Most people that know anything about me know that I'm a huge Google user. Gmail, Reader, Maps, Calendar, Blogger, YouTube, Labs, Chrome, and the list goes on. I recently rejoined the land of cell phone users, and I picked my phone (HTC G1) because of it's Google integration.
Now I know a lot of people are very concerned with one provider having all of their data. The idea that the one provider has your balls in their hands and can squeeze or just yank at any given time. Personally my data isn't quite that important, and the convenience far out weighs those concerns. So for me, this is huge and I'm excited. (I'm so excited in fact, I'm not playing inFamous for the first night in 4 days.)
Having said all of that, Google I/O 2009 started on Wednesday and has been in full swing. Day one, those in attendance received a cell phone running the Android mobile OS. Day two they were introduced to what may very well change how you surf, send emails, blog, or hell just think!
They unearthed Google Wave. It's a new web app that Google is releasing later this year, and it basically does everything. And honestly if it can't currently do it, you the user could create extensions to do what you want.
The full Google Wave presentation has been posted on YouTube and I have to say I've had my mind blown repeatedly watching this hour and twenty minute presentation. I was going to embed it here, but honestly I went through all the trouble of typing this out while trying to watch the rest of the video; I'd kind of like you stick around and read the whole post.
Some things really stand out in the presentation. I really like how you can live update a document or event with another user. Add new users at any point of the conversation and the new user can see everything, even replay it as it happened.
The last four Sundays have been some sort of movie event with sister and friends. This weekend is going to be more of the same with Up releasing on Friday. If I could create an Up Wave, invite all who may be interested in the event, and just have at it. Is Sunday a bad time? Go to an earlier show? Do we care about IMAX? Everybody can post their comments, create a poll, and in the end easily see what time and showing is best for the group. Group event planning just got PWN'd!
I'm planning a trip to Washington DC this summer to hit up the museums, and this would make that even easier. I could post all the information I gather to the Wave and the people involved can all weigh in. "I want to go to the Air & Space Museum." "OMG me too, I've never had space ice cream!" (True story, can you believe it?) "I want to go to the pop culture museum." "Ew, I don't want to go to there, let's go see ol' Abe Lincoln instead!" All of this could take place inside of a Wave, and everybody could actively work on gathering information. Hell, this blog post could have been edited and created there! Could have quickly linked all the sites, added images, and maps with out a single mark-up on my part.
As I mentioned in my last post, I recently joined Twitter and have been exploring and enjoying the service. The site and/or clients can pull all the information you want together, but sometimes you miss things. Or other people find things and I'm completely lost on how. With a Twitter API you can set up a "Twave" do it all for you. Can pull information together based on what you need or want, and you can then interact with it as you see fit.
Wave could essentially branch off into anything the user wants it to. If you lack the knowledge to build what you want then just find somebody else who has and use that instead. As much as I hate the catch words of "Web 2.0" or "Web 3.0" this may finally be what those concepts fail at describing.
If you use Google, go watch the video, you won't be disappointed. Make sure you also go to http://wave.google.com and sign up for an account. May be a while before you get in, but it can't hurt. I wrote some goofy haiku for why they should give me early access. I wish I could remember exactly what it was so I could re-post it here. Something about "Gimmie it now please."
Friday, May 29, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Ann Arbor Skatepark Benefit Art Show
So the comic book shop I hit up regularly - Vault of Midnight - has been very hands-on with getting a skate park in Ann Arbor for the kiddies and adult skaters. There are skate parks in Michigan, but they're out of town, and downtown Ann Arbor hasn't really been very skater friendly. So people had to drive an hour or so to legally skate, or skate the streets at their own risk.
So after a bunch of petitions, and lobbying with the City Counsel, the Skate park was approved and it's money time. Today there was a huge art benefit to help raise money for the skate park and it was at my favorite comic book venue; The Vault.
Event started at 7PM, but I couldn't dip out of work early until 8. Either way a friend and I show up, not really knowing what to expect but wanting to support the shop and the skate park.
Get in, check out the normal stuff and I can hear the auctioneer over the stereo. Besides the fact that you don't normally hear an auctioneer being pumped through the speakers of any business, there's usually an awesome selection of random music flooding the place. We head down stairs and the place is packed.
Now the down stairs area is usually used for board games and older comic book stock, but today it was packed with people and 50 skate decks hanging on the wall for the auction. Because I didn't get there until about an hour and half after the event started I missed a lot of the fun, but I did catch the intense bid war at the end.
One of the bidders and a member of the Skate Park board, Doug Song, posted a lot of awesome pictures on his Flickr page. Make sure you check them out to really see some of the things artist's submitted for the event. I really liked the "Silver Surfer" deck as well as the Marvel characters deck. There's also a picture of the Tony Hawk deck that was signed by 24 pro skaters and was auctioned off in a silent auction before I got there.
Detail: 47 Uploaded by dugsong
Now you can't really see it from the image, but this was laser etched. Curtis described it as a "stencil, on top of a stencil but instead using paint, they used a laser." Curtis and Doug went at it until Doug threw out a bid of "2." Yes, that's a 2k bid on that awesome deck. At one point I thought Doug was going to have a heart attack - and that was just at $1500 - and Liz (Curtis' wife) turned a deeper shade of red every time Curtis bid another $100. Curtis played a good game waiting for the last second to snipe the bid, trying to pysch Doug out of the lead. Bid went to $1800 and Doug made the jump to $2000. Crowd went wild, Curtis bowed out and shook Doug's hand. Game over.
So after a bunch of petitions, and lobbying with the City Counsel, the Skate park was approved and it's money time. Today there was a huge art benefit to help raise money for the skate park and it was at my favorite comic book venue; The Vault.
Event started at 7PM, but I couldn't dip out of work early until 8. Either way a friend and I show up, not really knowing what to expect but wanting to support the shop and the skate park.
Get in, check out the normal stuff and I can hear the auctioneer over the stereo. Besides the fact that you don't normally hear an auctioneer being pumped through the speakers of any business, there's usually an awesome selection of random music flooding the place. We head down stairs and the place is packed.
Now the down stairs area is usually used for board games and older comic book stock, but today it was packed with people and 50 skate decks hanging on the wall for the auction. Because I didn't get there until about an hour and half after the event started I missed a lot of the fun, but I did catch the intense bid war at the end.
One of the bidders and a member of the Skate Park board, Doug Song, posted a lot of awesome pictures on his Flickr page. Make sure you check them out to really see some of the things artist's submitted for the event. I really liked the "Silver Surfer" deck as well as the Marvel characters deck. There's also a picture of the Tony Hawk deck that was signed by 24 pro skaters and was auctioned off in a silent auction before I got there.
The night ended with Doug and the owner of the Vault, Curtis, going into an all out bid war on this board.
Detail: 47 Uploaded by dugsong
Now you can't really see it from the image, but this was laser etched. Curtis described it as a "stencil, on top of a stencil but instead using paint, they used a laser." Curtis and Doug went at it until Doug threw out a bid of "2." Yes, that's a 2k bid on that awesome deck. At one point I thought Doug was going to have a heart attack - and that was just at $1500 - and Liz (Curtis' wife) turned a deeper shade of red every time Curtis bid another $100. Curtis played a good game waiting for the last second to snipe the bid, trying to pysch Doug out of the lead. Bid went to $1800 and Doug made the jump to $2000. Crowd went wild, Curtis bowed out and shook Doug's hand. Game over.
Here I was expecting it to be this boring ordeal, that I'd leave shortly after saying hi to everybody. Instead the damn Mayor of Ann Arbor was there, and the last two decks went for a combined $2,800! Still kind of shocked, but it was a lot of fun and a lot of money was raised for the A2 Skatepark.
I asked if they were going to do something like this again and they're really hoping so. Next time I'm going to be prepared and see if I can win a deck. I saw a few in there that I would have gladly bid up to $250 so I could hang them on the wall behind my desk. My picture of frogs is starting to get boring. But in it's defense it has been there for quite a while. (Sorry no picture, I think sister has the camera with her.)
So I'm home, had a lot of fun, and Arwocky may have TB. Yeah, that's tuberculosis. If you're thinking, "who the hell is Arwocky?" That's O.K, it's an inside joke!
One last thing before I finish, got a cell phone, Ren made me get Twitter, and I now "tweet." Follow my random boringness as I use my G1 for anything BUT making phone calls.
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