Blake Perdue » General http://blog.blakeperdue.com Web reviews, app reviews, and technology and startup commentary Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:41:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 DIY Whiteboard http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2009/06/15/diy-whiteboard/ http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2009/06/15/diy-whiteboard/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:19:29 +0000 Blake Perdue http://blog.blakeperdue.com/?p=483 I love whiteboards. They are an essential tool for explaining an idea or running a brainstorming session. Drawing an idea helps me better understand my thinking. We have whiteboards in every meeting room at the ATDC, which are constantly used by our startups.

Lance making good use of whiteboards at StartupWeekend 2

Lance making good use of whiteboards at StartupWeekend 2

Although I’ve enjoyed the whiteboards at work, I’ve wanted to get a whiteboard for my apartment for some time. But the costs of buying a retail whiteboard are astronomical. An 8′ by 4′ whiteboard costs $239.99 at Office Depot. Not wanting to shell out $240 for basically a piece of poster board, I decided I would build one myself.

Fortunately, there are plenty of DIY whiteboard instructions on the web. You can go to your local hardware store (I went to Home Depot) and buy a cheap piece of showerboard, which is nearly identical to commercial whiteboard. Then it’s as simple as cutting some holes in the board and hanging it on your wall.

My DIY whiteboard after installationWall hanger used to hold the whiteboard

All together for the 8′ by 4′ showerboard, wall hangers, and nails was $25 — for a total savings of $214. It might not be pretty, but it gets the job done at a very cheap price. If I were furnishing office space for one of our startups, I’d buy a few of these showerboards and build floor to ceiling whiteboards.

]]> http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2009/06/15/diy-whiteboard/feed/ 6 Faster Search Using Bookmarks http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2008/12/22/faster-search-using-bookmarks/ http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2008/12/22/faster-search-using-bookmarks/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:09:15 +0000 Blake Perdue http://blog.blakeperdue.com/?p=459 There are a handful of websites, like Amazon and IMDB, that I constantly look things up on. If you want to know what rating a movie has on IMDB, you go to your browser address bar, type www.imdb.com, wait for the homepage to load, enter the movie name and click search. This is a 3 step process that can be reduced to 1 using a bookmark.

Instead of those 3 steps, I just type “m <movie name>” into my browser adress bar and hit enter and it takes me right to the search results on IMDB. Similarly, I type “a <product name>” to get results on Amazon. The trick is to create a bookmark that passes the “<movie name>” or “<product name>” text to the site you’re searching on.

To do this, visit your favorite site and search for something. For example, I searched for Donnie Darko on IMDB, which sent me to this URL:

http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=Donnie%20Darko

Next, bookmark this page in your browser and then edit the bookmark properties. Change the keyword to the letter you want to use to search. I use “m” for IMDB and “a” for Amazon. Change the search terms (“Donnie%20Darko”) to “%s” like below.

Save the changes and you’re done. Now you can search using your bookmark. I can’t remember where I first learned this trick, but it has quickly become one of my favorites.

What tricks and hacks do you use to speed up your searches?

]]> http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2008/12/22/faster-search-using-bookmarks/feed/ 8 1.7 Million Missing iPhones http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2008/01/30/17-million-missing-iphones/ http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2008/01/30/17-million-missing-iphones/#comments Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:20:52 +0000 Blake Perdue http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2008/01/30/17-million-missing-iphones/ iPhoneThat’s right, Apple reported selling 3.7 million iPhones in 2007, but less than 2 million were activated. That leaves over 1.7 million iPhones which have probably been unlocked and are being used on networks other than AT&T.

Apple still makes a pretty penny on the sale of iPhones, but is missing out on an estimated $10 per customer per month payment from AT&T for these 1.7 million phones. That’s $200 million a year.

This news, along with some disappointment with product announcements at Macworld Expo have sent Apple’s stock tumbling 34% this year. Might soon be a good time to get some Apple stock on the cheap.

]]> http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2008/01/30/17-million-missing-iphones/feed/ 1 How Do You Know What You Know? http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2007/10/03/how-do-you-know-what-you-know/ http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2007/10/03/how-do-you-know-what-you-know/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:00:09 +0000 Blake Perdue http://blog.blakeperdue.com/2007/10/03/how-do-you-know-what-you-know/ How do know what’s going on in our community, the communities next door and the rest of the world? Most of us rely on the traditional new gathering and distribution establishment (ie, CNN) to provide us information. In some occasions that source can have real value. But in others it can really under deliver.

Over the past few years I’ve begun to seek additional news sources to stay informed. I’ve subscribed to the WSJ, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur Mag, Wired, Fast Company, Business 2.0, and Inc. I learned an enormous amount by reading these publications. But the most valuable new source I’ve developed over the years is citizen news.

Blogs, videologs, podcasts, and social news sites provide a wealth of news that the networks ignore or simply never hear about. They also provide great coverage on very niche topics while giving you opinions that the networks are afraid to express.

I thought I’d share the news sources that I find most valuable to my tastes and interests:

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