Eric Mack On-Line

It's time to stop following Justin Beiber on Twitter and hit the books...

Now that the wildly successful "The man your man could smell like" campaign has made its way around the world, we are beginning to see some very classy parodies. How does the saying go? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

By the way, in case you've been under a rock or away from the planet for a while, here's the original

For my developer friends that like to start their day with Java and who can't get anything productive done without it... enjoy!

Via Flixxy

Because of where we live and the programs our children are involved in, we have two church families, one on the mountain and one off the hill. We have very dear friendships at both.

Last week, our pastor's wife passed away, leaving a heartbroken husband and congregation. Yesterday, our family attended the memorial service for Linda Reece, wife of Pastor Roger Reece. Linda and Roger came to serve at Pine Mountain Christian Community Church just three years ago and in a very short time they endeared the hearts of the congregation and the community. Evidence to this was the fact that the church had standing room only as people came to celebrate Linda's life and to show their encouragement to Roger and his children.

In the program, there was a poem by T.R. Buzzard, that sums up the Linda Reece we knew, loved and will miss until we see her again one day:

Our Pastor's Wife
In the shadow of the parsonage stands a figure of obscure.
Just behind the faithful pastor is his wife, devout and pure.
She is with him every moment helping make his work progress,
and you can't discount her portion in the measure of success.
Oft behind the scene of action, often never seen or heard,
yet she stands forever ready just to give a helping word.
It is not in active service that her worth is really shown,
but in the bearing heavy burdens that to others are unknown.
With encouragement and vision she must urge God's servant on,
when the shadows are the darkest and his courage's almost gone.
With her home forever open and her work quite never done,
she is ever his lieutenant in the battles fought and won.
       - T.R. Buzzard

The poem is a fitting tribute to Linda as were the many kind words shared by friends and family during the service.

Continue Reading "An awesome memorial service for Linda Reece" »

Update 6/22/2010: Problem resolved thanks to a few helpful people. Please see comment thread for details

I'm stumped by this problem with Apple Safari; perhaps you can help.

Here's the situation. I have a file that I make available for others to download. The file happens to be a Notes template but it could be any file with a non-standard extension.

The file is on a hosted web site at GoDaddy. I upload files there to make them available for download.

Here's an example:
   http://download.eproductivity.com/thisisanemptynotestemplate.ntf

On a PC, if you click on that link from IE, FireFox, Chrome, or Safari, the browser will prompt you to Open or save the file, like this:



On a Mac using the Apple Safari browser the experience is completely different.
Continue Reading "I could really use some help with Safari on a Mac" »

Do your words scream louder than your actions? If so, are your actions consistent with your words? That's something I try hard to keep in mind.

As a husband and father of four girls, I try to reflect Christ in my relationships with my wife, my children and others. I'm far from perfect but that's the model I've chosen to follow. As far as my children, I can preach all day long about what they should or should not do but, as this video shows, it's what they witness that will determine what they learn and who they become.

I was humbled to see my daughter's blog tribute this Father's Day. Clearly, things I did not think were important have impacted them. It's a sobering and welcome reminder that they are watching everything I do.

IBMer Amanda Bauman of the  Lotus Technical Information and Education Community Blog recently shared her experience implementing GTD in Lotus Notes with eProductivity. It's a great post and worth reading. I'd like to share the comment I posted on her blog in response:

Hi Amanda, thanks for continuing to share your experience getting things done with Notes and eProductivity. As the creator of the software, I was tickled to read this:

"This made me think of using GTD and eProductivity as having a time machine. It gave me back hours if not days of time I might have spent getting a handle on all the things I had to do.  It also gave me confidence that I hadn't dropped the ball on anything, and who doesn't want to feel like that?."

Amanda, that pretty much sums up the 'Successful outcome" we had in mind when we set out to create the ultimate productivity solution for Lotus Software. You are not alone; we routinely hear from users that they are saving 30 minutes to an hour or more each day.

At the end of my comment, I reiterated an offer I have extended to other technology and productivity bloggers:

As far as getting a license key, my open blogger offer remains: all I ask is that you give eProductivity a try for a month and blog your experience in at least four posts on topics of your choosing. At the end of your evaluation, if you conclude that you would like to keep eProductivity, I'll send you a free activation key, no strings attached. If you decide that you would prefer to go back to your old way of working, you can simply remove eProductivity. In either case, all of your projects and actions will remain in place, so you won't lose anything. I do hope you will continue to share your experience along the way and let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Reading your blog post and the feedback we receive weekly from customers is great validation. Thanks.

If you are a technology or productivity blogger and you'd like to evaluate and blog about your experience with eProductivity, let me know. If you end up agreeing with thousands of others that eProductivity is the ultimate productivity application for IBM Lotus software and you want to keep using the product, let me know and I'll send you a complementary license key. You have nothing to lose except the time you waste each day being less productive that you could be.

I've blogged about different forms of visualization tools that can be used to help people understand a concept better. (Graphic example). Matt McKeon has put together this awesome chart which helps visualize the Evolution of Privacy on Facebook. It's worth studying for the privacy implications as well as the method of display.



Source: The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook by Matt McKeon