Paypal.com finally goes Mobile

Finally!

Paypal is going into the mobile payment provider area. What does this mean? This means that you can send money to another person or entity using your mobile phone. It's basically your paypal account linked to you phone. You send a text message to a phone number with the amount. To verify the transaction, paypal calls your phone and you enter in your PayPal Mobile PIN number. Once the payment is confirmed, the transaction is completed and the money is transferred to that person's/entity's account.

The best part is that Paypal is introducing a service called Text to Buy, where you can buy things like buy DVDs, electronics, books, etc securely through your mobile phone. The Text to Buy signs can be put on posters, in a magazine ad, at event/convention. You can buy the item texting the item number through your cell phone, complete the transaction with the callback, and the item will be sent to you by mail.

I first read about it in this blog then I went to the paypal site to activate my phone. Definitely check it out.

Personal Trainers…. on your mp3 player!

Someone told me about this website where you can purchase personalized training programs and download them on your mp3 player.   There are different sets of training routines and it looks like they have new routines every month.  Looks good to me!

iTrain

It’s been a long time….

A friend of mine recently emailed me letting me that I haven’t updated my blog lately.  Yes, I know…. I know.. I know 

It’s been a whirlwind of craziness these past couple of months.   Notably, I’ve been rehabbing my knee that I injured prior to the NYC Marathon.  It’s been a slow and sometimes frustratingly humble recovery.  I’m almost 90% and about ready to start running again.  THANK GOD.

For all those who are in recovery and/or just want to get stronger running base, I recommend taking a class that concentrates on your Core muscles, which basically are your abs, lower back, chest, butt, and thighs.  I’ve been taking a boxing condition class that includes 1 hour of "hardcore" core strength training followed by 30 minutes of "bag" work.

I can’t wait to start running again…… 1 month and counting. 

The joy of unintentionally spamming my 350+ email contacts

I’m usually really good about filtering out the spam from the rest of my “good” emails. I keep two accounts: one for my personal emails and the other for registrations, sign-up, etc where I know my email address is going to be sold to a third-party to send me things like a “Free PS3″, when they become available. I’m pretty good about not falling for that stuff.

Then just recently, I got an email from a friend who I haven’t seen in a long time with the title “Let’s Share Photos”. This is through my personal account, which usually does a great job of filtering out spam. I opened it thinking that I would be able to see this person’s shared photos. I went to a website called Ringo.com and they asked me for an email address (for registration purposes) and a password. Now, what I sometimes do is to use the same password for registration as my login to access my email.

When I did that, it logged into my email account, extracted all my contacts’ email addresses, and sent them invites to “Let’s Share Photos”.

WTF?!?!

Needless to say, I was pissed. I’m still in the process of emailing all my contacts from my email account telling them that the “Let’s Share Photos” is spam and not to register. I went through their “contact us” section on their website, told them to cancel my account, and reiterated how furious I was and how this was just poor marketing. Not to mention an invasion of privacy.

What to do next

Now that New York has come and gone, it’s time to figure out what to do next.  New York was one of the “Big Five” that every marathoner should do at least once in there lifetime:

1. New York City Marathon
2. Chicago Marathon
3. Marine Corps Marathon (in Washington DC)
4. Los Angeles Marathon
5. Boston Marathon

Chicago, Marine Corps, and LA are all signup-and-run marathons, meaning that there’s no criteria to get into the marathon.  New York is a lottery-based entry, where roughly 60,000 people apply and only 30,000 get invited.  Boston is a qualifying event, meaning that marathoners need to run under a qualifying time to be invited to run the marathon.  For my age group, I’ll have to run a 3hour15minute race. 

Right now, there’s NO WAY that I’d be able to qualify for Boston.  Well, at least not yet.  My marathon Personal Record is no where near that time.

I love running, but I tend to “enjoy the sites” more during the marathon.  I’m what’s called a “strong-and-steady” runner, meaning that I take longer than usual, but keep a steady pace throughout the race.  It’s a good way of saying that Boston will take longer than usual for me to qualify. 

Last year, I made a 5-year commitment to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2008 and run the fabled marathon in 2009.  Why 5 years?  Well, just like my running, I’ll be taking the conservative route to getting there.  This gives me a long term goal to shoot for.

Along the way, I’ll be doing one of the “Big 5″ once a year with Boston being the final year in 2009.

Next year will most likely be Chicago; however, if I get picked to do NYC again, I’ll do that one again.  It’s THAT much of a good race.

The New York City Marathon experience

I didn’t know what to expect going to NYC for my marathon. Honestly, I didn’t. I’ve been waiting for over 2 years to be in this race and decided, injury or not, that I was going to go. I ended up having to walk for a good 7 hours before I crossed the finish line.

For a big city marathon, I totally recommend doing it. The crowds were really supportive even for us people who walked the race. The race starts at Staten Island, goes through Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronyx, and ends up at the Tavern at the Green in Central Park. Essentially, I had a 26.2 mile walking tour of New York City. I know that if I would have ran it as I was supposed to, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the scenery as much. I plan on signing up for it again next year.

iFill

I read about this on iLounge last night and it’s pretty cool. It records streaming radio stations and tags the corresponding songs with their titles, artists, etc. I configured it last night, hooked my iPod up, and went to sleep. I woke up this morning with a playlist containing with 159 FREE songs, all labeled by song/artist. You can then deleted the songs as needed and record a whole new set. It doesn’t record them in format that is recognized in iTunes, so they are stored as files in the hard drive. Hence, the amount of songs that you get depends on how much space you allocate on your iPod. It definitely beats going to the music store to sample music. It’s $20 software, but it’s a great investment:

 

iFill

Video iPod…. not bad!

I was one of the lucky people who managed to get a black 30gb Video iPod and I have to admit, I love it. I’ve been on the fence about getting one for a long time, but after seeing what the new iPods are capable of doing, I had to get one.

For anyone who already owns an iPod and wants to upgrade to the 5G Video iPod, I would say to wait until the 6th generation comes out, whenever that may be. The video is very slick but only lasts 2-3 hours. Think of this 5G iPod as a music player first and a video player second.

For anyone who was on the fence about getting one, all I have to say is this:

GET ONE. Get one NOW.

The audio is incredible, the interface is slick, and the look is stylish. It’s pocketable and the battery life is damn good If you let it run via playlist, it can give you around 14 hours of battery life. No joke.

I seriously can go on-and-on, but I’ll be blogging must-need accessories later on and some cool slick software that I tried.

Always have backup

Just an important piece of advice both in life and if you own a computer/ipod/cell phone/digicam/etc.

I was in a situation where camera data wasn’t backed up and all the photos were lost.  This has happened to me on some occasions and have used PhotoRescue to recover them. (One of the best $25 investments that I’ve made and a must-own asset to all digital photographers.)  However, this damage was something that was beyond repair and the photos were irrecoverable.

I just bought a new Motorola phone and got the Mobile Phone Tools set from the Motorola.com site.  A safe (and fun) investment as well.  Not only can your sync your SIM card and cell phone phone numbers, but you can modify some of your existing mp3s and make them them into ringtones.  You can also take your exsiting photos, crop them, and transfer them to your cell phone for wallpaper.  If you have a PIM, you can sync your Outlook data with your cell phone via the Mobile Phone Tools, too. 

 

Hitting the Big 3-5

It’s just a couple of minutes past midnight on October 25th, 2005 and I’m officially 35.  Every single year, I make a few goals.  Last year, I promised myself that I’d be running the New York City marathon and in a few weeks, that goal is going to be reached.

Another one was finding a job that I enjoy.  That’s the key word here.. enjoy.  I love my present job right now and couldn’t be happier.

My goals for this coming year?  Honestly, I haven’t written a definitive list yet, but here’s some things that have been on my mind:

• Want to incorporate David Allen’s Getting Things Done philosophy to get more organized in my life.  Started doing that a couple of weeks ago and I love it.

• Want to run a faster marathon