johnwilker.com

My Xoom review

I’ve been meaning to write this for a few days, and decided I just need to sit down and do it. Be aware, this review has no pics. There’s so many pics of the Xoom and the iPad out there, there’s just no need for them now. We all know what a tablet looks like [...]

sometimes you want to quit

As is typical of life, I’ve had this blog post sitting in a Safari tab to be written about. I’m in a blogging mood today so I sat down to talk about this post, and turns out it’s a company who just signed on as a sponsor of 360|Flex. There’s no real correlation, but I [...]

Read Books, it’s Good For You!

I’ve known this anecdotally for a long time. I think it extends beyond bloggers needing to read, and read fiction. It applies to every single person, everywhere. The points outlined in the article all speak for themselves, so i don’t need to re-hash those. Reading is good for you. Reading anything is better than nothing, [...]

Disney world, it’s not so magical

Ok so we spent much of last week and Christmas day in Orlando with the In-laws. Mom-inlaw wanted to do Disney World.

Overall, I had a good time. Having been to Disney World with my mom two years ago, there wasn’t much “awe” happening since in 2 years Disney hasn’t done much to the place.

Magic Kingdom

I was really bummed that the Haunted Mansion wasn’t all “nightmare Before Christmas”-ed out. Must be a CA thing? Overall the park wasn’t too crazy, crowded to be sure, but not bad. It’s funny tho, i was talking to Mike Lee about his recent trip to the Magic Kingdom and he was saying how it’s odd when you see things not go right. Disney (like Apple) tries really hard to manage the entire experience, and when something goes wrong it’s glaringly wrong. Well we definitely had the BMF experience at the Kingdom.

Apparently part of experience now when waiting in line is to have the line be less a line, and more a mob. On two, maybe three rides when the iron bound queue ended and we got into the actual ride building, Disney employees informed us that the line wasn’t single file, fill all available space. I’m guessing as a way to make the lines outside seem shorter, or something. However as in all cases with mobs, it quickly went from “happiest place on earth” to “mob rules; cut in front, elbow and kick your way into the Pirates of the Caribbean”

So that kinda sucked and really ruined the experience of the ride. Thankfully most lines weren’t too long in general, and we fast passed the popular stuff.

Christmas day, we were flying home, so after breakfast with the fam we went to epcot to walk around. To get from breakfast to Epcot/our hotel we had to go past the Magic Kingdom. Here I was thinking, “Who the hell wants to be at Disney World on Christmas day?” Turns out, a lot of people do! We asked the gal behind the counter at hour hotel about it and she said, at around noon that day they were at “level 3″ meaning only season pass holders and resort guests could get in. The park was already turning away folks who were staying elsewhere or driving in. ON CHRISTMAS DAY! She said on New Years Eve day, they’ll be at “level 4″ meaning once you leave, you can’t get back in, and even resort guests and season pass holders might not get in.

I gotta admit, I’m amazed that it’s that busy on Christmas. New Years, sure, I bet it’s a pretty fun party, but christmas?!

Oh and Space Mountain, the new music sucks. I need a fast rock track to make the ride fun, the current music is way to mellow, i found myself just sitting there waiting for the ride to end.

Epcot

My favorite part of being in Orlando is Epcot. Mostly because of the world tour part, and beer. Epcot itself is fun, the rides are cool, and the new (even new to me) Nemo ride is pretty sweet. Actually the ride is lame, but there’s an aquarium attached (you can just walk into that part, the ride exits there) that is really awesome.

It’s funny, we went to a beer/snack cart in the United Kingdom Pavilion, and i got mocked (rightfully so) for ordering a Stella.

Also, if you like trying candy we don’t get in the states, the Twinnings Tea shop has a pretty good, but small selection. SKIP the turkish Delight. This ain’t Narnia!

Thankfully, with the Magic Kingdom being so crowded on Christmas day, Epcot was not. We breezed thru the park using up the last of our meal plan snacks with hardly anyone else around. AWESOME!

Meal Plans

I dont think the meal plans are worth it. Ours was actually free with our package booking, so that was nice. I’d have been annoyed if I had paid for it. For one thing it’s very rigid. A “meal” is an entree, drink (non alcoholic) and dessert. I don’t like dessert and would often prefer an appetizer, no go cowboy! (Props to the waiter at Nine Dragons in Epcot. he hooked us up with some apps for free. Course with a party of 8 and 18% tip built in, why not make sure we’re happy. I know we added a little more tip to the bill)

The way the plan (ours at least) worked was we got 4 meals, 4 snacks, and 4 quicks. After cracking the code on what exactly each of those was, then it was a matter of scoping out the icon on the menus around the parks to see what applied and what didn’t, and then having to tell the worker, “I want a snack, what’s that entail here?” every time.

So overall it was way more effort than it was worth.

Ok that’s a quick and dirty run down of my christmas (oh and along with being at Disney World on Christmas, flying on Christmas is also very popular! WTF) vacation.

All in all, a good time.

How does iThoughtsHD have this and Apple doesn’t?

I caved, and paid $10 for pages. Complete waste of money. I edit a lot of pages files. Sponsor packets,etc. All the time. I’d love to pull one up on my iPad, edit, and without having to think about plugging into iTunes, copying the files out of iTunes back to my iDisk where they live, overwriting the old one.

Pages, and most apps, come kinda close, you can access the file, pull it in locally, make edits, but then you’re stuck, the document is trapped in the iPad and iTunes.

Why not make the iPad apps (at least the Apple ones) more connected to Oh I dunno, say Apple’s own cloud services. iWork.com and mobileMe. Some of us (still) pay for mobileMe hoping it’ll mature and actually be useful. I have no idea what iWork.com is for, but it seems like it’d make perfect sense to tie the iWork iPad apps (maybe the new iLife ones too) to Apple’s own (though dropbox, et. al. would be nice too) services to extend their usefulness.

Open Letter to Apple? Come on

Rather than see Apple go to an exclusive event for executives who don’t want to touch the unwashed masses, I’d love to see Apple support the developer community. Hey Steve, Phil, et. al. Come to the next 360|iDev. Meet the people writing the apps, meet the developers who bought 4 iPads. After all, they (IMHO) more than any one in attendance at Web 2.0 Summit, are the people important to Apple. The Developer community is buying iPads like their going out of style, buying each other’s apps/games, etc. They’re the early adopters, the strongest pro-Apple voices, etc.

I do agree with the letter in so far as the Apple of Today isn’t the Apple I fell in love with. It’s not the Apple of the Powerbook, the Newton, the Performa. Times change, and (as many do) if you argue bank accounts as an indicator, Apple is doing something right. I’m tickled pink (I’d be more tickled if I owned Apple stock) that Apple isn’t $8/share. I remember when it was. As a kid in school, I checked the price daily in the paper before I left the house. I saved and saved and bought a Newton, I bought a powerbook 510 for College (ok well my folks did). But I’d love to see that Apple (tempered by age, fine) come back. The Apple of “Think Different”, the Apple of Ellen Feiss.

iPad….. nice but not magical, yet (my Review)

So I’m writing this on my iPad. I’m not feeling the magic. (update, i had to save it so I could edit on my Macbook, else this post take would’ve taken 40 years to write)

Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty, but not useful. Yet.

And before you decide I’m just an Apple hater, let me lay out my credentials for those that don’t know me.

I own:

Unibody Macbook, 2 Minis, 3 iPods (including an iPod Photo), 2 iPhones, 1 iPad, 2 Airport Express, 1 Airport Extreme, my wife has a white plastic macbook.

I’ve Previously owned:

a Macbook Pro, Newton 110, Powerbook 510, Performa. I think it’s safe to say my fanboi-ness is secure.

That out of the way.

The iPad is a very pretty device, and if your life (as some do) revolves around reading websites, watching videos, and …. well that’s it. Checking email I suppose too. Then the iPad is the perfect toy for you (albeit, for those simple tasks, the price IMO is a bit steep).

I tried. I didn’t write this review the night i got my iPad, I didn’t write it Sunday night, I waited and actually tried to do things I’d normally grab my Macbook for.

First I went up on my deck, to get some sun, and enjoy working outside. Since I was just gonna reply to a few emails, I grabbed the iPad.

360Flex San Jose – Recap

It’s been a while since our last 360|Flex. Almost a year in fact. Indianapolis in May.

Since getting back from 360|Flex, I’ve been full tilt forward on 360|iDev (rest? Decompress time, weak sauce!!), but wanted to take a few minutes to write down my thoughts on this latest 360|Flex.

For one thing it was a huge success. We made money. Not a metric buttload, and it would have been more if we hadn’t carried a ton of debt with us out of 2009. BUt still, we made money, and that’s a good sign for the event and the company.

We did a few things (as usual) differently.

We had volunteers to help out. We had I think 8 folks, that got a free pass in exchange for helping out. w had them help assemble SWAG bags, work the reg desk (This was THE first 360|Event where the keynote wasn’t delayed, and where I was able to actually hop up on stage, vs have some one go start the keynote.) work our video cameras (more on that), and in general be around to do whatever we needed.
We had Nicole on board officially. As Tom leaves, Nicole joins. It’s pretty cool to be working with my wife to make the events even better!
Video. We’ve wanted to do video since Seattle ’07. In fact we had video in Seattle, but marketed them poorly. We had Video in San Jose ’09, but it was Adobe TV. This time we decided to go lo-fi to start and see how it works. We used 8 SD Flip Cams, and Camtasia Relay. Volunteers swapped cams out for each session, and set up Relay on speaker laptops. Now that hard part. I’ve got 40+ sessions to process into usable video. We’re not sure what to do yet as far as distribution. Attendees will get the video for free, but I’d love to try and sell access to the video (un-DRM’ed of course) files. I think there’s value in the videos, and think it’d be nice if we could support the company between events with video sales.
Panels. Panels are another thing we toyed with for a while, thinking it’d be cool to do, but never really executing. We decided to pull the trigger. 360|Flex had 3 panels, and they all rocked! Panels are here to stay. We also put a panel as the last session on the last day, to bring everyone together at the end of the conference. The panels are a great way to have all attendees in the same place, and get great discussions started! I’m really excited about the Panels, and can’t wait to do more.
Official hotel while using Ebay. Normally when we do the SJ event, we don’t have an official hotel, or if we do it’s just a room block at the Holiday Inn. This time we went downtown San Jose to the Marriott. Who offered a shuttle bus each day. That worked out awesome! Each day the bus brought everyone to Ebay and took them back to the hotel at night. After the evening receptions, folks bussed back to the Marriott, and partied at the bar, out in downtown, etc. it was awesome.
Over all I couldn’t be happier with 360|Flex San Jose. We had an almost sell out crowd, at about 365 registrations, not to mention the “I had to register?” Crowd that we printed badges for on the fly.

Now on to 360|iDev, San Jose! I can’t wait to see my Apple crew! We’ll all be fresh off iPad euphoria, and ready to talk iPad apps!

Social Media – The new ‘Internet’, hello 1998

Anyhoo. history aside, I was struck the other day at a MHSMC meeting that social media is the new ‘internet’. Mainly this relates to my love of all things Cluetrain Manifesto. One of the of the primary things I took away from Cluetrain in my first reading as a lowly Software developer at a mortgage company where marketing outnumbered IT (as well as my many subsequent readings), was that it’s important, and beneficial for enterprises to let their people be people. Lower the walls, don’t raise them. I thought we were making progress here.

It seems that social media is moving away from that if MHSMC is any indicator. The presentation this month was on Corporate use of Social Media.

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.

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