Category: Technology

My dad always says “you can learn anything on YouTube.”

As a “real” book lover, I’ve always had something of a mental block about using YouTube to solve a problem for some reason. Probably due to the same neurons that prevent me from being able to ask for directions (again, much easier problem to solve in the age of portable computing, LTE connections, and mobile phones).

Nevertheless, I’ve given some of my stubbornness away. Just in the last 24 hours, I’ve used YouTube to learn how to fix a leaky shower faucet, root my Android phone, install an early copy of a mobile software update that’s not been released yet, how to best grow tomatoes in South Carolina, update a few codecs on my non-smart TV, get a lightbulb with a broken bulb out of a socket, and adjust the brightness controls on a laptop that has a new Ubuntu install.

It’s one thing to use Google as a search engine to find info or directions on replacing a lawn mower blade or installing a -curl command on a server or changing a cloth diaper, but it’s a whole different experience in using YouTube for education and instruction purposes.

Brave new world we live in.

Make more videos.

Certainly not the type of company culture I’m hoping to build:

Google Reader Died Because No One Would Run It: “And if you aren’t working on something that the boss cares about, then what’s the point?”

Beautiful graphic diary via the NY Times…

Riding the New Silk Road – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com: “The network of routes known as the Silk Road connected Asia and Europe for centuries before fading in importance in the 1400s. Now, Hewlett-Packard has revived the route as a faster, overland alternative to shipping electronics from China to European markets by sea. A look at one section of the modern-day route, now more commonly traveled by train instead of by camel.”

So very true and worth your time to read if you care ’bout marketing and/or culture (or Homer):

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com): “‘Why wasn’t I consulted,’ which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web. It is the rule from which other rules are derived. Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before has been able to tap into that as effectively.”

Why I’m blogging back here in this format and in this template. Words matter.

Words: “We’ve become obsessed with fancy designs, responsive layouts, and scripts that do magical things.

But the most powerful tool on the web is still words.”

Great post that basically lays out the Harrelson Agency philosophy:

How I Earned A Lot More on Projects by Changing My Pricing Strategy: “Most clients want to know what your prices are up front, and a lot of service providers feel obliged to give an answer.

But I found that starting the conversation with the price leads you down a bad road.

Why? It puts my needs ahead of the client’s. It emphasizes what I want out of the relationship, not what they want.”

Just as every client is different, every client relationship (and the investment involved) should be different. That means building trust and taking away the expectation that hiring a marketing agency is just one more business expense rather than a problem solving relationship.

Really not sure what I would do without Transmit.

Well, of course I do. I’d use a less featured and elegant solution like Cyberduck or one of the many other FTP clients out there that work across platforms.

But when I’m on my Mac, Transmit is normally one of my top 3 used apps for sure.

Great cautionary tale for these early days of cloud computing and new forms of marketing/advertising…

Dumped! by Google : The Last Word On Nothing: “I returned to the Google fold with eyes wide open to my responsibilities as a user. In relationship terms, I am no longer monogamous. I store my data on other servers maintained by providers like Evernote, Dropbox, and WordPress, and the cloud is my standby, not my steady. I’ve swapped convenience for control: I back up my email and what I care about most on physical hard drives.

I’m also back in touch with my first love—spiral notebooks. Unlike Google, they will never come close to containing the world’s information, so no one but me will ever want to access them. And to encrypt my data, I just rely on my handwriting.”

Again, be like the fox.

We’re looking for a great intern or two (or three) to help us out with day-to-day operations of Harrelson Agency, Harrelson Press, Harrelson Racing, Harrelson Autos and/or Thinking.FM.

It’s a fun role for a young person to fill either in our Columbia, SC offices or even virtually if they’re tech savvy enough. Plus, you’ll gain incredible experience and have some great references and lines on your resume for the future.

Here’s the formal announcement but feel free to email sam@harrelson.co for more details or if you have any questions…

“Harrelson Agency and Harrelson Press are offering a joint summer internship for high school or college students interested in design, publishing, and where those two fields intersect. The internship period will run for six weeks beginning July 8, 2013. The pay will be a stipend of $500.

Interns are expected to maintain a professional attitude and work schedule, which includes working remotely, meeting with clients, and individual weekly progress meetings. The internship will include website coding, copyediting, e-book design, and other related services.

Interested applicants should submit a 500-750 word bio and/or a link to your blog or Twitter profile to merianna@harrelson.co for consideration.

Let’s get started!
Sam Harrelson and Merianna Neely”

I love my Epson XP-400. I picked mine up at Best Buy but you can find them on Amazon (linked) for about the same price of $70.

It’s not a fantastic picture printer, but for crisp documents or archives or tickets etc, it’s all I need for my home office and our Harrelson Corps office.

The biggest benefit is that for $70, we can print straight from an iPad or iPhone just by connecting the printer to the wifi network in the office. It’s magical to print a document or contract from your iPhone in five seconds.

Secondly, with the printer’s support for Google Cloud Print (takes about 2 mins to setup), you can print any Google Doc (from a laptop or device) from anywhere in the world as long as you’re logged in to a Google account or domain (harrelson.co in our case). That’s awesome.

We don’t print a ton of things at Harrelson Corps, but having the ability just to tap a button on the iPad and make it happen makes me feel like I’m finally living in the future.

Highly suggest.

I’ll post later on why I love my Merkur razor, but this is the greatest tip I’ve ever read on how to get the soap part of using a razor like this just right (found deep in the Amazon reviews of my next brush)…

Amazon.com: Parker Safety Razor 100% Silvertip Badger Bristle Shaving Brush (Chrome Handle) and Free Shaving Brush Stand: Health & Personal Care: “Everyone has his own method, but if you’re new to this game, here’s mine: Fill half the basin of your sink with the hottest water you can get out of the tap, and place a mug full of this water in the basin. (this allows the mug itself to heat up, which will keep the lather warmer longer.) Let the mug and the brush soak in this water for about two minutes. Squeeze most of the water out of the brush, and swirl your brush in some shaving soap, 4-5 rotations, like you’re mixing with a paint brush. No need to overdo it. Then empty most of the hot water out of the mug, saving just enough water to coat the bottom of the mug, and work up a warm, thick lather in the mug, adding water as needed. Then come back and write a review of the best shave of your life.”

Shaving snobbery is one of my little joys in life. The process takes way too much time in the morning and is expensive upfront but the joy it brings to my life and my pocketbook (do you know how much those Gillette blades really cost??) make me happy before work.

Still hurts:

We’re pretty amazing creatures…

Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves | MIT Technology Review: “Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. ‘I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,’ Negroponte said. ‘Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.’”

Sad and true across the landscape of education (public and private)…

“Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exists’” – Washington Post: “My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom.

Pretty awesome…

Forecast: “Eventually, it dawned on us that, given the animations we had elsewhere in the app, the Climacons simply felt too flat, too static; we therefore set about making our own set of animated weather icons that felt more alive—but not so much so that they distract—which are the icons you now see on Forecast.

We are calling them Skycons, and they are now open source on GitHub.”

Nifty to see HTML 5 implementations really gaining traction in all sorts of ways that wasn’t possible just a few years ago. This and things like WebRTC, the future is bright for the web outside walled gardens of Facebook et al.

BTW, if you haven’t checked out Forecast.io you really should.