June 2007 Archive

iPhone Activated (delayed)

posted by DL Byron on June 30, 2007

Well the multi-store vector plan worked and I purchased an 8g iPhone last night. The Zoopa AT&T store had the shortest lines, but ran out when we got in line so we went to the Apple Store. The line was longer, but fun with water, coffee, and camaraderie. Once in the Apple Store, the employees cheered for you (that was a bit embarrassing). I was in line for about 40 minutes while Pam shopped a clearance sale at the Bon.

As with any Mac-related purchase, there’s a ritual to it and I waited until this morning to activate my phone. Like Daring Fireball, I had a few glitches:

• dash 50 error from the software update — rebuilding the library solved the problem
• Additional time to complete — for some unknown reason, my iPhone activation requires additional time complete and I’m waiting for an email from AT&T to tell me when. I’m replacing an existing phone (4 yrs old) and account with the iPhone and that’s probably why.
• the contrast between the AT&T retail experience and the Apple Store is remarkable. Suggest purchasers buy from the Apple Store.

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iPhone Purchasing Strategies

posted by DL Byron on June 28, 2007

I’ve been waiting for 4 years to get an iPhone; seriously, none of the Smartphones, Treos, or anything else appealed to me, just kept my “pretty good” Sony Ericsson. The iPhone is honestly, not a status symbol to me, but a tool years in the making. That being said, I’ve set aside a day to clean up my computer anticipating the great sync.

There are 3 stores near me and I plan to ride (or drive if it’s raining) by each and if there’s a line keep right on going. Todd Bishop reports no lines at the University Village Apple store, so that’s good for me.

Remarkably, I turned on cable, flipping through the news, and there was Scoble standing at the front of the line at the Palo Alto Apple Store. Interesting, besides seeing Scoble on TV, was that he didn’t get an iPhone to review like say, Pogue and the other tech journalists. I don’t know that any bloggers got the iPhone.

Looks like the traditional PR media machine worked here for Apple amazingly well.

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Apple iPhone: a phone apart

posted by DL Byron on June 26, 2007

Just in time for the launch of the iPhone this Friday, the media reviews have been published from

• NYTimes
• Newsweek
• Mossberg

with all of them saying the phone lives up to most the hype, despite a few flaws. I joked with clients today that I was taking next week off, with the holiday and all, to spend it with the iPhone. I’m not planning on standing in long lines and will probably just purchase it online. The iPhone online experience is very impressive.

My only doubt is syncing with Entourage. If it uses Microsoft’s sync services to sync the calendar to iCal, then that’s most certainly not going to work. Microsoft’s sync services will fail every-time if you’re calendar is large (by first spiking the processor and then crashing the operating system. Email, contacts, all that should work well.

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iPhone Browser

posted by DL Byron on June 22, 2007

Just in time for the iPhone release later this month, MarketCircle offers iPhoney, a Safari-based mini browser to test your web pages and I guess, pretend what it’s like to have an iPhone.

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Designers on Bikes

posted by DL Byron on June 22, 2007

Attending an An Event Apart in Seattle, I met Dan Dean from Pop Media at the bike racks behind the Bell Harbor Convention Center. I was there with Bettie and he was on, I think, a old-school Miyata that he loved dearly.

Suggestion to AEA: consider providing, or at least promoting, alternative methods of travel to your events … towards a greener AEA.

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An Event Apart Custom Font

posted by DL Byron on June 21, 2007

An Event Apart is so designy and classy, they have a custom font for their badges! That’s spending money on a font to make it look hand drawn … very nice.

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An Event Apart Seattle Green Room

posted by DL Byron on June 21, 2007

In the An Event Apart Seattle green room, I saw Mike Davidson, Shawn Lawton Henry, Jason Santa Maria, and Eric Meyer.

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Tim Bray: Reporting From The Engine Room

posted by DL Byron on June 21, 2007

I’m at the sold-out An Event Apart Seattle, in a translation booth actually cause they are no seats, and listening to a fascinating Tim Bray lecture on Web 2.0, blogs, programming, design, and more, concluding with the Atom Project.

Listening to Tim, reminded me of a funny story at one of my first speaking gigs. I was at a Thunder Lizard event talking about standards via WaSP. Tim and I met afterwards and we chatted, and at the time I was consulting with Microsoft and for some reason, something happened, where he thought I was an agent for MS. Later we got that resolved, but it was a bit tense for a few, and the whole world has changed since then. Much of that change he talked about today.

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@ An Event Apart

posted by DL Byron on June 21, 2007

Taking a break from the bike huggin’, client work, new supa-secret projects, and all that we do, I’m hangin’ at @ An Event Apart Seattle later today, tonight, and tomorrow.

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Sweet Swap Meat

posted by DL Byron on June 20, 2007

Checked in with Coudal earlier this week, and he told me about Swap Meat, where you send Coudal the cool thing you’re working on and get a cool thing in return, like a Circuit-Bent Furby, a Box of Documents, or a Giraffe Pillow.

We just sent a Bike Hugger Tee and a box of Clip-n-Seal Mondos.

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An Event Apart Seattle

posted by DL Byron on June 20, 2007

If you’re lucky enough to have a pass to the sold out An Event Apart Seattle, it’s tomorrow at the lovely Bell Harbor Conference center. All the web design gurus are scheduled, including Mike Davidson, Zeldman, Meyer et al.

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Clip-n-Seal Mondo

posted by DL Byron on June 19, 2007

Yesterday we started selling Clip-n-Seal Mondos direct to consumers — on our shopping cart and eventually Amazon.com. The Mondos are 40 inches in length and we’re originally designed for NASA and used in the Space Shuttle Program. Big Pharma, the US Navy, and biomedical companies are using them now in various industrial and medical processes.

For the hobbyist, small business, or for testing, you can cut the Mondos to size or use them as is on your giant costco-sized bag of chips!

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An informative and entertaining book

posted by DL Byron on June 14, 2007

James Thomas, of the Bicycle Design Blog wrote to say

I am not really a business blogger, but I picked up a copy of your book this week (I guess I was curious since I see the cover every time I visit Bike Hugger). Anyway, just wanted to say that the book is quite informative and entertaining. Maybe it will help me a bit in improving my bicycle design blog.

Thanks James. The Amazon reviews have also been very positive (5 of 5 stars).

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Monster Hair Conquers All

posted by DL Byron on June 13, 2007

Couldn’t tell if she was a man or woman and it didn’t manner cause that monster hair was conquering all on the streets of Portland.

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Apple's bloggy redesign

posted by DL Byron on June 12, 2007

In Apple’s redesign, that Mike D described as “it’s $$$$$$$$$$$,” there’s also a bloggy influence. Note the headline (permalink), date, category, blurb and link to read more. Those are bloggy features and found in standard blog templates. I often talk about how a blog doesn’t have to look like a blog and it can blend right into a corporate site, as another part of a company’s brand. A site can also look more bloggy, as Apple shows and that can make for a better online experience.

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Safari 3 Public Beta

posted by DL Byron on June 11, 2007

While I normally don’t care about betas, and lament the everything’s a beta thing in our industry, Apple releasing Safari for Windows is certainly exciting. Right up there with MT4.

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Crossing Paths at Bizjam

posted by DL Byron on June 10, 2007

Pictured below is an interesting Pathable tag cloud in the background while a Bizjam participant is interviewed, sharing her intersecting BizJam badge with the interviewer.

Whereas most attendees used Pathable, an innovative cross-organizational collaboration tool, and their badges showed their interests and affiliations, my badge was blank, a tabula rasa.

I showed up at BizJam to be in the moment (wrote my preso in like 14 minutes), of the moment, and I also missed the email about Pathable!

Check Pathable and Waggle Labs on their blog.

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Busting out of the Brochure

posted by DL Byron on June 09, 2007

One of the topics I always talk about, when explaining blogging to business, is it’s “busting out of the brochure” (aka stop polishing the turd). A great example is Trek and the launch of their Madones. Alongside their traditional website, with a brochure site, downloadable PDF, and media reviews, they’ve got a blog with product managers answering questions — lots of questions. The bike industry has always been an early adopter of blogging (we blog ourselves about bikes on Bike Hugger) and Trek is posting lots of details, videos, and images not available in their brochure. In fact, they’re busting right out of that brochure.

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Seattle BizJam

posted by DL Byron on June 07, 2007

Billed as as a radically different kind of business conference, Bizjam is this weekend and I’m there hosting a jam session about business blogging.

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New Launch: Latin Insights @ Intel

posted by Jason Swihart on June 06, 2007

Intel's second international blog—Latin Insights@Intel—launched Tuesday without much fanfare, but after the successful Blogs@Intel China launch, I was quietly excited to see how this one would go.

Read more »

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In the archives

posted by DL Byron on June 06, 2007

As part of our refresh (nearly complete), I’m also housekeeping the site and looking back at 10 years worth of content, 7 years of blogging and 4 years of Movable Type. My first MT post, indicated by entry&id=1&blog_id=1, was The Reverend Carrion Crow in 2003.

Today we added a search to easily find content in our archives. Readers can also view our blog archives by date (in the blog sidebar), a full archive listing or by tags.

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More on Movable Type 4.0

posted by DL Byron on June 06, 2007

Reactions to MT 4.0 announcement and the beta have been really positive. Anil Dash, Chief Evangelist for Six Apart, and I chatted about the Movable Type 4 Beta today in an instant message.

Byron: Hit me with some MT talking points

Anil: Basically, completely redesigned UI and architecture organized around helping you succeed with tasks, instead of just listing entries and posts and enabling a two-way dialogue with community, instead of just basic blogging.

OK, what else you got on MT 4?

Anil: I think just emphasizing it’s a *real* beta old-fashioned kind we’re not using “beta” because we’re afraid to launch we’re using Beta because we actually will be listening to people’s feedback.

Why the switch to open source and what does that mean?

Anil: Well, I think it’s not a “switch” — we’re adding an open source license, and one of the main reasons simply that developers and people in the tech community wanted it … Just adding options for all the different audiences we try to serve.

What does MT 4 mean to the enterprise?

Anil: I think at a fundamental level, we’re seeing that blogging in business situations has gone from “oh, that sounds like an interesting experiment” to being something where people have seen measurable improvements in communications and efficiency, compared to using email alone, or groupware alone. And MT4 makes that significantly easier. Easier to set up, easier to manage. You can just click and set up a default blog that gets created for every employee on your staff, or every workgroup in your organization. It all connects to the directory servers and databases and middleware and portals you’re already using. Creating or customizing content can happen in suites like Microsoft Office or Adobe’s Creative Suite, so you’re not reinventing the wheel with your processes.

And oh! snap, nearly forgot, check this out! More creating community in emerging markets with the new Latin Insights blog from the Intel Blog Network (built with Movabe Tye).

Anil: I think sites like Latin Insights help reinforce the fact that blogging is an international phenomenon, and a great way to communicate with people regardless of where in the world they are. We’ve always been a very international company — much of our MT business comes from our divisions in Europe and Japan, and this is just more proof that global businesses can really use blogging effectively.

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Movable Type 4.0 Beta

posted by DL Byron on June 05, 2007

MT 4.0 is going open source and rolling out with 50 new features. Six Apart just announced the beta and relaunched movabletype.org

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Refresh nearly complete

posted by DL Byron on June 01, 2007

There’s an old adage that agency sites never look as good as their clients because they’re too busy. Midway through our site refresh and re-org, we got really busy and are just now getting back to finishing our work on the new Textura Design. As I always say during my talks, blogs are iterative, constantly changing, and we’re updating here live and at least now more frequently.

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Redfin Startup of the Year

posted by DL Byron on June 01, 2007

One of our clients, Redfin, was named startup of the year by the Technology Alliance.

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