James VanDyke Blog

Author Archives: james

Results Only Work Environment

By james | April 27th, 2009

In 2006 Business Week magazine published an article entitled, “Smashing the Clock.” The article detailed electronics retailer Best Buy and a new work environment they were promoting – Results Only Work Environment (ROWE). The basic premise is companies and workers are tied to a old mind set of a forty hour work week. The mind [...]

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Only the Best – The Concept

By james | February 8th, 2009

Have you ever walked into a consumer electronics store only to be overwhelmed by all of the choices? I have. You want to spend your money wisely.  But,  this sea of products seems to ensure you can never be certain about your purchase.  If you’re like me, you probably walk away from your purchasing experience [...]

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Collecting Botts Dots

By james | January 2nd, 2009

Walking our dog twice a day gives us plenty of time to look around our local streets. Lately we’ve started collecting what we call speed bumps. They are the little plastic pieces glued to the concrete that seperate lanes. We later learned through the marvels of the Internet that these bumps are officially called “Bott’s [...]

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Coming up with an idea

By james | January 1st, 2009

My first task for my “Starting a Business” class was to think of a business I wanted to work on for the entire semester. I brainstormed for about a week and half about potential ideas. I found the most useful formula for plausible ideas came from combining three things: Something I’m interested in Something I [...]

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Up Coming Series: A Business Plan

By james | December 31st, 2008

I’m getting an MBA at night and this past semester I took a class called Starting a Business. The bulk of our work focused on writing a business plan for a theoretical business that we might start. Since I put a good deal of work into the class I thought I would share over the [...]

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Posterous: Posting Anything via Email

By james | December 30th, 2008

Posterous is a service that should appeal to people who want to post things online but don’t want to deal with the technical details. It works by simply emailing what you want to post to post@posterous.com. You don’t even need to create an account to get started, just email them. The contents of your email [...]

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Unrequited Love: Linux and the Geek

By james | December 26th, 2008

I want to love Linux but it doesn’t share my feelings. To be honest, I think it’s hurt that I’m only looking for a fling; a trophy of geekdom to casually flaunt at parties. “Yeah, I”ve got a Linux box at home.” We both know that when I’m done experimenting I’ll head back to the [...]

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Merry Christmas

By james | December 24th, 2008

Even in Texas it’s getting to be Christmas time so I thought I’d pass along some holiday greetings in the form of the Christmas card we sent out this year. Merry Christmas to you.

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What the Font?!

By james | December 24th, 2008

What to do when you need to know which font was used for a graphic? Well, if you’re short a typographist or font-spotter graphic designer you might try What the Font. It’s a free web service from myfonts.com who I’m guessing hopes you discover that the font you need is sold right on theirwebsite. So, [...]

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The Pogue-O-Matic

By james | December 23rd, 2008

David Pogue, technology columnist for the New York Times, has released a entertaining way to narrow down your choices before a tech purchase. This new tool called the “Pogue-O-Matic” basically just narrows your choices as you select the options you want. The treat comes as Mr. Pogue’s video commentary helps you choose which option is [...]

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