Custom Temperature Alerts

Have you ever found your home air conditioning running when the outside temperature has already fallen below the temperature inside your house? I have. It's really irritating, and it wastes both money and energy.

The solution is simple, free and most of the time works fairly well.

Use IFTTT to set up a temperature alert for your zip code. Specify a temperature and how you want to be notified.

If you'd like to try it out, feel free to copy my "Open Windows" alert.

Don't care about temperature? Check out other recipes at IFTTT or create your own.

Yelp Should Buy The Entertainment Book

The Sacramento Entertainment Book has 1496 coupons for restaurants, plus a few hundred additional non-dining coupons. Many of the deals are buy-one-get-one-free -- perfect for dates with my wife or kids.

Trying new places is fun, but since the Entertainment Book provides no restaurant reviews, it's difficult to know which places are good and which are not. Try cross-referencing coupons in the Entertainment Book with online reviews at Yelp. It's neither easy, nor fun.

I'd love to see a website or app that integrates restaurant reviews with Entertainment Book listings.

Sort of like A Better Queue does for Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes.

Alternatively, Yelp could just acquire Entertainment Publications, LLC and integrate their two websites for us.

Good Short Podcasts

Updated 1/6/13

It's your choice: you can turn on the radio and listen to what someone else wants you to hear (along with a bunch of commercials), or you can embrace the podcast.

I've become a big fan of podcasts. I like being able to listen to a program from start to finish and pause it whenever I'm interrupted. I like being able to pick the programming I want to hear when I want to hear it. You just can't do that with radio.

(Note: If you own a smart phone, you'll want to get a good podcast app. You'll also want to develop a good playlist, so before you start driving, you can hit play and the latest episodes from each podcast will play one after another on your commute home. If you become a podcast junkie, you may want to get a car stereo that has an auxiliary input and a USB adapter.)

Among my favorite podcasts are those that provide high quality content without wasting my time.

Here are a few I recommend:

ESV Bible Readings - Try the Outreach New Testament plan first, since it is the shortest. (Hopefully someday ESV will add a few more shorter options, like an Outreach Old Testament, Psalms and Proverbs podcasts for those of us who like to customize our playlists.)

Proverbs Podcast - Max McClean reads the "Proverb of the Day" in NIV.

Grace Gems Daily Podcast - A new podcast I set up to make it more convenient to listen to the daily Puritan audio devotionals from GraceGems.org. (Added 11/1/12)

Morning and Evening - The classic daily devotional by Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Al Mohler's The Briefing - I like to say Dr. Mohler reads the New York Times so you don't have to. In just a few minutes he highlights top news stories of the day and provides insightful analysis from a Christian worldview.

Connected Kingdom - Tim Challies and David Murray interview various Christian authors. (Revised 1/6/13)

NPR News - Yes, I admit it. I listen to public radio. But these five minutes of (nearly) commercial-free news headlines are hard to beat. And by subscribing to this podcast, you no longer have to wait until the top of the hour to catch the news.

NPR Politics - Like it or not, NPR does some outstanding in-depth politics reporting. Plus, when you work in politics, it's always a good idea to monitor the enemy's airwaves.

Marketplace - One of my favorite public radio shows, Kye Risdall and the Marketplace team are always both informative and entertaining. If you want to understand recent economic developments, this podcast is a great place to start.

Capitol Connection - Hands down the best podcast for California political news and analysis. Veteran Capitol reporters John Myers and Anthony York provide their take on the most significant developments of the week. (Added 1/6/13)

Capital Public Radio News - By subscribing to Capital Public Radio's podcast, you'll at least be sure to never miss Ben Adler's ace reporting. (Revised 1/6/13)

Accuweather - Get the latest weather conditions and forecast in less than half a minute. This link is for Sacramento, but there are also similar podcasts available for other cities.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day - Learn new words or the origins of words you already know.

In addition to the podcasts suggested above, both my boss and my church have podcasts you might want to check out.

I hope these suggestions are helpful. Please feel free to leave a comment recommending your favorite podcasts.

Sacramento Home Prices in 2011

It's been more than a year since I wrote a blog post criticizing the notion that Sacramento home prices had stabilized. We now have the benefit of hindsight. How did Sacramento home prices fare last year?

According to Sacramento Real Estate Statistics, the median asking price fell 6% and the average asking price per square foot fell 5.89%.

Zillow shows a 9.1% year-over-year decline in home prices through November 2011.

Sacramento Zillow Home Value Index

Sacramento Home Values - Interactive chart

And, as reported by the Sacramento Bee, a Sacramento Association of Realtors survey found a 10% drop in the median price of a single family home in the region. Furthermore, the median home sales price in December 2011 was the lowest since 2000.

So, by nearly any measure, home prices are lower today than they were a year ago. And interest rates? Those fell too -- see this chart.

By way of disclosure, my wife and I purchased a short sale in the Sacramento area this past fall. We're still not convinced prices have fully bottomed, but we're thankful to be settled once again in a home we own.

A Social Media Plan for a Sacramento Start-Up

As we've been making various repairs to our house, my wife and I have noticed that many small business owners and contractors have missed the boat on social media.

This isn't surprising, since most of them aren't tech geeks. They know their business, but find the digital world confusing and a bit overwhelming.

This morning I received an e-mail from a friend who is planning to start a new business in the Sacramento area. He sent me an ad for a social media service he found on Craigslist and asked for my advice.

My response is below. Perhaps these tips will be of assistance to others seeking cost-effective ways to enhance their social media presence. Feel free to weigh in if you have additional thoughts that might be helpful.

Social media is important, but it can be overhyped. I certainly wouldn't pay someone hundreds of dollars a month to manage it right out of the gate.

As the boss, it's important for you to at least understand what your social media presence is, how it is set up, what your passwords are, etc. It needs to be an integrated part of your overall business plan and advertising efforts.

There are a lot of social media gimmicks out there, but the best social media will happen authentically from real customer engagement if you have good customer service and find creative ways to invite your customers to stay connected using social media.

Keep in mind the best and most widely adopted social media is still e-mail, so be sure that is a part of your plan.

Here are the steps I suggest:

1. Design your logo. If resources allow, pay a pro (I recommend Kevin Yee). Otherwise, try a free service like Logo Instant)
   
   
2. Set up Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Youtube, etc. These are free, so the sooner you get them up and running, the better. Even static "coming soon" pages might begin to attract interest and followers.
   
   
3. Register a good domain name, then have someone build your website (preferably using Wordpress). Feature a blog (for updates/promotions) and links to your social media.
   
   
4. Connect your social media accounts to your website using dlvr.it so they will automatically post new content.
   
   
5. Establish an e-mail list (save money by first trying a free service like MailChimp). Include a sign-up form on your website and at your business.
   
   
6. Plan ways to harvest e-mail addresses (e.g. collect business cards for a giveaway).
   
   
7. Drive customers to engage via social media (e.g. give something away free for folks who check-in on Yelp or Facebook, do a video contest on Youtube, etc.)
   
   
8. Maximize your reach by sending out new updates/promotions via e-mail and posting them to the blog. They will automatically post to your social media sites.
   
   
9. As time and resources allow, post special promotions, coupons, surveys, videos, etc. to social media sites to increase customer engagement. Develop creative content that has the potential to "go viral."
   
   
10. As resources allow, develop a budget for using Google Adwords, Facebook ads, etc. to attract new customers. Target likely customers within 10-15 miles of your zip code.
    

All of this can be done for very little expense. When the time is right, feel free to send me your business name and logo, and I'd be happy to help you get things up and running.

Join the Typo Police

Have you ever had a great idea only to discover that someone else already thought of it first?

In my prior post I suggested a computer programmer invent a site for reporting misspelled words and other errors found on web pages, blogs, etc. It turns out one already has, though I doubt many have heard of it.

The programmer, John Tantalo, left the following comment on my post.

I created a website that solves this problem for you a few years ago, its called Emend (http://www.emendapp.com/).

It runs on Google App Engine, so we require Google logins to control spam.

You can pull your typos via RSS or a REST API.

We also have a new Chrome and Safari extension that adds a context-menu item to flag typos.

This was the first I had heard of Emendapp.com. Since then I've tested the site on a few computers and found it works great. (The only exception being my Windows 7 64 bit machine at work, which seems scared of the Google authentication process.)

So for all of you perfectionists out there who have been waiting for a convenient method to report all of those typos and grammatical errors you find online, the moment you've been waiting for is here: you can join the typo police at Emendapp.com today.

If you manage a website, you should sign-up to receive notifications and then encourage your readers to start using this helpful tool.

Note: I've signed up to receive Emendapp.com edits to durancentral.com via RSS. So feel free to emend my blog to your heart's content.

There Ought to Be an Easier Way to Report Typos

UPDATE: See also "Join the Typo Police" (10/30/11)

Have you ever been reading a web page or blog post and noticed a big, glaring typo? You can't fix it yourself, but you have a hard time just ignoring it. You feel like you should tell someone about it. But who? And how?

Some websites have taken to paying readers to find and report typos (see TypoBounty.com). This is a great idea. The only problem with this approach is that unfortunately the websites where I spot typos aren't in the program. And I doubt they're going to sign up anytime soon.

To report a typo, one could follow About.com's advice and try contacting the webmaster of the site. I've actually done this quite a few times. After all, if someone spotted a typo on one of my websites, I'd appreciate knowing about it.

But at some point, especially in the professional world, it seems a little weird to be constantly contacting newspapers, bloggers, etc. to point out their typos. It might seem I don't have anything better to do, or I'm just nitpicking their work. Plus it's just too time-consuming a process, especially when webmaster e-mail addresses aren't readily available.

The solution to our typo crisis may actually be relatively simple. It could merely require a smart computer programmer to make it happen.

Here's what the programmer would need to do:

1. Create an extension for popular Internet browsers like Chrome and Firefox that would allow users to flag misspelled words.

2. Develop a website where all user-reported results would be made publicly available, along with relevant details (e.g. the URL where the typo was found).

3. Allow anyone to subscribe to receive results by e-mail or RSS for the domains for which they want to receive alerts for reported typos.

I'm sure all of this is easier said than done, but if done right, it could become a popular, free tool that would help many. I imagine many bloggers, webmasters and online news editors would sign-up for the alerts.

And all of us perfectionists wouldn't have to puzzle over what do when we stumble upon a typo.

So, if this hypothetical service doesn't already exist somewhere, would it work? If so, who wants to create it?