Brian Foley dot Net

Plaxo has been around for a long time. I signed up with them many years ago when they were first starting out. The main idea behind Plaxo was to have your contact information available on the web. When someone you know also signs up with Plaxo, you would be connected, much link LinkedIn. When someone you're connected to moves, changes jobs, gets a new cell phone your address book will automatically be updated. Likewise if you change your profile, their address books will also be updated. It's a fantastic concept, but in my case, wasn't very useful as the majority of my contacts were not online. Let alone signed up for Plaxo.

Oh My God! Speed Racer had to have been my MOST favorite cartoon when I was a kid. I used to watch that and wish that I was a racecar driver. I'd wander around the house singing the theme song "Go Speed Racer, Go Speed Racer, Go!" According to CNET, the cartoon is being brought to the big screen and should be out sometime in May '08. I'll be there!

Apple has announced the release date for the much anticipated, highly acclaimed, shiney new iPhone! Set your calendars for June 29th! Steve Jobs has commented that if your looking to get one one the release date, that you might want to go to your local AT&T store first, as the Apple stores will be very busy.

I would LOVE to have one of these phones, except for the fact that I would have to switch my cellular service to AT&T (Cingular). I know that AT&T service is not very good around where I live, so I'd be getting less than stellar phone service on a (hopefully) fantastic phone. Perhaps AT&T will get enough new contracts that they can start investing more on improving their service. By then the iPhone might have had a revision or two out, until then I'm sticking with Sprint.

Check out the iPhone commercials Apple has released!

Recently I've made a few changes to this site. First, you might notice a new address. I've started redirecting bfoley.net to brian-foley.net. I also changed the page titles a bit to acknowledge the changes. I'm also working on recategorizing many of the existing posts to try to clean things up a bit. I don't think I fully understood how to use the categories before and was creating new categories for almost every post!

I have no clue what the kids in Redmond have been doing to the Windows/Microsoft Update site, but it seems like lately every system I've tried to run the updates on I get an error. After spending a LONG time checking for updates, it comes back with Error number: 0×8DDD0009. I should clarify that it's always on Windows XP SP2 systems. So, I follow the instructions Microsoft has provided on this error page including emptying the cache, restarting the browser and... It still fails, all I've accomplished is wasting a heck of alot of time!

Recently I downloaded the audiobook "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" by David Allen. I've heard alot of good things about the GTD method of organization and thought it might help me to keep organized with new information that I'm exposed to everyday, as well as to help me keep on track with some new projects I'm involved in. Part of the GTD philosophy is to get all of the "stuff" out of your head, and either onto paper, or into an organization system.

Looks like I'm one of a growing number of Apple Mac surfers as mentioned in this article. About a month ago I had an excellentopportunity to purchase a 24" Apple iMac. Let me just say it has been so much fun learning how to use Mac OSX. It's so much nicer than Windows, both XP and especially Vista. It's a little weird to use at first, as the keyboard is slightly different, and the mouse lacks a physical left and right button, but I've gotten used to it. I'm in the process of installing all the applications I need to have the functionality of my Windows system. In case I do need Windows for something, I have it running on the Mac using Parallels.

Eventually I think I'll replace my Windows Vista machine at home, with the Mac. I'll probably give that system to Mandie. My laptop has Vista (barely) running on it, but I think I'm going to replace Vista with Ubuntu Linux. The next laptop I buy will be a Mac Book Pro, no doubt!

Now I just need to come up with a way of storing the data I use most to someplace on the web for easy retrieval from all the different system I use. Using web applications is the most logical thing to do since the one thing in common with every system I use on a day to day basis is the web browser. I think as time goes on, it really won't matter what operating system people are using, as the important tools we use will be web based. Jut look at what Microsoft is doing with Windows Live and Google with Docs and Spreadsheets.