Wild.er

Today is the first day of the 19 day Fast in the Baha’i calendar. Baha’is abstain from food and drink when the sun is up so it is important that I wake up earlier than usual to have a good meal. Waking up is rarely easy since I’m such a happy sleeper so I need all of the help I can get. Enter: a free web based telephone calling service called Wakerupper to help me stop slumbering.

Wired magazine wrote about Wakerupper back in November and I immediately tried it but it was not fully available then except for beta testers. Without an account all you can do is schedule a single call. My single reminder calls worked well but the real beauty of a service to call a phone number is to schedule multiple calls on a schedule.

Wakerupper is basically a service that calls a telephone exactly when you want with the message of your choosing. According to the company:

“Wakerupper is an experimental service that aims to make telephone alerting as easy and inexpensive as possible. In one easy step, on one simple web page, Wakerupper enables users in the United States and Canada to schedule telephone reminder calls.”

Today I got an email inviting me to be a beta tester for the servce (yay, right on time!) and it is working great. Details on how it works are below. [Read more →]

An interactive 360 degree photographic experience makes a huge difference when you’re trying to find a wedding location. I wish more venues had this kind of feature on web sites. Since they do not, I am happy to share with you this interactive 360+ degree image of the Lodge at Seneca Creek.

Update: this is not where we decided to have the wedding but it is one of many places we investigated. [Read more →]

I’ve enjoyed the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service for more than two years and today’s news about the transfer of the subscribers to Rhapsody isn’t a surprise after all that has been happening in the world of digital music.

Digital rights management (DRM) is one of the downsides of subscription services because the tracks can’t go on a portable mp3 player unless you pay more per month and then the tracks only work on certain players. You can get around that by purchasing tracks and albums and burning to CD and then rippping the tracks to your computer and then after all of that you can add them DRM-free to your favorite mp3 player. Annoying!

The problem with DRM is hinted at in this question & answer from Yahoo! regarding the migration of the subscribers to Rhapsody (emphasis mine):

I purchased tracks and albums through Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Can I play them in Rhapsody?

Yahoo!-purchased tracks can be imported into and played on Rhapsody. Instructions on how to import tracks after you’ve migrated will be available soon. We strongly recommend you back up your purchased tracks to CDs in the event that they do not play successfully using Rhapsody’s Music Software.

This is exactly why I bought zero tracks from Yahoo! in these two years. I didn’t want to lose them when the software stopped working or the company was sold. Looks like playing it safe worked this time.

Are you going to switch to Rhapsody or take your business elsewhere? Do you have a better way to fill your life with music? (I’m keeping my eye on Last.fm and their upcoming subscription service.)

Friday night came quickly this week with the full schedule at work and at school so it was a rewarding break to visit the independent movie theater in Bethesda, Maryland tonight. Lena arranged a night of Persian food followed by Persepolis, a movie about a young girl’s experience during the Islamic Revolution.

It’s late and I need to get sleep so let me get straight to the point. The movie is well done with inventive and engaging animation. The adaptation from graphic novel to movie is a success and the texture added with music, sound and motion bring the story alive. I have never learned so much about the Islamic Revolution in Iran and now I want to know more.

So yes, the movie is worth your time. If you have the inclination, do it. But go early because otherwise you’ll be stuck in the only available seat… the far edge of the front row.

Having just read The 33 Things That Make Us Crazy in the latest Wired magazine I must add my own item to the list: Movie theater seating. So let me get this straight: I get to pay more than ten dollars to sit in the front row, far right side of a subtitled movie and the only way I can see is by slouching down far enough so that I can see the screen. After 20 minutes my legs are going numb and my neck is getting sore. I look over at Amanda and I can tell this isn’t her idea of a great movie experience either.

How about if the seating at the theater were priced like it is at the theater… movie goers could buy a specific seat and the theater could vary the charge depending on the desirability of the seat. Why would theaters have different pricing? Because my living room is the competition and I always get a comfortable seat at home.

Did you know that when you surf the web that the sites you visit can tell where you are located?

I sent out an engagement announcement email in December that directed readers to a web page.  Evanwilder.com is able to tell where site visitors are physically located and this map shows that in detail.  The map above shows the location of the last 100 visitors to evanwilder.com. Typically the people who view the site are from the USA but after the engagement email went out Amanda and I could tell which friends living overseas and who among our friends and family had checked out the web page.

We’ve been looking at various places to hold a wedding ceremony and reception and I wanted to post some photos of some of the places we have investigated. Tonight let me show you the Lodge at Seneca Creek.

Surrounded by 26 acres of scenic, wooded parkland, The Lodge at Little Seneca Creek is Mother Nature’s ultimate meeting place. This rustic log cabin with its natural wood cathedral ceilings and massive, wood-burning flagstone fireplace is an ideal setting for a business retreat or social gathering.

This is a stitched together photo showing the entire lodge. I want to also post a 360 degree interactive version but for now just click to view the large size:

Update: The interactive version is now available here.