I hate voicemail. It is probably because a high proportion of my voicemail is stuff I was supposed to do but forgot or meetings that I’m late for or it’s a recruiter that wants me to call them back and decides that right then is a good time to take five minutes to say not much of anything in particular.

So when I bought my Blackjack, I just didn’t set up voicemail and it has been over a month now. People were suspect though because the Cingular message they are given is cryptic and makes it seem like my phone got cut off or something.

Then I found SimulScribe. (probably via CoolHunting though I can’t be sure)

You set up their voicemail number instead of Cingular’s (here’s [partial] instructions for the Blackjack — the rest come in an email after you sign up) and here’s the best part:

They do text-to-speech on your message and email it to you. Ah.. that is so much better. Thank you SimulScribe. I chose the pay no recurring fee and just a quarter for each message.

Above is Emily’s test message to me. She really said “You are a geek face”, but that is totally close enough.

I added a badge to my left nav from RapLeaf.

They are building an independent reputation system. Initially they focused on buyers and sellers, taking what eBay has done for nearly ten years and abstract it away from a single site and out into the Internet. You can imagine how helpful this could be for buying/selling via craigslist.

Recently you can see signs that they are adding non-commerce related functionality — primarily the ability to say something like “I know Tim. I am endorsing Tim as a good person”

I’m putting it on my blog because I’m hoping to integrate it with Notches, the startup I’m building and I’d like to kick the tires with it as a tool over here on CoreyH.com.

Emily and I opened our presents to each other on Christmas eve. Her family has high tolerances for early gift opening, basically anything in the previous fortnight is fair game. My family is in the one small token sized present immediately before bedtime the night before camp.

I said out loud “let’s open them at the same time in case we got the same thing for each other” because the boxes were of similar dimensions.

But after holding the package meant for me I said “oh wait, no, mine is heavier, they aren’t the same, you go ahead.”

Emily unwrapped her Polar F11 Heart Rate Monitor. I then proceed to go on and on about how there more complicated ones available, but that I did the research and decided among the 33 available models this was the one for her and yadda yadda, she just smiled.

Then I opened mine: The Polar RS200sd Heart Rate Monitor w/ S1 Footpod, the ultimate running training computer!

Spotted live by me, but I didn’t want to cause a scene with my cameraphone, so I just googled the model # when I got home.

Those are disc brakes — on a stroller.

Achieve IT!, one of those motivational blogs, had a post yesterday that was titled “I Have Met The Enemy And His Name Is Effort Divided”.

“You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,” a 15th century proverbial saying tells us.

For the goal focused individual, what this means is we cannot strive for two goals with equal passion. We must make a choice between A and B. Working towards both with the same time, energy and gusto means we won’t do either particularly well.

Dividing efforts always means at any one time one of the objectives is being ignored. When we know consistent action is the most efficient path.

We can’t have two #1 goals without the risk of killing them both.

This is a corollary to the pig commitment I mentioned a couple weeks ago. Even now, with Notches being my sole job, I’m fighting to keep distractions to a minimum.

I try to unsubscribe to at least a feed a day, but I seem to add them at about the same clip, so I’ve been at ~411 feeds and holding steady for a while now.

I’m realizing this even includes ideas that are viable and could potentially bring in short term income. I had an idea about trying my hand at the content/media blog thing and launched a blog called FiberScriber.com, which is a blog about stuff made out of carbon fiber. I only made it five posts before I realized that the time needed to generate income from something like this was just way too much for me to be able to continue to build this startup. Perhaps I should attempt to sell it on eBay. If anyone wants to take it over I’ll be happy to discuss.

I also have a huge, capital intensive green technology idea that could revolutionize the automotive industry but it is just not something I can focus on right now. Hint, this idea is based on the belief that electric drivetrains are the future of cars and that players like Tesla motors are strongly positioned to shape the trends. Plus as a first time entrepreneur with no engineering credentials, I’d have to give up most of the equity to make it happen. It is difficult to let these things drift out of my control, but I just can’t spare the brain cycles. This is one that might still be available to me once this Notches, Inc. business is up and running and I’m able to hand over the reins and begin again with clear, dedicated focus.

PIC-0002.jpg

Originally uploaded by nuwanda.

Found today at Barnes & Noble.

1.3 megapixels on my phone is more than the first Polaroid digital camera I ordered in 1997 that was a couple thousand dollars.

As part of some ongoing with with the Tamron lens company, Emily shot a “podcast” — which seems to be misnamed because it is a quicktime video and I don’t see an RSS feed, but no need to quibble about semantics.

The page is up here and the direct link is here: Natural Light Portraiture: Emily Wilson with the 28-300mm [Quicktime]

The model in the setups is our friend and fellow upper-west-sider Anna.

(tech note: this is the kind of thing you can use the download embedded FireFox extension to save as with)

I picked up the Samsung Blackjack.

I needed a keyboard and push email now that email is so much critical now. My choices were down to the Blackjack, the Dash from t-mobile and the Q from Verizon.

To simplify my research by a factor of 50:

• T Mobile Dash: nice device, and plans are the cheapest, but they don’t have 3G high speed data access yet. bonus pro is they offer wifi (starbucks) on their network included in the data plan.
• Verizon Q: good device, high speed access, some minor gripes with the Q from a friend with one, best customer service. But at the end of the day I still consider myself a world traveler even if the ink of my passport is bone dry and I wanted a GSM phone to that end.
• Cingular Blackjack: brand new phone, w/ good reviews. High Speed 3G data access, I was an old AT&T customer so they gave me an upgrade priced plan that was $10 off rack rate.

There are so many more details in all of this, but I’ll keep it light for now. If you need help choosing between these guys, I’ll be happy to share more info.

So the other huge factor here is that I need some kind of EVDO/PC card coverage for my laptop. The brief time that I had my corporate provided card was enough to spoil me forever. I’m going to try and use my Blackjack’s data connection via the laptop (USB or Bluetooth) and see how that goes. I tested it briefly and it does work and is reasonably fast, I just need to use it for a while and test the reliability. If that fails I’ll just go to Verizon and pick up an EVDO card (~$20) and a data plan from them. The pathetic thing is none these companies were able to offer me any kind of benefit for getting a PC data plan and a mobile data plan and a voice plan from the same company, so I’m just going to take my business to another network. Plus this gives me “network diversity” which means that if I’m in a area with no GSM coverage, I’ll have CDMA data access, or obviously the reverse. This works for couples too, Emily and I use separate networks, so one of us is almost always going to have reception.

I love the entrepreneur life.

Getting pig-level-commitment for this business has been amazing for progress. I’m learning how to manage my time and focus on the right things, but I have a ways to go before I feel like I’m firing on all cylinders.

Being a New York based startup is an interesting challenge. Out in Silicon Valley, they’ve got a whole ecosystem for dealing with tech entrepreneurial startups. NYC has elements of this, but the community is definitely smaller, but bigger than I had feared.

In my first two weeks of this, I’ve already attended four networking type events. In reverse chronological order: 

A) NY-Tech Meetup. Loved the format – setup like the 1970’s computer meets, where people have a few minutes each to demo and share, then drinks and snacks. Might have found some cool collaborative office space for our team through a guy I met afterwards. And if your company is going to speak, and you bring a CTO and a head of sales, let the CTO talk.

B) Jason Calacanis’s drinky drink party. Congrats Jason on the new dream-job and thanks for the pizza.

C) Staying Ahead in a Flat World with “Tom Friedman, author of ‘The World is Flat’, Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media and Internet luminary who coined the term Web 2.0m, Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of Apache, Devin Wenig, COO, Reuters Group” at the Marriott in Times Square. The event itself was mediocre — dumbed down to fit the large room full of suites I suppose, but interesting to hear the panelist speak. The afterparty was tops though and I met two great folks who happened to be the only other under-40 yr olds at the place.  

D) Listening to Fred Wilson speak at a Columbia Business School sponsored event. Fred works for Union Square ventures, writes a popular VC blog (A VC), and is one of the few New Yorkers with money+power that “gets it”. And by “gets it”, I mean understands where the web and technology are moving, what web 2.0 is all about and that beyond the hype there is real value being created with these tools. Virtually everything Fred said (and posts about) reaffirms what we are building, is completely in the sweet spot for his VC firm and inspires confidence like you can’t imagine.

I’m only five workdays into my virtual work-life and I’m close to giving up on Starbucks as the default goto spot. This is especially easy for me as I don’t drink coffee and there just aren’t that many ways to order tea.

My preferred hangout? The hotel lobby lounge.

I’ve got one specifically that I’m happy with (ask me and I’ll tell you which one, hint: they have a cat) in midtown. The wifi is free, the chairs are comfortable, the bathrooms are clean, the atmosphere is quiet.

I ordered a diet coke & a tea set, asked for the free snack mix and paid $8.64 + tip, less than a day-pass of wifi at starbucks.

[image of the Intercontinental Hong Kong via Flickr user yohanes.budiyanto]