With the Pandora Smooth Jazz channel playing, and though I am confused at some of the music they are classifying as “smooth jazz” I am nonetheless liking it as I collect my learnings for the week…

• I learned 2 things along with the above photo. Presumably if you are putting on a water ski, it is probably too late at that point to read the warning fine print. Also, this modern ski was not sufficient for my lovely wife, as she strapped on wooden skis she used when she was a kid to be pulled behind a boat for the first time in at least a decade, and with great success – go you!
• Sometimes, spontaneous fun has to be scheduled.
• Facilitating the listening to the earlier-mentioned Pandora channel are my iHip Patriots lanyard headphones. I have had these for a while and am surprised I have never talked about them as I love them! Most of the cord is wrapped in lanyard material sporting the Pats logo, which means they don’t tangle just by looking at them. And for under ten dollars, they are a great deal. Where mine have the logo of the greatest NFL football team ever, they are offered in other team logos, including the local team the Chicago Bears.
• Where I didn’t need headphones was last Monday when I saw Bob Mould perform at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park. I have mentioned him and his original band Husker Du many times before, and this was the third time I saw him over the years. In short, he rocked, both in his new music, songs he has recorded as a solo artist over the years, and even a few songs from Husker Du days, including Hardly Getting Over It, Flip Your Wig and Makes No Sense at All.
• Building on my original blog post on Managing Your Email Inbox To Zero from 5 years ago, a great way to get your inbox down is to sort by recipient – it’s a great way to clear out notifications, newsletters, junk mail and other spam. It is also a good way to action on a group of emails pretty quickly.
• The Boston Market restaurant in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago closed abruptly on the June 15 and I found out about it when I went to take the family there for dinner, and we found out from the attendant at the free parking lot next to it that they shut down. As someone who had been to the original Boston Chicken before renamed and franchised, which itself closed years ago, it’s sad this decent meal option for the family becoming more scarce.
• I am not a therapist nor do I play one on TV, but if I was a PhD and I wanted to prescribe certain medications I now could in Illinois, after taking over 2 years of additional education, based on a new psychologist prescription bill that has become law. Even in this hypothetical situation, to have a PhD then take more education, especially in this uncertain time in healthcare worldwide, I would rather refer them to a true MD who would buy me a beer for every referral. Again, in this hypothetical situation I would.
• While the City of Chicago has been thrust into turmoil over the addition of the name TRUMP to the eponymous skyscraper and winning the future George Lucas museum, what has been hardly talked about is the installation of sensors to monitor, among other things, sounds and mobile device activity. They are due to be installed along Michigan Avenue and the Loop starting later this year. Of course they won’t look as ominous as they sound as they will be concealed with a decorative shield. As expected, they are being proclaimed not in the name of Big Brother and Big Data, but for our safety. Looks like I will be placing my phone in Chicago Mode (similar to airplane mode) as I walk around the city.
• When you say you don’t know, chances are you probably do.
• Version 7 of ownCloud is now in beta. The suite of tools which you can use – just as I do – to replace Google Docs, Calendar, Address Book and similar “cloud” services from others has been an invaluable tool for me, and I haven’t even yet installed version 6 yet, which is out and has been given high marks.
• Where the next book from my good friend John J. Wall may not be coming out anytime soon, I have finally taken the first baby steps towards writing my own first book. Note the term baby steps, so don’t expect my book signing bus tour to commence anytime soon.
• I ran across Musicless Music Videos almost by accident, where popular music videos are stripped of the music and you hear what could have been the sound when the video was shot. Below I have embedded the video for Dancing in the Streets by Mick Jagger and David Bowie with this treatment – follow the link if you can’t see the video below, and follow this link to the original video, including music.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Announcements • Business • Social Media • Technology • Thrive • What I Learned • (1) Comments • Permalink

After waiting all total about 30 minutes for Windows 7 to patch itself, and a few other lame excuses for this being posted late…

• The installation of the 1,004 Portraits at Chicago’s Millennium Park, which I mentioned in last week’s post, is complete. This is what it looks like at around 7:30 am Central time with the sun’s reflection off of buildings on Michigan Avenue.
• Speaking of the last blog post here on The Hot Iron – it was my 750th post. After the last several years of not blogging much, it is good to hit a milestone like that.
• Morrissey, who came to fame in the 80’s as the lead singer of The Smiths and since has had a prolific solo career, canceled the remaining dates on his US tour as he caught some form of virus in Miami, including tonite’s show. The fact that I had great seats for that show makes me sad, but I hope he gets better and books yet a third show in the city, which hopefully be the charm to see him here.
• I did get my fix of 80’s music last Friday night as I “heard” Foreigner and Styx. They were performing at the FirstMerit Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island, an outdoor ampitheatre that sits where the former Meigs Field airport was. If you look at this aerial map of the venue, you may see water around it. That water is Lake Michigan and Burnham Harbor, where boats are docked or do dock by it for concerts there, where they can hear them extremely clearly, and for free. I know as I was on a boat in the harbor singing along with Foreigner, who’s 45 rpm single “Urgent” was the first record I ever bought in the late 70’s. It was wicked awesome, and thanks to Kristy and Edi for having us aboard.
• People are more inclined to give to a specific cause or item rather than just to a general fund. For example, ask people to contribute any amount to a charity, and you will not get the response like asking someone to donate to purchase a specific piece of equipment for a charity that has a fixed cost. It also works better if you repeatedly go back to those same people and ask for another specific item.
• Just recently Hailo, my choice for taxi hailing app, added black car service. So rather than riding in a standard taxi cab, you can choose a black car – a leather-lined sedan or SUV or even a limo – for just a little more than the cost of a standard taxi. This new option is so easy to choose, and it could become addictive.
• This past week I learned the terms information foraging and information scent. Though I had just learned these terms, I was very familiar with the concepts and have used them in Web design and content development for years. For those of you that are not technical, follow the link above and read the article and let me know if it makes sense to you, and if you have experienced this yourself.
• I don’t need someone pimping out their new biography to make it “Ideas Week” – for me, every week is ideas week.
• Upon catching up on podcasts this week, I got to listen to the 100th episode of The Voicemail. It is a weekly, around 30-minute podcast on mobile technology hosted by 2 very smart and witty guys, James Whatley and Stefan Constantinescu. If you are interested at all in the mobile device industry you must listen, and thank me later.
• My good friend and colleague Tom Ordonez is launching Miami Startup School. Being billed as a “3-month bootcamp that teaches you the right way to create a business. Sales, marketing, legal, tech. Everything you need to do it the right “lean startup” way and stop wasting time and money” I am sure it will be a success for those who attend and for Tom. He is a serial entrepreneur and takes a no-nonsense approach to building thriving businesses.
• I was amused by the story of how ad agency Cramer-Krasselt parted ways with Panera Bread. Where I personally don’t have an opinion either way about their advertising, they certainly need a creative touch in the presentation of their in-store menus. Most of the time when I am in there, only to buy a loaf of their fresh bread, I am behind people who can’t make heads or tails of their menu. With numerous colors and fonts, it is not a quick read by any stretch.
• Though it originally aired over a year ago on national TV in the US, I was just made aware of this dialogue in the CBS-TV show “Mike and Molly” which interestingly takes place in Chicago. The exchange is between 2 older men, an Italian-American, and the other who is apparently a farmer or lives in a rural area. Their exchange is full of stereotypes, making references to life on the farm and being Italian. Where comments about an Italian man’s mother’s moustache is one thing, calling him a WOP is another. The term is a racial slur against Italians, and is clearly not an apples-for-apples comparison to the insults the Italian said to the farmer, yet it somehow cleared for broadcast? You can view the excerpt from the Mike and Molly episode on YouTube at this link and I have embedded it below. Where I usually end my weekly lessons learned on a high note with a video, this one is surely a low point. Seeing this only reinforces why I don’t have cable TV or an antenna.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Announcements • Business • Mobile Technology • Social Media • Technology • Thrive • What I Learned • (0) Comments • Permalink

Without further ado…

• Over the last 5 plus months of using Dryv, the Chicago start-up who offers on-demand pickup and delivery of your dry cleaning and laundry, not only has my life been made a tad bit simpler, but I have amassed a collection of safety pins. The pins hold the tags on the garments and for some reason I have been saving them. I have yet to actually use one, yet I hold onto them. If anyone reading wants some (or all), feel free to contact me. Otherwise, the container will continue to fill. If you want to collect your own safety pins and save $20 off your first order, follow this link to Dryv, enter code 6H1A and request a pickup on the Web or your iPhone.
• Tech media reports about a compromise of eBay logins surfaced almost a week before I received an email from eBay recommending I change my password. You would have thought some companies would have learned from other recent network breaches.
• A primatologist is someone who studies apes and monkeys and wants to teach them to communicate with humans.
• Over the weekend my lovely wife and I stayed at the Best Western Premier Waterfront Hotel in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It was completely remodeled last year and it is an awesome hotel with great style and amenities. But I have to admit, when I saw the name “Best Western” I wasn’t immediately drawn to this hotel. It could easily be rebranded as a Marriott or Sheraton as it was on par or even ahead of some hotels with those brands I have stayed at. I wonder if others have thought the same?
• The reason we stayed at that hotel in Oshkosh was that it was our 12th wedding anniversary. I still seem to be learning about not only keeping but thriving in our relationship on a daily basis, but it is lessons well learned!
• I received an email from LinkedIn inviting me to their long form post program where essentially I can write and post full articles similar to what I post here at The Hot Iron. Where this will be an option made available eventually to everyone who uses LinkedIn, I will pass on it for now. There are 2 compelling reasons why I am not clamoring to post something there. The first is in the “rights and responsibilities” of the offering where it indicates I could have posts disabled or lose my LinkedIn account entirely based on what I write, if it is found to be to salesy or in violation of their user agreement. The second is the track record LinkedIn has of terminating services within its property, such as network activity RSS feeds, their Answers section and its acquired CardMunch apps and service. By sticking with my own platform I will retain full editorial control of my content as well as the continuous availability of it.
• It is better to communicate bad news directly rather than let people hear about it indirectly.
• When I saw all of the news on the self-driving cars from Google, all I could think of was the Johnny Cab, a robotic-controlled cab service from the movie Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The link is to a clip of the movie where the Johnny Cab is featured. It is not necessarily “safe” for work, and of course that always depends on where you work.
• I’ve just started watching some of the videos from the Lumia Stories project, where 100 people, born every year over the last 100 years, gets a Nokia Lumia mobile device and records part of their personal story. The campaign was created by 1000heads, the amazing word-of-mouth agency I have had the pleasure to get to know over the years from my involvement with other work they did with Nokia. It has me thinking about recording more of my history and getting history from my family members. I do count what I write here as being part of that.
• When changing my eBay password I reviewed my list of logins and passwords and saw one for “something” called BugMe. I didn’t recall it, and upon further review I still don’t know what it was, but now it is an app productivity tool for tracking tasks with virtual sticky notes. I started using it on my iPhone for both personal and work tasks and so far so good. I plan on using it for this week’s learnings tracking.
• This past week Steve Perry, the former lead singer of the band Journey, performed a few songs from his former band during an encore after a performance by the band Eels in St. Paul, Minnesota. Apparently Perry and members of Eels have become good friends. What’s interesting is that Perry hasn’t performed on stage in over 20 years. As songs from Journey played over and over on the radio from the late 70’s to the 80’s to today, it was great to see and hear him perform. Though his hair is a little shorter today, he still has it with his unique singing voice. You can watch the video embedded below, or follow this link to watch it on YouTube.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Announcements • Blogging • Mobile Technology • Technology • Thrive • What I Learned • (1) Comments • Permalink

I grabbed one of the last pieces of paper on one of those pads that has a magnet on the back and you stick on a refrigerator – before my kids got to it for their various art projects – to carry with me and log what I learned.

• I had my first, and most likely my last, Coronarita. Pictures here, it is a margarita with a mini Carona Beer bottle, called a Caronita, inverted in it with a special plastic holder. I like margaritas, but not with beer in them.
• When I was a kid, you never paid for anything at school except for lunch. You got all of your school supplies and went on field trips at no extra cost. Clearly that is not the case today, as I find myself sticking an envelope in my daughter’s backpack almost weekly with money in it. It would be great if I just paid a lump amount at the beginning of the school year for everything, and if it went under, then the school gets the balance. Like one of those Popeil “set it and forget it” ovens, or maybe that’s a bad analogy?
• Comfort comes at a cost.
• Speaking of comfort and cost, after I learned the previous statement, I got a glaring example with platinum passes for Lollapalooza, the massive 3-day concert in Chicago’s Grant Park this summer. The pass gives you everything from golf-cart rides around the grounds to air-conditioned bathrooms to food and drink, all for the bargain price of US$3,600.00. Nice to know, but I’ll take the grunge of Riot Fest over this any day.
• I have never been a fan of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and thought it was way too much to spend for such a tool. The Dyson hand dryers you find in public bathrooms are ok, but not everyone can bend their wrist that way. Now if Dyson wants to really have a coup, they should make a car vacuum cleaner that actually works. Now that is something I’d pay money for. Needless to say, I am on my third car vacuum in a year and I don’t see this one lasting either.
• The authenticity of kids toys is amazing today, including something I took a double-take on at my kids daycare – a wooden toy Keurig machine.
• Just as I finished ordering for my kids first visit to a Chipotle Mexican restaurant this past week for Taco Tuesday, and tried to articulate their choices to the antsy staff, one of the staff said, “we do have a kids menu.” Who knew? And why isn’t it on the sign anywhere?
• Put to the test this past week was my new bike lights, which are LED and rechargeable with a USB adapter. The Blackburn Flea 2.0 Front Headlight and Rear Light Combo worked great as I got an evening bike ride in along Lake Michigan. Now if I weren’t one of the few people along the lake trail with lights it would even be more beneficial.
• The blog post I wrote yesterday about the great service GiveBackBox was written with my voice, using the Siri function on my iPhone and the Notes app. I did it over the weekend during downtime, and for this first attempt it worked well. After I “wrote” it, I emailed it to myself, and edited it on my PC. It was a fairly straightforward story so it worked well. I have already started another post, which I am sure will need much more editing.
• Though I still do not have a TV, I couldn’t not hear about the “drum-off” between Chad Smith, the drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and actor Will Farrell, which occurred last night on the Tonight Show. I’ve seen the Chili Peppers several times over the years, and once ran into Smith – literally – as I was coming out of the men’s room and he was walking in after their show at the University of Albany in 1990.Years later I met Farrell after he ran the Boston Marathon and I was a volunteer there, though this only involved a handshake and not almost being knocked over. The drum-off made for more than good TV – you can click the previous link to view it or the video is embedded below.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Announcements • Blogging • Thrive • What I Learned • (2) Comments • Permalink

We are a society of stuff. We get new stuff and get rid of the old stuff. With home delivery, overnight shipping, Amazon Prime and other ways getting stuff is very easy. Getting rid of stuff is a different story, for either we put it out on the street, throw it away or put it in a bag and lug it to Goodwill or Salvation Army. With all these ways methods it takes a level of effort to do so, and isn’t always convenient. With GiveBackBox now there is a way of getting rid of things that is just as easy as getting them.

GiveBackBox, which launched last year, is a service where you can create a UPS shipping label to put on any box of things you want to get rid of. You simply go to their Web site at givebackbox.com, enter your email address and the UPS shipping label is presented to you as an image which you can print out and put onto a box. The label itself is a return shipment label so you don't have to weigh the box or enter its dimensions. Just fill a box, put the label on it and drop it off at UPS Store, Staples or give to any UPS driver. The label has the address of Goodwill in Indiana. There is no cost to generate a label for anyone.

I first heard about GiveBackBox on Twitter late last year. I thought the idea was brilliant and I had to try it out for myself. Originally you had to register and create an account to use this site but now they removed that and you can just enter your email address to get a label.

The service was started by Monica Weila who runs Style Up Girl, an eCommerce site that sells women’s shoes. On the GiveBackBox Web site it tells a story about how she saw a man on Michigan Avenue in Chicago who wanted a pair of shoes. As she didn’t have mens shoes, she got some and went back, but he was gone. This was the catalyst for what has become this service.

I have been using GiftBackBox for several months now and have sent over 10 boxes of stuff. Some boxes were bigger or smaller than others, but every time I was reusing a box that came from something I ordered online. Living in the city, I end up storing a bunch of stuff to give away and I really don’t have the space to do so. With GiveBackBox you can just send the things as you go. Granted larger items like baby gates and desks are nothing that you are going to box up, and those are things that I actually will bring to Goodwill or Salvation Army. But for the most part clothes or small items are perfect for the service. You can also get a receipt for your donation by going to the Goodwill Web site and filling out a donation form you can print it or save it as a PDF for your taxes.

I like a lot of things about GiveBackBox and I have recommended it to many people and I suggest you give it a try at givebackbox.com. Let me know what you think of the service and feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments to this post.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Announcements • Business • Thrive • (1) Comments • Permalink