[see the video]

First thought? Wow,  that is so flipping cool!

Second thought? I’m going to have nightmares about them.

Third thought? Alfred Hitchcock.

Fourth thought? How much?

Fifth thought? They need cameras like this.

Feeling sentimental about the days when typing was a ridiculous chore complete with paper and corrective tape? Try this on.

Can you imagine bringing your iPad and the typewriter into a coffeeshop and setting up shop? It’d be awesome. 

The hipsters may declare you king. 

Price: $799

iPad 2

Pros:

• Fun to play with.
• Feel cool in coffee shops.
• Lots of apps.
• Perfect for consuming media.
• Fun for taking short notes, like a giant iPhone.
• Light, battery lasts a long time, shiny.
• Lots of apps for kids to play with. (Or entertainment for bored adults on planes)

Cons:

• Not going to pay AT&T more money for 3G service, so stuck finding wifi.
• You can’t read books on this and keep your eyeballs happy.
• Where did the SD card reader go?
• You can’t write for a long time on this, need to buy the external keyboard.
• It’s too heavy/awkward to hold for long periods of time.
• The camera stinks compared to the iPhone 4.
• Completely useless in bright light.

Kindle

Pros:

• $139 or less, great entry price.
• Almost all of the classics are free. And I adore the Kindle Single format.
• Very light, easy to hold for a long time while reading.
• Doesn’t feel fragile.
• The screen is amazing, doesn’t hurt your eyes and you can read it in full sunlight.

Cons:

• A lot more money for the 3G version. While doesn’t include a contract, it’s steep.
• It would be nice to listen to music while you read, I can’t figure out how to do that.
• Needs a backlight option so I can read in bed without turning on a light.

Check out what happens at :37. My guess is that something happened or maybe the person filming the piece wanted to change up the subjects angle or the lighting was just a smidge better… but they caught a recycle bin in the background.

Drats. I hate it when that happens.

You can usually get away with shooting something on the odd side of an office building or even back by the loading docks. Just make sure you look at the whole shot.

This morning I woke up and my blog was down. With more than 6 years of content here that is scary.

It was a healthy reminder to me that it was time to back-up my blog. (After fixing some corrupt tables)

This is your reminder: If you haven’t backed-up your self-hosted WordPress blog lately, you need to do it.

Don’t know how?

No problem! I wrote a tutorial for you over on the McLane Creative blog.

The parallels between the iPhone in 2011 and cigarettes in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s are stunning.

• It’s iconic.
• It’s celebrated as the cool thing.
• It’s a status symbol.
• It’s celebrated in the media.
• It’s manufacturer is getting rich.
• There are cheap imitations. (Sorry Android users)
• It’s addicting, but not viewed as a serious addiction.
• The first thing you do in the morning is light up your iPhone.
• The last thing you do before you go to bed is put your iPhone out.
• People step out of meetings to check their iPhone.
• People huddle around their iPhone while they walk around.
• They do it in public, to the sneering glare of non-iPhone users.
• After sex… well, some people light up their iPhone.
• The price could go up at any minute, but you’d still need an iPhone.

I’m as much an addict as the other millions of regular users. Hopeless. Helpless. And happily satisfied in my addiction.

Just like cigarettes– users are left with the question:

Do you own your iPhone or does your iPhone own you?

A living exhibit of current apps being sold. Photo HT to Sachin Agarwal

More than 1 billion apps have been downloaded from the iTunes app store. Believe it or not, there are lots of people who still don’t think of it as a serious marketplace. A billion is 1,000 million folks. That’s pretty serious.

Here are 5 things that the app store has taught me

1. Free is a legitimate business plan.
2. Financial success isn’t so much about profit margins, it’s about price point.
3. Traditional high margin businesses with complicated business plans can’t compete.
4. The one hit wonder is just as powerful today as it was yesterday.
5. Big business will always manipulate a free market system.

Some brief explanations to unpack the list above.

Free is a legitimate business plan

Would you have an account on Facebook, Twitter, or Gmail if it cost you $2.99 each to belong? Of course not. But how did Google, Twitter, and Facebook get to become some of the most powerful companies in the world without charging you a dime? TV has been doing it for years.

Financial success isn’t so much about profit margins, it’s about price point

When I developed my first apps for YS, the content was valued based on the retail price of the book. Consequently, they never took off. People aren’t going to pay the same $7.99 for an app version of a book that they’d pay for a hard copy because the perceived value is different. The question app buyers are asking is, “Will I get the free version or will I pay $.99?” Remember… all of Facebook, Google, and Twitter are 100% FREE! So your buyer wants to know why your app, compared to what they know is already free, has more value to them than that. To pay more than $.99 for an app you have to demonstrate ridiculous value. Consequently, if you lower your price point or eliminate the cost, you will access millions more customers and potentially make infinitely more money as a result.

Traditional businesses with complicated business plans can’t compete

Traditional media and brick/mortar retailers are struggling to figure out how to take advantage of apps. Look for yourself. Retailers apps aren’t really necessary but are just attempts to have “something” in the app store. An online catalog is pointless because of Google. A store finder is pointless because of Google Maps. Most traditional brands apps aren’t adding value– they are marketing. And people are extraordinarily good at sniffing out marketing thanks to the popularity of bloggers like Seth Godin. Companies with simple business plans are beating them in the app store because simple business plans have lower overhead, can take more brand risk, are more nimble, and will rely less on expensive “experts.” (If an app maker is an “expert” than why would they sell your company something for thousands when “experts” are becoming millionaires? Additionally, the counter-intuitive business strategy of free is nearly impossible for traditional business leaders to comprehend.

The one hit wonder is just as powerful today as it was yesterday

Angry Birds is to the app store what Don McLean is to the record business. Except we live in an age when a company that has a one-hit wonder in the app business will get a royalty checks from Apple for millions of dollars per month. Not bad for some college students from Finland, eh? Take that– Mattel or EA or any of the other major players in the game industry! Each of the original creators of Angry Birds will not only make a lot of money off of Angry Birds… they are now solid gold for life.

Big business will always manipulate a free market system

The editors at Apple have always claimed a certain level of editorial control of the app market. In other words the stuff at the top of the pile is at the top of the pile mostly because it is the best in the marketplace. But, in truth, they have allowed that to be manipulated by some levels of marketing of new stuff. Go to the app store today on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad and you will see ads for featured items. That wasn’t free and it is almost always big, publicly traded companies, who have bought that influence. Consequently, some of the biggest selling apps are not, indeed, the best apps in a totally free marketplace. There has been some manipulation.

Intrigues the conspiracy theorist in me. Imagine how smart I would be if I could go back and make a commercial that everyone thinks they saw 30 years ago predicting everything we are currently doing.

Good idea?

HT to Gavin

Photo by Chantal Foster via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Last Sunday, I was asked to pray in church for those of us in the tech industry, that we would use our skills as a means to Christ’s mission on earth. I opened my prayer by getting rid of the polite language. “Lord Jesus, be with the geeks and nerds among us. We were once made fun of but now are seen as the hope and solution for our companies. Let us use our new found influence for your glory and not our own. Let us point others to the Solution.”

The nerds and geeks have come to rule our nation logistically. We might not hold a lot of political offices but it is headline news when leaders change companies, retire, or even get sick.

Long gone are the days when the rest of the room snickered when I said, “I run websites.” Now they wait for the meeting to end and then ask for my card so they can pitch their project to me.

Becoming geek

What makes a person a geek is that they have thrown away all semblance of generality and become hyper-knowledgeable in their sphere of knowledge.

In some regard we are all geeks. It’s how you become a professional in a field. Last year, I was at a man’s house repairing his PC that had gotten clogged up with Spyware. About every 25 minutes he would come by and look at what I was doing and say, “Man, I’m glad you know how to do that. I wouldn’t have a clue.” After a few rounds of that I stopped him. “You know– this is just my skill. If my toilet blew up or my washing machine got clogged… I’d call you. The world needs both computer nerds and plumbers.” It was an aha moment for both of us.

Geek isn’t just limited to tech. Geek is how you become an expert. And the world ceases to spin without experts.

Lack of balance

As a geek, I am perplexed at how some people judge me. They say it in subtle ways like, “I limit my use of the internet to just at work.” Or “I put up some boundaries so I don’t do that stuff while I’m home.” What they are really saying is that the thing they geek out in, say preparing for 25 hours to preach a 35 minute sermon, is somehow more noble than my task. They judge my expertise through the lens of their life and call for balance.

At the same time becoming a geek at something brings joy and satisfaction far beyond a paycheck or acclaim.

That’s the difference.

Being a geek at something is the absence of balance. It’s really an acknowledgement of letting go of a desire to maintain balance as a generalist and completely go after one thing.

Becoming a geek is making something others view as ignoble, noble.

Some say I waste a lot of time observing and participating in all sorts of things. At the same time, I don’t waste a lot of time reading books or watching mindless television.

No shame in geek

That’s the nature of geek. Going after one thing in a completely unbalanced fashion. Geeking out for hours trying to figure out how something works, how you can improve it, how others worldwide have taken it to new heights, and trying to predict when your geek-subject will go in the future.

May we stop judging and start embracing and supporting the complete lack of balance of the geek class. Stop trying to change them because, in the end, they will change you.

A fun outlet for me is building WordPress sites, consulting, and social media campaigns at McLane Creative. Since it’s a creative outlet I tend to be pretty picky with who I work with. Here are three quick slogans I use to describe my work there:

• Guaranteed to be on budget and past deadline.
• I tend to chose you more than you chose me.
• I pick projects that matter to me, regardless of budget.

Interestingly, this tiny business has continued to grow through 2009-2010. And with marketing slogans like that… how could it not?

I’ve fallen into a pace where 7-8 projects per years is just about right. Any more or less and it’s just not worth it.

Two quick structural updates:

1. I’ve moved all of my hosting from Bluehost to 6sync. More importantly, I’ve moved from a shared hosting environment which lead to some unexplained downtime and nasty malware, to a VPS environment where I’m much more in control. More on this move.
2. I installed a client collaboration tool. The way MC works is that I build a custom team of freelancers for each project. This is an ultra efficient model of web development for the client… but the pitfall is that it requires that I manage a bunch of people working together for the first time over and over again. The new client area (powered by Collabtive) centralizes the teams communication with the client. More on this move.