I sometimes use JDarkroom for writing.  It blanks out the screen, giving only monospaced text, letting you focus on words (not formatting, the clock, the weather, email, surfing, or blog reading).

But when I need to think, turning off the computer entirely and writing on paper seems to work best (I like the large squared Moleskine notebooks).  It goes everywhere, boots instantly, and never crashes.  Because my writing bandwidth is much lower than my typing bandwidth, I focus more on thoughts than words.

For creative thinking, I also find it helps to shake up my surroundings.  I like leaving the office and going to a restaurant, coffee shop, library, museum, etc.  I’ve even made excellent “think time” out of waiting at the dr’s office, waiting to pick up the car with new tires, etc.

Try scheduling some notebook time.

I got a big chuckle out of this article from CNN, about consumers canceling cable service and turning to the Internet for TV.

The analyst/pundit comments reminded me of the Internet naysayers from the mid 90s:

The brutal economy may motivate some consumers, like the Wynsmas, to switch to Web-based TV, but it won’t necessarily hurt the cable or satellite TV business, which has historically been recession-proof.

Yes, but this is the first time in history that consumers have a viable alternative to satellite and cable TV.  And, the alternative happens to be entirely on-demand.

And:

“The cable companies have invested billions of dollars to expand the footprint and reach of their services, and it will require a similar investment by the [Internet Protocol Television] players to catch up,” said Lewis, the technology consultant.

Not really:  cable companies spent billions building infrastructure, both for broadband/IP and for proprietary cable distribution.  Since IP is open access (in theory), the IP TV player don’t need to duplicate that investment — they can just ride on the back of it.

I love video chat, but I’m currently stuck with my dad where we can see his video but he can’t see ours (using Skype).  We know it works on our end.   My dad can’t figure out why it doesn’t work any more, and (debugging remotely) I can’t figure it out either.

I loved Skype when it first came out:   it was simple, punched through firewalls reliably, and had great audio quality.   Now, I feel like it’s devolved to the iChat / old Net Meeting experiences, where each session begins with 15 minutes of debugging (can’t connect, no audio/video, etc.)

I want a video chat client that “just works”, and works especially well when one of the participants isn’t that computer saavy:

• Rock-solid firewall traversal (e.g. no iChat “communcation errors”)
• Simple setup and config; eliminate all “advanced” options
• Remote debug of problems.  With permission, let me poke around the other computer’s chat configuration (e.g which USB device, audio settings, etc.).  If soemthing doesn’t work, give very specific and detailed error messages.  Bonus:  include screen sharing or at least screen snapshots.
• Great echo cancellation (modern PCs have the signal-processing horsepower) so nobody needs microphones headphones
• Dynamic quality settings for video and audio based on bandwidth.
• Pre-configuration option:   a way for me to configure a link, send to a friend for them to download and install, in a way that it’s intially configured to chat back to me.
• A test call that checks everything (like Skype’s echo123, but for video too).
• Launch and chat.  Support for individual desktop icons that initiate a video chat to a specific recipient.

I’m half-tempted to start an open/collaborative effort to build this.