After Lowes’ Katrina houses, we now have IKEA’s flat-box shipped house options. But, they aren’t available in the US — at least not yet.

These little gems aren’t inexpensive, however. And one development in northern Europe is using the BoKlok  homes, clustered, in neighborhoods. To learn more, read this Realtytimes.com article.

Although I love the tiny houses, and I like the idea of high-efficiency home production, these houses hold little charm. To me, they look like boxes — and ugly ones at that.

To each his own, I guess.

I love the concept of a roll-up computer the size of a largish dinner napkin. Don’t you?

The design (and it is a design concept only, btw) is like a latex tablet pc that’s uber-thin. Kinda cool.

I’ve been tweaking all my systems lately and I wanted to share the list of firefox addons I’ve settled in to use. These are all tried and true — no browser-breakers here. (more…)

I saw this little work of art while driving around Danville, Kentucky the other day, and I just had to grab a shot of it.

(It looked particularly interesting cruising the parking lot — with the post-its on the wheels twirling around.)

I’ve been battling with the frustration of having a Thunderbird application that shuns it’s brother, Firefox, in my Kubuntu install.

Whenever I click on a link in an email, Konquer launches. I don’t like Konquer. I like Firefox. Firefox has all my cool add-ons and the tools I know. It wastes my time and frustrates me to look (in vain) for my tools before realizing that I’m staring at a Konquer window.

Setting Firefox as the default for Kubuntu didn’t work. Nothing I’ve tried before today worked. After searching high and low for some 5 months now, I finally found the answer.

Whoo-Hooo!!! Today is a GOOD day. (I’m a simple woman, it doesn’t take much to make me ecstatic.)

If you want to have Firefox launch, you have to make this change from inside Thunderbird itself in Linux: (more…)

Best of Craigslist – amusing, but seldom rated “G” — it’s a wonderful place to waste some of your life and get a few chuckles (or nod in silent knowing — depending on your own life experiences.)

Take a walk on the woodsy side with this enchanting tiny house from Whales — built by hand with straw bales, imagination and little else. Simply amazing low-impact housing with a sense of magic and wonder — and all built for 3000 British pounds.

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On the topic of tiny houses, this one is another oddity. But isn’t it fun?

See more of the interior and exterior here: http://itsjustabitoffun.com/date/2007/8/20/.

If you use Kubuntu and you want a command line string to easily backup the entire Linux system on an external hard drive (for regular backups as well as offsite backups), without encountering recursive errors, permission problems and other headaches, try using this TAR command from Konsole: (more…)

I think I have found one of the sweetest little Tiny Houses in the USA while cruising around online the other day. Now, I’d just love to have this tiny little thing built into the side of the cliff, overlooking the “big creek” on my own farm!

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The writer’s strike resulted in “Black Monday” last week during which the major studios fired many of the best writers, producers, etc. in the entertainment industry. I don’t really watch public television, but I do purchase the shows I like, via iTunes, and the selection has been pretty slim and the episodes pretty strangely spaced and noticeably off since the strike ensued.

I don’t like it. I don’t like it because it messes with my fun, but primarily I don’t like it because this guarantees an abundance of default consumption of the stupidest stuff to ever hit the tube: Reality TV.

How does reality TV suck? Let me count the ways… (more…)

The new space-hungry multimedia applications coupled with consumer desire for the convenience of external “plug and play” drives have resulted in a host of new possibilities for data portability and ease of use for the remote professional.

The cost to store data is plummeting. In 2007 I saw the price of a 500 gig drive cut in half in a matter of weeks. Having the “space” to store your stuff is no longer the same issue it might have been a couple years ago.

I just picked up an external terabyte drive for under $250 and a portable drive (about the size of a deck of playing cards) that holds 250 gigs of information and cost less than $140. As an “old-time” geek, I find that incredible.

Many of the newer small portable drives don’t even require external power, so a short USB cord is all you need to carry. Simple “lipstick” flash drives with 16 gigs of storage space can be purchased without breaking the bank.

There are a number of Open Source programs that make it possible to plug in an external drive into a host computer and use the hardware (cpu, monitor, video, peripherals) to run personal programs without leaving a “footprint” behind. (For Apple fans, you can even use your iPod or your iPhone to run the software!)

What does this mean for you? You can now buy an external drive of any size that meets your needs and carry it to a client’s site rather than carrying an entire computer. You can also take it on a trip, to a library, or even to a friend’s house. You can plug it in any usb drive to open and run files, perform diagnostics, access your personal data, send emails, look up your usernames and passwords and never leave any trace of your personal information on your client’s computer. You are simply “borrowing” the hardware to view, edit and manipulate your information – the software programs and data reside on your drive.

If you are new to “portable apps” and would like a basic tour, visit http://portableapps.com/ to get an “all in one” package of applications for Windows OS and Mac OS (Linux is coming soon). My favorites from this line-up are:

• GIMP Portable – an image and graphics manipulation program (it’s the program I use, full size, in my office)
• FileZilla Portable– the best, easiest FTP client I’ve ever used
• Miranda IM Portable – IM from anywhere!
• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition – my favorite browser in a portable platform
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition – take your email with you (get the version with an address book)
• MPlayer Portable – I’ve been a fan of this program since my Treo days, when it was the only program that made movies work seamlessly on my smartphone.
• VLC Media Player Portable – great portable option for multi-media entertainment (and the one I use on my Linux box)
• OpenOffice.org Portable – all the office software basics in your pocket (and compatible with the commercial “big boys”)
• 7-Zip Portable – compression/archiving program to manipulate most common file extensions.
• KeePass Password Safe Portable– I love this program on my main computer and find it handy to be able to take this secure, encrypted file with all my critical data wherever I go.

If you are a rebel and would like to pick and choose your own apps, try any of the following websites to pick and choose your programs for any use:

• http://pendriveapps.com/
• http://www.portablefreeware.com/
• http://www.usbspace.com/
• http://www.no-install.com/ (requires registration)

You may also want to use the portable option to try out new or beta software without risking your main machine’s set up. Lifehacker offers an example on safely trying the Firefox 3 beta from a flashdrive.

If you are interested in running Linux on a portable, check out http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ for more information.

To keep your data secure on these small (and infinitely easy-to-misplace) devices, install a copy of TrueCrypt, a highly-acclaimed opensource “on-the-fly” encryption program – just in case.

Now you know how to work from anywhere by borrowing a computer, rather than lugging your own, without any worry about privacy or confidentiality issues for your data or your client data. And, when you are finished working you simply pull your drive from the USB port and take it with you. Now THAT is portability!

If you (like me) have considered incorporating on multiple occasions, you may be interested in some information about the tax and simplicity benefits of staying ’solo’ in the legal organization of your business.

Learn more about tax benefits for sole proprietorships.

A client sent me information and photos of the smallest house in Toronto, Canada this week. She knew I have a thing for tiny houses, and she said this one should be right up my alley. The house, purchased for $139,000 last year (according to a report from Reuters), has recently been revamped and is now back on the market for $179,900.

It boasts (or should I say “whispers”?) 300 square feet of living space with a tiny back patio. If small living is your thing, this might be your next house!

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Check out this “graphic” view of reality: http://glob.anewyorkthing.com/?p=2334.

I love it!

Some words are difficult to differentiate. For those with who struggle with how to use “ensure” vs. “assure” vs. “insure,” I offer the following information:

To “assure” a person of something is to make him or her confident of/about it.

According to the Associated Press Stylebook, to “ensure” that something happens is to make certain that it does.

To “insure” is to issue an insurance policy.

I’m tired of hearing the same old words used to describe nothing in particular — and I’m in a largish club. (more…)

Yeah, it’s a fortune, but it’s also amazingly cool. I’d love to have a book half this amazing. (And you would too — admit it!)

I’ve rekindled my love of fine books lately and have been drooling over a number of leather-bound editions online, which is how I found out about this.

Want to learn more about it yourself? Want to see the leather-bound edition with silver and gem skull relief on the cover? Want to drool over the fact that only seven exist in the world and that Rowling herself hand-wrote the text? Yeah, I thought so.

http://tinyurl.com/2a9h7m

I’ve been following the LiveScribe Pen product since it was announced several months ago, and it occurs to me that this would be a great way for real estate agents to record meetings (and take notes) with both buyers and sellers.

How cool would it be to tap on your notes to “replay” the list of features that a potential buyer wants (when you didn’t quite have time to jot them all down?)

Personally, I’d love a way to hook this into a phone so I could take notes while consulting with a client and have the conversation “searchable” when I’m reviewing notes and completing tasks (with the client’s permission of course).

The chat-boards are already talking about my ideal paper solution — a Moleskin pocket sized notebook with the dot-pattern. Now THAT would be an awesome portable solution for this pen-and-paper loving tech-geek!

If you have a FaceBook account and want a chance at winning a pen — before they are available for sale, join the LiveScribe group. (Find out how here.) They go on sale at the end of this month.

(I’m getting a technology itch again, dang it!)

Web two-point-oh. You have been hearing about it several years and in 2007, it was EVERYONE’s favorite online buzzword.Now it’s 2008 and all you know is that you are supposed to be more “involved” online and that you probably need to sign up for a bunch of “social networking” sites and get some cool widgets to make your site score more visitors.

You also know that you don’t have the time to send messages to people on MySpace (and you don’t really want to). So, if you can just find the right tool, the right technology, that elusive “thing” you are missing — you can conquer this Web 2.0 frontier. Right? (more…)