BrianHimes.com » News

Here’s a Good Idea

Brian — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:04:41 +0000

You know what sounds like a good idea? Burning books.

You know what else is a good idea? Taking an extreme action to disapprove of a small subset of another group's actions.

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File This Under “Duh!”

Brian — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:26:50 +0000

You can file this under “Duh!” Last Summer’s Sinkholes and Street Geysers Explaind.

Now, did anyone really believe the DWP when they fed us the line about the cause not being the water rationing? Way to go USC for studying the situation and calling DWP out.

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Cup with a Cause

Brian — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:15:34 +0000

I stopped by the 7-Eleven across from my office this morning and noticed a new promotion while I was serving myself some coffee. The promotion is called “Cup with a Cause”, and it’s a philanthropic venture for 7-Eleven. Here’s a description of the program from www.cupwithacause.com.

The 7-Eleven Coffee Cup with a Cause program brings limited edition coffee cups designed by high profile entertainers and athletes into 7-Eleven stores nationwide. Each cup will benefit a charity of the celebrity’s choosing, with the organization receiving a $250,000 donation from 7-Eleven. This means that the next time you help yourself to one of 7-Eleven’s great coffee options, you’ll also have the chance to help someone in need. Now that’s hot. Cup with a Cause. It’s charity, by design.

It’s nice to see 7-Eleven doing something like this. And, with so many people visiting 7-Eleven each day, this will be great PR for all of the featured charities. Very cool 7-Eleven.

The first featured cup benefits the Richie-Madden Children’s Foundation.

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LA Nonprofits on Twitter

Brian — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:55:01 +0000

While I was sitting around the house this morning, an idea popped in my head. The idea was simple. I should find local nonprofits on Twitter and follow them. Now, I agree this may not sound like a lot of fun, but when you're a nerd like me things like this sound exciting.

To my surprise, after a short search, I was unable to find a good local list. I looked through directories, lists and users and found nothing that satisfied me. There are wonderful Twitter users like @nonprofitorgs who are compiling comprehensive lists of all nonprofits, but that is a little more than I want. I want to just read about the LA area. No one seemed to be doing that. So, I started @bhimes/la-nonprofits. It's a Twitter list for Los Angeles area Non Profit Organizations.

At this point it is a work in progress, but the plan is to grow the list and I can only do that with your help. Please suggest Los Angeles area nonprofits for me to add. You can leave a comment here, or send a reply to @bhimes on Twitter. Thanks.

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Google Buzz

Brian — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:16:37 +0000

Odds are you have now heard about Google Buzz. And, if you're a Gmail user, you might have even seen it in your Gmail inbox. Google's been rolling it out to everyone with Gmail accounts since Tuesday. But what is Google Buzz? People are still trying to figure that out.

If you're only point of contact with Google is Gmail, Buzz seems to be a Twitter-like aggregator for sharing ideas and content. It links with other social media services like Flikr, Twitter, etc.

If, like me, you use other Google services, Buzz becomes a little more interesting. For example, if you have a phone with the latest version of Google Maps, you can now see Buzz posts laid out on a map according to where the person who made the post was located at that point in time. There's also another view in Maps where you can see a Twitter-like list of all the posts of people physically near you. With this functionality, you can leave tips, comments and reviews for any location you visit, and people will see these posts when they check out the Buzz.

If you have an iPhone or an Android phone with Android 2.0+ you can also access a web app, which I can only guess incorporates the features available in Maps and Gmail. My Android phone only has Android 1.6 so I haven't been able to see the app. Please feel sorry for me.

All these features make Buzz a look a little like Foursquare + Twitter + Friendfeed on crack. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Foursquare has been growing quite rapidly in recent months so, for Google to drop Buzz right now is an interesting and maybe smart move.

The question that remains is will people adopt this new platform? Only time will really tell. I think it will largely depend on whether Google works out some of the kinks with Buzz, and if you haven't noticed there are some kinks.

Perhaps the biggest kink in my mind is that content pulled in from Twitter and other sites is slow to show up in your Buzz stream. And to make matters worse, communication with these services is only one way. For Buzz to succeed it'll need to be able to push and pull data instantly from services like Twitter and Facebook. Otherwise, what's the point?

I would be very happy to have Buzz essentially replace the need for all of these separate services, and the convenience of having access to it all in Gmail, makes it even more alluring. Interestingly though, with the addition of Buzz, Gmail has become more a communication's platform and less a webmail portal. It has chat, email, and now an aggregation/broadcasting tool. Strange huh?

It'll be interesting to see how that progresses. For now, I'm going to continue exploring Buzz and hope that Google continues to improve it over the course of time. I've been really impressed with their work in Gmail and I hope that Buzz can live up to it's name.

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Weekend Update

Brian — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:51:49 +0000

I have a little time, so I figure I should do a weekend update. Right?

Friday

Erin was at school so I stayed home and did pretty much nothing. I thought about doing something, but settled on doing nothing.

Saturday

Erin was at school so I stayed home and did pretty much nothing. Wait, that's not entirely true.
I had a leisurely breakfast at Starbucks, returned a pair of pants that didn't fit, saw Avatar, cleaned the house and prepared a nice dinner for Erin and I. It was actually a pretty busy day.
We concluded the evening with a viewing of Rachel Getting Married, and dessert at Denny's.

Sunday

Church, followed by lunch with the in-laws at Acapulco, a quick nap, and Night of Praise at church. It was a busy day.

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In Times of Catastrophic Disaster

Brian — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:47:23 +0000

Why do we only care about the poor and poverty stricken in times of catastrophic disaster? For the poor and poverty stricken each day is a disaster. It’s a disaster when the can’t afford food or shelter. It’s a disaster when they are beaten and broken. It’s a disaster every day.

We have this tendency to give in abundance when media is plagued with coverage of horrific events; but once the coverage has ceased, such events fall out of our consciousness.

Now that the terrible events in Haiti are two weeks past, coverage is getting less and less frequent. Soon we will forget all about Haiti and we will return to a world in which, for all intents and purposes, Haiti no longer exists. It reminds me of something I recently read on The Onion.

Less than two weeks after converging upon the site of a devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake, American anthropologists have confirmed the discovery of a small, poverty-stricken island nation, known to its inhabitants as “Haiti.”

We didn’t acknowledge it’s existence before so why should we continue to care a few weeks from now?

If you’re a Christian, like I am, you are probably aware that we are called to look out for these people. It’s what Jesus modeled in his ministry and it’s what he instructed us to do in following him. He even went as far as telling us that whatever we do for the least, we do for him (my paraphrase).

So the question is, what do we do? What do we do to look out for the least? What do we do to keep Haiti, and the-like on the forefront of our minds?

Here’s a suggestion. We should regularly support local and world humanitarian efforts. We should do so with our time and money, in times of catastrophic disaster, and times of every day disaster. There are always people who need help. And there are always ways to give… even if you aren’t wealthy.

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Apple’s iPad

Brian — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:52:09 +0000

Well Apple seems to have done it again. They announced what seems to be another amazing product. And this time, in an almost un-Apple fashion, the price point of the product seems reasonable. Maybe I’ve just become accustomed to their pricing, but I really expected the iPad to start at $700 subsidized by a mobile carrier when you sign a multi-year data contract. I’m glad I was wrong. Apple seems to have pulled out all the stops with this device.

One of the features that surprised me most was the availability of the iWork office suite. I had been dreaming that it would be capable of running presentations and opening documents, but I never really expected it to be a reality. Bravo Apple. This seems like an amazing device.

I am anxious to see how the iPad fares in reviews once people have their hands on it. I know I have a few questions still about how it will accomplish certain tasks, but I’m really excited about the possibilities. I think Apple is going to give both netbooks and ereaders a real run for their money with the iPad.

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Android Market Rant

Brian — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:42:49 +0000

I like to peruse the new apps added to the Android Market every day to see what’s new in the world of Android. I realize this is a little obsessive, but oh well. It’s just something I’ve done since I got my phone. Now, because I like to see all of the new apps, I generally use the All Apps category and filter it by Just In which mostly works great, except for one small thing. The All Apps category lists every non-game application, including all the wallpapers, themes, font packs, etc.

Now, if it were an actual program that managed wallpapers, themes or font packs I could understand why they would be listed as an app, but is wallpaper really an app? Also, when publishers add new wallpapers, or themes they sometimes publish 20 (or more) at a time, so you’ll see a Lakers theme followed by a Clippers theme, followed by a Cavs theme and so on. It gets really annoying. I wish the Android Market had another category for these types of files. It would make my daily habit much more enjoyable.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the themes or the people that make them; I just think they should be organized differently. If they had their own category it would be easier to find them when you wanted them and easier to avoid them when you don’t. I think it would be a win win situation.

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Weekend Update

Brian — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:02:12 +0000

Friday

Dinner at Zeke's Smokehouse in Montrose. Chicken, Ribs, Beans, Green Beans, Hush Puppies, Onion Rings, Sweet Potato Fries, and Shiner Bock. Good stuff.
Watched Up in the Air. Erin enjoyed all of the little details about business travel.

Saturday

A little work around the house followed by a lot of playing with my new WD TV Live. It's a cool little toy that allows me to share media on my home network and play it on my TV. It took me a while to figure out file sharing with my eMac, but it was because I skipped a step or two in setup. Oops.

Sunday

Church
More work around the house. We actually hung some stuff on our walls.
Small Group and a little New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

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