AtomJohnson Blog

You’ve come along way in 7 years…

I’m am officially an Apple geek.  I’m now one amongst the ranks of wide-eyed, Steve Jobs-worshipping uber geeks who have waiting an absurd amount of time to purchase a newly released Apple gadget.  In case you missed it, Steve Jobs recently unveiled the much anticipated iPhone 3G in early June and ensured that few of us would sleep well until July 11th, when we could rest our heads comfortably on our new phones and 2 year year AT&T service contracts.

Actually for about a week leading up to last Friday, I was debating whether or not I even wanted to get the iPhone.  I’ve been very happy with Verizon Wireless and wasn’t sure I wanted to risk getting bad service with a new provider.  But, as I finished up my deadlines on Friday afternoon, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to go check things out at the Apple store.  So, I jumped in my underpowered, fuel efficient Japanese hatchback and headed over to the local Apple store.  As I approached the store, I saw one young man walk by with a sh!#-eating grin and an iPhone 3G bag in hand.  I nodded as if to say, “don’t worry, I’ll be there soon”.  As I turned the corner, I was surprised to see that there was no line.  I guess waiting till the afternoon had paid off.  When I explained to the Mac employee blocking the door that I was here to purchase an iPhone, he pointed across the street to the enormous line of people…also waiting to buy the iPhone.  This was my opportunity to head home and contemplate the purchase further…but, instead, I took my place in the back of the line and graciously accepted a free bottle of water that the Apple employees were handing out.

Over the next 2.5 hours, we saw groups of 12 or so people at a time excitedly walk into the store like catapillars and emerge as beautiful butterflies…butterflies with unlimited data plans on their crisp new iPhones.  As I finally approached the front of the line, I was cut off and asked to wait for the next group.  Just about this time, a photographer from the Colorado Daily showed up and asked if he could take my photo for Monday’s paper.  I managed to not look completely crazed as I knew that I was NEXT!

Finally it was my turn.  I was let into the sacred store and assigned my own personal sales representative to handle the adoption.  Over the next half hour I gave whatever information was necessary and excitedly checked boxes of agreement to terms that I could care less about…as long as it means that I am now amongst that special elite group of 7 million (and counting) who call the iPhone home.

There is no doubt in my mind that Google, Apple, and Frank’s Hot Sauce Company are the three most important company’s of my generation. Apple is doing things in the computer industry the likes of which haven’t been seen since Frank’s introduced their Chile n’ Lime Hot Sauce to the food industry (mmmm….delicious).

Now Google is doing work in the Earth industry that hasn’t been done since Creation. I’m specifically speaking of their Google Earth application. It is a free, navigable, desktop version of the entire planet. I realize that sounds ridiculous, because it is completely and totally ridiculous.

In this latest version of Google Earth, they have included hiking trails (the red lines in the photo below) and geographically-specific photographs that are contributed by users. So, if you’re coming out here to visit and hike in Rocky Mtn National Park this summer, be sure to download the latest version of Google Earth and plan out some hikes.

I love music! I listen to the stuff all the time…in the car…on the computer…when my cell phone rings… In my eyes, there is nothing better than discovering a new artist who just blows you away. I had this experience most recently with Josh Ritter. OK, go ahead and giggle, and think….’gee, that sounds alot like John Ritter’…compose yourself….now go out and buy the album. Start with The Animal Years and then buy Hello Starling. Or, just listen to this story on NPR.

Yesteday, a friend at work pointed me to Pandora. Pandora is a web application put together by The Music Genome Project that allows you to enter an artist that you like and then proceeds to suggests other artists that have a similar musical genetic structure. What do they mean? The Music Genome project is a group of musicians and technologist who came together in order to break music down to its genetic structure. From their website:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

So, please check out Pandora. It promises to put an smile on your face and an echo in your wallet.

It was bound to happen that I would purchase a Playstation Portable (PSP). Although the portable gaming system has been out for over a year, the stars would have to align before I’d drop my hard-earned cash on one. Well, the starts have aligned. Winning Eleven 9 has come out for the PSP…and I happened to see a used one on sale for $180 (retail on these babies is $250). Combine this with the fact that I am turning the big ‘three oh’ in 9 days…..and Happy Birthday to me!

I’ve got to tell you, this thing is amazing! The Winning Eleven game plays soooo much like the PS2 version, which plays sooo much like the real game of soccer. Take into account the distributive property of addition…voila…the most realistic soccer game ever made, sitting in the palm of your hand. The best part is that you can pause the game and power the system down (which only takes a second)…and then when you come back to it later, you power it back up (which also only takes a second) and it resumes right where you left off. This allows me to quickly pause and hide the game when I’m supposed to be doing something else. I have already found this feature useful on several occasions.

The miracle device also plays movies in their native widescreen format. Sony sells movies in the proprietary format, but you can find programs on the web that will rip movies from DVD into a format that you can save onto a memory stick and watch on the PSP. Oh yeah, did I mention the wireless web browsing capabilities? I checked out my blog on it and it looked pretty good. Without a keyboard, it is kind of a pain to navigate to a new site…hopefully someone will come up with a solution for this soon.

In any case, I’m very excited about my new toy. The trick now will be to not get fired from my job or lose my relationship with my Nat to this palm-sized magical world of soccer….perhaps someone will come up with a solution for this soon.

Geeks throughout the world wait with baited breath every time Steve Jobs gives a keynote address. It usually means some other gadget to lust over. Today was no exception. Leading up to today’s keynote, there was alot of speculation on what new marvel of technology would be brought into the world.

Engadget hosted the WWJD (What Would Jobs Do?) contest where Apple enthusiasts mocked up what they thought Steve Jobs might have up his sleeve. Check out some of the predictions.

After the keynote, we all breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that the world no longer has to live without and Intel-based Mac mini, or an iPod Hi-Fi boombox.

Where was I last night at 12:45am? I think I was in bed….

I wish I had been doing freelance work on my computer. I wish I had become distracted and decided to purchase a song in iTunes. I wish I were like Alex Ostrovsky of West Bloomfield, Michigan, who purchased the billionth song on iTunes. This unassuming 16 year old logged on late last night to purchase ‘Speed of Sound’ from the new Coldplay album. Moments later he receives a call from Apple to alert him that he has just purchased the billionth song and that the $.99 that he spent has also purchased him a 20-inch iMac G5, 10 60GB iPods, and a $10,000 gift card for the iTunes music store. Oh yeah, and we’re setting up a scholarship at Julliard in your name. Again…where the hell was I when all this was going down?

Do you ever see a new product or technology come out and kick yourself because you had already thought of it, but decided not to pursue it? Maybe it was the cornballer? Or perhaps it was the motorcycle airbag? Even if it was just the bumper dumper, you realize that you have might missed the boat to guaranteed riches and a better life for you and your family.

Anyway, I had this crazy idea a while back that people would pay money to be online tourist or even to live in a virtual world. I had read an article about the number of hours that people spend in online virtual worlds. There are thousands and thousands of people who spend 8 hours a day at their job and then come home and spend all night in a virtual world. In the scientific community, we call them ‘losers’.

Check out Second Life. Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by nearly 100,000 people from around the globe. Upon entering the virtual world, you create an avatar (a 3D person), cloth them in the limited choice of outfits, and then explore the continent. You can buy land, create buildings, landscape…and basically do anything that you can do in the real world.

Included in that ‘anything you can do in the real world’, is opening a business and making money. Hundreds of entrepreneurs have already opened businesses in this virtual world. Jennifer Grinnell, Michigan furniture delivery dispatcher turned fashion designer in cyber space, makes more in the the virtual world than she ever did in the real world.

I’m currently working on my own idea of creating virtual virtual worlds. You have to imagine that as more normal people start moving into this virtual world, the scientifically described ‘losers’ will need a fantasy world to escape to. Well fellas, step into Third Life…

If you currently use Mapquest (like I do) to find directions, stop immediately. Your new “go to” for directions and yellow page searches is Google Maps. Check out how it displays pizza restaurants near my house, “pizza in Alexandria, VA“. Be sure to click on one of the teardrop-shaped markers for the address and phone number. Then, if you can still stand it, click somewhere on the map and drag your mouse. If the “geek” in you is strong, you may not be able to hold back the tears. I nearly shorted out my keyboard. I haven’t cried this hard since Old Yeller.