After our exchange Robert tweeted:

I think it’s awesome that if you search for @rackspace on Twitter you see an ad from a competitor. http://t.co/cmwff4z Why? See next tweet.

We’ve learned that having the best informed customers possible makes them more loyal and happier. So, when competitors advertise it helps!

In Roberts view people searching for Rackspace are already doing their homework and an advert from a competitor shouldn’t disuade them from their due diligence in finding the best solution.

Insert 2 week delay while this has been sitting in drafts

The more I think about this the more I like it, hard to measure but smart.

OK so I live in Germany and am paying 20 Euro a month for a ‘Premium’ package that includes some crappy English channels, the only thing I actually watch is old re-runs of King of Queens (Doug & Carrie, Doug & Carrie, Doug & Carrie, Doug & Carrie…).

So it being Sunday I thought I would try and get BBC iPlayer working on my AppleTV.

Here is how I did it, this is by no means the easiest way but after searching around I couldn’t find that easy solution, and this is what I used so far.

Of course if you are in the UK then you don’t need the VPN or Internet Sharing part of this.

1. ibvpn.com VPN account 1st month 4$ thereafter 8$, I’ve only just signed up and everything seems fine so far.

2. Plex App installed on iMac (Free).

3. iPlayer plugin for Plex App (Free). In Plex on your Mac goto Plex Online > More > All Available Plugins.

4. Plex app on iPhone or iPad (4.99 USD) (note: iOS 5 beta running on iPad works fine, an older vers of iOS 4 running on an iPhone 3G wouldn’t work but the latest version of iOS on my wifes iPhone 4 works)

5. Apple TV 2

So lets assume you have setup your VPN connection and are now connected, you then need to share your Internet connection using Internet Sharing on the iMac.

Connect your iOS device to that wifi signal instead of your home wifi signal.

Go into the Advanced setting on the Plex app for iOS and turn on Airplay.

Go into the Video Quality settings on Plex for iOS and change to 720p, 4MBps, I found that 1080p was ok but wanted to reduce the traffic a little just in case it affected the quality at all (play around and find the settings that work for you I don’t think these matter that much apart from the lower quality settings the picture will obviously be worse on a big screen).

Go to Channels in Plex on your iOS device then iPlayer (as long as you installed the plugin), then pick what you want to watch, once it’s loaded then you should see the Airplay button and can send it over to your Apple TV.

Bobs your mothers aunties uncles son!

Close Plex on your iPhone and it keeps running on your ATV.

I sent back the Jabra headphones and got a refund but along the way I tweeted my thoughts about the quality of the sound from these headphones and advised people in general to give Bluetooth headphones a miss.

Jabra wasn’t listening, Creative Labs were.

Creative offered to send me a set of their newly released WP-350 Bluetooth Headphones, they did not request a review nor did they ask that I mention them at all but I want to for a few reasons.

1. They were listening, not just for their own brand but for the technologies they produce products for, in this case listening to ‘bluetooth’ mentions on Twitter.

2. They did not say anything bad about the product or company I was complaining about they just offered me to sample their wares.

3. Their product lived up to their promise of being better.

One of the biggest problems I had with the first Bluetooth headphones was a complaint I came across while doing my initial investigation into which headphones to buy, the Bluetooth signal would drop between headphones and iPhone when you put your phone in your pocket.

Not sure about you but I think your phone being in your pocket is a pretty common place to put it while you have some tunes playing and are just interested in listening. The Jabra worked fine if I put the phone in my right trouser pocket, but it sounded like a Hyena if I put the phone in my left trouser pocket….

Yep the connection quality was dependant on which side you dressed your phone, to the left or right ;)

The WP-350 has no such problems, the signal area for me through walls and rooms goes from my office to my balcony (around 10 Meters) and just cuts out if I hang my head over the balcony ;)

So yeah in short Jabra NO, Creative WP-350 Thumbs up!

I’m here

Add a link to your Plus in the comments! To make it useful for people to see if they should connect with you add a few words about what you do or are interested in.

Like ” Hi my name is Roger, I’m an Aries and I like Photography and Rainbows and work in Advertising….”

-How to scale your social media program globally (by superstar Intel strategiests Ekaterina Walter and Bryan Rhoads)

-How to measure something other than “Likes” (by Vector David himself)

-How to create infographics that wow the Web and drive crazy traffic (by Robin Richards, director of information design at who else but JESS3)

-How to build relationships with influencers (by the most important person in my career, Leslie Bradshaw, and me)

20 Experts, 1 Awesome Resource: The Social Media ProBook — It’s All About Revenue.

I see this a lot and it really irks me.

People congratulating companies and individuals who use Twitter because they reply to your tweets.

‘So and so really gets Social Media’

‘they’re really on the ball with their community’

Do we call them and say hey, well done you picked up the phone and spoke with me, really good work…?

If you tried to call a company and they didn’t answer your telephone call, what would you do?

Twitter & Facebook aren’t new Ladies & Gents, if the company you are trying to deal with doesn’t get it by now then in all likelihood there is something wrong with them or their service already #boldstatement.

Vote with your feet, think of Twitter as a telephone, if they have a presence and they don’t answer a question then go to one of their competitors, simple.

Or is it?

Or something like that.

This isn’t about Cameras but ToDo lists.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you need to put these things in your hands and try them yourself, recommendations for ToDo systems and how to use them don’t work in my mind. Edited for Rick because he says real friends tell you when you’re talking bollocks!

At the moment I use a combination of Task Paper and Quickcal, Taskpaper for notes and Todos and anything that has a time limit or end date gets added to a calendar that’s it.

Taskpaper

Not a cheap solution by any means but I love it’s simplicity.

TeuxDeux

TeuxDeux is a simple, designy, to-do app. If you like making to-do lists, you will love TeuxDeux. Use the free browser-based TeuxDeux at work/home and then take your to-do’s on the road with the iPhone app.

Nice and minimal, wasn’t for me though but worth a try.

Producteev

Ever missed an action item buried in your email? Say hello to Producteev! Forward your important emails to task@producteev.com we’ll create to-do lists on the fly and send you alerts when needed.

Producteev seemed to be the perfect solution for me tying together Email and Tasks, actually not really sure why I stopped using it.

Rememberthemilk

I had a Pro account of RTM a long time ago before the iPad and iPhone apps where released, it’s been too long since using it to remember why I don’t anymore, I think it was the lack of a Desktop app that moved me away and I didn’t like using it in a Fluid instance.

I think if it had a native Menubar app I might try it again as I liked the simplicity.

Things

Task management has never been this easy. Simplicity, however, is not achieved at the expense of powerful features.

Unfortunately although off to an amazing start Things seems to have been left behind with a lack of Cloud sync being the most complained about feature missing.

Update Strange timing but the day after this post I got an email to try out the Things ‘cloud sync beta’, if you still want to use Things and waiting for Cloud Sync you can sign up on their site.

Omnifocus

OmniFocus is designed to quickly capture your thoughts and allow you to store, manage, and process them into actionable to-do items.

Never used it, for my simple needs I think it’s Overkill but for larger projects I hear it highly recommended.

Wunderlist

No matter what needs to be done, from shopping lists to projects and todos – there is Wunderlist to manage it all.

Nice, also team collaboration but there were a couple of niggling points for me, one being the ability to add a url to a note and it be clickable which it wasn’t (they may have changed that now though?)

Flowapp

Flow is a task management app that makes working with your team a breeze.

Seems like a great option but I didn’t find the price attractive, I guess if it’s THE one for you and it saves you wasting money looking at others then it works out cheap in the end.

While writing I found that there are quite a few shortcuts to be had for marking up your text as Markdown and saved them in to a little group of snippets.

There are lots more possible but these few will start you off, are easy to remember and should get your brain working on how to create your own.

Links in Markdown are of the format

       [Anchor Text](http://url.com)

,[ = [%clipboard] – this will expand to create the text for a link from whatever is on your clipboard. eg the sitename or post title.

,( = (%clipboard) – copy the url you want to link to to the clipboard and then initiate this snippet.

,* = %clipboard Copy the text you want to make Bold to the clipboard and this snippet will surround the word with ** and paste it back.

I tried importing some other peoples snippets once and from a list of 20 or more I could only ever remember one or two, the shortcut triggers I found are quite personal to each persons brain, so start making them yourself is my best advice.

The group can be downloaded and then to import into TextExpander open TE and then hit the + button in the bottom left corner and ‘Import Group from File’.

Enjoy.

Well bugger me if my problem isn’t already solved…

Enter Dropvox and Dropin

Dropvox has been available for a while it’s basically a Voice Recorder for iPhone that saves your recordings to your Dropbox folder.

The problem I had with it was there was nothing on the Mac side to remind you that you recorded something.

So enter Dropin, this app monitors your Dropbox and provides notifications (highlight the menubar icon, growl & sound) of file changes within. I think the main intention is to provide notifications if you work in teams and someone in your team updates a file you’re working together on, but I found it a perfect solution to just remind me that I left a voice message for myself when I come home.

And as Mike Alderson pointed out to me, if the Dropbox folder is shared between a team then this is a low impact way of getting voice messages out to a team of people.

If you want some more detailed info on Dropin then check out the MacAppstorm post How To Give Dropbox a Functionality Boost With DropIn