Weatherproofing Amazon’s New Kindle 3 for the Beach

I am very aware of the damage that the salt water and sand can do to any electronics and always enclose my phone in a sandwich bag prior to bringing it to the beach. Today is the first day I am bringing my new Kindle 3 to the beach. It turns out that Ziploc quart-size freezer bags perfectly fit the Kindle 3. The trick to using it on the beach while contained in the plastic wrap is to remove the air prior to fully closing the bag. I leave about 3/4″ unzipped and use that small space to suck out all the air and then immediately close the bag. With the clear side of the bag protecting the reading surface, I can fully use the Kindle without worry of damage due to any sand or salt water.

Genie Garage Door Opener GCG350 Fails to Open/Close

I’m surprised to see an established manufacturer use plastic gears to drive the opening and closing of a garage door. In time, the plastic gears wear and the garage door opener cannot perform its duty. You can see the worn threads around the rim of the gear, and even worse, which is the cause for slippage, is the worn and cracked area around where the shaft goes. The square shaft no longer is secure inside of the gear and thus it slips while trying to open the garage door. Fortunately, this is easily (and cheaply) fixed.

For my garage door opener, Genie model GCG350, the outer housing is removed with a single screw in the middle of the case. With the housing removed, there are three screws that need to be removed from a plastic, black enclosure that houses the gear. With the gear housing removed, the gear is easily removed, along with the square, metal shaft. Be careful when removing the gear housing as there are two metal washers around the shaft and laying on top of the gear housing that can easily fall off. If the gear does not come off with very little effort, pull the cord on the chain drive and adjust the garage door such that there is no more tension on the gear. Replace the gear with a new one; I ordered mine from garagedooropeners on eBay, Genie 27096A Garage Opener Drive Gear, for $2.71 + $3.75 shipping (order more than one as this repair only lasts a few years). Add everything back in reverse and it should work fine. It is a bit tricky to get the gear casing on as it is difficult to line up the shaft and keep the washers in place – it just takes a bit of patience and very little effort.

Social Networks and Business Email Addresses

With the introduction of Microsoft’s Social Connector for Outlook, it becomes even more imperative to separate your personal identity from your business identity. In a nutshell, every working professional should have at least two email addresses – one used for work purposes and one for personal use. Never, I repeat, never let the two intertwine.

Recently, I sent an email to a manager at a spa dealership to inquire about the status of an order. It was quite a shock to see a picture of the him giving me the middle finger in my email window! This picture happened to be his Facebook profile picture. I can tell you it left a less than favorable impression on me and made me much less inclined to do business there again.

The Outlook Social Connector will go to Facebook and download your profile picture and display it right in the email window if it can link up the email address being used. Also, if there are any wall postings that are public, they will appear there, too. If you have this plug-in installed, you do not need to visit facebook.com to get information related to an email address, it will appear in your message window as soon as you type in an email address in your To or CC/Bcc field.

Currently, there are not many social connector providers, but with the API for the Social Connector published, I predict most, if not all, major social networking sites having a connector. Current providers are Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live Messenger, and MySpace.

What this means is that if you have created an account at one of these sites using a work-related email address, change it immediately! If you don’t have another email address, go to https://mail.google.com and create an account, now and then change your email address on the social networking site, removing your work email address.

Beware that if someone possesses both your personal and professional email addresses and has them attached to an Outlook contact, the Outlook Social Connector can triangulate between the addresses and still display your personal information even when using the business address. Make certain that only the people you want to see your personal information have your personal email address.

Impressive Amazon Kindle 3 Packaging

The new kindle box is nothing like the original! The box is very “green” as it not only contains the box but it is its shipping container. Simple instructions are printed on recycled cardstock (one long piece, folded, not cut), and the startup instructions are imprinted on the screen in e-Ink with a protective, clear covering, not wasting any ink or paper. The cord is also enclosed with the same, recycled cardstock, not plastic. My only gripe in packaging is that the container could have been just a bit smaller, though not much. Overall, the Kindle packaging is an A+!

Problems Using Newly Purchased TomTom Maps

If you purchased a map within the past 24 hours from TomTom then you are likely to see an error message when trying to select the map: “You cannot use this map on this device.” Turns out there is a problem with the certificate on the map and you will need to call TomTom support (US: +1.866.486.6866) to have them generate a new certificate, unless you downloaded it prior to 2010/8/18 3:19pm EDT then you will need to delete the map from your device and the cached downloaded files for the map. Updating your TomTom from the Home program should install a fresh (and fixed) copy of the map.

On a Mac OS X system, the following steps are necessary to remove the map:

1. Connect the TomTom to the computer
2. Open the Internal drive
3. Delete the folder containing the maps – mine was titled North_America_2GB
4. On the Mac, in your Documents folder, remove the contents of the folder TomTom/Downloads.
5. Using the TomTom Home program, update the device and install the map.