Personal
It seems like a mandatory thing – own an iPhone, download a ton of apps (mostly free) and write about them on your blog. My turn.
My Top Ten (this one goes to Eleven!)
Evernote (free) – truly one of the best apps, Evernote is an extremely usable note-taking tool which combines text, photos, and voice notes with a synchonized iPhone client, web client, and desktop client. I’ve personally used this in place of OneNote to effectively take notes at a three day conference where I simply didn’t want to drag my laptop around. Worked beautifully. I’m not as familiar with Evernote as I am with Microsoft’s OneNote (my favorite Office application) but it is a strong contender due to the super-useful iPhone client. I’m sure this will eventually warrant it’s own blog post. I use it and love it.
mBoxMail ($9.99) – thanks to my complete reliance on e-mail and my possibly insane desire to keep my work and personal mail accounts as separate as possible, I was forced to turn to a distinct mobile app for my personal e-mail. I use HotMail as the mail server for DevCow. Until recently, HotMail didn’t offer Pop3 access in the US and the mobile web UI is less than appealing. Along comes mBoxMail (specifically version 2.0 which I am testing in beta) which offers a slew of features I love, including features which are missing from the current default iPhone mail client. I’ve actually written about mBoxMail already. I use it and love it.
CameraBag ($2.99) – the iPhone is just so appealing to grab and play with that the camera on it is seeing a lot more action than any of my previous cameraphones. Unfortunately, Apple didn’t put a good camera here so I’ve picked up CameraBag to improve my photos with a variety of filters and effects that really make a difference. The filters offered here do a variety of neat little edits such as black and white, sepia tones, super-saturation of color and more. Best of all, the effects can be easily layered. This is about as complex as I’d like to manage when editing photos on the iPhone and it works beautifully. I use it and love it.
Tweetie ($2.99) – I really enjoy social networking. I use it a lot, talk about it a lot, and have even co-authored a book about it, Social Computing with Microsoft SharePoint 2007. In my social networking life, Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. On my iPhone, I’ve tried out several different Twitter applications and in my mind the undefeated champion is Tweetie. Tweetie offers a great deal of features including the ability to save individual tweets and searches. These last two are favorite features of mine.
Stanza (free) – By far, this is the app I use the most on my iPhone. I’ve got a small library of e-books which I’ve been carrying around for years. This little tool can consume a wide array of formats and offers access to a number of built-in book stores, including a huge amount of free content and the Fictionwise premium store. I’ve never really used a Kindle or the Kindle iPhone app, but I can’t envision myself switching to that given the free content available and the online Google book search stuff recently released.
Facebook (free) – I freely admit that I like Facebook. I even like the new UI with the live feed on the home page. This app makes it easy to keep up on the go with a view into your feed, notifications, and inbox. You can even use this to send photos from your iPhone directly into Facebook (which has dramatically increased the number of photos I upload) as well as to chat with online friends with Facebook Chat. I actually use this mobile application more than I do the website these days.
LiveStrong ($2.99) – This calorie tracker integrates bi-directionally with the Daily Plate feature of LiveStrong.com. I’ve been using this website for nearly a year now and it’s helped me lose (and keep off) nearly 30 lbs since June of 2008. The UI is simple and the food database is enormous (and frequently full of duplicate items). This fits my needs as I’m not looking to count points or strictly regulate anything – I just need a way to keep an eye on what goes into my body so I know when I’m in danger of overdoing it. I managed to scoop this app up while it was still free a while ago.
WootWatch (free) – I love Woot.com. Take a product and discount it, write funny stuff about it, and sell the heck out of it! Great idea! Woot seems to have become a wildly successful little website, so much so that now there is a shirt.woot and a wine.woot. This fantastic little application lets me check in on each one of the woot sites every day and should I so desire, purchase the product right from the app. This is one of the most intuitive and easy to use apps on the phone and I regret that there will not be future updates because the application’s developer was hired into Apple.
Crayon Physics Deluxe ($4.99) – The first game I purchased for the iPhone and still the one I turn to over and over. The game is based on a simple concept – get the little ball to the little star. The trick is that you can draw crayon lines with your fingers and these lines have strength and weight which are affected by physics and gravity. Draw lines, ropes, pulleys, catapults, etc. Get the free desktop demo of this award winning independent game at www.crayonphysicsdeluxe.com. No, really. Go get it. Show it to your kids. Watch the videos on the blog about some of the clever Rube Goldberg solutions.
Lux Touch (free) – Risk for your iPhone. Lots of fun for a free game. I keep coming back to this one when I’ve got time to kill. This is the free version of an $8 game which looks good, but not worth $8 to me (yet).
Wolfenstein 3D Classic ($4.99) – How could I resist this one? The grandfather of first person shooters fully reproduced on the iPhone by the original designer, and completely open source. The game was fun back in the day and the iPhone version has this really amazingly clever touch control that makes it a blast to play. Hunt down some *** today!
Other apps I use (or at least have downloaded and not deleted yet)
Easy Wi-Fi (free) – I’ve not actually used this yet, but the claim is that this tool will streamline the connection to AT&T WiFi (which comes free with the iPhone) whenever you happen to walk into a place that offers AT&T WiFi (Starbucks?). Having attempted to manage the irritating connection details for AT&T wifi when wandering through the airport and such, I have to say that I’m really hopeful that this application lives up to its claims and I never have to deal with that junk again.
Wi-Fi Finder (free) – WiFi is faster and easier on the battery than 3G, so why not use a tool like this free Wi-Fi Finder to locate the nearest publically available and advertised Wi-Fi. Eat lunch there. Browse the web faster and for free on your iPhone at the same time. Good stuff. I’ve used this app once. It turns out that for me, I’m never really just wandering around in parts unknown looking for a wi-fi connection. I always have a destination in mind.
Microsoft Tag Reader (free) – I have no idea if this concept will take off or not, as I’ve only seen a single Microsoft product with a colorful Microsoft Tag on it (and that was a copy of the Halo Wars Xbox 360 game) but if it does take off I’ve got an app which can read them and react accordingly. For those who are unaware, this is similar to a barcode – except it’s a code readible by the terrible cellphone cameras. If we all had high resolution lenses capable of capturing a barcode, I’m sure we’d just be snapping photos of those. Since we don’t, the fine folks at Microsoft Research have come up with this clever information sharing tool. I’ve used this app once, inside the Microsoft store.
Cooliris (free) – search for pictures from a variety of locations like Google and Flickr. If you find one you like, Cooliris lets you set that as your iPhone wallpaper. The UI is pretty neat but there is a ton of data flowing through for this app so be prepared to be a bit patient when on a 3G connection. I use it and love it, although the speed at which it resolves some of the images does occasionally leave something to be desired.
SnapTell (free) – The promise of this app is great – find the book, DVD, CD, or video game you’re looking at in a store more cheaply online. It’s got great reviews in the iTunes AppStore but I’ve never actually used this. I think the reason is that I very rarely buy books, DVDs, CDs, or video games and when I do it’s always online. Come to think of it, that very logic might cause me to uninstall this app and clear out some space
Shovel (free) – Digg news aggregator. Works pretty well, but I’m not a huge fan of Digg so I don’t use this app very frequently. I have another news aggregator I prefer – Mobile News. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with this app, its just that I tend to think that most of the stories which get to the top of Digg are terrible and in general, a waste of time. But that’s just me. I also don’t like that you have to click the story twice to get to the story, the first click takes you to people talking about the story, but that emulates Digg itself.
TED (free) – Unfortunately I have been unable to devote the time I’d like to this app and the associated website. Basically this presents a very compelling UI for access to the video and audio content of the TED convention. The TED convention is a gathering of the best and brightest in the world discussing solutions to real significant problems. The problem is that I’ve never been able to sit around and watch stuff on my mobile devices. Maybe someday, perhaps in an airport.
NPR Mobile (free) – Do you listen to NPR? Do you like the stories and perhaps want to be able to listen to them at your convenience? Would an easy to navigate set of categories help you find what you’re looking for? If you answered yes to these questions, this app is for you! Some content is audio only, some is text and audio, and all of it is pretty darn good. I still tend to use the AP Mobile News app more frequently, but I do like this one b/c I can find the programs I like and see what I’ve missed.
Pandora (free) – Personalized radio on your iPhone. Brilliantly easy and familiar to anyone who uses the desktop version. I’ve never really been a user of this app on the iPhone or desktop b/c I have my Zune with me, but if I need it, I’ve got it.
Shazam (free) – This app is pretty remarkable. It’s able to listen to a song (radio, TV, restaurant background music, whatever) and identify it. It can get a bit screwed up by loud ambient noise, but when the area around you is quiet enough, Shazam is dead-on accurate. Very cool. Once you’ve identified a song, the app will bookmark it for you with a tag which you can refer to later or use to find the song in iTunes for purchase. This is slightly cooler than the Zune FM purchase capability b/c this app recognizes songs from anywhere, not just songs which are coming from a radio station broadcasting RDS.
BargainBin (free) – This app scans through the iTunes AppStore to find the apps which are free or have been marked down. I’ve been able to download at least one application for free which otherwise would have cost me about $3 so it’s been a worthwhile addition, although in general it’s of dubious value in that it mostly reveals applications I don’t care about.
More apps
Other apps I’ve installed and just ran out of patience trying to write a paragraph description for. I’ve included links at least!
In the past 9 months (almost to the day) I’ve been tracking my weight loss efforts on www.LiveStrong.com and this morning I’ve reached the milestone of 30 lbs lost. Yay! This puts me about 3 lbs away from my next personal milestone – weighing less than I have since I graduated from college.
In an effort to encourage myself, I haven’t been recording my weight any time the number goes up which explains the continuous downward slope. Totally a mind game I play with myself. The frequency of the little dots has gone up as I now have a LiveStrong mobile app on my iPhone which lets me put details such as food and weight.
I bought an iPhone game today – an awesome game called Crayon Physics Deluxe. This little app is incredibly cool. You get to draw shapes and lines with your finger and have these amazing Rube Goldberg Crayola machines spring into action. I showed this to a few co-workers and they’re off to grab the desktop version of Crayon Physics (free demo available here). This is really worth a look.
Now imagine this thing on a Microsoft Surface table!
At this point, doing my best means that I've given up eating anything which has ever walked on land. I still eat eggs, fish, and shellfish. I also eat dairy. I'm not vegan by any stretch. However, since I started the vegetarian journey a few months ago, I've lost about 25 lbs and I'm generally feeling much better. The best part of the weight loss is that I really have not changed my habits to include a lot of exercise, which I can't seem to fit in regularly thanks to my terrible work schedule.
I make not secret of the fact that I'm a Microsoft fanboy. I use a Microsoft Zune. I have several Xboxes (I kept 1 and gave 2 away). I use a Windows Mobile phone. This morning, my Microsoft Life got updated.
I fired up my Xbox 360 and downloaded the new Xbox Experience - an entirely new dashboard which introduces the "twist" style navigation familiar from the Zune and Windows Media Player. Now I have dozens of screens to look at and a generally improved way of navigating through the content. I spent all of about six minutes playing with it b/c I was excited to set up my most anticipated feature - integration to my NetFlix Instant Queue. Unfortunately I didn't get to demo that functionality as the NetFlix device activation web site was down. I'll hit that when I get home tonight. I also created an avatar, which I'd show you but apparently the Xbox Live site is still being worked on - I can't log in or look at my stats and friends.
I checked Twitter and saw Mike Gannotti talk about why he loves the Zune, including that he just got an update to the 3.1 firmware. This update includes new games like Soduku and some new listening features which I have yet to explore fully but anticipate loving the hell out of!
I'm thrilled with the new updates and can't wait to waste unbelievable hours of what would be marginally productive time listening to music, watching movies, and playing games. All I can say is that if the NetFlix integration is as awesome as I hope it is, I'm going to cancel HBO and ShowTime (and save a bucket of money). Next up - Windows Mobile 6.5. Rumors indicate we may finally see Zune software integration on handsets which will give me yet another way to kill my battery superfast. Yay!
I've been pretty quiet here on the blog recently. Lots of work has been going on, work at my job, work at home, and work on SharePoint-related items which has taken up my full attention. However, light is showing at the end of the tunnel and I'm committing to getting back into the blogging spirit. Look for more posts and general activity from me, coming soon...
If you want to have lists of items to track that you can make public and private check out
Remember The Milk
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
It is funny they have a very similar logo to ours. The great part is that it is available from many different sources and all you have to is send it an email.
Anyone else have any good sites for keeping up with lists?
No one told me about this before having a kid, but apparently it's a common issue that kids (lots of them, worldwide) get fussy between about 7pm and 11pm. This unexplainable phenomenon is known as the "witching hour". Parker's time seems to be between 9pm and 1am. 11pm is one of his feeding times but where he'd normally be content he screams through the feeding. What sucks is that my shift normally is between 8pm through the 11pm feeding. He gets so fussy and I'm reluctant to just turn him back over to the always exhausted Kim while he's crying that I end up staying up with him to 1 or 1:30. Last night Kim stayed with me through the 11pm feeding to see what I was talking about. She was astonished at how angry he was!
Oh well - this too shall pass. The biggest problem is that it cuts into my writing time. Deadlines are going to be pressured...
New photos of Parker are on Flickr if you've not seen him recently. He's gained nearly 3 pounds since his birth a month ago!
Here is a photo I've been playing with using Paint.Net as a free alternative to Photoshop.
Parker Sean Ranlett was born on May 7th at 5:29 pm. He tipped the scale at 6lbs and 14oz. He's gorgeous, has a full head of hair, and can currently be seen sporting a pair of bluish-grey eyes. Check out more photos on my Flickr photostream. Parker is named after Kim's father and my grandfather, both of whom we miss terribly.
Parker is doing fine at home and Kim is recovering a lot faster than either of us expected. I'm already back at work thanks to the constant presence of family members helping us out. Kim's sister has been helping us with that initial transition from hospital to home and my mother is going to come in and help out for three weeks. I've been back at work one day and I've already had to run home just to pinch those cheeks!
I wanted to give a public thanks to everyone who has been helping us out over these past several days and for the help which continues to pour in. Thanks everyone! We appreciate it more than you can imagine.
Now I can say most of what I used to say here in a far more immediate and visceral way using Twitter. You should all be using Twitter and Twhirl! Go forth and tell everyone what you're doing.
What is Twitter?
How do I get an account?
What is Twhirl?
Got all that? Excellent - now check out a neato mashup of Twitter and Google Maps.
I just received notification that I've been selected as a SharePoint Server MVP, after 2 years of being a SQL Server MVP. I'm glad someone more deserving got the SQL spot I'd been occupying, but not as glad as I am that I'm now able to hang out with my SharePoint buddies and not have to hide in the shadows!
Thanks everyone!
And boy, does he ever. Due to what appears to be an accounting mistake on one of our paychecks, Kim and I owe an astronomical amount to the Federal and State governments this year. Consider our emergency fund completely blown at this point. We're going to follow up with the payroll people to figure out why the amount of money withheld for taxes went down over 2007 when we actually were making more money. Looking at 2006 vs 2007, our net taxable income increased by 22% (yay!). However, the taxes withheld actually went down by 4%. The difference was so impactful that we actually owe a penalty to the IRS for under-withholding. Apparently there is a rule that if you make above a certain amount of money as a family AND you fail to withhold at least 90% of your year end tax bill, there is a extra penalty. Our penalty is all of about $50, but the concept is pretty obnoxious.
Next year we will be looking into ways to minimize our tax exposure. Along those lines, check out these details from No Credit Needed, who points out that a dual income family can put aside $3208.33 into retirement accounts each month. The 401(k) portion of this definitely helps reduce taxable income.
I've never seen anything like this, so I had to take some photos and put it online. I'm working at a client site in town today - basically it's a non-profit organization with some SharePoint issues. In the restroom, they have this TP distribution system I've never seen before. Basically there is a restrictor plate on the TP-Spinner which prevents delivery of more than 2 sheets at a time. This was obnoxious and I can't see that it really does anything to reduce the per-capita TP usage for the organization. Having said that, I'm about to go look for one I can install at home!
Enclosed are some photos
Restrictor plate in "ready" state
Restrictor plate in "engaged" state
If you are from Linksys give me a call and we can talk, I just might put you on hold for 5 hours and resolve your issue in 2 days!
Where do you start with any customer support call? Well I used to think that Linksys was one of the best brands on the market, but I will look around before buying another one for a while. This all started when the $150 WCG200 combo wireless router and cable modem would not connect to the internet. I purchased the unit in January of 2007, but only started having the problem when I moved in June. I started out by blaming the cable company thinking that they were dropping my connection. So they sent a person out to the house and sure enough there was nothing wrong. The problem wasn't happening everyday so I let it go for a while, until one day it wouldn't reconnect for a long time. At that time I became upset and looked on the web only to find out that other people were having the same trouble. The problem appers to be because of a bad firmware version from Linksys that the cable company pushes down to the modem.
Check out the full problem here: http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Cable&thread.id=11&view=by_date_ascending&page=3
A month or so ago I contact the online support person to see if they could quickly resolve my issue, but with no luck I gave up for the time being. Then the problem got worse and the device wouldn't connect for hours. So just the other day I started down the path of trying to call Linksys to fix the problem. They made me go through common troubleshooting that I had already done like resetting the modem (which obviously removes all of your custom setup so you have to do it again). Keep in mind this is causing major problems on the home front because my wife works at home. She can't get to the internet and since I'm the first line support while at work all day, I can't deal with the issue very well. Anyway this is how the conversation goes.
Start Conversation
6:15 PM - wait 15 minutes someone picks up and then hangs up on me. (not a great start if you ask me)
Call back (6:30 PM) - Talk with first line support who can't help, then talk with second line support who makes me do only the standard troubleshoot just to tell me the modem is not online. Exactly what I have been saying for the last hour.
7:30 PM - Get transferred to manager because the linksys forums suggest replacing my combo with two different devices or else you will continue to have the same problem. This is because there is a bad version of the firmware.
7:45 PM - Manager tells me he needs to look into the issue and he will call me back in 30 minutes.
10:15 PM- I call back, no manager, nobody called back at all and to top it off I get a front line person that says they are too busy and someone will call me back in 30 minutes.
At that point I am pissed because I have already fallen for the 30 minute routine. I argue with him for a minute and he tells me they have 1 or 3 shifts working right now and that is why it will be better in 30 minutes. He also tells me there are 300 front line support and 50 managers that are working at the moment all that have calls waiting for them. He tells me that there are 54 calls in front of me and that it might take some time.
So I give up.
But not for long.
10:25 PM - About 3 minutes and James answers. James was the best person I talked to. James fixed the date of purchase from November 2006 to the correct date of January 2007. He told me I would be on hold for 2 minutes and exactly at 2 minutes he came back and asked if it would be ok for another 2 minutes. Before the end of the second 2 minutes he had someone on the line. Amazing how James works.
10:41 PM - I finish explaining the problem again to the third person I was transferred from and I am now on hold once again. So the real issue is that I need to replace my modem with two different devices to get it to work, but no one can understand that.
10:50 PM - My final tech got the 2 device swap changed out for my original expensive device. But there is a catch, I have to call back tomorrow from 8AM- 5PM EST (maybe) and get customer service to replace the device.
I will let you know tomorrow at 8AM.
Next day
8:50 AM - So I call back and press the right buttons and it tells me they are not open yet. I also get informed that the operating times are from 9-6 and 8-5 with no timezone. Because I am good at waiting I call back and press 0 like 5 times until I get an operator. When I talk to the technician he tells me it is PST so they will be open in a few hours. Just so you know there are some wonderful people on the helpdesk - it is the process that sucks.
11:39 AM - I call back to customer service and talk to a nice person that tells me they can only replace the unit for the same device type, not what I was told last night and now I have to pay shipping to send my unit back. I am starting to question if this is really worth my time for this device. So to get the RMA processed I have to go online, which I can't because the modem is the problem, but she was kind enough to take my information and place me on hold to take it. (I guess they can read your minds at Linksys).
11:55 AM - She came back and told me that they can only replace the unit for the same unit, which makes sense, but that device doesn't work with my service provider based on bad Firmware from Linksys. So I push her enough for her to tell me they do follow policy and that she will respect my request to transfer me to a manager.
12:14 PM - She came back on and wanted to see if I wanted their help to call Best Buy and push this issue onto them.
12:16 PM - Finally I get a manager at customer service who doesn't listen to my problem but starts to tell me that there is nothing I can do and brushes off anything I say and continues to tell me that I need a senior level technican to approve my return. I push back as usual and she tells me a senior technical engineer will have to call me back in 2 days to verify the problem. So I tell her I did that last night and she tells me that those are not senior level technicians and that everything I did last night for 6 hours was not valid. Last night was ONLY for determining that the device is not working correctly. I could have told them that in 2 minutes! grrrrrr. Her name was Janet and her id is (13717) don't use her if you can help it. She was the worst person to deal with out of the entire group, but it is because she is standing by company policy. Which again I understand, but you could be nice doing it. She didn't even care to listen to my problem or understand the actual problem, she just stood behind the policies and told me that is the way it is.
12:28 PM - After I push back and explain that I did speak to people I ask her to go over my phone records. It appears they are going off old calls and my orginal case online where the person was not helpful at all. I can post that entire conversation later. She comes back after reviewing the case again and tells me that they might be able to process the request as stated by the senior technical engineer last night. So we wait. =)
12:40 PM - So somehow she finds the call logs from last night and the fact that a technical engineer did look at the problem. So she tells me that she will be able to do the unit model exchange that is approved. So one last time I check with her to make sure that it is for the two untis and she tells me the units it will be. I ask if I will have to pay shipping and of course she says that I will have to. To make sure I ask if it will be new or refurbished and of course it is refurbished and they are going to put a hold on my credit card for $150 bucks which is more than those units are at the store new. So we have to fill out an RMA form and she has to help because I can't go online. And you guessed it - we wait!
I actually had time to make up a song based on customer service hold song.
"Down in Georgia we call Linksys support,
we call Linksys support,
so angry waiting so long,
sooooooo weeeeeee
wait, we wait for Linksys,
we wait for Linksys,
we wait for Linksys,
With no end in sight,
we wait for Linksys
Boy I wish I had internet to mail the big cheese,
but we wait on hold and try not sneeze,
upset with the time it takes,
soooooooo weeeeeeee,
wait, we wait for Linksys,
we wait for Linksys,
we wait for Linksys,
With no end in sight,
we wait for Linksys"
1:03 PM - She was able to process the RMA request which has free shipping and will take 3-5 days to get here. I asked her if it can come quicker because I don't have internet and she said it will cost 15-25 dollars more to do that but she advises against that because 1. she already processed this RMA and would have to start over 2. she can't promise the time it will go out so I may not really get it quicker and 3. they took so long today that it is past the time today where they do those requests. We would have had to do this by 9AM PST, which I explained to her was what time they opened and took my first call today.
Wrap up
So in the end it worked out, kinda. I am without internet for 3-5 days because the modem has gotten worse for some reason. Probably the 300 restarts a day that they asked me to do. And now I have to pay 30 bucks to ship the old one back. I will get used units that we hope will work and they have 150 bucks on my credit card for now. All this stress and time for a unit that cost $150. $150 bucks is a lot but it is amazing that you start to think of options when you have so much crap to deal with from customer service reps. Remember they are being paid to lower costs and follow policies that don't always apply. In fact this is their full time job and you have other responsibilites. We actually need a company that charges a fee to handle this kind of problem with customer service for people.
Question: do you think that Mr. J. Michael Pocock - Sr. Vice President and General Manager, Linksys would have this problem? I seriously doubt it so why am I having this problem? I think a good challege would be to give top level executives a scripted problem and have them call to resolve the problem. That way they can see what it is like from our point of view. No offense Mr. Pocock, but your award winning support didn't win any awards for me. You might want to look into it and if your team says they will call you back, then they should.
I would also work on your URL's at Linksys - they aren't very easy to use. Might I recommend something like SharePoint 2007? I could even help you put it in place.
J. Michael Pocock - http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Content_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1160628765198&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper
If you wonder if I really did talk to so many people, check this out. Please forgive me if I spell your name wrong. I did write down all of their ID's, but I'll spare those in this list.
- Maricel
- Pete
- Cheryl
- Janit (never called back after they told me they would in 30 minutes)
- James
- Airashee
- John
- Leon
- Kathy
- Janet
Totally off subject, I just got my coupon in the mail from Taco Bell for a free item for one of the resturants charging me 50 cents for water in the drive through. I will say Taco Bell customer support was 100 times better, but they don't have to set up a wireless router on Vista. (That is a poke at that recording on Linksys that says they are having trouble because of the number of Vista users). I think this shows the higher the value of the item you're having a problem with, the more effort you must put in.
Let me know good or bad if you have had a problem like this or if there is a website that maintains these complaints from a third party point of view.
![SharePoint and Office blog[3]](http://www.devcow.com/blogs/adnrg/WindowsLiveWriter/SharePointpostsmovingtoanewblog_74A1/SharePoint%20and%20Office%20blog%5B3%5D_1.png)
Brendon and I are moving our technical SharePoint related posts to a new URL - http://blogs.sharepointguys.com. We'll each have our own separate blog which can be independently configured and populated with great SharePoint-specific content. My blog is at http://blogs.SharePointGuys.com/Matt and the RSS feed is through Feedburner.
The idea behind this move is to refocus a bit on DevCow and to turn it back into the Community Service project it was originally envisioned to be. In the past year or so, I've stopped posting coverage of user group events and conferences and started posting a lot of personal details and the occasional technical nugget. I'll probably keep posting the personal details here, until I decide to move them somewhere else, and I'll keep the community announcements here. The new SharePoint blog fills the dual purpose of keeping posts on topic and encouraging me to post more technical content more frequently.
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