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If you want to see a company who knows how to work the blogosphere, it doesn’t get any better than what I’ve been seeing over here at Vinny Carpenter’s blog.

David Friend, CEO of Carbonite is all over the blog post answering questions and solving problems for people - and impressing the hell out of me.

I can’t use his products so I cannot say much about them… Why? I used external fixed disk drives and Carbonite doesn’t support right now.

I use Mozy - but now have a far better opinion of Carbonite since watching this guy and if they ever add the support I need, I’ll be in the right mindset to give it a try. It looks to me like they are taking care of consumers and that is terrific to see.

But I now have a new example of doing this right.

When you take pride in your work, it shows. Sometimes, it’s downright artistic. These guys take pride in the work. What’s more, almost nobody will ever see it. This is behind the scenes cabling that makes things like this website work. Anyone can pull wire, but only certain people can make it look like a masterpiece.

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another two photos after the break

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AT CES, Samsung showed off their new web-connected TV which lets you display subscribed RSS feeds (only USA Today for now) on the screen. Equipped with an Ethernet connection, they can pull RSS feeds, allowing you to customize your news, weather, sports, and more. Other providers are also working on improving this integration, but I like Samsung’s approach.

Information dashboards are all the rage. I’ve seen executives with 5 plasmas on their wall, each displaying a few data points (and helping to heat their office) My parents would never use this, but for upwardly bound news junkies, having feeds show over Bloomberg, CNN or other incoming information sources might be the perfect office jewelry. It reminds me of what was cool about Pointcast, but using the latest tech.

RSS can of course carry rich media (it’s really just a list of pointers in a package) so there is no limit to the types of textual, audio, video, and interactive information that can flow this way.

“USA TODAY is excited about this innovative and groundbreaking partnership with Samsung,” said Jeff Webber, senior vice president of advertising for USA TODAY and publisher of USATODAY.com. “The ability to deliver up-to-date news content to Samsung’s customers is just one more way USA TODAY is working to expand how people get news and information.”

USA TODAY is a multimedia brand with print, digital, video and mobile platforms that reach millions of readers each month. USA TODAY will provide national and world news as well as keep viewers in touch with the latest in money, sports, life, weather and politics news for the InfoLink™ RSS service. The Weather section will allow viewers to personalize current temperatures and seven-day forecasts by zip code and will also feature weather alerts. Markets data will offer market summaries and individual stock quotes.

Consumers need only to press the special RSS button on the Samsung HDTV remote control to bring up a semi-transparent menu overlay featuring selectable newsfeeds covering a variety of customizable topics. Consumers can then either browse through headlines to catch a quick glimpse, or select a specific story to view full story. Content already playing on the HDTV will remain on-screen, ensuring that moments from a favorite show or a fantastic play during the big game will never be missed, all the while having the most up-to-date news, weather and more just a click away.

Video Here

The big question for me is what happens when you click.

What About the Search and Social Media Players?

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1. Amazon Prime - This returned probably 500%+ ROI. Worth every dime.
2. EndPCNoise Workstation - the sweetest Windows XP machine I’ve owned. Spooky quiet.
3. Fujitsu ScanSnap - This was the year I went digital on just about everything. This was the reason.
4. Simulscribe - My voice mails, transcribed, and emailed to me. (I don’t know why people don’t just use email, but this takes care of that.) I got rid of my PBX, which was good, but total overkill and I got behind on voice mails to the point of embarrassment. Now I am staying on top of it.
5. Jajah- Simplified calling, mainly because you can add phone calls to your Windows Start menu - that saves me time! Jajah went downhill fast after I wrote this.  It is now unusable - cutting calls mid-call, a frustrating and unreliable website, etc.  Just horrible and a bit sad
6. A special separate monitor to run Quickbooks on, with the weekly timesheet on at all times.
7. Moondog Digital - encoded my entire CD collection for great office tunes.

Products that weren’t right for me:

• Blackberry 8300 - The 8800 would have been so much better. I’m going to get a 3G IPhone next year.
• Dell Precision 360 - Actually bought in Nov 2005, this noisy, finicky machine will hit the heap as soon as I can replace it. Dell put me through three on-site calls with a talentless hardware technician who screwed up 2/3 of what he did. No more Dells for me!

I thought about how ridiculous this product was. It was a good idea to get all the charge-ables together in a single place. It was not a good idea to do it all on paper and never test the feasibility. But it clearly doesn’t work in the real world. The solution? Shall we redesign it so it really works? Nahhhh…Let’s SELL IT ANYWAY!

The weather was crappy this last weekend, we were all a bit under the weather, and I wanted to leave the TV and video games turned off.  So headed into the electronics graveyard and pulled some CDROM drives.  And the fun begins.

Those old electronics parts are fun to disassemble, and it is a terrific teaching experiment for kids. But the key to me is that it takes the “mystery” of out technology. I see that as one of the major obstacles to the professional advancement of so many out there. “I don’t like computers” or “I don’t understand those things” is such a common excuse for people who are stuck in today’s economy. Get a small electronics screwdriver set before you start.

I don’t have an agenda with the kids. They can stop whenever they want. I don’t do lectures. I just answer questions. Like… what a belt drive is for. What’s amazing is how many questions there are. It’s a terrific bonding experience.

In many cases, you should seek out a recycling solution for working computers. I know which parts are going to be useful and which are not, and if they ever get a decent recycling program here in Kentucky for PCs you bet I’ll participate! As for now, they want you to take stuff for >1 hour drives unless you live in Louisville. Someone chime in if I missed something.

If you have good stuff to get rid of, use a Manufacturer’ Take-Back Program

Dell Corp. - Dell Recycling
Gateway Corp. - Trade-In Program
HP/Compaq - HP Planet Partners
IBM Corp. - IBM PC Recycling Service for individuals and businesses.
Toshiba - Trade-In and Recycling Program

Oh yeah, don’t forget. Some things have hazardous materials in them. especially monitors and batteries (yes, even flat screens.) Other things are sharp and so forth. So use common sense in what you take apart. Look online for information about this. And never, ever break hard plastic or do any hammering without safety glasses on. This you knew, but I had to say it. Be smart about this stuff. And if you’re smart enough to do this with your kids, you’re smart enough to know that little bitty parts do not belong in toddlers’ bellies, right?