• Is this a website or service I wanted to sign up for?  If it is then I take a few minutes and evaluate its worth to me... if it's more involved than a quick sign up then it might go into the to do list (Remember the Milk is the list of choice here).
• Is this information this something I want to read later?  If yes then it goes into Instapaper (and I have Instapaper Pro for the iPhone as well, which I actually prefer as a reading interface for blogs posts or articles).
• Is this a resource that I might want to use as a reference later?  If it is then it goes to Delicious.  The Delicious extension in Firefox is a nice way of accessing those later.

I do love the convenience of my iPhone and the many apps I have installed, but if you use an iPhone (or any other smart phone) and rely on a data network in your own country (for me the United States), you become quickly aware of how reliant that device is on data access once it's stripped away from you.  This makes using the device a challenge when you're outside your network trying to find your way around or discovering interesting things to do.

I don't plan on giving up my US based iPhone any time soon, so most of my days in the UK are spent on free wifi access points or rationing my 20MB of international roaming data (which I do quite successfully most months).  This isn't the US though, free wifi can be difficult to find, and trying to load up the built-in Maps app will eat your roaming data very quickly.

I recently spent a day in London.  I considered it a touristy day, basically roaming one part of London and taking photos along the way.  The goal of the day was to spend as little money as possible, which I thought would be a fantastic challenge for a city as expensive as London.  I may blog about the entire experience some other time, but for this post I wanted to focus simply on the technology.

Features that make a good travel app include offline access with full use of the phone's GPS, and an easy to use interface.  Not everybody may require offline access, but it's good to consider, especially if you plan on using underground transport, or areas where you think there may be no wireless signals present.  I'm focusing on a few apps I downloaded for London, but I hope to take what I learned there to discover different apps for visits to other cities in the future.  A good way to test how an application will work offline is to try it out in airplane mode first.

Travel Guides

I still like to take a paper travel guide with me, but I like to keep them small.  This is because I prefer to plan trips out before I go and don't like carrying giant travel tomes.  I've also been burned on GPS signal in big cities before, tall buildings can interfere with getting an accurate reading on your device.  If you rely too much on the technology it could get you lost.  I prefer the Fodor's '25 Best' Series if I can find it for any city I visit.  It's thin, it only contains a few highlights of the best attractions, and it has maps both inside the covers and a bigger fold out map (oh and it's also cheap).  Having a nice and easy to use paper based map is still a good idea, even when you are traveling with a device that has a digital map.

I relied on my paper map the first time I was in London back in August, though this time I seemed to want to forget I even had it... even when I needed it.  I think it is easier and faster to pull out the iPhone than it is to mess with a map, which is why I try to plan on having both on hand.

I admit I didn't use my iPhone much for travel guides during the trip, I did look at a few before though.  Here's a few I found that I did like:

Free & Budget London - $1.99

If I liked one travel app the most it was this one.  I'm thrifty, what can I say?  It was the most expensive of all the apps I purchased, but I think it was worth it.  The interface is really nice and there are some unique tips and ideas for exploring London on the cheap.  I also liked that there was an average price for restaurant options.  The app works nicely offline, but you do need access to a network to view places on the map.  The distance option does work with the GPS and the phone offline, so it's possible to get nearby options on the fly.

London Map and Walking Tours - Free

This application has a nice interface for walking tours.  Even if you're not into doing an entire walking tour it could be useful for finding places nearby to go.  It also has a map that can be used offline.  There is a full version of this app for $4.99 that includes the same tours but with GPS navigation and turn-by-turn tour routes turned on.  The map and tours are loaded into the application and work offline.

London Highlights - Free

The London Highlights application is a lite version of the Way2GoGuides.  It has an easy to use interface with audio, area maps, and a host of other useful information.  There are a few other more detailed mini-guides that can be downloaded for $4.99, but the free application seems more than suitable for ideas and travel information on local attractions.

If offline access isn't necessary for you then there's a couple of honorable mentions.

Time Out London - Free

For a free app there's a lot going on here.  It's packed full of information, events, and fun things to do with a nice interface.  It doesn't work offline, but because there's a lot of real time information on events in here you can be sure there's less stale or outdated entries.  If I have one complaint about this app it is the nagging Smirnoff screen at the beginning asking if I'm of drinking age.

Spoonfed - Free

Like the Time Out London app, it will keep you up to date on live events and happenings.  It also needs a network connection to run so no offline access here either. 

Maps

Offline city maps are a wonderful thing to have on your phone, but it can be frustrating to find the best one.  There are so many options to choose from.

Smart Maps - London $0.99

I settled for this map because of the offline access and the price.  It uses OpenStreetMap as the base map, which I noticed a number of these mapping applications do.  What you need to know about OpenStreetMap is the data is non-commercial, open, and user-generated (anybody can use it for free).  It will only be as good as the data the users have added to the map (and of course how the app developer implements that data).  Though knowing this I noticed a lot of mapping applications using OpenStreetMap are charging a lot more for their apps, some in the $4.99 range, but others, like this one, a few dollars.  It's good to look at the features, and it's also good to know what you're going to want from an offline city map.  For me use of the GPS was important.  Where this map failed for me was finding a nearby tube station.  The stations are marked but they're not labeled, so I had no idea which one I was looking at.  It looks as if an update to this map does have some tube stations marked and search-able so this may no longer be an issue here.  The icons for tube stations and bus stops are similar so it's not as easy to use as Google Maps, but this is still a good map though.  The GPS works ok, the search feature does bring up some nearby places of interest, and an update to the map allows you to bookmark landmarks (which I've already started adding a few for my next trip to London).  The people who make the Smart Maps do make a few for other cities.

With all that being said, I noticed that the Walking Tours map I mentioned earlier does have the tube stations more clearly marked and uses the same OpenStreetMap base map.  The Mini A-Z maps ($9.99) are very popular in the UK, but I personally do not like how they look and the apps are basically expensive scans of their print maps.  Before committing to a map try to look at the screenshots to see if you can get any a sense of how the information is organized and labeled.  For a good map I don't think $4.99 is too much to pay if you think you're going to use the features, but cheaper is always better.  I did use the offline map a lot to get my bearings, they are incredibly helpful.

Transportation

I love riding on the London Tube!  I didn't bother downloading any bus apps for London because I prefer the Tube and walking, but there's a bazillion different transport apps for London alone.  I've also searched apps like this for Chicago so I know any large city will have many options for you to choose from.

Tube Map - Free

Like with city map applications, transport applications can vary.  The one I settled with was Tube Map because it was free.  It does a nice job getting you from station to station if you know where you're at and where you intend to go.  It does not use GPS though.  There is a naggy screen when you open the app to register but you can skip that and the app works fine offline.  The only thing that will not work offline with any of these apps is the tube status feature, which needs a data network to connect.  For a free app though, this one is good.

London Tube - $0.99

I haven't tested this one out for London, but I have a similar app by the same developers for Chicago.  I do find the interface a bit finicky to get around and you have to pay more for points of interest so it's no good if you want to search nearby locations.  I also have full access to the AT&T network in the US, so I'm not so much concerned with offline access there.  I've given my Chicago app another look though and I do find the interface frustrating enough that I'm willing to skip the London version of this application.

London Tube Deluxe - $0.99

While I still have yet to test it in London, I've decided to upgrade from my previously mentioned free Tube app to London Tube Deluxe.  The reviews are good and it was updated very recently with new features.  I like the interface, you can select a station from the map by tapping twice on the screen, and there is a locate feature that uses the GPS.  My next London trip won't require a ride on the Tube, but I'll try to remember to turn on the app to test the GPS offline while I'm in the city.

Looking through the options and the reviews, $0.99 seems to be the most you want to spend on a transport application.  The free map works just fine, especially if you don't need to rely on a GPS location for finding the nearest station, but if you want a few more features then you can find it for not much more.

WiFi Hotspots

A big "must do" when I plan on going anywhere is to get a handle on where the wifi hotspots are, or rather, the free wifi hotspots.  WiFi is a little easier to find in the US, but not impossible to find in the UK. 

WiFiZone@UK - Free

Most of the wifi locations here include the commercial services like The Cloud and BT Openzone, these are not free wifi hotspots and there is no filter to really determine if any are free.  The app claims it works with no internet connection, but it oddly does not work in airplane mode.  If you need a hotspot quick and don't mind paying for access this one will work throughout the UK.

Free WiFi London - Free

This is a simple app that works offline.  I used it twice in London, once brought me to a location that was closed (it's possible to mark locations closed when you're online, which I did), and another time brought me to a fabulous little cafe that I wished I had eaten lunch in instead of the typical chain cafe I did end up in.  It's not fancy, but it works with no internet connection and with the GPS.  My success rate is still only 50% with it, but it's a free app and it might help you find free wifi so it's worth the download.

Travel requires some planning and traveling with technology requires a lot of patience and research.  The apps themselves can be of varying quality and expense.  What I've learned with this trip to London is that finding the best applications might also take some time.  I'm not against paying money for a good app, but if you look at a decent map application alone you'll see some pretty astonishing prices.  I think once I was out and about during the day I realized what features were more essential than others.  The other unfortunate thing about downloading apps, particularly iPhone apps, is that there is no refund if you decide you don't like it after all.  My recommendation is to start with free or cheaper apps, there are some good ones out there and there are some bad ones too.  If it's free you're out nothing, and if it's cheap you're out a little... and who knows, maybe with some advice from you that mediocre free or cheap app could improve in time for your next trip.

I hope some of the resources are helpful for people. Social media has opened the channels (and backchannels) of communication widely for many of us, but it also has us drowning in a lot of information that we don't often know what to do with.

I was a little bit nervous about the whole thing, I generally don't like the way I look in photos (though, everybody says that, don't they?) but in the spirit of the event and knowing that having some nice photos will help spice up some other projects I'm working on here and there (blog redesign, CV, and article bios), I decided it was definitely a good thing to embrace. 

I am so pleased with the results!  We set up a day last month to meet in the Jewelry Quarter in Birmingham (a short walk for me as I live just on the outskirts).  The walk over threatened a little rain, but I liked the atmosphere, it was a beautiful autumn day.  Lee was great, my nerves didn't last long, he made the whole experience really comfortable, and he only risked my life in dangerous British traffic once during the whole day ;)  Though to be fair, he risked his life in traffic far more than I did.  I liked the Jewelry Quarter as a backdrop, I've been here for a couple of months so it does feel like home now, and the urban landscapes do remind me of being in Detroit.  Below are a few of my favorite pictures from the day.

I'm really glad I had this opportunity, and now having done it I would recommend to people that it's worth it to get some professional photos done of yourself (and if in Birmingham, call Lee of course!)  I've already updated my Twitter background, and changed some of my online avatars, it does kind of make me feel a little bit grown up :)  Thanks to Lee, and thanks to the Twestival for opening doors and giving me some unique experiences here in Birmingham.

In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold--services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate--in ways we can only begin to imagine.

I do believe that Twitter and Facebook (or insert name of favorite social networking tool here) is changing the way we communicate, but that doesn't mean we're all going to stop using email any time soon.  It's a shift in habits brought on by innovation in the tools we use.  I check two things religiously and in parallel each and every day, Twitter and Email.  In my world both services are of equal importance.  Twitter is not always about trivial communication, but the type of information I get from Twitter I don't want in my inbox.  Email is about communicating tasks, stuff I need to do or remember.  And let's admit, there's some things we need to communicate in more than 140 characters, I need email just as much as I want Twitter.

A lot of this evaluation of email is coming at the heels of Google's new collaborative tool, Google Wave (which I'll comment on a little later in this post, but here's a short and clever YouTube video about Google Wave).  TechCrunch's response to the WSJ article and the flurry around Google Wave described it as a "passive-aggressive" form of communication, while also quoting the WSJ article:

For many of us, email is simply not cutting it the way that it used to. It's a sedentary beast in a fast-moving web. It uses old principles for management, and this is leading to overload. I think the key statement in the WSJ is this:

"We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet--logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone."

That's absolutely true. But that also implies that we want some sort of always-on communication connection. I don't think that's the case. I think we want the option to communicate in real-time at will, but also the ability to communicate at our leisure at times. I would consider this to be a desire for a "passive-aggressive" method of communication. Perhaps it would be better stated as a "passive/active" method of communication, but passive-aggressive sounds better, so we'll go with that.

I think WSJ and TechCrunch are both missing the mark with email, but I do agree with TC that there are limits to the "always on" connection.  The WSJ elaborates a little more by saying, "Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging? Thanks to Facebook, some questions can be answered without asking them."  Well sure, but I still have to log in to Facebook to get the answer (oh and by the way, Facebook is a poor example because I get all my Facebook notifications through email anyway, I absolutely do not want Facebook to be my email client).  Facebook is a closed platform, and another tab on my browser.  WSJ also goes on to say that, "Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave..."  Collaboration isn't all about fun, it's also about getting things done... and Google Wave is still another open tab in my browser that I have to log in to (in other words it's not "always on" if I decide to close the tab).

I think email can be better, and several services are working to that goal.  What I would like to have is less tabs, and a few services have emerged to re-invent email.  Xobni is a tool that integrates Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and others into Microsoft Outlook.  It works ok and it's good for what it does, but the problem for me is that it's integrated into Outlook which is bloated and I hate to run.  Outlook is not an "always on" application for me, but it may be for others.

I'm looking forward to Mozilla Raindrop, which isn't available yet but looks promising.  If there's one reason I wouldn't use Raindrop it would be because it's a client.  I am moving more web based.  I've tried Thunderbird in the past for email, but because I have Outlook (and never use it anyway), I find downloading another email client excessive.  I might be compelled to if it can bring together the filtering, communication tools, and prioritizing that I want from everything I use.

What Xobni and Raindrop are doing is integrating new tools with email, which is what I think should happen.  Email is a base for me.  This has not been Google's approach with Wave, however, and I'm a bit disappointed by this.

So my thoughts on Wave, maybe it's too early to tell, but I find it to be clunky and busy.  Like I mentioned before, Wave is just another open tab in my browser.  I still find Google's own mail service to be far superior to anything else out there.  If Wave could be integrated with the email that I already use in some way then I might be more excited about it.  I actually do find Wave a little boring, I normally only check it once, maybe twice a day, and I haven't got much value from the few threads that I'm on (other than learning how the tool works from a more mechanical perspective).  That could change though once more innovative uses open up.

In the end we're going to use what we're comfortable with anyway.  If somebody sends me a DM through Twitter I'll probably respond through Twitter, likewise with people who communicate through Facebook or email.  The real issue isn't with the tool, it's about our habits with the tools that we use.  Email isn't going anywhere, if anything it will get better and more intelligent over time.

The default styles for MT are boring though.  The design tools out there don't add much to the design either, mostly just changing colors, and there's a reason for that... the StyleCatcher plugin.  The plugin is designed to make it easy to switch styles on your MT blog, it's  good idea in theory, but it can be complicated to work with in practice (which is probably why you don't see a lot of MT theme repositories out there.)  I did have a custom design awhile back, but I also had a custom CSS file that didn't match the StyleCatcher format.  I like the idea of pushing a button and being able to change my blog design, but it only works if you're willing to spend some time with StyleCatcher, this isn't really a user friendly process and you really have to understand CSS more than casually to be successful.

I'm not a designer, I'm more like a tinkerer, I can play with CSS and HTML and come up with something presentable.  I like simple and clean designs, I also like little touches, it's the little touches that can get me in trouble.  My favorite design site is Open Source Web Design, but the designs are normally static and need to be modified to fit a blog template, that's where the hacking comes in... most of the time this ends painfully.

Last night I decided to dive into StyleCatcher again, determined to make it successful.  StyleCatcher relies on two CSS files, a base file where it pulls the format based on your column layout and type of blog (in theory you can create one design then apply that same design in a variety 2 or 3 column formats).  The problem with editing this base CSS file is that all of the other StyleCatcher default themes rely on this file.  You can add your own into the directory and use that, that base file includes layout for many other "invisible" elements too, things like form spacing and buttons, comments, categories, and other things you might not consider when you're just looking at redesigning your home page.

The style CSS is stored in another directory altogether... both CSS files are called by another CSS file in your main directory.  Sure you can bypass all this stuff if you want, but it could mean more tinkering later if you need to refresh your template or upgrade your blog (which is what happened to me last year).

The approach I took was to create a new style directory, which I wanted loaded into my style gallery in MT.  I wanted to switch back and forth between my custom style or a default style if I needed to.  I also anticipate creating new blogs with the same style for some projects I have in my mind, and I wanted them to be seamless, loading them into the gallery makes them accessible to any new blog I create, now by simply applying the style.

After some playing around with the CSS and consideration, I decided not to change the base CSS file and focus on the custom style.  Working with either CSS file is a pain, they're not laid out like I would like them to be and you still have to switch back and forth to make sure you're not changing anything important.  If you want to keep the StyleCatcher functionality the most important thing is to not change any of the divs or classes, and to keep your HTML files completely in tact.  This means trying to figure out the best way to take somebody else's CSS file and translate it to something StyleCatcher can understand.

So all of that sounds like a lot of work... actually it is, but once you have it worked out it's really easy to load it into MT and applying the new design is even easier.  Movable Type has instructions for creating new themes, the one I did was #5, creating a StyleCatcher theme.  Though by the time I got to here the hard part was already done.

The current version of this design is from the website ZeroWeb and based on the theme Curiously Green by nodethritythree.  I have some more tweaks I'm going to do to the site over time, some of them will be more involved than others, but I'm pleased with the results so far.  Now, hopefully MT doesn't go messing with the StyleCatcher plugin or I'll be in big trouble.

There's a lot of attention on Detroit these days... corrupt politicians, a failing auto industry, and an unemployment rate at almost 30%, it does sound like a pretty depressing place.  Even with all of that though, it's difficult not to love Detroit. It's especially difficult not to love the people.

Recently I stumbled across this piece in Time called Assignment Detroit.  Time bought a house in Detroit and they're going to live there for a year.  Why?

Because we believe that Detroit right now is a great American story. No city has had more influence on the country's economic and social evolution. Detroit was the birthplace of both the industrial age and the nation's middle class, and the city's rise and fall -- and struggle to rise again -- are a window into the challenges facing all of modern America. From urban planning to the crisis of manufacturing, from the lingering role of race and class in our society to the struggle for better health care and education, it's all happening at its most extreme in the Motor City.

I was happy to see somebody finally get it... but surprised to see that it was a media outlet making the effort.  I'm drawn by these stories though and I hope that Time can present them in a respectable way.

Detroit is a city filled with optimism and pessimism (sometimes by the same people at the same time).  It is a city filled with hope and with despair.  It's a city you have to be in to understand though, which is why I think it's often misunderstood.  Some of the videos I've watched so far from the Assignment Detroit project are interesting and candid.  I especially enjoyed the interviews with Kid Rock and Michael Moore... both had a very different understanding and vision, but both still seemed to represent the essence of the city.

When something enters your consciousness your awareness of it becomes more heightened, so having lived for a short time in Detroit and then moving to a different part of the world that's sort of what has happened with me.  I don't know where I came across it initially, but a few days ago I was reminded of Detroit's motto, it started with one of my typical snarky comments about the city's flag (on twitter)... but after the snarkiness wore off and I considered the motto (errr, well I realized I could use in this blog post which I had already started weeks ago anyway).

The relevance of the flag and the city motto is described on the Detroit Historical Society's website:

The official Seal of the City of Detroit is the centerpiece of the flag.  It commemorates the great fire of 1805 that burned Detroit to the ground.  The seal shows two women.  The woman on the left represents Detroit at the time of the fire.  She is weeping. The woman on the right, who is comforting her, represents hope and the future.  The background scene shows the city in flames on the left.  On the right, a new and brighter city is shown.  On the sides are Latin words which translated into English read "We Hope for Better Things...It Shall Arise from the Ashes."  This motto captures the real spirit of Detroit - one that meets challenges and evokes images of Detroiters working and building together.

Of course I focused on the burning part, Detroit has a habit of catching on fire, a lot.  Sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident.  The motto is what the city is really all about though.  It is a city that burns, it is a city that weeps, but it is also a city of hope.  Detroit did rise above the ashes after the 1805 fires, it became the center of industry in the US, a large and prosperous city... it was a city that immigrants were eager to travel to because they could find good work there, it wasn't always the city we see today.  The prosperity wasn't enough to sustain it through modern times though, so it burnt again, but in spirit. 

I'm pretty confident the city will rise again.  It's a slow and painful process there though, like many places in the world it is fearful of change and stuck in tradition.  It's a tradition that the city cannot sustain, and many are aware of it... though painful to watch, maybe the city needs to burn to be good again. Speramus Meliora, Resurget Cineribus.

I'm interested in the idea of crowdsourcing (or even the collective wisdom of a large group), but I immediately see its flaws.  We're often easily influenced by the reviews on Amazon or other sites, but how many of us actually go back and post our own later?  I know I don't do it very often and don't have the time.  I've started adding a few reviews to Yelp or TripAdvisor, but to add a quality review does take some thought and feels like work (actually I cheat and use the same review to post at both, Yelp is my favorite and TripAdvisor seems to be most popular). 

Another flaw to the crowd based review system is that many people normally don't contribute unless they really like something or really hate something.  In most cases people probably post reviews based on negative experiences and not so much on positive ones.  We are not really motivated to post a review of something we feel sort of neutral on.  When this happens what we then see is the extreme ends of the review.  This may not always be beneficial to somebody reading a review if the reviewer is showing any amount of bias through their thoughts.  We know from statistics that outliers exist in every situation, this really isn't any different for online recommender systems.

I think there's some slight nuances between the "wisdom of crowds" and crowdsourcing though.  A good example of a "crowdsourced" phenomenon is Wikipedia.  A couple of posts have suggested that only about 1%-2% of the users are actually editing articles.  The same sort of thing is going on here, a small number of users are contributing a very large amount of content.  What's the real difference then?  Wikipedia is a community in itself, and it attracts passionate users.  Since when have we ever thought of the reviews on Amazon contributed by passionate community members?  Wikipedia is actually harnessing the "wisdom" of its users (even if they are a few).  The community is also managed in a way to eliminate bias (at least the best it can... a librarian like myself will say don't use Wikipedia as your only source, but I stand by what it tries to accomplish).  There is actually quality stuff in Wikipedia!

Both Wikipedia and Amazon rely on crowdsourcing for content, they both are integral in explaining the Long Tail, except that where passionate users on Wikipedia can be found editing in Wikipedia, the niche markets around products sold in Amazon exist elsewhere on the web.  Let's say you're into a band, then maybe you're posting your thoughts and reviews on their MySpace or Facebook pages instead.  Conversations are happening on another platform, and then they go to Amazon to purchase (or iTunes, or wherever).  What's left on Amazon is a filtered view in a way.  Niche markets like niche tools, and Amazon is too mainstream... besides, if we really like something, we don't want to tell the world, we just want to tell our friends.

There have been some attempts by a few services to focus on improving user reviews.  Some companies have thought to remove the outlier reviews from their recommender systems (remove the best and the worst and focus on the bulk in the middle).  Others have been fine tuning their systems to focus on the user and how they compare to other users with the same interests.  Both are a step in the right direction, but I think they're also missing a key component and that is the network.

There's a lot of great services out there that people just don't use.  For example, I'm on Yelp (and do use it), but I only have a few "friends" on there.  When I'm really stuck on where to go I usually turn to Twitter for help, this is where my network is.  Other people may do the same but go to Facebook, or whatever service their network mostly communicates.  If I'm going to proclaim that I really really like something I'm going to do it on Twitter... what if Yelp (or some other relevant service) could parse from my Twitter stream that I was at a certain place (which they could tell because I checked in via Brightkite), and then that I thought the food was really good, but the service was incredibly slow (of course based on my excessive complaining about service and praise of meal in some succession of tweets).  Boom, instant review.

Ok, I realize I'm now in the fuzzy, abstract world of the Semantic Web, but it could happen.  Actually I believe it will happen (that's another blog post a few years down the road, I hope).  We're sharing the information, but we're doing it the way we've always done it, in conversation, word of mouth, and with our friends.  There's wisdom out there, in large groups and small groups, I think you just have to know where to look for it.

First let me point out that I no longer have a television.  My internet access has also been limited, so outside of the occasional download, television is really not an integral part of my media consumption.  Though that will likely change with the addition of unlimited broadband in my life, when I do watch a television program it's usually online and I may revert to catching up with the shows I can through my computer.

My music listening has also decreased.  I can't use my Rhapsody account here (so I had to cancel it), and prefer not to stream music over a limited internet connection, but that may also change with the addition of unlimited internet access.

I didn't realize just how many books I had started reading at once until I went through them in my head yesterday.  The current count is three.  Before I started school that was my average, but I read them slowly in print form.  My three books are all in different formats and accessed in different situations.  I'm reading one book on my iPhone through the Kindle application.  I don't mind reading on the small screen, I'm currently on my second book with the Kindle app.  I tend to read the Kindle book while I'm having a quick lunch or coffee on the go, or have more than a few minutes of a wait to spare.

I've always been a huge fan of audio books, and I'm pleased that my Audible account still works in the UK.  I find audio books are good when I'm on the train or the bus, it also makes the trip go by faster (or too short if you're listening to a good book).

I've even started to read novels in paperback form again.  I found a local coffee shop that had a large stack of BookCrossing books and picked a few free ones out of there.  I have a theory that not having continuous access to the internet is really what has increased my paperback reading, but given that I'm already enjoying two other books I don't feel that guilty about that.

I subscribe to a number of podcasts, both audio and video.  It was always really difficult to keep on top of podcasts before, but I find that it's enjoyable to catch up on them while I'm walking around the city.  It can be up to a 20 minute walk one way, depending on my destination, and that's enough time to get in one or two podcasts.

One of the few times I like to watch television is when I'm cooking dinner (and eating dinner too I guess).  I think it's something I've kept from when I was younger (the only times we ever really watched television in our home was during those times).  For that reason I've set up some video podcasts to run while I'm cooking, though sometimes I listen to podcasts or audio books then too.

The amazing thing is that even without a constant connection to the internet and no television I still have access to an incredible amount of media.  I haven't even got into how I may occasionally grab a print magazine or newspaper (yes, there's still something nice about reading print magazine, though never been a fan of messing with newspapers).  I've even gone to a few movies at the theatre.

I see this all as a good thing.  Book publishing is on a huge increase, not a decrease.  The amount of new information created every year is increased by terabytes.  How we consume media has to change in order to keep up with that increase and the demand.

I'm not the kind of person that really cares for these retrospective sorts of moments though.  I get nostalgic sometimes, but I've always felt that what happens happens.  It's a survival mechanism.  You can't change the past.  This year has been good and bad in many different doses.  If there's one thing I should be grateful for is the blank canvas I have in front of me.  It is weird getting to this point in life where you finally know what you want, but then not sure if you'll ever get it.  There's a reason why I never make plans, they never work out that way.

When I last left this blog I was actually moving from Ann Arbor to Detroit.  I spent an entire six months in Detroit and didn't blog once.  I somehow fell in love with a city that people love to hate.  I miss it there, but not enough to move back.  I love the people, I love the Bronx (best burgers), and I love Motor City Brewing (best beer and pizza).  Detroit taught me an important lesson though, and that is that things aren't always what they seem on the surface (sounds really cliché, huh?  Well, it's true).

I didn't know what I would think of Detroit when I moved there, I moved there because it was close to one job and rent was cheap.  I never expected to enjoy living there, but that's what happened.  I tell people I'm from Detroit, though I'm really from Toledo, I'm proud of being from both places.  I'm also happy to have lived in Ann Arbor for so long.  I've met some incredible people along the way there, and the journey only continues.

I'm in Birmingham, in the United Kingdom now.  I love the UK too.  Birmingham is a wonderful city, and not unlike Detroit, people tend to think otherwise.  There's some subtle similarities between the two cities (meant in a good way actually), but there's definitely some differences.  The biggest difference is that Birmingham is not as desolate as Detroit.  Detroit has pockets life here and there, but Birmingham has a thriving city center and an amazing amount of shopping crammed into a small space.  I like being here because I can walk anywhere and shop for just about anything. 

I think Birmingham is what Detroit could be, maybe someday in my lifetime.  Birmingham, was the original center of industry, while Detroit clings to its automotive roots.  Where Birmingham gets it right is that it keeps rebuilding itself into something new.  I would love to see good things for Detroit too.  There's a heart and soul to Detroit that you can't detect from the bleak news that comes out of it.  It's difficult to explain but I'm sad to leave but glad I did.  I know it doesn't help Detroit to flee, but life is difficult enough as it is on its own.

I've wanted to be in a city for a long time.  I don't miss my car.  I don't even miss my things (currently packed away in a garage in Toledo).  To be honest I don't miss much about the US.  Things are just different.  Not better, not worse, just different.  I enjoy wandering the city (except for Saturday, there's way too many people here on Saturday).  About every other day I go out for a walk around now familiar Birmingham roads and shopping centers.  I like to go to the markets at the Bull Ring, and especially into the meat markets inside.  I like the activity and the bustle and the cheap stuff.  I like walking around and listening to podcasts on my iPod (I'm finally catching up).  I'm getting used to traffic coming at me from the wrong direction at insane speeds.  I spend some time shopping in the grocery stores.  It's a little like an anthropological exercise for me.  Grocery shopping is different here and I prefer it.  Because I'm walking everywhere I don't do all of my shopping all at once.  Things seem fresher.  Notably, vegetables are cheaper.  For anything considered "healthier" in the US expect to pay way more money for it.  The reason why obesity is a problem in the US is because it's cheaper.  I enjoy being able to cook again too so it's nice to find fresh food a short walk away.

I will try to blog and write more.  I can't get online as much I want yet, but writing can be done offline.  It helps sort through the things in my head, which is pretty scary at the moment.

I don't know what's in store for the next year.  I would like to say more blogging and less tears.  I would like to say a lot of things for certain, but I can't.  Well, that is except for more back pain.  Another year done, and another new chapter to write.  So, Happy Birthday to me... knowing that birthday wishes do not always come true, but we do what we can.

But focusing on free stock images I often don't need to go as far as stock.xchange.  I've had my account on stock.xchange for a long time, but I recently "rediscovered" it after I read Presentation Zen and was interested in good stock photo sources.  There are plenty of free high resolution images to download, and some of them of excellent quality.  Searching the site is pretty easy, and you are able to favorites to your account.

If you're looking for public domain images try morgueFile, the images here are free and completely available for use as stock photography.  There's keyword search as well as an advanced search.

Another good free search is Image * After.  I recommend Image * After for stock photography, but it's also a good source for free textures. 

The Multicolor Search Lab is an excellent search tool for discovering images based on color, and with a little advanced trick it's easy to get the exact color you're looking for too.  Let's say you want images for specific color in your palette, just embed the hex number at the end of the search string:  http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolour#colors=201974;  You can even add more than one color for even more control over the color options:  http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolour#colors=201974,842959;  You may add up to 10 colors in the search.  The images are from alamy stock photography which does include some licensed as well as royalty free images.

Then if you're looking for a meta search site, everystockphoto includes some of the ones I already mention including Flickr and a few others I didn't mention.

Of course Flickr is an excellent source of images, but if you decide to use images from Flickr it's good to understand and respect Creative Commons licensing when choosing photos.  What's nice about Flickr is that its API allows many developers to create some pretty awesome search tools based on the site.

One very cool search tool is the Content Based Visual Image Search.  This tool unfortunately doesn't allow you to narrow your search by license type, so it's very possible your searches will yield a photo with a restrictive license, but it's a great site for showcasing what's possible with the Flickr API.  The search tool lets you browse by tag, and when you find an image you like you can search again by that image's theme or by color/texture.  I found it fun to play around with the options, it's too bad there isn't more options for refining the searches though.

Flickr.Storm is a Flickr search that does let you filter by license.  I find the interface a little strange, but it does a good job and returns a set of nice images based on tag from Flickr.  The advanced search allows you to narrow to a specific Creative Commons license which is useful if you know exactly what license will suit your needs.

As Flickr searches go I definitely saved the best for last though, and that is compfight.  The quality of images returned are excellent, the interface is excellent, and it will allow you to filter for Creative Commons.  There's an added feature of a blue band that pops up when you mouse over the results that displays the image's original dimensions, very helpful if you're looking for an image of a specific or relative size. 

I really found this list helpful when searching for images for presentations, and I've started using it more in basic web designs I'm considering for my class and personal use.  Even if you're looking for something to spice up a blog post, you're not going to have too much trouble finding the perfect image from one of these sites.

-UPDATE-

I closed the comments to this post recently due to comment spam, but @mir_b gave me a link to Roy Tennant's FreeLargePhotos.com site.  Thanks mb and thanks to Roy for putting this together!  Definitely another great site for the list.

The book is a collection of really interesting stories, to me they're stories that are plausible and fascinating, and they kept my interest.  Nothing truly surprised me (well one thing did, a statistic that I mention later), but a lot of things made say, "huh, that sort of makes sense."  I think it's up to the reader to take it at face value or not.

I was particularly struck by the fun connections Gladwell made to birthdays and success.  I even found myself relating with the connection that children held back a year from starting school do better than children who start school right away...  My birthday falling in September made me one of those children when my education began, and I was not in the category of children held back a year, making me the youngest in my class.  I always wondered why two of my good friends, both in a class below me and weeks older than I was were particularly smarter, honor students, and one Salutatorian of his class.  A lot of my friends are smart, I never felt jealous of this situation, I was pretty well aware of my strengths at a young age and recognizing I didn't have have to be intelligent at everything happened to be one of them... to me then it was still an interesting curiosity, and now it sort of makes sense, they were just given a different opportunity than I was.  I was also shocked to discover that only 11% of children in my category, the children who are not held a year, even attend college, something I had done, which puts me in this small group of college graduates that I was never aware existed.  Being the youngest in my class was a struggle, school in general was a struggle for me, and always has been, and neither one of these things were ever overlooked by me... I suppose I just never made the connections between them.  I do know other situations certainly make up for any disadvantages I may have been handed by being the youngest in my class, and that some combination of this and some combination of other things make me who I am, and somebody I've always been proud to be.  It doesn't make me better off or worse off, it's just like little puzzle pieces that fall into place, you feel better having some insight you didn't have before.

The other story I was interested in was the opening on cultural heritage and the settlers of Kentucky.  This fascinated me mostly because the lineage followed very closely to my own.  My father's side of the family migrated from the British Isles then to Virginia and settled in Kentucky about the same time.  I'm not sure if they were caught up in any of the feuding mentioned in the book (but now I'm fascinated to know for sure!) but it definitely gave me a different perspective of what life might have been like for my family and my own cultural heritage.  The point in the book is that these settlers have a cultural legacy of honor that even today is intrinsically followed by those living in the South, despite modern circumstances.  Now of course one branch of my father's family migrated north, to Toledo, starting with my Great Grandfather as well as my Great Grandmother, so I did not grow up in the South, but I wonder how much of that culture of honor is present in me, or how growing up in the North shaped it differently.  I do find these things quite fascinating to think about! 

The stories in the book are success stories told in a way you don't hear the stories told, and for me at least they made me think (of course two of which did hit particularly close to personal experience so that could've had a lot of reason for that).  I did enjoy the audio book version of this one, it was read by Malcolm Gladwell and there was also a small interview at the end of the book.  This book won't give you any answers about success, I'm not sure that's what it sets out to do, but it might make you think about it differently than you did before.

Refresh Detroit >> Tagging:  People Powered Metadata for the Social Web

I initially wrote it as an assignment for my Information Architecture class last semester, but pared it down some for the blog.  We'll see if my last semester lends itself to doing more things like this, hopefully my schedule won't be so bad with both of my classes being online.  I do want to have more time to read again!

I try to avoid New Year's Resolutions because I'm bad about keeping them, but I have to admit that I do get pretty motivated this time of year.  I have a lot to do, and things have been an organizational mess for a little too long so I'm working on those areas before the motivation dies... which it will eventually, that's just how things are with me.

To start I've decided to go through my books.  I probably don't have a lot compared to a lot of librarian type people (I don't read fiction much, and I don't buy books much), but I have enough that I've decided to weed them and organize them.  First step is to decide which I'm keeping.  My long stagnant LibraryThing account has been resurrected.  What I like about LibraryThing is that it pulls in the call numbers from Library of Congress, I've been writing these inside the covers to eventually label them properly (I think I can work some magic with Excel and Word to automate this with some labels).  I've decided to use Library of Congress instead of Dewey only because I have a lot of Classical music CDs and sheet music that will also get labeled and I think Dewey is pretty horrible for cataloging CDs, I would like these items to be relatively close to one another in order so I can find them easier.  At one time I did want to teach flute lessons, thus the reason for organizing my music, I probably never will, but I still like the idea of having them in order.  This probably makes me a huge geek on so many levels though, and to think I really don't like "real cataloging" all the much it seems funny I want to do this at home, but LibraryThing makes it really easy.  Right now most of the books I have added to LT are my old music textbooks, that was just the first shelf I grabbed.

So what to do with the others?  I've opened a PaperBack Swap account.  I don't have much there yet (ok, it's been harder than I thought to part with some books), but the great thing was the first day I posted books I had a request for one!  I mailed it off yesterday, it was a pretty nice book about making and playing folk instruments so I hope they enjoy it.  The really old and really useless books will probably get recycled, I do have a few old workbooks that I don't know why I've kept them for so long.  I've never been one to sell off my textbooks, this has come to my benefit, especially last semester when in a desperate attempt to find resources last minute I found the best in an an old Library textbook... you just never know.

In the meantime I also want to rip all of my CDs to my backup drive, and I'm ditching the cases in favor of a sleeved binder.  I might buy another binder just for the Classical CDs though.

And yes, I do hope to blog more.  Maybe I should be less ambitious than once a day... maybe once a week is ok.  And if not once a week I seem to do ok with once a month.

The computer is really easy to get booted, it's even easy to use, but the interface on the Linux version is for 3 year olds.  There's links to all the necessary stuff like internet, mail, instant messaging, even Google Docs, which I do admit to using quite regularly... but I got bored really fast.  So I installed Ubuntu.

It took me a few times to get it working, but I finally did.  I even looked at Ubuntu Eee, a version made specifically for the Asus Eee, but I didn't care for the screenshots for that one, it reminded me too much of the OS I wanted to kill.

Creating the Live USB is easy with UNetbootin, I mean seriously really easy.  I appreciate that there are people out there taking time out to create tools that make it easy for the rest of us to do geeky things!

So for whatever reason the live USB wouldn't load on the Eee.  I tried several times last night on 2 ports, and then tried a new one today.  It wouldn't load the first time on the third port either, but the second time, for no reason that I could tell, it loaded.  I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth... apparently persistence does pay off.

The install went fine.  It connected to the internet via my LAN no problem, and my tiny USB mouse even works great (wish I still had my tiny white one though so they matched).  There were 126 updates to install for Ubuntu though, which took some time.  In some of the reviews I read that the USB ports aren't that fast, and I have noticed some lag with my mini mouse, so there may be some truth to that.  The touchpad with Ubuntu works fine though, I did not, however, like the sensitivity when I had the default OS installed, so at least I'm happy it's better with what I installed.

Now there are a few documented issues with Ubuntu and the wireless, this really took some time to work out.  After lots of searching and a lot of playing in the terminal window with a bunch of stuff I really didn't understand (but didn't seem to be breaking my computer so why the hell not), I finally stumbled on what I probably should have consulted first, and that is the Ubuntu Community documentation of Eee fixes.  The wireless isn't the only issue, but making a mental note to return to this page if I find more issues.  Also noting that the first fix didn't work for me, the second, which was installing the Madwifi driver did.  There are other fixes on the internet for the Madwifi driver that did not work, but this one did (gift horses are everywhere, I swear).

So that's it!  I have a tiny computer, that is cute, with a cuter operating system that I've always enjoyed using.  So now I'm going to lounge around with my tiny PC while I watch TV on my monster PC.