I picked up an external 10-key keypad at Staples tonight and plugged it into my Macbook Pro (Snow Leopard) and found Targus doesn’t [...]]]> My Receivership work is requiring a lot of spreadsheet work…which is a pain on my laptop…Mac, Windows…it doesn’t matter. Numeric Data entry on a laptop is simply for the birds.

I picked up an external 10-key keypad at Staples tonight and plugged it into my Macbook Pro (Snow Leopard) and found Targus doesn’t know how to spell MAC.

I was almost ready to test its high impact wall resiliency and promise myself to never purchase a Targus product again, when I came across a solution on the MacRumors forum.

First, although there is a solution (below), Targus get a #FAIL on hardware compatibility.

Second, here is an excellent write up of the problem from Makosuke:

I just bought a Targus USB numeric keypad (the corded one without built-in calculator, but with a 2-port USB hub) for my MBP. Plugged it in, OSX (10.4) recognized it as a keyboard but couldn’t figure out the type since it was a keypad not full keyboard, but it works… almost.

End result it’s useless in Calculator (or the widget) since it hits clear after every number so you can’t input anything, and while I can input numbers into a text document the extraneous “clear”s slow it down and make annoying beeping (since there’s no defined action for that key in, say, TextEdit).

Targus’s website help is pretty much useless.

Luckily Shawn Levasseur found a solution in the reviews of this keyboard at Amazon.com posted by someone with the username, “The Wizard”: http://www.amazon.com/Targus-PAUK10U…R30E5W6AUBQKQK

Great job Shawn and The Wizard!!! You saved my wall from an unfriendly dent.

Here’s the solution:

This [Targus PAUK10U Keypad] doesn’t work with a mac unless…

Do exactly as I say and it will work fine:

• When your Targus keypad is disconnected press and hold the Num Lock button.
• Connect your Targus Keypad USB cable to your mac USB port (not a hub) while still pressing and holding the Num Lock key.
• When the Num Lock green LED light goes on, wait for exactly at least three seconds (count 1, 2, 3) then release the Num Lock Key.
• Now it shouldn’t Beep and it will work fine in programs like Excel.

Dharmesh Shah posted this great list of things to consider when starting your first sales team. Excerpt:

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Your sales force if your company’s lifeblood. No matter how good your product is, it won’t sell itself, no matter [...]]]> Bill Bryant, a member of the Seattle Tech Startup Mailing list found this post…thanks Bill!

Dharmesh Shah posted this great list of things to consider when starting your first sales team. Excerpt:

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Your sales force if your company’s lifeblood. No matter how good your product is, it won’t sell itself, no matter how much you believe otherwise. Establishing a competent, effective team to draw customers is often challenging for entrepreneurs, though, who would rather focus on research and development or chase VCs.

Read the list here: 14 tips for building a startup sales team

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If you are interested in the Seattle Tech Startup mailing list:

Seattle Tech Startup mailing list
Organize@seattletechstartups.com

Luckily [...]]]> I have been frustrated with Apple’s instructions on syncing my Mac’s contact list to my Gmail contacts. I think the root cause is the assumption that I am already syncing an iPhone or iPod Touch with my Mac. Simply stated, the sync with Google option does not appear as a Preference option.

Luckily I just ran across Franklin Davis’ blog post at Zaphu:

How to Enable Mac Address Book to Sync with Google’s Gmail Contacts without an iPhone or .Mac [Mac Guide]

The critical information is changing the Family ID to 10001 in the Plist. Uh, Plist? Uh, Terminal? Not to worry, Franklin refers you to Gina Trapani‘s Lifehacker post:

Enable Google Contact Sync Without an iPhone or iPod Touch

This post shows you how to enable the functionality without using Terminal

I ended up following Gina’s instructions since I am not comfortable in Terminal. Couple 10 minutes later everything was put together and syncing.

Thanks to Franklin and Gina for finally helping sync up my Gmail contacts without having to double post information in both Mac Contacts and Gmail.

Understand why everyone wants to be Mobile.

Everyone you ask? Yes, 4 Billion everyones. As they say, there are only 800 million cars on the planet, Internet user equal 1.4 Billion, only [...]]]> In their February 6, 2009 blog posting supporting the book Communities Dominate Brands by Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore…

Understand why everyone wants to be Mobile.

Everyone you ask? Yes, 4 Billion everyones. As they say, there are only 800 million cars on the planet, Internet user equal 1.4 Billion, only 850 Million cable & satellite subscribers. So yes, everyone has a mobile phone.

Its a great read.

I downloaded it, set it up in no time flat, and posted my first blog posting with it.

Slick interface and very easy [...]]]> On last week’s Macbreak Weekly, Leo Laporte reported he liked Blogo. It is a blogging editor for the Mac.

I downloaded it, set it up in no time flat, and posted my first blog posting with it.

Slick interface and very easy to use.

I view it as an [...]]]> I’ve been using my Livescribe since Christmas and have found adequate value so far. Adequate because I’m taking written notes in a notebook…big wow. Although I have been syncing everyday, I have not exported to PDF and have not really used the true power of the tool.

I view it as an insurance policy, meaning all my notes are backed up electronically and I can listen in at any point of a meeting’s audio. Although I haven’t used it for a CYA yet, I can see how useful it will be. I wish I would have had meetings recorded last year when we had a need to hold our incompetent CEO’s feet to the fire.

Here is a cool use for Livescribe. I listen to my voicemail on speakerphone and have the recorder turned on the Livescribe. I write down the person’s name and phone number and thats it. Later I can click on the person’s name and listen to voicemail. Its like a backup voicemail system. Pretty Slick.

Here is the definition of Lamonti from [...]]]> I get asked a lot what Lamonti is. Most people think it is Italian. I found the word about 10 years ago while I was trying to find a name for one of my companies. Being from Seattle, I was looking at West Coast Indian words that would work out.

Here is the definition of Lamonti from a Chinook Jargon website (you can also find a Chinook Jargon entry on Wikipedia:

lamonti — mountain, from Fr. la montaigne (pron lamonTAI).Hyas lamonti — the high mountains, hyas hyas lamonti the deep mountains, remote faraway mountain country. Note alsohyas hyas stone illahee, meaning the “greatest and biggest land of stones” – the great barren high country (in Paul St. Pierre’s novella Breaking Smith Quarter Horse; the context is the vast and diverse inland alpine areas of the Coast Mountains, flanking the Chilcotin district where the action of the story takes place). (Stone in orthodox CJ is usually testicles, the possible subreference here may be to the power and ruggedness of the lands described by the phrase).

Here’s the deal. We bought a camcorder 3 years ago when Lily was born. It was great, fit in [...]]]> My wife rocks. I’m a gadget freak, so for Father’s Day she researched the best gadgets on CNET and found a review of the Flip Mino. As of today, August 17, 2008 it sells for $151.48 on Amazon.

Here’s the deal. We bought a camcorder 3 years ago when Lily was born. It was great, fit in my hand and took two hours of tapes. Here’s the problem: it sits in a bag downstairs somewhere, the battery always seems to be dead, the tape always seems to be full and its a bit too much hassle to get the video off of the tape and on to a format we will actually use.

The Flip Mino, on the other had, is a little smaller than a deck of playing cards. I just carry it around in my pocket. The internal memory holds about 60 minutes worth of video and the device has a built in USB connector. I simply plug it into my computer and copy over the videos.

Flip Mino

Here’s a shot with the USB Connector open:

Here’s how I use it:

1. Take as many videos as you want before it fills up (about 60 minutes).

2. Flip up the USB Connector and plug it into your USB port on your Mac [You're not still using Windows are you? If so then go here.]

3. Copy the files from FLIPVIDEO\DCIM\100VIDEO\*.avi to where ever you are going to store your videos. Yes, you read it correctly. Flip stores the files as an AVI file. Luckily you can convert it over (see below). I have a couple Western Digital Passport: 250 Gig USB external drives I use for my media files. Although I bought mine at Costco, you can currently get them for $95.99 at Amazon. On the Passport, I have a subdirectory called “Video_Flip”.

4. Once you confirm the videos were copied over, go ahead and delete them off of the Flip. If the little LCD light is blinking on the Flip’s USB connector, go ahead and leave it connected to charge the battery up. It will stop blinking when complete. NOTE: if you completely drain the battery, you can not simply plug it in and download videos. You have to wait until it charges up to some magic point. The documentation doesn’t mention this and I thought it was broken.

5. If you are like me, you probably have a week or so worth of videos stored up on the Flip. They always are named incrementally starting at 001. So when you delete them off the Flip, the counter starts over. If you are always copying the files into the same subdirectory on your computer, you will have file collisions from files with the same name. Instead, every time I copy something over, I rename the files with the date I took the video (ie. 20080817-001). That way I also know when I took the video.

6. Fire up iMovie and import a clip. Create a new project and name it. I use the following naming convention: YYYYMMDD_description (ie. 20080621_sacramentors). That way I know when the video was shot and I have a fighting chance of knowing what it was about.

7. Drag the clip into the project, or edit the clip to your hearts content. I put a title clip at the front with both a name and date.

8. Under the Share pull down menu, select Export. I save it to the same subdirectory as my .avi files on my Passport. You can select the file size and attributes. I save it as a Medium (640×330) size so I can play it on my Apple TV.

9. Add the file into iTunes and you’re set.

Here is what a quick video looks like: