A couple weeks ago I finally decided to drop the hammer, purchase a Drobo and pick up a couple 2TB Green Caviar Hard Drives. First off…Drobo…Green Caviar…fabulous names! I’ve put this off for almost 2 years and finally broke down after cratering over 60G of hard drive space on my Mac Pro within 2 monhts. Not to mention that I maxed out my other external drive earlier this year. My lackluster backup system would be crippling on so many levels that I had to do something.
The Drobo offers dead simple …

Last August, I whipped together a blog post on a Firefox Add On For Google Voice that I had come across. Much to my surprise and continued head scratching, that post drives nearly 20% of my overall site traffic. Not exactly lightening striking but certainly surprising.
I started migrating to the Google Chrome browser when it was first in development for Mac but since January I’ve begun relying on it more and more. What made me switch? The Chrome Extensions Gallery and Developer tools. Now I only open Firefox and Safari when …

Did you notice anything strange about Google Buzz or was it just me? No, I’m not talking about the questionable privacy issue, that’s been resolved…and rather quickly I might add (Yah, I’m a Google fanboy).
Google Buzz has no advertisements.
So did Google miss an opportunity to place more ads? Are they waiting for something? In case you’re wondering, Google generates nearly all of it’s revenue from advertisements, yet Google Buzz doesn’t have advertisements. I suppose it isn’t so strange…Calendar and Docs are missing advertisements as well. Anyone have any ideas on …

All the buzz about Google Buzz got my mind buzzing… Who’s to say that someone doesn’t register The_Real_Shawn_Cheatham@gmail or some such nonsense. Here’s how I got a nifty ‘verified’ flag on my profile. Click my profile image below see my Google Profile.

Head over to www.Knol.Google.com
Sign-in with your Gmail username/password
Go to Preferences in the top-right corner
Select the Name Verification tab to verify your account

After a few failed attempts at verifying via credit card I resorted to using my social security number. You can check out the Name Verification FAQ here.

A couple years ago I was bitten by the Ruby on Rails bug. For those of you who don’t know (probably most people reading this), Ruby is a coding language and Rails is a framework (think template). My interest in Rails grew at first out of curiosity and interest in how comparatively easy it was to pickup in comparison to other technology I’ve worked with. Before long I grasped the basic ‘theory’ and ‘concepts’ of Rails to the extent that I could hold my own in general Rails conversations.
Similar to …

Couldn’t resist keeping this one around for a bit…
RT @Scobleizer: Oh, we finally found a GREAT use for Google Wave! Holy shitake! RT: @Orli: Awesome video!! http://bit.ly/4vfQAR #googlewave

If you’re one of the lucky few that have a Google Voice account, you might want to check out Chad Smith’s Google Voice Add-on for Firefox. The add-on gives you the ability to dial an outgoing number directly from a web page and then connects to whatever phone you specified in your Google Voice settings. Despite being in beta, I’ve been using it for a month or two with no major complaints. After installing and configuring the add-on, just go to a web page that has telephone number listed in …

After a bit of a “test” launch, I’m gearing up for another run at Momtorials.com What originally started with a visit home and a seemingly simple question from my mom is now a full-on side project. (Un)Fortunately, I got a little busy earlier this spring and wasn’t able to put in the time needed to build out the site but now things are starting to normalize and I think we’ve laid a good baseline. If you haven’t already, go take a look at Momtorials.com or become a Momtorials fan on …

If you’re looking for a professional photographer or you’re a PRO, take a look at what Eric O’Conner is up to over at mylife-pages.com. Eric has created a fantatstic tool for professional photographers that provides the ability to create custom websites for their clients. The beauty is in the applications effortless approach in creating an event specific site. In a matter of a few minutes you can have a site up and running with professional pictures. Another interesting feature is that the client has full editorial control over the content!
Here’s …

I just signed up for a Scrum Product Owner certification course with GoodAgile’s Peter Deemer. Over the past year or two I’ve become increasinly interested in Agile Software Development and specifically the Scrum framework. Originally, I had planned to take the ScrumMaster route but after a bit of reflection I think the PO course will provide a bit more relevant information.