Love change! Don’t you? It’s good stuff. The change this time is a new computer and a new phone. Fun times. The new devices are faster, hold more information, and more powerful. The phone has a pretty bomb camera and the computer has video editing capability only matched by super villains. Looks like I’m getting a macbook pro 15in and an iPhone 4S. The straw that broke that camel’s back was that both of my current devices (macbook and iPhone 4) ran out of disk space.
“WHAT? That’s like buying new clothes because you haven’t done laundry!” Yup. At least on the surface. Think about it this way: It’s a miracle that you can still sell my 3-year old computer for the ballpark of $600. Show me ANY PC that holds its value that well. My current computer still works great after 3 years and I should count my lucky stars for that and sell it while it’s still worth a lot. Kinda like the Jetta. It should hurt a little bit to sell it. At least then you know you can get a good chunk of cash for it and put that toward something you want that works well. Like an ‘06 vibe.
So here’s the auction on my computer. eBay is fun. Good times. Maybe I’ll sell my phone, too. Who knows. I was sort of thinking of keeping it just to have a backup or another camera. We’ll see.
Change change change. Also last night I did an open mic night at a local music venue. It was so fun. Oh man I miss being a band or otherwise musical group more than I thought. Last week I jammed twice with some friends and it was amazing. I LOVED it. I really feel alive when I’m rocking out. It’s so natural and happiness-causing.
Nah, I think you’re lying everyone loves data. Here’s a summary of how many and what kind of visitors I had in 2010. Kinda fun! The data is gathered by Google Analytics, a free service to anyone with Gmail. You add the code to your website/blog and it does the rest.
Below are just a couple simple figures. It has A LOT more, like the type of computer or browser a person has, how often people come back, etc. Just know that almost every website gathers this info and so much more. I customized these reports with Adobe Illustrator so they would be more simple and readable.
Comment and let me know if this is the first time you’ve heard of Google Analytics or if this info scares you or if my blog is more/less popular than you thought.
This first one is a summary of total visits and what countries across the globe enjoy reading www.ethandparker.com. Because web browsers can translate stuff instantly, these people can still read what I’m writing about unless I put text in an image like I did below where it says “Top 5 Countries that like me!”
One day I will reach out to those in Mongolia. One day.
Since the US is the most popular country and most of the readers live there, let’s take a closer look. Utah not surprisingly is the state that visits the most, but AZ and CA aren’t bad. It was my goal to have visits from all 50 states. Including visits from 2009, it happened!
Below is a summary of people visiting my blog via smart phones. Notice in 2010 the trend of this traffic becoming more popular. Just like the CEO of Omniture told our group of 20 BYU students, the mobile market (smartphone) is like the internet was in 1995. That was 2 years ago so it’s looking more like 1997. What are you going to do about it?
Jim Lovell came and spoke at BYU today. Tom Hanks plays him in Apollo 13. He was very personable and funny. This is what he looks like from far away. I was impressed by his spiritual views on life. He surprised us with his easy-going attitude.
Stanford is a hub for innovation and every year they have a “Mystery Object Video Contest” of sorts. They announce a random object and then you have 5 days to create the most “value”, documented by video. The value could be humor, service, fund raising, etc.
Many of you probably don’t know about this, but 2 years ago Parker Planners sponsored this same contest at BYU. It was a ton of fun and we even got Deloitte the accounting firm to sponsor us! These groups of students had only 5 days to think up, write, direct, film, and submit their videos. Great job to them says I! We had about 9 submissions, here were the top 2 and then an honorable mention. The winner got $500.
Last week Benjie and I worked at the annual Omniture Summit where top marketing executives from fortune 500 companies gather to learn more about internet commerce. It was lots of fun and we learned a lot.
I unapologetically post this food:
It was delicious and filled with two varieties of wonderful chocolate and vanilla mousse. Wow. Lotsa good food at this thing.
There were lotsa signs like this. It was in the Grand America Hotel, pretty sweet venue. The Killers played on Wed night.
Here’s Benjie and I in front of a kiosk thing. Omniture tells companies how many visitors on the web they get and also what people do when they get on their websites and buy things. Some of their customers are Walmart, GM, AT&T, and MTV.
Adobe purchased Omniture for $1.8 billion recently so their name is on everything. Here’s the first mobile devices (Palm Pre, Nexus One Google Phone) with Flash implemented and working. This will come out in about June. Cool! Apple doesn’t want flash (internet application that allows animations and online games) on the iPhone because they think it will do away with their free app game market. Silly Apple.
I have been protesting Facebook for some 3.5 years now. I thought it was a big waste of time because so many do just that.
I have decided that I’m going to be in the world and try not to be of it. Because my father, grandmother, bishop, and Church now have facebook pages I figure it’s finally time.
Oh man, my windows are so dirty. I can’t clean them, though, because I don’t have an elaborate vehicle to hoist me 2 feet off the ground to wipe ‘em down.
Hello ya’ll readers of Being Happy, Living the Dream.
I’m back from vacation time and its on like Donkey Kong blogwise. Just got back to Provo and its time to kick-start a new year. I love govt. grants and interest-free student loans. Beautiful things.
I may abandon windows. XP is getting a little dated for me. I’m typing to you from Leopard a.k.a. OS X (operating system like windows, vista, etc.) from my macbook right now and its nice I must admit. I’m getting into the habit because when Adobe CS 5 comes out I’m going to install it on the Mac side of my computer.
CS stands for “creative suite” and it’s adobe’s bundle of design software. Rumor has it that the new Flash version can program iPhone apps right from the graphic interface so you don’t have to know the Objective-C programming language to make apps! Way way rad.
I’ll fill in some pictures from the break. Welcome back!
I was in a math class at ASU for about a week. The professor would talk about the online homework, or “web work” in his curious, idiosyncratic manner probably 5 times every class period. I dropped the class and tested out instead (mostly because it was at 8am). When I told the teacher, he asked: “was it the web work?” ha ha
Tonight and last night I’ve spent probably 8 hours doing web work. Website and blog web work, that is (waaaayyyy better than math!) Notice the new “Favicon” ?? Yeah! It looks like this: and can be found at the top of your browser to the left of the address bar. It’s kind of a pain to put up there, but so much cooler than just the you see on other web pages.
So Parker Planners has a blog now. www.uselifewisely.com oh yeah. Can you believe we have 150 facebook fans? I hope a lot more people become fans so they can always be in touch with our inspirational messages
This “social” aspect of business can be pretty confusing sometimes. I guess it’s important, though. Good ‘ole writing a post at 1:30 am. Later.
I may have mentioned Zinch in this blog before, but if not, they are a big inspiration for me as an entrepreneur. I was in one of the founder’s wards (geographic area of LDS church members) last summer, Brad Hagen. This last March I stumbled upon his younger brother’s blog; Mick Hagen. Since then I think I have read every post he wrote since 2006 and ate it all up.
He dropped out of Princeton to start this company and had no assurance that it would succeed other than faith and talent. There have been naysayers, but it will likely grow into something really big, multi-millions. He’s just someone who lives for the right reasons it seems to me, and he’s fearless. www.mickhagen.com is the blog.
So until recently Mick didn’t know I was blog-stalking him and we had never met. Since he’s opening an office in San Fransisco and moving away on Friday I decided to visit the office and meet him. Today Mick told me the gist of the Zinch story and answered some questions I had written down. Very cool and very intelligent young man (25!) as I expected him to be from reading about his life. We exchanged business cards.
Here is a “tweet” he wrote just a little while ago. Nice to be acknowledged by those you admire. I hope to be the same way when people approach me about business. Especially those with companies not as developed as mine (believe it or not that’s happened to me with my biz Parker Planners once or twice).
Zinch is a very innovative site that allows high school kids to get looked at by their dream college. It’s also a hub for scholarships. The students create a profile much like my space or facebook and colleges pay to be able to view and sort these profiles.
When I got my Pre on Sept 2, 2009 there were 41 free apps. You couldn’t purchase any yet because the store wasn’t officially open. Today, Dec 9, 2009 there are 613 available for purchase and few have more than 50 reviews. Palm was touting the Pre as the iPhone killer; they’re gonna have to try harder.
The iPhone by contrast has 110,485 apps and well over 2 billion total downloads.
Here are some more cool mobile app facts: reference
Apple has sold more than 50 million iPhones and iPod touches (up from 37 million in April)
The App Store is available in 77 countries
There are 125,000 registered iPhone developers
Basically all this means is that I should have released the Parker Planner iPhone app a long time ago. In March 2009 I heard the CEO of Omniture say that the mobile app situation right now is just like the internet was in 1995. If that’s true, holy crapoli I need to get on the horse of innovation and bust it out.
The world needs a Parker Planner adapted to the iPhone!
I like the Pre and the service only costs about $50 a month. iPhones cost $100/mo. for full service but I’ll get an iPhone sooner or later I’m sure.
I was spending time with my brother and dad last Thurs and we decided to buy a crazy little remote control helicopter. It flies great so we thought we’d try it outside. It got stuck in a tree so here I am getting it out using a ladder in the bed of our truck. mmmhmmm. Worked.
In the days of environmental over human supremicy, we thought we’d do our part by detroying an old piece of furniture by tossing it off the third floor of our apartment complex. Our manager gave us a new dresser, so this one will become firewood.
This post is from the Arizona trip I just took, but it requires special attention because of all the solar fun. There’s a lot of sun there and they take advantage of it. Check out this parking meter thing you can pay with a credit card at, solar powered!!
Next up is a crazy trash can on campus at ASU that compacts the trash into neat blocks, or something.
The super sweet solar biz my brother-in-law started and currently owns and operates is called “Secure Source” and this is one of their solar-powered security camera units. They have patent-pending technology that rocks the house and I’m in the process of making a simple informational website for them. Here’s me and Cooper. He’s got a sweet beard.
Yo YO! I finally got a smart phone. Yup, one of those new-phangled doo-whackys that can check your email, take 3 mp pictures, do “tweets” and even make phone calls! It’s called the Palm Pre and so far I likes it pretty good.
Here are a couple pictures we took with it. That’s a true blue Parker Planners shirt if you couldn’t tell. We’ve got T-shirts, its official.
Parker Planners