henry sztul

I have been having a hard time keeping on task and focussed lately.  I belive this is what comes naturally when one tries and works on several projects at once.

Jake introduced me to an app that I tried today and it seems that I like it.

Pester.app is a simple mac application that runs a timer for a designated amount of time or sounds an alarm at a certain time.  Simple yet effective.  I was just productive for 50 minutes straight and am now taking a 10 minute break…

opps… the alarm just went off… back to work!

Google Apps for a domain, a service that lets users that own a domain, like say Sztul.com, host email (gmail style), a calander, online documents, a start page and more is now a paid service.

If you go to http://google.com/apps you will see that now it costs $50/user per year after a 30 day free trial.  It used to be free (as in beer) for up to 50 users. hmmm…

I guess I am glad I have several domains setup with them already so I seemingly don’t have to pay for anything (as of now).

On the one hand I think it makes sense to have this service as a freemium service (ie a free version and a paid version) BUT I will end this post with saying GOOD FOR GOOGLE! In reality they SHOULD charge for this service.  It is a valuable set of tools (an online Word, Powerpoint, Outlook etc) and $50 / user / year is the going rate I guess.

Pi Cubed - For iPhone/iPod Touch

This looks like some powerful stuff!  Imagine being a kid with an iPad rocking this in math class… #futureoflearning

Watch out TI-82!

Unsubscribe.com - from the man who brought us phonetag (one of my all time favorite services) comes unsubscribe.com. This is as low tech as you can get. The service unsubscribes you from mailing lists, automatically if they can, manually if they have to. You get five unsubscribes per month for free and for $19 you can upgrade to unlimited unsubscribes (not per month, forever). I didn’t even bother with the free offer. I paid $19 the minute I saw this service and to date I have unsubscribed to roughly 125 mailing lists with the click of a button.

Another great service brought to us by Jamie!

A VC: Inbox Zero

Check out my new United Football League App featured on Boxee!  Football Live on your TV… WITHOUT cable! #awesome!

@boxee, @idancohen, and @@dN0t were great to work with!

[even better UI update in the works!]

(and yes, I watch Warehouse 13 :)

Boxee App developer Henry Sztul said: “Boxee is a fantastic service to bring Internet video into your living room. The UFL Boxee app will allow people to watch live games, games already played, and older video content on any TV in their home connected to a PC running Boxee or a Boxee-enabled device like the upcoming Boxee Box by D-Link. The ultimate goal is to provide a state-of-the-art sports viewing experience that cannot be found anywhere else online. As a developer, this has been an exciting project. Sports content like this just does not exist outside of traditional cable, and there are so many directions this could go technologically.

United Football League Announces Launch of Boxee App to View 2010 Season Games | UFL

I like this splash screen! Again, @boxee, @ufl, @idancohen, and @dN0t were great to work with!

I really love Instapaper.  The whole product through and through.

Marco Arment has done a great job with this product all the way from top to bottom. The bookmarklet experience is great, it’s fast, convienient, clear as to what is happening, the web experience is straight forward and designed well, and the iOS app is the first App that I knew EXACTLY what I was getting when I paid for it, and was 100% satisfied with the $4.99 price tag.

In 2011, from what I can gather I saved over 1100 articles to read later on my iPad (I don’t have an iPhone). Almost every morning either over coffee or my morning subway ride, I would catch up on my reading. It was really a great system.

Unfortunately, with the start of 2012, I am no longer going to be using Instapaper.

Like I said I don’t have an iPhone. I have an android device (a HTC Thunderbolt rooted with the CM7.1.1 ROM) and I am just a little tired of carrying around my iPad with me everywhere, that’s in addition to my laptop which I have in my bag more and more often now.

My Android phone is large enough and powerful enough to do everything I need to do on the go, so why carry around Y.A.D. (yet another device)??

For several reasons, Instapaper is not available on Android (a recent write up from Beta Beta beat can be found here).

Marco has stated he would split revenue 50/50 with whoever can make Instapaper for Android (that meets his strict requirements of course). That’s not good enough for me, so I am hopping over to Read it Later.  They have a bookmarklet (not as well designed), an iOS app for my iPad, and most importantly an Android app.

Read it Later, so far, is not as great as Instapaper, but c’est la vie! I am enjoying reading a whole lot more on my phone that my iPad on the Subway.

Here’s to 2012!