Rohdesign Weblog: Technology

Here you'll find all posts file under the Technology category.

August 2, 2008

BarCampMilwaukee3

Woohoo! We're just 2 months away from BarCampMilwaukee3, on October 4th and 5th at Bucketworks, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This morning I've updated the BarCampMilwaukee3 logo and icon designs, and am starting to ponder ideas for the t-shirt design for this year's event.

What's a BarCamp?

In a nutshell, a BarCamp is an event where technology people come together and share what they know, in a low-key environment. There are no keynotes or special speakers — anyone who attends has an opportunity to present their ideas and knowledge. There is a heavy emphasis on sharing with others at BarCamp events. It has earned the name "unconference" because it turns the conference idea on its head.

How much is it?

It's a free event, paid for by sponsors, which makes it easy for anyone who wants to come to be there. It's also a great way for sponsors to give back to the local tech community, and already we have a number of sponsors signed up. If you're interested in sponsorship, a donation of $200 to $500 gets your name on the website, t-shirt, and a sign and mention at the event. Not bad!

What will I eat & drink, where can I stay?

Food and beverages are provided for free. Sponsors provide many of the meals and snacks and several of the attendees bring along food and beverages to share if they like. If you want to save cash on a hotel room, you can crash for the night at the event, all you need is a sleeping bag and a pillow.

Where and when is it?

It's taking place at Bucketworks, the "World's First Health Club for the Brain" at 1340 N. 6th Street in Downtown Milwaukee. It's taking place October 4th and 5th, 2008, with a kick-off party happening on October 3rd (my birthday!).

BarCampMilwaukee2 Video

Here's a video by my friend David, from BarCampMilwaukee2:

Come to BarCampMilwaukee3!

You are invited you do come to Milwaukee and experience BarCampMilwaukee3. It's a great opportunity to learn, share and connect with others who love technology, the web, hardware and social media as much as you do.

Questions? See the Getting Started section of the BarCampMKE3 site, or Join the BarCampMilwaukee Yahoo mailing list. You can also leave a comment here and I'll do my best to answer your question.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Milwaukee | add to del.icio.us

May 2, 2008

Clay Shirky & the Power of Disposable Attention

Thanks to Derek Dysart, I was able to hear Clay Shirky's "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus" talk from the Web 2.0 Expo, embedded for your viewing pleasure:

Clay's assertion is that like gin sold from pushcarts helping Londoners cope with the sudden shift from rural farming to urban industrialization, the TV sitcom helped post-WWII society cope with a new surplus of leisure and free time:

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before — free time.

He argues that society is awakening from a focus on TV sitcoms, and is realizing that they are in a position to create the content they want. They are able to contribute to the discussion, in ways not possible before:

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

What Shirky calls a cognitive surplus, I like to call disposable attention. Some may choose to spend attention on one-way activities like TV, but this is changing with the new generation. Shirky shares this story about one young girl's reaction to TV:

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

I'm fascinated at how deeply this 4 year old has been impacted by interactivity in her life. She so wanted to have an impact on the TV show she was experiencing that she had to "find the mouse" in an effort to make an impact. Consuming was not enough for her — she wanted to interact.

There are many new opportunities available to us that were not available 10 years ago. We have the power to create. We have the power to write our own stories on blogs, tell them in podcasts and show them in videos. We can contribute to larger projects like Wikipedia or attend BarCamps.

The encouragement to me in all this is we're moving beyond the stage of simply sitting on a couch, accepting what's being presented. We're given the opportunity to create and share our own stories, finding there are others like us out there, interested in our stories and willing to share theirs with us.

Here are a few great parting quotes from Shirky's talk:

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

We're looking for the mouse. We're going to look at every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?" And I'm betting the answer is yes.

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March 15, 2008

The MilwaukeeDevHouse Experience

Last night, Nathan and I packed up the MacBook, Canon scanner, 27 of his "transportation" themed drawings and headed downtown.

We were off to take part in the first ever MilwaukeeDevHouse at Bucketworks — an opportunity to hang out with a bunch of local Milwaukee tech geeks, doing stuff together.

When we arrived, Bucketworks was already hopping! I counted 30 people, and I may have missed some attendees wandering around Bucketworks (not to mention those who came after we left at 9pm).

We found a spot at one of the tables and setup the MacBook and scanner, then Nathan and I worked together as a team to scan, tune and upload his drawings on Transportation to Flickr.

Today I asked Nathan his thoughts on the event, and he said:

"I liked the people and the noise and the food. I liked pushing the buttons to scan my drawings. I liked everything there!"

This was an excellent experience for us both on many levels:

We shared quality father and son time in a fun, shared environment
I was able to encourage Nathan in his creative work by scanning his art
Nathan met a variety of Web414 pals and learned how to interact with others
We were able to build a memorable experience with tangible results

What's MilwaukeeDevHouse?
In a nutshell, a DevHouse is a space where people can work on serious or fun projects, either by themselves or in a team. Here's the official description:

MilwaukeeDevHouse aims to be the premier regularly scheduled hackathon event that combines serious and not-so-serious productivity with a fun and exciting party atmosphere.
If you’re a coder, designer, or just someone who enjoys software and technology development, MilwaukeeDevHouse was made for you...

MilwaukeeDevHouse is intended for passionate and creative technical people that want to have some fun, learn new things, and meet new people.

If you have the chance to check out a DevHouse locally, do it! Our experience was wonderful. Even better, start a local DevHouse in your area.

Special thanks to Pete Prodoehl, one of the leaders of MilwaukeeDevHouse.

We're already looking forward to MilwaukeeDevHouse2! :-)

Related Links
MilwaukeeDevHouse1 Photos on Flickr
Nathan's Transportation Drawings:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Permalink | Comments (6) | Milwaukee | add to del.icio.us

March 12, 2008

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes

Welcome BoingBoing readers! Be sure to check out my follow-up post called Lessons Learned from my SXSW Sketchnotes too!

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes are up!
I've just completed scanning, tuning and uploading 34 pages of sketchnotes I captured in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook at SXSW Interactive earlier this week.

I think the sketchnotes turned out well, and it was no problem for me to continuously create them for nearly every session I attended. I certainly went through ink in my G2 mini pens — I'm glad I brought several along.

With the SEED Conference sketchnotes being pretty popular, I'm curious to see how these SXSW sketchnotes are received. While sketchnotes capture concentrated concepts for each session well, I think they're even better at awakening ideas stored in the minds of session attendees.

Speakers Featured
Here are the speakers featured in the SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes: Naz Hamid, Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Ryan King, Glenda Bautista, Ariel Waldman, John Gruber, Michael Lopp, Jim Coudal, Dan Rubin, Didier Hilhorst, Eris Stassi, Lea Alcantara (sorry for the Leah misspell in the notes!), Ben Brown and Frank Warren.

Finally, here's the FlickrSlidr Slideshow set:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did creating them! :-)

Stats on Flickr — Wow!

Check out Shaun Swick's very cool SXSW Sketchnotes 08 Flickr Set for another perspective.

Dave Gray does his style of sketchnotes on 3x5 notecards, check out his set from VizThink08.

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March 11, 2008

Rohdesign Podcast 05 - SXSW Roundtable Discussion

I've now recorded and posted Rohdesign Podcast Episode 05 in Austin, a little longer 16 minute roundtable discussion on the patio at SXSW interactive. It's posted as an MP3 and as a web-based flash player:

In the fifth episode of the Rohdesign Podcast, I talk with Ashe Dryden, David Overbeck and Carlos Ortega about their impressions of SXSW Interactive, favorite sessions and why you should consider attending SXSW 2009.

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March 9, 2008

Rohdesign Podcast 04 - SXSW Interactive Edition

I've now recorded and posted Rohdesign Podcast Episode 04 in Austin, after 2 days at SXSW interactive. It's posted as an MP3 and as a web-based flash player:

In the fourth episode of the Rohdesign Podcast, I talk about networking at SXSW, excellent design sessions I was able to attend, sketchnotes progress and plans for Sunday's activities.

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February 27, 2008

DVD Recorders & Over The Air Digital TV

After Christmas, I made the decision to buy to a DVD Recorder and digital tuner, which is one of the best TV gear purchases I've ever made.

My plans for a new DVD recorder was to capture favorite TV shows (Heroes, The Office and Numb3rs) and convert DV tapes of Nathan and our VHS wedding video to DVD discs.

Choosing a Device
After my research, I chose the Panasonic DMREZ27K, a DVD player/recorder with a built-in ATSC digital and analog TV tuner. It plays DVDs, records DVDs, reads SD cards and receives both analog and digital TV signals from local stations. It also has S-Video, and Firewire ports which are critical for converting our DV tapes to DVD.

When looking at these types of devices it can be difficult to compare, because features are often inconsistent across brands. For instance, many DVD Recorders don't come with an ATSC digital tuner, while others do. To deal with this, I focused on what features I most needed and chose the best device within my price range.

DVD Player & Recorder
The recorder and player were pretty easy to get used to, being very similar to our old DVD player and VCR recorder. You can record immediately or on a timed program, from digital TV signal, RCA jacks, S-Video port, or the Firewire port.

It can record 4 hours of video on a single disc in LP mode at decent quality, or 6-8 hours at lower quality. I'm still experimenting with settings, but have recorded from digital TV, through S-Video and Firewire from the DV camera and through RCA jacks from VHS tape with pretty good results.

Once a DVD is recorded, I can toss the DVD disc into my Mac and view the video, or convert the video files into a format optimized for the iPod touch. Nice!

Commercial DVDs look pretty good when played, though I should mention — we don't have an HDTV yet. The Panasonic up-samples DVDs to decent quality 1080i resolution video via an HDMI port, so we'll be able to enjoy old DVDs when we do get an HDTV screen, at least until Blu-Ray Recorders are reasonably priced.

One feature I've not tested yet — recording with DVD-RAM discs. Apparently the Panasonic recorder can treat DVD-RAM discs like hard drives, pausing live TV while the program is still recording. I'll update this article once I try it out.

Digital TV Tuner
The surprise feature of the Panasonic DMREZ27K was the ATSC digital TV tuner. We had subscribed to bare bones cable for years, but when we moved last summer, our basic cable got fewer channels and went from $12/month to $20/month. Ouch!

After researching Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV) I decided to take a chance, replacing our cable with over the air digital TV, saving $20/month.

I found a variety of helpful resources on the web: the Engadget article OTA HD demystified, HDTV Magazine's DTV reference, DTV.gov, HDTV Antenna Guide, and TitanTV providing customized, web-based, local digital TV programming schedules.

Once I had the digital tuner setup, I was amazed at the picture quality and the variety of local channels! We had all of our local Milwaukee stations in digital, a 24 hour weather channel, 9 different public TV stations and several more to boot.

We love the two kids stations we receive: a PBS station with Sesame Street, Curious George, Clifford and the other, Qubo, with a variety of quirky, fun programs like Postman Pat, Theodore Tugboat and Pecola, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

When analog TV shuts down on February 17, 2009, we'll still receive the digital broadcasts we see now, and may even gain a few by then.

Conclusion
In this transitional period between analog and digital TV, regular and HDTV, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, it's nice to find a device that does a lot for a reasonable price.

I've been very pleased with the Panasonic DMREZ27K. I've converted VHS and short DV tapes to DVD, recorded TV shows in digital quality over the air, and have two fun, educational stations for our son, all while saving $20 a month on cable.

Not bad for $200 bucks!

Permalink | | Technology | add to del.icio.us

February 7, 2008

Attending SXSW Interactive 2008!

For the past few years, I've been very intentional about attending thought-provoking conferences and events, to learn, grow and meet new people.

In 2007, I attended BarCampMadison, UX Intensive, SOBCon07, BarCampMilwaukee2 the SEED Conference and excellent monthly Web414 meetings through the year.

For several years I've heard great things about SXSW (South by Southwest) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Many of the people I admire attend yearly, I've enjoyed podcasts from the event, but it's never worked out for me to attend.

That will change in 2008. On March 7th, I'll be heading down to Austin, with fellow Web414 members Ashe Dryden and David Overbeck. We're all excited to see first-hand, just what all the SXSW buzz is about.

Thanks MakaluMedia!
I've been given the opportunity to attend SXSW as art director and designer from MakaluMedia. I'm very thankful for this opportunity, and I plan to make the most of my time in Austin. I'll attend multiple sessions, take notes and capture sketchnotes similar to the ones I did at the SEED Conference and UX Intensive.

Advise the Newbie
Since this is my first time to SXSW Interactive, I welcome tips and ideas from seasoned veterans. I'm also open to Austin tips and suggestions from any Austin dwellers out there who would like to share. Just leave a comment below. :-)

Contact Me SXSW-Goers
I also want to meet old friends and new people while I'm at at SXSW. If you're attending SXSW Interactive 2008 and would like to meet for a coffee in Austin, drop me a line with the subject SXSW. I'd love to connect before I head down to Austin.

Resources
As I prepare for SXSW Interactive, I've compiled a selection of resources to share with other SXSW attendees, and those interested in the event:

SXSW Interactive 2008 — The official site.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Time) — SXSW Panels, time schedule.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Day) — SXSW Panels, by day.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Category) — SXSW Panels, by category.
SXSW Registrant's Guide — Registrant's guide.
SXSW Registrant's Mobile Guide — Mobile registrant's guide.
SXSW '08 Insider's Guide — Information and forums on Ning.com.
SXSW Baby — Un-official Weblog and forums for SXSW.
Ze Frank Explains SXSW Interactive In Under a Minute — Classic Ze Frank humor!
SXSW Core Conversations — Directory for informal conversations.
SXSW Past, Present, and Future — Great podcast interview with Hugh Forrest, Director of Events for SXSW Interactive on the history, culture and future of the event.
SXSW Geeks Love Bowling — Bowling with SXSWers, Sunday, March 9th.
Airbag: Hampton — Greg Storey's Guide to SXSW Newbies.
John Phillips — Beginner's Guide to SXSW.

Have a resource to share? Email me and let me know!

Permalink | Comments (8) | Creativity | add to del.icio.us

November 20, 2007

What Happens When Web Services Fail Us?

As Web 2.0 gets into full swing and mainstream "average joes" start using and relying on web services, what will they do when those services eventually fail them?

A few stories have brought me to this line of thinking:

TinyURL went down Sunday and Monday for several hours. TinyURL conveniently shrinks long web links into tiny web links and handles redirection to the long link's site. When TinyURL failed, so did all of the web links I and thousands of others have created to help our friends, family and colleagues.
Pete Prodoehl mentioned the plight of Phil Wilson, who had all of the web services he used on Google fail in a different way — account suspension. Without any warning, his email, documents, and other data was denied him for over a week, as of his last posting.
Google penalizes hundreds of blogs who offer text-link advertising on their websites, by dropping PageRank, a number from 1 to 10, assigned to sites based on Google's secret algorithm and other criteria. In a single day, many who relied on Google (too much I'd contend) saw their PageRank and AdSense revenue drop at the whim of Google.

I see these stories as a warning: be aware that the web services I'm using can fail at any time. Be aware that I could be denied services, without notice. Be aware that I could face a lack of access to my account and data, at the whim of the service I use. Be aware that the company who provides advertising income and my search results could change its mind about the value and importance of my site.

I'm not against web services — I use them all the time. However, I keep mission critical data like email on my Macs and my own servers. Maybe it's a generational thing to want my data local, and to be a little leery of giving away too much information to web services.

What web services do you depend on? Could you survive if they folded tomorrow?

Have you considered what you would do if your services went down for a day, a week... forever?

What if those services simply denied access for a terms of service violation you can't prove because the service doesn't respond to your emails?

How would you handle denial from years of your email for 1 week, 2 weeks, a month?

Something to think about.

Permalink | Comments (6) | Technology | add to del.icio.us

October 30, 2007

SEED Conference Thoughts & Sketchnotes

Whew! I'm back from Monday's excellent SEED Conference in Chicago.

What a great event! The Illinois Institute of Technology and Rem Koolhaas' Tribune Student Center building, was an incredibly cool venue. Funky lines and the architectural space provided a unique backdrop for the sessions of the day.

Carlos Segura
All of the sessions were very good, though the most interesting for me as a designer was hearing Carlos Segura speak. He talked about taking risks and thinking deeper for clients and going beyond only what they ask to figuring out what they really need.

I was especially inspired by the Corbis Stock Photo case study, where Carlos' team changed the stock agency's overall approach to consider their clients (designers) and in doing so, changed an entire industry.

Segura also stressed keeping small, working on projects and with clients you really want to work with. Good work comes from these situations, and by staying small you aren't constantly taking jobs you dislike just to keep everyone busy. In fact, this turned into a thread that connected all of the talks of the day.

Jason Fried
Jason spoke very briefly, so he could open the floor for lots of Q&A time. He recommended these 5 items:

Watch out for red flags
Keep your team small
Make sure your staff has alone time
Keep meetings short and focused
Make tiny decisions instead of massive ones

Jason also recommended a small team size, though his perspective focused a little more on communication issues with small vs. large teams and scaling projects to fit your team size rather than scaling your team to fit scope.

I resonated most with Jason's call for alone time. I work remotely, but even though I work alone, there is always a temptation towards IM, email or phone calls, and I find that blocking out chunks of alone time makes a difference. I know this may be a tough one for the multi-tasking generation, but I think it really can help your focus.

Jim Coudal
I loved Jim Coudal's candor and relaxed approach, and especially his openness in sharing his firm's successes and failures. He shared several stories and films, and drew ideas from them. My take away:

Be curious
Choose people on their taste
Don't be afraid to fail

Jim talked about his curiosity and how many of the things he's been curious about have turned into business ideas. Curiosity helps with client work, since you can get to speed quickly and often see a problem from a different perspective than the client.

He also talked about identifying people and hiring them on taste over technical talent. Not untalented people with taste, but rather if you had to choose between two people and one had good taste, go with taste over talent.

Coudal suggested that failures are OK. They're learning experiences which often create opportunities that might never have happened otherwise. You have to learn to identify and capitalize on unexpected opportunities that often grow out of failures.

Discussion Session: Segura, Fried & Coudal
The most interesting of the sessions was the final hour or so of open discussion time with Carlos, Jason and Jim at the front of the room. They fielded all sorts of questions from attendees about their ideas. Questions about small teams, marketing, simplicity, community, building products while still managing client work, questions about creating apps that rely solely on other platorms (Facebook), and more.

Of all the sessions, this was the one I and the 4 other guys I met, thought was the best of all. Why? Because they had a chance to respond immediately and candidly to random questions. I also enjoyed hearing them discuss and explore ideas in depth that hadn't come out in their talks. Finally, it was interesting to hear their similarity of thought and subtle differences of approach and opinion on the same questions.

Sketchnotes
As mentioned last week, I took my pocket Moleskine sketchbook along and captured 17 pages of sketchnotes, from the entire day's talks and discussions, including Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, Edward Lifson and Jim Coudal.

I didn't try to capture everything said during yeterday's event, since others were probably doing that.

Instead, I took time to listen and analyze the talks, distilling and capturing the main ideas I was hearing. By doing a bit of on-the-fly processing, it forced me to boil down what was being said, then express it in ink on the page in a way that would be meaningful to me and to others who might read my sketchnotes later.

To make the notes interesting, I played with typography and images with the sketchnotes, to provide a little texture and depth beyond pages of gray text.

SEED Sketchnotes on Coudal Partners
Seems my notes have struck a chord. Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners emailed about my sketchnotes on Flickr and made mention in their Fresh Signals feed. Thanks Jim!

SEED Sketchnotes on Signal vs. Noise
Awesome! 37signals noticed them too: Mike Rohde's SEED Conference 2007 sketchbook notes. Thanks Matt!

Pretty cool to have speakers and sponsors mention notes taken during the event. :-)

Overall, SEED Conference was well worth the time and price to attend.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

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October 24, 2007

iPod touch Two Week Report

It's been two weeks since I've switched to an iPod touch. I love this device. Since I'm regularly asked about it, I've decided to write a report in on my thoughts so far:

The touch's size is perfect. Thin and small. Slides into my pocket nicely, though I'm still not completely over the idea of carrying such a valuable device in my pocket just yet.

I love the density and weight of the touch. It feels substantial and sturdy, though I am very careful not to torque the thing. I still need to find a sturdy case that doesn't add too much heft.

The screen is incredibly bright. I've turned it down to 1/3 brightness to save battery life and it's still very readable. Did the same thing on my Zire 72.

Mobile Safari is very useful. I can surf the sites I regularly use, with tap and pinch to zoom as needed. Mobile specific sites, like NewsGator Mobile and Facebook, do a nice job providing essential information on the smaller screen. For a complete listing of mobile sites, visit Apple's Web Apps Directory.

I'm noticing that Safari seems to quit when it gets overloaded with a particularly detailed page, or if too many pages are open at the same time. I'm not sure what wipes Safari out, but it seems to wipe out more than it ought to.

Safari can be an e-book reader of sorts! It can read Word documents quite nicely. I just performed a tests on several MS Word documents, and it worked perfectly (go figure). The text loads in Safari, flows to the window and retains formatting, including em dashes and curly quotes properly. I am already planning on loading several Safari windows of e-books in .doc format on my touch, then going offline to read 'em whenever I like. Note that you will need server space where you can host these Word docs.

Safari also supports PDF files quite well, though if formatted for a Letter or A4 page, requires scrolling around and zooming to see fine details. I imagine one could create a PDF document optimized for Safari on the iPhone, though doing that as plain HTML seems easier to me.

Plain text .txt files are semi-supported in Safari. It complains about not being able to read the file, but seems to open them anyway. However, the text doesn't flow with the screen properly and is set in a fixed Courier font that makes reading tedious. RTF files seem to not be supported by Safari.

I'm enjoying the easier to read contact list, and editing/adding capabilities. One thing I missed from my Palm was a full and editable contact list. The nano offered the list in tiny, nearly unreadable type with no editing capabilities.

I'm pleased that Apple is releasing a Software Development Kit (SDK) to developers in February 2008, and figured they had this in their plans all along. Looking forward to cool apps like Natara Bonsai — right Bryan? :-)

I like the Video capabilities and the wide screen, though I've not taken full advantage of this yet. I've put Firefly from our DVD set, but not much more. The YouTube app is handy, though I avoid the black hole time suck that is YouTube, unless I'm looking for something specific.

Brando Workshop sent a BW UltraClear Screen Cover to test, which works well. Brando's screen covers are tough and easy to install. Thanks Brando! :-)

Having a synced copy of iCal on hand is useful, though I wish for calendar editing. I know there's a hack (thanks KeVroN), but I'm avoiding hacks, since Apple just announced the SDK for '08.

Using the iPod touch in the car is a problem. I feel uncomfortable having to visually interact with the touch, so I make changes at stoplights, or queue playlists or podcasts to run uninterrupted. One solution I'm considering is an Apple Universal Dock with remote, for manual control on the road.

Battery life is a little less than I would like, though I think reasonable considering WiFi feature and screen size of the touch. I'd be very open to an iPod touch with the same dimensions as the iPhone if it had a bigger battery. I'm exploring shutting off WiFi when not in use, to see if it extends battery life.

I love that the touch pauses tracks when you remove the headphone jack.

I'm getting used to the keyboard, which works decently for most needs, though I wouldn't want to write any kind of long post using it, just yet. I'm hoping ThinkOutside will develop a version of their foldable keyboard for the iPod touch and iPhone. I'd buy one.

The iTunes Mobile Store is well done, though I won't use it terribly much. Still, I have to admit it's very cool to have access to any track I might want directly from the touch. Might come in handy some day.

I'm getting used to the multi-touch interface after years using the nano's scroll-wheel. I like the iPod touch interface, though there's a pretty big trade off versus a scroll-wheel interface for pure music management. The touch's software-based interface and lack of control buttons, require visual and tactile interaction to manage what I listen to. If you need a pure music player, then a scroll-wheel iPod would be a better fit.

Summing it Up
I feel there's a huge potential for this device to expand and adapt to my needs, especially in 2008 when applications start appearing. As it is now, the touch is quite useful and fits my lifestyle well — with a few more key native applications I can envision it becoming more and more useful as time goes on.

The iPod touch integrates well with my most useful tools. I can carry a lighter load in my Cafe Bag for logo sketch sessions: my Moleskine planner, Miquelrius sketchbook, Faber Castell pencil and iPod touch. It's great!

Permalink | Comments (7) | Moleskine | add to del.icio.us

October 15, 2007

BarCampMilwaukee2 Was a Success!

Another BarCampMilwaukee has been successfully pulled off!

In my wanderings and speaking with people in attendance tis weekend, BarCamp was a success.

I repeatedly received positive comments such as "what a great event!" or "wow, people here are so helpful and friendly!" and "this was very well planned and managed" from attendees.

Those who have been involved in putting on a conference will know it's a different view from the inside. We certainly had our glitches, but I was always impressed with the team of organizers and random attendees stepping up to help.

It was very encouraging to see the group do it for themselves, giving of themselves and sharing what they had to make BarCampMilwaukee2 happen for everyone.

As an example, I was set to handle registration and t-shirt handout with several helpers. All was well until I found that the spreadsheet I was using was somehow un-searchable in NeoOffice, two co-organizers moved the file to another machine, while several others started taking names and shirt sizes on good 'ol paper and pencil. Several fresh registrants stepped up to help distribute shirts to other registrants.

Things like this happened repeatedly throughout the weekend, problems being identified and helpers stepping up to solve them. It was a great experience seeing that sort of ad-hoc willingness pop up again and again.

Great Sessions
Sessions were varied and interesting, ranging from personal branding, portable apps, web and graphic design and analog tool capture, to hacking elevators, the Flickrverse, social networking history and more. In each of the sessions I attended, fascinating discussions got going, and kept right through to the end of each hour.

Photowalk
I went on the BarCamp Photowalk and had a great time shooting a few images and getting to know several campers better. Check out photos from the event on Flickr. We wandered Schlitz Park, and we then invited into the building of an attendee to snap images inside. We rode in a creaky freight elevator in a old warehouse building, to explore a room full of busted piano parts.

But I think I most enjoyed meeting new people. People like Marcus and Jen and Tracy. There were many more and everyone had a story, an interest, a passion. And those I met seemed to be having a great time, just like me.

Thank You
Thank you to Pete and all of the organizers! I'm very proud to be counted as a small part of the BarCamp organization team, handling t-shirt design, production and printing as well as various other tasks. It was a true honor to be part of this group, watching it move from planning, to preparation to fruition.

Thanks go to our sponsors, who made this event possible. On a several occasions I had attendees ask who was paying for food or shirts — it was a great feeling to tell them that everything was covered by sponsors and individual donations. I'm very proud that the company I work for, MakaluMedia, was a sponsor of this event.

If you're curious about the event, check out the batch of photos generated at the event on Flickr, or check out other postings on Technorati.

Attend or Organize a BarCamp!
If you learn of a BarCamp in your area — go! It's a blast and you won't regret it. If there isn't one in your area, start one! You'll find fellow BarCampers very helpful, and full if ideas and information.

Lord of Chaos T-Shirt
You can see the story behind the Lord of Chaos T-Shirt I designed for Pete Prodoehl, and if you like itm pick up your own directly from GoodStorm:

Technorati Tags: barcampmilwaukee2, milwaukee

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October 5, 2007

iPod touch: My New PDA

I've been Palm PDA-less for about a year and a half now, successfully switching to a hacked Moleskine Planner system for my personal calendar, tasks and notes.

In fact, the Moleskine has worked well in combination with my iPod nano, which provided access to my contacts in nearly unreadable 4pt text.

When the iPhone launched, I was quite interested, even though an iPhone doesn't suit my needs or budget. I was more interested in the iPhone as a mobile data device, with Safari, Mail and other features it offers.

Enter iPod touch
When Steve Jobs announced the iPod touch, my ears perked up. Now here was a device I could make use of, without a 2 year contract. It had the features I'd actually use: music and podcasts, contact info in a font I could actually read, WiFi and a mobile version of Safari, video play, and access to iCal calendars on the go.

So, this week, for my birthday I got an iPod touch, and so far I'm very impressed.

First Observations
Here are my first observations after having the touch a bit over 24 hours:

The size and thinness are amazing, compared to the Palm devices I used to carry round. it's a little disconcerting carrying a $400 iPod with a full glass screen in my pocket, so I'm working on a case and clear screen/body protectors.

Mobile Safari and WiFi are quite nice. I'm investigating mobile-specific sites for the iPhone and iPod touch, like PocketTweets and Mobile NY Times, picked up from Janet Tokerud's update on her iPhone. If you have sites to share, please share the links.

I've already been able to play audio at IT Conversations, and video from Google Video, so the browser is pretty handy and flexible for my needs.

I love the Contacts app, with super-readable text. I like that it syncs from my Address Book on the Mac. I like that I can add new contacts on the go. This was one of the most-missed feature of my Palm PDA.

It's handy to have my work and family calendars synced from the Mac as well. We've just setup a common family calendar with iCal on our Macs, Google Calendar on the web and SpanningSync to connect everything together. Having a mobile view of our shared calendars adds a nice access point. I wish I could add events, and hope this feature is added in a future software update.

Widescreen video is wonderful. I've moved a few videos over with iSquint and have been pleased with the results. Since my nano had no video capabilities, this is an interesting new option to explore. Now I can watch The IT Crowd wherever I want! :-)

Audio is great, though I'm having to re-orient myself a little to to the touch way of navigating through my music and podcasts. I think it's more a matter of me adapting to the new features the touch offers.

One thing I miss from the nano is the scroll wheel. I listen to podcasts and music when I drive, so having a physical wheel there for jumping tracks or adjusting or pausing the sound has been useful. Now I need to eyeball the iPod touch to make these changes. I've heard from friends there may be headphones or docks with this feature, so I need to do some research. If you have tips on this, let me know.

I'm trying to secure some things to review for the iPod touch in coming months. As I get hold of those and try them, look for reviews, to help out other touch owners.

Battery life seems OK, not extensive as my nano though. But hey, this device has a huge screen and WiFi, so I have to be realistic about my expectations coming from an iPod nano.

It's nowhere near as featured as a Palm PDA, and doesn't have near the tools that are available on the Palm OS, However, it has the items I need it to have. Over the years I've found that the right features in a tool or device are better for me than every possible feature, especially if I never use 80% of the features offered.

After 24 hours I'm impressed. We'll see what quirks arise after a few weeks. I'l be sure to post again after a month or so and let you all know how things are going in iPod touch land. :-)

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September 22, 2007

BarCamp Milwaukee 2 T-Shirt Mockup

Yesterday I visited MJM Ventures, the company who is printing our BarCamp Milwaukee 2 T-Shirts. They kindly got a sample of a Gildan Sand colored shirt, so I could see the color and create a mockup.

Wow! What a perfect color! It's neutral with a hint of warmth and light enough to work with out dark gold and navy blue colors.

Today I created a quick ink-jet iron-on mockup of the BarCamp shirt, to figure out the correct size of the imprint and to make sure the colors would look good on the shirt's surface. I'e done many ink-jet iron ons before and they are a great way to envision shirt designs or make custom shirts.

I think the emblem is going to be enlarged a tad, and then I need to find a good Pantone gold that's not too greenish. For whatever reason, the dark gold we had been using has a tendency to go toward the green, when I want it to stay warm and rich.

Next week, the art gets finalized along with the sponsor list.

To secure one of the t-shirts, you must register to attend BarCamp Milwaukee 2 before Wednesday the 26th, when the art goes to the printer!

Permalink | Comments (2) | T-Shirts | add to del.icio.us

September 17, 2007

iPhone in Europe!

Saul Hansell suggests that the iPhone is headed to Europe. If true, that's good news for my European friends who have been waiting to get their hands on an iPhone.

Carrier choice is unconfirmed, though reports suggest O2 in the UK, T-Mobile in Germany and Orange in France.

When I saw this quote from the Guardian article, I had to chuckle:

Throughout discussions over marketing the iPhone in Europe, Apple has played off the UK’s four main networks - O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone - against each other. All of them, at one stage, believed they had an exclusive deal for the British market.
As a result, many mobile phone company executives are unimpressed with the way the Californian computer group has conducted businesses this side of the Atlantic, although similar tactics were used in the US.

I find it hard to believe that the network execs would be surprised by a "play them against each other" tactic, especially since the same approach was used in the US — before the iPhone's launch and wild success.

Isn't this negotiation strategy 101?

And what does "believed" mean here? Are they suggesting Apple tricked them? Or some operators "believed" they had the deal locked up and didn't count on a more aggressive operator like O2 going even farther to win the deal?

I'm curious to see how the iPhone is received in Europe, where SMS and texting are more common. Will the touch screen be a liability, or will Europeans adapt to it?

Should be very interesting to watch! :-)

Update 2007-09-18
It's official: Apple chooses O2 for exclusive carrier in the UK:

iPhone is scheduled to go on sale on November 9 and will be sold exclusively in the UK through Apple’s retail and online stores, O2 and The Carphone Warehouse's retail and online stores.
iPhone will be available in an 8GB model for £269 (inc VAT) and will work with either a PC or Mac. Three new great value iPhone tariffs will be available from O2 starting at £35, which all include unlimited anytime, anywhere mobile data usage and, in a market first, free unlimited use of the UK’s largest single public Wi-Fi network, covering over 7,500 cafes, restaurants, airport lounges, pubs and other locations across the UK.

Nice touch to offer the WiFi coverage. Wonder how long until the software developers manage to unlock the phone for other UK carriers?

(via Daring Fireball)

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September 14, 2007

BarCamp Milwaukee 2

It's coming! BarCamp Milwaukee was so much fun in 2006, we're doing it again!

BarCamp Milwaukee 2 is set to happen on Saturday, October 13 and Sunday the 14th, 2007, at Schlitz Park Center. BarCamp is an "unconference" in that the people who attend are also the presenters who share expertise and passion with others.

BarCamps usually focus on technology, though at the Milwaukee event we want to encourage the discussion of creative culture and how to integrate new technologies to foster further growth.

We plan to have discussions on Creative Commons, which so often can seem hard to grasp. I look forward to hearing about this, so I can be better about applying CC licenses appropriately, and share my work with others who are interested.

I'm also giving a talk on Iterative Design at BarCamp, sharing some examples and getting a discussion going on how to practically apply principles of iteration to various forms of work, whether creative or otherwise.

So, come on down and read the Get Started page, so you can sign up and donate! Check out the Sessions, and Participants pages. If you're a press person or blogger, the Press Kit is a good place to get concise info on BarCamp Milwaukee.

If you sign up before September 26th, you get this cool T-Shirt, with beautiful illustration work by Jen Anne and design work by myself:

Get in on the fun and join us at BarCamp Milwaukee 2! :-)

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September 4, 2007

Palm Foleo is Dead

My buddy Michael Ashby shared the news with me that the Foleo is dead:

In the course of the past several months, it has become clear that the right path for Palm is to offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts.
To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering out next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market.

Maybe the iPhone launch and success had an impact? Maybe the adrenaline rush from an impending death has imparted a wonderful focus?

I was worried about Palm and the Foleo when it launched, so I'm happy to hear this news. But apparently not everyone is happy about the decision:

I know there will be disappointed folks who were looking forward to carrying a Foleo for all their mobile computing needs. I am certainly one of them.

Dissapointment for the few people who would actually purchase an oddball sorta-kinda-laptop-handheld-thingamabob, running an odd operating system, that is.

But never fear faithful few! The Foleo is not completely dead, just sleeping! There are already dreams to revive the Foleo, running the new platform from Palm:

Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category.

I'm glad to see Palm has regained some much needed focus on their rapidly shrinking smartphone business. I hope they can shed excess distractions and come up with something new to delight their customers.

I really hope they can do it before Apple releases iPhone v2, v3, v4, v5...

Related Links
Foleo, we hardly knew ye (Michael Mace)

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August 29, 2007

Infomania

Today I came across an interesting paper on Infomania — the deadly combination of email overload and constant interruptions. It's a challenging piece, which really got me thinking about Infomania's impact in my work and personal life.

Written by Nathan Zeldes, David Sward and Sigal Louchheim, the paper describes the severe effects of Infomania on productivity and quality of life for knowledge workers, as well as its impact on businesses:

In this work, we show that this phenomenon places knowledge workers and managers worldwide in a chronic state of mental overload. It exacts a massive toll on employee productivity and causes significant personal harm, while organizations ultimately pay the price with extensive financial loss.

Lately, I've been much more aware of interruptions and how they work against my productivity. I've spent about a month setting up my new home office, trying to establish a regular work pattern after the move — It's been difficult. In this in-between state I can see how damaging interruptions can be.

Fortunately, my office and work patterns have now stabilized, and I'm eliminating interruptions and distractions. Even so, there are always temptations to allow interruptions to steal my focus.

Solving this problem would have a positive and immediate impact on organizational results, while restoring computer–based communications technology to its rightful role as promoter of personal and organizational effectiveness.

I have more recently felt the need to physically avoid my office on weekends and evenings. I just want to be somewhere else, so I can recharge for the next day's work.

It's not for a lack of loving what I do — design work, my clients, and the company I work for — there is something deep within me that yearns for separation.

Time away from the computer during the workday is refreshing. I'm fortunate that a large portion of my work is research, thinking and sketching with pencil and paper.

What about your situation?
Do you feel the pressure of Infomania at work, at home? Do you have established times away from technology for refreshment? Have a journal you can write, sketch and get away from technology in?

I recommend Reading the paper and pondering the evidence.

Thanks to Dave Gray for the Infomania link!

Permalink | Comments (7) | Technology | add to del.icio.us

June 30, 2007

iPhone Thoughts & Observations

The iPhone has landed.

Looks like a winner so far, even with its limitations and flaws. Let's be real, it's a v1.0 product so there will be limitations and flaws.

Overall, I think the iPhone is well balanced for a smartphone aimed at the mass market — I and that's important because I believe Apple isn't targeting only geeks with this device.

Personally I'm not getting an iPhone just yet, mostly because it's impractical for my lifestyle. I'm not mobile enough to make effective use of the thing, no matter how cool it is. :-)

I saw a CNet story about the iPhone's effect on Palm already:

Palm reports profit drop, expects iPhone effect

In that story (which doesn't bode well for Palm or the Treo) I had to chuckle at this quote from Palm Chief Executive Ed Colligan:

"They will have 30 days to return (iPhone) so we hope we'll benefit from that, if that happens" — Ed Colligan, Palm CEO

Riiiiiight! We'll benefit IF they return their iPhones?

That's all you've got Ed?

In the words of Jayne Cobb of Firefly, "I'm smelling a lot of IF coming off this plan!"

I think Palm is in trouble. Not that the Treo isn't good for what it is — but they were caught flat-footed. What do they have in response? Another Treo, this time in other pretty colors?

Or maybe a crippled pseudo-laptop thingamabob?

Yeah, I think Palm better get cracking quick on something revolutionary that customers will actually buy in this new iPhone influenced market, and not another re-hash of an the same-old solution from 1999.

The iPhone is not perfect, but it is re-shaping the entire wireless phone world, even if it's pushing competitors to respond to it.

iPhone Web Apps
I have a gut feeling that web-based iPhone apps are going to be huge. On par with the Palm app eco-system. Sure, the iPhone doesn't have a native API and may never have, but I think the next progression of Web 2.0 applications are bwoser apps for mobile devices (e.g. Safari).

Already we're seeing apps for the iPhone appear, like OneTrip and Quip and more are going to come. There's even iPhoney, an OS X-based app to test your iPhone apps.

Web developers and designers — this is your opportunity!

Related Links
Daring Fireball: Jon Gruber's Fist Impressions of the iPhone
iPhone User Guide (via Daring Fireball)
iPhone Dissasembled (via Daring Fireball)
The Talk Show Podcast: Dan Bejamin & Jon Gruber Talk iPhone (34 min)
Fake Steve Jobs Blog: Crack you up humor from a pseudo Steve. (Rated R language)
The Morning After - Scobelizer
Tech Ronin: First Person Report on my new iPhone
Derek Punsalan: A look at the iPhone, after all the ritz and glamor
37signals: Ta-Da List for iPhone
Geek With Laptop: Palm Pushes OS-II to 2008 (via Phil)

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June 22, 2007

My Podcast Interview on The Micro ISV Show

A few weeks ago, I was invited by author, micro-business owner and new MakaluMedia logo design client Bob Walsh, to be interviewed on Microsoft's The MicroISV Show (a podcast for software developers) with co-host Michael Lehman:

It's a brave new world for MicroISVs in which it's no longer enough to drag some controls onto a form and simply make sure they're lined up and the tab order is right. The mantra "form follows function" is becoming more and more important for developers as advent of Windows Vista, WPF and Silverlight once again change the expectations of how customers perceive software. You've got to "put your best face forward" and think about design of the user experience right from the beginning.
In this episode, Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh talk to Mike Rohde, designer and art director for MakaluMedia, about the changing role of design in software development and how and why MicroISVs must incorporate design thinking into their development process.

Listen to The Micro ISV Show #22 podcast:

• Putting your best face forward - The growing importance of design for MicroISVs
• Direct Podcast MP3 Link (Size: 36MB, Runtime: 40:13)

We had a great time! I had an opportunity to talk a bit about my views on design being more than window-dressing on applications, the importance of starting early with a designer, how to choose a designer, vector-based development tools and how they may effect developers and designers, and more.

Bob worked in questions about my creative process, asked how I generate so many sketch ideas, and even slipped in a mention of my Moleskine Planner Hack project.

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

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June 15, 2007

Friday Tidbits: Pudding, Journler & Northern Room

Here are a few Friday tidbits to share:

Ataraxis Pudding Launches
Pudding, a tool crearted by Michael Sica, launched last Friday. It's a web-based tool for sharing creative work with others. Pudding allows you to post images of your work in a private account, for clients and colleagues, to view and comment on. It comes in many flavors depending on your needs, free 30 day trial and a tour to see what Pudding can do.

Journler Gets 4.5 Mice from Macworld!
My friend Phil Dow's wornderful mac application Journler just received 4.5 mice from Macworld, in an August 2007 review. I've talked about the icon I designed and how I love the application — so it's very nice to see a great guy like Phil, seeing success and critical acclaim for the hard work he's invested in Journler.

Good Tunes: Northern Room
A few weeks ago I came across the local Milwaukee band Northern Room, via my good friend Joe Phillips. They have a great sound, which I quite like. I'd categorize their sound as similar to Snow Patrol, U2, Coldplay, and O.K. Go. Check out Northern Room on iTunes, Purevolume and SonicBids.

That's all — have a great weekend everyone!

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June 1, 2007

Panoramio (and logo) are acquired by Google

Congratulations to my friends Eduardo, Joaquín and José of Panoramio, in the recent Google acquisition of their startup!

From the Panoramio blog post on May 31st:

The integration of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth has been so successful since John Hanke suggested it that we see the acquisition of Panoramio as a natural consequence. We have tightened our relationship with Google Earth more and more in recent months, and at the end we decided to walk one step further. After so much work together, honestly, we couldn’t imagine a better scenario than selling Panoramio to Google.

I was honored to work with "the boyz" back in October 2005, when we created the Panoramio identity (along with two other identities after it, including Cursoo).

I'm very excited for the Panoramio team, and just as excited that the identity work for the project had a small part in helping the team get to the next level.

Congratulations guys! :-)

Permalink | Comments (3) | Logos | add to del.icio.us

May 30, 2007

Palm Foleo: Hit or Doomed Thingamabob?

Just saw today that Palm has released the Foleo, apparently that "other device category" Jeff Hawkins has been talking about for a few years now.

The Foleo (which is at this point an unreleased prototype) is a kind of pseudo sub-notebook thingamabob that enhances a Palm Treo.

Based on what scant technical info offered on the Palm site, the $499 Foleo has a 10" color screen and full-sized keyboard, which syncs via Bluetooth with a Treo for data (email, photos, files, etc.) and piggybacks off of the Treo's wireless connection for web surfing, or can do 802.11b WiFi. It's a full sized "companion" to a Treo and not much more — something like a prosthetic screen and keyboard. :-)

Some of my first questions about this device are:

• Does it operate without the Treo or other handheld? Can I do anything useful on this device without a Treo to get my net connection or to sync mail or photos?

• Who will buy this for $499? Notebooks and the iPhone are available or soon to be available for the same price. As far as I can tell, the Foleo can't stand alone — you must also have a Treo or other handheld device to make it fully useful.

My friend Hal reminded me that 3com produced a short-lived, co-dependent device called the Audrey. This stunted, home-focused thin client lasted all of 8 months before 3com pulled the plug. Is the Foleo the Audrey rehashed for a tiny niche of mobile device users?

If you already have a notebook computer, why would you need this pseudo-subnote-thingamabob? Are there really that many people who would do business travel with only a Treo and a Foleo?

I think the Foleo is going to be another short-lived niche of a niche product.

What do you think?

Michael Mace, a friend and a guy I highly respect, has weighed in on the Palm Foleo, and suggests it is a stealth mobile PC:

But I don't think the Foleo really is a "mobile companion." Back when I started to work at Palm (before the turn of the century) one of the old veterans of the company pulled me aside and passed along a little wisdom. "Michael," he told me, "Ya gotta think in terms of real estate. If you're in another device's real estate, you're competing with that device. Palm lives in your pocket; it competes with other things that go in your pocket. If you get bigger than the pocket, you're living in the briefcase, and you're competing with the notebook computer."
Foleo lives in the briefcase. It's displacing the notebook computer from your bag. I don't care what they call it, I don't care if Palm fully realizes it yet, but the fact is that Foleo's a notebook computer.

More to the point, Foleo is the most significant new consumer PC platform introduced in the US since the Macintosh. All you Linux heads who have been asking for a true consumer Linux PC, you finally got your wish.

I think if Foleo is truly a lightweight notebook that's open to developers, it has a chance. A chance. I'm still not sure if there is a place for a new device between a notebook and smartphone that feels like a stunted, limited, overpriced notebook. Feels like a 3rd wheel to me. But we'll see.

I wish Palm had spent all the time, money and effort refining the Treo or working on the next generation Treo, right now it seems to me they've squandered resources to release a device that's very 1999.

Permalink | Comments (11) | Palm | add to del.icio.us

March 1, 2007

BarCamp Madison 2007 + Followup

This Saturday, March 3rd, I'm heading one hour west to attend BarCamp Madison, in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. I had such a great time last fall at BarCamp Milwaukee 2006, going to this un-conference made sense.

What's BarCamp Madison?

BarCampMadison 2007 is an ad-hoc gathering of high-tech enthusiasts born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Participants work together and try to create something exciting by being in close proximity to lots of smart people. Each person contributes in some way by leading discussions, demos, asking a question, or volunteering. Read about the first BarCamp in WIRED or news.com.com

You can read about my BarCamp Milwaukee 2006 experience to get a feel for what the event is like. It's a relaxed, friendly people-oriented environment, where techies, artists, hackers and plain ol' people hang out to share and discuss ideas.

Fellow members of Web414 (Milwaukee's Web Community) will be there, including über-hacker Pete Prodoehl. Of course half the fun of BarCamp is meeting and talking to new people. :-)

If you're attending BarCamp Madison, drop me a line and let's meet.

Followup Notes: March 9, 2007
Had a great time at BarCamp Madison, meeting several new friends and learning new things. I had lunch with Tim Bailen at a local Nepali restaurant (yum), hung out with Pete Prodoehl and Ashley Dryden, did a Flat World session with Kevin Ciesielski and met Matthew Pickard with whom I discussed print and web design.

Most inspiring was Sean Johnson's How Not to Burn Your Business to the Ground session, sharing his rules for good business. Even the drive there and back was good for some podcast listening, so it was all good.

Permalink | | Technology | add to del.icio.us

February 26, 2007

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days Review

A few weeks ago I received a nice surprise from Apress books: a review copy of Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston.

This 456 page book is a collection of in-depth interviews with the founders of many high-tech startups, like Apple, PayPal, Adobe, Flickr, Six Apart, Blogger, Craigslist, Fog Creek Software, ArsDigita, 37signals and more.

I'm a little over halfway through the book, and have already thoroughly enjoyed the interviews I've read. Especially interesting to me were interviews with Mena Trott of Six Apart, and Evan Williams of Blogger, Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us, Steve Wozniak of Apple, and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, since I've used products they've created.

Jessica asked good, open-ended questions, then let the founders speak freely, for very in-depth, detailed replies. I loved reading Steve Wozniak's interview, which is available in its entirety at the Founders at Work site, along with the full interview of Fog Creek Software's Joel Spolsky. This is a good way to see the depth and style of the interviews featured in the book.

Importance of Flexibility
As I read through the interviews, a common thread emerged — that each of the founders benefitted by remaining flexible and open to change. In many cases, the products which became blockbusters for these startups were internal tools, like Blogger, Basecamp, FogBugz, and Flickr.

With Blogger, Evan Williams and his team had a "real" application in Pyra, when their internal note capturing tool, Blogger, exploded in popularity and forced the team to shift. In Flickr's case, Caterina Fake's team was developing an online game, when they found their social photo tool Flickr was taking off. They reluctantly switched to Flickr, saw it grow and eventually sold it to Yahoo. In each these cases, shifting away from the original product proved quite difficult, though in the end, the choice to shift paid off tremendously for each of the founders.

There were some personal projects, created to fulfill the founders' needs, which turned into popular blockbusters, such as Steve Wozniak's Apple I, Craig Newmark's Craigslist and Joshua Schacter's del.icio.us. In these stories, the products were created because of a passion and a need to fulfill the creator's vision for a tool or service, which in the end became very profitable products.

In other cases the blockbuster products were quite different than the founder's original business plans. For PayPal, the company began as a PDA-centric money exchange utility, which shifted to a web-based money exchange utility when eBay users begged for the service. For Adobe's founders, they intended on creating a complete hardware/software system for publishing, until two potential customers begged for the software which became Adobe Postscript.

Present in each of the stories is that thread of flexibility — to not be too tied to your idea of what will work when the signs are leading elsewhere. I found this fascinating, because so often I've had the idea that every great product was planned that way from the start. Many times this approach seemed to be the exception not the rule.

Sharing Hard Times
In the interviews, I appreciated hearing about the "hard times" from each of the founders. it's natural to think that successful people just breeze through without a scratch — when in reality each of these founders faced tough choices, challenges and in some cases, very hard times. Phillip Greenspun's account of the demise of his company ArsDigita was an eye-opener, as was Evan William's revelation of the tough times he went through founding Blogger.

I'm enjoying Founders at Work, and I know it's a great book, because I can't wait to read the next interview. Reading these founders' stories is encouraging in a way that a step-by-step "1-2-3" book isn't. In the hearing of others' stories, I can relate to my own story and apply lessons these founders can share in my own life.

If you have an interest in tech startups, fascinating stories from many interesting people, Founders at Work is a great read. Who knows, maybe the stories shared in this book will help ignite the passion of technology's next founders.

Thanks to Pete and the kind folks at Apress for the opportunity to read, review and share my thoughts on this excellent book.

Permalink | | Books | add to del.icio.us

January 9, 2007

iPhone Rockin' the World

I'm right now spending my lunch break watching the live Macworld Keynote blogging at Engadget, chatting with my good pal Michael Ashby about the iPhone. We are both in shock (in a good way).

The iPhone is a smartphone running some version of Mac OS X, complete with a full web browser (Safari) what look like Widgets, and apps on the device far beyond any mobile phone apps out there.

Watching the Steve Jobs keynote unfold, we both agree that this announcement of the iPhone is big — really big. So big that it could impact nearly every aspect the tech world — mobile phones, smartphones, phone service carriers, PDAs, MP3 players, computers, Mac software developers, and web-based software developers... and probably others I haven't thought of.

From the Engadget live blog:

We've been pushing the state of the art in every facet of this design. We've got the multi-touch screen, miniaturization, OS X in a mobile device, precision enclosures, three advanced sensors, desktop class applications, and the widescreen video iPod. We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them."

This is the kind of device I would be compelled to carry, and I've more or less stepped off the PDA bandwagon last year. It's looking that cool and useful.

This is going to be very, very big.

Amazing! Conan O'Brien gives us a sneak peek of everything the iPhone can do! :-)

Related Links:
The Ultimate iPhone FAQ (David Pogue, NYT)
Cingular's iPhone Signup Page
Apple Unveils iPhone (Macworld)
iPhone a 'wake-up call' for the industry (Macworld)
Does the iPhone hit the spot? (CNET)
Investors dump RIM as Apple launches iPhone (Washington Post)
First iPhone Pics (engadget)
Raw commentary on the iPhone announcement (Michael Mace)
Apple's iPhone: That isn't a phone, it's a PDA done right (Michael Mace)
Impact of the Apple iPhone (Michael Mace)
Apple aims to shake up cell phone industry (San Jose Mercury News)
Top 5 Worst Things About The iPhone (Wired Gadget Lab)
iPhone: The Newton's Revenge (Wired Cult of Mac)
The Apple iPhone (Kottke.org)
Apple's New Calling: The iPhone (Time)
iPhone: The Most Revolutionary Device Since 1984 (JeffCroft.com)
iPhone Not Touchy Feely (37signals)
iPhone and the End of PC Era (Om Malik)
The iWipe
You could call iPhone perfect (Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times)

Image via Apple.

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October 21, 2006

Scrybe: Emerging Online Organizer

Just saw this tool mentioned by Robert Scoble, and had to share it — it's called Scrybe and it looks like a pretty amazing web-based organization tool. It's too hard to easily describe, so instead, check out the video:

I've already signed up to be a beta tester for the October 2006 launch. You can do th