Since I’m always working on one website or another, trying out new ideas, this is something that interests me very much – coding the 17th website is just not that exciting. One of her recommendations was Squarespace.

I’m simply blown away. It’s a very easy point & click way to build web sites (including blogs, discussion areas, photo galleries, what-have-you) that really doesn’t require any code. It comes complete with pre-built traffic measuring tools, log viewing, etc – and pretty, too.

And in case you really need your own custom tweaks, you have full access to the CSS, and limited places where you can even inject additional HTML.

Since I’m currently tinkering around with re-building my wife’s jewelry web site, I gave it about two minutes, just playing around – here’s what I got so far.

It’s impressive enough that I’ll spend some serious effort on this over the coming days. (Add to that the fact that they’re fairly affordable – $8 a month is certainly in line with other hosting solutions, and they do all the software patching for you )

Oh, and if you’re – like me – paranoid about your data, they have full XML export facilities. And blogs can be exported in Moveable Type format, which pretty much every other blog software can import.

If you have a MacBook and an analog phone line, it’s easy – it’s built right into your print dialog, under the PDF button. Just connect your built-in modem to the phone line, and you can fax from any application.

But analog phone lines are on the way out. More and more people have either Internet phone service, or no home line at all – just a cell. In that case, things are not quite as easy.

The first thing that pops out via a Google search are fax services that want you to pay a monthly service fee. If you fax often or need to receive faxes, that seems like a good solution. My personal favorite so far is eFax. You can send and receive via e-mail, can have a local or a toll-free number, and it’s only $16.95 per month for an account.

That’s not my cup of tea, though. I’m not faxing that often. So where are the services that actually let me pay per use? A bit more searching reveals at least one of them – FaxZero. You get up to two free faxes (3-page limit) a day, or you can pay $1.99 per fax for up to 15 pages and send as many as you want.

As a casual fax user, that’s pretty much all I need. But during my search I found one more interesting thing: If you are (like I am) a customer of Vonage, there’s an even better solution. It’s well hidden, but if you dig, you can find the Vonage fax page. It allows you to send PDFs or OpenDocument files, and it’s part of your Vonage service – no extra fees.

That’s going to tide me over until people finally switch to e-mail…

But that only works for things that are truly interesting. If I’m faced with more mundane tasks, like working through my e-mail inbox, every e-mail seems like yet another obstacle that will take way too much time. And no matter of cheerleading will make dealing with it any more interesting.

So yesterday, faced with a 100+ mails in my inbox, I set out to find out why it’s so hard to deal with them. For each e-mail, I intended to jot down a short summary, what I should do with it, and why it was so hard to decide.

What happened then was rather interesting. Instead of writing down the reasons why I couldn’t do things, I just did them. It turned out that that, in most cases, was easier than just writing up an excuse. (Plus, I knew I was writing about this – and I really didn’t want to post a bunch of lame excuses to my blog)

I’ll share a couple of the more interesting ones – and what I learned from them:

• Somebody sent me a link to a “really cool piece of music”. And the speakers on my laptop are broken, so I’d have to find head phones, sit down for a couple of minutes, etc. In other words, I didn’t really want to, but felt it was the polite thing to do. DELETE

  Lesson learned: If it’s not helping you achieve your goals, mercilessly wipe it out. There are too many demands on your time as-is – don’t spend time on things you don’t truly care about.

• Several comments on my blog languished un-answered. REPLY

  Lesson learned: If you do care about it – and I certainly care about you guys! – it’s better to actually act on it. Letting it sit in a filing folder really doesn’t help.

• An e-mail from DynDNS. I only kept it around to remind myself that of the many dynamic DNS providers I evaluated, I chose them. FILE (as bookmark)

  Lesson learned: Your inbox is not a filing cabinet. The more you clutter it, the more you dread going through it. Also, I had the interesting insight that it might be a good idea to file web links as bookmarks. I know, it’s obvious – but I didn’t quite realize it till yesterday. So, lesson #2: Have appropriate ways to file things.

• Correspondence regarding the Watchdog web site. Properly processing it would mean finishing a couple of rather longish tasks. So instead, I break them down into smaller tasks and add them to my project list. FILE

  Lesson learned: If it’s a to-do item and takes more than a few minutes, put it on your to-do list. You won’t finish it while cleaning out mail.

This Christmas, Petra and I had some time to ourselves, and started sorting through old pictures and clothes. As we did that, we realized that we’re carrying around a ton of stuff that has no real use for us. In an effort to get some space in our apartment, we have been working on cleaning out unused items ever since then.

There were donations, items sold at work, items sold via eBay, you name it. But the hardest part to tackle are mementos – items that carry a sentimental value, but are really completely useless apart from that. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can say good-bye to old accolades and awards.

For example, during my advergaming years, my creations won quite a few advertising competitions. Yes, it was fun winning them – but if it’s more than a couple of years ago, it’s really time to say farewell to them. I’ve come to realize that I’d rather focus on creating new exciting things than dwelling on past achievements.

This post is a final farewell for these items – right after it’s up on the web, I’ll make a trip to the trash bin.

With OSX Leopard, iCalFix has ceased to be useful. The core functionality is now part of iCal, iCalFix is incompatible with Leopard, and Apple is phasing out the method I used to actually modify iCal. As a result, many people have asked me how to remove iCalFix from their machines.

While I’ve (usually – apologies to those of you I missed!) responded via e-mail, I never got around to writing this up on my blog. Partially because I was too busy, and partially because it does hurt a bit to bury a project. Well, no use in postponing the inevitable. There are two ways to remove iCalFix. No matter which one you choose, you must reboot your Mac after you’re done – otherwise iCalFix will linger around until you finally do reboot.

1. Via Terminal.app

Before I share the code with you, please be careful. If you don’t know what this line does, or how mistyping it could delete all your data, do not use Terminal.app. For all the other brave souls out there, this line will do the trick:

sudo rm -rf /Library/InputManagers/iCalFix

2. Via the Finder

If the shell is not your natural home, you can always use Finder to get rid of iCalFix. Open your main hard drive, find the “Library” folder. In there, find “InputManagers”. In there, find “iCalFix” and drag it into the trash can. Empty the trash can after rebooting, and that’s it.

Obviously, this means I should focus on a different project. I have a couple of ideas – let’s see how things work out.

That’s scary, considering that most of my life resides on some form of hard drive by now. So I decided to take a step back and look at what I want from my data.

1. I don’t want to physically lose it. That means it needs to be stored in at least two different locations. (Two different online services is fine – my blog lives at dreamhost and on Amazon’s S3) Currently, I’m using SuperDuper to back up to an external hard drive, but it is getting a bit unwieldy as more and more of my data starts to live online.

2. I don’t want to be at the mercy of a single proprietary format. I don’t want to be tied into any given application – I like testing out new things, and I’m not fond of what’s commonly called “The Microsoft Tax” – the need to constantly update your office applications. At the very least, any software I use should have the ability to bulk export into an open format.

3. I need a local backup of online data – I never want to be cut off just because I forgot to update my credit card information, or some provider goes out of business.

4. Data needs to be revisioned. I’m not only interested in the current state – if I accidentally modified something a few weeks ago, I want to be able to undo that change. Maybe Leopard and TimeMachine will solve this problem – we’ll see.

5. Some of my data I want synchronized across several locations. An online calendar is no good if it’s only online, and an offline one doesn’t help me if I’m not near my laptop.

6. Some data needs a bidirectional synchronization with other peoples data – calendar information most prominent among them. I do want to share my calendar with my wife, and she needs to be able to modify it independently of mine. For that problem, there’s BusySync – but there’s more data that wants to be shared.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be taking a look at a lot of my different data sources, re-evaluating them in accordance with those guidelines. As I find solutions, I will be sharing them in this space. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you what your data is doing when you don’t look.

Just recently, I stumbled upon an iCal replacement called Even-t. It’s way more powerful than iCal and offers a host of features. It is a tad bit pricey, but if you have extremely busy calendars, I’d definitely give it a look.

My wife and I are both rather busy, and unfortunately in different jobs. That means we spend a lot of time syncing up our calendars, making sure we know each others appointments, etc. And still – things slip through the cracks. We both keep our own iCal calendar, but there’s no easy way to share them.

That is, until BusySync entered the scene. This little app auto-discovers other iCal calendars around you and allows you to easily share them – both ways. I can add to my wife’s calendar, she can add to mine, and we can see each others schedule. I’ve been testing it for a couple of days now, and it’s been simply awesome. I couldn’t imagine living without it any more.

So go head over to the BusySync download page and get your trial copy. They’re in beta till the end of the month, and then will start selling for $49.95. Yes, that’s not cheap – but it is worth every cent.

If you’re in a similar situation, you know how annoying this is – I really don’t want to do the same status update on 15 webpages. For a long time, I’ve been only updating my Twitter page. It’s the most convenient one, just one key press away, thanks to Twitterific. A few days ago, Tim Bray was also wondering about different places to update your status. And one of his readers was kind enough to point out MoodBlast. It’s a wonderful little application that lets you post your status to a large number of services simultaneously.

Unfortunately, Facebook seems to have decided it might be a good idea to make legal threats against anybody who’s not using their approved API – which doesn’t support status updates. (Interestingly enough, Facebook has no problem employing the same techniques to scrape data from other applications, like gmail.)

This points out a fundamental problem of many web applications – your data is under the control of somebody else. Both import and export only happen at the whim of somebody else. And in Facebook’s case, that’s a 23-year old who seems to have power delusions.

This probably means I’ll abandon Facebook sooner or later, and I’ll definitely be re-evaluating all the web services I use if they provide open access to my data. I suggest you do the same – otherwise, more important data than your “status” might be locked away.

Tags: Twitter, Facebook, open data

And yes, so far it’s been a great device for me. Let me warn you, though: It is not for the business people who truly need a constant e-mail stream. The iPhone is decent when it comes to mail, it supports push (via Yahoo! IMAP), but it’s not something for people getting large quantities of mail throughout the day. (Although if you really need e-mail every second, you might want to re-evaluate your life.)

It is squarely aimed at casual users who want a phone that is a pleasure to use. Yes, it misses some features like GPS – but it does the job of keeping you connected amazingly well. Not to mention all the attention to detail that makes it a thoroughly enjoyable phone – it reports where an area code is located for phone numbers without contact info. If two contacts share the same phone number, it shows call as a call from “Person A or Person B”, and much more. Sad as it may be, the iPhone is the first phone that makes me happy when I use it.

As for the keyboard – it is working fine for me. There are few secrets to making it easier to use the iPhone keyboard.

Number one, you have to trust the prediction. Don’t go back and correct typos – the auto correction usually gets what you’re saying. Second, use slightly longer words – it gives the autocorrection more to go on. (I.e. ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use’, etc.)

Third, find your optimal touch point for keys. Even though you might think you put your finger squarely on a button, keep in mind the tip of your finger is round – it is likely that your fingers hit the screen off-center first, before making more contact. For me, that means touching the upper left of a key instead – it will pretty much always hit the right key.

Experiment with it – you will find your optimal touch point fairly soon. Just look at what characters come up if you miss, and move slightly in the opposite direction.

Oh, and if you’re fond of contractions, try leaving out the apostrophe. The auto correction will fix it for you. “Youre” becomes “You’re”, etc. The one excpetion is “it’s” – you need to double the trailing s to “itss” – that way, you can still use the possessive form properly. (Did I mention attention to detail?)

Phone, mail, web, and calendar are really the main applications. Safari is an excellent browser – the only recommendation is not to open too many tabs. Going beyond six tabs seems to markedly increase the crash rate. But having a full web browser on a phone is a great tool.

Then there are some applications that are just pure entertainment. YouTube is a marvelous thing – my friends and I spent half an evening at a bar yesterday night sharing personal YouTube favorites. The same goes for the iPod part, especially movies. The display is unbelievably crisp – it is fun to watch videos on it.

Google Maps is Google Maps – except for the fact that the touch interface gives it a decidedly “Minority Report”-ish feeling, especially in Satellite View. You have to experience it to really get the satisfaction from handling maps by touch. I could watch L.A. satellite pics for hours….

Of course, there are a few downs – the camera, for example, is pretty much a kids toy. The only tip here is to keep your finger on the snapshot button. For strange reasons, the iPhone snaps a pic when you release the button. It makes it slightly easier to snap a good picture. (It’s still a bad CCD sensor. Hope for improvements)

Notes is another forgettable application – I recommend you use Jott instead. (See my previous article on Jott).

All in all though, it is a great phone/web device. After having used it for a few days, I can safely say that it’s the best one I ever had, and yes, I’d buy it again.