William Sylvester

The world is really round? Is the Virtual Assistant Dead?

editor — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:31:35 +0000

So we have all read books on the topic of outsourcing your life (4HWW, TWIF), and they recommend outsourcing tasks that are frankly a waste of your time. I remember sitting in a senior management meeting of a mid-sized company in 2002, the CEO stood on stage and encouraged all his managers to stop making [...]

Mountain Lion Dictation

editor — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:12:51 +0000

Are you getting the AssistantServices.framework bouncing in your dashboard when trying to use dictation in OS X Mountain Lion? This simple fix will get the framework to stop bouncing and for you to see the cool dictation box popup properly. Edit : sudo vi /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AssistantServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Info.plist Insert the following between row 4 and 5 (right after [...]

Macbook Pro Retina a treatise in patience

admin — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 00:44:11 +0000

So what’s all the noise about this new Apple laptop? For me it was more about modern processors, better video processors, and well memory.. 16GB of memory to be exact. The realization that my 30″ Cinema HD display could really get it’s game on. So what’s the reality? The waiting process, baseline estimates of [...]

Netflix Increases Prices 76% in past year!!

admin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:36:43 +0000

It was back in January that my Netflix prices increased 18% from the increase a year earlier. An email earlier this week (July 12, 2011) from Netflix indicated that September 1, 2011 prices were increasing again, this time an additional 50%. The real news is that Netflix is basically doubling their prices from January 2011.

… and Wegman’s came to town …

editor — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:37:09 +0000

The grand opening of the new Wegman’s grocery store near the house opened yesterday. The anticipation had been growing as the store had been under construction for some time… and early November was always far far away. The opening day finally arrived, November 8, 2009. It was mostly a non-event, until I realized Sunday morning [...]

Valentine1 a great example of customer service

editor — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:16:05 +0000

About seven years ago after getting yet another speeding ticket, I sat across the table from my attorney at breakfast meeting one morning. I was inquiring to see if he knew anyone in a remote part of the country that could assist me with my legal traffic woes. It was in that moment he said, "you want my advice? get a Valentine1!" So I did. Granted, it was expensive compared to the other brands out there. It's selling points were pretty clear. Well designed, detects pretty much anything they can throw at you, and was fairly invisible to the K40 radar detector detectors. After some seven plus years, covering hundreds of thousands of miles on the road-- The Valentine1 has been flawless. ...until last week, it suddenly started to see ghosts.. signals from everywhere around ever turn. Immediately, I checked for support on the website, which led me to believe I did in fact have a problem. I called the customer support line who reiterated what the website confirmed. Something was amiss. Some $12 later, I had shipped the unit back to Ohio for repair. Feeling separated from a trusted part of the family. I waited for word... ...a week went by and FedEx arrived.. returned my Valentine1 returned to perfect function. Despite being loved for many years... and well used... the repairs were made at no cost and return shipping paid. I must say that, I was fully prepared to pay the $45 diagnostic fee and reasonable repair charges, and had all been hopeless I would have found a way to buy a new one. But instead, Valentine1 exceeding all my expectations did the right thing to maintain their position in the marketplace as the high quality radar detector. Thank you Valentine1 not only for an exceptional product but also for providing exceptional customer service!

How to fix mach-o, but wrong architecture on OSX Snow Leopard for Ruby Gems Bundle Files

editor — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:09:45 +0000

Ran into the annoying mach-o problem for compiled rubygem extensions on a few gems (mainly RedCloth and CSVScan). First pass at Google rendered a few people who had experienced similar problems but no real solutions. Finally broke down and figured out how to fix it. First, what is the problem; in the land of OSX [...]

Signal to Noise in the Social Web and the viability of the river of news with advertising

editor — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:01:47 +0000

I came to a small realization this weekend; this is big, traditional media is dead!

Gone the way of the dinosaurs. Twitter is breaking more news these days than CNN or the Wall Street Journal. The news papers or bleeding life. Subscriptions are down. Pew Internet studies state that younger generations are going online to get their news and dont read traditional publications. Here's the rub, social web and social media still lack a proven business model.

The new world of twitter… and maybe google.

editor — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:02:40 +0000

Rumors of last night are that Google is close to acquiring Twitter… see Techcrunch if this rumor matters to you. I opened my TweetDeck late last night (as I often do). And saw acquire as a trending topic. I clicked on the term… some 30 minutes old… and watched it grow over the next couple [...]

Unlocking the Blackberry Perl 8100

editor — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:40:33 +0000

My Blackberry Pearl was recently out of Warranty, I was considering using it for future international travel. I called ATT and told them I was planning International travel and needed to unlock my phone. They placed me on hold and eventually came back and had the code. The process they described on the phone [...]