Andy TaylorLeave a commentUncategorized

Read On: Life Changing Veggies in Phil Vischer’s Autobiography


I just finished reading a book that a good friend gave to me last week (you know, one of those “you’re going to love this book because I did…” offerings you get nine a week of?) that I once I picked it up in earnest, I couldn’t put it down!

The funny thing is that I really doubted that this persons taste in literature and mine would be able to find common ground as she is a couple decades older than I am and hates to read.

But then she said the magic words…”It was too techie for me, so most of it went over my head, except at the end.”

So she handed me a paperback copy of “Me, Myself, & Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables,” Phil Vischer’s autobiography about how he created VeggieTales, BigIdea Productions and how he handled its ultimate downfall and bankruptcy…one look at the cover and I laughed and said “Ok, I’ll give this a shot, as soon as I can.”

I now have only two regrets: (1) That I waited over a week to crack it open; and, (2) that I’m finished reading it.

Publishers Weekly hit the mark saying “Hilarious even when describing his headlong plunge into bankruptcy.”

Not wanting to “give to much away,” let me just say this in the hopes that you too might latch onto a copy of this book and then spread it around to friends and family: Until I read this autobiography of the rise and fall of the VeggieTales creator, Phil Vischer, I had no idea that either VeggieTales or Big Idea Productions was ever in any kind of financial trouble, nor that the company was no longer owned by its founder and being run, by 2003, by a media outfit that had bought the company in a bankruptcy sale!

Reading this book I found the answer to several other deep thinking questions as well…like, who is the voice of Larry the Cucumber?

And of Bob the Tomato?

Just what kind of a nutcase could think up all those wonderfully quirky, absolutely uplifting and morally encouraging videos?

Anyway, it goes without saying…EVERYONE should read this…it’s about business and how to, how not to, approach and run a company.

It’s about a little boy who becomes enthralled with Walt Disney and animation after his first trip through Disneyland.

It’s about heart, courage, drive, ambition, unparalleled success, and yes, utter failure…but it doesn’t leave you at that point with a “oh well, life goes on…” ending.

So, what’s any of this have to do with IT and technology?

Well, it could be all the ‘cool stuff’ that Phil discovers from 1980 to 2003, how technology changed his life, made his dream come true, outfitted his business.

Or it could be about how important it is to keep current on trends, be fiscally sound in your decisions.

About how to, and how not to, pick your business partners, leaders and co workers and employees; the benefits of solid training…’cuz it’s all in there.

But hey, I say, read because you’ll be fascinated by living the dream vicariously through Phil; laughing, shouting, cheering, even crying…and only Uber Geeks can interact with a BOOK that way.

So how about it? Are you Uber enough for this book? Get a copy and find out.

Until next time…

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Andy Taylor1 CommentUncategorized

Pogo Browser from AT & T

http://www.pogobrowser.com

So today I was “sifting” through my many emails that I receive in my Outlook and I came across an email called “invite” and “pogo”… I opened it up only to find out that I remember a while back that I had submitted my email for an invitation to “beta test” this new browser by AT&T. I was excited to say the least… I thought, “Will there be some competition with a new browser?” Let’s see and find out.

So, I went through the “invite” steps and downloaded the new browser. I’ll I have to say so far is “WOW!” Well, I’m obviously going to say more… but “WOW!” Just from the few minutes I spent looking around in the browser, I was quite impressed. But hey, I’m easily impressed by new technology anyway.

The browser looks similar to “Firefox” but it’s different in many ways. The first thing I like about the browser is that it has this “strip” at the bottom called, “The Dock”. On the dock you can open several different websites… you can view up to 12 but it has back and forth arrows that you can scroll through if you have more than 12 websites you are looking at one time and you can “toggle” between those sites. Right now I have the “blogger” site opened, as well as the Pogo Browser site and I am toggling between the two to get some information and then type in the blogger.

When you close the browser and open it again, the websites on “The Dock” that you previous had are not open anymore. However, you can save all the sites you were looking at by adding them to Pogo’s “Springboard”. By clicking one button, you can look at all the websites on your “springboard” and pick the one you want to visit. I remember Google having a similar feature, but cannot remember what it’s called.

Pogo has a few “3-D” features built in… one being “Bookmarking”. You can create what is called “Collections” and in these collections you can categorize your bookmarks. When you go into the bookmarking section, the different collections pop up as “3-D”. You can scroll through them with your mouse or with the up and down arrows they have on the page. For example, if you create a collection called “Technology”, you can store all the technology sites that you visit in this one collection, choose the collection and then choose which site you want to go to by double clicking on it.

The other “3-D” feature built in has to do with your browsing “History”… one button pulls up all your browsing history for the day and it’s viewed in “3-D”. You can delete certain websites you’ve visited, you can set a time period of browsing history from a certain date to a certain date. The browsing history even types out the URL of the website you visited.

I have yet to look around at some more features of the Pogo Browser, like the Pogo Fabulous Find or Pogo’s Search Player but I like what I see so far. My recommendation one the browser launches is to see for yourself what it can do and what capabilities it has. For me, I like it so far!

One downfall that I did notice is that it’s a “memory hog!” Way more than IE7. But for me, what isn’t when you have a 5-year-old computer that needs more memory! LOL. You definitely have to have over 256MB of VRAM for this browser.

And what I’m reading, the reviews on the browser have not been so great BUT to each his own. Test it out for yourself and let me know what you think!

TechtalkRadio Broadcasting Live Sundays 10am to 12noon Arizona Time
Andy TaylorLeave a commentUncategorized

Firefox 3 Available and On the Way to a Record

In case you were hiding under a rock, today is the big day that Mozilla released then next version of the companies browser Firefox Version 3.0. Company officials are touting this release as faster then Internet Explorer 7 as well as more secure. We had no problem grabbing the new version which registered at a little over 7MB. After installing, we only had a couple of plug ins that were not compatible, one of them being the Cinema Now Manager for watching and downloading online movies. Everything else seemed to load fine and without hesitation, our flash videos on the TechtalkRadio Site loaded fine and again, we were pleased with the outcome.

Download it yourself here

Download Day

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Andy TaylorLeave a commentUncategorized

Verizon Wireless – enV2

I received the new Verizon Wireless LG enV2 phone about a week and a half ago to test it and see what I thought of the phone… I can say there is nothing that I don’t like about… from the large phone buttons on the exterior of the phone to the Qwerty keyboard inside… I really am impressed with this phone…

You can text message directly from the front of the phone without opening it up… you can retrieve your contacts, as well as play your music without even opening up the phone.

Verizon Wireless offers you several options to choose from like VCast Music and Videos, VZ Navigator, Email, Ringtones, Instant Messaging, Mobile IM, Ringtones, Pictures, etc.

The VZ Navigator allows you to input a location you are going to and gives you turn by turn directions. It also has listings of your favorite places such as movies and events in your area. It shows you what movies are now playing and what event venues are in your location. You can also choose to press “local searches” and it gives you things that are in your GPS location. The VZ Navigator has the capability to follow you on the map. It also gives you traffic and weather in your area, as well as at the Airport.

Verizon Wireless’s Media Center offers Music & Tones, Pictures & Video, Games, and Mobile Web. I’ve downloaded some Music onto the phone and it sounds great on the dual speakers. You can create your own playlists from the music you download. Each downloadable tune is $1.99. I’ve also downloaded some wallpaper, which you can customize. Each price is different depending on which pictures you download. You can also add the wallpaper to the external and internal display of the phone

I also downloaded some games to test out like Wheel of Fortune, Block Breaker and The Spiderwick Chronicles.. Yes, I downloaded it so my 6-year-old, Bubba, can see if he liked it. His exact words… “Mommy, Andy’s lucky, he gets the cooooliest stuff!!”

The 2.0 Megapixel camera allows you to take pictures and send them via email or text message. I’ve taken a few and the camera is not that bad. You can also purchase a seperate external memory microSD card to store your music, video clips and pictures on your phone. You can even move your music, video clips and pictures from your pc to your phone.

The phone also has BlueTooth capability which I have not had a chance to test out yet. The phone also has “mobile email” which you can add as many email accounts to the phone and check your email no matter where you are. I particularly like this feature since I have a business and have to constantly check my email no matter where I am..

I enjoyed testing out this phone… I would definitely recommend it too some who uses text messenging alot or even if they don’t… because it has a ton of features packed into it… Verizon Wireless is having a special sale on this phone through June 13, 2008. It retails for $149.99, but you receive a $50 mail in Rebate… costing you only $99 for the phone.

Yesterday I went into Verizon Wireless to upgrade my phone since my contract was expiring and I had every intention of purchasing this phone UNTIL I walked over to the row of phones and was looking at what else they had.. and I happened to pick up the LG Voyager… (think that was my first mistake… LOL) and started messing around with it… and I liked it even more than the EnV2. The LG Voyager has touch screen just like the iPhone… I’ve only “seen” what the iPhone can do, never tested it, and I was pretty impressed. Since I don’t have the service that the iPhone comes with, the LG Voyager compares to the iPhone, so I purchased it.

I have 30-days to really decide if I like the phone or not.. and if I don’t I can return and purchase something that I do like… I will test it out and see. If I’m not impressed 100%, then I will return for the Verizon Wireless Env2 because I was very much impressed with the phone.

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