If co-workers can't go to the cake, the cake will have to go to the co-workers

Above is a Youtube video which explains Google Hangouts

     Jinny travels with her work; when she's not traveling she works from home. Sometimes she meets one of her co-workers on the road, but her entire division is never together at one time except for a few times a year.
    This is actually a challenge for workers who don't come into a common office. Time spent around the water cooler or in the break room gives people a chance to know each other. Being able to see and hear people is different from just reading emails.
    One of the things Jinny's company does is to meet together every Friday afternoon in a Google Hangout. This is essentially a group teleconference. I've posted a Youtube video that I found online above which explains Google Hangouts. This gives everyone a chance to see and hear what is going on in various parts of the company.

Everyone got their own cake for baby shower

    In an office, when an employee is about to celebrate a milestone the others will join in and celebrate with a lunch or other event. Kind of hard to do when everyone is scattered to the winds.
    A few days ago one of Jinny's team members announced that there was going to be a virtual baby shower for one of the crew following the company meeting. She ordered everyone a cake; Jinny's came from Kelli's Cakes and Confections in the Larson's Cash Saver shopping center. (I might add that Kelli's does wonderful cakes; this was the first we've had from them).
    And so on Friday everyone gathered at their computers, cakes at their side, and had a wonderful baby shower. As the social reporters for the small-town papers used to say, "A good time was had by all."

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    Remember the old Spaceship Earth ride at EPCOT, where right at the end there were two kids, one in Japan, the other in America, talking to each other through their computers? They were actually LOOKING at each other on their computer screens! It was such an amazing concept that we all knew that it wouldn't happen until the distant future.
    Of course, I first saw that as a teen-ager. Now my hair is falling out and I have children not too far away from college. I guess the distant future has arrived!
   

My iPhone is dying and I want a decent-size phone, not a Chiclet

    I need a new smart phone.
    Now wanting and needing are two different things. I've wanted a new cell phone for well over a year now. My iPhone 3GS has served me fairly well for the past three years or so, but more than a year ago the screen messed up a bit. I lost about an eighth of an inch on each side. Kind of annoying when the letters get cut out of text, but it's still worked just fine.
    The volume toggle fell off a few months ago. But I've still be able to adjust the volume, so just another hassle to live with.
    But now the "silence" toggle has broken. From time to time, the phone will ring even though in "silent" mode. And it constantly vibrates as if I'm switching it back and forth between silent and regular mode.
    I've been able to silence the ringer manually by going in to setting and cutting the volume down. But this is time consuming and means I don't hear calls if I don't stop to turn the volume back up. Bottom line is if your phone won't go to "silent," you can't go to church, funerals, picture shows, restaurants, or you name it.
    I've even decided what kind of phone I want: THE BIGGEST PHONE MADE! That may be the Galaxy Note, soon to be released for AT&T. It has a paltry 5.3-inch screen; bigger than the iPhone by far, but still way too small.
    Attention Cell Phone Makers! We aren't just using our phones to talk these days. We need to use them to navigate, to surf the web, and to take lots of notes. In other words, we need a really big screen.
    The Galaxy Note has been a big success in Europe, but prior to its release a lot of people were going around complaining that it was "too big," particularly that it was too big to fit in a pocket. What a crock! I can fit my Kindle Fire with its 7-inch screen in most of my pants pockets, so a teeny-tiny Galaxy Note will fit with no problem. I just wish it were bigger.
    When it comes to design, the rule is that "form follows function." What that means is that the form a thing takes should be determined by what its function is. Back when we were all merely talking on our cell phones it made sense to make them as small as possible. No longer. We use our phone for big things and thus need big phones.
    Most readers of this blog will perhaps fondly remember their first cell phone. Remember the large bag phone, the size of a very large lunch box. Remember how easy it was to carry it to a meeting or whatever when you needed to? Some people even had them built into briefcases, Maxwell Smart style. I loved my bag phone; it had great reception and the size simply was not a problem.
    Then came the "brick" phone. It was a huge cell phone that was designed to be more portable than a bag phone. No way was that thing going in a pocket, though. And the signal had a weaker wattage than the bag phone.
    If you were to see someone with a "brick" phone today, they would look goofy. But they didn't look goofy back then. We envied those lucky people.
    So the phone manufacturers need not worry about making their smart phones too big. Build them we enough power and we will come.
    Meanwhile, I'm eagerly awaiting the official U.S. launch of the Galaxy Note. Unless, of course, something larger and better comes along first.