fact check radio...

Winter is here without a doubt. We went from a surprisingly mild early November to well, Winter. I am going to still try and walk, just bundle up. I listen to podcasts on my iPhone and listen to Fact Check Radio.

FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit website that describes itself as a "'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation.

Most of its content consists of rebuttals to what it considers inaccurate, misleading, or false claims by politicians. FactCheck has also targeted misleading claims from various partisan groups.

Besides maintaining a website, FactCheck.org distributes audio stories by podcast and iTunes Radio.

These podcasts are an easy short 7-9 minutes. Two in my queue are 'Earmarks, Taxes and Premium Hikes', and 'Obama, Pelosi, Pence and McConnell.

top 10 must have iphone apps... and a few more...

This is a list by the New York Times... is is always fun to see what someone's top 10 is. The Google voice search function sounds interesting as does RedLaser and Star Walk... OK all of them sound interesting... This is making me think of the first Thanksgiving after we got our iPhones and 3 of us at the table had them. Any question anyone asked had us looking it up at the table during the meal... I hope we do better this year. If not I apologize in advance.

picture show iphone app crush....

This app is SOOOOOOO much fun. I am sorry Hipstamatic but my heart now belongs to PictureShow. For only $1.99 from iTunes you get quite a robust little app. The first photo is one I took on my iPhone. The second one is after I played with all the many options available.

Same here, top one is un retouched. (Before I post photos I usually lighten them in Photoshop.) This one has that old polaroid border.

Same here... but using the random button. The only thing I am not crazy about is the noise it makes when you use the random feature. I didn't notice it until John asked what I was doing while we were watching TV and I was on my 27th random photo. I assume if I dig around somewhere I can figure out how to turn that off.

Original...

These 4 were all done with the random button. Oh I see hours and hours of fun here. You can find more out here. I initially had some problems saving the photos. I upgraded my iPhone software and that did the trick. Enjoy!

There may be less posts this week. We were out of town this weekend and I am in the middle of a big project... I'll post when I can.

iphone app & pantone case...

If is used a iPhone case this would be the one. I love color and all things Pantone. You can pick from 8 colors and they will personalize the case with your name and logo for free. All this goodness for only $19.99.

When we got our iPhones we had good reception. Then we moved just a couple miles away and have questionable service. Basically we get dropped calls inside the condo where we make business calls. That is bad. There are solutions that we need to check out. In the mean time today I downloaded this free app called Mark the Spot. When you have a service issue you tap a button and a report is sent to AT&T. Now part of me wonders if I am having service issues how this report gets to them... but well it was free and I am going to try it.

hipstamatic... on the iphone...

Here is an app that is worth every penny and then some. I love the interface with the retro look and the retro photos. You can play with this forever. I wish I had one of the original cameras this was based on. The original app is $1.99 and each of the 5 additional sets of lenses & films are 99 cents each. A lot of cheap fun. You get this through iTunes, of course.

6 lenses + 7 flash options + 8 films = 336 different combinations. Yesterday I found photojojo.com which has a great guide to this very thing. You can look at the effects and choose the lens/flash/film combo you want to try.

This photo and the ones in last Thursday's post were: Lens- John S, Film- Blanko,  Flash- Laser Lemon Gel

My new Facebook photo was taken using the Lens- Lucifer, Film- Float and Standard Flash. As I said... lots of good cheap fun here.

mac how-to... add a photo to a folder

Here is a fun thing. If you don't love those empty, blank file folders here is a quick and easy way to add a graphic to them. I found I had best luck using .jpgs. Here's how...

1. Create a file folder on your desktop. File>New Folder

2. With the folder selected type Command i

You will get the box below...

3. Click on the small folder in the upper left corner.

4. Drag a photo or graphic in jpg format on top of that folder.

See photo below.

FYI... this is for a Mac only. I have no idea if this can be done on a PC.

customer service... dead or alive?

We are in the throes of 4 home improvement projects. So we need stuff from stores to make that happen. I forgot how much I hate to shop for washers, dryers, counter top-type stuff.

First I end up in stores I don’t like. Looking at things I need but do want to spend my money on. So it is even more important that these stores are nice to me. And do what they say.

After many phone calls doing some washer/dryer comparison shopping we headed out to Menards. They had a $300 store credit if we bought there. The snag is that we need to have it delivered and hoisted over a second floor balcony. No outside the box thinking there. The young woman just kept repeating that they will send only one guy. We kept explaining that it will take 3 guys. Long story short WE could call their other store that has a big truck and see if they would do this for us. But they would also only send one guy and we’d have to pay an additional delivery charge. So we would need to provide 2 additional guys, more than likely on Menards random time table. Like I have 2 big guys here just hanging around waiting to move heavy objects.

We also picked up our special order small piece of white counter top. When putting it in the car John noticed that the edge was chipped. This was after we had to call and see if it was in, no email to let us know it was there, as promised.

They did say they were sorry but it felt like we’re sorry plz leave now so we don’t have too see that you are unhappy.

Now the night before we go to a store I do like... the Apple Store. A place where I actually like to spend money. John had a computer issue with corrupt fonts that I could not figure out and he was having an iPhone problem. Not only were both problems fixed by friendly, smart, pleasant people who  kept apologizing to me that I was having to wait a short time but they replaced John’s new ear buds that HE broke. For free, with a smile. None of this cost a penny.

All the way home we talked about how great the whole experience was and by replacing the $29 ear buds we love them even more. That is why Apple has a cult following...

And last night after our Menards experience we chatted about how we are so not going to buy the washer/dryer there, in fact we will not buy anything there. And because they will not make the delivery easy they will lose out on a $1000+ sale. The worst part is that it appears that they don’t care and won’t even notice.

Oh yes... this was after we were on hold so long with Best Buy that we eliminated them from the possible list. If they can't even talk to you I think we know what kind of customer service they have.

chapter a day on npr...

I am a huge fan of National Public Radio. You can listen to it on the radio, computer or I often listen to it on my iPhone using both of these apps. They are free. I plug my iPhone into a Yamaha Portable Dock at my desk. (If you are interested see link on right.)

At 12:30 I enjoy foraging for lunch and being read to. It must be a carry over from my childhood. Plus when you work from home you need routines. This kind of anchors my day.

Chapter a Day® is heard daily at 12:30pm and 11:00pm on the Ideas Network stations of Wisconsin Public Radio

The five most recent chapters are available for RealAudio on-demand listening on the Chapter a Day® Webcasting page.

In September 1927, Harold B. McCarty pulled a book from his briefcase to unknowingly begin one of the longest-running radio programs in history. Harold McCarty's book led to another... and another, and another. Today Karl Schmidt, Jim Fleming, and other readers continue the tradition as they read a chapter from a great book each day. The five most recent chapters are available online on the Chapter a Day webcasting page.

My only disappointment is that I can't go back and listen to the shows I miss without downloading some older software that WPR uses. It's called Real Audio. My guess is that is probably just works automatically on a PC but not a Mac as we use iTunes. I should figure this out as they have archives of others things that could be fun to listen to as I work.