New new camera

Took back the Sony got a Nikon. Couldn't get a good picture out of the Sony. Tried. No matter how much light, etc. It was a shame, the camera was a dream to hold and use. Very fast focus. Much faster than this Nikon. BUT. The pictures that come out of this Nikon easily rival what I was getting out of my D50. The quality is good. So good in fact, that I'm convinced Nikon understands photography better than anyone else. They "get it". Nikon color is different - real and just good. It's not the beachball colors of the pumped up Canons. I have grown to appreciate it and like it so much more than all the rest. This camera is a dream to use too. Very simple.

New writing tool

Got my new AlphaSmart keyboard today!

Photographer 2.65

I picked up a new camera this weekend. Wasn't planning to buy one really. I had sold all my others and was down to one little 5MP Sony Cybershot 3XOpt job that someone had given me because they couldn't charge the battery. One Universal AC adapter later, I had a free camera. I like it a lot (isn't free great) but it was limited.

3x optical is tad (okay a lot) limiting and in movie mode the focus would hunt and hunt and hunt.

So being down to that camera was...um....depressing. So when I came into a little extra dough-re-mi, I went looking with no intention of buying. I keep waffling. I love a good digital SLR but they are so BIG. Not to mention they need accessories and lenses, and lights - oh my! Also none of the DSLR's have a movie mode and honestly - video is GO! If you can't do video with your cam - shame on you.

The quasi-pro hybrids are nice like the Canon S5 - but still BIG. Won't fit in a pocket, need a bag etc.

So when I was in Sears and I picked up this Sony DSC-T100 it was swoon. 5x optical zoom. Nice. All metal - felt really good in the hand. Very cool lens cover that slides down to turn the camera on and a giant 3" LCD on the back. I tried to resist. Sony's have always had a couple of short falls for me. One, they way oversaturate the reds (this one does too) and two - bring on the noise. But oh those Sony skin tones. Mmmmm. Just right. Nice and warm.

Sony's also focus fast and take the shot quickly. Much faster than other digicams I've used.

So after about 30 minutes of playing in the store with it, and surfing for prices on the Internet with my iPhone, I had decided to "sleep on it."

Then the sales lady who was helping me said, "Okay, I work tomorrow at 11am. I could really use the sale, I work on commission."

Okay, shop global but buy local. So I bought. More on the camera later.

Fundamentals of Web 2.6

So what are the fundamental principles of designing for Web 2.6 (2point6)?

1. Minimalism. Just what is asked for, nothing more nothing less. Less really IS more.

2. Mobility. Works across platforms, hardware.

3. Monetization. Everyone who contributes receives a cut.

4. Membership. Has a mechanism for visitors to 'belong."

5. Matters. Is significant to one or more of it's members.

6. Merges. It works and plays with other sites, simply.

7. Manufactures. It creates something rather than just regurgitates what is already out there.

8. Is part of or has a Manual. It comes with (or is) instructions.

Okay I didn't mean to do it all with "M" words but I got on a roll. I stifled the urge to add "Monkeys" and "Monogamy" but just barely. The point is a Web 2.6 site is an interface between a group that manages or manifest some of their interests or concerns.

Announcing Web 2.6 (2point6)

So after researching Web 2.5 we really are past that. It had a few proponents that advocated it as a social enterprise and an always-on-you web. Which is accurate to a degree. But I think we moved maybe one notch past it - so I'm declaring Web 2.6 as the new web.

Web 2.6 is still always-on-you, but it is also always on us. It is more connected to the world wide world and less about being a place you go to and more about finding a place to go. It is less about information and more about directions. It is your electric newspaper that morphs in real time to your interests via your input.

It will be for a select few however, as most folks won't get 2.6 - they will be stuck in 1.0, or 2.0.

Web 3.0 is on it's way. It's the fusion of 3D virtual reality with 3D real reality and you navigate and engage in it in ways that are only hinted at in virtual worlds like Second Life. But that is still a ways away.

In Web 2.6 only a few "get it." Microsoft doesn't. They are busy trying to copy Flash with Silverlight and there is no Flash in 2.6. Web 2.6 is distinctively retro codewise because the browser is limited to react to touch. It is simpler and easier to use. In fact 2.6 retains 2.0's focus on making things simpler and easier to deal with.

It won't be about shoving things down our throats but rather us choosing just what we want. Communication will be faster and less far. Web 2.6 will also focus on building infrastructure at the social and community level that prevents large companies from aggregating content and selecting what we can and can't see at high speed.

Web 2.6 represents a deeper integration of the WWW into IRL. I'll be blogging more about 2.6 (2point6) in the next few days.

Web 2.5 - the web that catches stuff

I thought I was going to write a pithy original post about inventing web 2.5 but I'm late to the party. Sigh.

My Web 2.5 was dubbed so because it's one step forward (Web 3.0) and one half step back. The step forward is the portable, always available Internet. The half step back is the compromises we make to code to make 2.5 work. The trade is way more than fair.

I'm basing the trade-offs on designing pages for the Apple iPhone. You can read the official guidelines here.  Some more interesting comments are here. The upshot is you no longer design for mice but for the human touch (which also makes a nice metaphor). The phone also doesn't support Flash, so you are looking at taking your pages back a bit but not all the way back.

Perhaps the best summary of the experience is here. I know many of you will grouse at the iPhone being a pivotal piece of hardware since there are already so many web connected phones out there. To that I only have one word to say: Macintosh.

If you aren't having intense Deja Vu over the iPhone then you weren't a geek in 1984 (yeah I was). It's the same thing all over. It's SO expensive, it's only Black and White, there are hundreds of CPM and MS-DOS machines out there. Okay right. But how many computers are there out there now that weren't influenced by the Mac interface? Virtually zero.

So Web 2.5 naysayers will be plentiful. In fact they are a vital part of the viral process. But the reality is, if you haven't retooled to design for Web 2.5 - you will.

Also, Web 2.5 will connect us in ways that will make commerce not just simple but intelligent. Consensus marketing will become a norm with the savvy marketer able to attract a "flash" mob (or a "hit" crowd) in minutes.

There are a few barriers to entry at this point:

1) SMS is too #@#@#% expensive. $40 a month for unlimited text seems like gouging. Carriers need to consider the economic impact of dropping this to $20 a month. The new signups alone would offset the price drop.

2) Hardware is pricey too. Even at $399, the iPhone is out of reach for a lot of folks that have money to spend. The value is there honestly but there are too many phones that claim to do the same thing at the $199 and less price point. Just the same God bless the early adopters for they shall change the world.

3) Designers won't want to go back. It's not about learning new tricks as much as it is re-learning old tricks. Blow the dust off that copy of Fireworks and put the Flash back on the shelf.

Web 2.5 won't be about scalability - it will be about sustainability. It will not be about having 7 million "friends" as much as it will be about having 7 (or 70) IRL friends with genuine interests and viable ways to asynchronously communicate "what's up?" It will be about team building more than stardom.

It's going to be very very cool.

My next car

Okay here's what I want to drive to work. Runs on sun.

iPhone: "It's like the picture"

I've only had my iPhone a week so I hardly know everything it does (but I'm close). Yesterday I needed to do some banking for Mrs. Xackr - who is out of town - and I needed to know where the closest branch was. Hmmm, iPhone. I opened up maps and typed in the name of the bank and the zip code in search under maps. The map came up with little push pins sticking in it. I clicked the one I was interested in and the name popped up with a link to more info. I clicked the link and all the details from the branch popped up. The phone number was there already in the form of a button. Pressed it - and next thing you know I was talking to the bank.

"What time do you close today?"

"5:30"

"Cool"

I hung up. That was too freaking easy. It was actually easier than I ever thought it would be, and much easier than it's Windows counterpart that I owned -  the Blackjack. I was so excited that I had actually easily used a new piece of technology without posting a message in a forum somewhere I called Mrs. Xackr to tell her.

I recanted the experience.

"It was like the picture" she said.

"Huh?"

Then I remembered. One of my pet peeves is the difference between the picture and the product. For example go to your favorite hamburger joint sometime. Look at the hamburger on the wall in the picture. Order that. Unwrap it. Go hold it up to the picture. Enhhh.

But the iPhone actually lived up to the TV commercial. Actually exceeded it because I didn't know you could just press a button to connect to the pushpin. Too cool.

iPhone ToDo list problem solved

One app missing from the iPhone is the todo list. Okay a todo list is actually flawed because everyone should actually have a "schedule" but I like to keep a "grasscatcher" list and a daily list. Was easy enough to fix - tadalist at tadalist.com works perfectly on the iPhone and gives you the missing functionality and is completely FREE.

iPhone, you phone, we all phone

Okay, after the $200 price drop, I caved and bought an iPhone. I'd been wanting one since trying one in the AT&T store a while back. At first I thought the phone was overhyped but after using it for about 20 minutes, I realized I was holding the tech equivalent of "nature's perfect food." Steve and his Apple geniuses have smashed competition with this nearly flawless convergent device.

I had been using a Samsung Blackjack previously and it was good for texting and as a phone but the web browser which is the heartbeat of the world now - was crap. It would just lock up for no reason. Loading was painfully slow and navigating was virtually impossible. Pages designed for the mobile platform were BORING. So I kept using it because it was better than nothing but not by a whole lot.

The iPhone is  different beast. The screen is beautiful, the web is - well - the web. It taps into my wifi in my home when I'm at home and so it is lightning fast. I have yet to try it in the wild (I believe some of my Blackjack problems were the "Edge" network).

So I am enthused about the possibility that this device will "liberate" me from being a laptop lugger and allow me to mobilize my life yet remain connected to the rest of most of the world.

Fast, Cheap, or Good - Pick any two

Clients want their project to be perfect instantly for free. That's fine, that's what we all want.

Reality is you can only have it fast and good, cheap and good, or fast and cheap. Make sure your client understands the scope of the project and the deliverables before you begin work to eliminate misunderstandings. Make sure fee structure and payment schedule is defined. Don't cut corners in the project definition phase unless you have a free lifetime supply of Tums and are independently wealthy.

Useless Micromanagement

We have a person on our current team who is the self-appointed team "worrier". They constantly ask/interrupt other team members to find out "what they are doing."  They make lists and lists and more lists but never actually work one of them. They think we should stay in the hot dank room we have all been working in through lunch rather than take a break (because they haven't worn themselves out worrying yet).

This type of person on a team is toxic. They pull down the flow, they sap the energy of the team. As best you can you need to find a busy task for them to do to keep them out of the hair of your producers. If you can you need to let them go. Unfortunately, they are often the boss.

At the very least identify these folks early on and come up with effective strategies to keep them occupied and isolated.

Making Lists

The aging hippie in me is probably just as abhorrent to making lists as the rest of you free spirits are. Understandable. Lists are just not natural. The problem is when working in a group a decent list becomes a necessary even vital component to your success. Not only is a list important but it has to have several key features to be useful.

1. It has to have an item identifier (see the "1." at the beginning of this sentence). In project management this identifier is usually part of the WBS (work breakdown structure). In less formal groups it can just be a line item.

2. It has to have a place to live that everyone that needs it can access it. The best way to do that low tech is tape it to the wall. A high tech solution would be get a Sharepoint 3.0 website (way cool).

3. It has to have a procedure for adding to it that includes notifying everyone who needs to be aware of the contents of the list. Low tech - shout out in the room "Hey I added something to the list." High tech - subscribe for email notifications

4. The list has to be reviewed at some fixed interval by every person on the team. Lo tech - look at it when you walk by. High - schedule a recurring task in Outlook to review the list.

5. There can be no other lists. The minute your create another list that covers the same functions you are "splitting" your effort and "doubling" your work load. Make sure you stick to one and only one list.

Depending on what the list is for there are other guidelines that might be useful. Like...

6. Accept all entries. Close irrelevant ones quickly. Capture everything on the list and quickly close out the ones that are not important or not relevant.

7. Make one team member the list keeper. Their role is to be manager and cheerleader for the list. They give out gold stars for the people who work the list and sad faces for those who undermine it's value

List making is frustrating and can require a lot of pushing to become a habit but properly applied, it can save you a ton of time in completing all the items "on your list."

Why does software need Gas Gauges again?

There's a problem with Windows Vista in that it takes more time to calculate and do the gas gauge for a file copy than it takes to copy the file. I'm sure Microsoft will find and fix this problem but this raises a bigger issue. Why do we need gas gauges at all?

Honestly, it's become a standard - but why? I would be perfectly happy just to see "100 of 200 transferred" rather than go through all that CPU machination to be able to see a bar slowly fill up. I can remember a time when installing software that the gas gauge was actually a torture device because the first 20 blocks or so would breeze by and then the last 3 would take forever.

I remember the first time I saw the Apple OS X gauge appearing to be filling up with water and I thought "how cool" but really wouldn't it be better to have the machine cycles back?

Here's a simple idea. If you are going to steal machine cycles from the process to keep the user occupied - instead of just updating a pointless gas gauge - why not pull items from the Outlook tasks list and flash them on the screen? That way while the monkey is waiting to start pressing the lever again, he could at least be getting something of value.

Bundling Software is a BAD idea

Okay I just bought an HP Compaq laptop. It's a good machine. When I placed the order I was buying a laptop with 1 gig of RAM, 80 gig HD, Microsoft Vista Premium. I got so much more, problem is I didn't want it.

How can I present the problem? Imagine you go to the doctor and you have a splinter in your finger. You want the splinter out. The doctor examines you and says "We have to amputate your arm." You'd think he's crazy.

So I start up my laptop and there in my Start bar is Yahoo! Desktop search. I don't have anything in particular against Yahoo! it's just that their search results are not as good as Google's. Period. So I want it off. It's not that I want Google there either, I just don't want ANYBODY there. So I go to remove it. Can't. Not anywhere to be found. It's part of HP Total Care Adviser. A piece of software that also gives me updates on my hardware from the manufacturer - something I DO want. Can I just set preferences somewhere? Nope. So for the one thing I want it to do, I have to put up with a whole bunch of things I don't want it to do.

So it's gone.

In a better world, I would have either...

a) Gotten to choose which pieces of software I wanted to install in the first place

-or-

b) Had to option to selectively remove the programs I don't want, like Yahoo! Desktop Search.

Adobe recently got a taste of bad bundling. They put a button linking to Kinko's FedEx for printing, which created an uproar with competing printers who use Adobe products. That button is gone, but Adobe is still one of the worst about "over" installing software. I'm loading the trial of Fireworks CS3 right now, and it couldn't install with FireFox running - why? And I know that when I'm done I'll also have Adobe Bridge which I don't want. Why not just let me take it off. I'll also have an Apple network scanner and the very annoying Adobe Updater which I guess is a necessary evil. Macromedia had a much better solution of just checking for updates when you run the program and letting you know, and you could optionally download. Easy.

The whole experience with the new Adobe expansive install has me so completely turned off to them that if I didn't love Fireworks so much I wouldn't have a single Adobe product on my machine. And be sure, as soon as I can find something that does what Fireworks does - they'll be gone. Sorry Macromedia - we miss you.

To all you manufacturers out there you are shooting yourself in the foot. Stop installing search toolbars, and other crap. Stay OUT of the task tray. Check for updates when the software runs. You are chasing off more customers by taking away their control than you are keeping.

Just run the freaking program.

Digg is the New Enquirer

Yeah it is.

At first Digg was cool and fresh. Now it has become about being "dugg" and not whether or not the item submitted is cool and/or relevant.

To get dugg these days there are a plethora of "flamebait" headlines like "Microsoft Is Finally Going Under!" or "Aliens Steal Chickens!" hanging over one more boring story about Linux is shipping from Dell or Mexican aliens - not Aliens from Uranus.

Digg has gone from being something fun - to a lot of work to find something interesting. I call this the "AOL Effect". Yes, that AOL.

In the beginning, AOL cost about $4 an hour to use. AND it was dialup speed. So the user community in the tech area consisted of computer professionals who were for the most part serious and knowledgable about their craft. Discourse in the Chat Rooms was always civil and informative. You could find real answers to your questions and have a pretty decent conversation. As AOL prices dropped the rooms slowly became more "VB sux" "VB rox" type of exchange, to the point where eventually you couldn't even stand to be in there.

I guess it's a situation where the price of admission determines the value of the experience.

Digg has peaked. MySpace has peaked. Facebook is next and Twitter can't be far behind. It's a scale thing. Signal to noise. Web 2.0 is about architecture but also about fashion and once everybody does it - it's not cool anymore.

So long Digg, I really dug you.

Hewlett Packard Compaq C500T A Review

I picked up a HP Compaq C500T at Office Depot on special for $374 dollars (plus $69 shipping - more later) on August 4th. My wife was using the old Thinkpad and the battery no longer held a charge so I would hand down my HP DV6000 to her and use the new one.

I like the way the unit looks which while really trivial is important to me. Also I was ready to move on to Vista (which I will write about separately). Pre-purchase I found a good review of the machine here. My machine differs from this one in that I opted for the Intel Pentium Dual Core and upgraded the RAM to 1G. Good thing too, because out of the box just booting the machine it uses 780 megs of RAM.

The ordering process consisted of going to Office Depot, where you actually order it from Tech Depot and then they order it from HP. So at the time I placed my order my machine did not even exist. It took about 6 days for my machine to ship from Kunshan, China (apparently a high tech suburb of Shanghai) and FedEx ground had it to me in 4 days. That still amazes me.

The box arrived. A plain brown cardboard box with no markings other than shipping labels. It was the only box too, no box in a box like the iPod. Inside the contents were to say the least "spartan". One laptop, one battery, one AC cord, one power adapter and one booklet. No recovery DVDs. Sigh. Okay but for $374 what did I expect?

It had an 80 Gig harddrive but that is somewhat misleading (like the old monitor debacle). It HAD 80 gigs until HP put a 8GB recovery partition, a 2GB software install folder (on C:) of software no one wants, and lord knows how much space taken up by the installed versions of said unwanted software. So my unit arrived with 48 gigs of free space. A little more than half. Sheesh.

I decided to make recovery DVDs, which in hind site was a bad idea because it took 4 hours to do. First the machine copies files from somewhere (the restore partition?) to somewhere (I'm guessing my C: drive) and that took 2 hours almost.

It only took 2 dvd's so that was a blessing. I then uninstalled all the bloatware. Which took a while. Feeling satisfied, I check my free space now. I was up to...no....down to 42GB. Huh? The only thing I can figure is I filled up my restore point cache or the recovery DVD process left files in a temp folder somewhere. More than a little frustrating. I didn't find how to get the Yahoo search bar out of the start bar but I will. HP also has this app called HP Total Care Advisor which runs at startup and takes up a good bit of RAM. I changed it to not autostart. The largest flaw of the machine without a doubt is not having a spot in the initial setup where it says "Do you want to skip the installation of the free/trial/crap software?". This would be a big boon.

As far as performance goes, the machine is great. I was expecting a very slow machine based on what I've read about Vista but considering all that is happening, it's certainly fast enough for me. Keep in mind, I'm a coder not a gamer. And this is NOT  a gaming machine because it has the Intel GMA 950 video card. I can't even run Second Life, which I use to prototype things and get feedback.

The finish of the machine is good and all the connectors are tight and snug. The quality of the speakers is really good and the in front position really projects the sound better. Fingerprints do show on the top (so when I have finally touched every square inch of the top it will match) but I can't see that part when I'm using it. It's a big laptop but weight with the 6-cell battery is tolerable. The keyboard does flex and feels thin but it works fine.

The screen is bright, and I like the gloss finish. Not sure how I will calibrate it since my tools are for XP but we'll see.

One thing I really miss from the DV6000 is there is no switch to shut off the touchpad. That was very handy. There is however a vertical and horizontal scroll area on this touchpad and that will come in useful.

I think this machine will work fine for 95% of what I want to do. I have had good luck with HP product lately and probably will continue to look to them first. Plan to upgrade the warranty to accidental coverage and pick up a 12 cell battery so my total out of pocket will be a little higher but still much less than most laptops these days.

Back up your Google Apps data - Lifehacker

Hack Attack: Back up your Google Apps data - Lifehacker

Great article on how to backup all the data on your Google apps site. Covers mail, calendar, docs, and blog.

For the remaining few (like your web site) - a good web crawler could at least make a copy of the web for safe keeping.

Stick computing only needs XP Home

Techworld.com - Vista retreats as XP sales hold up

Microsoft is selling more XP than they expected. I imagine the increase can in part be attributed to people who bought a machine with Vista on it and went out and got XP to replace it. I know of a least one person who did it.

That makes another strong point for portable or stick-based computing. With your digital life stored on a stick (or iPod, etc.) you only need Windows XP Home connected to the Internet to do your work. All the bells and whistles and curb feelers on the operating system are dross. Just weighting down performance.

I'm sure Microsoft is aware that the Internet IS the application now (hence higher prices, more price points) and sees and end-of-life for an operating system that doesn't work and play well with others.

So I would look for more of their current marketing strategy which is to create multiple price points at higher and higher prices for essentially the same functionality.

Okay back to work.

CNN/YouTube debate? Yawn.

Questions, not answers, highlight YouTube debate - CNN.com

First don't get confused, this was not about Hill88 or Renetto asking questions of presidential hopefuls. Nor was it what you dream of - anyone being able to ask ANY question and it be aired on a national forum.

It was YouTube[Filtered by CNN] and the questions were what you would expect from hot-button political theater (at least the part I watched - I got bored with "more of the same"). Safe questions that are your standard fair red vs. blue "flamebait".

Wow it would have been great to see a question about investigating thoroughly 9/11 and find and hold accountable the party or parties involved. Or a thorough accounting of Iraq war spending. Or the deficit with China. Sigh.

The only other thing that seemed worrisome was constantly pointed to by Mike Gravel. Why in an age - when UPS can tell me with chilling accuracy when my made-in-China iPod is going to arrive at my doorstep - can't we make sure that all the candidates get equal time? That was odd. I also was curious as to how Edwards/Clinton/Obama ended up center stage since it would only seem fair to put them in alphabetical order.

I think the thing that convinced me I was being "sold" and not "informed" was during the debate when there was a nice 3-shot of the big fundraisers and Edwards was violently wiggling his fingers - and lo and behold Cooper calls on him next. Wow imagine that.

I'm pretty sure it probably boils down to who is going to buy the biggest ad rotation on CNN next year but it seems a shame that we can't actually try to find the most qualified, most intelligent person to hold the office and instead have to continue to play "the game."

Okay back to work.

U3 Sticks a Dead End

Microsoft, SanDisk Venture Promises Apps On A Thumb Drive -- Windows USB -- InformationWeek

If you are deciding whether to go with a blank stick and use PortableApps.com or go with a stick with U3, go with the blank. U3 is a dead end.

Ativa™ USB 2.0 Flash Drive, 8GB at Office Depot.

Ativa™ USB 2.0 Flash Drive, 8GB at Office Depot.

I picked up one of these drives on sale at OD this weekend. I had just received by Netvantage rebate so combined my out-of-pocket was about $85. I could've gotten a slightly cheaper drive online but I like the convenience of return to my local store.

The drive is lightweight barely weighing anything. It's a little long since the cap flips and stays on. But still - it's 8 gigs! It was not U3 compatible but that's okay I've been wanting to try out John T. Haller's PortableApps.com menuing system anyway. After all I'm pretty sure I'm not going to stop trying different sticks until I have a nice 16GB one.

The speed of the stick is great. Much faster than the 1,2, and 4 Sandisk I own. And I've put some pretty big things on it with no problems. Comes with a black lanyard (few do these days) and was manufactured in China. No mention on the packaging but OD website says it has a 1 year manufacturer's warranty.

I've loaded it up with almost all of the more popular apps from PortableApps.com and it seems to handle them fine. Everything runs and I have no trouble saving and reopening files.

The housing is a shiny grey plastic that looks like it is only slightly scratch-resistant. Not a big concern to me. Have no regrets on the purchase but as always - shop around.

YMMV.

I Believe Google

Tag me fanboy. Shake me to try to wake me. Regardless I believe Google is out to "not be evil."

I read a lot of posts about Google becoming another monolithic evil empire, etc. but I don't see anything to point to it. I don't see them trying to coerce us into a world controlled by Google. Just the opposite. I've seen Google do more in the past year to empower people than I have any other computer company. They monetize their users. They give them really useful tools. They go to bat for the user when Big Brother wants to peek.

I suspect we will be sold a lot of "look what they could do with all that info" in order to "hem" them in. But I'd be willing to bet that the real reason behind that effort is to stifle free and open communication and circumvent the natural success that comes from taking care of the customer, instead of forcing them to buy what you are selling.

There are just too many absolutely free tools available from Google that empower users for me to think that they are really "up to something."

So all the Google paranoia is lost on me.

I believe.

Stick It

Hi, I'm Xack (yeah a fake internet name) and I'm the first Xackr.

Xacking is [code]hacking on a stick. But it's also about using inexpensive stick technology as your "base" for your entry into the connected world.

The entry level price for computing is still fairly high. Stick based computing is a lot lower and allows you to keep it personal even if the computer is shared.

Eventually you'll be able to learn all about it at Xackr.com.

For now I'll be blogging about anything and everything here.