I won’t re-hash my thoughts on that, read them here. but according to Mobilereads, Sony might be the winner here, releasing their desktop library management app on the Mac. I’ll admit plenty of ignorance here as to what the app looks like and it’s exact feature set. I’m presuming it’s no iTunes, since I haven’t heard of it in it’s PC form and that sounds like it’s been around a while.

The Sony reader was the runner up more or less in my thinking about eBooks. Had 360|Conferences not bought my Kindle i might have one day bought the Sony. Sadly for Sony I had no idea they even had a desktop library app, which woulda really worked in their favor (well not as much as it would now that it’s on the mac).

I’d love to get my hands on the app, not sure if it’s standalone or requires a PRS-5XX device. It sounds like the latter is the case :(

if anyone has a Sony reader, and a mac, let me know what the app is like, and how close it might be to an iTunes for ebooks.

Amazon really better wake up, a killer device with piss poor library management will flop for sure. Can anyone imagine having no way to manage their music library EXCEPT onscreen on their iPod? buy music, it shows up, that’s that. no playlists, no ratings, just a massive list. That’s the Kindle in another year or two as people’s libraries grow and grow.

jeff Bezos, I hope you’re paying attention, or Sony (of all people!) is going to steal your lunch money.

Airports are like movies and concerts in that they encourage asshole behavior hand “It’s all about me” thinking. I don’t know why, and not everyone does it, but it seems easier to get to that point when flying.

I typically check my bags. Either I’m meeting Tom and my flight is first anyway so I have time, or I’m traveling long enough that I need my big bag. 9 out of 10 times, even when I’m flying with my smaller luggage (that can fit overhead) I check it.

I understand a lot of people are in a hurry (whether they really are or just think they are) and don’t want to wait for luggage, that’s ok. But those same people seem to usually be the ones who can’t or won’t grasp the “must fit in overhead, and only 1 allowed” rule. I’ve seen people with 2 rolly bags, 1 rolly bag, and a huge duffel, etc. there’s many variations.

What sucks is that, a big bag will fit sideways if you’re the first person on the plane, and as usually happens, the people with the big bags make sure they’re on early and can steal an overhead for their oversized bag(s).

I guess congress is stepping in on behalf of the non-asshole-air travelers. I read about it on the Tom Bihn (awesome bags) blog.

I agree with the Time’s Writer, when he says that pushing bag size checking to the TSA zone, means slower security checks. Yeah, as if we need slower security. My only recommendation to make that not be a huge time suck, make the apperture of the xray machine the size of the “allowed” bag. if it can’t fit in the machine, it won’t fit in a bin. This will at least solve 1 dimension of the “steamer trunk” problem.

I’m torn. I don’t like laws that enforce common sense or non asshole behavior, but having been forced to watch the plane I’m on leave late because of the baggage wrangling that is required, I certainly wouldn’t mind a “gold standard” in luggage.

Maybe instead of making luggage size a TSA problem, the luggage industry should step up and make bags that are the right size, and clearly the wrong size, so there’s less guesswork, “will this fit” going on.

OR, we could all stop being self centered retards. I know, who am I kidding

I spent a little time this past weekend jailbreaking, and unlocking my iPhone 2G, and it’s rekindled my love of the jailbreak. Back when I first got my iTouch, before even owning an iPhone I jailbroke my iTouch every OS release.

Since getting my iPhone, i kinda of fell out of practice, and realize what I’ve been missing.

Jailbreaking adds so much useful, fun, and cool stuff to your iPhone, it makes you realize how crippling Apple is. Of course if you’re not a star trek nerd, this won’t be as impressive, but it definitely shows the potential.

I’ve had no problem with my phone since the break, and never had problems with my iTouch. Anecdotally, my 3GS spontaneously rebooted when I loaded a game.

I’m seriously thinking about jailbreaking my 3GS now. There’s just so much you can do.

Some is small stuff of little consequence like themes. but other is stuff like qik which enabled me to stream the Coor’s Field fireworks from the 4th of July from my iPhone

You can argue stability, blah blah blah. but I’ve never found the exisitng iPhone OS 100% stable either, so that’s a fairly spurious argument. It’s surely a matter of personal taste, but having been re-introduced to the possibilities a jailbroken iPhone possesses, I’m finding that it’s very tempting to make that leap on my main phone.

Overall I think the jailbreaking community is definitely on to something and seems to be really becoming mainstream. It was pretty cool to load up Cydia and see the store that was announced at 360|iDev in March. Saurik and crew have done an awesome job. They’re bringing a level of choice and control to the iPhone that Apple has taken away from us. As a consumer I can’t fault with that at all.

I just got it, literally, a day ago. No I didn’t rush out to order one at WWDC after the keynote. I didn’t go wait in line at an Apple store, or any other variation on fan boy-dom. Oh and I could have, because I nver bought a 3G and bought my 2G on ebay, so I’ve been contract free for a while.

No longer.

I wasn’t sold on the 3GS. for one thing, it’s still aesthetically ugly IMO. It’s plastic, which I don’t like. I don’t like it because plastic feels crappy. I don’t like it because when the 2G came out, Apple made a big deal about plastic sucking and the aluminum body being so nice. I agree.

I’m bummed that Apple (in a move very unlike them) didn’t change the outward appearance at all. Typically apple makes new models look a big different (I suspect so that the fanboy, early adopters can feel special, and be visually better/apart from the masses), if you sat a 3G and 3GS next to each other, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference (it’s not impossible).

What sold me, wasn’t the compass, the voice dialing, event the stereo bluetooth. It was the speed.

I read that it was (roughly) 54% faster than the 3G. That’s pretty substantial. It’s also got more system RAM, and more graphics capabilities.

I might have been ok with sticking with 2G and EDGE (or buying a 3G on Ebay), but Apple has made it clear to developers, that supporting iPhone OS 2.2.1 isn’t in the picture, they need to build apps for 3.0, which means apps that will be expecting more system RAM, better graphics, and faster CPUs. Things I didn’t have, and wouldn’t have in the 3G.

Plus as Tom and I do an iPhone developer conference, we figured one of us should be keeping up with the Jone’s, in this case our developer community.

So I own a 3GS, and it’s about what I expected, wicked fast, making the iPhone that much more an actually useful device. I’m sure next summer Apple will roll something out, and I’ll have to skip it or pay through the nose since now I’m back in a 2 year contract, but oh well.

His book ‘Stick it to the Man: How to Skirt the Law, Scam Your Enemies , and Screw Big, Fat, Stupid, Lazy Corporations…for Fun and Profit!‘ launched last week, and the party was at a the Barnes & Noble downtown.

Ron is a great guy, truly interested in meeting people and doing what he can to help them succeed. When I first met Ron, I was blown away by his genuineness, he proposed we meet for coffee and was not just looking for one more person to talk about his book to. We talked about 360|Conferences, my Kindle (which I brought with him and showed him).

At the signing, he asked how the conferences were going, which was nice and further cemented my respect for him, not only did he remember my work, but showed real interest in it.

That reminds me, I need to set up coffee with Ron.

I’ve only skimmed the book a bit so far, but hearing Ron read a few passages from it, and hearing him talk about how he “landed his book deal” it was truly inspiring.

It was great to be there to support him in his (first of many, I suspect) moment in the sun.

It’s available on the Kindle store, which is a huge deal to me, so that not only can I read it where ever I want, but I won’t have to risk my signed copy getting all messed up.

It’s a great topic, and an awesome set of little things to get a leg up on companies and government trying do do the same to you.

If nothing else, buy this book to support a local (if you’re in Denver) author, it’s a good thing to do, and I’m certain Karma will smile upon you.

After thoroughly enjoying ‘Weapons of Choice’ at the gym and while folding clothes in the Kindle’s robot voice, at the car wash, etc. I bought book 2, and added 3 to my Universal Wishlist.

Sunday morning I was getting ready to fold some clothes, so I grabbed my Kindle, went into the menu for ‘Designated Targets’ and what do I see? Start Text to Speach, is grayed out.

WTF?

Sure enough, someone; John or his publisher has decided I’m not allowed to use the book I legitimately purchased in any way I please. The decision was made that I couldn’t listen to the book while I did something else.

I won’t be reading future books in the series, nor will I be finishing ‘Designated Targets’, and I hope no one else does. As a consumer and someone who believes that technology is not a tool for abusing consumers, I can’t support an author that thinks I’m not trustworthy, or thinks he can milk me for more money with an audible.com version of the book or whatever shitty logic is applied to the “Disable text to speach in my books mentallity”

I really hope that publishing wakes up sooner than (have they yet?) the RIAA/MPAA. I can’t stress this enough, this time in history for publishing is the same as the launch of iTunes, napster before it, etc for music and movies. So far publishing seems to be going down a similar path.

I also hope that Amazon makes it clear on product pages, which Kindle editions have been crippled, so that I can avoid those books. It’s a bummer for sure, but I won’t support such practices.

Beyond the ridiculously obvious “you get nothing physical” there’s a lot of reasons why an eBook shouldn’t cost as much as any printed version of the same book.

Let’s look at what goes into the price of a printed book vs. an eBook.

So given that several important factors in price (setting a price that when discounted due to depreciation is still profitable for example) don’t apply to eBooks, why should we as consumers be expected to pay a price similar to that of a hardback book, for an eBook?

While the cheap consumer part of me wants eBooks to be $.99 i acknowledge that it’s a bit unrealistic, since a great deal goes into writing a book, and while a single song is $.99 an entire book, shouldn’t be. Should a book be over $10 for the eBook version? No.

I feel a certain amount of pity for the publishing industry. While the music and movie industry got their heads kicked in, and alienated customers by the thousands, the book industry (rather than learn) watched from a far (i presume) assuming they were immune. Then Amazon came and fucked it all up for them.

Now they’re doing the same thing those other two industries did (killing speach to text on the Kindle, charging $15 for an eBook, etc), and not surprisingly the same type of backlash is being felt.

Publishing at least seems to have learned a little from their cousins in movies and music, but not enough I think.

From a conference attendee perspective, it’s too big, and seems to be all about Apple making us feel like we don’t matter. I’ll break my thoughts down below.

Keynote line: Tom and I got up early and waited in it. We’d never done it before so wanted to see what it was all about. We didn’t get up crazy early, but still waited outside for I think 2 hours, we were numbers 404 and 405 or something. About an hour before the keynote the line moves inside, where they’ve put out coffee and donuts and stuff. Then the line essentially breaks down into mayhem to get up the 4 escalators then mad rush into the keynote room. Why we waited in line to be ran past I don’t know. Why we waited in line when Apple could have let us get in and get seated earlier, I don’t know. Other than it’s a nice way for Apple to show everyone who’s in control.

Sessions: with 5200 people in attendance and only like 12 or so sessions at a time, do the math, each session was a mini keynote. Complete with having to wait in line to get into the room. Why wait in line? No discernible reason, other than (to me) to further make sure everyone knew it was Apple’s show we waited in line at their leisure.

Each session had at least 400-500 people, some filled to capacity, around 1500. How do you present a topic to 1500 people? just like a keynote, you talk at the crowd. Each session ended with “go see these sessions to get more info” pitches then a little Q&A where you have to go stand at a mic, ask your question, take the answer and sit down.

Content: I’ll admit, a great deal of the content was over my head. I’m still very much a novice iPhone app dev. Be that as it may, it was still very dry and very not deep. A lot of the time, sessions were slides of code, with explanations (i can read the docs myself). Every once in a while a session would get into some live coding,but that wasn’t the norm.

Oh and since each session was a mini keynote, they dimmed the lights, and kept it warm, it was WAY too easy to fall asleep, especially in the more “sales pitch” type sessions.

After Hours: WWDC is like… well I don’t know, I’ve never partied like that before that I recall. THough I barelly recall the partying I did at WWDC, so…

There’s at least 6 or more parties every night. Most are “invite only” or “RSVP and hope you get a ticket” deals, which sucks, and further promotes the crazy superstar nonsense that exists. Sadly most party venues are dive bars around downtown SF, so they’re crowded, noisy, did I mention crowded and noisy? The House of Sheilds is a popular place to end up. Bring a catheter and strap a bag to your calf. The bathroom (used as loosely as possible) is like stepping into the 9th level of hell, which if you’re curious is the sewer for the other 8 levels.

WWDC’s official party is a concert in the Yerba Buena park. We got there just as Cake started their encore (The Distance, w00t!) and as soon as the band finished, the tables were cleared off, the booze stations closed up, and the stage crew went to work. This was all before the folks up front had stopped jumping up and down. Very weird.

As much as I liked the parties, they were completely useless for meeting people. You ended up in a group that migrated place to place and sometimes members would come and go, but meeting new people was tough. If you were in one of the parties the music and voices were so loud, you couldn’t hardly talk.

I much prefer the 1 party to rule them all approach that Tom and I do. Sure the people who need their own party to feel special, are denied that, but hey, they can still throw a party elsewhere. Cynergy did it in Seattle. But at least you can meet people, talk, and not be running from place to place trying to catch up to the “in crowd”

Overall: WWDC is just like MAX. It’s the place to go to be seen, it’s the place where you’re assured to be in the presence of people like Wil Shipley and Brent Simmons (though, Brent will be at 360|iDev) and the rest of the luminary Mac/iPhone guys. Oh and of course Gruber, who probly will never be at one of our events.

It’s not the place to get a ton of new knowledge. It’s not the place to try and meet new people, forge new relationships, etc.

It is the place to get new NDA goodies you can’t talk to anyone about, and of course be in the room, when a new laptop is announced.

It’s definitely the place for Apple to assert their dominance over us all, and make sure we know our place in the order of things,which is pretty low.

Luckily the bike, unharmed. Which woulda sucked, since it was Nicole’s replacement bike that we bought at the police auction, and had essentially just finished getting into tip top shape for her to ride.

It’s interesting that the plastic tire strap snapped and the rail itself (pic one) bent until failure, and the grabber arm, that you tighten on to the bike’s frame, actually let go. I presume that’s by design, and I’m very pleased to only have to buy a new bike rack vs a new bike.

The car faired well too, only a slight gouge on teh roof, from the pedal as the bike collapsed on to the roof.

Needless to say, Nicole and I will not be so engrossed in a conversation that close to home after being out with a bike.