I'm gonna start a new project. i was looking at all the stamps i have and how they are unused. so i want to do a mail project. When looking at facebook, instead of liking something on someone's wall, i'm gonna print it out and write my comment on it and mail it to the person. This i will do once a week.

I've reached one million views on all my flickr photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/spudart. Thank you to everyone who has viewed my photos.



Here's my top three most viewed photos:


Chicago's Moving Bridges over the Chicago River
Viewed 41,256 times


The Chicago Slushie
Viewed 34,790 times


Finger tattoos
Viewed 25,926 times

Wow. I often think of the battle against drunk driving to be an effort in the past 20 years. But they were posting ad campaigns even back in the 1930's!

The National Archives in Chicago stores a bajillion-million files and papers on all sorts of stuff. My sister is on staff and they pull out the most interesting items like this one and posts it to their Facebook Fan Page. Join their Fan Page today and see documents pulled out that that have been hidden away for decades.

This image is from a Automobile Safety League of America photo gallery on the National Archives at Chicago Facebook Fan Page. (this particular image was pulled by their intern Gloria. Way to go Gloria!)

Celebrate the day with the most sunlight by pulling an all-nighter outside. I accidentally did this a few years ago as I locked myself out of my apartment at 11pm. I didn't want to wake up the building engineer to let me in, so I just walked around a bunch. And then went to the Golden Nugget restaurant down the street until about 7:30am, when it was a more reasonable time for the engineer to let me back in.

I tell ya, there's lots of people that stay up late on the summer solstice night.

In addition to such stamp greats like 50s cars, Yoda, and Hawaii; the Maldre stamp store now has new stamps available.



And there is also measuring scale available to weigh your letters.

Letters:
0 - 1 ounce: $0.44
1.01 - 2 ounces $0.61
2.01 - 3 ounces $0.78
3.01 – 3.5 ounces: $0.95

Large Envelopes:
0 - 1 ounce $0.88
1.01 - 2 ounces $1.05
2.01 - 3 ounces $1.22
3.01 - 4 ounces $1.39

More weight prices at:
http://www.usps.com/prices/first-class-mail-prices.htm
A printout of this page will be available to those weighing envelopes.

For this confused, the Maldre postal store is my desk with a hanging file full of stamps. I welcome anyone in the Tower to come by and purchase some stamps.

Everyone should have an Amazon wish list.
1. It's handy for yourself to keep track of things you want.
2. It helps keep you from making unneeded spontaneous buys. (When you see an item that interests you, put it on your wish list and see if you still want it 24 hours later)
3. People might buy you stuff.

Below is a widget containing the recent items I've added to my list.



(Facebook users, RSS and email subscribers if you can't see the above widget, go to the Matt Maldre's wish list webpage to view)

Over 500,000 people are gathered outside my window at the Tribune Tower for the Blackhawks parade. I will be posting updates on what's happening in the comments section. Please feel free to jump in with your own comments at http://bit.ly/blackhawks-parade

People can now sync their flickr photos with their Facebook wall. Anytime you post something to flickr, it'll also post to your Facebook account. Sounds great, right? But what if I already look at people's photos on flickr? Now i'm going to see their photos twice. This is going to get annoying fast. It's much like people who have their tweets auto-post to Google Buzz.

Look, I don't need to see tweets duplicated on Buzz.
I don't need to see flickr photos duplicated on Facebook.

It's nice to distribute your work everywhere. But when the platform doesn't allow me to turn off the double-posting, it's a waste of time. If someone starts posting all their flickr photos automatically to Facebook, I might just have to hide that person.

HERE'S WHAT FACEBOOK NEEDS TO DO: I want the granular option to hide specific sorts of content from specific people. If someone posts their flickr photos to facebook, I want to hide the notifications of just their flickr photos. Flickr has a great interface. I don't need to go through Facebook to look at people's photos.

HERE'S WHAT GOOGLE BUZZ NEEDS TO DO: There should be an option to hide people's tweets. Right now if someone posts their tweets to Buzz I just don't follow the person. But if I could just hide their tweets, I'd happily refollow them.

BIG PICTURE PLAN:
Once we start getting all these granular controls, it's gonna get confusing to keep track of what I'm blocking where. Eventually everything needs to come together into ONE MAIN CONTROL PANEL for ALL the social media services. It would enable me to control what I see across ALL social media.

Instead right now it's just huge data dumps being unloaded on us in all these different platforms. I don't need to see the XKCD comic strip in 10 tumblr accounts and 5 facebook profiles.

I work in a company where everyone in meetings takes notes on paper. Whenever I go back to my desk, I have to type the notes for action items on my to-do list. Or for further conversation in email. It would make much more sense to just bring a laptop or netbook to the meeting and type all the notes right there.

Why aren't laptops used more in meetings? Here's some reasons maybe why:

1) Momentum
Paper: Everyone uses paper. It's the thing to use.
Laptops: Since nobody else does it, nobody else does it.

2) Loudness
Paper: Using a pen on paper is quiet. Using a pencil on paper is annoying.
Laptops: The sound of keys tipper-tappering might be considered annoying.

3) Goofing around
Paper: People can see what you are writing. If you are goofing around by doing drawings, at least you are being open about it.
Laptops: With your screen being hidden from others in the meeting, they may think you are surfing the web instead of taking notes.

4) Socialness
Paper: There's something about having your notepad laying flat down for everyone to see what you are writing. It's very communal.
Laptop: The laptop hides what you are typing. it's very secretive. What's he typing? Is it notes? is it a to-do list? Humans have the urge to know what's happening. Laptops block openness, thus human curiosity rises.

That being said. I'm still going to get a netbook. I would be cool to have an iPad, but it is near impossible to type on without looking at the screen the whole time. I figure if i'm going to be taking notes, it's nice to at least look at the person. Hmmm, then again you don't really look at people while jotting notes on paper. Hmmm. Well, the iPad is mad expensive. $499 for the cheapest model. Whereas I can get a Asus 900A Netbook for $139. Yeah, the iPad can do A LOT more. But all i want to do is type my notes on a laptop/netbook in a meeting. That's it.

Here's a photo of the Asus 900A next to a macbook.

(photo from sharonrosas)

What do you think? While in meetings, do you take your notes on paper or on a laptop? Which is the better way of taking notes?

The Tribune Tower is getting a new tattoo. Performance artist Elliott From painted a Blackhawks logo on the WGN window at the Tribune Tower today. It was a cool live painting performance as Elliott was playing music and splashing paint on the window. A crowd gathered around to watch Elliott in a Blackhawks jersey with a name "ARTBEAT LIVE" climb a ladder to complete this 12-foot tall painting.

It makes me wonder though. This Tribune Tower window has been boarded up for five days. I thought they were just replacing the glass, but then Elliott comes and does a painting on it.

What was the intent behind the board being on the window? Was Tribune fixing the glass, and then realized that it looks ugly, so they put a painting on it? Or was the board put up for the sole intention of Elliott to do a Blackhawks painting?

See other performance painting by of Artbeat Live at www.youtube.com/user/artbeatlive and www.artbeatlive.com.

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Trying to help AT&T

Normally I use around 100mb per month with my iPhone. Last month in May, it jumped up to 477mb. I haven't changed the way I used my phone, so I was curious where the extra data came from.

I want to try to manage my data, so I'm not using this extra 300mb per month, so it helps the AT&T system. You'd think AT&T would be interested helping their customers manage their data, especially since they already have a hard time handling the amount of data used on their system now.

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AT&T doesn't let you track your data usage

The AT&T rep, Crystal Brundidge, told me over an online chat, "You currently have the unlimited data plan which is $30 each month. Regardless of how much data you use, the cost is the same. "

I explain to her I want to help AT&T's system by not using as much data. I want to help. She told me, "Features that have unlimited usage are not tracked. Since the data plans for the Iphones are not changing, then your plan will remain the same."

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AT&T doesn't accept suggestions from customers

I asked her where I can submit my suggetion on how to improve the AT&T system. She responds with, "Unfortunately we do not have a suggestion box."

Here's my response, "whoa. That's wacked out. How is at&t to get better if there are not customer requests. That's wack. lol. So AT&T is just a closed up wall with no incoming suggestions? That's a bummer. Where's the innovation? I guess it lies within the walls of AT&T. And they don't want to know what the customer thinks."

She responds with, "I apologize for the inconvenience. Do you have any additional questions that I can assist you with today?"



Bottom line: AT&T doesn't want to know what their customers think.
If anyone from AT&T reads this blog post, please leave a comment below and tell me if I am wrong.

This blog post started when I read abhayshah76's tweet:
AT&T to Charge More to Heavy Users of Data http://bit.ly/cYQdso #NYTimes

Ken Griffey Jr retired today. He was the biggest deal coming up in 1989 when I was in 8th grade. His '89 Upper Deck was THE card everyone wanted. He lived up to all the hype and then-some (well, only for the first 10 years). Here's to one of the all-time greats.
-- My twin brother's status message on June 2, 2010

Here's where Ken Griffey, Jr ranks all-time on the leaderboards:

  246 Intentional Base on Balls...(4th) 
  630 Home Runs...................(5th) 
 1192 Extra Base Hits.............(6th) 
 5271 Total Bases................(12th)
 1779 Strikeouts.................(12th) 
 1836 RBIs.......................(14th) 
 1994 Runs Created...............(20th) 
 15.6 AB per HR..................(24th) 
  102 Sacrifice Flies............(25th) 
284.8 Power-Speed #..............(27th) 
 7398 Outs Made..................(29th) 
 
 2671 games played...............(31st)
 9801 At Bats....................(31st) 

 1662 Runs Scored................(31st) 
  524 Doubles....................(36th)
 1312 Base on Balls..............(37th) 
 .538 Slugging Percentage........(38th) 
 2781 Hits.......................(46th) 
 .907 On-Base Plus Slugging......(57th) 
  199 Double Plays Grounded Into.(87th) 
   81 Hit by Pitch..............(137th) 
 1589 Singles...................(150th) 
.2838 Batting Average...........(510th)

  142 Assists as CF...............(2nd) 
 5134 Putouts as CF...............(4th) 
   76 Errors Committed as CF......(7th) 
 5606 Putouts as OF...............(9th) 
 2382 Def. Games as OF...........(14th) 
 .986 Fielding % as CF...........(79th) 

Here's my favorite 20 tweets from May 2010 tweeted from spudart, mattmaldre, and fourspudart.

It would be nice if ebay would archive the auction page of the auctions you win. I've started doing that now. I save both a screenshot PNG and a printable PDF.

The PNG file is so I can see exactly how the page looked like. I use an add-on for Firefox called Pearl Crescent Page Saver Basic. It takes a screenshot of the entire webpage and makes it one image file in the PNG format.

The PDF keeps the text searchable, so if I ever want to easily search my hard drive for the original auction item, the PDF will show up in a contents search. To save the PDF, I go to the print the webpage. But instead of clicking "print" I click "save as PDF."

I know it sounds kinda crazy to save the auction page for the items I win. But it's neat to have the back story of how I aquired these items. It's kinda fun to see how they marketed the item. Plus sometimes there's extra info that I would normally forget. LIke in this ewok animation cel that i bought, I would probably not remember that it's Wicket, Latara, and Teebo featured in this drawing.