Just waiting until tomorrow

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As you well know, I’m an iPhone owner and fan. While it has been the best phone I’ve ever owned, it isn’t perfect. I’m writing this as I sit waiting for a meeting that isn’t going to happen (I got stood up), I decided to write this little post on my iPhone* about my thoughts on tomorrow’s iPhone SDK announcement by Apple. There are many questions about what will and will not be possible for 3rd party developers, but I’ll go ahead and make my predictions:

  1. Delivery will be done only by the iTunes music store
  2. Software will be signed by Apple making small developers mad (and many users)
  3. Signed apps will be approved by Apple but they’ll claim they will be fully supportive (time will tell)
  4. There will be options for free apps
  5. There will be some apps available immediately
  6. There will be a Blackberry-like service to push corporate email to iPhones
  7. There will be a lightweight iWork suite announced
  8. There will be Bluetooth keyboard support
  9. Developers will have more access to the hardware than feared but less than hoped
  10. I’ll go out on a limb that they’ll also announce a small tablet device with the touch interface but that may be further out (6 months)
  11. I’ll be buying around $20-30 of software that is immediately available

I admit I’m taking the shotgun approach. My money is on 1-6. We’ll see what the future holds for us.

* The draft was on the iPhone, but links and final was done on my desktop

It doesn’t have to be painful

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This morning I went in to the local DMV office to renew my driver’s license. Fortunately, all that was needed was an eye exam so I wasn’t anxious about the prospect. I did have the forethought to make an appointment several weeks ago as I didn’t want to worry about finding a good time to go and how long it might take.

My appointment was for 10:10 AM. I walked in at 10:08 and saw about a dozen people lined up just to be given a number by the "what are you here for" lady. The adjacent counter had a "Appointments" sign hanging over it and only a single person being helped. I walked up behind him and then was shortly assisted. She checked the list of appointments (I didn’t see an Abe Froman, btw), gave me a slip of paper with a number (F012) and suggested I take a seat. I saw about 50 people waiting all together in several different seating locations. I found an empty one and proceeded to check Google Reader with my iPhone.

No more than 8-10 minutes later, my number was called and a walked over to window 4 which was fortunately only about 15 feet from where I was sitting. I had a nice little exchange with the woman assisting me (two of her four boys are serving over in Iraq though she’d switch them with the other two if she could {huh?}), took the eye test, paid my fee and was directed to another window for my photograph which took all of 3 minutes.

From walking in the door to walking out was 18 minutes. By comparison I overheard a man complaining to his neighbor that he had been waiting 90 minutes already.

Just a tip, if you know you’re going to the DMV, make an appointment. If you can’t, bring a book.

Easily adding pictures to a post

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I’ve been having fun working on my WordPress install for this blog and just added a new plugin called PhotoDropper which was originally shown to me by my most beautiful wife.

In the compose window, a new section allows you to search Flickr for Creative Commons tagged pictures that can easily be added to your post.

Here are some examples:

Creative Commons License photo credit: mrbaseball2usa


Creative Commons License photo credit: ericskiff

A change of scenery

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 A kind friend of mine, shared a few new WordPress plug-ins with me for integrating a blog with a Flickr feed: Slickr Gallery and Slickr Widget. I had previously set up Gallery on my site and do have several pictures uploaded, but I liked the idea of leveraging the largest web sharing photo site around. Now, I can simply export any picture I want to share from iPhoto to my Flickr account and they are displayed on the sidebar to the right. Click on a picture and pull up a nice flash-based display of the pictures.

I’m planing on setting it up with the email access option, so I can easily post new pictures when out and about. I’ll be working to migrate the gallery pictures to my Flickr account but will likely leave everything in place until I have to worry about migrating it. That way, my previous posts are still valid.

Can you tell I had a nice time this weekend relaxing? Now, I just wish I didn’t feel like I’m coming down with the same cold that Brian and Becky had last week.

Operators are standing by

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 I’ve heard about GrandCentral a few times, but never had the chance to take a look. I’m impressed. The service which was acquired last summer by Google, has a very interesting concept of a single phone number for life.

How it works is this, you pick a phone number in any area code you wish (not necessarily where you live or work), and then register your other phones (e.g., home, mobile, and work). When somebody calls your new number, all of your registered numbers ring simultaneously. You can limit which phones ring based on the designation of the caller (family, friend, work or unknown). You can even register a SIP phone like Gizmo Project or an Asterix service. Now, you can hand out a single number for all folks and not worry about giving a more private number and they can still get a hold of you. If you don’t answer, GrandCentral will take a voicemail and can email and/or SMS you with the notification and link to get the message. You can also customize the greeting for each caller which certainly make it more personable.

A cool feature is you can switch between any of your registered phones by pressing ‘*’ just like if you switched extensions in your home.

Lastly, and perhaps the geekiest feature, is the WebCall button you’ll find on the home page of my blog. You click the "Call Me" graphic, enter your name, and the number you can be reached at and click "Call Me." What happens next, is your call-back number will ring and when you answer, my extensions will ring and connect us when I pick up.

I hope I’ve given a reasonable description of the service. For me, I plan on using it specifically for work for a single contact number when our network operations center needs to get a hold of me and for those occasions I need to give a number to somebody but don’t want to worry about staying at a number or leaving the line open.

If you’re game, give me a call at 760-444-0399. I’m planning on using it from now on.

Clearing out the drafts: A night with John Williams

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I have a few posts that I never got around publishing and have been glaring at me every time I go to write something. Since I can’t think of anything particularly interesting to say, I’ll polish off one and call it good.

Interestingly, the concert was one year ago tonight exactly. Weird.

My family had the distinct pleasure to go see the San Diego Symphony last night during a special performance of John Williams‘ music conducted by the man himself. I have had a great appreciation of his music since my childhood after seeing Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark (and on and on) so it was a real treat to experience his music performed live while the man who created it, led. He covered much of what he is known for and to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a little tired of hearing them. That is true for most well known performers so why not composers, too.

During a set of pieces from Harry Potter, he did something that I thought was very decent and a sign of how genuine he really is. The piece "Nimbus 2000" is performed by a woodwind ensemble which was seated right in front of his stand. He started them off and then simply stepped down and watched them perform. I thought that act showed sincere trust in the performers and an appreciation of their performance. I do believe that he wanted to make sure everyone could see them as well.

Another interesting part was when they performed the chase sequence from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He first showed the sequence (the one with River Phoenix as a young Indy running from some poachers on a circus train) on a screen above the stage with only the dialog and sound effects. He then played the sequence again with the musicians playing the scored music. It was a nice experience for people to see how the process of scoring a movie works.

In many respects it was the symphonic version of a rock concert. They did three encores (Memoirs of a Geisha, Olympic Spirit, and Raiders of the Lost Ark) which, in my fairly limited experience of concert going, was a first. All-in-all, I was very happy to see my musical idol in the flesh (well, tuxedo) and feel it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

A nice Sunday with the family

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If you’ve been paying attention, I’ve had two trips in three weeks. As a result, I’ve been missing my family, and it was quite nice to be home today and watch the super bowl together as a family. Since I’m not much of a sports fan, I was more interested in the ads than the game itself. One of the more entertaining ones was the one from E*TRADE. You can check it out at their site.

I wonder what Apple is up to?

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When I was up at Macworld two weeks ago I got to see in person many of the announcements that were made during Steve Jobs’ keynote (MacBook Air, iTune Movie Rentals, Time Capsule , etc.). While the MacBook Air is quite sexy, the most interesting thing I thought while strolling through the Apple booth was how much they were pushing the newly updated Apple TV.

If you haven’t heard of it, it was originally announced last year and is basically an iPod that you keep attached to your TV. You navigate the on-screen display with a small remote using an interface similar to Front Row on OS X. I was wholly unimpressed with it as originally announced as it required you to sync content to its 40G drive from another computer on the network. This year, they have improved the software to where you can now rent movies or purchase music or movies from the device itself (before purchases had to be made on your computer and synced to the device).

While Apple isn’t the first to offer movie rentals via digital delivery, they are arguably the highest profile and stand the best chance on making it work (much like they were with digital music purchases with the iTunes Music Store). My question is, what is Apple up to? Are they trying to be the premiere source for digital delivery of media? I suppose so, but it doesn’t necessarily make sense. Maybe they are going to truly transition to the classic razor and razor-blade business model and try and get as much (or more) revenue from each Mac or iPod purchase in the services they offer. It appears the the new price-drop of the Apple TV is not due to lower costs which supports the theory.

I personally have two gripes about the rentals. First, the HD versions of movies are $1 more (generally being referred to as a “guy tax”) and can only be purchased on an Apple TV. That means that my Mac Mini which I have set up as a media center for my TV can only do standard definition. My other complaint, which is more of a deal breaker, is that you have 30 days to begin watching any movie you rented (which is decent), but only 24 hours to finish watching it when you start. That’s a problem. When Becky and I watch a movie, we often don’t finish it in one sitting (especially during the week). With the current model, when we go back to finish it the next night, it’ll be expired and already removed from the system. Lame. My guess it’s a short-sighted requirement from the studios rather than a “feature” from Apple, but either way, it’ll have to change before I get on board.