The Assignment Houston meetup at the Houston Museum of Natural Science was a big success! Thanks to Erin from the Museum and Laurie from Assignment Houston for organizing a very cool event.
A TON of photographers showed up... I was enlisted to take the group photo, I did a merged/stitched panoramic (visit the photo on Flickr to see the full size version, if you dare):
So I got in on the "hey the 2.0 bundle is out early!!!" download-yer-own iPhone OS 2.0 upgrade thing on Thursday (which turned out to be a good thing b/c the 2.0 upgrade didn't go smoothly for most of the world yesterday). I love it. The big reason I love it: apps! Surprising, I know. The basic OS has some improvements, but the big deal is third party apps.
Of which I have 10 or so installed already... love Twitterrific and NetNewsWire... I use both on the desktop and the iPhone versions are excellent. Especially love synced RSS feeds. The Facebook app is nice, but missing some things. Exposure is awesome for Flickr users. Pay Fraser money! It's worth it.
But biggest of all: games. The games are fantastic... Super Monkey Ball, Chopper, and Cro-Mag Rally are all very, very fun and perfect for mobile gaming. Of course, we need multi-player Cro-Mag now. It's like a Wii remote... with the Wii and the TV embedded in it.
I was pretty surprised that playing a game as a caveman driving a cavecar was fun, but it was. The ridiculousness of that concept adds something to the fun, I think (suspension upgrades for a car made out of logs and nearly square stone wheels? nice).
The only problem with the games? Battery life. That may make me upgrade to the new hardware sooner than I expected. The new battery has maybe twice (?) the life of the 1st gen hardware... Super Monkey Ball is death to my battery.
Oh I almost forgot... a very close 2nd to games... Remote! Apple built a full-featured iTunes remote app (which is free). It works over Wi-Fi, you can browse your library, playlists, control Airtunes destination, etc. It's exactly what I was looking for a couple days ago on twitter.
I'm super happy with 2.0, and especially given that it's free! Now if only all the games were free... sigh... :)
P.S. screenshots are really cool... hold the home button and press the lock button once, voilá. Email to yourself. Post on blog. Eat, drink, and be merry.
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iphone, mobile, iphone 2.0
iPhone 2.0 up and running, downloaded TypePad, posting... awesome!
Judah turned 9 months old recently!
Just a shot from inside that I really like.
Symbian is going open source. This is a pretty interesting development, but I think it may be too little, too late, and it doesn't imply any major changes in the Symbian platform.
The real problem with Symbian isn't the fact that it's closed, it's the fact that it's Symbian. It's a difficult platform to develop for, its UI concepts are dated and accelerating towards antiquated, the "access point" scheme for managing IP connectivity is appallingly difficult for users, etc. Perhaps going open source will provide a catalyst for some serious changes and revolutions in the platform, that would be great. We'll see. Increasingly, the features of the Symbian platform that made it compelling are becoming unnecessary... the hardware platforms for mobile phones are no longer the exceedingly resource-constrained, battery-sipping environments they once were, and that will only become more true.
2010 is a long way off... the iPhone 3G ships in 3 weeks, Android phones this year. Developers finally get their hands on Symbian innards one year after that? I can't see that being very interesting to new developers.
It could be a huge boon for existing Symbian developers though, who've wished for access to deeper APIs, or even just to understand what is going on down deeper in the idiosyncratic Symbian brain. But again, in a year or two... it doesn't help now.
Interesting times!
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symbian, nokia, mobile
Max at Catalina is bringing in guest espressos every month, and this month it's Epic Espresso from 49th Parallel Roasters.
WOW. It's really good stuff... if you're in Houston and you drink espresso, you need to go by Catalina and check it out.
Epic is rich and deep and smooth... flavors are predominantly "rich and smooth" flavors like chocolate. There's some brightness but it's definitely muted... maybe a little citrus, a little floral. Just enough to give it depth and character. It's the best I've had, certainly.
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coffee, espresso, catalina, 49th parallel
I love the famous Mark Twain quote, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
TUAW seems to have forgotten that in a pretty pathetic post about the Japanese not wanting the iPhone. Or maybe they're just groping for traffic. Or maybe they're just parroting the news article without thinking about it.
The title of the article is "Survey: 91% of Japanese don't want an iPhone". Assuming that's true, that would be almost as many iPhones sold in Japan as sold in the US in its entire first year (roughly 11 million and 14 million, respectively). 95% of US Americans (snicker) didn't want an iPhone either.
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iphone, tuaw, statistics
Here's a hint... it's not the feature list...
Smartphone makers- better wake up and smell the Applesauce from @jkendrick.
Though, I have to say, I'm about as geek as one gets in many ways, and I love my iPhone too... for the same reason. My "other" phones are broken in so many ways I can't count. They're frustrating. The iPhone is almost never frustrating.
Take GPS for example... I have three phones with GPS in them... however, the GPS apps are so poorly written that I couldn't figure out how to use them, and to get real benefit, you have to subscribe to yet another service from some company I've never heard of. So do I use the GPS? Nope, never. Will I use the GPS in the iPhone 3G? Almost certainly.
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iphone, usability
Discovery Green is a very cool park smack in the middle of downtown Houston... I went this morning to check it out and get some photos before it got TOO hot. I like forward to spending more time there in cooler weather. :)
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houston, discovery green
I recently went to Antidote Coffee (continuing the theme of trying late-night coffee houses when Catalina is closed). Again, my criteria are all about the latte (see my post on Inversion).
The verdict: pretty decent! The latte wasn't great, but it wasn't offensive and could definitely be enjoyed. Overall a little weak on the espresso, and fairly standard (but not incredibly overheated) milk. Better than many I've had, not as good as mine at home.
I would definitely go back if I was looking to get out of the house for some coffee when Catalina is closed.
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coffee, houston, antidote
I love my wife. She's an amazing mother and a very gifted "natural parenter" and teacher/supporter of natural parenting/mothering things. I was really proud to take her and Judah (the baby) to the Caroline Collective grand opening... she and Judah shone. I wish I had pictures from that night, but here are a couple from a fairly recent trip to Memorial Park.
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wife, love, mother, mothering
Friday evening I was too late to make it to Catalina (they have a mostly day crowd, so close at 9pm), so I decided to give Inversion a go, since I'd heard good things.
Now, I judge coffee shops by their lattes. A passable latte requires some amount of training, care, and craft. If a coffee shop doesn't make a decent latte, they are demonstrating a lack in all three of those departments, at very least.
So the verdict on Inversion: not good. One of the worst lattes I've had, in fact. The milk was WAY too hot, and the espresso had any number of defects, beginning with being watery and bitter. Very disappointing, and really very unfortunate. It's just not that hard to make a decent latte... not a great one, but a decent one. You need to be able to pull a decent shot of espresso. You need clean equipment. You need to understand what you're doing to the milk, and what happens when it gets too hot (i.e. much above 155°). And you need to care.
So I stick to my current belief that Catalina is the only good espresso house in Houston. I've yet to find another (but I'm trying to slowly give the others a fair evaluation).
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coffee, houston, inversion
Caroline Collective is Houston's first dedicated co-working space, and the grand opening party is tomorrow! Check it out!
I got the tour yesterday, very cool... I'll at least be one of the regular freeloaders. :)
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coworking, caroline collective, houston
I'm really digging the naked portafilter (a "naked" portafilter is one with no spouts... the espresso flows directly from the basket to the cup). It's a great training tool, helping me spot channeling (light blonde flows w/in darker flow), but it's also just really cool to watch. I took a shot of it today:
This is the Rancilio 58mm filter sold by Chris Coffee.
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