1-800-HOSTING Blog http://blog.800hosting.com Inside 1-800-HOSTING Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:00:58 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The Truth Will Make it Free http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/11/the-truth-will-make-it-free/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/11/the-truth-will-make-it-free/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:00:58 +0000 Jonathan Curry http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=2108

A few weeks ago at lunch I dropped my beloved iPhone 4 and shattered the back side glass. Fortunately I already knew the cost to replace it, as I had just been to the Apple Store the previous weekend with a friend who committed the same act of violence against his phone.

At $29 I thought he got away cheap – but I didn’t understand why my friend fabricated a ridiculous story about how the glass shattered on his phone. Later he told me it was to try to get sympathy from the Genius in order to replace the glass for free. Of course this lowered my opinion of him (not the lie, the fact that it was a terrible lie) and I knew it wasn’t going to work for me.

After recovering from my phone-dropped-glass-shattered induced heart attack, I scheduled an appointment with the Genius Bar online & was served by the very same Genius as my friend:

“How did this happen?” he asked.

I replied, “I dropped it in a parking lot.”

At that moment it felt like you could hear a pin drop in the store. All of the surrounding Apple employees looked toward me in shock & awe, not because I dropped my phone – but because I told the truth.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

~George Owell (or not)

Unbeknownst to me, a store manager was standing right behind me, came up to the service desk, and asked for more details about my phone tragedy. It seemed as if nobody ever told him “Yes, it’s my fault & it hit the pavement.” The manager took my phone with him to the back of the store & came back minutes later letting me know the glass was replaced and that the repair cost was on him.

Nothing more than the truth made it free.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/11/the-truth-will-make-it-free/feed/ 0 Hunter Man http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/hunter-man/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/hunter-man/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:34:17 +0000 Christopher Leisure http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=2200 The smell of the outdoors to me is a mixture of dust, dried leaves, gun powder, all carried by the wind of the season. I’m what you might call a hunter.

Friends of mine wouldn’t hesitate to call me a barbarian for shooting little woodland creatures, riding 4-wheelers, drinking Coors Lite, and maybe dipping. But, they also don’t fully understand the closeness to nature that hunters feel; traversing the earth, observing animals and plants, being out in the woods when it rains. They don’t quite understand what it’s like to camp outside, look up into a pitch black sky scattered with twinkling little stars, and breathe in the majesty that is our universe. But I don’t hold ignorance against them. Anyone who enjoys the outdoors is soon made aware by spending a weekend in the blind with me that it’s a give and take relationship with nature, and often times it takes my breath away.

Hunting is an exercise in self-reliance and survival, as well as it is on conservation. Whereas hunting does take the lives of animals for food, for those who respect nature and the circle of life, it is also a way to help control over population, and to become aware of the systemic value of life-cycles, and the role we all play in maintaining our planet.

Trust me, hunting for Cheez-Its at the supermarket isn’t the same as hunting your own food. The value you place on what you’ve caught and killed, cleaned and eaten is a lot more substantial than what you put on your Skinny Cow cheese wheels and crackers. It delves into the meaning of life and death, of resourcefulness and respectfulness. That’s why I hunt, and I challenge you to try it once or twice to gain a better appreciation for gathering your own food.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/hunter-man/feed/ 0 My Name Is: Consumer, and I’m an Android http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/my-name-consumer-and-i%e2%80%99m-an-android/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/my-name-consumer-and-i%e2%80%99m-an-android/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:15:34 +0000   http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=2196 Recently I took the plunge and switched from the iPhone to the Android platform. The acclimation was a bit rough, slightly exhilarating, but ultimately rewarding.

I decided on the HTC Inspire because it was still about a month out for the Galaxy 2 release. Though at times I regret being hasty, because the Galaxy 2 is far better technology, I still am pretty darn happy with my Inspire.

Cases are easy to find, the interface is very technically oriented, so there is a lot you can do with it, and it is also largely intuitive. Setting up tethering was easy, adding music and images for things like ringtones and backgrounds is a breeze. I don’t even really miss the iPhone centric apps.

So far the Android platform and phones have been a pretty sweet experience to explore. Not that I don’t love the iPhone 4S that just came out, but I’ll leave the locked down interface and user friendly operating systems to my wife, who doesn’t like getting into the nitty gritty of devices.

I’m a happy Android user, and look forward to the technology advancing with time.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/my-name-consumer-and-i%e2%80%99m-an-android/feed/ 0 Social Networking and Your Blog http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/social-networking-and-your-blog/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/social-networking-and-your-blog/#comments Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:46:56 +0000 Christopher Shaffer http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=2186 Some of you may know I love food, and in my effort to both learn more about social networking, wordpress architecture, cloud computing, and search engine optimization I decided to create a blog devoted to my adventures in seeking out the best places to eat around.

Creating a blog is easy, though customizing it for your use is can be challenging unless you take advantage of the work of others with the thousands of free themes, plugins, widgets, and other tools that are available to streamline the customization you wish to add. Here we will discuss how to tie your Facebook fan page into your word press blog so you can share information between the two seamlessly and promote traffic to your site.

There are many word press to Facebook plugins, but the one I chose was Add Link To Facebook. This allows me to publish articles composed on the site to the Facebook Page I have setup for the blog and share the comments and likes between the two. It was rather simple to setup and configure as I already had a Facebook developer account which was required to create the Facebook application needed to bridge the two together. The instructions were super simple and I was up and running in no time.

 

If you have a blog and a Facebook Page I highly recommend you integrate the two to steam line the content management between the two.

 

-Chris

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/social-networking-and-your-blog/feed/ 0 Voice Recognition in the Work Place http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/voice-recognition-in-the-work-place/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/voice-recognition-in-the-work-place/#comments Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:24:30 +0000 John Cunningham http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=2180

If I could have three wishes, one of them would surely be 100% accurate voice recognition with every electronic device that I interact with. I don’t mind typing but given the choice, I would much prefer to speak my commands rather than have to type them into a keyboard or hammer them out on an iPhone or iPad.

Voice recognition is obviously in its infancy but it is becoming quite good considering the tools we have to work with. In fact this blog post is being dictated into an iPad with the headphones that come with the iPad and so far it has been 100% accurate. I agree it could get confusing for a computer to decipher commands if you’re in a crowded room or there is loud music playing in the background or any other number of situations that might not be applicable to voice recognition.

That said how nice would it be to wake up in the morning and say, “turn on shower”. Or if you’re laying in bed at night and you want the lights off, instead of getting up to walk across the room you say, “turn off the lights”. How about you say, “did I remember to lock the doors” and the computer says “no, the back door is unlocked, would you like me to lock it for you now”.

It almost sounds a little like being lazy on the surface but I think it goes much deeper than that if you really ponder the possibilities. Steve Jobs seemed to be headed in the right direction before his untimely passing and I suspect that in the not-too-distant future, keyboard will go the way of the eight track.

Imagine how much we would save on hand sanitizer and carpal tunnel syndrome treatments.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/10/voice-recognition-in-the-work-place/feed/ 0 The Safety In Identification http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/08/the-safety-in-identification/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/08/the-safety-in-identification/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:42:15 +0000   http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=2154 Being an avid road biker, and also a diabetic, I always equip my saddle bag or backpack with a few essentials; Fluids, wallet, phone, protein bars, and emergency sugar packs. I’ve always had a healthy fear of getting into an accident, or having a diabetic episode (Very low blood sugar levels in this case) and no one ever finding me, so keeping all of these items with me seems almost essential. But within the last year, and from running as well, I’ve noticed that sometimes bringing all of that stuff isn’t practical. Jumping on the bike and just going, or slipping on the Vibrams and running just isn’t as easy if you have to carry around all of that.

A few running/biking buddies had already been using the Road ID, so I thought I’d take a look. Needless to say, the price point for their ID bracelets are more reasonable than a smaller metal chain type in some cases, and the information you can keep on them is enough that it offers essential information, but enough to allow EMTs or others to identify you and take action. Mine has my name, DOB,  city, state, and zip, loved ones and doctor’s contact information, and of course, the fact that I’m a type 1 diabetic. They also offer Road IDs in several wrist models, as well as some in ankle, shoe, and dogtag form. They also offer a low profile dog collar tag for Fido, which allows more information, and costs less than the PetSmart tag I bought for my dog at $19.99 that is already broken.

I wouldn’t be anywhere without my Road ID. I wear it even when I’m not playing sports or participating in outdoor activities. Check them out if you’re in the same boat I am, of if you think that keeping identification readily available in case of emergency is a good idea. Road ID

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/08/the-safety-in-identification/feed/ 0 To Kill a Birthday Girl http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/08/to-kill-a-birthday-girl/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/08/to-kill-a-birthday-girl/#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:52:24 +0000 Christopher Leisure http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=2163 I’m a big fan of NPR, and listen to it almost exclusively when I’m in the car.  A few weeks ago on the Diane Rehm Show http://thedianerehmshow.org Diane had a guest on who suffered from extreme food allergies. In Sandra Beasley’s book “Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl” http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Kill-Birthday-Girl-Allergic/dp/0307588114 she writes about growing up, and living with such a debilitating condition. I often times wonder what it’d be like if I couldn’t eat some tasty treats, or devour delicious sammiches. From birthday cakes, to peanuts served on airplanes, Sandra discusses what it’s like to be plagued with food allergies. If you’d like to listen to Diane’s interview with Sandra, feel free to here.  http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-08-04/sandra-beasley-dont-kill-birthday-girl-tales-allergic-life

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