Category Archives: technology

Finding Stolen Bikes with Craigslist

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Someone’s black Cannondale road bike was stolen a few blocks from my home on Friday morning. I hope the post on Craigslist will help people in the neighborhood track down the robbers and the bike.

dear fellow biker. On my way to work I saw 2 Latino men one with a camaflouge base ball cap and “W” on it and his friend in a Magna bike cut the cable of your lock and steal your bike. I asked them is that your bike and yelled at them for stealing your bike. Unfortunately they road off with The black cannondale road bike with white lettering. I followed the guys down Euclid but they threatened me so I found a cop on Columbia Rd parked who headed in their direction. I am sorry you lost your bike, and wish could done more. Maybe the cops got them, you should check. Stolen 8/31/07 about 7:15am.

This comes a day after Jeff told me his bike was stolen and he never recorded the serial number — something the police needed to make an official report and I assume to track down the bike. I’m going to photograph my serial number right now store it in a secure location online.

[I witnessed your CANNONDALE ROAD BIKE get stolen this morning, photo by Sarah.]

Skype Outage Affects House Guest

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My friend Bob Cook is in town for a job interview and to do some post grad school R&R. When I went to work I left him to his own devices to call about job leads. Since I’ve got a single cell phone and no land line phone I suggested he do his calling from Skype. As luck would have it it was during those days that Skype had issues and the program was unable to connect to the Skype network.

Yesterday Skype wrote me, a paying customer, to apologize and give me a free week of service. This is a nice gesture and I appreciate it. Still, what I am happy about is that Bob’s calls were not significantly affected by the lack of service. Besides, what does a week of free calling cost the company? On my plan their free 7 days equals a grand total of $.30.

As a goodwill gesture to all you faithful Skype Pro, Skype Unlimited, SkypeIn or Skype Voicemail customers, we’re adding an additional seven days to your current subscription, free of charge. And even if you didn’t miss out on using Skype last week – you can still have a week free on Skype, on the house!

How To: Use the Fewest Cell Phone Minutes and Save Money

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I want to see how few minutes I can use on my cell phone this month while still maintaining my typical level of conversation with friends and family.  Oh, and the voice quality needs to be good so people I call don’t get dropped or ask me why the connection sounds bad.  Here’s the plan:

  • Keep track of how many minutes are being used.  The minutes used will be always at the bottom right corner of my internet browser.  The free browser add on that allows me to do this is T-Mobile (USA) Minutes Used.
  • Call using the Gizmo Project.  This program somehow allows me to make free calls over the internet.
  • Call using Skype.  I’ve paid for a year of unlimited calling for $15 so it is much less expensive than my cell phone provider … but it’s not free.  Plus, this only works when I’m at home with my computer.
  • Nights and weekends: when using my cell phone I get unlimited calls after 9 pm and over the weekend.

I’ll report to you at least around August 13th.

Inspired by National Geographic’s Houston Photo Camp

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Photo Camp Houston is an inspiring project.

The goal of the four day workshop in my own words is to bring photography to youth who do not have access to photography in their lives. We did talk about basic photographic techniques but the photo camp isn’t about learning to use a camera. It is about learning to see and finding out how powerful one’s voice is.

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National Geographic Photo Camp

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In a few days I’ll be in Queens for National Geographic Photo Camp.

Photo Camp San Francisco wrapped up last weekend and I’m on the staff of the next one. In case you are interested, check out the video and transcript from the ABC affiliate in San Francisco to get an idea about what the camp is all about and what I’ll be doing there with the kids. And yes, I have been assured that all of the gear including cameras, computers and supplies have already been shipped from S.F. to NYC (the news anchor make a joke about this at the end of the video).

Photo Camp SF from ABC News

National Geographic Offers Camera Camp In S.F. [via KGO-TV]

Phone + Web app = GrandCentral

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I’ve been trying GrandCentral for the past few months and the company announced today that it was acquired by Google. Google is smart to buy it — this service is the best thing to happen to the telephone since the cell phone.

What is it? Essentially with GrandCentral you get a new phone number that links to your existing phones and gives you tons of amazing services.

Here are some of the things I love about it:

  • you can link and ring up to six phones to ring when somebody calls you.
  • you can set different rules for each caller (some ring all your phones, other can go straight to voicemail)
  • create personal voicemail greetings for each of your callers and for groups of people. (if you call me you you’ll get my friend, family, work or other voice mail message)
  • you can get a text message and email when someone leaves a voice mail.

So the service just went into a closed beta version meaning you can only join if a friend invites you. Let me know if you need an invitation!

Update: Not many of you asked for my sweet invites so I gave 95% of the left over ones to the nice people on InviteShare. If you still need an invite then I suggest going to that site and hoping someone shares the wealth.

GrandCentral [via GrandCentral blog]