Mike Cohen

Connectivity was a lot better today. Today I discovered that they have a “hidden” network (no SSID broadcast) outside the exhibit hall, so I was able to get online at Moscone South. I took advantage of it to update my iPhone to 1.1.3. The upgrade went smoothly and my iPhone didn’t get bricked.

I went to the WordPress meetup lunch at Chaat Cafe and met some interesting people from WordPress, C|Net, and MacTeens, and I got a new red WordPress T-shirt.

I bought an Eye-Fi card, which I haven’t had a chance to try yet. It’s a 2GB SD card with built-in WiFi that can upload directly to Flickr or into iPhoto. I’ll post something about it later.

The Eye-Fi card won best of show, along with Parallels Server, MacBook Air, and Photoshop Elements. Ben Rudolph from Parallels was sitting behind me and he noticed the Parallels Desktop icon in my dock.

I’m now blogging from H&R Block Tango’s Blog Spot, where the wired internet connection is very fast, and they have free beer. I’ll probably post more later.

I was up at 4:30 AM and on line before 5:30, yet I only got into the overflow room. I was very disappointed with the lack of internet access and power. I was able to plug in my MacBook Pro a few times to charge it, but I wasn’t able to get online for more than a few minutes, at Microsoft’s Blogger Lounge, where the WiFi only worked intermittently.

Today’s keynote was the first in a long time where I didn’t want to run out and buy something right away. The MacBook Air is gorgeous, but I can’t really use it since it doesn’t have enough storage and is too slow to be my primary machine, and there’s no easy way to sync it with another Mac.

I met Daniel Brusilovsky, Robert Scoble, and Patrick Scoble in the show and at 6PM I went to Daniel’s Apple Universe Live event.

The internet connection in my hotel isn’t working and they said it would be several hours before it’s fixed.

I haven’t been able to upgrade my iPhone without a reliable connection, although that’s probably a good thing, since Patrick Scoble bricked his iPhone doing the update. I’m now posting this from Starbucks near Moscone West.

I got to San Francisco on time, and even more amazing, my luggage arrived with me. I only had 25 minutes for the connection in Salt Lake City because my first flight arrived about 15 minutes late. When I got to the gate (which was in the next concourse from where my first flight landed), it was already boarding.

I made it to the Ars Technica party tonight, but less than 2 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours started to hit me, so I’m now back at the hotel to get some sleep before tomorrow’s keynote.

I hope to be at Moscone West before 6AM tomorrow morning. I will be meeting Daniel Brusilovsky, who has guaranteed seats, and we’ll be covering the keynote together. If there’s no wifi, I’ll attempt to post via email and Daniel will stream live at Qik.

I bought the MacHeist bundle yesterday. Only $17,337 needs to be raised for charity before Pixelmator gets unlocked! Since Pixelmator sells for $59, even without any of the other applications it makes the $49 bundle worthwhile.