johnwilker.com

Looking Forward, Looking Back

It’s been an interesting year. More so than normal years. It’s also the end of a decade, so I’ve got some thoughts on that too. Fair warning. This is a longy.

Decade first:

in 2000 I worked for a company that was basically an IT Staffing firm that decided to get into software. I worked internally on a web app that would (in their terms) revolutionize staffing. I bailed, they failed, it was 2000, that happened a lot to a lot of people and companies.

I spent most of the 2000′s as a programmer, first doing ColdFusion, then moving to Flex. It never occurred to me to try out M$ tools, or any other. I liked Macromedia (Now Adobe) offerings and stuck with them.

What makes the Kindle awesome, isn’t Amazon.

It’s funny I was reading Joe Wikert’s post on the death of the Kindle, when Amazon released it’s long, long, long awaited firmware update 2.3, adding a few, but not enough of the things Joe mentions being conspicuously missing from the Kindle.

Joe has some really good points, and sadly, 2.3 doesn’t negate many if any at all.

Then I got to thinking, what makes me still recommend my Kindle? It’s not the Kindle itself, it’s only a little bit Amazon itself, though I do almost all my buying on amazon, and really like the whispernet service.

it’s the incredible third party ecosystem that has grown around the Kindle to make it a truly kick ass device.

Follow up to Netflix on my PS3

I wanted to post a quick followup to my previous post about streaming Netflix on my PS3 via a disc they send out.

It’s as shitty as I said.

My free disc arrived and I figured, you know what, I’ll try it out, maybe I’m wrong, it happens from time to time. I wasn’t.

The interface is craptastic. You load the disc like any other, it spends some time connecting, then it brings up a nice little screen with an alpha numeric code, that I have to plug into my Netflix account. Too bad my laptop was upstairs doing something so I had to commit it to memory. Lame. I know it would have been extra work on Netflix’s part, but it would have been an awesome gesture if they could have pre-registered the disc they sent to my account “Welcome John, here’s your instant Queue”

The browsing is about as simple as it could be, a linear horizontal display of movies. You have to just scroll left and right through the list. That’s it.

No bells, no whistles.

Boxee it’s quite nice!

in the meantime, it’s been nice to catch up on shows on Hulu (when it doesn’t freeze mid show), and stream some Netflix movies. I looked at Plex, but the Boxee interface was more friendly. To that end, Nicole has already used Boxee, liked it, and managed to navigate to watch things, without me in the room, that’s a huge win for Boxee.

Is Apple just Anti 802.11N?

Airport and Airport Extreme devices are 802.11n, so are Apple laptops. So why not the handheld devices? The only thing I can think of is, power. Since Apple certainly doesn’t mind putting it in other devices.

But is it that big of drain? It’s not like iPhones are exactly long lived on battery as it is. Why limit their wifi speed?

just a random thought, but it occurred to me that 802.11n isn’t new, draft n devices (including the aforementioned Apple ones) have been around for a while, and now that it’s ratified, what’s holding Apple back?

Why do we listen to Steve Jobs about other Tech?

Steve doesn’t like the Kindle, well duh!

Why would anyone even ask him about it? Looking back on Steve commenting on technology, he (at least lately) seems to dismiss things as lame and not what people want (cuz only Steve truly knows what we want), right up until Apple releases their version of said thing.

Case in point. iPhone apps.

iPhone App review – iFitness

it’s been a while since I talked about an app I really like on my iPhone, so why not.

Since I’m on a bit of an increased fitness kick since I have to fit into my slacks for a wedding, I’m gonna talk about iFitness.

I use two apps to track my fitness, I wish it was only 1, but alas, so far neither of the two does it all.

iFitness rocks for it’s work outs. It has a ton of

activities stored,with pictures and even some video demos. It’s also got some prebuilt work outs, and the ability to create your o

macworld Snow Leopard hidden features

So I’ve had Snow Leopard since WWDC, but was amazed at the number of things this video showed, that I had no idea existed! Some were more “Meh, that’s nice” and a few were “Wow, turning that on, right now!” If you’ve just installed Snow Leo, or are planning to this weekend, spend 7 minutes [...]

Did Sony beat Amazon to the desktop?

A while back I wrote that the killing stroke in the eBook reader marketshare war wouldn’t be the reader device any more than the iPod was in the eMusic war. It’ll be the desktop software that powers such devices. I won’t re-hash my thoughts on that, read them here. but according to Mobilereads, Sony might [...]

Solution: iCal, gCal, and iPhone. A happy threesome

If you followed my previous post about wanting to trade my Kingdom for a way to sync my iPhone, iCal, and gCal, you know that the current situation for an iPhone owner, with a gCal account is pretty much W.E.A.K.

the blackberry definitely one ups the iPhone in this category.

While I’m not 100% happy with my current solution (Thanks commenter Toby), it’s the best solution I’ve come up with so far. My environment is convoluted for sure, but can’t be unique.

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