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Facebook Application Marketing

Published by pete July 30th, 2007 in facebook, events, presentation and marketing. 1 Comment

Facebook Developers Garage - LA

Published by pete July 30th, 2007 in Uncategorized, facebook and barcamp. 0 Comments

This weekend I attended the Facebook Developer Garage in Santa Monica. Meagan Marks from the Facebook Platform team spent several hours with the group and made it clear that they are very developer friendly. The next several hours were filled with Barcamp style presentations and ad hoc discussions. By the time the beer and pizza came in the evening the audience was mostly developers coding, sharing information and giving each other feedback on their apps.

The best part was meeting people who have used the past 60 days to develop not one but sometimes several successful applications. And the serious people are making money.

Special thanks to Kareem, Eric and the rest of the organizers. And hat’s off to Meagan from Facebook for sharing her Ninja secrets and being an enthusiastic supporter of the developer community.

Too Much Noise on Facebook?

Published by pete July 28th, 2007 in facebook. 0 Comments

Awesome timing. I am heading to the Mahalo offices for a facebook event and Jason Calacanis declares facebook bankruptcy last night. But if I was him, I would do the same thing. The guy has got something like 200 pending requests. Unless you have OCD, this is a nightmare.

Calacanis makes some good points but he’s the one that asked for all this attention and I don’ blame Facebook for his problem. He is a pro at working online communication channels to get his message out. I love watching Calacanis in action. Before Mahalo launched, he augmented his blog by building a huge audience on Twitter. So a 150 friend requests on Facebook? Not surprising. I think if you turned off email and application notifications you would be better off.

Now after calling out Calacanis out as an edge case, I have to admit something. I am finishing up a FB app design and I am concerned about similar types of backlash for “regular users”. Will everyone be sick application requests by the time I launch? Hopefully not. From my totally unscientific polling (asking every kid I run into), the millennial generation seem to be OK with the noise.

One last thing. I am a pre-funded startup building a FB app inside their walled garden. Calacanis asks why someone like me would do this. We are making an app because it’s inexpensive way to validate our product and build a user base. Low development costs, no marketing costs. If it works out, we will have a lot of useful data and a ton of content.

Confessions of an Early Adopter

Published by pete June 28th, 2007 in apple II, gadgets, treo, empeg, mp3, HDTV and TiVo. 0 Comments

I am the ultimate gadget freak and poster boy for early adopters. I bought the first Apple computer, the first Palm Pilot, the first Treo, one of the first MP3 players, the first in-car MP3 player, the first gen iPod, the first TiVo and the first Samsung HD DLP TV, the first DirecTV HD DVR and so on.

There is a sadistic quality about being an early adopter of innovative v1.0 products. My Treo 150 had to be replaced 3 times because the hinge would break constantly. My Samsung TV’s circuit board had to be field updated two months after I purchased it. My DirecTV HD DVR was plagued with problems and the software was updated weekly for months to fix the bugs. Somehow my wife puts up with it.

But will I get the first gen iPhone?

Switching from a PC to a Mac: Picking the Right Apps

Published by pete January 2nd, 2007 in GTD, mac, osx and pc. 2 Comments

I have been a PC user for the last several years but decided it was time to go back to Apple. I used to like my Asus notebook and Windows XP but over time several little things started to drive me nuts. Every time I picked up the notebook to move it somewhere my hand would hit the side buttons and turn off my network connection or then windows started behaving badly (as it does after a year or so of use). Instead of waiting for a Notebook/Vista upgrade I decided to jump back into the cult.

It’s only been a few days and I am stoked that I made the change.
I researched the impact of a switch on my critical business and personal applications and work flow for a week or so then decided to made the switch over New Years weekend. Here’s my experience - hopefully it will help some folks out.

I was fumbling around until I read this awesome post on lifehacker. It’s a must read for switchers and couldn’t have come at a better time. It a perfect quick start guide for Windows users - why didn’t apple write this?

COMMUNICATIONS

Firefox -> Firefox - DONE

This is a seamless switch. I just re-downlaoded my favorite plugins and I was good to go.

MS Office 2003 / Plaxo / Palm Hotsync -> Office 2004 Mac / Plaxo / Missing Sync - DONE

This move was mission critical and could have been a deal breaker if the Mac could not satisfy my Windows GTD workflow. Fortunately it looks like it will. (Now I can finally stop ignoring all the mac posts on 43 folders).
Mitch Ratcliffe pointed me to a great whitepaper on using Entourage so I am on my way. The guide set me back $10 but it’s worth 5 times more so go buy it!

Skype -> Skype - DONE

Trillian -> Adium - DONE

Mind Manager -> Mind Manager Mac - DONE

I am a really visual thinker and I can’t live without this brainstorming tool. Like Office 2004 Mac, this does not appear to be a straight port. But everything that I love about Mind Manager is there.

Visio -> Visio on Parallels - DONE

UTILITIES

Memeo Backup -> Retrospect

I used to use Retrospect on my PC but I had some issues with the scheduling that I cold not resolve. Bob Levitus’s excellent Guide to Backing up Your Mac convinced me to go back to retrospect.

Roboform -> 1Password - DONE

Roboform is another program that I don’t think I would be able to live without. It securely stores all your passwords personal information so you never have to fill out a web form ever again. I also love the safe note feature - it’s great for miscellaneous info like my kids’s social security numbers.
1Password is a great Mac alternative to Roboform. In fact, like most Mac apps, it skips over the superfluous features and delivers only the essential functionality.
The only downside with 1Password is that it does not automatically create and maintain a list of bookmarks for all your passcards. However, the developers are about to launch another app called All Bookmarks to handle this.
Lastly, 1Password includes a Palm app so you can take the data with you. Sweet.

SnagIt Pro -> [?]

I only really need to screen capture regions. OSX’s screen cap functionality may be fine for this.

MUSIC & PODCASTS
Sonos, Rhapsody & iTunes - [?]

I store my music on a server and the library on my old notebook. I have seen some guides that suggest migrating via your iPod but my library is way too big for this. Unless I can find a workaround I may have to ditch my ratings. ANy ideas?

PHOTO/VIDEO EDITING

Adobe Photoshop Elements -> Aperture - ALMOST DONE

I lost my love for Photoshop Elements after getting serious about photography. It really started to slow down and din’t talk to flickr that well. Time to move on. Like my music, the biggest issue here is retaining my metadata. I went through the trouble of tagging thousands of images but like itunes, AP Elements keeps this in a proprietary database.
Again, I am trying to preserve my metadata here. APE does not write tags and captions to the photos by default - you have to explicity instruct it to do so for your whole library. I am having some problems getting APE to write the tags properly but I am optimistic that this will work itself out.

Adobe Premiere Elements / Adobe Premiere -> iDVD and Final Cut - DONE

I don’t have time for video editing right now but this is the planned switch. I figure iDVD and Final Cut could ONLY be better then Adobe Premiere. Even if the DVD templates are better I would be happy. Have you seen the choices for making a DVD in AP? Fugly.

That’s it for now. I have a whole list of other Mac specific apps that I am going to try out once I get everything working right.

BarCampLA was a Blast

Published by pete November 13th, 2006 in barcampla2. 1 Comment

I had no idea what to expect but BarCamp was awesome! I got a chance to hang out with a bunch of interesting tech and film geeks. My workshop on how to build a $35 video camera was well received too.

I am still processing the event but I am looking forward to taking a closer look projects like the 1 Second Film.

Off to Barcamp LA

Published by pete November 11th, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I am heading out to Barcamp LA in a few minutes. I am really excited to see what this is all about. My session is going to be on camera hacking since I have been working on it lately and after all, this is LA.

Web 2.0 Sites are Ruining my Life

Published by pete October 29th, 2006 in commentary and GTD. 1 Comment

There was a day not too long ago where if I was looking for something I knew where to find it. But then something happened. I started hanging out on the internet with lots of sexy Web 2.0 sites.

I realize the result of my actions now. I have created dozens of in-boxes. Hold on, let me try to explain first. Like I said, there are lots of web 2.0 sites out there and I tend to visit them often. I’ll look around, click some buttons, maybe register… I don’t have any control over this. Eventually, I’ll deposit a bit of information.

You say you will keep track of movies that I may want to watch some day? OK Web 2.0 site, why not? Here are some. And oh by the way, a couple more. I should see these too you say? Alright just a sec, let me add them.

Did you see that article on Digg about the Top 5 places to visit before you die? I think write it down in my palm, no I’ll tag in del.icio.us! See that new site that will create a killer slideshow of my kids with to all my friends? I’m in love with you already. Let me just upload the pictures that I already uploaded from my camera to my computer to my flikr account to my blog TO YOU!

I gotta boring project due at work. Web 2.0 will make it fun! I’ll set up a Backpack page and all my co-workers can share and edit the project tasks and notes.

I know what you are thinking. As a matter of fact, I’ll go ahead and say it for you. These in-boxes were created from my love affairs with sexy Web 2.0 sites. Oh their glossy interfaces and come ons. Well, where does that leave me now?

MTB Cam: Second Gen Mount

Published by pete October 9th, 2006 in MTBCam. 1 Comment

So my last mount was light-wieght and had a cool quick release. But it was not adjustable so all my video pointed almost straight down!

I took a trip to Sammy’s camera and looked around the store and found a small head and a quick release,

which could easily mount on my helmet.

Now I just had to attach the quick release plate to the camera.

This was an excuse to use my favorite new thing: epoxy.

I had to be careful to not attach the quick release over the two halves of the camera for two reasons. I wanted to still be able to access the guts for maintenance but more importantly, I did not want to glue the battery compartment shut. So I masked off a small area to mount the quick release.

And then used my second favorite thing, mini clamps, to keep it all together.

Up Next: A night time test run on the best single-track in Pasadena: El Prieto.

Win Screen from Ultima I Videogame circa 1981

Published by pete October 3rd, 2006 in games and apple II. 2 Comments

I’ll never forget playing Ultima I on my Apple II computer late into each night during the summer of ‘81. Well my mom recently handed me a box of pictures from my childhood and I found a shot of the win screen:
Ultima I Boss Fight - Victory!

See me proudly standing over the corpse of Mondain? I knew I must have been the first person in the world to win the game so I dialed 411 and got the number to California Pacific Computer. The next day I called the company and asked for Lord British.

“I am calling to tell Lord British that I killed Mondain! It said to contact you right away! Am I the first?”.

“Actually, no. But thanks for calling and look out for Ultima II available in stores soon.”

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