Enjoying the Journey

With the release of the iPhone 3G tomorrow, Apple is also releasing new iPhone/iPod Touch software and the App Store.  Aside from a lot of other cool stuff, iPhones can now have third-party applications on them.  So what does that mean?

Have you ever wished your cell-phone had a whole bunch of other stuff on it, like a tip calculator, a to-do list, etc.?  Wouldn’t it be cool if you could pick and choose from thousands of applications so your phone does what *you* want it do instead of whatever the creators wanted it to do?  Well, Apple solved that problem with the App Store.  Developers can create their own applications and you can easily and quickly get whichever ones you want on your own iPhone.

Use Facebook or Myspace a lot?  Would you like to have an application on your phone to use your accounts?  Have you ever been at an electronics store and wanted to know how highly rated a TV was and how expensive it was online?  Wouldn’t it be cool if you could look them up with a simple application on your phone?  Thankfully, now you can if you have an iPhone.

But the best of all, at least for me, is that now I can take a photo on my phone and send it straight to my favorite online photo sharing service with SmugShot.  I can add captions, keywords, select specific galleries, etc.  And it’s free to download and use.

That’s hot.  And speaking of which, 500+ applications were released today with the new App Store, and guess which app is the hottest right now in the store?

Family

My sister-in-law Kellee and her fiancee Jared came to visit us this past weekend.  It was really nice of them to come out, especially since they are busy preparing for their wedding.  Meghan gets a bit lonely living so far from her family.

Unfortunately, I had to work some very late nights last week to ship SmugMug’s new product (more on that later) and I was tired and cranky most of the weekend.  Sorry Kellee and Jared!  The highlight for me though was doing one of my favorite things: a visit to the beach in Carmel.

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My wife and her family have come to depend on me somewhat for computer advice/help/support/shopping/etc. over the years.  One of the most important pieces of advice I give them is to ditch Internet Explorer.  It’s an abomination and I could write pages on how much damage it has done to the Web, to developers, and to its users who never even knew there was another choice.  It comes installed already on Windows machines and is by default the most used Web browser in the world.  Unfortunately, it also is absolutely terrible.

Without spending too much effort on explaining why it’s so bad (it’s like a cheese grater that grates your hand instead of the cheese) and how much damage it does (the cheese grater is also made of lead), I want to propose an alternative to anyone else stuck in the purgatory of Internet Explorer:

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MacAskill babies aren’t bald, they are just follicly challenged.  Here, we can see Reese trying cover up Logan’s luxurious locks.

We are having a ball with our video camera these days. Unfortunately, the quality and uniqueness of our videos suffer from a few things:

1. Meghan and I both hate to see or hear ourselves on camera. So we generally either stay silent or just eliminate the audio track entirely and put it to music.
2. We can’t edit video at home. Well, we prefer to do it at my office, where I have access to a nice Mac Pro. Mac’s, especially with iMovie and Final Cut Pro, are vastly superior to PC’s when it comes to video editing (and just about everything except games and statistics).
3. We usually miss the really good stuff. Either we don’t have the camera nearby or the subjects (Reese and Cibo) get shy on camera. We really want some good video of Cibo having a doggy nightmare or of Reese dancing and singing.

Anyways, we did manage to scrape together a couple more videos.

Summertime and Pool Fun (ending with a special urinary salute by Jedi)

Creepy Nighttime Visit

Also, props go out to my sister-in-law Kellee for keeping her last name near the end of the alphabet. KZ in da house!

A friend of ours decided to throw an awesome surprise party for his wife’s 40th birthday. She was never able to attend her Senior Prom, which would have been in 1986. Fantastic idea, but it makes the rest of us husbands look like chumps.

Anyways, photos:

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A lot more work goes into some of the features at SmugMug than you might think.  Through the magic of Shizam and the other SmugSorcerers, we now have a full HD Flash video player.   Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t actually allow me to embed any videos.

But you can get an idea of my excitement from my brother’s blog post.  Reese’s videos will now play in Flash instead of Quicktime (unless you are on a Mac, in which case you can silently shake your first at Adobe).

I have been really busy lately, but I should have some more Reese videos coming your way soon.