John Jonas Blog

Literally.

This morning I was chatting with Kirt Christensen on Skype and we both had our video cameras going.

Here’s a shot of what my video camera shows:

My wife needed to take a shower so she gave me our 10 month old to hold while she showered.

She knew I was working so she showered quickly and then came back quickly to take the baby away from me. So quickly in fact that she didn’t bother to put on any clothes.

What she didn’t know was that the flattening technology (read: my webcam) was running and Kirt was on the other end of it.

Beware of flattening technology, it might catch you unaware sometime too.

I love you Kim!

I’m reading The World Is Flat right now and had a flattening experience yesterday and thought I’d share it.

In the book he lists 10 “flatteners” that have caused globalization over the past 10-15 years. They include web browsers (anyone can view content), work flow software (managing processes), uploading (people sharing info online), oursourcing, offshoring (moving your plant overseas), informing (search engines), and other things.

One of the things that wasn’t listed (because it wasn’t nearly as big in 2005 as it is now) is the ease of putting video online.

I’m not talking about youtube or google video (which are obviously huge marketplaces). I’m talking about the ability to communicate via video and how easy it is getting and how it’s making globalization easier.

For example, as many of my readers know I have quite a few people who work for me full time in the Philippines. One of the big reasons I have been so successful with it is because of the ability to record a video of a process I do online using screen capture software like Camtasia Studio. I’m busy. If I had to type out processes I use to give instructions to people overseas, I simply wouldn’t do it and employees wouldn’t have my processes. Work wouldn’t get done.

Because of video, I can easily record my process and upload it and they have immediate instructions, in my voice, personalized to them and their situation.

For the past year or so I’ve been using Jing to create videos. The reason I use it instead of camtasia is because it makes it even easier to create and upload a video, reducing the overhead time of creating a video to virtually zero.

The ability to give instructions so quickly and easily makes it that much easier to move anything and everything overseas.

The flattening experience I had yesterday was when I got a Jing video from a customer of mine where she detailed feedback about using our website (how we could make it better, problems she’s having). She took a jing video of her using our site and detailed the problems she sees and why they’re problems. Feedback doesn’t get any more clear than that.

The flattening happens because now it’s super easy for me to forward that feedback onto my developers and have them make the changes, and nothing gets lost in the translation.

Feedback directly from the mouth and screen of a user going straight onto the screen of a developer overseas.

As more and more people realize the power and ease of creating videos and putting them online, the knowledge worker here in the U.S. had better become more knowledgeable or they’ll be replaced by people overseas (which obviously is already happening).

For those of you with jobs working for a company, if you’ve read the 4-hour work week, my guess is you can see how to use this to help outsource yourself!

When you and a few co-workers pitch in together to hire someone overseas, and you create videos to have them do your work for you, so you can go play golf, and you do it without your boss knowing, let me know. I love this stuff.

Over the past few months I’ve had 4 people complain to me about having to switch their email address.

Of course, they sent out an email:

“Everybody,	(obviously this is an email that “everybody” wants to get/see/deal with)
We had to switch from AOL	(why the heck were you using AOL in the first place)
to MSN	(NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!)
so our email address is changing.	(Why? Why does your email address change when you switch ISP’s?…That’s retarded.)
Please update your address book	(Yeah Right!)
to our new email address:
SomeOldFolks@msn.com
Thanks,
Grandma and Grandpa”

I’ve never once updated my address book from receiving an email like this.

Seriously people. Just because someone tells you that your “new email address is SomeOldFolks@msn.com” doesn’t mean you have to use it.

Nor do you have to go around for the next month complaining to everyone about how bad it is to switch your email address, all the while you’re just setting yourself up to have the same problem again.

You’re just asking to go through this “nightmare” of changing your email address again by using your ISP’s email address.

Stop using your ISP’s email address!

Here is the proper solution to having to change your email address:

1. Open up a Gmail account (Even yahoo mail will work). The point is to get a permanent email address that won’t ever HAVE to change.
2. Don’t email everyone about it.
3. Save yourself the headache and pay for your old service for one more month and forward your old email address to your new one for that month. You’ll still get all your emails from your old account, and as you reply from your new account, people’s address books will get automatically updated.
4. Start sending all emails from your new email address.

Voila!

Problem Solved.

Now you never have to go through the “nightmare” of changing your email address again.

If you do have to change it again, you don’t have to tell everyone. All you do is forward your gmail (or yahoo) email address to your new one.

People’s address books will get updated automatically.

Besides, if some people do lose your email address, it’s probably a good thing. One fewer thing to deal with.

Aren’t we all sick of email anyway!

If they really need to contact you, they’ll call (unless you just changed your phone number too…in which case you’re really, really lucky and you can actually start living your life, instead of living technologies life).

So, why can I get the “print” button for gmail?

I can read about it on the homepage of gmail…but I don’t get a button in my account!

Is it an April fools joke?

If they really are printing photos on high glossy paper like they say they are, can you imagine the implications? Oh man…that would cut like $100 off my wife’s christmas card bill!

And they say they’re going to print stuff for free, as many as you want! I can already see printing businesses going out of business. There are sooooo many people who would print something with ads on the back because they can print it for free.

So where’s my button!?

I knew this was coming at some point, but I didn’t know just how good it was until today.

I guess with Provo Labs office space you get the space (which I believe right now is going for about $17/sq ft.), telephone, internet, secretary, printer, desk, chair, conference room. Those are the tangibles.

The intangibles are way more valuable as far as I’m concerned.

Paul is teaching internet marketing to everyone with office space there. Paul Teaching + entrepreneurs listening = changed lives. I know. It changed mine.

And then theres the networking that will go on there.

If you’re a programmer, looking for work, I don’t see how you can afford to NOT go get office space there. I can almost guarantee that by having space there (even if you just use it to study), you’ll get more work than you can handle from the other entrepreneurs with great ideas but who lack the technical expertise to implement their ideas.

If you have a start-up business, with office space, or looking for office space, in utah county, I really think this is the place.

Being that I’m 28, I have had quite a few friends get married.
I’m pretty sure that over the next few months/years, I’ll have quite a few more get married.

Because of this, I’ve had to go down to the dumb tux shop to get measured for a tux I don’t know how many times.

I’m sick of it.

If you want my tux measurements, here they are:

Neck: 16
Sleeve: 34/35
Waist: 34
Chest: 38
Over arm: 46
Outseam: 41.5
Coat: 40L

I’ve never really done this before but I can’t help it with this one.

You know the commercial for EleFun on TV, the one that has the kids jumping around having a blast as the butterflies come out of the elephants nose that’s sticking straight up in the air. Yeah, that one that looks like it could actually be fun for kids.

That toy STINKS!

Don’t buy it for your kids.

Austin has wanted that thing for over a month now, and the 12th was his birthday, so we got it for him.

Here’s how it REALLY works:

You put the butterflies in and put the nose on. Then you turn the elephant game on and wait for like 5 minutes, then a single, sole, butterfly will come out. The butterfly drops to the ground (yeah, that’s right…drops. They don’t float around like the commercial shows), and you wait 5 more minutes for another butterfly to come out.

Then, if your kid is like mine, they want you to pick them up and hold them so they can hold their butterfly net at the top of the nose so that when a butterfly comes out they can “catch” it (really, they just miss it because it’s darn near impossible to catch them).

Then, you realize this is stupid, because the fan inside the dumb game isn’t strong enough to blow the butterflies out quick enough to make the game fun. All it does is create a whirlwind of butterflies inside the elephant.

So, how do we use the dumb thing?

We took the nose off and gave up on that all together. We just put the butterflies into the elephant, and then turn it on and put our nets right next to the opening where the nose would normally attach. Then we hope some of the butterflies fly into the net as soon as they come out of the dumb elephant. It only takes about 10 seconds to blow all the butterflies out of the elephant when the nose isn’t on, so then we just turn it off, put all the butterflies back in, and repeat.

Just as a warning: DON’T BUY THIS DUMB TOY!

Your kids will be sorely disappointed.

Boy do I dislike this.

I have jonasfam.com. That was the first domain I ever bought.

I tried to put my family website on it and integrated some php photo album software into it.

Well, the software the site is running got hacked a few days ago and my hosting company threw a fit. So, I need to upgrade this site that has tons of pictures on it from the past few years, but I don’t want to spend the time to do it.

What’s going to end up happening is I’m going to take down the whole site and start over from scratch. That also means that I’m going to lose some good content that I want to keep. Oh well. I’m going to post some of it here onto my blog just so I can keep it.

I sat in and listened to Phil Windley speak on “Blogs, Wikis, and RSS” tonight at Paul Allens internet marketing class.

It was wonderful. Probably one of the best guest speakers I’ve ever heard. He was well prepared, knew what he was talking about, practiced, had a great powerpoint presentation and used it very well. In fact, I think it was the best use of a powerpoint presentation I’ve ever seen. He didn’t put up a laundry list regurgetating what he just said. It wasn’t a continuous outline of what he was spewing. His powerpoint presentation was used to highlight and bring interest and keep the audiences attention on what he was currently talking about.

Beyond that, his talk was just insiteful. He taught about blogs, why they’re important, what they’re changing on the internet, how to read them (feedreaders), and how you can benefit from them.

I love hearing people speak who know what they’re talking about. People who have already done it.

If you have the chance to hear Phil speak take advantage of it.

Whenever my parents are in town they like to take us out to eat at nice
restaurants.

One of the favorites is to go to a japanese steskhouse. Last night we went
to Tepanyaki in Provo. The food was very good (and very expensive) like
most steakhouses.

Austin loved the place, which is why I’m writing about it. He especially
loved the volcano the chef made from the onions. Here are some pictures
of the food and the chef.

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Sent wirelessly - Sony UX50 + Ericsson T610