A quick follow up on the last post re the major recall of cat and dog food in the US.

Three more major brands have been added to the recalled cat  and dog food listings since this morning: Iams and Eukanuba and Good n Meaty. The updated cat list is at: http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_cat.html The updated dog food list is at: http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_dog.html

This US FDA site (http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01590.html) lists press releases containing lot factory info from:

Nestlé Purina PetCare Company Press Release

Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc. Press Release

P&G Pet Care Press Release (Including Iams and Eukanuba)

And, this resource: RSS Feed for FDA News Releases [what's this?]

Associated Press (AP) is reporting today a recall by a major cat/dog food manufacturer of some 60 million containers of wet pet food. Some sort of food contamination has caused numerous cases of acute kidney failure and death.

Here is the story: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/17/petfood.recall.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories .

The company has published on its web site an information number (1-866-895-2708) about the recall. The company, Menu Foods, produces food sold under many brand names.

Here is - as of today - the cat and dog food brands affected by the recall. Only certain lots of each food from one of two factories are being recalled - as of now:

1. Check the brands you’ve bought for a match on the lists below.
2. If you bought a brand on these lists, click it and an Excel workbook will open listing the specific lots. The two key columns are the Buy Date and Description 1.
3. Check the individual containers of food for a small line of text printed on the package (see image). This will be either the Buy Date, the Lot number or both.
   
   

   Petfoodrecall
   
   
4. If you find a match, do not use that food! In the US Call 1-866-895-2708.
5. Watch for further information on this story. Recalls are often expanded in the days and weeks after the initial event.

Recalled Cat Product Information

    Recall Information 1-866-895-2708

1. Americas Choice, Preferred Pets
2. Authority
3. Best Choice
4. Companion
5. Compliments
6. Demoulas Market Basket
7. Fine Feline Cat, Shep Dog
8. Food Lion
9. Foodtown
10. Giant Companion
11. Good n Meaty
12. Hannaford
13. Hill Country Fare
14. Hy-Vee
15. Key Food
16. Laura Lynn
17. Li'l Red
18. Loving Meals
19. Main Choice
20. Nutriplan
21. Nutro Max Gourmet Classics
22. Nutro Natural Choice
23. Paws
24. Presidents Choice
25. Price Chopper
26. Priority
27. Save-A-Lot
28. Schnucks
29. Sophistacat
30. Special Kitty
31. Springfield Pride
32. Sprout
33. Total Pet, My True Friend
34. Wegmans
35. Western Family
36. White Rose
37. Winn Dixie 

Recalled Dog Product Information

    Recall Information 1-866-895-2708

1. Americas Choice, Preferred Pets
2. Authority
3. Award
4. Best Choice
5. Big Bet
6. Big Red
7. Bloom
8. Bruiser
9. Cadillac
10. Companion
11. Demoulas Market Basket
12. Fine Feline Cat, Shep Dog
13. Food Lion
14. Giant Companion
15. Great Choice
16. Hannaford
17. Hill Country Fare
18. Hy-Vee
19. Key Food
20. Laura Lynn
21. Loving Meals
22. Main Choice
23. Mixables
24. Nutriplan
25. Nutro Max
26. Nutro Natural Choice
27. Nutro
28. Ol'Roy
29. Paws
30. Pet Essentials
31. Pet Pride
32. Presidents Choice
33. Price Chopper
34. Priority
35. Publix
36. Roche Bros
37. Save-A-Lot
38. Schnucks
39. Springsfield Pride
40. Sprout
41. Stater Bros
42. Total Pet, My True Friend
43. Western Family
44. White Rose
45. Winn Dixie
46. Your Pet

I very seldom talk here about “off topic” topics, but this is important and a minute or two of effort on your part could prevent a horrible tragedy.

I’ve verified this is a real story about a real recall and I implore you to take a moment for the sake of your companions to make sure you do not have food covered by this recall. Please check with any of your cat/dog owning friends who may have not heard about this recall.

 

I've been remiss about posting here - too much to do, to few hours - even when you do GTD to the max. But I wanted to mention my new book, Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them is out.

I covered Vox in the book, and Six Apart's Andrew Anker was kind enough to let me interview him about Vox for the book. In a nutshell, I can really see that Vox is the future of personal blogging.

If you're new to blogging, or not getting the results you want, I think you'll find it well worth your time:

• There's a free sample chapter at Apress: http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=10150
  
• Darren Rowse, whose problogger.net is one of the top blogs in the world said,

"I was quite impressed with the depth and breadth of what Bob managed to cover in the book. It’s the most comprehensive book I’ve seen on the topic of blogging and well worth the read. I’d recommend it to any new blogger wanting both theory and practical advice about everything from the setting up of a blog through to the running of one."

On another note, can anyone point me to how to set up and run a private group here?

Well,I finally went and did it.  I and Tina and our two cats are now officially "on vacation" for two weeks. Loading Mini Cooper with cats and litter box, the SUV stuffed to the gills with every cubic square inch filled, we decamped yesterday to Santa Cruz, California, to a rental house we've been before for two whole weeks vacation time.

Of course, vacation doesn't mean the same thing it used to be.  Today, I interviewed one CEO for my upcoming book on blogging via Skype, answered a couple dozen e-mails, checked several very very cool sites including this excellent tree map implementation, and four or five other work-related things.

I guess it's the cost of being a Micro-ISV: you never get turned work off or private time fully on.  But this is not a post bemoaning how the web and computers made it possible to mix work and personal life so deeply they can't be separated: it's a suggestion that you, yes you, make some time in your life to just let your mind percolate and mull over things.

If you can work on your suntan at the same time, good for you!

Over the next couple of weeks while I'm soaking up the rays and enjoying the scenery I hope to come away with a fully thought through design for the next major interation of my Micro-ISV's product.  As someone said to me today, "it's time to get on the train." Specifically, I've been accepted into Microsoft's micro-ISV early adopter program for Vista/.net 3.0.  I've been thinking about task management, and task management applications for about 15 years now; finally, some of the things I've always wanted to be able to do are now possible.

I'm hoping that by getting away from the day-to-day, spending many long walks along the water, and giving my brain a chance to mull over old ideas and new software capabilities I'll come back home in a couple weeks with a fully thought out paper prototype for my next application.  Not to mention a great tan!

Be seeing you!

Don Dodge -- a Microsoft blogger I follow unerringly -- has a post up today about the death of newspapers.  He's right, newspapers are dying.  He's wrong if he thinks that this means the newsrooms behind those newspapers have to continued their slow death spiral into oblivion.

For the past decade American newsrooms have lost one half of their reporters -- casualties of corporate desires for ever-improving profit margins, the dumbing down of American news as the least common denominator sinks like a stone, and a trend that began in the 80s to glitz up the news to make it more palatable, more entertaining and less straining.

Reporters  today are like a bunch of hostages sitting in a room waiting for the guys outside to take one out each hour and shoot one.  They -- and we, the people online who turned away from traditional media -- have a choice: watch journalism disappear from the scene or support news men and women throwing off their corporate masters, breaking the chains of traditional news distribution, and going online in a serious way.

Newsrooms don't need newspapers to survive. They need the guts to go out there and get the story -- without fear, without favor, without entertaining little bits of video and scripts written for six-year-olds. They can do it: online publications like the Huffington Post, and the better still the New Orleans Times Picayune prove the point. Reporters, if they get over their fear and loathing of bloggers, can lead the way and save the day.

If you're wondering why as an online person like you should care one whit what happens to journalism in America and elsewhere, here's a simple a simple answer: journalism is the antivirus app of the political body at every level. Journalism is what keeps politicians in line, private deals for public monies in check, and and corruption of all sorts at bay from ruining your life.  You have a dog in this fight whether you know it or not.

Just a quick post to point out that TED now has its own TypePad blog where where you can get ongoing new chunks of the past TED conferences.  In the latest posting there, there's a video of Ross Lovegrove, an industrial designer best known for his work with the Sony Walkman and Apple's iMac. It's a great presentation, and can be subscribed to via iTunes.

If you missed my prior post on these free TED posts, definitely spend some times with these very cool presentations.

As far as I'm concerned, GTD Connect has already paid me back for it's first month's cost of $48 because of a four word banner vertical banner ad I saw while signing up: Capture, Clarify, Complete, Win.

Mantras, rallying cries, chants and slogans can be powerful ways of associating and using whole religions, ideologies or in this case, management theories. These four words sum up, in my opinion, the whole Getting Things Done methodology David Allen has expounded on for the past six years.

These four words are both the bottom line and the topmost concepts of GTD, and I'm finding that by running through them as a checklist whenever I sense my productivity flagging, I can identify and remedy what part of my GTD process is not working.

Here's the scoop:

• Capture - This is the whole idea of having a few well-defined collection points in your life to capture every incoming task and intention. You can tell when capture isn't working: there's a mess on your desk, or a mess in your email Inbox, or a mess in your head of all the uncaptured and undocumented things you need to do.
• Clarify - Do you know what you're doing and why? Do you know what the desired outcome is for what you're working on right now? Do you know why you are online right now? Clarity leads to defined desired outcomes, accomplishments, movement forward, momentium and productivity; Lack of clarity leads to procrastination, low motivation, hours and days wasted online and crummy feelings about yourself. There's a great old cult movie out there John Carpenter's They Live, in which the main characters ask each other towards the end of the movie, "Are you Clear?" Asking yourself that question quickly sets you right.
  

  They Live Redux
• Complete - This has frequently been a tough one for me (Just ask my Apress Editor, Jonathan Hassell). There is a vast difference between being 80% done and being 100% done with a task, or for that matter an issue or a relationship. Focusing on completing the task is what it is all about. Without completions, all you have is blood, sweat, toil and tears, and the unending drag of things not finished.
• Win - In the game of life, it's up to you to keep score. If you don't know whether you are mkaing progress, if you don't do your weekly reviews, if you don't admit to yourself whether you won or lost that hand of cards, a promotion, a friend, a lifelong companion, how do you expect to do better next time? It's not all about winning, but you need need to answer up to the guy or girl in the mirror if you're going to keep your self respect.

I know this is is not what you'd call a "light" post, but nonetheless, keeping this set of just four words in the back of my mind as my GTD checklist above all checklists is working for me, and I bet will work for you.

I just posted at my online blog ToDoOrElse.com a longish post on David Allen's new GTD Connect.  This looks to be a very useful motivational tool for bridging the gap between knowing that GTD can make a difference and living it.

I did not post this post here at Vox because I'm not yet happy with how Vox cross posts to TypePad.  Nonetheless I hope you'll read  take a look at this post.

Here's a quick screen grab of what GTD connect looks like:

One of the worst parts of wearing multiple online hats (blogger, author, micro-ISV) is that you end up in Permanent Information Overload. Between technical info in 4 major flavors, a million little passwords to a million Web 2.0 sites, half-completed ideas for various blog postings, and chunks of thought that somewhere go into Clear Blogging, I'm drowning in information.

Add in all the thought I need to do and record about the next version of my product and I'm a roadkill on the information superhighway, a victim of my own desire for more knowledge.

I've long looked for a tool that would bring order out of this chaos - first on the desktop, and then as more and more of my world moved online. PIMs are a dime a dozen over at downloads.com, and despite having spent hours and days searching, I've yet to find one single tool that does what I want.

Then I got to thinking about Wikis. You probably know what a wiki is - especially if you've ever used Wikipedia. It's a body of hypertext, a mini internet anyone can read and edit.

But it doesn't have to be.

After seeing TiddlyWiki, a wiki that lives as one single html file on your desktop, I began to wonder, why not create a wiki just for me on some restricted host somewhere? Then I talked over the idea via email with Mike Schoeffler, the founder of ProfitDesk, who is using a wiki inside his business for all sorts of things, and raves about it.

While I wanted to do this project, too little time and too many choices weighed it down. Until now. I just found a real gem - WikiMatrix - that gives you a rundown on just about every wiki out there, let's you do side-by-side technical comparisions, hosts discussions about each wiki and even has a pick-a-wiki wizard. This is very cool.

So, it's time to get serious about a wiki engine for my own use and one to blow the dust off MyMicroISV. If you're finding yourself sinking into Permanent Information Overload, checkout wikis. They may just be the rope you need to pull yourself out.

Via Guy Kawasaki's blog, I happened this morning upon a great series of videos from the 2006 TED Conference. The TED Conference is one of those ultra cool conferences where invited attendees get a chance to hear and share, but up to now, they've never shared with the rest of the world.

Until now.

Yes, there's a sponsor - BMW - (someone, somewhere hast to pay for the bandwidth) , but while I hate commercials, especially car commercials, I'll give points to this automaker for being with it to actually provide some value.

Here's a grab of the list of luminaries you can now watch (also Nicholas Negroponte):