Pioneer Week Challenge: Can you live without it?

I'm a geek. I love all things technology and new-and-shiny. If it has buttons, batteries, or does something I could have done with my own two hands then I want it. I have an eight year old son who complains of being bored unless he's watching a movie, or playing a game on my laptop or Android phone. Technology is integrated into our lives in such a way as to make us appear to be the first iteration of the Jetson's. The only thing we lack is a robot maid (my wife is waiting for one). We document our life in an almost exclusively digital manner. Analog is something that my kids will likely never understand.

Recently this addiction came to a head with my son (and myself) being at the receiving end of some serious talk from my wife. It seems we neglect Real Life when we stare at our glowing screens. Who would have thought there was life outside of Lego.com, Google+/Facebook/Twitter, and Angry Birds? So my wife said we were going to have an entire day without computer, TV, or cellphones. Being the "good husband" that I want my wife to believe I am I one upped (+1) her and said we should do a whole week without technology. Talk about putting your foot in your mouth. That taste will never leave. Sooooo here's the deal:

We will be shutting down our technology consumption from Pioneer Day (July 24th for those not aware of Latter Day Saint celebrations) and conclude on Saturday (which just happens to be our Ward Pioneer Day celebration). What does shutting down mean? Well this means that we will not have our cellphones, our TV, our computer, running for the entire week. This could result in some serious energy savings for our family. The lesson we'd like to learn from this is that there is more to life than 0's and 1's arranged for our entertainment. We may take this to a new level and even do as much of our cooking using less conventional methods (i.e. Dutch Oven, BBQ grill, solar oven etc.). We will either come closer together by weeks end or we will not see the week end. In either event I feel strongly that it's going to be quite the adventure.

So now the challenge to all who are willing. Join us. Take the Pioneer Week Challenge and turn off the digital world as much as possible. Take out the things that distract you from your family and focus on things that bring you together. If you survive then you just might be a Forever Family.

Are you going to take the challenge? Leave your ideas for "Pioneer activities" in the comments section and we'll try and do some of them during our experiment. When it's all over I'll post a blog about our experience.

NOTE: We are so digital that our only phones are cellular style so if you need to get hold of us during this week you'll need to come by and talk to us in person.

Facebook...it's been a good run. Google+ gives me so much more.

I was recently lucky enough to get an invite to Google's newest attempt at social networking. Google+ is the latest in a long line of mediocre and failed attempts by Google to compete legitimately with their newest and biggest threat to internet dominance - Facebook.

Google+ (G+ for short) is everything that Facebook should have become over the last several years...had they been listening. Which is exactly what Google appears to be doing with their early adopters at least. There are tons of new features and things to like in this social network and while I'd love to spend thousands of words on those features I will try and keep this short.

My favorite features:

First is the Circles concept and execution. Circles are your "circles of friends" sort of like Groups on Facebook but a million times easier to create and manage. Your circles act like individual streams for each group and gives you the ability to communicate the information you want with only the people you want. I know most of you Facebook-ers are saying that you can do the same thing on Facebook. My question is; how many of you are doing it? and if you're not why not? I consider myself pretty well heeled on almost every social media platform primarily Facebook and I don't break my friends into those categories because it's simply too time consuming and not very intuitive. Google has found the most intuitive way to not only conceptualize your groups but also curate them and execute their usage. You can create layers and layers of circles and share just the information you want with just the people that care about that information.
It's even got Twitter-like functionality. Twitter allows you to follow people that don't follow you back. Creating a source for news and information without forcing a "relationship". G+ also does this. You can add almost anyone to your circles and they aren't forced to follow you back. This means that you can get the same news and information feed that you have on Twitter without leaving the Facebook-like relationship network of G+. Admittedly G+ is new and as with all new things they glitter with awesome...but I see this network replacing both my Twitter and Facebook because it can do both functions for me on one site without a third party Hootsuite, or Tweetdeck interface.
The next innovative function (probably the next one to be mimicked by Facebook) is the "Hangout" feature. This feature allows people withe web cams to meet up and have a 10 way chat with each other. Built on the Google Talk product this is an awesome social integration that really takes things to a new level. While this feature won't stand long with Facebook playing catch-up very quickly it remains to be seen just how this will be executed in Facebook. I can tell you that it is very compelling in G+.
The next feature is deep integration with the mobile phone app and image sharing. Every time you use your phone to take a picture the image is immediately uploaded (not shared) to your Picasa web album and available to share. Another mobile feature is Huddle. This is a SMS feature that allows you to select one of your Circles and start a SMS chat with the circle. All of the responses are sent to all the circle members creating a complete conversation where everyone is privy to the conversation and no rebroadcasting is necessary. Very handy for organizing diner with some of your favorite people.
The long and short of it all is that Google has finally got social figured out. They will be a force and you'll find that your in a similar situation to when you left MySpace for Facebook. Below are some important links in learning more about this network and if you understand it all you'll be as excited about it as I am, maybe. One more reason to join...Ashton Kutcher is already building a following here.

Related articles

• Google+: Why I Think Mom and Dad Will Use It (jeanhsu.com)
• 9 Reasons to Switch from Facebook to Google+ (pcworld.com)
• How to turn Google+ into and online photography portfolio(thenextweb.com)
• Google Plus 50(chrisbrogan.com)
• 39 things you should know about Google+(webpronews.com)

Awesome Camping Trip: 10th Anniversary at Camp Z

This last weekend we went on our 10th annual Camp Zarahemla trip with Karen's family. It was perhaps one of the best trips we've ever had. The weather was great the food was perfect and our trip to Mt. Rainier was as good as you'll ever get. I'll keep this post short and not bore you with the details of our trip. Instead I'll include some of the awesome pictures we took. Below you will find the slideshow of our trip.

Amazon Tablet Rumors: What if they're true?

{EAV_BLOG_VER:12a8ae1d61ba62ef}Image via CrunchBaseAmazon is a very forward thinking company. My personal experience working for them at a customer support call center gave me a chance to see how they work to make their company better every single day. Not only was the organization extraordinarily fast paced it was also very customer centric bending over backwards at times to make a customer happy. Why would I preface this post in such a way? Well Amazon is a household name for a reason and with their first foray into consumer electronics they were successful in large part because they have had such laser-like focus on the consumer experience. This will be the key to their rumored second consumer device reportedly coming in fall this year.
The tech part of this is important. Amazon has one of the best libraries of Video's on Demand of any company. While Netflix is unarguably the monster in this category, Amazon has a very respectable catalog that warrants attention. Netflix, and Hulu Plus are services that have made the transition to tablets and this transition is important to their future success as these devices become our primary connection to the world and entertainment. Amazon's creation of a tablet follows on surprise moves like the Amazon App store that sells Android Apps. This new store allows them to leverage their huge retail presence and the digital accounts associated with it to rival the Android Market by Google. But this store is more of an opportunity to support their new Android powered tablet and that tablet, like the Kindle before it, could be a huge deal. If Amazon puts all of their current apps on this new tablet and announces a new app with the tablet they could enter the tablet wars as a legitimate force. So what app do they need to introduce still? AmazonVOD (Video on Demand) for Android would allow them to enter the tablet market more prepared to do battle than almost any other Android tablet released or rumored to be released. While working there over a year ago I mentioned that they needed to make such an appliance...low and behold here it comes. No doubt it's been in the works longer than that but it's like they were reading my mind. With this product they would be positioned so well to compete with Apple that Motorola, Samsung, Dell, and other Android tablet manufactures would seem like second class citizens in the market. I make this assertion on the fact that none of those organizations is paired with a content source that comes anywhere near rivaling Apple or Amazon. Apple has iTunes and thousands of movie titles that are available for rent/purchase with ease. If Amazon plays their cards right (and they almost always do) they will be THE Apple iPad competitor. Between their cloud MP3 service and cloud drive offering they'll be able to point to cross platform functionality from almost any consumer entertainment or computing device. Apple has this only in so much as you have lots of Apple products. If Amazon is able to add uploading and streaming of movies like they do music they will have one up on Apple and will be able to draw the iPad2 and it's lesser competitors back to the drawing board.
Of course all of this is speculation at least until this holiday season when all our entertainment dreams come true thanks to Amazon.

3 Things to fix Chrome OS and my CR48

Image via WikipediaI just read a similar blog post that detailed the items that Chrome OS doesn't have that it needs. I found myself disagreeing with the blogger on almost all accounts. I shared my opinion with my suggestions as to the REAL features that are missing in the CR48. I felt so strongly about it that I decided that I'd bore my faithful readers with my review after having the CR48 since before Christmas.
First and foremost the CR48 is nowhere near ready for broad public purchase. The machinery is awesome if a little conservative in processing power...but it is just for use on the internet and doesn't need to run Photoshop CS5 or anything like that. That being said...if you've been using Chrome browser you're ready to buy one of the newly announced Chromebooks coming to a big-box store near you in June. I can say that because I suspect that the CR48 line has provided the data needed to make the upcoming Chromebooks not only stable but more advanced on the software end than the current dev or beta releases on CR48 and that updates and improvements to the CR48 will slow and have fewer serious tweaks in coming months.
Now, again, based on the assumption that most of the problems that exist on the CR48 TODAY are going to exist in the Chromebooks next month, here is the list of things that need to be corrected.

1. Media player! Holy cow this one is big. In large part a computer is only useful in as much as it is able to play/run various files from a variety of media. If I have a SD card with the first 5 episodes of Big Bang Theory that I want to watch on my laptop I better be able to get my fix of Sheldon, Penny and Leonard without having to jump through hoops. My experience with the Media player is that it'll play MP3's like a champ. Easy peasy. But Mp4, Mpg, Avi, just about every video format that I've had time to try doesn't play on the media player. I've tried the dev channel, the beta channel, and followed forum instructions and have yet to have a downloaded file work in the media player. When this is fixed I'll be an even HUGER advocate for this OS.
2. Centralized or simplified storage solutions. Right now I can save my pics on Picassa, Box.net, Flickr, GDocs, and a variety of other resources. Each of those offer varying capacity to me for saving those important files. If I want to save my music I presume I'll be able to save them on either AmazonMP3's system, or GMusic and have access to them in a playable format with ease. The problem is that in many cases I have to have a user id and password for each of those and remember which service I saved the file with. If I save my homework in Box.net and I keep looking in GDocs to find it I'll be at it all night. I need to be able to have a central cloud "C" drive that I can quickly count on for finding ALL of my files regardless of the service I need to use them. If this is some URL storage service that creates searchable & tag-able bookmarks to my files then that's what that means. If it means Google ponies up more than they already do for their individual services so I can save my videos (specifically those I'd play on that media player) then that's what needs to happen. YouTube will not play my purchased media but the media player better and that means I need a place I can store and search for that media. 
3. Offline use of extensions would also be nice. There are some extensions that I use that aren't always just useful on the internet. Occasionally those extensions are useful for other things. 

That's it. The list is short and likely already corrected just not on my CR48. The hardware issues with the trackpad and the slower rendering of Flash are things I can get over for the price I paid for this beta tester. Had I paid $300-400 for this thing I'd be disappointed...but we've been assured these won't be issues with the new Chromebooks. Chrome OS is an important addition to the marketplace because it will bring millions to the "Cloud" and it will give a simplified "average user" experience that will appeal to people who have no use or experience with things like design software or other processor/graphics hungry programs. Chrome OS is for consumers that still want functionality with basic features that most people buy a computer for in the first place. Chrome OS is not for people who require the raw power of a computer to create products or consume bleeding edge games. Chrome OS is for people who want to write a paper for college and then watch some YouTube or upload their most recent vacation pics. It's functional, useful, familiar, and does what most people ask their computer to do and then more. For all of the benefits of Chrome OS click here. Then tell me what you think.