First I'd like to thank Alain Lafon for his article here about using an Adwords campagin to get Dropbox referrals. Read the post, it's a fun idea and a good chance to learn Adwords on the cheap, with an immediate reward.

I also found this page which has a handy video explaining how to set up the campaign.

Here are the details I used, keep in mind I set this up based out of Argentina, so costs were in pesos. The conversion rate is roughly 4.3 pesos to a U.S. dollar.

All amounts in Argentine pesos!

• Budget Max per day: $40
• Number ads (different copy for each ad): 5
  Screenshot of my ads:
  
  
• Number of keywords: 6, but only 5 that were cheap enough to enable
• Max bid for each keyword: 0.16 (one centavo higher than the lowest)
  details:
  
  
• Locations: All locations (global) Languages: All languages
• Where: Google results pages

In two hours I had my full 8gb bonus from referrals.

Impressions: 1,073
Clicks: 297
Final cost: $25 (pesos) which is just under US $6

As noted in the first link: if you have a .edu email account, you can double the bonus (for a grand total of 16gb + the standard free 2gb) at this link.

Final Note: Make sure you pause or delete the campaign as soon as you reach your goal!

What a fool I've been to give NYT a month's worth of web+mobile subscription money. Sincerely, I should have known better.

The first sign of trouble arose with the "paywall". There is one major problem with using a paywall to monetize: You shouldn't haven't to cripple your product to make money. If removing features makes your customers happy enough to pay money, well then I don't want to be one of your customers.

So what's new in this campaign of poor web business intelligence? Simply put, paying for a subscription does not remove the ads from the iPhone app version of the New York Times. Yep.

After figuring out how to cancel my in-app purchase subscription, I found a form to send feedback.

Sent: 10/18/2011 08:37:08 AM
To: mobile nyt <nytmobile@nytimes.com>
Subject: Feedback

I'm disappointed to see mobile ads still being displayed after paying the mobile + web subscription premium.

I enjoy the content but bristle at having to pay, and pay again by viewing ads on a small viewport.

I'm going to discontinue the subscription and I hope this policy changes in the future.

Sincerely,
Michael Jablecki

They first reply side-stepped my snarky remarks regarding my discontent.

Dear Michael Jablecki,

Thank you for contacting NYTimes.com.

We appreciate your feedback and have passed it along to the appropriate department.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance to you.

I took the opportunity to press on.

Thanks for the acknowledgement of my feedback.

Actually, I'm really interested in knowing why the decision was made to show advertisements for paid subscribers.

If you could share that information, I would really appreciate it.

Sincerely,
Michael Jablecki

A different customer service rep replied.

Thank you for contacting NYTimes.com. 

Unfortunately, we do not offer an ad free version at this time. When you pay for access your paying for the right to view more than 20 articles in a month and not paying for the right to remove ads.

We appreciate your feedback and have passed it along to the appropriate department. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance to you.

In retrospect, I was hoping that there was a glitch with my copy of the app, that the ads were supposed to go away, and that NYT wouldn't be so foolish as to leave ads in for paid subscribers on a tiny iPhone screen.

Manage Startup Items:

gnome-session-properties

System Settings:

gnome-control-center

Manage Themes/Icons/Etc. (3rd Party link):

gnome-tweak-tool

Refresh Gnome3:

alt-F2 "r"

Manage Old Menu Items:

alacarte

Show the date by default in the calender link on the top bar:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.clock show-date true

Move notification items from the annoying (auto-hiding) bottom bar, to the top.

Instructions: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/06/move-icons-from-message-tray-to-top.html

*note: I had to create a directory for the copy-paste steps to work

Recently, Chris Hardwick, in the May 10th episode of The Nerdist Podcast with Ed Helms, posed a technical challenge. I should probably finish the episode to see if they solved it, or check the web for other solutions, but I'll outline a possible solution for the problem here.

Problem: Wirelessly and Remotely control your iPad.

I don't have an iPad so I can't test my solution, but based on what I've seen, the following solution should work. In short, you can use a PC or an iOS device (iPhone or iPad) to remotely control, through a wifi network, using VNC.

Jailbreaking the iPad

You'll need to jailbreak your iPad in order to install the program we need to remotely control the device.

For the uninitiated, this procedure opens up the operating system of an iOS device to allow installation of non-Appstore applications. Fortunately, it is perfectly legal in the US thanks to a 2010 ruling. 

You can find out about what's new in the world of jailbreaking at the blog of one of the major players in the jailbreak community.

VNC - Desktop Sharing

The key technology which allows remote use of the iPad is VNC, a graphical desktop sharing system. Our setup involves installing the two parts of this software, one on the iPad and one on the device we'll use to control the desktop. 

A coworker installed a VNC server on his iPhone and controlled it with a VNC client on his desktop and was able to remotely control the iPhone.

Installation

First thing first, we install a VNC client on the device to be used to control the iPad. Let's look into using a PC for this, as it's straightforward. (Alternately, you can use a program such as realvnc to use another iOS device to control the iPad.) Your desktop may already have a VNC client, but you can always install TightVNC. A quick search online will reveal free clients for any operating system.

Once the jailbreaking is done, use the application installer Cydia to install 'Veency', a VNC server for the iOS.

Some Details Omitted

The rest is a matter of configuring the two programs right. As the question was posed by some clever nerds, I'm going to assume that this last part isn't a challenge. I'd be happy to go into detail though, if needed.

Post Script

I've been meaning to send a note to @nerdist or post a quement, but never got around to it. 

In summary, I want to congratulate you guys (Chris, Matt and Jonah [and Ray ;)]) on making one of the most entertaining and enlightening podcasts out there. You've made something out nothing and I appreciate the effort involved. I'm impressed by the range of guests, and their widespread reach into society, especially considering they share the common ground of comedy. I've become an instant fan of nearly every guest I was previously unaware of. 

Thanks and good luck!

Anyone who spends more than a few minutes customizing their Vim configuration probably knows what a annoyance it is to re-tweak vim on a new machine.  Several people have offered suggestions, but I never ended up trying them out.

Having recently created a free GitHub account, I decided to try using that.  The setup for having your own GitHub account could be a daunting task for some, but they have a exellent walk-through to help out.

So I put my .vimrc in my GitHub, along with some plugins I like and a colorscheme multi-pack.  I have my main .vimrc include another local file automatically, so I can have custom settings on each machine.  Finally I create a symbolic link in my home folder, using the versioned .vimrc directly.

As a side bonus, I can check out my .vimrc online quickly, for reference, a quick copy and paste, or to recommend settings to someone.

Store bought (vanilla):

Following loosely the advice of this article (http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/11/13/optimize-a-website-for-iphone-in-10-minutes/), I was able to optimize BragProof a bit for the iPhone browser.  BragProof is a 'take back your high scores' screen-shot posting site that's been cooking for a little while on slow burn. The majority of users are sending iPhone screen-shots by email to post-up, so it was time to make an easier to read version of the site for mobile devices.