Will Patton

Post from my iPhone

2008-02-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

Sent from my iPhone

Jefferson Hon - Perceptive Pixel

2007-01-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

Jeff Hon of Peceptive Pixel multi-touch technology is believed to be in Apple's iPhone.

You Tunes

2007-01-07T02:31:00.000-08:00

Andy Mckee - Drifting - www.candyrat.com

Bay to Breakers 2006

2006-05-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

Another fun day at Bay to Breakers 2006.

Canon Dominates

2005-11-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

Canon’s digital cameras win PC Magazine’s Reader Choice awards. That's no surprise because Canon cameras are not only the choice of the editors, but also the readers. Canon has done a lot right to earn such honors. If you're asking me, your next digital camera should be a Canon. Look at the SD400 and SD500 compacts. Don't miss Canon's prosumer grade DSLR "20D".

Biometric Security

2005-10-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

A clever company in Silicon Valley is making good progress in biometric security. Check out UPEK www.upek.com. You can tell a company has their "marketing act" together when you can easily discern the product, company, clients, market, and capital partners from the web site. Well done. Keep your eye on UPEK.

New Fed Chairman

2005-10-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

President George W. Bush has picked Ben Bernanke as the next Fed chairman. Bernanke is a former Princeton economist. Some believe the chairman is the ‘second most powerful job in the world?’. Overall, reaction in the market was good today. We'll shall see what happens...

Adobe Finally Adds...

2005-09-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 finally implements the “Ken Burns” effect to simulate motion during photo slide shows. Apple's iPhoto slide show wowed my friends for years with no Adobe equivalent. I can only speculate that Adobe didn’t implement such Apple like features as a competitive courtesy. At last, I can tell my friends that panning and zooming (i.e. the "Ken Burns" effect) are now possible with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.

Tunes In Motion

2005-09-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

This goes to my friends who I’ve had Apple, Podcast, and marketing chats with recently. Like you, I’ve been quite fascinated with the iPod and iTunes as you have (marketing, branding, total market domination, lifestyle, etc.). Version 5 now supports Podcasts. Steve Jobs presentation of the new versions is worth a fascinating look at Apple Special Events 05 . It takes about 30 min (Nice to see such great video quality over broadband). Interesting data that 30% of automotive OEMs are including iPod capability standard.

Buying music online? Great! Me too… from Apple.com, Sony.com, and even Wal-Mart.com. I can finally get quality recordings that are correctly tagged and digitally remastered. I’ve deleted thousands of songs from online downloads and hard drive sharing – I’ve just learned the hard way that more than 10,000 songs is too hard to manage. More focus to my favorite genres better suites the situation.

I’m writing to share a couple of pseudo-secrets:

* Download your songs and albums and burn them as an ordinary audio CD, asap. This not only creates a CD backup of your purchase, buy also allows you to re-rip the songs back in .mp3.

* Although iTunes is the interface of choice for iPod, MusicMatch is still a superior product for managing your library existing library.

* MusicMatch has a new feature called “Super Tagging” which allows for the automatic online lookup and fix for all the songs/ID3 tags in your library. This includes adding album cover artwork in to your ID3 tags – the automation is just amazing!! It’s a testament to centralized computing.

* As you’ve found, an iPod is much easier to use when your library is correctly tagged. Now, with the newer Nano pod, adding album artwork to the tags is all the rage to get those nostalgic neurons re-fired.

As for the tunes, I’ve found myself torn between tired ole’ 70’s high school music or unfamiliar 00’s hip hop. Come on, admit it, you too??? To fix the dilemma and pretend I’m cool in my mid-life, I’ve sampled a number of streaming stations and found the Energy X station very interesting.

Also, try the iTunes New Music Tuesday podcast. It’s just great – you’ll love it. Also notice there’s something about mass marketing to people on Tuesday… Hmmm, inner secrets to human behavior…

iPod Nano Teardown

2005-09-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

iSuppli.com - A recent dissection of the new Apple iPod "Nano" music player reveals some surprising semiconductor choices. For example, notice the use of 2GB and 4GB NAND memory by Samsung. This teardown created quite a buzz in the industry. For more, do a Google search on key words "iSuppli" and "nano".

Apple Switches to Intel

2005-06-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

Apple switches to Intel - It's about time. For a decade, Apple's been floating on the wrong boat. Now that the PowerPC roadmap has all but dried up, it's time to eat crow and switch. For me, I've forgotten about debates like CISC vs. RISC that are a decade old. I just want the user experience to advance. Now it can. We "the users" can now look forward to CPUs and GPUs on our UNIX OSX systems with a billion transistors each. Way to go Apple! That move took guts.

Webby Awards

2005-05-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Webby Awards - Those zany people have published honors for best web sites again. I can only imagine the difficulties faced by the judges who have criteria on one hand and popularity on the other. The site is worth a look because you'll learn many thing you didn't know that you didn't know (i.e. the "unknown").

Adobe to acquire Macromedia

2005-04-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

Adobe to acquire Macromedia – This is smart move for both companies. Their product lines are complementary and will benefit the entire creative industry. The marketing done by both companies is exemplary (strategic and product). Although Microsoft’s Office suite is important to the office professional, creative professionals demand better graphics, web, media, and publishing tools. This software merger will drive industry demand for 64-bit multi-core processors, many gigabytes of memory, and vast storage arrays.

Wireless HotSpots

2005-03-15T17:00:00.000-08:00

Looking for a hotspot? Tryout the Motion Wireless hotspot locator.

Axentra Hardware

2005-02-25T17:00:00.000-08:00

Axentra – Now here’s a bright company that built a nice piece of hardware. Too bad they didn’t realize there was no market for it. It appears they’re exiting the hardware business and going with a software solution instead. Branding alert - It takes many times to remember, spell, correctly pronounce their name. Great web site. (style, flash, macro photography, organization).

2005 Predictions

2005-01-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

Blog predictions: No real estate bubble. Tech continues to integrate. China muscles up.