iFrogz was kind enough to send me a pair of their Earpollution Earbuds to review. The short of it: They’re decent earbuds at a good value. More after the jump…

I’ll be honest and say, in my opinion, I still like the stock iPhone earbuds better overall. I tend to make handsfree calls while I’m driving and the noise cancelling mic on the Earpollution HAS been getting better feedback from people on the other end of my iPhone calls than the stock Apple earbuds. That’s really important. On my part, though, when I’m driving, I notice more noise from my environment (road noise, radio, etc) through the Earpollution buds. Which, for emergency vehicles… might be important too. The audio clarity and range seem to be about the same to me.

Amenities… The iFrogz box came with a variety of earbud cups to attach and I may have really odd shaped ears, I dunno. I never found a cup that created a nice seal. Your mileage may vary.

They also have the ability to control your iPhone with an inline clicker.

Let’s say you’ve lost or damaged your stock iPhone earbuds and are looking to replace them. The good news is there are decent options at a nice value point.

The Apple Store has just updated to note Snow Leopard ships on August 28. Lots of update options: $29 update is presumably an updater only for those of us running 10.5.x already. If you buy a new Mac that doesn’t have Snow Leopard installed… $9.95 will get you there. A boxed full-install, set of Snow Leopard will cost $129.00

Snow Leopard unlimited server will cost $449 and ships at the same time.

Visit http://store.apple.com/ for more details.

My friend Shay Arnett announced tonight his iPhone/iPod Touch app, “CHEAT” has been approved for App Store distribution.

Shay is one hard working guy and a new dad to boot. I’ll never know 1/3 of what he does about development. But, for $.99 I can hang with him feeling a little (okay, a LOT) more in the know than before. He’s packed over 475 cheat sheets for HTML, Rails, CSS, jQuery, Prototype, Obj C, testing, text editors, etc.

Get yourself some “CHEAT” today and support a super nice guy who created a super helpful app.

Hey, Shay… what do I do with all these little O’Reilly pocket guides now?

A new craze has hit Twitter and it’s called SpyMaster.

It’s free to play. It’s fun. And, there’s no telling where this thing is going. Right now, it’s a total rocket ship. I’ve checked for terms and conditions… there are none. So, seems we’re all clear to proceed. If you’re on the verge of quitting/abandoning your SpyMaster account… Please, consider wiring me your liquid assets balance. My Swiss Bank account is 000000027398 1153681740385

I was a good sport about a (successful) assassination attempt on my account (@GeraldBuckley) and was rewarded with a massive heaping of in game cash. I’m now set on in-game cash and basically continue playing just to level up and kick as much high-level booty as I can. It takes a LONG time to make enough to open a Swiss Bank account. However, once you have one (and I do) it’s trivial to wire money to other accounts and “open” them for the other player. Even $1 xferred would do the trick.

I’ve been wondering what I could possibly DO with all this excess in-game cash… and the entrepreneur in me has prevailed.

I’m selling it!

For $5USD I will happily wire $500K to your in-game Swiss Bank account. Because the Directorate has capped the amount of funds that can be transferred between two acounts I can send as much as $500K to as many accounts as I like. I accept PayPal (gerald@grocio.com) or TwitPay (@geraldbuckley) or Amazon Payments. Remember to include your ENTIRE Swiss Bank account number or the transfer will be delayed unnecessarily as I’ll have to email or DM you.

So, to recap:

• $5 USD via paypal, amazon payments, or twitpay for $500,000 in Spymaster funds
• I need your Swiss Banking # (you can either follow me and dm it or you can email it to me)

I’ve been on Twitter for a LONG time and have a terrific reputation. I work hard and I play hard. But, at the root of it all is an entrepreneur. ’nuff said there. You may want a little more proof-positive I have what I’m selling. So, a picture is worth a thousand words…

Mr. Cook, as one of your long standing Apple Developers in good standing and a former employee of Apple… Thank you!

Not only do I feel listened to (due to the very cordial contact from Mr. Ron Okamoto & the last open letter) but the recent decision to go forward with the Snow Leopard Developer Forum is a VERY welcome move. I’ve logged in and looked at the lay of the land and by the looks of it I’m most definitely not alone. LOTS of healthy participation going on.

Thanks again.

Very sincerely yours,

Gerald Buckley

Click thru for the bigger pic. Just thought, given the insanely high pitch this topic is getting (maybe rightly so, I dunno) it might be fun to put a little levity into it if possible. Certainly not something a parent would like seeing happen right about now. On any other day it’s just funny or gross. Today…? You decide.

DivX7 is unleashed today and it is Bad Ass!

And, our buddies at DivX have graciously done it again and given us 100 DivX Pro (Yes… PRO!) serials.

These are for Mac only folks (this is a Mac-only blog except for the frequent jabbing at the “have-nots” I do for sport).

HERE’S HOW YOU SCORE THE HOTTEST NEW SERIAL NUMBER AROUND..

1) Follow me at Twitter. I’m @GeraldBuckley

2) message me by tweeting ”RT Follow @geraldbuckley He’s giving out 100 FREE DivX7 Pro serial numbers for Mac” Copy it and paste it… unless you’re on iPhone (boo!)

If you don’t follow me I can’t DM you the serial number. You have to do BOTH to score the SN. And, YES, I *will* be following you back

Well, I’ve been at this now for four+ years and we just passed the 700,000 visitors served mark.

It’s taken about 5 months to rack up each of the last couple of 100,000 marks. Lately I’ve been spending the majority of my time on my startup and on some of the other social networking sites and less time writing. Once the Snow Leopard release arrives I’ll have MUCH more to blog about.

The “Installing Leopard from DMG” post is by far the most popular post here.

The “Open Letter to Tim Cook” post resulted in an interesting conversation I can only write about AFTER a certain something happens. And, of ALL the 1,100 posts to date… it’s the one post I’m most proud of. And, before too long, you’ll see why: I’m told it’s going to manifest in a major announcement out of Cupertino.

Finally, ALL of the comments and commenters are so very appreciated. Keep ‘em coming.

It’s official: Google Voice is the successor of Grand Central.

Seems it’s invite only and they’re hard as hen’s teeth to get right now. Even if you have a Grand Central account it’s not switched over just yet and an invite is still required. Follow @GoogleVoice at Twitter or read the blog for more details.

<< Google Voice Blog: Moving to Google Voice! >>

I’m smitten with SSD and Gizmodo just fed me a loving spoonful of SSD PR0N. The moving parts of a traditional drive just bug me to no end: I’ve had so many drive failures over the years that solid state storage (or whatever is poised to eclipse it even) intrigue me.

One thing that ROYALLY blows my mind though is ZFS. As Leopard was coming out there was a hint that ZFS was going to be a staple in the release candidate. For whatever reason that didn’t happen. It appeared all so briefly in one of the Leopard seeds in the Disk Utility app. So, being the good little Apple dev I am… I put that baby to the test. I strung several external drives (of differing makes and capacities) together and formatted them ZFS. Damned if it didn’t work as advertised. But, what really screwed with my noodle was when I added a fresh drive to the mix… adding it to the ZFS volume was super easy and slick as hell. Why isn’t that available RFN? I dunno. But, I liked it and hope it comes back. SOON!

Now, imagine if all the above was all done on SSD drives. Holy crap! At that point you have a highly scalable VERY small footprint array of some formidable scale and wicked fast speed. Not sure what the power consumption looks like. I have to think it’s much improved per Gb pushed/pulled. I’m all for cloud computing and things like Amazon’s S3. But, if I had a read/write intensive, mission critical app and could address it with a local SSD array… WOW!

I’ve been an Apple Developer since 1991 when I was an Apple Systems Engineer. I developed for HyperCard, AppleScript, OpenDoc, Newton, LOTS of HTML and most recently the iPhone. I never did anything big, splashy or noteworthy and may not, at least by my own hand. I have seen some detrimental Apple policy though toward their Developers. And, it is because of that I hope to persuade a change in Cupertino to allow us ADC Select and Premiere members to exchange methods, opinions and findings in a year-round, sanctioned way OUTSIDE of WWDC. What follows is a transcript of a handwritten letter I’m mailing to Tim Cook today. My hope is, if you’re in support of this, you will weigh in via the comments (with YOUR real name in plain sight please).

Mr. Cook -

As an Apple Developer in good standing for several years I have hoped for an online venue whereby we select & premiere ADC members could freely exchange methods, best practices and work arounds.

But that hasn’t happened.

We’re expected to abide by our NDAs. Which means innovating for things like Snow Leopard either happens at WWDC or have to wait until after launch.

Isn’t there a sanctioned way to do this?!

I don’t mind trying to learn & innovate while under observation. The give and take can only HELP solidify developers’ affinity to Apple. As is a lot of this is happening outside of view of Apple and at the cost of the platform.

Gerald Buckley
(918) 813-9745
geraldb28@me.com

An ideal outcome IMHO would be a discussions.apple.com type arena where Select and Premier ADC members could freely exchange ‘how to’ type info. Frankly, getting the web services up and functional in early versions of 10.5 Leopard were insanely hard. That is until a little more documentation came around. But, testing that stuff was central to what I wanted to contribute and, frankly, what the developer notes were asking for. Now, you tell me, how can I pitch in (while still honoring my NDA to Apple Developer Connection)? There is a LOT more good that could come out of a new, sanctioned “portal”/”exchange”/”marketplace” than any bad. Heck, I don’t mind paying a bit more for it. There are a ton of us who just can’t or won’t make it to WWDC regularly. And, it’s a shame the innovations that could be brought to market closer to the each launch of a new Apple OS have to lag for lack of a sanctioned/moderated place for Apple’s developers.

So, if you would please raise your voice in support of something like this I’d like to think we could usher in some fresh positive policy at Apple with regard to Developers. Or, at least let them know, we’re not above doing it ourselves in plain sight and in the pirate tradition of Cupertino. (There’s a warning shot across the bow sure to draw a cease and desist)

The workstation and server seeds of Snow Leopard were posted on March 5. Lots of new stuff in there and certainly worth the download. Developer.Apple.com

Apple’s been busy presumably wrapping up the loose ends on Leopard and making way for Snow Leopard. Head on over to the Apple Developer Connection for your latest seeds.

Next week I’ll be delivering a talk titled “A Tale of Two Founders” at the OpenBeta2 event in Oklahoma City. If you’ve ever thought of starting a business, let alone a dot com, I’m going to do something that gets me well outside my comfort zone (thanks for setting THAT bar so high Loic!) and takes us to a very transparent place about the good (lots), the bad (far and few) and the ugly (yes, there is broken glass occasionally) of my startup, Grocio.com. I’m going to deliver a no-holds-barred, up close and VERY personal, roll your sleeves up peek behind the curtain of a dot com startup determined to make it in Oklahoma. From being down to our last 87 cents to the threat of lawsuits to the highs of raising capital to weathering the media attention and a few forward looking statements that require me to invoke dirty words like “Sarbanes Oxley.” If you’re a VC or an angel investor with intentions of attending this talk please give me a heads up so I’ll at least know where the heckling is coming from and why.

TEASER

Grocio’s past week and a half has been… interesting. I’ll stop short of saying it was difficult. It wasn’t. Not particularly. It was a challenge of patience and discipline to not spontaneously combust. But, it wasn’t difficult. Clear as mud? And, it was this past week and a half that hatched the idea for this particular talk. There are maybe half a dozen people in the know of what the key peeps around Grocio had to go through last week. Who said ANYTHING about crime scene tape!? If you’re the least bit curious of a few of the highs and lows you’re in for as a startup… hot foot it to the OpenBeta2 web site and register to attend (7pm Thursday, March 12th, okcCoCo, 715 Hudson Ave, Oklahoma City).

I’ll be headed out of Tulsa shortly after 5 on Thursday. If you’d like a ride in the Startup Mobile I’ve lovingly named “Bootstrap” you’d do well to call “shotgun” quick. WARNING: I *do* drive fast (not kiding) and the Odwalla and RedBull will flow freely. Yes, I find bribing geeks to be very effective. If we don’t die a fiery death on the Turner Turnpike, we’ll be back to Tulsa around 1 am Friday morning.

Finally, I’m whoring hiring myself out quite a bit lately with speaking gigs, writing magazine articles and guest blogging. It’s something I find I like doing. If you need an irreverent (not to be confused with irrelevant) delivery to wake up your audience, call or text me at (918) 813-9745. You will advance straight to the head of the line if you’re offering a ride on a nuclear submarine, a tandem jump, a ride along with the Life Flight helicopter crew or a contract to publish my book “Rough Air Ahead”. You think I’m kidding!? No siree, I’m not. Those are top of my Bucket List and if I don’t bag them all by 1 am next Friday morning… I’m plain screwed.

Paraphrasing here… but when Steve Jobs claims Safari on iPhone is a full featured web browser and the best mobile browser there is… I just can’t resist calling Bull Shit! (emphasis very definitely  mine)

I simply point to the continuing saga that is Flash (lite or otherwise) for iPhone.There are two possibilities here. It’s way down in the skunkworks and is getting some serious polish applied to it and we’ll see it when we see it. Which is classic Apple. OR (and this is more likely) there is something getting in the way – politics, technology, something and we’ll never know about it fully. Keep in mind Apple and Adobe have a love/hate relationship. For those of you not in the know just look at the business that is Adobe and you’ll see where their bread is buttered (hint: it ain’t the Mac platform and they tend to launch products on the Windows platform first). The love between these two companies is shallow and doesn’t run much deeper than the the thickness of the income statement.

Look. I own an iPhone. I was one of the masses on Day One. Still have that phone. Use it on a daily basis. It’s shortcomings are piling up though in light of the onslaught of feature rich alternates (Google Gears, non-Quicktime video, higher quality photo optics/zooming, copy/paste, not to mention bluetooth stereo, etc… the list is LONG). It’s an OK phone and a slick interface. But the arms race has heated up and it’s incumbent upon Apple (as the instigator) to maintain the high ground. I don’t think they have the balls to do what it takes to mature the platform fast enough to stay competitive in the long run. Even though they dropped “Computer” from their name… that’s what they remain. An OS and application company.

Folks, the reality distortion field has weakened greatly of late and Apple has a choice to make. Open up a bit or don’t. Tim Cook’s job is maybe a little easier should Jobs not come back. But, until that shadow is dealt with… I’m betting Apple doesn’t open the iPhone’s web browser fully and my declaration of BS stands for a while longer.

Mike Arrington asks “Is It Time To Swith Ad Partners?”

HELL YES! Not just “HELL YES!” but think of something far more profane and that is what I meant to say.

Mike, why, in this day and age of falling infrastructure prices would you turn down OpenX.org for your hosted ad platform? [DISCLAIMER: I'm in no way affiliated with OpenX except as a happy customer paying ZIP for their services.]

• Hosted or Open Source. Your choice! (Think “WordPress”)
• FREE up to 100 million impressions per month.
• Text, graphics, Flash… all are acceptable media types.
• Fantastic backend reporting.
• You get to keep 100% of what you kill.
• You’re in control of the CPM, CPA, whatever model you pick.
• You’re in control of the inventory and how it’s displayed and to who.

Yes, you have to pay a sales force to close the deals. And the problem with that is…?

As a startup I’m tasked with evaluating options, navigating a dizzying amount of choices and making an educated decision. But, sometimes, an option comes along (like OpenX.org) that just takes all the choices off the table with such a compelling value proposition.

Now, for those of you with a little less traffic than TechCrunch… Can you think of a better solution for YOUR company to create it’s own DIY ad network? For the life of me… I can’t.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock all day… (and I was) The news du jour is Tim Cook, Apple’s COO, has the day to day while Steve Jobs is getting his shiz back together. Wish I could say, “Called that one back in 2007.” But, what were Apple’s options? REALLY?! Where did they have to turn? Lookit!…

• Meg Whitman’s off on a whiff to go all Gubernator 2.0 on us. So, she’s off the short list.
• Gates is too busy selling shoes with Jerry Seinfeld.
• Carol Bartz and Jerry Yang have new gigs.
• But, wait, Sue Decker came available… Hmmm…

Nah! Cook gets it. As much as I’d like to see Ive run the show… the professional manager Cook is the right call. Just so long as Ive gets all the aluminum his not-so-little CNC mill can munch, Phil Schiller is re-assigned to iChat evangelist and Bertrand Serlet is given the state of Oregon as his annual bonus for all the goodness we’re going to get in Snow Leopard.

And, you heard it here… Jobs ain’t coming back folks. He’s out. He just doesn’t acknowledge it (publicly) yet. He’s going to retire across the board – Apple and Disney – in one fell swoop. He’s earned his place in history plus some. Exit. Stage right.

The free 30 day eval is available for download at Apple.com. [EDIT: And, the serial number is purchaseable straight from within the demo. So, go ahead and download the fully functional demo. iWork.com's pretty slick stuff to boot.]

First impressions – love it.

Deeper in I find I’m really only sort of in love. Kinda like being half pregnant. Only this somehow works.

I live in Keynote and Numbers these days. So, I really like what has been made available. But, I’m finding I’m not so happy with what has been (seemingly) taken away. Particularly in Keynote. The Apple Remote doesn’t seem to pair with Keynote 09 now. And, there is no Flash export option. Neither one is a show stopper. But, my pretty new flame has a wart right where there shouldn’t be one.

[EDIT: on the plus side I held off writing about the hard-to-find Keynote Remote iPhone app. Turns out it wasn't searchable but was hidden in plain sight nice and prominently on the App Store landing page. And... it works fabulously. It controls the presentation very nicely with plain gestures. And, while you don't see the actual transitions from slide to slide or the slick builds... it's totally controllable. One wish for the next rev of Keynote Remote (which is 99 cents btw) is that it had a built in timer. Presenter notes are there but no timer. Ah well...]

There’s a scenario floating out there whereby Apple buys Yahoo! (the exclamation mark is part of their name not any kind of drama I’ve added)

So, why is that a good idea? I think people are seeing a lot of ghosts behind trees right now and this one just may have been planted to get Ballmer back to the table. Imagine the chairs that would fly if he, for one instant, thought Apple was seriously considering taking his sloppy seconds only to trounce him soundly in the end-run.

I really don’t see this happening though. You have Eric Schmidt as an Apple Director. Not a person I’d easily or readily dismiss due to a merger or product direction. He’s already marginalized a bit due to the competing tendencies between iPhone and Android. Still… An aquisition of Yahoo! while fun to think about just doesn’t ring true.

Yes, Yang came out on stage and did the whole poster-boy thing at the iPhone intro. And, Jobs went to Yahoo! HQ and told them they have greatness in them.

But, so what!? This isn’t the stuff of mergers. Not to mention the nuts and bolts of such a deal. Does Apple really want to have the additional drag Yahoo! would add to operations?

Nah.

I’ve had less to say lately than ever before and more to do lately than ever before.

As things heat up in my various roles at work, with my startup and on the home front… there’s just a lot less time to devote to blogging. For me, personally, it’s been an extension of my life experience to be able to take a half-hour and compose a decent post regarding say the impending release of Leopard or the latest from MarketCircle or to delve into some of the more speculative aspects of what’s around the bend for the Apple experience.

So, what has been going on? OK.. in a nutshell.

I met Jay Shuster a couple weeks ago. You know his work. He’s the sketch artist behind Pixar’s Cars and Wall*E. Neat, neat guy. Also, at the same event (Art Directors Club of Tulsa) was Michael Wallis, author of the defining book on Route 66 and consultant to Pixar for the movie Cars. He actually lives in Tulsa.

Somewhere around here is my ass. It’ll turn up someday. I was up painting on the 24′ ladder one day and my behind just fell off. BAM! it hit the ground and I haven’t seen it since. Between all the obligations I have stacked up there’s about four hours of “sleep” each night.

Wwaah! wwwahhhh! I know… Actually I love it as there’s never a dull moment. For instance, right now I have a dual processor G5 XServe gutted on my desk at the office. It’s giving me some (phantom) ass pain with the odd stuff it’s doing (basically, it wouldn’t power up consistently and when it did… it wouldn’t boot). Fortunately we have an AppleCare Service kit for it. Replaced everything there is to replace via the kit and the problem remains. Without getting into the details of the whats, whys and such… It’s problems like these that sometimes give me the a lot of joy. Being able to say, “Problem solved. What’s next?” is a treat whether it’s hardware, business finance or a key hiring decision.

So, if I do go silent for long spells here you might check the Grocio blog (chances are good if I’m quiet here I’m quiet there) or you could conclude I’m just absorbed in things best left not blogged about for now.

Hope everyone’s Thanksgiving’s were great and you Christmases are queued up to be great.

Think of it as a local TechCrunch50. The Tulsa Spirit Awards were very similar – 100 startups enter and a handful win cash awards. Everyone’s business is better for the process. (Yes, my startup Grocio.com won top prize. More on that below.)

The main differences? No big on-stage dog and pony and it was put on here in Tulsa by Tulsans. Yes, you heard that right – Tulsa, Oklahoma! See! You shouldn’t be flying over next time. Stop and stay a while! I’ve said it many times before to Dave Winer and Robert Scoble… Native Tulsans have a mutated risk-taking gene and it’s a nod back to the day when people settled the Indian Territories (I’m native american btw) and started exploring for oil and building toll bridges across the Arkansas river. We’ve been taking “life and limb” sized risks since day one of this city. We’re entrepreneurs genetically.

Spirit Bank and the Kauffman Foundation were kind enough to put up prize money + resources galor. Maurice Kanbar was nice enough to put up office space. The Tulsa Metro Chamber, TEDC and many others have offered terrific resources as well along the way.

Leaders from all disciplines within the Tulsa community rallied behind our mayor and Sean Griffin (for the second time now) to fortify our business plans and impart their lessons and wisdom. Their leadership and commitment through this process was extraordinary. I said it before the awards, I’ve said it since will say it now and maintain it all along the circuit -

If you’re a startup, there is no better place in America to startup than right here in Tulsa. The resources are tremendous. The cost of living is spot on. The economy is positive and we’re upbeat about the immediate future. Plus our commutes (or lack of) will probably cinch it for you. Don’t just put us on a checklist to evaluate. Come visit. There are lots of us who would happily be your guide and show you around. What other city will do that for you!?

Grocio.com next moves?

Lot’s of people have asked, “Have you spent all that money yet?” In my mind I’ve spent it a couple times over. But, no, I haven’t spent any of it. There are a few modest obligations that I’m very grateful to have been able to postpone until some funding arrived. IOU’s in other words. So, those are first order of business. Outside of that we’re into the next phase of the business plan – hardcore development. We’re now on the path to get from prototype to production. That will burn through a bit of the award money and we’ll find ourselves at the next round of funding in short order.

“$30,000 or $60,000?” We’ve won $30,000. We’re in the process of earning a match from i2E. In January/February I’m expecting to have good news to announce along these lines. I have no reason to believe we won’t be awarded the matching funds.

The inevitable question, “Did you quit your day job?” NO WAY! and am making no plans of doing so. My employer has been really understanding the past several months and naturally curious about all the recent press and what my intentions were/are. If you’ve ever had a side business you know there are boundaries to respect. Don’t ever lose sight of that. Trust me, I know it’s hard. But, there’s a lot at stake and frankly… you have to keep in mind who’s paying the bills. To do otherwise says a fair bit about your character and how you might run your outside venture. Enthusiasm is great. Don’t let it make you a sloppy business leader. P’s & Q’s…

“Are you talking to VC?” Only every opportunity I get. If you’re looking to invest in a cool new startup with a bunch of new found street cred… Call me (918) 813-9745

“When does Grocio.com open for business?” We’re open now for FREE pre-registration. There’s even a screencast that shows some of what it is we’re going to unveil and how it’s going to work. The comparison shopping side of the operation opens in February ‘09. November ‘08 was my target. But, because we were so tight in on the holiday shopping period with a lot of work to be accomplished and with a lot on the line… we’ll waive off and fire up the engines in February ‘09. Still, registration is free and those are the people who will be notified first once we’re on final approach.

“What grocery stores will you have? What’s the geography?” We have three really large branded grocers on board now. There’s not a grocer in America we’ll turn away. Just yesterday a north California chain came calling. I’ve talked to one store operations up to the largest there is. Talk us up to your local grocer and chum the water for us. OK?

The media has been a great friend through all of this. So, to answer the “Are you willing to talk with us on the record?” ABSOLUTELY. No segment, article or blog is off limits. Go to Grocio.com and all my contact info is there.

[EDIT: Recieved a few DM's at Twitter asking for the behind the scenes of the Spirit Awards. Someting to address - What goes on behind closed doors? There's my next writing assignment. Stay tuned.]

Would REALLY appreciate your support of Grocio as a nominatee in The First Annual Tulsey Awards. We have some terrific competition in the Interactive category. One of them is far and away more popular that Grocio and I see them doing very well. So, get the word out among your friends and family… we need help in getting the vote out. Need not be a local to vote by the way.

The Tulseys are a celebration of the Global Entrepreneurship Week and the winner in each category gets (what I hear to be) a slick trophy (no money at stake). I love Tulsa. And, more than that, I love the risk taking nature of the people here in my home town. You can go way back to the formative days of this town whether it’s the land speculators, the oilfield folks, the toll bridge across the Arkansas… People were really doing some cool stuff. Sticking their necks out and trying new, risky and life threatening things. Bless their souls.

Fortunately that DNA exists in spades in Oklahoma. And, I hope, is reflected in what we’re trying to do with Grocio. Thanks!

Thanks folks. It’s been fun. Looking forward to the 1 million mark.

A little background first: When Leopard was in pre-release there was a LOT of moaning about installing it because Apple (in the early seeds) failed to include adequate instructions on “how to”. So, I posted my own set of instructions and it’s been one of THE MOST commented and controversial blog posts I’ve ever penned. Yes, a lowly instruction manual.

But, see here… Apple’s ADC agreement specifies non-disclosure. Meaning I couldn’t divulge details of anything they’ve provided. Well, it turns out since they didn’t provide the instructions I wasn’t in breach. And, it turns out, it enabled a lot of people to install Leopard. The controversial part kicks in when the question is asked, “Was it used in the piracy of the images?” I suspect the answer has to be a firm, “Probably.” and that sucks and I’ve written as much. Point in fact, there were many comments I just flat moderated out of existence as they were clearly intent on piracy. We won’t have that problem this go around. Here’s why:

INSTRUCTIONS
So, to the part you came for… If you have legitimate access to the Snow Leopard 10A190 dmg you’ll have legitimate access to all you need to get it up and running. If you aren’t yet a paid and in good standing Select or Premiere Developer with Apple… Maybe you should consider it.

[EDIT: All is well now... Carry on.]

Just received an email from the Apple Developer Connection. The seed of Snow Leopard 10A190 is apparently posted to the Apple Developer Center.

However, mere paid-an-in-good-standing devs like me are apparently not allowed access.

You do not have access privileges to download the software you are requesting. If you believe you have received this message in error, you should confirm your access privileges directly with your Apple contact or view the downloads that are currently available to you.

I don’t get Apple sometimes, I really don’t. I LOVE their hardware and software. Top to bottom. I love their stores. When I travel I try to go out of my way to tag an Apple Store. But, when it comes to the ADC… it’s been a love/hate relationship now for six years.

They send me this email with no hint of exclusivity for this particualr disc image. Looks like every other click-to-download link they’ve ever issued.

BAH!

Orlando friend just emailed. She’s needing .net, asp.net and VB.net Devs. Some are remote-friendly opportunities. Some require existing Secret clearance. email me at GeraldB28 at me dot com

If you know of any good dot net devs about to be out of work… shoot me the best of the lot… I’ll try like the dickens to refer them on to a soft landing.

If you know of a hot shot Rails developer have them give me a shout. Need them on a project yesterday or sooner.

Gerald Buckley
(918) 813-9745 or geraldb28@me.com

I’ve used most of the web analytics packages under the sun since 1995 and I’m evaluating one that is in beta right now called Woopra. It’s slick. REALLY slick! [EDIT: Reminds me of a Bloomberg heads up display for web analytics.]

• It’s FREE first of all. Powerful AND free. Nice!
• It’s a Java runtime second of all. So, unlike my gripe with the likes of Urchin which always comes out first for that other platform… Woopra just works as a simple runtime app… wherever.
• Thirdly, it’s LIVE. I don’t like waiting an hour for feedback of what’s working (or not). I don’t like tailing the log files much either. So… “live” is a big deal to me.
• Fourth, the heads up display tied to mapping is SWEET! I really like knowing where people are coming from.
• Fifth, the ability to engage visitors with a live chat widget is pretty clever. (Wish it was Jabber oriented… But still). So, come on by during “after hours” and see how the live “engage” function works.
• Finally, it’s a simple script snip to add to your existing code.

A couple things I’d like to see… some kind of built in monitoring component… Basic uptime stuff. A Mac only feature I’d LOVE to see is “share this screen” functionality (ala Leopard iChat). Wouldn’t THAT be cool!? I’d pay a nice chunk of change to have a bit of “lead me” functionality so I can intervene with my audience. And, if there was an iPhone admin client… HOO BOY! That would be HUGE! Imagine a live analytics tool on an iPhone. How cool would THAT be!?

[UPDATE: I accessed Grocio.com running the Woopra script with my iPhone and while monitoring the site tried to connect the chat client with no success due to it being an embedded script.]

Overall, I can see myself switching horses really, really soon.

Hey all 14 of you Tulsan’s out there watching this space once in a blue-moon. If you haven’t heard of it yet… Tulsa’s celebrating the diverse entrepreneurial scene by creating another awards ceremony – The Tulsey’s. This is our way of participating in Global Entrepreneur Week.

So, noodle out who you would like to hoist up for recognition and click on through.

Rumor has it Redmond is running a new ad or three. Good for them. Those Jerry ads were… well… weird. Creepy weird.

The new ones are actually kinda safely predicatble. Hi, I’m a PC. & I’m a PC. & I’m a PC. Might as well have said, “Hi I’m a human.”

DUH! WE know you’re a PC. How uninspiring it is to show cut after cut of “Hi I’m a PC” when being a PC (as you show it) isn’t… inspiring or even entertaining. Well… the “I make energy out of number 2″ was memorable. But…? “I wear glasses” or “I wear headbands” or “this is my office”!? C’mon!

I know a few folks at Crispin Porter & Bogusky. They do AMAZING work! Subservient Chicken. Volkswagen. Mini Cooper. Plus a bazillion others that really rock. But, this… This smells like Redmond PR was all over it and watering it down until it wasn’t a what it should have been. Kinda like some beers I had moons ago. YUCK!

“OK, Gerald… what would you have done – Smart ass?” More cowbell baby. More cowbell. Let’s say the I’m-A-PC theme was a must have. Let’s start there. I would have been REAL cheeky with it. And, the big judo move at the end… the BIG reveal… cut to a laptop zooming by with the familiar Redmond flagship startup screen on it. The audio sounds like screeching tires… we back up to see a MacBook Air user on a parkbench starting up that other OS (because, you know we can)… voiceover says, “Shhhh… I’m a PC too.”

Talk about hijacking the other guys’ mojo!

Why the MBAir?… it’s the most recognizable of the Apple lineup. Why show an Apple “anything”? Cause it would piss ME off as an Apple fanatic. It would rattle cages. And, it would say to the Windows faithful… “We’re SO in demand even the OTHER guy runs our junk.” It’s risky to be sure. But, if I REALLY believed in my platform (and I know the Monkey Man does) that’s what I’d do.

Oh this is stinking BRILLIANT!

If you haven’t heard, Apple rejected an iPhone Developers App & on the surface it sounds as if it was due to a competing feature set to iTunes’ Podcast stuff.

What did the rejected developer do? What any clever and determined developer would. He routed around the damage and used a legitimate back door Apple left ajar… “Ad Hoc” app distribution of course.

Now, what Apple may have just done is unwittingly cracked their own strangle hold on the heavyweight title of iPhone app distribution. I hope someone (possibly Alex) can exploit this to full advantage. Apple’s heavy handedness in this matter is not something we ought to tolerate silently.

For those of you who haven’t heard, I launched a little startup today called “Grocio” (pronounced Grow-See-Oh). Registration is free!

We’re a comparison shopping engine for groceries. Starting with your zip code and shopping list, we’ll identify the least expensive local grocer. At the same time we MATCH coupons to the EXACT items you’re shopping for. So two things are happening here:

• You’re saving a TON of money at the checkout counter by picking the right grocer.
• You’re adding to the savings with coupons you didn’t spend an hour trying to find in the newspaper.

We’re in a local business plan competition (kind of like TechCrunch50) and could use all the registrants possible. If you like the concept, drop in and give us a vote of confidence by registering please.

I LOVE MobileMe. Syncing with my iPhone has been great. iDisk is great. Up until recently even mail was a much improved experience over the old dot mac. Lately, I have been having a bad time of sending mail through MobileMe from Mail.app. Even though webmail and iPhone mail have worked fine, I went through all 12 stages of grieving in about a day. Then, with a cleared head, found the solution.

So, if you’re receiving this error (or something like it) check out this article at Support.Apple:
“MobileMe: Issues sending messages in Mail or other email applications”
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1152?viewlocale=en_US

Turns out I needed to change my port number FROM 25 to 587 and turn on ssl. For good measure I also turned all the mail and smtp.mac.com references to .me.com references.

All is now good.

Dear Senator McCain… All your house are belong to us.

(How’s THAT for a return to blogging?)

Saw a question  on LinkedIn a couple of days ago asking what server a web startup should saddle up with. The answers, of course, were “it depends”. Lots of things help determine “which server”. There are lots of choices to make. What’s interesting is the decision other startups have settled on. Anticipate some people are going to ask, “How’d you assemble this list?” I’ll preempt that by directing you to NetCraft.

[EDIT: Have begun adding a few new sites here and there. Check back semi-sort-of, but-not-too often.]

For instance (and this is by no means comprehensive. So… feel free to comment with your site of choice to help round out the list):

Another installment of our iPhone developer interview series has us talking with Satoshi Nakajima, founder of Big Canvas.

First, congrats to the team at Big Canvas on your new iPhone app. Is everyone as excited on the creation side as we are on the consumption side?
It’s been an unbelievable experience. It’s a super exciting time in the industry. It IS game changing. It’s an iPhone only app. Our application is called PhotoShare and maximizes the iPhone’s camera as a “friends & family” experience… a sharing device for casual communication. Twitter for pictures. We’re focused on the user experience and host the photos and conversation on our servers. It’s Secure. Private. Registration isn’t required – we eliminate the pain of passwords altogether.

In talking with other iPhone developers it’s become clear… this platform is surprisingly easy to develop for. What kinds of good surprises did your team encounter?
Emotionally it’s very gratifying. It’s a great device. A year later, the “love” is still there for iPhone. Apple pays a LOT of attn to power consumption and memory allocation. CPU management was clearly on their mind and is evident in what’s possible. Controlling and optimizing the power consumption was easy. The choice to avoid true multitasking was also the right call. Apple’s attention to these kinds of critical details was a nice surprise.

How helpful was Apple in the grand scheme of things during development? Resources beyond the usual ADC and WWDC venues?
Mostly we developed with the SDK. We drew on some Apple help at a few critical points. Despite being really busy they got back with us quickly to help us debut with the App Store on opening day.

How did you arrive at pricing for PhotoShare? Curious minds would like to know…
It will be free as a social networking application. We’ll offer it for free, learn some lessons and develop a business model as we go.

Finally, beta testing apps under development seems to have taken a step backward due to iTunes being the distribution point. Has that crimped the development and testing cycles at all? How did Big Canvas adapt and overcome?
There are complexities. Observing the nuances of the detailed documentation and preparing the application for iTunes is slightly tricky. Apple made it easy in one sense but rigid and strict in another. The most difficult part was not being able to test widely. Refinements for our apps will come quickly after the App Store launches.

Any parting advice to iPhone users? Apple?
Try a LOT of applications. The Long Tail dictates many will be garbage. There will be some really good apps rise and emerge as major apps.

PhotoShare can be downloaded from the App Store now. (Link will launch iTunes. v7.7+ required)

It was a good week for interviews and reviews. This book by Fritz Anderson is something I’ve been waiting to come along. As a publisher in the science, technical and medical space… I want to first say a big “Thank you” to Mr. Anderson. Anyone who undertakes the mountainous task of publishing a book, a REALLY GOOD book has my immediate respect and in a case such as this my deep appreciation. Fritz, I’m looking forward to interviewing you and picking your noggin.

On to the book. Application development is an arcane art to me. Some people LOVE great food. I LOVE great software. There are some apps I just can’t get enough of. As with some people who love food… they naturally turn to perfecting the art of preparing what they love. I’ve tried that (over and over) with NewtonScript, AppleScript, Automator, XCode, the iPhone SDK. I suck. I suck BAD at development. Worse than I suck at Calculus and we know how THAT story ended (hint: change of college plans and an entire career dream abandoned). It is better for all of you out there to not have had to suffer my applications (and for those of you who did… ehem, Adam Engst, ehem… I’m eternally grateful you let me believe my shoddy efforts to port TidBits to the Newton all those many months were anything but).

As with a lot of people these days… I have a renewed interest in developing in Cocoa and WebObjects. iPhone is driving a lot of that interest and so when the opportunity came to review this book I jumped on it like a rat on a cheeto. I’m dying for a good XCode 3 primer. Something that will take me from tooth to tail on building an app I can appreciate for all that it is.

So, over the course of the next several days, weeks, months (however long it takes) I’ll be perpetually reviewing this book and I’ll be taking you along with me. Hope it’s as beneficial to you as I’m hoping it will be for me.

FYI, anyone can be an Apple Developer free of charge. Simply go to http://developer.apple.com/ and download XCode 3 (which only runs on Leopard). There are tiers of Apple Developer and I happen to be a Select member which means we have access to early release versions of this and that as it comes along. Select was $499 I think. And, Premier is a bit more expensive and comes with WWDC ticket(s) and some access to a few more trouble tickets. If you’re hardcore Premier is probably the way to go. I will be eventually…

Occassionally I’m approached with an opportunity to review products that might be of interest to my Mac toting friends out there. Sometimes I’ll run with it and I’m really glad I did in this case.

The iSkin ProTouch is an interesting product. It’s billed as a anti-microbial barrier. All well and good. What it does right off the bat is keep hair, dust and muck out of my laptop keyboard. I’ve had six Mac laptops (the original luggable, a Duo 230 which I loved like a child, a WallStreet, a TiBook, a PowerBook G4 and the MacBook Pro I’m writing on). Each one has accumulated nasties that a keyboard cover could have prevented.

My first two observations about this keyboard protector have to do with it’s “feel”. You know how surgical gloves feel? Sorta slick and a tad thick. That’s how this feels – like I’m typing with surgical gloves on. Going from a naked keyboard to one with a cover is a big tactile adjustment for me. Not one I respond well to right off. The second issue – the edges of the cover don’t adequately overlap the deck of the laptop. My thumbs generally rest on the space bar and were frequently pushing the iSkin down into the keyboard well. It’s not a big thing. But, a minor annoyance is still a minor annoyance.

A real concern I have is when it’s covering my keyboard… the MacBook Pro fan comes on more frequently and the laptop gets warmer to the touch of my skin (yes… my lap). So, it comes down to a trade off for me. No microbials on my keys or slow-roasted lap steaks.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the iSkin. But, not so well as to keep it on permanently. And, obviously I’ve never felt so strongly about the muck gathering under my keys to buy one of these covers for myself.