TekGems Blog

Photos: Cracking open the iPhone 3G S

It's a very sad day for me. Michael Jackson was a lot of fun at different party events.

Michael Jackson's death roils Wikipedia

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Michael Jackson Memorial Ride Tonight

According to Twitter reports, "Mourn MJ SF-style tonight: Michael Jackson trike ride and flash dance. Starts @ 7 at Dolores Park. Winds down @ Ferry Plaza at 8:30."

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Remembering Michael Jackson's video game legacy

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Email archiving strategies: Five best practices

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Re-Establish the Weekly Review Habit [Personal Organization]

Reviewing where you are and where you're going is a critical but oft-overlooked part of personal development. Here's how to get in the habit of giving yourself a weekly review.

You may not have ever been an adherent of the Getting Things Done philosophy of time and task management, but at some point you've certainly sat down and reviewed what was going on in your life. Making lists and writing down tasks is a great habit, but it's equally important to make a routine of frequently reviewing your lists, tasks, and goals to reconnect with your work and purpose.

Productivity blog Stepcase Lifehack runs a series of refreshers on components of the Getting Things Done system. This week, the focus is on the weekly review and the importance of establishing a habit of reviewing:

More than anything else, though, a weekly review is a point of connection between you and your work. We live in a go-go-go society where work – any work – is expected of each of us, all the time. Americans, especially, work harder than just about anyone – not necessarily more efficiently or on more important things, but longer hours and with fewer breaks. It's all too easy in all this rush of work for work's sake to lose track of why we're doing it and of what it has to do with us as people.

They point out, rather accurately, that it's easy to make lists and even do mini-reviews on any given day, but that larger reviews—the weekly, monthly, and yearly kind, involving more goals than tasks—are usually lost among all the little projects and fires we attend to. It's important to review your work to gain a sense of where you are, where you are going, and, more importantly, focusing on what the next tasks need to be to get to the place you want to be.

Not sure where to start with your own review? Check out our previous advice on establishing a weekly review and the free refresher on weekly reviews from David Allen. Are weekly reviews integral to your workflow? Never found the time for them? Sound off with your experiences in the comments below.

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XBMC Installer Deluxe Makes the Most of Your Modded Xbox [Xbmc]

Read over our coverage of XBMC, but not quite sure if you're ready to take the plunge? XBMC Installer Deluxe makes tinkering with your freshly modded Xbox a breeze.

We've shown you the complete process for installing XBMC on a classic Xbox, and those instructions are still sound. XBMC Installer Deluxe is a disc you can use after you've modded your Xbox to make installation and configuration of XBMC a breeze. Veterans of Xbox tinkering will appreciate, having combed the internet for various tools, everything being in one place, and new users can take advantage of the well laid-out menus.

You can use Xbox Installer Deluxe to format your Xbox HDD, backup and restore saved games and disk partitions, update your dashboard, install XBMC, and install homebrew software. If you want to use your Xbox for more than just media playback, check out the equally as excellent Auto-Installer Deluxe which includes additional dashboards, emulators, and other software. It's overkill if you just want XBMC but it's awesome if you want tons of Xbox tools all on one disc.

Check out the link below for more information and a well written product wiki. If you don't have a classic Xbox you're not left out in the cold, XBMC is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux too.Thanks John!

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Apple's $30 apology for iPhone activation delays

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Mayo Clinic Reports Dramatic Outcomes In Prostate Cancer Treatment

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The Wisdom of My Father

This is a guest post from Ann Zerkle, a Get Rich Slowly lurker, and the founder of Heroes of Capitalism.

As the daughter of a truck driver and stay-at-home mom, my family lived very frugally (and very happily). As an adult, I see the wisdom in the frugality of my parents. Below are the frugal ideas my father always espoused.

1. Work smart, not hard. My dad believed in hard work. He constantly put in 60 hour work weeks, and somehow still managed to be active at church and in the community. The trick is that Dad never wasted effort. He constantly innovated to keep working smart.
2. Don't make special trips. Dad understood that cars are big, deceptive, money-sucking machines. He understood that every time he fired up a personal vehicle, money was going down the drain. As a result, it was a family policy not to just run out for an item.
3. "It took me X hours to get that!" Whenever Dad bought something, he thought about it in terms of how many hours of work it took him to earn it. This left him walking away without whatever item he was thinking about buying several times. He often applied this to TV as well. He realized the time suck that TV can become.
4. If you can put off buying it, put it off. My parents never had a car payment. They drove junky cars that they could buy with their savings. Even if the car was going to die in the near future, my dad understood that if he could put off buying a new car for another month that was one more month they had to save and put off paying for tags, registration, new insurance coverage, etc. Sometimes the cars would last way beyond expectations. Right now my dad is driving a 1992 Oldsmobile with 200,000 miles on it. He expected it to die two years ago, but it just keeps on ticking.
5. You have to take a risk sometimes. Now that I'm old enough to care about investing, I've learned that my dad took some pretty big (yet calculated) risks as an investor. As a young man he lost money in the stock market because of his risks. He's changed his risk strategy over his lifetime, but still takes risks. He was really the first one in his family to start investing, so he basically learned from scratch and is continually taking his calculated risks.
6. Don't be afraid to ask. My dad is not shy. He is never afraid to ask for help. This often took the form of borrowing. We had a large garden growing up, but never owned a tiller. My dad always borrowed one from a neighbor. He would ask his pipefitter friend for plumbing help. Even today he is not shy about asking my husband for computer tips and help. He knows what I have come to know: most people like to help, you just have to have the guts to ask.
7. "That UPS truck just ruined my whole vacation!" My dad has worked for UPS for years. Whenever he was on vacation if one of those iconic brown trucks went by he'd say with a smile, "That UPS truck just ruined my whole vacation." My dad liked his job, but he understood the need for rest. One can't go on working 60 hour work weeks without rest. He always took a little of his vacation time just to hang around the house so that he could be ready to keep working later.
8. Invest in yourself and your family. Dad understands that the only thing in this life that really matters is people. Ultimately all of our things can be taken away from us by governments, fires, and mismanagement. As a result, he knew the only sure investment is investing in yourself and your family. He helped all three of his children get through college in various ways. He continually improves himself with books, online research and asking questions. As a lifetime truck-driver he could have stagnated in his personal growth and still made the money he is making, but he chooses to keep improving himself.
9. Let people feel the consequences of their actions. My dad did show grace to his children, but he also understood that we needed to feel the consequences of our actions. Around age nine, every January we had to present him with a yearly budget for our allowances. It included a variety of things like school supplies, clothing, spending money, camp fees, and incidentals. We would negotiate the yearly amounts, and then get that portioned to us on a monthly basis. I remember quite vividly one month my sister ran out of money about a week before allowance day. Instead of giving her money to go out with her friends, he let her stew for a week. I don't think that happened much after that first incident.
10. Eat to get not-hungry. This may seem like an odd thing to say, but even as a little kid I can remember Dad saying, "We don't eat to be full; we eat to not be hungry." It took about 15 years, but I am starting to understand the deep wisdom in this. First, eating to get full is a fast way to become overweight, and being overweight has a whole set of financial ramifications. Secondly, focusing on food is not healthy. People who eat to be full on a regular basis are often consumed (pardon the pun) with food. As Get Rich Slowly has addressed in the past, the food we eat has a whole set of financial ramifications.
11. People come first. The final overriding wisdom my father has imparted to us kids is that people come first. You can see this theme throughout the other parts of this list. My parents have a generous giving plan and believe in putting people first, above the environment, above animals and above material possessions.

Ultimately, my dad found what was important to him in life and put his money where his heart was. As a result of this he lives frugally and is deliberate with his money. This money philosophy was imparted to me at a young age and helps me to live frugally. As a result, my husband and I are getting rich slowly.

What did you learn about money from your parents? What do you hope to teach your children?

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Financial Education: Are Schools Doing Enough?
• You're Never Too Young to Save
• Father Tries to Make Mother Like Figures
• Ask the Readers: How Will My Family's Credit History Affect My Own?
• Co-Signing a Mortgage: Its Effects?

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Use the Cloud, Luke: Easier Shipping Is in the Stars

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AT&T Budges on iPhone 3G S Upgrades

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eBay Developers Conference 2009: A Recap

I was only able to attend the first day of the eBay / PayPal Developers Conference this year but the coverage coming out of the event has been so consistent and thorough, I felt that I was able to get enough information to feel like I didn't miss a thing.

Bottom line, the whole team over there - Delyn, Max, Adam, Laura, Kumar (I could go on) - put on another fantastic agenda and the feedback from those in attendance that I talked to was overwhelmingly positive. Great job to everyone who had a hand in making this year's Developers Conference such a success.

Presentations

If you check out my preview blog post from earlier this week, you can access hyperlinks to PowerPoint presentations of every session over the past two days.

Keynotes

A thorough breakdown of the opening keynote on Wednesday, can be found here.

The second day of opening keynotes maintained the theme of "building your business with us", and welcomed four notable Silicon Valley venture capitalists to share their insights on funding, business trends, and good business practices. Lorrie Norrington followed the panel discussing eBay's future. Here is the full breakdown of the second day of keynotes.

For the most comprehensive coverage of the two-day event, please visit the eBay Develo...

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Just How Financially Healthy is Your Small Business, Anyway?

As I grow my business, I have learned that one of the most valuable uses of my time as a small business CEO is to manage the financial health of my business. In other words, is my business strong? Or — heaven forbid — are we skating on such thin ice that one or two bad months could mean the end?

My goal is to have a healthy business that can withstand a few ups and downs (emphasis on the downs) and let me get a good night's sleep.  That's my layman's definition of a financially healthy business.

Monitoring and managing your business's financial health involves more than simply maintaining a cushion in your bank balance. It's more than just keeping accurate books. It is more than staying up to date on your accounts payables and not letting your accounts receivables get too stale. Those activities are important, true.

But managing your business for financial health is about taking a big picture view of your business, as interpreted through the detail of your financial statements.  Sound contradictory?  It's not.

What I am talking about is understanding your financial statements, identifying which numbers matter most on those financial statements, and interpreting those numbers to make informed business decisions. In other words, you are identifying key numerical indicators that tell you how fiscally healthy your business is.

Knowledgeable finance people and savvy business owners call these key indicators "financial ratios." By monitoring financial ratios, you can benchmark how well your business is doing compared to healthy businesses; watch for early warning signs of ill-health; and develop goals to work toward to improve in any areas of weak financial health.

The Business Owner's Toolkit says this about financial ratios (also called business ratios):

"In order to assess how your business is doing, you'll need more than single numbers extracted from the financial statements. Each number has to be viewed in the context of the whole picture.

The true meaning of figures from the financial statements emerges only when they are compared to other figures. Such comparisons are the essence of why business and financial ratios have been developed.

Various ratios can be established from key figures on the financial statements. These ratios are very simple to calculate — sometimes they are simply expressed in the format "x:y," and other times they are simply one number divided by another, with the answer expressed as a percentage. However, these simple ratios can be a powerful tool because they allow you to immediately grasp the relationship expressed.

When you routinely calculate and record a group of ratios at the end of every accounting period, you can assess the performance of your business ...