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Technology and Me – A Day in the Life of

Randy Weber — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:16:40 +0000

This is the third post of three about technology changes over the last decade. First I covered what I was using in 2001 and what I’m using in 2010. Second I covered what I consider to be the biggest changes for me over the last decade. Today I’m covering how these changes have affected me on a day-to-day basis.

A typical day for me begins with the following before getting out of bed:

1) turning off my alarm (iPhone 3GS)

2) start download of the day’s WSJ This Morning podcast (iPhone 3GS)

3) checking the temperature (iPhone 3GS)

Once I get out of bed:

1) I get dressed to take my dog for a walk while listening to the WSJ podcast that has finished downloading.

2) I feed myself and my dog while continuing to listen to the WSJ broadcast.

3) I connect my iPhone to some powered speakers and finish the WSJ podcast as I shower and get dressed for

work.

As I leave the house to go to work:

1) I listen to music on my iPhone as I walk to bus stop.

2) While waiting for the bus I check my personal and work e-mail.

3) After checking e-mail, I play games and listen to music on my iPhone until I reach work.

It’s amazing how fast time seems to pass when you have so many productivity and entertainment options

available.

Depending on what I’m doing that day at work, I might listen to music, Pandora, or local sports talk from

Dallas (the ESPN Radio iPhone app is great) as I work.

At work I’m always connected to the Internet and most of my collegues are located remotely or at another

office. Work is done primarily via e-mail and chat. I’m on the phone no more than once or twice a day.

Prior to heading home from the office, I start the downloads for a few ESPN podcasts which keep me company

until I get home and walk the dog.

Once, I walk my dog and feed the two of us. Then I catch up on TV shows waiting for me on my DVR. I’ll

typically surf the web and read the days news and tech blogs on my laptop as I watch TV.

When I crawl into bed at night I set my alarm, plug in the charger, and turn on some relaxing tunes on my

iPhone 3GS.

As you can see, the iPhone has been deeply integrated into my daily activities. I have a hard time seeing

how I’d get by without it.

A typical day for me begins with the following before getting out of bed:

1) Turning off my alarm (iPhone 3GS).

2) Starting the download for the WSJ This Morning podcast (iPhone 3GS).

3) Checking the temperature (iPhone 3GS).

Once I get out of bed:

1) I get dressed to take my dog for a walk while listening to the WSJ podcast on my iPhone that has finished downloading.

2) I feed myself and my dog while continuing to listen to the WSJ podcast.

3) I connect my iPhone to some powered speakers and finish the WSJ podcast as I shower and get dressed for work.

As I leave the house to go to work:

1) I listen to music on my iPhone as I walk to bus stop.

2) While waiting for the bus I check my personal and work e-mail.

3) After checking e-mail, I play games and listen to music on my iPhone until I reach work.

It’s amazing how fast time seems to pass when you have so many productivity and entertainment options available.

Depending on what I’m doing that day at work, I might listen to music, Pandora, or local sports talk from Dallas (the ESPN Radio iPhone app is great) as I work.

At work I’m always connected to the Internet. Most of my collegues are located remotely or at another office. Work is done primarily via e-mail and chat. I’m on the phone no more than once or twice a day. I used the phone far more when I was doing Business Development.

My primary applications include Outlook, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Excel on a 10″ Dell laptop running Windows XP docked with dual 20 inch LCD monitors. I use Word and PowerPoint far less in product management than I did in Business Development.

I also keep Meebo’s web-based chat application open all day on a small USB monitor to access AIM, Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. I keep up with industry news using Google Reader and Techmeme.

Prior to heading home from the office, I start the downloads for a few ESPN podcasts which keep me company until I get home and walk the dog.

Once, I walk my dog and feed the two of us. Then I catch up on TV shows waiting for me on my DirecTV DVR or stream some music using my Apple TV.

I’ll typically surf the web and read the days news and tech blogs on my laptop as I watch TV or listen to music. I have a 17″ Dell laptop running Windows 7. I primarily use Google Chrome to browse the web at home.

I actually have print subscription to Business Week (it was free).

When I crawl into bed at night I set my alarm, plug in the charger, and turn on some relaxing tunes on my iPhone 3GS.

As you can see, the iPhone has been deeply integrated into my daily activities. I have a hard time seeing how I’d get by without it.

I’m Lovin’ the NFL Sunday Ticket and the SuperFan Upgrade!

Randy Weber — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:24:54 +0000

This is my first season with the NFL Sunday Ticket. I love it!

I have 2 games recording and I’m watching the RedZone real-time highlight channel on my iPhone. RedZone is great!

Maybe I’ll stop complaining about how much this costs.

Are You Ready for Some Football ?!

Randy Weber — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 03:21:31 +0000

Football season is fast approaching. My first football season in SF was TERRIBLE. 6 out of 17 weeks during the NFL season saw only 2 games aired Sunday afternoon, robbing me of the 3rd game that the rest of the country typically gets to see. But worse, those 2 games were the 49ers and the Raiders. So not only was I getting robbed of a game. The games I was left with were crap. And don’t get me started about not being able to see hardly any Cowboy games.

The college season was even worse for me. I ended up having to listen to most of the early season Longhorn games on Yahoo Sports Radio at a ridiculous price. And I did say listen, no picture. It took me 2 months to try to figure out how to cancel the service once the season was over. When I did figure it out, it was on the phone. Listening to all the things that Yahoo has subscriptions for was incredible. That company is solid, though perhaps a bit unfocused. But I digress.

So I swore this season will be different. I ordered DirecTV last night with a Wednesday install. No more drama about whether or not the NFL Network will be part of my cable package on Comcast. The NFL Sunday Ticket will insure that I can see my Cowboys play. And ESPN College Game Plan should at least help to alleviate missed Longhorn games. At least Texas has a great pre-season ranking, so they should be a national game most weeks they play.

Back to satellite TV. I’m nervous about this. Besides the crazy price and long commitment for all of this, I found cable to be pretty reliable. More reliable than most of my friends’ satellite services. I’ll let you know how it goes.

But check this out. With the NFL Sunday Ticket SuperFan package you can watch games on your iPhone! How cool is that?

All-in-all, I’m expecting an improved, if not more expensive, football experience this season.

Apple TV, part 3 (Boxee)

Randy Weber — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:02:55 +0000

I hooked up the Apple TV, accessed iTunes on my Mac mini, and synced my music from my mini to the Apple TV.

Next up was installing Boxee. Not quite as easy as the instructions made it out to be, but I still got it installed and working. There was some overscan on the video but the software has a really easy way to adjust the overscan, so no problem.

Hulu worked, though it listed videos that weren’t available anymore. That was annoying. ABC.com didn’t work, nor did Fox. That’s makes Boxee a lot less useful. Didn’t try You Tube.

I like the Apple TV’s implementation of Front Row for music much better than I like Boxee. I see Boxee as my avenue to Internet video. For that it works well. I had an episode of 24 running from Hulu. It looked great.

The Apple TV and Boxee are definitely worth it.

Apple TV, part 2

Randy Weber — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 04:20:24 +0000

As I said earlier, the Apple TV is a breeze to setup. I’ve since loaded all of my music onto it. It took forever to load 65GB of tunes via Wi-Fi. But it’s done and it looks and sounds great. It operates pretty much just like Front Row on my Mac mini. So it’s a keeper. I’ve disconnected my mini from the TV and taken it downstairs to the office where it will replace my ancient mini-ITX project PC. My next step is to load my photos onto the Apple TV. Then I’m going to try out Boxee.

Apple TV

Randy Weber — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 01:21:07 +0000

I’m setting up my new Apple TV today to replace my Mac mini in my entertainment center. So far, it’s been a breeze to get it connected to my mini and to get it on my wireless network. I’ll let you know more once it’s all set up.

Customer Service Excellence

Randy Weber — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:23:44 +0000

It’s OK to make mistakes as long as you admit it, apologize for it, and fix it. This is a great example from Hulu on doing just that found at 37signals:

This note, however, is not about the fact that episodes of ’’It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’’ were taken down. Rather, this note is to communicate to our users that we screwed up royally with regards to how we handled this specific content removal and to apologize for our lack of strong execution. We gave effectively no notice to our users that these ’’Sunny’’ episodes would be coming off the service. We handled this in precisely the opposite way that we should have. We believe that our users deserve the decency of a reasonable warning before content is taken down from the Hulu service. Please accept our apologies.

Given the very reasonable user feedback that we have received on this topic (we read every twitter, email and post), we have just re-posted all of the episodes that we had previously removed. I’d like to point out to our users that the content owner in this case – FX Networks – was very quick to say yes to our request to give users reasonable advance notice here, despite the fact that it was the Hulu team that dropped the ball…

Well done.

TiVo Partners for New Functionality

Randy Weber — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:47:04 +0000

According to the Wall Street Journal, TiVo is now offering a great new product feature done in partnership with Entertainment Weekly. TiVo users can now record shows recommended by Entertainment Weekly. It appears that TiVo looks to do more partnerships like this. Anything that makes it easier to find and record the best shows is great in my book. I love it.

Now if I could easily share my recordings list with my friends, I’d be even happier.

TiVo and Amazon Team Up – NYTimes.com

Randy Weber — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:09:18 +0000

Back in December 2006 I wrote about TiVo not keeping up in the quest to be the provider of the “sofa web.”

Om Malik at GigaOM discusses the new game consoles and the contribution they might make to Internet browsing. He refers to it as the “sofa web.”

It was announced that TiVo and Amazon Team Up – NYTimes.com. This is a positive step towards TiVo becoming part of the sofa web. I can’t wait to see more deals.

YouTube on TiVo Launches, Does This Really Matter?

Randy Weber — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:24:50 +0000

Zatz Not Funny! says YouTube on TiVo Launches. I know how crappy YouTube videos look on my iPhone. How bad do you think they’ll look on your big screen TV, especially HDTV? I could see people using this a few times and then dumping it. I say no big deal.