood Hotel, which I love, except for the abysmal WiFi and WiFi policies. In this case, performance of WiFi in my room sucked and the cost was $15 / device / day. Upon connecting my computer and Amy’s computer, I realized I was paying $30 / day for shitty WiFi. Nope – that doesn’t work for me. ...

I’ve recently discovered two awesome tools for helping me manage my contacts in Google Apps. One is a TechStars Boulder company called Rainmaker and the other is a Paris-based company called Kwaga that has an app called WriteThat.Name. I’ve got a large address book in Gmail (> 11,000 contacts). I get numerous new inbound contacts on a regular basis from people reaching out to me and Google automatically puts their email address in Google Contacts, which is cool. However, it doesn’t put any additional info – either from the email body (which often has contact info in it) or from other sources like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook – which often has a lot more contact info, including a photo. ...

I did eventually solve my Paris smart phone problem. Here’s what I did. I paid AT&T some absurd amount of money for unlimited international everything for my iPhone. The nice senior people at Orange sent me a SIM card that is good until the end of the month for free unlimited everything for my Android. Maxroam sent me a super cool device that gives me 3G and international calling for $15 / day. But none of it matters. Because after two weeks without a smart phone, I simply don’t give a shit anymore. In general, I hate the phone and try to stay off of it. I spend my time in email, IM, and Skype when I’m in front of my computer, which is a lot. However, when I’m wandering around between things, I’ve actually started to realize the joy of looking around and noticing all of the other humans staring at the little pieces of glass they are holding in their hands. During dinner at a restaurant, I’m enjoying the idea that I’m unreachable while I shower 100% of my attention on my beloved and anyone else I’m dining with. And, when I go to the bathroom in a restaurant, I’m actually enjoying the notion that I’m not going to return to the table distracted by the emails I’ve scanned while doing my business. ...

Finally I solved my Paris Internet Mobile 3G SIM cell phone nightmare poke my eyes out scream at my phone problem. It was remarkably easy, once I knew the magic trick, which I found on the site Pay as you go sim with data wiki (thanks Toby Ruckert – lunch is on me tomorrow.) Here are the steps (as of 7/6/11) for an unlocked Android phone and a Gmail user. ...

And then our hero’s glasses broke. At this point the meltdown was complete, and our hero crawled into bed for a two hour nap in an effort to let his soul catch up with him. I’m on day three of trying to get my Google Nexus S to work with 3G without costing me $17 / minute. Since I use Google Voice for my phone number (and I make almost all of my phone calls on my laptop using Google Voice or Skype) I only need data service. Based on all the feedback I got when I was in the US, this seemed easy. “Just get a pre-paid SIM card from any of the telecom providers when you get there, slap it in, and it’ll work fine” or some varient of that was the suggestion. ...

Thanks for all the cell phone suggestions for my europe trip this summer. Of course, shortly after I wrote the post, Apple came out with an unlocked version of the iPhone 4 (which just showed up in my office) rendering many of the options (and presumably some of the companies) either obsolete or unnecessary. However, I decided to take a different approach. I’m going to give the Nexus S another try. I’ve been using it since Friday and the most recent version is awesome. Almost all of the iPhone apps I rely on are available on Android and since I’m a Google Apps + Google Voice user, the integration is much nicer. So we’ll see how that goes. ...

I’m in my car on the way to Aspen for the weekend (Amy is driving – I’m in the passenger seat.). The top is down. It’s absolutely beautiful on I-70 as we travel at a high rate of speed. And I’m sitting here blogging on my iPad. There is no way to describe this as anything other than magic. I’m in an extremely creative zone of my life and trying to spend as much time as I can working on stuff I really care about. I love the entrepreneurs I work with, my partners are extraordinary, the team that supports us is dynamite, and because of magic technology I have an enormous amount of time and space freedom. ...