Evernote and ShoZu
Lately, I have been using the beta of Evernote as a way to organize my notes on the MacBook Pro as well as to have an online copy. While still a little immature, the synchronization, search and OCR on photos are very impressive. Also, the integration with various platforms (Mac, Windows and Windows Mobile) is cool.
One thing I was not happy with was the resolution of the snapshots done by the Evernote Windows Mobile client. As an alternative, I could take a higher resolution photo and then email it to my Evernote email account; however, it would take a lot of steps. Enter ShoZu.
By making Evernote email my one-step account in ShoZu, I can quickly take a photo and send it to Evernote online. Evernote will store it, OCR it and, when I synchronize with my Mac application, provide a copy on my laptop. It is quite cool.
I recommend that everyone should try Evernote and ShoZu. They are an excellent combination.
Reckless Kelly - Time to Visit the iTunes Store
There are times where you find a hidden gem and you need to pass it forward. Reckless Kelly is one of them.
I was introduced to them by one of my friends. Hailing from Texas, their country/rock blend is quite enjoyable...if you don’t have any of their music, it is time to visit iTunes and download their three best songs:
Wicked Twisted Road
Seven Nights in Eire
Stick Around
Enjoy!
"A Tale of Two Upgrades"
To quote Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” This week two long-awaited upgrades arrived for Mac users: RapidWeaver V4.0 and Delicious Library 2. Both have offered some free upgrades to its installed base.
RapidWeaver allows any registered RapidWeaver 3.6 customer, i.e. a Serial Number starting with RW3SN. RapidWeaver is an excellent Web site creation tool and is the one used for this blog. For me, the upgrade was a snap and now I am using RapidWeaver 4.0 for this entry. I will report on my impressions of RapidWeaver 4.0 in a later blog entry, once I have had the opportunity to explore it further.
Delicious Library has stated that any customer that bought Delicious Library 1 on or after December 1st 2007 would be entitled to a free upgrade to Delicious Library 2, when available. Here is the actual blog entry. Delicious Library is a cool application that allows you to “catalog your books, movies, music, software, toys, tools, electronics and video games”. However, unlike the RapidWeaver upgrade, this upgrade is not going as well. The Delicious Library 2 installation and migration of my library has gone flawless; however, the new version does not accept my Delicious Library 1 license key. Consequently, my instance of Delicious Library 2 is running in demo mode and will NOT allow me to scan in any new items.
There are no instructions on the Delicious Monster Web site on the process to get a free Delicious Library 2 upgrade license key and I contacted Delicious Monster by email two days ago about the problem. I have yet to receive a reply.
My hope is that Delicious Monster will be honoring their commitment to the installed base. In any event, they are not handling the situation as well as RapidWeaver. I am wondering if we will see a rerun of the YazSoft PR disaster?
UPDATE 6/4: Good news. I found the free upgrade path for Delicious Library. You simply need to go through the normal purchase process embedded in the software and they will credit you the $20 upgrade fee if you qualify. Unfortunately, I needed to find this on my own and there is no real explanation on the Delicious Monster Web site. Nevertheless, I never received a direct response from Delicious Monster.
UPDATE 6/18: I finally got an email from Delicious Monster with my free license key. Clearly, they have honored their commitment to existing users; however, it is more than three weeks since the product announcement.
Was I in Tokyo?
Sometimes I am surprised and yesterday was one of them.
While my wife was shopping for food at Nijiya Market - the Japanese supermarket in Mountain View, Ayumi - my 10 mo. old daughter - and I went to Grain D'or Bakery in the same strip mall. Grain D'or is related to Andersen's Bakery chain where I frequented often when I lived in Tokyo. We get excellent premium white and raisin bread there.
Also, I normally sit with Ayumi and have a cup of coffee and sometimes a cheese danish. They brew Mr. English Coffee from my favorite coffee shop in Los Altos. This time however, they had run out of all the freshly-brewed coffee, except de-caf. When I told them that they needed to re-fill the "high test" coffee, they offered me a free cup of espresso for the inconvenience. Nice touch, but hardly blog-worthy. Patience.
As I was having my coffee, an elderly person in a wheelchair came into the restaurant and one of the staff helped her to the table next to mine. She was going to have lunch in the cafe. At the same time, out of joy Ayumi let out a huge shriek and the elderly woman commented how loud she was. It was understandable so I moved to the outside tables to give her some peace --- after all she is paying good money for lunch, too.
Here is the blog-worthy service item --- after I finished my coffee and brought the mug inside, the same staff person came and apologized again for the lack of fresh coffee AND to tell me how adorable my daughter is and thank me for moving to accommodate the elderly person. It is the kind of service and commitment you unfortunately don't find here in America, but is commonplace in Japan.
As Seth Godin puts it, it is part of Grain D'or 's purple cow and what makes it remarkable. I recommend that you visit the store at 137 E. El Camino Real, Mountain View, CA 94040 (650) 210-9488.
