I tried not to preoccupy myself with the new user interface for Amazon Fire TV. Ok, why the main navigation is down the middle of the screen is odd. I did figure out how to change the default apps with enough clicks of the remote. And the issue with the back button not working seemed to go away when I restarted the Fire TV device. Perhaps I did obsess a little on it?

Trell–oh! – I have been using the Web-based productivity tool Trello for some time now, but I always felt there was more to learn. After taking the course Trello Essential Training on LinkedIn Learning I now understand it writ large. This 2+ hour course is lively and covers many features and how to use power-ups. My biggest takeaways were on checklists and how to copy them, assignments, due dates and covers.

Clarity on Privacy – I also took a course offered by Siteimprove Academy on the European Union privacy law GDPR. This course is only available within a customer account, and was a good high-level overview of GDPR and provided me with the areas I need to dig deeper to understand and verify plans are in place to comply.

And if you ever saw it... – An interesting idea I ran across is Nosy which is a filtered covering for your nose and your nose only. Seeing is believing for me and likely for you. I didn’t dig deep enough though to see if it would fit over a nose as grand as my own.

Proclamations to Nobody – I read earlier this week that April 5 was Golden Rule Day here in the childhood home city of Harry Houdini. This of course was well after the day. Had I not read this on the All Things Appleton site I mentioned a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have seen it elsewhere. Perhaps it was posted on social media and no other place? Am I overanalyzing this like the Fire TV UI?

The Frozen One – Congrats to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (better known as UMass) for winning the NCAA Mens Hockey Championship. I remember when UMass started a hockey team and joined the Hockey East conference where my team, the Boston University Terriers, dominated for so long. As someone who often, um, socialized on the state university campus when I was matriculating elsewhere, Go Minutemen!

Can You See My Email Now? – I often get text messages from friends saying email from me goes into their spam or marketing folders in their email program. I then tell them to setup a whitelisting rule so that doesn’t happen. They then give me a strange look. I found this week a list of how to whitelist email addresses on popular email platforms from Progress Software.

Vote For New Paradigms – This week Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a podcast that he would like to be able to vote from his iPhone. Shortly thereafter Ohio’s Secretary of State expressed his disagreement.

I’m on the side of Cook on this one, and have been for a while. Digital voting is already being done in some US states and around the world. The comparison to billions of dollars of transactions every day is a valid one. Will someone try to hack a purely digital system? Of course. Computer security is a constantly moving effort – now and in the future. The benefits of digital voting go purely beyond convenience, as many who lives in lower-income areas use mobile devices as their computer as well. It also addresses issues of Accessibility, and as I have said on this little blog before, Accessibility efforts help everyone. Digital voting must be invested in for it to become a valid reality. And with that, I will step off of my soapbox.

Just Didn’t Do It – My friend Nick Gracilla wrote an inspiring piece on the word “just” being a four-letter word to him. There are many words and phrases which, you know, like that can easily be replaced or edited out of a sentence altogether, and just is one for him.

Out of Time – This week I participated in some of VirCon, the virtual conference offered by HighRoad Solutions. The conference had a Back to the Future theme, and some good topics. That being said, as it was in the middle of the workday, I registered but only caught live a few sessions. My plan was all along to watch the recordings after the fact, and being live in some was a bonus.

Time On My Side – Shortly talking with Kim at HighRoad Solutions about VirCon I pulled up along-side the above-pictured original DeLorean modified to look like the very car Doc Brown enhanced. I see this car around a lot, and the timing of it all was intriguing.

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

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