Bitcoin market has officially popped it’s bubble cherry!
Posted: 04/12/2013 Filed under: Economy, Technology | Tags: bitcoin, bitcoins, btc, bubble, global currency, mt gox, penny stock, virtual currency 1 CommentI couldn’t think of a better title for this post, but I figure popping cherries and bubbles would get your attention.
So it finally happened, the media’s dreams came true and Bitcoin went from a euphoric high of $260+ (depending on which exchange you were on) to crossing into $50 territory about an hour ago as I write this over the course of 2 days. I don’t know about you, but this makes me happy in a bullish way about the future of bitcoins and virtual currency in general as a viable monetary option in the future, like 15 years from now future.
As I mentioned in my previous post, a vast majority of the global population doesn’t know what a bitcoin is or how it’s even used, therefore, this huge crash, which I will refer to as what it really is; this market correction was caused by a small percentage of the population. The correction was not only expected, but it was necessary. This proved that even the relatively small number of people currently trading bitcoins have already made up such a robust market for it that it may eventually grow and act more like a real equity or currency market. Right now unfortunately it’s still so thinly traded that it’s acting like a penny stock that just got major negative publicity on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money the night before, sell sell sell!
Where do we go from here? There will be some inevitable panic selling for a few days, the price dropped to as low as $54 a few hours ago but it’s trying very hard to break over $70 right now. Without the oversight of a regulatory body in place, it will be interesting to see how long it will take for this decentralized unregulated ‘insane person’s’ market to get back on a less volatile path to $250/BTC again. While we wait and see what the world does, check out these epic charts for some better insight.
Really puts things in better perspective when you can see just how ridiculous this market was looking from a 6-month view versus the nasty 30-day picture above. As of right now, I’m pretty impressed with the resilience of bitcoin thus far. Let’s see if it continues to impress over the next few weeks.
Speculating on the value of Bitcoins – Bubble? or not…
Posted: 04/09/2013 Filed under: Economy, Investing, Technology | Tags: bitcoin, bitcoins, btc, bubble, global currency, speculation 1 CommentI like to think of myself as someone that knows enough to be dangerous when it comes to financial markets, causes of fluctuations and volatility and possible areas where you can expect a bubble to form. When I try to apply this knowledge and past experience to what is happening with the value of Bitcoins, it is both scary and exciting to think about where this will be in the next 3 months. By now, if you don’t know what Bitcoins are, then read this: http://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works .
Anyways, as I write this post, the value of 1 BTC (bitcoin) is currently valued at $225 US Dollars. This virtual online currency is now trading for $225 REAL United States Dollars; let that digest for a bit. OK. Just over the last 30 days, bitcoins have gone from relative obscurity to gaining top spots on Bloomberg, Yahoo and other major media outlets over it’s meteoric rise. Over that same 30 days the value of 1 BTC has risen from $50 to about $225. If you bought into this just 4 months ago, you could have picked up a bitcoin at around $10; that’s some serious growth. Serious unsustainable growth. You can see now why I’m both scared and excited.
So here are my 2 insane theories right now:
1). We will continue to rise a bit more in the short-run and then have a somewhat significant pullback into the $150 territory due to some profit taking from the speculators that got in at like $1 per BTC (lucky bastards) 🙂
2). This is just the start of a major rise in the value of this virtual currency until it reaches levels achieved by other such ‘safe-haven’ anti-government anti-establishment investments such as gold. At around $225 or so right now, this may seem like a fire-sale bargain if we look back 1 year from now (assuming bitcoins are still holding up and not hacked by then). I believe this to be true simply because of the nature of understanding bitcoins and more importantly how to acquire them is not yet easily accessible to the mainstream public. Bitcoin purchasers up to now have primarily been nerds, geeks, drug dealers and immediate friends of these subgroups (myself included). There is still a massive portion of the global population that still hasn’t even heard of, not to mention purchased any, bitcoins. Once that information precipitates throughout society and more people are more accessible to bitcoins and understand them better, it will dramatically increase their value.
I have one more far fetched theory before I end this post, you can stop reading now though if you want. Here it goes:
The moment bitcoins breach some value (let’s say $1000/BTC) without any perceived vulnerability to be hacked or significantly manipulated by insane genius hackers, it will start to gain the attention of governments of several countries (the US included) prompting them to get together in a United Nations fashion in an effort to buy up a significant allocation of outstanding bitcoins in order to regain control over something that was never intended to be controlled in the first place. After which people will freak out, get pissed or just break out into protest and sell off bitcoins causing extreme devaluation and spurring possibly another virtual currency to replace it and start the spin cycle all over, repeat. It hurts my brain to think that this type of future would even be possible, but I’m just ranting at this point.
Bitcoins – Are they vulturing Gold investors?
Posted: 04/02/2013 Filed under: Investing, Technology | Tags: bitcoin, btc, cyprus, decentralized, global currency, gold, gold prices Leave a commentAfter the recent banking crisis in Cyprus, I have some reason to believe that gold’s safe-haven status may be in jeopardy due to the growing popularity of an internet-based global currency called Bitcoins. Gold has been in a downward trend over the last 60 days and essentially stagnant over the last 2 years after it peaked just under $1,900/ounce in mid-2011. The charts below illustrate this trend.
Gold prices over the last 60-days.
Gold prices over the last 2 years.
Gold prices over the last 15 years.
Why is any of this important?
Over the last 60 days there was significant news coming out of Cyprus that affected not only citizens of that country but also wealthy Russians that held large amounts of cash in those banks; all of whom are spooked now about the security of their liquid assets. I mean if you can’t trust your bank, who can you trust? Typically, this kind of news would push hard currency prices up as a flight to safety. In the wake of this news, gold prices rose slightly, but it was not a significant move by any measure.
Meanwhile, enter this nearly 5 year-old currency created by a mysterious person (or organization) out of a series of incredibly complicated code and living solely on the Internet. Bitcoins as they are called, are the new hot global currency that boasts the fact that they allow for anonymous transactions between buyers and sellers. To gold bugs, the most appealing feature of Bitcoins has to be the fact that it is a decentralized government-less currency.
Over the course of the entire Cyprus crisis, the value of a Bitcoin (BTC as they are commonly denominated) has nearly tripled over a 30-day period from nearly $30 for 1 Bitcoin to just over $100 for a Bitcoin. One can argue this is a bubble in the making, but one can also argue that this is just the beginning of Bitcoin’s inevitable rise as a serious force in the global economy. If you take a look at the 15 year gold chart, you will notice an eerie similarity to how Bitcoin has performed in just a matter of a few months. Without limiting factors such as a regulatory body to put the brakes on money flows in and out of Bitcoins, the sky is the limit as to how much this currency can climb. You can see the chart for yourself here: http://bitcoinity.org/markets
Barring any future setbacks in the security and widespread use of Bitcoins, at this pace, it will certainly be a force to derail the traditional view of using hard currency as a safe-haven investment. It will be interesting to see how far the world will go in embracing Bitcoins. At this point, I’m just waiting for the emergence of an investment firm to come out with the world’s first ETF (exchange traded fund) that tracks the spot price of Bitcoins and U.S. Dollars. Mr. Paulson, are you listening?
New Year’s Resolution: Ditch Cable TV for good, well not really.
Posted: 03/26/2013 Filed under: Consumerism, Entertainment, Television | Tags: cancel cable, Cox, cutting the cord, digital tv, fios, fios sucks, hd dvr, leaf plus, mohu, roku, Verizon, verizon fios Leave a commentWhile most of you were out making obscene resolutions like working out more and losing 50lbs in 2013, I attempted to do something a little more attainable and practical, well at least I thought it was until I actually tried to do it. I planned on cutting the cord and going off the cable grid, so to speak.
Why would I do that?
Let me explain, for nearly 8 years I had Verizon FIOS for my cable TV and was very happy with the value I was getting for such great quality. But over the course of time, Verizon started instituting irrational pricing structures, I was forced to use their bundled internet and home phone services in order to actually save money, but anyways, I refused to renew my latest ‘bundle’ contract for another 2 years and some how ended up paying nearly $150/month (including taxes, insane amounts of taxes!) for my Triple Play bundle (tv, internet, landline) and this doesn’t even include any premium channels. That pissed me off. $17/month to RENT an HD DVR cable box? I can pay $17/month to rent a 5′ by 5′ storage unit to actually place my physical belongings
What did I do?
Now, I love quality TV programming, that is my Achilles heel in this process, so there was no way I would be content with reverting back to my caveman days of using ‘bunny ears’. I did some research into this and found that the best option for an indoor antenna is product called Leaf by Mohu. I tried it out, the quality of FREE TV, yes, free, was pretty amazing even on my 720p TV, however, I need my TNT, USA and the woman needs her Bravo, so it was off the table. If you don’t need those, stop reading here and just buy a Leaf, you will be happy: Get a Leaf By Mohu Digital Antenna
My only viable alternative here is Cox Communications in Northern Virginia. At first, this was a horrible mess with bad equipment, bad wiring, missed appointments, etc.. but thankfully Cox has real humans that live near me and ultimately after 2 months, they did the right thing and upgraded me to their new platform which miraculously solved 99% of the issues I was having (this should be the default option now if Cox wants to remain a competitor!).
My life Post-FIOS – 3 Months Later
After a serious learning curve of getting used to the ‘optimally’ designed Cox remote control, which i still think needs some major tweaking, I am pretty happy with my exit from the FIOS eco-system. The quality of TV is no different than what I was used to before, I did lose a couple channels that came with my FIOS package, but saving nearly $40/month compared to FIOS puts a smile on my face every day. Amazingly, my new monthly price includes 15MPS download speed, which is more than enough for like 90% of the country and of course, the worthless landline (ditching that would save me like $4/month, so I didn’t care).
What about just getting a ROKU?
Tried it, was fun and novel, but not really a solution to cutting the cord. If you have a Netflix and/or Amazon Prime account, it’s a nice supplement to your entertainment options, but it’s not an outright reason to cut cable completely. There is really no ‘real-time’ live streaming TV on ROKU, except for the NoWhere TV channel, which is cool, but still in its infancy, check it out here: Roku NoWhere TV Channel info
Interested in trying a Roku anyways? It’s not too expensive, get ROKU 2 XS as it has a direct Ethernet cable connection so you get no lag when streaming movies: Check out ROKU here
Bottom Line – If you can escape FIOS, do it.
What still bothers me is that when I made that call to Verizon to cancel my entire bundle after so many years with them, they didn’t even try to stop me. I was cancelled and out in about 10 minutes. Nice loyalty. Verizon just knows they have the dominant position in cable TV markets so they just bully everyone now into their 2-year contracts with inferior alternative options. My Cox deal didn’t require any contracts, although I may just call in and lock-in these prices ultimately just in case. Not even a month after leaving Verizon, I get a letter in the mail for a new deal stating “We want you back”, no thanks Verizon, not falling for your tricks again.
Disclosure:
No, I don’t work for Cox, I’m no where near involved with the cable industry, at all. Just an unbiased TV junkie trying not to get financially ravaged by these greedy telecom giants.
Review of Happy Hour seeking apps in Northern Virginia for iPhone
Posted: 02/22/2013 Filed under: Consumerism, Drinking, Entertainment, IPhone, Technology | Tags: DC metro, drink specials, drinking, happy hour, happyhour, HH, iphone, northern virginia, nova, tysons corner Leave a commentIt’s Wednesday night, you’ve already had a crappy week at work and have no desire to go straight home. Solution: Happy Hour. When you work in Northern Virginia you are not blessed with the sheer volumes of pubs and wine houses found in the city (i.e. Arlington, Washington DC) so you end up fulfilling your drinking needs at fine establishments like TGI Friday’s or the that dive bar around the corner from your office because it’s so close. Please, stop this madness.
Enter the information age, where we all have smartphones with an assload of apps to download for them. I put technology to the test and entered the iTunes app store on my iPhone and searched for “DC Happy Hour” and then just “Happy Hour” and here are my results and subsequent reviews of the apps that followed.
Let me preface: I am not, for the record, a programmer. I have rated these apps from a scale of 1-5 (pretty original, right?).
- The only app that showed up under “DC Happy Hour” was in fact an app called Happy Hour – DC. The app sports a laughable 4.5 star rating that I can only assume came from review trolls in Singapore or just the owner of the app fluffing up this sorry excuse for code. The app basically just lists the same data that comes from its corresponding website. There is no ability to search based on your location, which is something one would expect from most smartphones by now. The bottom toolbar has some ideally useful features such as locating a cab when you’re drunk, when I touched it, I received a ‘404’ error. Bummer. Lastly, for a specific DC metro happy hour app, I would have liked to see more happy hour locations. Overall, just a big disappointment. RATING: 1
- Next, I went on to the more global apps. First one that came up was Happy Hours by GoTime. This had a cleaner interface, more professional look to it and I can only assume they had a much bigger budget to build this app. Lots of filters, but the app takes forever to load and then takes time in between filtering as well. It did provide a few more options for drinking spots in the Tysons Corner area, which is what I am using for my test area. RATING: 2.5
- I really wanted to love this app, 2nd one to come up. Happy Hour Finder by Noel Churchill. This app has by far, the best user interface, very polished and professional graphics, not buggy/glitchy at all, and sports a location-based search immediately after you start the app for the first time; I’m already impressed. Like the previous app, you can ‘like’ certain happy hours and have options to filter by day. This app unfortunately fails to provide a robust number of actual happy hour locations, which is basically the entire point of these apps (and this article.) Lastly, I did like the Yelp! integration for each location. Please, please, please ADD MORE LOCATIONS. RATING: 3.5
- Cocktail Compass by All Night Studios, LLC. If only I lived in Boise, Charleston, Little Rock, Portland, Seattle or Nova Scotia. This is by far the BEST Happy Hour app I have found and unfortunately does not work in our market or even within 1000 miles of it. So sad. The other apps should take notes from this one. My favorite feature besides from the fact that this app actually works as promised, is that it has a live countdown of every happy hour it has listed. The lists seem pretty robust, interface is excellent and you can actually choose between happy hours & restaurants to get straight to the point. I would rate this with 5 stars, but alas I just can’t!
If you know of a better app that I don’t have listed, let me know. Hopefully these existing ones can perform some serious R&D and improve what they have. For the time being, I will have to simply rely on word of mouth and Yelp! I guess… oh well, time to drink.
When your provider “bundles” you, you lose!
Posted: 11/12/2012 Filed under: Consumerism, Television, Venting | Tags: Bundle, Cox, Overpriced, scam, Verizon Leave a commentI may have previously posted or tweeted about my lifelong love-hate relationship with Verizon, a relationship similar to that of Bobby Brown & Whitney Houston or in modern days, Rihanna & Chris Brown, just your typical “he beats me but I love him” relationship. I get a decent product only because the competition is awful and can’t compete on their level but I pay exorbitantly high fees for this. As much as the rep on the phone didn’t want to admit it, they have a seemingly monopolistic hold on all things electronic communications related (phone, net, tv, life…)
Well now the greedy titan has raised its rates across the board because it can and decided to do away with corporate promotions and discounts that it once heralded to bring in business using the same tactics as drug dealers; let’s give them free 42″ plasma TVs + HBO for free for 3 months, get them hooked then slam them with an extra $30/month and not mail them the TV at all, muhaha! (sadly, this really happened)…But I digress.
So what I have pasted below is the current breakdown of costs for my Verizon QUAD plan (now 4 times the pillaging!):
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Current Activity Total $271.95
What am I bitching about this time around? Well, today at my tender age of 33 I realized that I’m not 70 and really don’t need a land line, I have a cell phone, my girlfriend has one, as does our dog (not really). I called Verizon to reprice my monthly bill without a land line. Here is a summary of how this conversation went, ultimately leading me to write about it:
Normal logic would dictate that if I cancel the Digital Voice (land line), it would equate to $30/month savings + more on the taxes i wouldn’t have to pay, bringing my total bill to about $241.95 + tax. Right? WRONG. Apparently, Verizon conveniently no longer has my 25/25 Internet package, so they would be ‘forced’ to jump it to 50/25 speeds (that is obscenely fast for anyone) or downgrade me to 15/5 (which is just shy of plugging back in my old modem), either way, the net result would either save me $8/month or $5/month because they no longer offer a bundle discount either! Shit on me.
In summation: I can pay $271.95 (plus tax) for what I currently have (TV, good fast internet, useless home phone + cell phones) OR I can pay $263.95 for (TV, shittier internet speeds, no home phone at all + cell phones)….hmmmmmm…. In the words of Lewis Black “how the fuck does this any of this make sense??” (I’m not sure if he actually said that, but he would)
I just had to vent, ultimately I changed nothing and am back at square one as Verizon’s bitch. Feel free to chime in your thoughts or suggestions!
PS– If it makes any difference at all, I’m in Northern Virginia where my only alternative is COX communications and they’re no better. As I just learned with them, it’s even MORE confusing. Ready for this? If I want JUST Internet & cable TV it’s $89.99/month for the first 6 months (then $116/month) but if I BUNDLE again to include a useless dreaded land line, my monthly cost drops to $75.99/month (then $107/month). How does this make ANY sense?? 
TV Cancellations and Renewal Index – Feb 2012
Posted: 02/14/2012 Filed under: Television Leave a commentI’m a big fan of TVbyTheNumbers.com and they have an excellent system of picking cancellations and renewals just after 1 or 2 episodes. I have to admit, they do a great job of it too, so I recommend you check them out. My favorite is their Cancellation/Renewal breakdown every week.
Here is their “On the Bubble” list and my take on who should stay, who should go:
| ON THE BUBBLE LIST | ||
| Private Practice | ABC | probably will stay |
| CSI: NY | CBS | probably staying |
| The Good Wife | CBS | should go, but may stay |
| Rob | CBS | should def go away |
| Rules of Engagement | CBS | probably going away |
| 90210′ | CW | should never have been here |
| Gossip Girl | CW | still has a cult following, sadly |
| Nikita | CW | will probably go away |
| Supernatural | CW | won’t die until creators kill it (like Smallville) |
| The Secret Circle | CW | No clue! |
| Alcatraz | Fox | eh, tough one, but should go away. |
| Napoleon Dynamite | Fox | not good, go away |
| Raising Hope | Fox | not very funny, go away |
| Terra Nova | Fox | not a fan, too slow to develop (like Lost) |
| Touch | Fox | I want to see more of this |
| Community | NBC | this should stay for sure |
So there you have it, the rest of the shows can be checked out directly on TVByTheNumbers website. My girlfriend will be sad that PanAm is getting the axe. I’m just happy that Fringe is still alive and Person Of Interest is killing it in ratings, great new show, check it out when you can, but you have to start from the pilot. I see Revenge is likely getting renewed, but I’m thinking, what if she actually gets her revenge this season? Wouldn’t the next season just be boring and anti-climactic? We’ll see. Watch safely my friends.
Missed the Google IPO? The Facebook IPO will not be your second chance.
Posted: 02/12/2012 Filed under: Consumerism, Investing, Technology | Tags: facebook ipo, google ipo, private equity, secondmarket Leave a commentLike so many of you out there still kicking yourselves (myself included) for not thinking that a start-up search engine company with an awe-inspiring name like ‘Google’ back in mid-2004 (just 3 years after a painful tech bubble burst) was going to be one of the hottest companies (and stocks) in American history, you are constantly now on the watch for that next hidden treasure. If you think that hidden wealth trove is the Facebook IPO though, I would caution you to not dive in head first thinking this will be a sure thing.
I am by no means an analyst on this subject matter nor will this post be a technical break-down of S-1 and IPO filings, however, this will be my common sense approach to why I think this is not a good buy in the immediate future. Here is a quick rundown of why I won’t be jumping into the Facebook IPO on opening day (or maybe even month…)
- Efficient Markets SHOULD prevail– Ok, so about 98% of the people I talk to in my circles and random people I meet out in the streets are all telling me that the Facebook IPO is coming and if you get in now you will be filthy rich like all those ex-Google secretaries boast today. Usually, in an efficient market, everything is baked into the price. I say usually because efficient markets vary drastically but in this case, it seems like a very high population of people are expecting this stock to sky rocket from day 1 and continue to grow into Berkshire territory in price. When everyone thinks the same way, there will be another splinter group of savvy investors betting against this and thus creating a very strong shorting market to bet against the populace, you know since suddenly everyone is a stock market expert and knows that this stock will surely rise indefinitely, like house prices did through 2007.
- Private Equity Markets– Hopefully by now you should be aware that there is another stock market out there that only the big boys are allowed to play in, should they choose to play to begin with. If I was one of those big boys, I would definitely want to play in this market. It is commonly known as the private stock market and one big player is site called http://www.secondmarket.com which won’t even let into the front door if you’re not considered an Accredited Investor (AKA Big Boy). My point is, Facebook is already being traded here privately and ultimately when this IPO does become public so us Average Joes can get our greedy little hands on them, it will already be ridiculously overbid to a price that most people may not even be able to afford on a per share basis. Not only that, but do you really want to own a stock that, on Day 1, has already been so overhyped that the value may be inflated by 3 to 5 times it’s actual value? This is like being almost 100% sure that LeBron James will win the NBA finals before the season started for the Miami Heat, we all know how it ended, he didn’t win but there was insane hype that he would.
- The Basics of Google vs Facebook– When Google’s IPO occurred in 2004, the company was only known by few tech geeks, students and a small % of professionals that could only compare it to the likes of AOL’s Webcrawler, Yahoo! and AskJeeves (ah the good old days). In comparison, we had no idea what else Google was capable of until they broke just about every barrier over the next 6 years and becoming a major threat to Microsoft with its first peek into cloud computing. We KNOW what Facebook is capable of and what it has done already and what it can probably continue to do, which is probably go after LinkedIn next and actually be useful to people other than recruiters. The fact that we know how great Facebook can become in my opinion, should also be a sign that the stock price will already know this as well and pack on extra premium. Now 2 years down the line if most of these lofty expectations are not met by Facebook, that premium will fade away along with Facebook’s stock price, it could be swift or just a gradual beat down over time.
Or I can be completely wrong and this post was just a giant worthless waste of my time and yours and Facebook will consistently grow at 200% every year into 2050 when we will no longer need to use computers and everything will be implanted into our mobile devices or brains and social networks will eventually lead us back to actually talking directly to people’s faces rather than on blog posts or Facebook Walls. Who knows, but I’ll be watching this unfold from the sidelines for now! Trade well my friends.
3 iPhone apps that make me more productive
Posted: 01/09/2012 Filed under: Productivity, Technology | Tags: cloud, declutter, dropbox, evernote, iphone, iphone4s, multi tasker, productivity apps, scan pages Leave a commentI must confess: I am a serial multi-tasker.
With that being said, I have so many thoughts and ideas brewing in my mind at any given time that I tend to ‘misplace’ other thoughts that may or may not be critical to my daily life. Some pieces of memory that I have misplaced in the past include but have not been limited to: my girlfriend’s birthday (never ever forgetting that again), my passwords for online banking, the reason I am standing in the middle of the grocery store with an empty cart, my niece’s name, the list goes on…
To alleviate my brain of all these burdensome memories I decided I need to find a solution to constantly track my thoughts, ideas, important numbers & dates and obscure yellow and blue notes I have riddling my desk from the bygone era of Post-It notes. After much trial and error I decided on 3 apps that met my very slim criteria in my iPhone app store. This criteria being 1) It will help me be more productive in some way and 2) It’s FREE… for the most part.
The 3 apps I discovered have been pretty amazing so far and I hope to only add 1 or 2 more apps to this mix to complete my “offline” brain, so I can focus more heavily coming up with my next blog post.
1.) Evernote- No surprise here if you are a subscriber of Inc. Magazine as they chose this company as their 2011 Company of the Year. I don’t blame them, they have a pretty well rounded and currently free
program that tries very much to double as a second brain. Perfect for absent minded serial thinkers (read A.D.D.) people like myself. I installed the PC version of this application, which I would highly recommend, signed up for a free account and also installed the companion app on my iPhone 4S and it has since been a great tool to keep my mundane memory items at bay in clean, easy to index formats so I can find them with relative ease. I feel like I have barely used half the features and it is already a helpful tool. Best of all, lots of new productivity apps are linking to Evernote now, which makes document portability completely paperless, which I need because my office is a huge mess of paper clutter. One of the apps that I have found to complement Evernote is my next most productive app.
2). Scan Pages- This highly original name for an app does exactly what its title indicates. It scans pages. How boring. You’re wasting my time reading this stupid blog just to highlight an app that scans pages? Thanks, Jerk. No seriously, 
this app is great. Another free app created by the scanning gurus at Ricoh, that uses the built-in 8mp camera to take a picture of a document that has been sitting on your desk for over 6 months yet you refuse to throw it away because “one of these days, it will come in handy”. Well that day may never actually arrive as I have learned so cruelly, so before I become another reality star on Hoarders, I started to take photo’s of these documents using Scan Pages, which quickly and almost effortlessly turns that real page into a very nice PDF file that you can snugly store in the Cloud (or your phone or home PC) whatever floats your boat. Personally, after I scan all of these documents I either send them to my Google Docs directly from the app or give it a title and put it into Evernote. Best of all, Scan Pages is fully integrated into Google Docs, Evernote and Dropbox, which coincidentally is my 3rd app on the list.
3.) Dropbox- I put this app 3rd because although it is helpful, it still a bit buggy and needs room for internal improvements. The reason I use it though is simple, it is a great way to access commonly used files between multiple 
computers as I do often since I do some work on my home PC and most of my work on the road on my laptop. I ultimately got tired of the age old options of using Remote Desktop or emailing the same document back and forth to myself, so I found this handy app that is probably more useful on your non-mobile device, but I still have the iPhone version as well. Dropbox is simply a Folder that contains your files securely on their cloud servers. Once again this is free but in order to gain more space in that folder you will need to upgrade, in my case though I only keep small Excel, Word and various image files I am working on at client sites; so works like a charm for me. My ONE gripe though is that when I am actively using a file in my Dropbox folder, sometimes it does not syncronize properly and ends up in a 2nd file appearing in the box which reads “conflict” in it. Sort of annoying, but not a total deal killer for me.
Try these apps out, see how you feel about them, hopefully it will make you just a little more productive than before you read this. In that case, mission accomplished.
If you feel there are better or complementary apps out there that I can also use, please feel free to comment below. I love learning about better ways to free the mind and live in a more decluttered and productive world!
Ardy’s DVR – November 2011
Posted: 11/02/2011 Filed under: Television Leave a commentI decided to change the title of my recurring post on TV shows to something more simple and to the point: Ardy’s DVR. I feel it’s more appropriate since I have no clue what is on there until I check it around 8pm every night. Here we go to kick off November 2011!
Fox: Ah Fox, the network that LOVES to kill good shows and keep the shitty ones until they bleed dry. Looks like New Girl is the best hit of the season so far, which I am completely in agreement with. Allen Gregory, however, needs to prove itself a little more if it wishes to stay near the likes of Family Guy and Simpsons. Fringe is seemingly turning away its viewers based on ratings, but I think it’s because it needs to be on SyFy and NOT Fox! It’s an awful show on Fox but will be awesome on a network that actually will promote it.
FX: Finally caught up to the lastest episode of The League and I am loving this show so far, especially with Seth Rogen as Dirty Randy and of course my favorite character, Rafi. 
CBS: Nothing new in the ecosystem of the CBS comedy line up. Honestly thought, who’s still watching Survivor? I certainly have not for over a decade. Not sure if I really like A Gifted Man, but it may grow on me like Revenge did (see ABC). I have not pulled myself to watch Unforgettable yet, but I promised myself I will since I hear it’s doing well in ratings, although let me preface that I am not a ratings whore and could care less about how high a show is rated, the whole rating process is flawed. Oh and go watch Person of Interest, just one episode at least, it’s good, I promise. Unless you’re like my friend, who I will call Sam for now, who has the special human power of making great TV shows cease to exist after he watches them, so if you’re like him, please don’t watch ANY of my shows. Thank you.
ABC: Ah, my breath of fresh new air. I’m now beyond any reason or logic in my desire to keep watching this impending train-wreck, Revenge. But I’m too far invested in it now and have to see who dies or gets publicly embarrassed next week. The writers for Pan Am finally put out some decent effort and are making this show tolerable for people that do not have a vagina. It only took like 4 episodes, but I think I can watch the rest of this season and still feel good about myself, unlike any male that watches Grey’s Anatomy.
More ABC: Suburgatory is still witty and pretty hilarious, so I will continue to watch this and keep it going on the DVR. Not more substance to it at all, but it’s just good old suburban hi jinx. I finally got Once Upon A Time knocked off my to do list and half way through the first 5 minutes I remembered, oh wait, Disney BOUGHT ABC, hence why they can alter classics like Snow White and Rapunzel and rewrite them for the sake of a new sitcom. If you liked fairy tales AND are into shows that would normally be aired on SyFy or the Science networks, then you should watch this, otherwise, you will probably hate this show and ABC will ultimately feel really shameful; either way, I’m still watching it!
Showtime: Premium channel time! I’m definitely hooked on Homeland as the best new show on the premium networks, but I emphasize, you have to watch this show from the very start and keep at it or you, like Claire Dane’s character, will also be on anti-psychotics because you won’t know what the f*ck is going on.
MISCELLANEOUS: So I don’t even know what networks these shows are on, nor do I care, but these shows also got stuck in my DVR thanks to my lovely girlfriend.
Long Island Medium- I really hope this show gets cancelled QUICKLY, not only is the entire premise a joke but the medium lady herself cannot be ANY MORE annoying. Maybe I really hate the Long Island accent or maybe I hate Mediums, I can tolerate most accents in all of New Jersey, but Long Island…that’s where I draw the line. Anyways, that’s my rant about this awful show and I hope it gets dismembered like another putrid show, Toddlers & Tiaras (legalized pedophilia). On a side note, she does eerily look like Kate Gosselin in like 10 years.
Thankfully the World Series is over now and some team in St Louis won I think.
ardy:theblog 
