Wall-E and a New Belt

Pixar does it again with Wall-E. Go see it. With each new film the animation out does the last one. And each plot is just as brilliant. Would've thought you could get a feature film about a lonely trash compacting robot.

From a purely business angle, the soundtrack was thin on vocals with balance left to instrumentals. Not that it was a bad soundtrack, I just doubt it'll sell as well as previous sound tracks.

In other news I earned my blue belt in my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training! Yes, I was a bit surprised. Some of us squeaked through without having to do another test.

iPhone 2.0

I finally had a chance to watch Apple's latest keynote presentation from a couple weeks ago. This was a developer conference so it's a little dorky, but all geekery aside, take a look at the first section of the keynote. In it, you'll see some incredible software demos that will be ready for the iPhone 2.0 software release - via the iTunes App Store.

The software, ranging from games to medical imaging applications, is amazing! These applications aren't just shinnied down desktop programs. Instead, many are uniquely suited to the iPhone interface itself by taking advantage of the touch features and accelerometers.

Wii Fat

The Wii Fit game arrived yesterday. I just finished an initial fitness test and a few yoga poses. Most of my friends would agree that I'm in decent shape, but the Wii doesn't appear to be my friend. After entering my height, birth date (The Wii Balance Board has a built in scale), and the approximate weight of my clothes, a BMI (body mass index) of nearly 24 was returned. Oddly, that's just on the edge of normal - yes I better watch my weight. After a couple balance tests, the first run of my Wii Fit age was 43! Ouch.

I ran another test and made it down to 31 - much more acceptable.

After entering my swimming workout from earlier today into the fitness log, I went straight to the yoga. I did the first few very basic poses, one of which is simply breathing. Following along with the trainer (you can pick a male or female trainer), you work each pose while trying to hold a steady balance as indicated on the screen. The tree pose gave me a little trouble, "You're a little shaky." No kidding.

So I'll keep moving along with other forms of training in hopes of reaching my lofty goal of losing 3 pounds in a few weeks. We'll see how I do.

Back On Line

A half a dozen calls to Comcast, two technician visits, various router configurations, and three cable modems later, we appear to finally be back on line. After moving the network setup to another room in the house, the whole thing fell apart. Well, the network was fine, it was the internet connection that was the problem. I would've rather had no connection at all. But instead the connection was very intermittent. A few web pages would load, and then things slowed to a crawl. Ugh..

So finally after fixing the wiring and replacing the cable modem, the connection seemed stable, and we let the Comcast guy go home at 8pm last night.

I even made an appointment at the Genius Bar. The odds of the Apple components causing the problems seemed slim, but I figured I check just to be sure. Oddly, in the few minutes I was there explaining the problem, two customers chimed in with sound suggestions. And I thought I was a geek.

Anyway, things seem to be ok for now.

Cloud Covered Fire in the Sky

We set an alarm for 2:15am hoping to catch a glimpse of the shuttle launch. But after stumbling out of bed, all we saw was an overcast sky to the east. With just a couple more years of shuttle launches, I want to try attend one.

iPhone Fun to Come

I'm sitting here watching today's iPhone SDK presentation.    SDK stands for software development kit.    Basically, Apple has created a programming environment that will allow people to create applications for the iPhone.   Some of the tech speak was beyond me, but the demoed sample software was pretty slick.   A few games were shown that use the full functions of the touch screen and accelerometer.   Nintendo Wii games came to mind.  Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a few Wii games converted to the iPhone platform. 

But games weren't the sole focus.   AOL IM was shown along with SalesForce marketing tools, and even Epocrates, a mobile drug guide for the health care industry (and the consumer). Check out their consumer lookup using the link.    

Apple is also going right after the Blackberry market with the announcement of a major behind the scenes infrastructure change to the phone.  If I'm able to use my phone for work I'm sure I'll prefer using using it over MS Outlook any day of the week.   I may even want to check my work email on the weekend.   Find me a full size keyboard, and I'll never use Outlook again. 

It's also great to see that all the new applications, which we'll start to see in June, will also be available on the iPod Touch.  

The growth for Apple may be just beginning.  

Google Apps at Work?

Yes! With this new version of Google Apps (watch the video), Google is clearly aware of people like me who loathe the productivity options available at our workplaces. Anyone working in even a small corporate environment knows software is updated less often than Microsoft releases a new version of Windows. But virus and security patches are made daily, which are installed without any thought to the productivity needs of the employees. 

Work with me for a week and you'll hear me complain about Outlook at least twice. At my work place, we're blessed with a whopping 70 megabytes of email storage, yes - 70 MEGABYTES. As of today, Gmail is granting me 6404 megabytes - FOR FREE! The worst part about Outlook is that when it comes to finding a particular message, well just don't bother because you won't find what you're looking for. Searching in Outlook is pathetically poor.

Perhaps Microsoft is finally getting the hint as evidence by its offer for Yahoo. In the meantime, I'll be giving Google Apps a serious shot.