What's in a name?

I now know why companies spend so much time and money to come up with the perfect name. A bad or, mismatched, name can give a company serious problems in the mind share department. We've been trying to come up with a name that is more descriptive of and appropriate for our business. It's very difficult to find just the right name. Someone can always find something wrong with the name, which is really the point. At some level you have to create brand value by driving value to your customer. The name means everything but, at the same time, means very little. By the way, we had to go outside of the english language to find something we liked. I can't say what it is now but, I will when the time is right.

Stevenote '06

I don't know whether or not I've mentioned it here before but, I'm a huge Apple computer fan. Today they unleashed a couple new software and hardware gems. I won't delve into detail about the hardware (think dual core Intel processors) as I would rather rant about software. The reason I switched to Apple in the first place was their dedication to putting the user first. Everything they do is driven by the user experience. Their latest update to the iLife suite of applications seems no different. They just make complicated things (setting up picture gallery websites, etc.) easy to do. I call if the wife test. If my wife can do it then anyone can. iLife has definitely passed the wife test and this version should only allow her to do more. That seems to me to be the difference between Apple and most other tech companies; they understand what the people really want/need. Check out iLife and, for that matter, a Mac today. You won't be sorry.

Read more at www.apple.com/

Finally

I've been an avid University of Texas fan as long as I have been cognizant of sports. Last night, in the greatest game my eyes have witnessed, Vince Young, in the greatest individual performance I have witnessed, beat USC to claim the National Championship. I have been waiting for this moment for around 20 years. Needless to say, I was as excited about a sporting event as I ever have been. When I was a teenager the Dallas Cowboys were just beginning their run in the early 90's. I hadn't been as pumped up about a game since the '92 SuperBowl. Honestly, my enthusiasm and excitement for sports in general has been fading as I've gotten older. Last night, however, made me feel like a young man again. Amazing what a silly game can do to some peoples' psyches.

Been a while....

Hard to find time to do anything, much less write in a blog, when you're working 16 hours a day. Here's that latest:

Bryce is getting big.
Work is good and bad.
My wife is lovely.
The Texas Longhorn football team is 60 minutes away from the Big Prize.

Company Dog and Pony was tonight. It's always interesting to see how people explain things they didn't create to other people. Food was good.

More to come soon, including an exciting look at the hottest holiday gift you won't have under the tree.

Google whistles a new tune | Tech News on ZDNet

Looks like the long rumored Google - iTunes pertnership had a shred of validity (they usually do).  This can only help the legal online music business.  Instead of finding links to myriad spyware-riddled P2P apps when searching for music, maybe a user will be directed to a resource where they can legally purchase the content.  This is great for the music industry and the online music stores.

Read more at news.zdnet.com/2100-958...

Help Wanted

Been a while since I've posted because we've been so busy at work. We've been trying to find people to add to the team, but, unfortunately, good help is hard to come by. It looks like there may be no relief in sight. 20 hour work days are the norm now and I don't see that changing any time soon. I guess things could be worse, though. Our current situation exists only because we have a flood of work pouring in. It could be much, much worse.

Mobile and Agile

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Originally uploaded by spudnik187.

Forgot to mention earlier that Bryce is now walking and doing so with much joy. He is enjoying, I think, the trouble he is causing for his mother and I.

No Rest for the Weary

Things have been insanely busy at work. This is both a good and a bad thing. Good because we are winning business and growing at a rate which we've not yet experienced. Bad because I see my family once a week. It's good to see what people are made of, however. You never learn more about a person than you do when you see them in the pressure cooker. It seems as though we've made some good personnel decisions because everyone is pitching in to make it happen. I feel very lucky.

Still learning

It became clear to me recently that our company would have to rethink our web delivery strategy. Although we have positioned ourselves somewhat against Flash, I came to the conclusion that it would be the only platform that we knew of that could satisfy our requirements. Being the adventerous type that I am, I quitely started working on a Flash framework that could allow us to deliver our presentations over the web at a reasonable bandwidth while maintaining the functionality of our DVD based presentations. After about a month of trial and error I came up with what seems to be a working model. I have to say that I am very impressed with the Flash platform and its ActionScript coding language. Because of my C++ programming background I was able to pick up AS very easily. It is indeed a powerful platform and I can see why so many people are drawn to it. Hopefully I will soon be able to convert the family website I was working on in HTML to Flash and take advantage of all that ActionScript has to offer. I'm just sorry it took me so long to discover it.

Quick Getaway

It's good to get away from the office sometimes and not think about work. Since I helped start "the company" I've had very few chances to really relax and focus on things other than work. Even on the weekends my mind often turns to work. Yesterday I had a chance to totally remove myself from the day-to-day. Much needed indeed.

Deal with the Devil

Those that know me are aware that I am a huge proponent of open source software for a number of reasons. In particular, I have become enamored with the Mozilla Foundation and their flagship offerings-Firefox and Thunderbird. They are both great products. I have also detested Microsoft Outlook and it's susceptibility to viruses. It isn't Microsoft's fault necessarily, but the fact remains that people write viruses that affect the majority of users. Unfortunately for me, as our company has grown it has become difficult for all of us to stay in sync with regards to our schedules and keeping track of who has to do what. Outlook has somewhat of an answer for this problem. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that Thunderbird doesn't offer the same solution. In the best interests of the company I have decided to jump to Outlook as my primary business email/task/calendar/meeting management tool. It hasn't been as bad as I thought, but there are a number of things I'm already missing about Thunderbird-namely the junk mail handling. We'll see how long it lasts.

Holiday Spirit

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Originally uploaded by spudnik187.

Guess it's never too early to celebrate our great country. This is my son in his 4th of July garb. By the way, he enjoyed his first fireworks show.

Humble Pie

It's always nice to see a piece of work that makes you remember how feeble your skills are. Keeps you hungry and always wanting to get better.

Nuevo Radio?

Within the last several days, Apple released a point update to its iTunes music jukebox software. Why then would it possibly be the beginning of the end of radio as we know it? Podcasts.

Before I begin, let me reiterate why I think Apple is possibly on of the greatest innovating entities of the modern era. They make complex technology easy before anyone else even attempts it. On to podcasting.

Podcasting, whose name is derived from iPod and broadcasting, has been around for some time now. Think of it as Tivo for radio. A show is produced (the term show is used very loosely, as technically any audio file could be a podcast) and converted to an MP3 or similar compressed audio file. Then, the file is uploaded to a server. That server then uses RSS (RSS is another discussion for another time if you don't know what it is) to "broadcast" the existence of the file over the internet. Once a listeners' RSS reader picks up the RSS feed it can download the file and the user can listen to it at his/her leisure. Seems simple enough from the end user's perspective. Why does it matter that Apple put support for podcasts in iTunes?

Up until this point, the process of getting a podcast from a 3rd party RSS aggregator to iTunes to the iPod has been cludgy at best. Finding podcasts were fairly simple, but most people didn't even know what podcasts were. Enter iTunes. To say that the iPod is the best and most popular portable music players in the market today would be an understatement. Naturally, most people who have iPods use iTunes to manage their music and sync it with their iPods. The iTunes Music Store is also the largest and most popular legal music download service in the market. People have become accustomed to purchasing and managing music with iTunes on Macs or Windows machines. Podcasts are now part of the iTunes Music Store and are very, very easy to subscribe to. One click and you're done. It's so easy it's literally fool proof.

So how is this the end of radio? First, podcats aren't subject to FCC rules and regulations. That alone has serious implications. Second, anyone with a computer and a microphone can have a podcast. Literally anyone can have a podcast about literally anything. With iTunes now providing a directory for podcasts in which normal people like you and I can submist our podcasts, literally millions of people can potentially subscribe to your podcast. Stop and think about that for a minute and you'll realize why the big corporations that run traditional radio are scared. Their cash cow is about to get slaughtered by the new "rebel radio" and there's nothing they, or anyone else, can do about it.

Testing

Testing...

One of the Best

I witnessed one of the greatest clutch performances I have ever seen in a sporting event tonight. Robert Horry, of the San Antonio Spurs, hit 4 key 3 point shots and a monstrous dunk to single-handedly win the 5th game of the NBA Finals for the Spurs. I admire athletes, or anyone else for that matter, who can perform so well under extreme amounts of pressure. Horry all but won the third NBA championship for the Spurs in the last 7 years. What a joy to watch.

Smooth Criminal

Don't know what to think about the Michael Jackson trial. It sounded like there was some fairly damning evidence against him. Of course, the boy's family seemed to be very flaky at best. I think he may have actually been molested, but he, nor his family, had any credibility whatsoever. Either way, Jacko has some serious issues.

Need more sleep

You know you're tired when you wake up on Sunday morning and start scrambling because you think you're late to work.

Catching up

Been a while since I've posted. Not too much going on until today. Apple and Intel? More on that later.

First, work has been hectic. Purchased Tiger for my aging iMac (800 mHz G4) and it has infused some new life into the little computer that could. Wrting this right now on a blogging widget for Dashboard.

Been playing WoW exclusively and loving it. Just got a GeForce 6600GT for the Linux box. Working great.

Big news today. Apple switching to Intel. Couldn't believe the rumors when I heard the last week and I almost still can't believe after I heard it from the horse's mouth. They need to nail this thing or it's going to cost them dearly. In the end, if it makes Macs more affordable for the masses then I'm all for it. That's all for now.

Long time no see

It's been nearly a month since I last posted. Much has happened since then, both in my realm and out. The following is a listing of just some of those things:

Work.
Brother-in-law married.
Work.
World of Warcraft.
Work.
World of Warcraft.

Very busy indeed. Bryce has started crawling, which is quite fun. Things are busy at work. Syringe (my new WoW character) is leveling as fast as he can to catch up with his guild.

I finally convinced the powers that be to get a Mac in the office. Dual 2 G5. Needed it to author a project in DVD Studio Pro. Tiger is awesome. The machine is awesome. Now if I could only get a new iMac for the house. More to come...