Cocoa and Me

Part of my brain keeps saying "go code in Cocoa and leave the rest all behind".

I beat that part of my brain with a stick.

Me and My Moleskine - How I Avoided the Mohel

So the fine folks over at KCAL wanted to do a piece on nerds rediscovering non-nerdy devices - like the pen and paper.  As an avid Moleskine advocate, they shot some (B) roll of me on Tuesday for their Tech Check segment.  Other than looking like Brother Ishmael from Kingpin, I think I pulled it off - only breaking out words unsuitable for their viewership once.

Stop reading and watch the video here or here.  Now go watch it again - yes, it's that good.

I also got to spend some time with the creators of LaserMoleskine (subsidiary of equally cool EtchStar). Very cool folk with an equally cool product.  If you want the coolest damn Moleskin around, are looking for awesome giveaways or gifts, or just want to make your iPod yours in a way that Steve Jobs won't let you, then go see these guys.  I'm having them build a machine large enough for my car to fit in - but I digress.

My PriceLine Review

Sure PriceLine, I'll click through your review of the Grand Hyatt I stayed at in SF last week.  I'll even spend 5 minutes giving you honest feedback.  But then you got a little snippy with me, didn't you?  You told me to write a review.  Well ok, here are my thoughts:

The Grand Hyatt is a perfectly adequate go-to hotel for business travelers that need easy access to the city.  Outfitted with the latest furniture from the 80's, you'll feel like the lead singer of The Scorpions as you walk the halls of this awesomely dated hotel.  Be sure to say hi to Dee Snyder for me too.

Google App Platform

As a rabid technophile, and systems/information architect I welcome our new Google App overlords and look forward to consuming their new App Platform. But then again, in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve been drinking the software-as-a-service Kool-Aid for quite some time. But just because the brain-trust that is Google is providing a platform doesn’t solve every underlying problem.

Stacey Higginbotham on Gigaom postulates:

“It could also cause problems for startups such as online storage company ElephantDrive”

But the truth of the matter is that the exact opposite is true. At ElephantDrive we have created systems and infrastructure to provide global access to a secure, archival-grade version of your data, no matter what device you created it on. That means we encapsulate: encryption; file differentiation; global de-duplication; access logic with credentials; and an entire sharing platform. Google’s platform doesn’t displace us, it just gives us one more potential bucket to use as underlying storage for our product - our infrastructure is still the most relevant and necessary piece of the puzzle. But then again, I’m clearly biased. :)

And we support files larger than 1MB already. Hooray! :D

More:
ElephantDrive Blog
Jose Miguel Cansado at Tech-Talk Biz
Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb

Non-Optimal Display Resolution on Vista

This has to be one of my favorite errors on Vista thus far.  I love the fact that the OS is trying to help users that don't understand the importance of matching native resolution on LCD's, but it sure is amusing when the stack gets a little screwy.  :)