Wed 09.30.09 - Once a month, the folks at 3 and 3 Mobile Buzz host a Pop quiz. Tonight I found myself joining James Whatley, Ben Smith, et al, at the Alphabet Bar in Soho. Lots of good laughs, much whispering of answers, and general good fun was had by all, but the best part is that all the teams were using their mobile phones to find the answers to the pop quiz!
Click on the photo to see the large version of the panorama.
Tues 09.29.09 - Upon entering the airplane in Dallas a week ago Monday, my respiratory system was working fine, half way through the flight to London, my nose was running like a spigot and I was chilled. By Saturday, the runny nose and chills had deepened into a sore throat & cough. By Sunday, I could barely speak.
Sunday morning London time, I called American Airlines to see what they thought of someone traveling sick. After talking to a very nice agent named Teresa, we both determined that I should not get on a plane yesterday and fly back home, even though as of yesterday, I had no fever. Due to the vagaries of the Mileage Awards program, the only flight open for me to fly home is next Monday.
So, now I am in London for an extra week. The last two days have been, quite frankly, a bummer as I have been ensconced in my hotel room coughing away and napping. Between coughs and naps, I can hear London outside. My favorite city outside, me inside.
So, I present to you today's photo, a view from my window. Bayswater was lovely this afternoon.
First off, let's start with the good news, via Facebook, of Mikey & Eliese's wedding on Sat. Sept. 26, 2009. Congratulations to M&E, may your marriage be doubly blessed:
Second off, Paige & Alex have Babified! Yes, the famed Diego Hernandez decided to grace the world with his presence on Sun Sept 27, 2009 around 4:45pm. He was a considerate grandson and decide to wait until after Joe & Vivian finished cleaning up from Mikey & Eliese's reception before making his grand entrance. Congratulations to Family Hernandez!
Sat 09.26.09 - After Over the Air was done, I met up with Abhinav Natarajan for a photo walk in the Park (Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park). I had a fun time playing with the panorama mode on the Nokia N86 and am quite pleased with this photo.
Click on it to see a larger version.
All Photos by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N86.
Photos taken today by Ms. Jen whilst attending events about London with a Nokia N86 kickin' camera phone.
Thurs 09.24.09 - Martin Ramsin presenting the Ovi SDK to the folks at the Ovi Developer event in London.
The new Ovi SDK Beta utilizes the new Ovi API and javascript, which makes it a good place for web designers and developers start to on creating mobile apps.
While the Ovi Dev day got off to a bit of a rough start before lunch with a small conceptual conflict between the verbal democracy of the dev crowd vs. the business-styled approach to presenting topics that Nokia folks are so fond of.
After lunch things got back on track when the presenters spoke of more concrete and relevant topics such as the Calling All Innovators UK, an open panel with last year's winners, and Martin presenting on the release of the OVI SDK.
I had a very good conversation after wards with Nokia Forum's Jouni Toijala about how to get more web designers and developers involved in mobile application development.
[Update a few hours later from a laptop: No, it crashed. The pre-release demo that was available for Ovi Dev event attendees to try out was half charged, the Vodafone connection was poor, and when I went to save this entry after writing the above title using the N900's web browser, the whole device crashed and had to be rebooted. After that I could not get it to browse blackphoebe.com at all. Please remember that the N900 has not been released yet.
p.s. What I was trying to get the N900 to do was to go on the full, non-mobile, version of my blog's Movable Type install and use Better File Uploader to upload a photo and blog it here straight up, not using any other app or service. To date, I have not been able to get a Nokia, or iPhone, or Android phone to correctly render and upload a photo using BFU's lightbox upload. The first mobile browser to render the AJAX correctly wins in my book.]
Wed 09.23.09 - This morning, I woke up refreshed and not jet lagged at all after a good night's sleep. My first full day in London, started by meeting up with Steve Marshall and a group of Yahoo! web devs for a dim sum lunch at the Jade Garden on Wardour St. in Chinatown.
After a delicious and delightful lunch with the gentlemen, I ambled up the street to the 1000 Heads office to meet up with Donna and Katie. We walked down to Covent Garden for tea and a good chat. The best part about the walk back to Holburn was the apricot tree I spotted on a street corner near Neal's Yard! Donna and Katie had to return to work and off I went down Oxford Street.
This evening I treated myself to dinner at my favorite local restaurant, Taverna Aphrodite on Heresford St. in Bayswater. Delicious. Now I am finishing up a wee bit of blogging before turning in for the evening.
Tues 9.22.09 - A big Happy 3rd Birthday to Moo.com. Big thanks to Richard Moross and all the lovely folks at Moo for the great photo cards they make and the lovely party.
Tues 09.22.09 - Happy Autumn Equinox!
Mon 09.21.09 - Photo of the airplane that would take me to London, captured while waiting to board.
Mon 09.21.09 - Waiting to board my airplane for London with a connection in Dallas.
Sun 09.20.09 - Happy almost Autumn. The official 2009 autumn equinox is on Tues. Sept. 22nd at 6:18am GMT (2:18pm PDT). To continue my almost yearly autumn, I will be departing tomorrow for a week in London.
This won't be just any week in London, as it will be London Digital Week, which means that something exciting in mobile / digital / web will be happening practically every day and evening that I will be there.
Wish me luck and good travels.
If you read this blog via a feed reader, you are probably thinking - WT*?!?!?!?!? Where did all those posts come from, some dated back to 2003?!?!?!?
I did a little blog house cleaning late this evening by reviewing all 25 unpublished blog posts I had accrued over the the last 6.5 years of blogging. About 18 were about 60-90% finished, so I just published them in their fragmented form as an archive of what I was thinking at the time. Three I deleted as they were never going to get beyond the link or small note I had written.
Now there are only four unpublished posts in my queue. Two I saved because I want to keep a record of the ideas, even if it is way past their due date for blogging about - such as 2004's WordPress vs. Movable Type bruhaha. And Two are still unpublished as they are from recent months and I have finishing them on my current to do list.
I promise I will get on those to the last two unpublished posts, which are the two last days worth of photo essays from this May's trip to Hawaii for Alex & Paige's wedding.
Wed 09.16.09 - I wonder if Frankie would trade me?
I don't know about you, but I voted for change, not more of the same.
Le Sigh.
The Patriot Act is and was a load of absolute bullshit that hinders this country in the name of fake security.
The title, it is true. When Mie Yaginuma blogged about how she missed Burning Man this year and included the above photo, I was immediately drawn to William Newheisel's Flickr page to find this photo.
I love it. I love the distance. I love the sky. I love the desert. The photo is evocative of a post-modern American Tibet - high desert with enigmatic decoration and art that suggests ritual and meaning.
As I continued to look at the photo, it made me think of my life right now, as I walk down a path that appears to be going somewhere, but I can't clearly see the end even though there are sign or light or prayer bell posts along the way. Am I on the right road or am I walking down a performance art piece of someone else's device?
What where you listening to in 1995?
Up until 2005, I had never heard of Daft Punk. I knew of the name, I knew that they were a Euro-electro band that was not a punk band in the way I knew of punk. In the last four years, various of my web design / dev friends have blogged & tweeted about listening to Daft Punk, because I trusted their visual & design aesthetic tonight for the first time I checked out Daft Punk on YouTube.
The me of 1995 would have changed the radio channel so fast, even if there had been a station playing Daft Punk in LA or Boston in 1995.
This was my idea of punk in 1995. This is Daft Punk's idea in 1995.
When you watch the videos both bands are musically very far apart, in terms of post-modern rebel aesthetic - not so far apart.
Thurs 09.10.09 - File under "Oh, Crap! Agh! SCRUFFY!!!!!"
Wed 09.09.09 - Photo of Billy Burke's barber station taken at Salon Pop and Barber Shop in Long Beach.
Tidbit #1: I don't have any photos from today because I only took one and it was of Scruffy. I think y'all get enough Scruffy photos.
Tidbit #2: Why no photos? Gasp! Shock! Horror! What ever have you been up to?
Work.
Yep. I am trying to work real hard real fast so that I can free up two weeks at the end of this month to go to London for the Moo Party, London Design Festival, Over the Air, and FOWA. I am registered for FOWA (Future of Web Apps) but I would really like to be able to be in London the week before.
Tidbit #3: Lauren has been Redeemed.
Tidbit #4: I am perversely considering buying a Nokia N86 in London rather than one here. Why in London?
a. I am sick of the US being the place of last mobile delivery and I don't want to reward companies that wait 2-3 or 4-5 or never months to release good mobile devices in the US.
b. The 3G sucks on AT&T due to the large number of iPhones on the network, so if one is going to be stuck (at least in LA) on Edge-like speeds why not buy a device that is Euro 3G - at least it will be fast when I am on holiday.
c. If I buy an Euro Nokia N86 online in the US, I won't have a warranty. My June of 2007 bricking experience of my online bought N80 taught me that no warranty is BAD. If I buy the N86 in London, then I will have a warranty in the UK. It is still a warranty.
d. I want to within the year get a job in Europe, so it would be better to get a Euro 3G phone.
I know...rationalizations. rationalizations. rationalizations for my anger at NokiaUSA for being S-L-O-W or getting their container ships lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
Tidbit #5: Hey, have I mentioned lately that I would love to get a job in mobile in London? Know of any positions for a bright creator|ideator|project manager sort? Let me know.
Hopping back on the hamster wheel.
Fri 09.04.09 - Brought back from Tokyo by Julie Wanda. Super Cute.
This week has had a surrealist, absurd flavor to it, thus I will add one more tidbit:
In case you were wondering, it is turtles all the way down.
test pixel pipe pro.
Update from my computer later in the day, Tues 09.01.09 - I realize that lots of folk find Pixelpipe to be a great mobile blogging application, but I just find it moderately annoying, and the above photo is a great example of why.
To start out with, I was unable to get Pixelpipe to work on the Nokia N97. I was able to get it to somewhat work on the Nokia N95 & Nokia N79, but was not happy with it.
I do find that the Pixelpipe Android user experience is MILES better than the Nokia Share Online + Pixelpipe. Also, I will say that Pixelpipe's support folk have been great to help me set up an "Atom" enabled pipe so that I can blog directly to this blog, rather than have the photo hosted on the Pp servers.
Today, I went to the Android Market (on phone app store) and purchased Pixelpipe Pro for $1.99 to see if the experience would be any better. In many ways, the user experience of Pixelpipe Pro is better, as there is a nice tabbed navigation allowing one to do tasks such has add a title, body copy, tags, a tab view the queue of photos or video going out, etc. I was not able to figure out how to do a minor task like rotate the image, so I exited out of Pp, went to the Android Gallery, rotated the image, saved it and then opened Pixelpipe again.
The above image now showed up as rotated and up I sent it to Pixelpipe. I was a bit frustrated here, as it did not allow me to choose to what location I wanted to send out to other than the tag version of indicating where it is to be sent. In the paid Pro version, I should be given a drop down menu of my pre-registered pipes and be able to choose one or more of them.
I sent the photo and did not see it show up on this blog within 10 minutes, so I thought we had a Pixelpipe failure, only to see it appear about 20 minutes later in the non-rotated version of the photo, even though I had saved the rotated photo and chosen that one to send in Pixelpipe.
Here is what I would like to suggest to Pixelpipe for their Pro version of the mobile app:
1) Allow the user to do all tasks and activities from the mobile app and not have to go to the website to set up pipes or manage them. All the settings and controls should be editable in the mobile app.
2) Allow the user to be able to do minor image editing tasks in the mobile app like rotate a photo or choose what size the photo should be sent at.
3) Allow the user to choose which Pipe they want which photo to be sent to in the mobile app without having to add tags.
4) Can Symbian also have a Pixelpipe Pro mobile app comparable to the Android Pixelpipe Pro that is completely separate of the evil Share Online? Please.
