thoughts to blog

So Becca, my lovely fiance, got me another device (the same week as my new iPhone, :: wow ::)... the Flip Video Ultra...

A slightly newer product and a neat idea, let's cram 480p video recording device into a super simple, easy to use ecosystem... and the pocket of our users. Make it somewhat affordable ($150 for Ultra) and easy to share videos (built in software uploads to several different websites by default)...

Here's a quick demo:

And yeah, I'm a big freaking dork...

As you can see... the video is actually quick clear for non-moving shots... but once you get it out into the sunlight with moving vehicles, it does degrade slightly. It's light, easy to use... definitely worth it for having something to play around with and take on vacations with you. It records up to an hour of footage, which isn't bad, and has everything you need (from hardware to software) built into the device...

Here it is, in all of it's glory...

Mom used to tell me they fought over me when I was in the nursery...

Last night was the kickoff meetup for the Fort Worth chapter of Social Media Club... hosted by Lauren Vargas...

I caught wind of it through Richie on Twitter and decided to check it out.

Unfortunately the group was mainly comprised of PR/HR folk, I being a lonely developer there... and the physical setup of the location wasn't as conducive to introductory meetings as standing up and mingling would have, but I did meet a few people and talked about drop.io and other social media topics.

I'm still unsure if I will be attending the rest of the meetings, I heard a whisper that the Dallas chapter has more developers, but it's too far of a drive :: grin ::

At any rate... thanks to Richie for pushing me to go... and thanks to Lauren for putting it on!

So I heard Becca scream the other morning... only to run in and find this little guy:

He was about 1.5" (very short) and when I went to grab him to take him outside, his defense mechanism kicked in and all I had was half of his tail in my fingers. I should have remembered! The cool part was that the tail continued to move for a good 5 minutes afterwards...

A bright morning after an ugly night of Lucy (read: Lucifer) barking and chasing a baby opossum around the back yard...

So I've had my Apple iPhone 3G for a week now... and so I figured I'd write up my thoughts so far.

When the first iPhone came out, I passed. I passed because with the EDGE network, the speeds were tremendously slow compared to my EVDO on my Motorola Q. And with the lack of MMS messaging, it seemed like something I would wait for a second iteration of. And besides, the iPod Touch was doing the same thing (sans the phone and SMS) and I figured I would grab one of those.

Well... a year later we come to the launch of the iPhone 3G. With the new network and "cheaper" price (read: cheaper up front)... I couldn't resist. A week with the phone and here we are.

Coverage:

With Verizon, I never had a problem in NYC, Minneapolis, and DFW area. Not once did I ever drop a call or not have reception. This is not necessarily the case with AT&T. The voice quality is a lot better on the iPhone than with the Q.

Internet speed:

3G brings a hefty update to speed over EDGE... but still nowhere near EVDO speed. With my Verizon phone, there were times where I could push over 1 mbps... with 3G, I can top out at around 670 kbps. Granted this is still fast enough for phone browsing, it's missing a little snap. BUT... thanks to having Wifi (and let's face it, I work from home so I'm always on Wifi), the speeds will be greatly improved... allowing me to purchase songs and apps from iTunes on my phone.

Interface:

The touch interface is awesome. It tracks both of your fingers perfectly... Everything slides and is smooth. Once apps really start coming together with common UI guidelines, the phone will be soaring with neat interface tricks. Some of my favorite are the games Quordy and Muddle... which tell you to "Shake it" or "Slide it" to start the game and use the vibration to give you tactical feedback. It's really nice.

Applications:

It's new and fresh, there are plenty of buggy apps to choose from, but they are improving. My favorites so far: last.fm, Super Monkey Ball, Aurora Feint, Muddle, Quordy, and the Mobile Safari Home Screen Bookmarks (check out the little things section)... They will get better over time...

Shortcomings:

Some bugs here and there... I've had to hard reset (home + sleep button) a few times in the last week. It would seem that some apps get out of whack and cause the device to go into a "you must reboot " state. For some reason the games that go into OpenGL ES seem to cause this... Super Monkey Ball and Aurora Feint come to mind.

Still no MMS messaging... this will and have to be implemented via software eventually...

No copy&paste, but that has been addressed by Apple by saying it's not high enough on the TODO list.

It's really hard to drive and use the iPod feature, as all of the important buttons are on screen and provide no tactical feedback.

Still no video recording...

Development:

The iPhone SDK is nice, but requires you to accept a Terms of Service that says you can't talk about it online. In fact, it's actually blocking some, I would assume to be, really interesting books from publishing. The videos are nice. Objective-C isn't exactly the most fluid language to work in, but if you already have those skills, they transfer well. The tax to get your app listed will help weed out the very very bad applications... and the time to the App Store is reportedly slow, but those will come (as well as better apps) once the phone has been out for a while.

The little things:

1. Buy one of these films: Glossy or Matte .. I've tried both and I like the glossy look. They are worth it and you can't even tell you have one on.
2. Neat Mobile Safari feature... save a page onto your Home Screen. (Same as adding a bookmark). If the publisher (like Facebook or Bloglines) is up on their iPhone enabled site, a custom icon will appear. Making it a one-click passage into your favorite sites.
3. Home + Sleep (one click) will take a screenshot... BAM
4. Click and hold an icon to turn the home screen into "Shuffle and Delete Apps" mode...
5. Turn the brightness down... trust me... at like 15% for a week, you won't even notice and it'll save tons of battery.

And finally... the camera... here's a pic taken with the camera. Not as bad as some reviews say it is... really... Click it for the higher resolution (including original)....

Holy hotness... last.fm, which I have been a subscriber for a few years, released an iPhone app... w00t!

Here are some screens...

The line was long... 2 hours long for me:

But when I got to this point, the cool air coming from the door was soothing...

And then it was mine:

Sam threw up a post about crosstalk in social networking websites... inspiring me to think about the problems that he raises.

Everyone in the social web posts content to several services; sometimes cross posting the same content... and a lot of these sites will also allow replies and comments. The problem is that it's all in separate places, leaving you to figure out how to collect the information and make it relevant. Sam discusses a few possible solutions, but all driving back to a concept of a monolithic "sink" of social data... a walled garden.

There are several sites out there that are trying to solve this problem... FriendFeed, SocialThing!, and even a federated micro-blogging service identi.ca... They allow you to enter in your profile information (sometimes including your heavily guarded password) and they will use an API to get the data and aggregate it. This type of system works out, but can have problems:

• You have to divulge profile information, including passwords, to these 3rd party websites.
• Those sites are at the mercy of the API of the target site... including downtown and rate limits.
• These sites are not heuristically figuring out how to munge all of the data into meaningful conversations (comments and replies)

So why not turn the idea around and think about social endpoints...

A social endpoint is a personal spot where your content magically arrives when it happens. Think of a reverse OpenID mixed with e-mail... Where if you create social content online, it gets forwarded to your own social endpoint for you to parse, store, display, etc. You could also potentially push other people's content down to your social endpoint as well.. it's just a message.

How does this solve the problem? It keeps the data input at the respective sites, thus allows those sites to function properly and keep their business models in tact. It then helps bring the conversations back to you in a relevant fashion. With optionally having other people's social data coming down your way, you can also get involved in other conversations.

Here's a small flow to show you what goes down...

1. Jake creates a social endpoint on his own webserver
2. Jake signs up for Twitter and Brightkite
3. Jake tells Twitter and Brightkite that his social endpoint is: http://socialendpoint.com/jake
4. Jake pushes a message to Twitter and Brightkite (could even be the same message)
5. Twitter and Brightkite send a social endpoint message (well known) to Jake's social endpoint.
6. The social endpoint takes in the data and stores it, uses it's muscle to figure out that it's the same message...
7. Someone replies on Twitter... Twitter sends a social endpoint message to Jake's social endpoint.
8. Someone does the same for Brightkite.
9. Jake's social endpoint takes those comments and associates them to Jake's original message.
10. Now Jake can read comments back aond forth...

The concept is pretty simple, create a simplistic spec for data and message passing for social data... and define an endpoint spec on how those messages should arrive. Create a base implementation in any language that you so choose... and store the data as it comes in. The real meat of it is the specs for the data, messages, and endpoints... but that's the whole concept right?

The Pros:

• The endpoint is your own, hosted wherever you want. It benefits from an OpenID style system... and can create a market of hosted services with competition to see who can do cooler things with your data. Hell... host your own!
• The messages and data are well known, so any service can push content back to your server...
• Implementations can be customized and/or rewritten however you want. If you want better heuristics to figure out what conversations are connected and how to display them, write it yourself or find a better implementation...
• Since it's pushing the content, you could easily daisy chain endpoints (in which they turn into nodes, like the internet). Imagine being able to subscribe to other people's endpoints and creating a massive conversation.

The Cons:

• The biggest problem faced is that sites have to implement the protocol... which is a huge problem to get it to work...
• This still has a fundamental flaw of being at the mercy of the endpoint being up... but it's the users fault, not the services
• This has the problem of trying to figure out conversations, but can be easier if the message spec is well thought out.

At any rate... I snagged socialendpoint.com to do a possible POC and see if it can catch on. I'm going to run this by a few other people but I would like some input from the blogosphere... Am I crazy??

Here's the product page for the ATtiny13...

and

Here's the product page for the USBtinyISP...

There are some projects brewing in my head that requires these things... :)

Sorry folks, we're at Capacity here with Jake's brain... so we've turned off blog posts and any new information for a little while...

:) Do I need a Twitter Fail Whale now?

(read: thanks for still listening to my blog, but I apologize that I haven't been posting... my family and soon to be family is definitely taking up a lot of my mental capacity and my concentrations are in that direction...)