I like to be proactive about things. There are times that I have to send someone an email on a certain date, or remind someone of a certain thing on a certain date, typically in the future. Well when I know about these things I've used sticky notes, calendar remidners, and other seemingly stupid ways to remember to do something. I was poking around OutLook today and figure out I can set a date to send a mail. So a colleague asked me to remind him of something on Dec. 4th. Well I'll be traveling for work (I'll have my computer with me) and may not be in the mindframe to remember to send him an email.

So I've composed the message that I need to send, and then clicked the 'options' menu item. Under the 'Delay Deliver' item on the 2007 Outlook Ribbon, I then chose:

   Do not deliver before: 12/4/2007 11:40 PM

I know I'll be in the office then, and my machine will be running so the mail now goes into the outbox, but sits there until then. So at 11:40 (ish) it will be sent out, no need to remember!

Make sure you realize that you must have OutLook open and be connected to the exchange server for this to work.

In the spirit of my previous post, and related to it indirectly, I've had an excellent experience with a company called Zagg. They manufacture screen protectors for various hand held and electronic devices. If you've ever used screen protectors from other companies, it usually goes something like this:

• Install the screen protector
• Become frustrated at how stupid the installation is
• Start over
• Try again
• Be somewhat satisfied with your install
• It moderately protects the screen for some time
• It's sometimes annoying and you wish you hadn't done it
• It eventually becomes too annonying and you remove it  ... or
• It falls off

But the Invisible Shield products from Zagg are a different story. They supply a liquid you spray on both sides of the film, and a squeegee. You put this 'wet' film on your device, position it, squeegee out the liquid, dry it off, and it stays on. I had the last one on my iPhone for over 5 months with no problems. No peeling, no annoyances. They guarantee it for life too. If you scratch, scuff, or ding it, they'll replace it for FREE. I don't think there's any way you can though, I've never seen a screen protector, or anything like this that is as good as Invisible Shield.

So where does the customer service come in?

Well my iPhone needed to be replaced. So I just swapped it out for a new one, without even thinking about the screen protector. (whoops). So I emailed Zagg and explained my situation, I really only needed a new protector, and not the squeegee and spray, as I had some left. I wanted to know if I could just purchase the film. They replied by saying they'd just send me a new kit, no charge, 2-3 day express mail too. Crazy good customer service.

Here's another cool thing... Got a device that's not listed on their web site? Just provide a link to a photo (so they can see the device), measurements of the screen, and the make and model of the device you want a protector for, and they will custom fabricate you a screen protector. Very nice. I just purchased an alarm for my truck, and the key fob has a digital display that's plastic, and I was worried about scratches. So I ordered the Invisible Shield custom cut to fit it.

If you're considering protecting a device with a screen, check these guys out, I like to support great companies!

Ok I know I bagged on Apple before... But this story is good.

I have an iPhone, if you've ever been here before, you must be painfully aware of it. Well it has been acting strange the past few weeks, and I finally got sick of it. Yesterday evening I made an appointment with an Apple Genius (man I hate that term....why can't they come up with something better, I digress...) to check out the behavior of the phone.

I had not been getting really long email delays and weird stuff when I docked the phone in it's cradle. After describing some of this to the ... ahem... GENIUS ... he showed me a menu on the phone that I had just glanced over and forgotten. Settings > Reset > and about three or four reset choices. He told me that every now and then it was a good idea to go into the reset menu and just choose the "Reset all Settings" option. It clears out files from the OS, and doesn't do too much damage to the settings on the iPhone, you don't lose any data, you may have to reset a few things here and there.

He claimed that this has solved problems for people from not getting receiving calls, to dead spots on the screen, hell at one point he had me convinced it could help solve world hunger. So I said thanks, and happily left with my iPhone. I did explain to him I was not about to do this every day, he said it shouldn't be needed to do it that often.

So today, guess what? Same problems. Made another appointment, determined to get a new phone this time. I went back in to a NEW GENIUS this time, man how many geniuses work there??? Ready to state my case, he said, "hmmmm you were here yesterday, let's just get you a new phone." I had even dealt with the fact I may have to pay a stocking or shipping and handling fee (not happy about having to do so, just recalling the experience with my Nano). But no fees, no hassle, new iPhone.

I'm restoring my backup now, and upgrading it to 1.1.2. Man I love Apple this time.

So last week the IT guys told me I'd be getting a new machine, and I'd need to surrender my old one when they gave me the new one. Well, that doesn't work. Especially when you're in the middle of development of projects. So after cutting through all the red tape, I was able to keep my 'old' box for a few weeks. I'm going to throw down some of my thoughts about transitioning to a new machine, and some things to think about that will help you.

Don't just toss your old machine out. Do the project in parallel. Had I turned in my machine when they simply dropped a new one off at my desk, I would have been "down tools" (an expression my Dad uses) for about two days.  Not to mention if my projects needed something, my new box would not have been setup correctly to respond to emergencies. So my old laptop was set aside, and kept running, it was great to be able to refer to it for settings, and other issues too.

There are two things really to have to do in migrating to a new computer, install your software and transfer your data. Both may seem really simple, but there are a lot of 'gotchas' to worry about. I'll address both items below in the following two sections.

Installing Software.

Think of your new computer as a brand new house. You don't have a pile of junk mail sitting on the table, hell, there's not even furniture in the place. So don't just move everything in right away, wouldn't a nice book case be better than the cinder blocks and 2x4's? Did you really ever use the Tiki bar that someone gave you years ago? The first thing I did was made a list of all the software I had installed on the 'old' box, and started trimming out things I hadn't used in 6 months or more. There are a few ways to accomplish this, I intially found a VBScript I ran to outoput a list of all the installed software, but then found this great free utility: MyUninstaller. It's an exe that run, nothing to install even. It will list every single item that is installed on your computer. You can even export the list to a text file, and bring it into excel, and do your evaluations there! Be realistic, there are of course programs that you have to install, but in reality, less is more. Don't try to get by with no Word processor, or no music software, but is that one time use utility worth installing? MyUninstaller works way faster than the Windows one, and provides a ton more information in an easy to read and use format.

Don't forget about utilities you use that are plain executables that don't have an install/uninstall associated with them. A good way to keep track of these is to create a 'tools' folder and dump all your stuff in there. I have a ruler tool, the MyUninstaller, and some utilities I've written to do stuff I need to do for my job. Just don't forget about these guys, as it could take a while to find them.

Once you're done installing all of your software, update update update. Get on Windows Update and start the service pack installations. You may find that you have to do this several times, or even before all of your software is installed, but now's the time to get it ALL on there.

Moving Data.

Hopefully, if you're organized, your data is all in once place. It's probably in your my documents folder. But there are a lot of other things to remember to grab while you're copying those files to your new environment.

1. Your Desktop - There's probably stuff sitting on your desktop that you'll want to move. If you keep shortcuts there, as long as your new programs are installed to the exact same locations, they should work. Files, and other stuff can be found in the Drive:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop
2. Outlook PST Files - Do a local hard drive search for *.pst and make sure you copy any of the PST files you may want on your new machine. Also setting up email on your new machine is easily facilitated by keeping your old box up, so you can get the settings off of it.
3. Bookmarks/Favorites -Your bookmarks are something that make you productive (hopefully) make sure you go to the Drive:\Documents and Settings\User\Favorites folder and copy these to your new machine in the samme location, now is a good time to go through and clean house on those as well.
4. Misc - Critically think about other things that may be in other places that are important to you. Again, this is why you should run both systems parallel for a few weeks before committing to the new one.

Transition.

Once the new system is setup, and you're 'confident' that you're ready to be on the new system, turn the old one off. Keep the old system handy for a week or two, and if you have the means, backup the old system entirely.

Apple usually makes this stuff simple. The 1.1.2 Firmware has been out since yesterday, and iTunes STILL does not know about the new firmware release. I found a link on engadet where you can download the actual firmware. After downloading the 160MB file, and sticking it on my desktop, you'd think a simple double click would start the update.... nope. Double clicking the file opens iTunes, but then it sits there and does nothing. Dang it. Here's how to get that file working... <shift> <click> the "Restore" button in iTunes, it will give you a file dialogue to choose a file, then simply locate the file and click OK.

NOTE: Doing the update this way required me to restore my iPhone to factory default settings during the upgrade, when I chose to restore from my last backup, it applied the 1.1.2 firmware, and then restored my phone from said backup. It took quite a while and I am now syncing all my songs and movies back to the device, doing the update this way, will RESET your phone to factory settings. But as long as you have a recent backup, it should not matter.