Kris Krug is a fashion and editorial photographer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. His photographs have appeared in JPG Magazine, ION Magazine, Business Week, Wired Magazine, and others. I think he’s kind of a big deal but I’m sure he’s a terrific photographer. His Gnomedex pix are some of the best I’ve seen so far.
American Airlines passengers will now have Wi-Fi access on some flights. The airline said Wednesday that it has finally launched its in-flight Internet access service via Wi-Fi on 15 of its 767-200 airplanes. The service, called Gogo, will be offered on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami. The cost is $12.95 per flight. Passengers will be able to sign up when they boot up their browsers.– [More at C|Net
Now that would make the flight from STL to Seattle whiz by. Would happily pay $13. Have to believe all flights will have it eventually.
Heading for Seattle tomorrow to attend Gnomedex. It’s a get-together for few hundred bloggers, podcasters and tech enthusiasts. I like Gnomedex because it is one of the smaller such conferences. And my pals Jamie and David will be there so it will be sort of "No Sex and the City." That doesn’t work, there’s only three of us. You get the idea.
Historically, I see or hear about things at Gnomedex that go mainstream a year or so later. But that lag seems to be shortening.
Blogging might be light for the next couple of days.
I’ve started paying a bit more attention to Facebook in an effort to stay closer to my nephews (18 and 16). After mentioning this in an earlier post, I’ve been getting a lot of “Friend Requests.” I have “confirmed” most of these. But I confess I’m not all that taken with Facebook and all this “friend” stuff reminds me of trading Valentine cards in fourth grade.
So please don’t get your feelings hurt if I ignore your “Friend Request.” Doesn’t mean we can’t be pals. Just know that I’m not taking Facebook very seriously. If you want to keep up with me, you can do it here. If I want to keep up with you, I’ll bug your house or hire a private dick to keep tabs on you.
I stopped buying/reading newspapers a long time ago. But there are times –breakfast, for example– when it is inconvenient or impractical to open the MacBook. My solution has been to print articles I find online and take them with me.
I’d really love to have a pair of reading “glasses” with some flash memory to which I could Blue Tooth these articles, including photos and video. I don’t see why that would be technically difficult and damned handy. This is close but likely to get my ass kicked at the local diner where I have breakfast. I’m thinking more along the lines of Clark Kent glasses.
No, I don’t need wifi access. That would be cool but would add a lot of cost. And, yes, I know there are all kinds of portable readers out there but I don’t want to tote around even a book size device.
What I haven’t tried is saving the text to my iPod. Not a great reading experience on the nano but it would work fine on the Touch. Hmmm. And if wifi was available… I suspect this wheel has already been invented.
I will, eventually, have to break down and get a smart phone. I don’t really want one but not having one is going to be a liability in my job. Articles, like this one from the American Journalism Review, make this increasingly clear.
“In January, ESPN reported it had more hits for NFL content on its mobile Web site (4.9 million) than it did on its PC site (4.5 million), according to RCR Wireless News. Those numbers suggest the mobile jock market has legs, since sports fans will access their cell phones to get scores and inside information even while they’re watching games on TV. Two mobile TV partnerships – AT&T’s Mobile TV and Verizon’s V Cast, both of which use Qualcomm’s MediaFlo TV-enabling technology for cell phones – have been launched with the sports market in mind. Both mobile TV services bill themselves as providing full coverage of sporting events, along with some regular network programming in English and Spanish. Content partners include CBS Mobile, NBC 2Go, Fox Mobile, Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile TV, Viacom’s MTV and Nickelodeon, among others.”
Former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach — a Republican — endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday morning. I think my friend and co-worker Kay Henderson broke the story. It got a lot of national play and her blog post generated 3,000+ page views. I’m sure we got a bunch more at RadioIowa.com. I asked Kay how she got on the story so early:
“I sleep with my blackberry. I woke up at 6 o’clock, checked the ‘berry, and went back to sleep. As I sort of floated out of dreamland I must have heard or sensed the vibration the ‘berry makes when there’s an incoming email. I pulled the ‘berry from underneath the pillow and read the email sent at 7:14 a.m. from a source in the Obama campaign, alerting me to the fact that former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach would be endorsing Obama in a few hours, during a telephone conference call being organized by the Obama campaign.
I called the newsroom and gave Matt – our morning anchor – the details for him to include in our next newscast, then roused myself from bed and walked into my home office. I started blogging by feel, as I hadn’t found my glasses yet. By 7:45 a.m. I had a fairly complete blog post up about the news. It included text from a speech Vice President Dick Cheney gave at a Leach campaign fundraiser in 2003, explaining the Leach-Cheney-Rumsfeld connection.
I kept updating the post through the day. An addition at the top – the opening Leach quote — came from a noontime interview. The McCain folks emailed responses, which got to my email box by 1:50 p.m.”
A couple of things in Kay’s account stand out for me. If she had waited until she got to the office to check her email, she might not have had the jump on the story. Should all reporters sleep with their Blackberry under their pillow? Well, yeah, if you expect to beat Kay on a story.
And that she blogged the story before having her Cheerios. A whole bunch of political reporters follow Kay’s blog.
And while the technology is cool, there’s no substitute for having the contact in the Obama campaign.
“No communication technology has ever disappeared, but instead becomes increasingly less important as the technological horizon widens.” –Arthur C. Clarke
NYTimes.com: "When Congress adjourns, so do C-Span’s live broadcasts because the sole cameras that record the sessions of the Senate and the House of Representatives are controlled by the members of Congress.
On Friday, when several dozen Republicans decided to stay on the House floor and discuss energy legislation after the House adjourned for a five-week summer recess, the cameras and microphones were turned off. So the first source of video was a congressman who streamed live pictures to the Internet using his cellphone camera."
Just one more (small) example of how things are changing. If any feature prompts me to break down and buy a real mobile phone, it will be the ability to stream live video when there’s no wifi.
If you want to glimpse the future, spend time with those that will live there. Back from a weekend with my brother and his family. The kids are 18, 16 and 12. They’re back in the states for 6 months to help Ryan get settled in college.
Uncle Steve was a big hit with his belated graduation present, but after giving Ryan his new iPod Touch, he was a little distracted the rest of the weekend. I also miss a lot of birthdays so we did a little catch-up with the other two. They opted for PSP’s (Play Station Portables).
The family is international with friends all over the world. But the kids do not use email to keep in touch (“Uncle Steve, please!”). The primary comm tools are SMS (texting) and Facebook. I had read that but it was interesting to hear it straight from the teenage horse’s mouth.
I’ve had a Facebook page for a while but never use it. If I want to keep in touch with my nephews and niece, that has to change.
Oh, and those PSP’s? Wifi ready so when they’re not gaming (or while they are), they can keep in touch with friends.
PS: On Saturday we stopped by the local Apple store. Packed. An iPhone class was underway and there were more gray heads than mohawks.