Good Morning Internet

It’s true: We’re finally liv­ing in the future. With the press of a but­ton, you can instantly trans­port your­self to a ran­dom loca­tion any­where in North Amer­ica, Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia!

Okay, sure, maybe it’s only vir­tual tele­por­ta­tion pow­ered by Google’s Street View, but it’s one of those very sim­ple mashups that, once you real­ize you’ve sunk two hours into play­ing with it, it becomes your new favorite thing.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, enjoy Globe Genie, your new web toy for the week.

National Novel Writ­ing Month is right around the cor­ner. I’m not sure what I’m going to write this year, but if I ever feel stuck, I could hit the “Shuf­fle” but­ton on Globe Genie and send my char­ac­ters off on an adventure.

Maybe they will need to hide out in a sub­urb in Min­eral Wells, Texas. Maybe they will have to drive along the coast­line north of Valen­cia, Spain hop­ing to find and res­cue a friend who left a dis­tressed voice­mail. Maybe the dreary weather in Wales will increase ten­sion among the group. Maybe they’ll encounter some­one run­ning from the woods in a des­o­late part of South­ern Fin­land, some­one beg­ging for their help. Maybe they end up at Mother Lode Appli­ance in Jack­son, Cal­i­for­nia, where they find a spec­tac­u­lar deal on a blender.

I need to make sure my whole novel doesn’t take place within sight of the road.

I love the idea of using this site as a writ­ing tool. I might even design a full-fledged writ­ing exer­cise around it. Keep an eye out for some Street View-inspired flash fiction.

(Screen cap and link via Boing­Bo­ing.)

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I am extremely excited to announce that my pro­posed ses­sion for SXSW Inter­ac­tive 2011 is now listed on this year’s Pan­elPicker web­site. It’s called “Why New Authors Should Think Like Indie Bands”. Here’s the offi­cial description:

The pub­lish­ing world is wrought with uncer­tainty. Tra­di­tional book sales are down, dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing is in its infancy, and pub­lish­ing houses, faced with shrink­ing bud­gets, are forced to shy away from pub­lish­ing nov­els writ­ten by new, untested authors. The rules of the indus­try are chang­ing. Before approach­ing agents and pub­lish­ers, new fic­tion authors are work­ing to self-publish and grow audi­ences with social media tools. When they approach a pub­lisher with a new novel and a built-in audi­ence, they take note. On this panel, hear from lit­er­ary agents and authors describe the way the indus­try is chang­ing and why it doesn’t mean doom-and-gloom for unknown fic­tion writ­ers. They’ll share suc­cess sto­ries, prac­ti­cal advice, and opin­ions on the future of publishing.

I really hope that my ses­sion makes it through the com­mu­nity vot­ing process, which counts for 30% of the final deci­sion, along with a 30% say of the staff and 40% of the advi­sory board. If you’re plan­ning on going to SXSW, I’d cer­tainly appre­ci­ate it if you include my ses­sion amongst those you vote up for next year’s con­fer­ence. If you’re not plan­ning on attend­ing, I still sug­gest you check out the Pan­elPicker and help shape next year’s SXSW Inter­ac­tive con­fer­ence. There are some really excit­ing ideas in there, and I hope you think mine is one of them.

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Update: It appears Apple has resolved the issue. A few hours after writ­ing this post, my mom tried the codes again and they worked. She’s the proud owner of “Broth­ers” by The Black Lips and “Sea of Cow­ards” by The Dead Weather. Still, it would have been nice for her to have them a week ago, as planned.

Last week, I pur­chased two gift codes for albums from the iTunes Store. I slipped them into a card and gave them to my mother as part of her birth­day present. I thought it would be fun for her to type in the codes, down­load the albums instantly, and sync them to her devices.

So you can imag­ine how upset I was when she politely men­tioned to me over the week­end that she had trou­ble redeem­ing the codes. Switch­ing into Mac Geek Son Mode, I hopped onto her com­puter and tried it out. I got the same generic error she did: “The iTunes Store could not process your request. Please try again later.”

My mom had been try­ing “again later” for days, and got the same unhelp­ful error each time. I double-checked my receipt and check card. The trans­ac­tion was processed and Apple took my money, so why wouldn’t the codes work?

On Fri­day, I sent an email to iTunes tech­ni­cal sup­port. Two days later, I got a response from a rep­re­sen­ta­tive who apol­o­gized for the delay (they nor­mally claim a 24-hour turn­around on sup­port requests) and issued me a two-song credit to my account to make up for it. Okay, that’s nice, but it doesn’t address the prob­lem of get­ting music to my mom.

The tech sup­port rep went on:

After research­ing fur­ther, I tried to open it from my end and I received an error as well. I was then informed by my senior super­vi­sor that there is an issue with redeem­ing gift codes and the Apple is cur­rently work­ing toward a res­o­lu­tion for the issue you have reported.

If you do not pre­fer to wait for the issue to be resolved, which I can’t pre­dict when will that be. Please reply to this email and I will cer­tainly refund the gifts back to your credit card. Thank you for your time and I look for­ward to your reply, Gavin.

Gift codes don’t work, sup­port can’t pre­dict when the prob­lem will be resolved, and the best solu­tion Apple can offer is a refund? Isn’t “Gift This Album” sup­posed to be a major fea­ture of the store? It’s unac­cept­able that the top music retailer in the US can’t han­dle a request this simple.

I wrote back, ask­ing if I could get replace­ment codes, or if there was any pos­si­ble way I could get these two albums out of the store and into my mom’s iTunes col­lec­tion. While I await a reply, my lovely mom is waits patiently for these two birth­day presents.

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Look, Com­cast, we need to talk.

It’s been a wild few years. I invited you into my home at a time when I lived in a small base­ment stu­dio apart­ment and needed Inter­net access. I had been with DSL for a few months, but we both knew I was just set­tling. You promised me more chan­nels than I had ever seen in one place, many in star­tling, breath­tak­ing clar­ity. I ditched Ver­i­zon and signed up with you and your attrac­tive pro­mo­tional rate.

I was so naïve back then.

Let’s face the facts. I tried to love your dig­i­tal cable ser­vice. I pre­tended not to care when the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel dropped out, some­times for days, even when you tried to blame it on me.

Maybe I should have lis­tened to my friends. They tried to warn me about you, but I couldn’t resist the way you streamed Net­flix in HD.

Over the course of our rela­tion­ship, you sent me five faulty cable boxes. Five! Who does that? When­ever some­one came to swap equip­ment, you charged me thirty bucks. It should have only taken me two or three ser­vice appoint­ments to real­ize you had no respect for me.

Also, your embar­rass­ingly out-of-date user inter­face should have been a major red flag.

Oh, remem­ber when I moved to a new apart­ment in a dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hood? You acted like you didn’t even know me and raised my rates with­out warn­ing. Sure, I tried to call and talk to you about it, but you put me on hold. For over an hour. I believed you when you said my call was impor­tant to you, but now I’m not so sure.

Don’t get me wrong, we had some great times, too! You still have the fastest broad­band in the city. Remem­ber all those movie trailer down­loads? The hours spent play­ing Xbox? The HD movie rentals? They wouldn’t have been the same with­out you. And you have a great crew of peo­ple on Twit­ter cov­er­ing for you.

I’m a dif­fer­ent per­son now. Insanely fast down­stream used to be enough for me, but now I need some­thing more. I need reli­a­bil­ity and con­sis­tency. I need to know my rates won’t change arbi­trar­ily. I need some­one I can count on for Inter­net access with­out always try­ing to turn it into a Triple Play.

I’d ask you to please not call with your “spe­cial offers”, and I’d ask you to not mail me glossy ads of happy-looking peo­ple enjoy­ing your ser­vices. But I know you’ll do those things anyway.

I’m box­ing up your things, and I’ll drop them by your office on my way home from work. Hope­fully, we can end this with civil­ity and with­out mak­ing a scene.

But if you charge me with a “Break-Up Fee”, I’m call­ing the police.

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Here’s the email I got from Apple on Mon­day when I reserved my iPad at the Apple Store in Towson.

This email is friendly, play­ful, and tor­tur­ous! Every time I hear the alert sound for a new email, I click over to Gmail or fire up the Mail app on my iPhone, filled with glee­ful, irra­tional hope that Apple is drop­ping a line to let me know my iPad is wait­ing for me at the Tow­son Mall.

Today is the last day it can arrive before I head to Max­Fun­Con tomor­row. I was really hop­ing to have my iPad on the plane with me, but it doesn’t seem likely to arrive today. By all accounts online, every sin­gle iPad in the uni­verse has been sold and there aren’t any more right now.

I worry that my iPad will arrive while I’m out of town. “When you get your noti­fi­ca­tion email,” the help­ful Apple Store employee told me after I filled out the web reser­va­tion form, “you have 24 hours to come get it before it’s released to the next cus­tomer.” It would be just my luck to be out of town for that 24-hour window.

I know I shouldn’t have my hopes up about my reserved iPad arriv­ing in next few hours, but I do any­way. “Your iPad will be here before you know it,” Apple said, almost as if they know what an impa­tient child I can be.

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Today, the 3G ver­sion of Apple’s iPad ships to cus­tomers who pre-ordered, and it goes on sale at Apple Store loca­tions after 5:00 pm.

This is the one I’ve been wait­ing for. Over the past year, I’ve been stuck in air­ports and hotels with costly wi-fi, snowed in while a bliz­zard knocked out my Inter­net, and in the mid­dle of more than a few really great writ­ing ses­sions when my laptop’s bat­tery died. In addi­tion to all the really cool stuff the iPad can do, I’m really look­ing for­ward to using it as my pri­mary writ­ing tool.

What about you? Are you rush­ing out to buy an iPad 3G this week­end? Do you already have the wi-fi-only ver­sion? Are you skip­ping out on the whole iPad thing altogether?

Per­son­ally, it’ll be a few more weeks before the ol’ bank account is charged up enough to wel­come an iPad into my home. But I’m pretty sure I’ll get my money’s worth out of it.

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This morn­ing, Steve Jobs posted a piece on Apple’s web­site called “Thoughts on Flash”. He closes the piece with what might be my new favorite Steve Jobs quote ever.

Per­haps Adobe should focus more on cre­at­ing great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on crit­i­ciz­ing Apple for leav­ing the past behind.

Burn! In all my years as a web devel­oper, I was never a fan of Flash and avoided using it. I always believed Flash was severely overused and mis­used on the web, espe­cially by bands, movie stu­dios, and (for some rea­son) restau­rants. For me, the devel­op­ment and refine­ment of HTML5 web stan­dards has been an excit­ing process to follow.

Lots of con­sumers are up in arms because the iPhone and iPad don’t sup­port Flash. When­ever peo­ple tell me that lack of Flash sup­port is a deal-breaker, I ask why. Mostly, the response I get is a shrug. The odd per­son will men­tion a spe­cific Flash-based site they use from time to time. More and more, peo­ple are sur­prised to find that a lot of these sites have per­fectly func­tional standards-based alter­na­tives avail­able for non-Flash users.

Essen­tially, it’s a big deal because peo­ple gen­er­ally don’t under­stand that it’s not a big deal. They hear some mis­in­formed tech pun­dits on morn­ing news pro­grams scream­ing, “The iPad’s great and all, but it doesn’t have Flash! It’s use­less!” This isn’t about Apple edg­ing out an Adobe prod­uct. It’s not about a watered-down Inter­net expe­ri­ence. It’s about Apple embrac­ing the future, adopt­ing (and con­tribut­ing to) the stream­lined stan­dards of the future, and cut­ting out the dead weight.

What are we learn­ing from this dras­tic mea­sure? The web doesn’t need Flash. It’s as sim­ple as that.

It’s been upset­ting to see how Adobe has strayed from the pack in a non-innovative way. Each new ver­sion of Cre­ative Suite, while pow­er­ful and essen­tial to most cre­ative indus­tries, feels less and less Mac-like when run­ning on a Mac. It’s not exactly Windows-like either, but more like step­ping into another world where things are clunky in their own, Adobe-specific way.

I’ve won­dered for years why Adobe hasn’t poured more energy into cre­at­ing the mother of all standards-complient web devel­op­ment and design suites. Instead, with each new Cre­ative Suite, it seems like they’re clue­less about the tools that will power the web of the future.

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French designer David Turpin cre­ated the beautifully-designed Moshi Moshi hand­set for mod­ern cell phones.

Plugged into an iPhone, the hand­set adds some super-hot retro style to calls. Espe­cially excit­ing is the handset’s com­pat­i­bil­ity with the iPad. Paired with VOIP apps like Skype, the iPad becomes a full-fledged Inter­net phone.

Native Union, the com­pany sell­ing the hand­set, says USB adapters will be avail­able to pair the Moshi Moshi with com­put­ers, as well as adapters for most mod­ern cell phones, even the ones not made my Apple.

The Moshi Moshi hand­set comes in two fla­vors. The hand­set by itself goes for $30 and a handset/base pair­ing is $60. Accord­ing to the site, it will be avail­able tomor­row, April 15.

I want a red one on my desk.

(Via Boing­Bo­ing)

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I went to the Apple Store but didn’t buy an iPad. My will power worked over­drive. I’m still hold­ing out for the 3G ver­sion. But man, that’s one gor­geous device.

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Mon­day, March 15, 2010

I had never used Gowalla until I was stuck at the Amer­i­can Air­lines gate wait­ing for my flight (which never actu­ally took off). I saw a lot of SXSW-bound friends update their loca­tion to Twit­ter via Gowalla. So, I fig­ured, why not give it a try? It’s not like I had a lot else to do.

The Gowalla iPhone app is sim­i­lar to Foursquare in the sense that it tracks friends when they “check in” to var­i­ous loca­tions. But the Gowalla app has a nicer UI than Foursquare (in my extremely hum­ble opin­ion), and its abil­ity to list pop­u­lar events within its slick SXSW inte­gra­tion ended up being even more valu­able to me than the offi­cial SXSW app.

Foursquare had SXSW inte­gra­tion too, but some­thing about it didn’t seem as friendly to me. Maybe it was because Gowalla is an Austin-based com­pany and were famil­iar with the area. What­ever it was, it sure felt like they nailed it. If SXSW is smart, they’ll work with Gowalla to cre­ate their app next year.

So, on Mon­day night, Gowalla threw a party. I stood out­side in a driz­zle (which even­tu­ally turned into a down­pour) with Tracy, Rob, and Amber. When we got in, we were handed T-shirts right at the door, and mem­bers of the Gowalla team greeted and thanked us for com­ing. Wait staff cir­cu­lated with trays of hors d’oeuvres. The bars through­out served a drink called the Gowalla, which was deli­cious and potent. All the flatscreens dis­played Gowalla check-in updates. It was delight­fully geeky.

Most of the Tiki Room was open-air, and Mon­day was one of the few rainy nights that week which made things kind of soggy. Still, Gowalla threw one of the weeks’ best parties.

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