THE DREAM IN ACTION

I’m going to be in the market for a new computer in the next few months.  I’m definitely going to get a laptop.   It just doesn’t make sense not to with how mobile everything is these days.  I’m currently using a friends computer to write this post and it is a MacBook Pro.  It’s very smooth, nice to work with, easy to write on and very clean.  It seems to me that recently there has been a increasing surge towards Mac’s away from PC’s and I’m being caught up in the surge.  The more I use Mac’s it just seems like it’s the better call.  Does anyone have any suggestions on what type or model of Mac to buy?  I’m looking for a combination of good screen size but still small enough to carry around.  Please use the comments to let me know some of the difficulties of transitioning from PC to Mac as well as suggestions on which model to get.

As I continue to research I’ll keep you posted on what model I’m leaning towards.  Thanks for the help.

How productive is it to have one place that you go to work everyday.  I sit in the same place everyday as many people do during their work day and I’m actually in a very good situation. I work on the 29^th floor of a building in

Today we had a full building evacuation fire drill that everyone obviously found out about early. In preparation we went to a local Starbucks (standard!) to work during the chaos.  I loved it.  It was so refreshing to be in a different environment event though I was still doing the same work. I was much more productive and motivated to do the same old work. 

It seems to me that this is the life of the work from home programmer or internet business guru.  You know that guy Craig, who started that list? Yea, that was this guy.  He got up each morning knowing that the only thing he needed to operate was an internet connection. He could make his cup of coffee, sit at his table or couch in his boxers and have a very productive day of work.  Must be nice.

I don’t think that an office is so necessary these days. Working from home is becoming a much more viable option with the availability of internet at coffee shops and the like.  Face to face interaction will always be needed from the client but at the same time as long as people get the results that they expect both on-time and on budget they don’t really need to see who delivers those results.

As I write this post in response to a post on tadfad.com about Public Transit I am sitting on the northbound redline train of Chicago’s elevated train system.  The CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) is imposing rate hikes within the month and the trains seem to be getting slower and slower and at least in the morning on the way to work and coming home during rush hour the trains are literally cattle cars. Each train has roughly 5000 people and a new train comes every 3-6 minutes, during rush hour.  After thinking about Chicago’s public transportation system, a combination of trains and buses, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are 5 main characteristics to a successful public or mass transportation system.  

Those characteristics are:

• Reliable

• Quick

• Safe

• Cost Effective

• Well Funded

Reliable.  The transportation system must run with reliability everyday and must be there within a reasonable amount of time.  Ex: If a person shows up for a 7:45am train it better be there within 10-15 minutes of the promised time or passengers will no long use that source of transport.Quick.  The transportation must work reasonably quickly; it must be reasonable relative to alternate means of transportation. Ex: If I can drive to work and in 20 minutes and the train system takes more than about 15 or 20 minutes more than that it would not be worth taking. Safe.  If the transportation system is not safe for all people to ride it will not be a popular option.Cost effective.  If the transportation system is not cost effective for the passengers it will not be used. Ex: If the train is not the cheapest option of transportation it will not be widely used.Well funded.  I think this is probably the most important point. In Chicago the number one issue for the train service is the fact that it is under funded. As I said before, rate hikes are coming soon to CTA passengers and there are many improvement projects already underway that need more funding. An example of the results of poor funding is Chicago’s blue line train. This train runs from the Loop to O’Hare Airport and the CTA decided last February to slow the train down in order to “get more life from the tracks” rather than to spend the appropriate money and repair the tracks.

In conclusion, a successful public transportation system is a cheap, quick, reliable, safe, and well funded one. Chicago’s CTA train system is the best that I’ve experienced, however, it leaves much to be desired in the well funded category.

Mint.com, the new start-up that helps users manage their personal finances is legit.  They just won TechCrunch40 the start-up competition put on by Michael Arrington’s blog TechCrunch.  The night they won I went to their site to sign up but I experienced very slow load times and nothing seemed to work quickly at all.  Apparently, they estimated over 100,000 new users were trying to sign-up for Mint that night.  A few days later I received an email apologizing for the inconvenience and I decided to give it a shot.  I had all my bank accounts added within 5 minutes and was able to see what my most visited establishment (Chipolte) is and what my spending avg.’s are.  This site is as easy to use as advertised and has some pretty sweet features.   I had to re-categorize a few of my expenses to make the analysis more accurate but that only took a few minutes as well.

Some of the other features bosted by Mint.com:

• Add your accounts in less than five minutes
• Know where your money goes
• See savings opportunities that are “unique to you”
• Get email or text message alerts to keep you in control 24/7

Give Mint.com a try for yourself and let us know (using the Comments here on ActionsTalk.com) what you think…

This topic is a bit disterbing, you’ve been warned.

Why are mom’s on facebook? Mine is and its a bit wierd.  I understand that facebook is one of the most popular websites on the internet and is used as a very effective tool to stay in touch with friends and family, however I definitely liked the facebook of old, when only your college friends had access to those pictures of you with roughly 15 beers down.   Now that facebook has changed it has opened up the tool and made it much more appealing for investors and Zuckerberg but to the facebook old timer it’s lost it’s appeal in many ways. 

 Old folks (people in generations before ours) have never been known for their ability to adapt to new technologies. Their generations are much more comfortable with sticking to what they already know.  It is the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality and it seems to work for them. Facebook has changed all that. This new technology seems to not wait for the older generation to come to it but it seems that it is going after the older generation.  At least that’s the only explanation that I can come up with for why mothers (and fathers) are joining facebook like crazy.  I guess I just have to learn to except the “new” facebook with newsfeeds, status updates and moms.

 Use the comments to let us know if you mother is on facebook and how you feel about it.

I’m in the very early stages of a career and I think I’m going through something that many people go through. I’ve entered a period of stagnation.  I go to work everyday but I’m rarely excited to go or excited about the work I’m doing. I don’t want to give up but I question all the time just how long I should “hang in there” before I start looking for more exciting work and a more exciting business. 

I just don’t know if I’m actually in a great company and just need to deal with it or if there actually are some much better options out there.  I’m guessing the later but with only one job (this one) to compare it to it’s hard to tell.  What is the right decision? Maybe a more difficult question, when is the right decision made. Decisions like this are the ones that shape your life and knowing that makes it that much more difficult to make. Whats signs do I look for? What decision should I make? I guess right now I’ll just continue to try and make as many opptions available as possible.

I’ve been writing on ActionsTalk.com for about 2 months now, probably not as frequent as I should but as the site accumulates posts I struggle with which directions would be the most beneficial for myself the writer and you the reader. It originally was going to be strictly writing about taking action towards a start-up. It was meant to be a motivating factor for myself and hopefully for you to get going, stop talking about it, and act on starting my/your own business. It was going to be a place where criticism, reactions, and advice could be given from those who have experienced to those who are experiencing. Now, that is in question.

As I attempt to write on a bi-weekly basis I find that there are a lot more things I want to discuss other than just starting-up and start-ups (i.e. travel, new technologies, and new products). My question to you is this, is a blog worth reading if it doesn’t stick to a very specific topic? I’ll be closely watching the comments with this post to see one if anyone is reading now and also your thoughts on the most effective ways to write/manage a blog. Thanks for any feedback/thoughts you have!

Not even Google can recruit ALL the best young talent. In the Silicon Valley there are thousands of computer science majors and motivated individuals who would give their left nut to be hired by companies like Google, Facebook and Firefox. But, these jobs are very rare and incredibly difficult to obtain. However, facebook.com has created an environment for themselves that gives them a competitive advantage in the recruiting category, this competitive advantage is the facebook.com development platform. Without paying a dime for development time facebook now has infinite amounts of developers out there creating new, attractive and increasingly complex applications that will, exactly as designed, greatly increase page views and users on facebook.com. I have no development skills to speak of (yet) and I’ve downloaded the developer application and tools thinking that I may give it a whirl. I’m sure there are thousands of others in my same shoes, many with more time and know-how just dying to create the next iLike or BlogTV.  Their applications may not be as big as Where Have I Been, but the one thing I’m sure of is that it won’t decrease facebooks page views or avg. time spent on the site. This is facebook.com’s very obvious but very often overlooked competitive advantage.

Is it just me or does everyone have a huge hard on for Steve Jobs? Chill out about it.  Today the iPhone hit the 1 Million in sales mark which is pretty impressive, however, there are a lot of other great products and companies out there and frankly I’m kinda tired of reading every other article on tech blogs about the new iPhone or new iPods.  Its seems to me that if you have the word “iPhone” in your heading you’ll probably make it to the front page of ‘Digg’ (thus, the title of this post).  Can everyone start getting excited about something new…please!