The code above is my own contact information.

Here’s a great article about incorporating QR Code into business cards.  That’s a pretty smart way to ensure that your contact information gets into the proper people’s hands.

As mobile smartphones gain in popularity, the ability to simply scan information in and store that data will become more and more important.

In general, there seems to be a lot of removing periods, adding commas and changing things from, “and…dependents” to “and any eligible beneficiary” (within the meaning of section 106(g) etc. so on and so forth).  So instead of using the antiquated 1986 idea of a nuclear family (Mom, Dad & Children) we now have a more realistic view of what a family is in today’s society.

Are you an “Elegible Beneficiary” as defined under 106(g)?  You may be if you are: a freelancer who receives health benefits from an unmarried domestic partner… like me!

So what does this all mean?

Basically, any unmarried person who receives  health benefits from someone else will no longer will have to report any health benefits I receive as “income.”  You see, because gays and lesbians are not allowed to marry (and we are not dependents), under the definitions set up in the Internal Revenue Code, any benefits we receive from a health care plan that is not our own are counted as “income” and must be taxed.

So, let’s do some simple math on our new found tax savings:

If for example, if I were to go my primary care doctor 10 times last year for routine checkups, flu vaccines, occasional illnesses, etc.:

10 visits @ $150 each (what the insurance company paid) = $1,500 – $200 in copays =  $1,300 in “income” x 32% = $416 in additional income taxes.

Wow… and that’s kinda estimating on the low side.  What if I had cancer and racked up $100,000 in chemotherapy treatments?  What if I had expensive maintenance medications? What if I had to go to the emergency room and stay in the hospital for a day or two?  I’m not even starting to calculate those things.

So for all of you out there who think that the new Health Care Act is going to raise your taxes, guess what?  Mine are going down as a result.  Yippee!

The latest article hinted that the chips will ship in early March, which means that apple can start selling sometime at the end of February.  That will be just in time as my iMac G5 (running on OSX 10.5) seems to be getting a new vertical colored line in the screen about every 2 weeks. It’s time for an upgrade!

Yes, I am probably the only Apple/Mac fan that does NOT own an iPhone. It’s MOSTLY because I used to do some consulting in the network development arena for many wireless providers, and I know first-hand that the AT&T Network is a cobbled-together-piece-of-crap. It basically comes down to poor technology choice + limited coverage… one can only wonder how much money they had to throw at Apple just to get them. But I digress…

My only gripe has been that I have not been able to sync or move files from my Mac to my Hero. Now I understand that the point of Android is that you’re syncing to the Google Cloud rather than your PC or Mac. But sometimes you need to transfer pictures or audio files in order to maximize your enjoyment. There’s software that was included to do this with a PC, but not Mac. I tried doing it on my own, but the Micro SD card wouldn’t mount and be recognized.

So I downloaded a FREE app from the Android Marketplace called “Auto Mount” by JRTStudio and guess what… IT WORKED like magic. My trusty (and very rusty) pre-Intel iMac G5 recognized the SD Card and allowed me to transfer my iTunes files over!!

Keep in mind that Android will play .mp3 and .m4a files HOWEVER, it will NOT play music files that are protected by Apple’s DRM file protection.

So here’s how it looked on my Mac

Disk Successfully Mouted

Then just open a new Finder Window and drag and drop files into the “Music” folder. Voila.

Jenna recently asked me to help her develop the Los Angeles Antiques Show website. It was no small job, considering that it’s one of the largest antique shows on the west coast! Not only that, but last year celebrities like Hilary Swank, Nick Lachey, Lisa Kudrow and Zack Braff all attended the opening night gala. Talk about visibility!

So I was hardly surprised at all when I read a NY Times Report that Russia is sick of the West dominating the Internet, and plans to introduce its Cyrillic alphabet for domain names.  Currently, the Internet only accepts Latin-based alphabet domains, so languages with non-Latin based alphabets like Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, etc. have to convert over.

On one hand, I have to say, “that’s great… the Internet should not have language barriers…”  But on the other hand, the Russian people (as well as about 75% of the rest of the world) are already accessing websites using latin based domain names and enjoying relatively unfettered access to the Web. It’s a system that works – albeit a system that favors the West who all have Latin-based languages.

Here’s the rub: The Cyrillic domains will be controlled by the Russian Government.  Ewww… that could be bad.

To me, it seems that Russian Government is just looking for new ways to extort money from and/or control of companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, EBay, etc. that are ALREADY accessed by the Russian people.   All these companies will now almost certainly have to shell out wads of cash, just so that they can get a .рф domain (.рф will be the extension for the Russian Federation).

Not to mention the fact that Sarah Palin’s nearest neighbor will probably want to have at least a little control over content of this new Internet space that would really only be of interest to a certain subset of the world population that conveniently lives within the borders of the Russian Federation.  Yeah, they kinda have a bit of history with that whole censorship thing.

This Cyrillic-only web space could, in turn, have the effect of alienating the Russian people from accessing news sources, social networking, and whatever else the Web has in store for us.

It all sounds to me like the early version of AOL, which desperately tried to keep users within AOL-land (so as to increase its ad revenue) and away from the forbidden fruit of the “evil and unsecure Internet-at-large.”

The nice thing about Google Maps is that it targets your business locally.  So whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or you have a professional practice, you can be found by users performing a search in your immediate area.

So last week, I got an unexpected super-kool gift from Google Maps!  They sent me a neat window decal to let people know that I’m listed as a “Favorite Place” and that they can find more information about me on Google Maps.

In looking closer at it, there’s also a crazy square shaped bar code.  Want to know what that’s for?  Well, just scan it with a Barcode Scanner app from any Google Android (sorry iPhone users… no app for you just yet) and you can get detailed information from Google Maps!

And guess what? If you download Google’s “Places Directory” from the Android Market (it’s Google’s mobile version of Yelp) and do a search… you’ll find it listed there as well. So not only are you able to market to users at a desktop doing a search, you’re getting coverage in the mobile space as well.  Pretty remarkable if you ask me!

Looking to get your business listed on Google, Google Maps, or Google Places Directory?  We can certainly help get that done.  Send me an email through the contact form, and I can send you a quote for services.

I find it odd that I worked for 10 years in the wireless industry but always stuck with phones that did only the most basic of functions: phone, contacts, simple text-messaging, text-only browsing.  No camera. No touch screen. No Email. Nothing…  I figured that I would make the switch to a smartphone when the technology has finally arrived.

So during the past two years, so much has happened: Google released its open source Android software for mobile devices, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have emerged as rising Internet stars that will shape the way we communicate.

After looking into phones for the past month, I settled on either the Samsung Moment (which has a QWERTY keyboard) or the HTC Hero (which does not) – both of Which run on Andriod.  After spending about an hour looking, the very knowledgeable sales rep pointed out the differences and helped steer me to the HTC Hero, and I am so glad that he did.

So here’s what the big deal is with Andriod: it works… Flawlessly.  It syncs… it’s intuitive… there’s thousands of apps (free and paid) available from the Android Market… and it’s less expensive and a serious competitor to the iPhone.

After turning on the phone, I put in my login information and simultaneously linked my Gmail, Facebook and Twitter accounts.  All these are now constantly synced and updatable directly from various apps on my phone.

But wait, there’s more… the fully customizable screen allows me to drag and drop all kinds of widgets for applications on any one of seven screens (1 middle screen and three screens on either side that are accessible by swiping your finger right or left).

But the greatest thing about Android is that it completely negates the argument of PC vs. Mac.  The choice is: neither!  The Google option is for cloud computing to store our information and sync from there – not from your computer.  Our lives are becoming more enmeshed with the online world and the Android system definitely helps to bridge the two worlds.

Well, I have redoubled efforts and my new website is up and running.  Undoubtedly, I still have lots to do, but for the most part, it’s there and fully functional.  Way to go Jim!  I should write a testimonial for myself… Hmmm…

Here’s what it does in a nutshell: you can see the rise and fall in popularity among keywords.  In typical Google fashion, you can also make comparisons between keyword popularity.  Here’s a sample: A review of searches for Facebook vs. MySpace shows that there could be an inverse relationship in popularity between the two sites, and that crossover in popularity occurred around  January 2009.  Interesting.  Now with that data you can also drill down to yield all sorts of yummy data: What states are more popular for Facebook?  What states should MySpace focus its efforts?

Now, what if you’re an online retailer who sells both Xbox, Playstation and Wii consoles?  Could it help me to guesstimate trends and plan inventory for the months ahead?  You bet!  Check it out here. You can even chart all three against major news releases related to the search term.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you just don’t get any of these types of tools with Bing, Yahoo or Ask.  The Google people are just so way far ahead of the curve in delivering value.