iOS and Mac developer
Mike Cohen The last few days I’ve been catching up with work and recovering from Macworld. This is the first Macworld where I didn’t come home with a cold, since I prepared by taking TriMune for the week leading up to it and I’ve continued to take it every day. I do have the post-Macworld blahs, though.
I miss hanging out with all of the industry people. Florida seems like another world, where nobody talks about the MacBook Air, and the rest of Apple’s announcements barely made a ripple.
I’ve made a few changes at MacMegasite and there will be more coming in the next few weeks.
First of all, Daniel Brusilovsky is officially a staff member! Hopefully we’ll add more staff this year. Look for a staff bio page to be added soon.
I’ve also added the mysite module, which lets users set up their own ‘my macmegasite’ page with their favorite content, on the style of iGoogle or PageFlakes.
I’ve cleaned up the user registration system to check for valid email addresses and purge any users who don’t activate their account by clicking the link in the registration email. As a result, several hundred user accounts that were never activated and never logged in have been deleted.
My MacHeist referral seems to be paying very well, and after that’s finished I will have additional paying sponsors.
I picked up an Eye-Fi card at Macworld, but I didn’t really get a chance to try it out until now thanks to the crappy WiFi connection and not having my D40x. It works exactly as advertised. I can take a photo and have it uploaded immediately to Flickr without using my computer, and also have it sent to a folder on my computer.
However, I find that I prefer just sending it to my computer, since not every picture I take is good enough to share, and I usually like to clean it up a bit before I upload it.
One nice feature is that it can handle losing the connection in the middle of an upload. If I take a picture outdoors where there’s no WiFi, it will start uploading as soon as I get within range of my network. If the connection is interrupted (or, more likely, the camera is shut off), it will resume when the power or connection is restored. Changing the camera’s auto-off timer (which they tell you how to do in the Eye-Fi help page) can keep it from interrupting the upload.
When I got to SFO and tried to check in, I discovered that my flight was cancelled due to snow in Atlanta. They called me at my home phone to inform me, so of course I never got the message. After some begging, I got switched to a flight on a different airline going through Charlotte instead of Atlanta.
I was randomly selected for extra screening, which meant I was separated from my MacBook Pro for longer than I would like. Although I kept a close eye on it, having LoJack for Laptops installed gave me an extra sense of security.
My rescheduled flight is at 1PM instead of 11:30AM, so I have a few extra hours at the airport. I found an electric outlet so I can keep my MacBook Pro charged, and the one year of free T-Mobile I got with my OLPC is very handy.
I get home after midnight tonight, so unless I have some extra time during my layover in Charlotte, this will probably be my last post for today.
I’m all packed and ready to go home. I still have about an hour before I have to leave.
I just deactivated WordPress on a few old domains (gp2x.macmegasite.com & xpresslinux.com) that I’m not actively maintaining since they’re still collecting comment spam even though I haven’t posted there in more than a year.
The last day of the show is crazy even though the crowd is smaller. I got a lot more swag today since everyone wanted to get rid of stuff. I spent most of the afternoon in Moscone West, where the smaller and more fun booths were. One company was selling headphones half price. I got a very nice set of iPhone compatible in-ear buds for $10.
EA was showing Spore, which they claim will ship “sometime this year”. It’s been in development for 4 years, by the author of The Sims.
Guitar Hero III drew the biggest crowds. One kid was playing for over an hour. I finally got a chance to try it and I found the guitar controller more comfortable to use than the Wii, although it isn’t wireless.
My hotel internet is still down, so I’m now blogging from the Apple store.
My day 4 pics are up now.
The only place I could find good connectivity in Moscone South is the corridor outside the exhibit hall. My hotel’s Wifi sucked even worse than usual – I couldn’t obtain an IP address at all.
Instead of buying the overpriced food in Moscone, I took a walk to Metreon for lunch. They have a really cool game floor, where kids play by walking, jumping, and stomping on the active surface. They also have an iPod vending machine.
I really like Guitar Hero 3 on the Mac, but I probably won’t buy it, since I already own it for the Wii (not to mention trying to get it home on my flight).
We had the 23rd annual Netter’s Dinner at Hunan on Sansome & Broadway. As usual the food was great and it was lots of fun. I haven’t been to all of them, but I usually try to go whenever I’m at Macworld. As always, it was organized by Jon Pugh and Adam Engst. I donated a few copies of LoJack for Laptops, which were given away as swag.
My day 3 pictures are now up here.