Wizard World Chicago Comic Con 2011

I'm suffering from San Diego Comic Con 2010 withdrawal still. This year I wasn't able to go as a good friend was getting married and I was his best man-- which turned out to be the best wedding I've ever been to. But anyway, you can see my post and pictures from that here.

So this year I made a last minute decision to go to Wizard World's Chicago's Comic Con. I believe the last time I went was in 1998. Thirteen years! Back then I was way more into comics, anime, manga, and bad Hong Kong kung fu movies. Okay, some of the HK movies were good. It was actually a big deal back in 1998 too. When I went in 1997 or 1996 for the first time, it was purely about comics basically. There was no representation from big companies like Marvel and DC. But in 1998, they all showed up. There were panels, discussions, and bigger names in comics showed up.

I thought things would still be like that in 1998 when I went this year. I was wrong.

In a way, it's a good thing it's not like that anymore. It's a different time now. Back in the mid to late 90s, the comic book industry was riding off The Death of Superman gimmick. It made big headlines in the news, the industry got an influx of a lot of new comic book fans (including yours truly-- me), and they could only top that by having more gimmicks. But that's a much longer story than I care to tell right now.

The Chicago Comic Con is back to more of how it was in 1996, pre-Wizard World. It's back to being about local retailers selling their comics. It's just fans dressing up, artists having their space to showcase their work, and it's just more basic now. In that sense it's good.
But it doesn't change the fact that I want to experience the glitz, the glamor, and even the Hollywood that the San Diego Comic Con is! Next year, July 12-15, 2012! I'll be ready!

Here are some of my favorite photos. Full set of pictures I took, here.

Some Thoughts on Photography, Blogging, and Coding

It was the summer of 2010 that I decided I wanted to dust off the DSLR I bought in 2006 and put it to good use more often. So throughout that summer, I made an effort to bring my camera with me everywhere I went. I brought it to work, to my various meetups I attended, and even when I walked around Chicago. I just kept taking photos of whatever I thought was interesting.

I discovered that I really enjoyed taking photos and sharing them with everyone on my social networks. I felt that I wanted to share the things that were going on around me. From comic conventions, a friend's night out, someone presenting at a meetup or conference, or the food I was eating-- I enjoy publishing it for all the world to see.

I've realized that photography, like blogging, is a form of story-telling. At least that's how I like to photograph. It's no surprise then that photography would become one of my new favorite hobbies. Like writing/blogging, photography is a craft I want to get better at. I recently came across a blog post: Want to be a Better Photographer? Become a Better Writer by Scott Bourne. That post points out that all these things have a strong correlation.

But it also occurred to me recently, that coding has a lot of similarities to photography and blogging.
Software development is basically a form of communication. I am reminded of the post: Coding: It's Just Writing by Jeff Atwood. When a developer writes code, it's basically writing. The developer communicates to the computer, what the developer wants the computer to do, in the form of code. A developer also communicates to other developers, project managers, and clients verbally, through emails, or even instant messages. Check out Jon Skeet's answer to Are good programmers good writers? I very much agree with his statement:

"clear thinking leads to clear code" - Jon Skeet 

I must thank Stackoverflow, for helping developers to combine writing and coding together. For me, the very act of writing out a question on any of the StackExchange (SE) sites, helps me get closer to finding an answer. To write a question so that others could answer, requires thinking and organization. It needs to be concise, show effort, and it has to be clear. There were probably a dozen or so questions I was going to post on some of these SE sites, that I ended up answering on my own because I sat down to clearly think and write what I needed help on. Of course I didn't bother posting the question once I figured out the answer, but in hindsight, I guess I should have.


So in essence, photography, blogging, coding are all forms of story-telling and writing. They provide a means to achieve clarity. I really enjoy doing all of the above. What's awesome about it is, there's no done-learning to any of them. You can just keep doing them for months, years, even decades, and still find ways to improve and enjoy the art.

Pictures from Chicago Alt.net: Coffeescript

Here are the pictures I took from tonight's Chicago Alt.net August 2011 meetup on Coffeescript, presented by Fawad Halim.

Some Thoughts on Traveling

In July of 2010, I quit my full time job as a software developer. I wanted to break away from the nine-to-five, travel a bit, have fun, and teach myself new things in the process. I was able to visit San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New York City, Denver, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Pattaya.



In 2011, I kept traveling, I visited Hua Hin, Phuket, Phang Nga, Singapore, Las Vegas, and Baltimore, before returning to Chicago for a time period greater than one week. Chicago is where I am right now. It's been such a rush getting on and off a plane, knowing that there's a different upcoming destination, just hours away. I've actually grown to like being in airports.



I am reminded of a blog post I read before I left for Thailand, back in October of 2010: 20 Things I've Learned From Traveling Around the World for Three Years by Tim Ferriss. I think it very much holds true.

The ones I found to be very true:

People are generally good. Most of the people I've come across have been very friendly, helpful, and well mannered towards me. This was especially true once I distanced myself from densely populated cities. Honestly, there seems to be a correlation between population density and people being unhappy or grumpy.

People don’t hate Americans. Actually, many people are either jealous or curious about Americans in general. I think their exposure to American culture is through television, movies, and what kind of technologies sprout up from the US. I often got asked the question that starts with, "Is it true that in the US..." Which leads to the next point.

Americans don’t travel. I realized this point when I was in Singapore for a conference. I met so many people from so many different countries/continents (Germany, Malaysia, Vietnam, Phillipines, Austrailia, Portugal, etc). Pretty much all of them traveled a lot or were expats. As an American, I found that my knowledge of other cultures, customs, and general map-awareness to be weaker compared to theirs. Everyone knows so much about the United States, but most Americans doesn't really know much about the rest of the world. It made me want to buy a map of the world to hang up on my wall.

You don’t need a lot stuff. This is incredibly true. I remember a general rule/saying that was posted somewhere. It goes something like: Before you pack, lay out the clothes and money you want to bring. Pack half the clothes, and bring double the amount of money. Some of the clothes I brought, I never even used. It became clear that certain clothing were favorites to wear.

Traveling doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be expensive, but it certainly doesn't have to be. The American dollar is strong, and generally goes a long way for simple basic things in other parts of the world. I highly recommend staying away from tourist traps.

Culture matters. I would add that keeping an open mind matters too. I learned that not everyone was raised with American culture. It's unreasonable for them to quickly understand jokes, references, history, and other cultural nuances Americans are used to. It really helps to be patient, to listen, and know when to talk and be thoughtful on what to say.

English is becoming universal. At least in Thailand, very basic English is taught in school. Much like how I was taught Spanish, but I never used it so I have only the very bottom basics. But with more usage, I could probably relearn it again.
But I have one more that I would add to his list:

Social Technologies matter. I used Meetup.com, Facebook, and Twitter to meet so many interesting and passionate people. Often times, they were travelers or expats. Combined with the English language, this is a great means to communicate, learn, and reach out to a local communities/individuals.>



Next month I'm looking to do some more traveling with my JetBlue BluePass. I'm still learning new things too, such as becoming a more experienced Rails developer, a better photographer, and a decent writer/blogger. I do wish to rejoin the workforce, but only once I feel comfortable and confident in what I've learned.

Why I'm excited about Spotify

I'm so excited and I just can't hide it. - Pointer Sisters (reference) 

I've been using Spotify now for a few weeks already. I've enjoyed it so much I upgraded to a premium account the very same day I signed up for it, so I could enjoy it on my mobile smartphone. Overall it's been a great service that I use almost daily. For a long time I've been waiting for music to hit the cloud, and this year alone it's really been a hit.

I once was an iTunes user, back in 2005 and 2006. I bought all my music exclusively through them. That is until my PC's hard drive crashed and my latest backup didn't contain a lot of the music I bought. Previous to this crash, I had another hard drive crash that caused me to lose a decent amount of my music collection. In fact that was what turned me on to use iTunes, I was almost at zero anyway, may as well have a fresh start!

I wasn't just upset with my PC for crashing, but also Apple's iTunes system. I bought all this music through them, and there wasn't an easy way for me to retrieve it all back, despite that I bought and owned them. And back then Apple had DRM on all of their songs. They have limits to how many CDs a song could be burned to as well as how many devices iTunes could run on!

I'm aware that I probably could have contacted Apple via email or phone, and they might have given me the opportunity to re-download my music. But I just didn't feel like doing that. To me, that feature should be built into the software.

In 2009, I discovered LaLa. I actually wrote a blog post about them back then: LaLa.com: A Better Alternative to iTunes. I loved the service. It was great because I could not only download and own my music, but I could keep it stored on their servers (the cloud) to listen to anywhere I wanted. Plus it was DRM free, I could listen to the whole song as a preview before deciding if I wanted to buy it. This was a great alternative to iTunes and a great taste of freedom.

Unfortunately, later in 2009, Apple bought Lala. The following May of 2010, Apple shut them down. I was so infuriated. A great service I liked and was using, was shutting down and I was given credit to Apple's iTunes. Like I wanted to go back and use iTunes! I was so sick of how much Apple wanted to try and shove Quicktime down my throat! Many of us speculated that Apple wanted to have a cloud storage system for their iTunes service. 2010 passed and nothing was released.

So for months following LaLa's demise, I fell back to using Songbird and Winamp, and managed my own music over a Windows Explorer once again. I also became more adament about backing up my data regularly.

I also used Amazon MP3 mostly, which was DRM-free. It was great back then but it wasn't until May of 2011 that they came out with Amazon Cloud Drive/Player. I was excited again. Once again I could buy/own/stream music to my heart's content, with the warm fuzzy feeling, knowing that my music purchases was stored safely somewhere else, and that I could access it anywhere, and re-download them all if need be. Plus there was no device limit.

Not long after, Google came out with a beta for Google Musi. I think it's great how it has a 20,000 song limit. I'm currently only at around 13,000 or so. But I personally have a few problems with it. One, there is no option to buy music from Google, this is a missing workflow currently. Two, unless you have your music's meta data incredibly organized, it can be a mess to look at. For instance, I have a lot of Thai, Chinese, and Japanese mp3s, where the Artist, Album, and other ID3 tags are incomplete or just plain messed up. This music management mess was enough to turn me off from using the service currently. Of course this is all still in beta, so by means is it a refined service for public consumption.

In June 2011 Steve Jobs revealed the iCloud service, but it won't be available until Fall of 2011. It would maybe be of interest to me if it would retroactively let me download all the previously purchased music from 2005/2006. But it doesn't change the fact that I stil do no like using iTunes even on my Macbook Pro.

In mid July 2011, Spotify says hello the the US. Hello Spotify.

Here's what I like about Spotify, despite other great music cloud services from Amazon and Google: I don't have to own and manage my music. No need to do regular backups or worry that I will lose the music I purchased, because I don't own them anymore. This is a huge relief on my part. Even the freemium desktop service allows me to listen to songs I don't own, in full. I simply pay my $9.99 per month, and I can enjoy all the American music I like, hassle free.

The social aspect is great too, but it still needs time and improvement. Public playsists was something I really enjoyed about LaLa, which was also easily discoverable by users browsing content. This isn't easily discoverable on Spotify, yet. Also, they don't have support for a variety of languages yet either-- Thai, Chinese, Japanese for instance.

Sure there are other similar services like Spotify out there like Grooveshark, Rdio, and Pandora. I admit that I haven't fully tried the alternatives fully, at least not recently. But regardless, by letting go of my need to own music, I can easily switch services as need be. To me, with all this competition for my business, that's worth getting excited about.

Getting ready to Jet Blue with Blue Pass

Last year, in 2010, I took off with JetBlue with my All-You-Can-Jet (AYCJ) pass during the month of September/October. I visited Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver. Five cities! Friends, food, and fun! It was such a fantastic journey!


On my plane rides, I met many other jet-setters flying around the US. I remember having interesting conversations with them, and even on one flight, sitting next to a dog!

Sadly, they're not offering that pass this year. Instead, they're offering the Blue Pass. Unlimited travel for THREE months. I chose to go with the Long Beach Select option. The cities available to me to/from Long Beach are: Seatle, Portland, Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Austin, and Chicago. So during the months of September, October, and November, I will be visiting some of these great cities.

My goal is still to make it out to California and find a great job and live a good life chasing down all my other dreams.


UPDATE (8/8/2011 6:44am): I bought my tickets last Thursdaay, August 4, and have yet to receive my confirmation email, which was supposed to arrive within 24-48 hours. I called JetBlue (1-800-Jet-Blue) yesterday (8/7/2011), and they told me that they are going to send me my confirmation email within 24 hours. They did give me a confirmation number over the phone, but I'll feel better once I get an actual confirmation email, hopefully today.


UPDATE (8/9/2011 12:53am): Still no confirmation email from JetBlue. What gives? I see the charge on my credit card. Why won't their system send me a confirmation email? I'll give them a call later on today.


UPDATE (8/16/2011 3:22am): Logged into my JetBlue, and saw that I have my Blue Pass. Awesome.

Purchased a Herman Miller Aeron Chair

A few weeks ago I purchased a Herman Miller Aeron chair from Home and Office Solutions up in Northbrook, Illinois. I've wanted an Aeron for the longest time, but just never felt comfortable spending a thousand dollars on an office chair. My seven-year old Ikea chair was falling apart and wasn't comfortable anymore. To be honest, it started to fall apart after two years. I really needed to get a new chair.

Not long ago I came across a blog post written by Joel Spolsky. From the post he mentions Herman Miller Aeron chairs for developers:

They are much more comfortable than cheap chairs. If you get the right size and adjust it properly, most people can sit in them all day long without feeling uncomfortable. The back and seat are made out of a kind of mesh that lets air flow so you don’t get sweaty. The ergonomics, especially of the newer models with lumbar support, are excellent.

They last longer than cheap chairs. We’ve been in business for six years and every Aeron is literally in mint condition: I challenge anyone to see the difference between the chairs we bought in 2000 and the chairs we bought three months ago. They easily last for ten years. The cheap chairs literally start falling apart after a matter of months. You’ll need at least four $100 chairs to last as long as an Aeron.  

So the bottom line is that an Aeron only really costs $500 more over ten years, or $50 a year. One dollar per week per programmer.

I think that blog post pushed me over to finally take the plunge and buy one. And so I did.

And I'm really happy I did. The chair is comfortable, sturdy, and encourages good posture with excellent support. It's a real joy to sit in this. At first I got a blue medium sized one. It is fine, but then I decided to give that one to my parents and get the large, as I am able to fold my legs comfortably in that size.

If you are thinking of getting a better chair because you sit in front of the computer all day long, I recommend you go try out a Herman Miller chair. I've looked at the Mirra line, which is slightly cheaper than Aeron, but I really felt more comfortable in the Aeron. I think you'll be glad you did.

Google Plus is for Geeks

Google Plus (G+) is for geeks. It's how it is now, and I think that's how it's going to be going forward, more or less.

I've been using G+ now for about a month. I scored an invite early on, and a few days later invited a good chunk of people from my Gmail contacts. I went through the process of making circles, refining the circles, installing the add-ons into my Chrome browser, and so forth. Basically, I did just about everything most power G+ users would do, minus adding thousands of people into circles. I personally don't see how Robert Scoble can read and sort through the tens of thousands of posts he must be getting daily. But he's a true G+ freak power user.

The first few rounds of invites really went out to the bloggers, social media giants, and digeratis. For the most part, they like it. I certainly like it. And this group all should. The community and ecosystem resembles FriendFeed (FF). For those of you who are unfamiliar with FF, it was basically a once popular real-time feed aggregator that pulled from many social media and networking sites. It was popular among the very same crowd that's using G+ now. Many call it FriendFeed 2.0.

I see that many people that I invited, just don't use it. They either don't get it, don't care for it, or don't want to bother with yet-another-social-network. Whatever the case may be, I can see that they're not generating visible content. Facebook (FB) and Twitter seems to be doing business as usual. But G+ has the very niche users: the geeks. Bloggers, photographers, software developers, entrepreneurs, techies, etc... are all generating content daily.

Honestly, this all feels very familiar to me. It's as though I've been here before....

I remember back in 1998/1999. I was an undergraduate still. Many of my friends were either in high school or also in college. I really liked ICQ as an instant messager (IM). Their software was far superior to AOL's AIM in terms of functionality. But it didn't get widely adopted amongst my American friends. Too many people were stuck with AOL as an internet service provider (ISP). By default they didn't adopt ICQ because AIM was already available to them, which all their friends were using. Instead AIM became the popular standard, and AOL eventually bought out ICQ, which turned into a bloated software with less support.

Remember when Gmail first came out in 2004? Previous to this spectacular email service, there was AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, and various other options. I remember the tech elite being the first to jump onto Gmail beta and use it. Sure Gmail in 2011 is popular (and out of beta since 2009), but despite that, there are still plenty of people still on AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, and even Comcast for email. Sometimes I wish I could stage an email intervention for those still using non-Gmail services. For the most part, people didn't switch to Gmail because of the cost of losing their email, the burden of updating their contacts, unable to think of email as conversations, the different user interface/experience (UI/UX), or even trusting Google, and I'm sure other costly reasons.

Going back into FriendFeed just a few years ago. I considered FF to be one of the best web apps that no one used. The weakness that FF had was that unless a user generated content from Twitter, their own blog, or other not-so-popular social network with an RSS feed, the service wouldn't be of much use. FriendFeed got bought by Facebook in 2009, to which it then turned into a ghost town because development and support ended.

From these three cases, we have examples of:

1. Popularity beating functionality.
2. Switch-over cost being perceived as being too high.
3. Inability to fully utilize a great service because it's not a fit.

And they are all valid reasons. Well, maybe not the Gmail one... Sorry, I'm incredibly biased towards Gmail, I love it so much!

I see all these reasons being applicable as to why Google Plus may not be a true competitor to Facebook or even Twitter. As a G+ user, I think it's already a better ecosystem than FB and Twitter. G+ has better interactions and a richer UI/UX than Twitter. The content is far better than what most FB users posts-- at least in my experience, which may differ from yours. But none of the examples would apply to geeks in general. Geeks are natural early adopters of new things and technology.

G+ a fresh start that improves upon Twitter and Facebook, althougth it still has quite a few kinks to work out and improve on. As far as I'm concerned, the G+ can just as easily stand for Geek+.

Reading List for Summer 2011

I have selected the books I'd like to complete before the end of Summer/Fall season. I think it's a nice set and variety of books.

• The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
• Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
• Eloquent Ruby by Russ Olsen
• Four Steps to Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank
• The Camera by Ansel Adams
• Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky

The Green Lantern: Blackest Night graphic novels below I already finished. Good stuff.

The History of Social Networks Part 2

In The History of Social Networks Part 1, I covered the legacy social networks that I was once a part of. I use the term legacy to mean out-dated, unpopular, and in some cases discontinued.

Now I'm going to cover the current social networks that I am active on today. I guess you can say that these are my picks, for now.

Facebook

I remember when I first heard about Facebook. It was probably from my youngest sister and another friend, both of which were in college still-- around maybe 2004 or 2005. I had already graduated and was working. I was also in graduate school at Depaul University. I kept hearing so much from these two about this new sites, which were supposedly better than anything else out there.

I admit I didn't have much interest in it since the primary users were college kids. It was a network I had long departed from for two to three years already. Eventually, I did sign up for it when I finally got around to signing up for the optional school email address. This was a time Facebook only allowed people with school email addresses to be part of their social network. This was maybe 2005 or 2006.

Facebook still didn't capture much of my interest. It may have been because blog sites such as Xanga were all the rage, especially for the eldest of the Generation-Y and most of Generation-X. Not to mention I was still blogging on my personally written blog.

Up until 2010, I used it a lot for contact management, posting and sharing interesting links of videos, articles, and pictures. I added pretty much everyone, and sought out everyone to be facebook friends. I use it quite a bit today, reluctantly. Facebook used to be fun for me, back when I had 200-400 friends on it. I could pay attention to the main feed as well as comment on people's post comfortably, without having to scroll through too much. After 600 plus friends, it no longer is the case for me. I have accepted too many friends, most of which the content shared is of low quality in my honest opinion.

This is easily the biggest social network in existence today. It used to be a network for college friends, but has since ballooned into the very social platform that everyone is expected to be on, and has spread across into other websites as the default login and identity.

Twitter

I've been on Twitter since it first started in 2006. Back then I tried it, I didn't get it, and I just unregistered my account (@sunpech). About two years later, in 2008 I tried it again (reactivating my account) after attending a social media event, where I was recommended to use Tweetdeck to help manage the stream of noise. I mean, that's how I saw it back then, noise-- it was like drinking water from a firehouse. Too much, too fast, with very small amount of signal or interest. In other words, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was too low. But thanks to Tweetdeck, it helped me manage my interest stream/lists, who to follow, and how to tweet easily. That, and I had to unfollow @guykawasaki, as that account tweets way too much.

As I've seen people tweet,

Facebook is for friends and family. Twitter is for interests.

I think this is very true. Well, at least the last sentence is.

Facebook is a mess, and interestingly enough, pure noise to me, while Twitter is everything of interest to me. It has it's own culture, limitations (140 character tweets), and community. I should give a special mention to Google Reader, although it's not really a social platform, it's a fantastic reader. Twitter very much compliments Google Reader in terms of what I read and pay attention to every single day.

Picasa
I was a Flickr user, but their desktop software wasn't as good as Picasa, so I made the switch to use the latter as my main photo application. I would say these two are the two popular photo social networks currently. I almost feel as though the rivalry between these two are like Canon vs Nikon. In the end, they're both good, very popular, but in the end it just comes down to what you want out of each. I think Flickr has a better community than Picasa, but Picasa is just far superior software, and plus they don't limit how much you can upload to your album each month.

I know about Instagram, but it's iPhone only for now. Perhaps I shouldn't say this until an Android app comes out, but I will say it anyway: I don't get why its users take such awful photos with the crazy ugly filters. The pictures of food on it make me lose my appetite. There's a time and place for the vintage photo filters, and most of the time, is not it.

LinkedIn
The social network for professionals: LinkedIn. I've been on it for a while, but never really used it for anything. I find that it's a ecosystem full of recruiters who blindly want to connect and spam you with job offers. I hope to one day fully utilize the site, as other job sites I've used lack the human/face element of a company-to-employee relationship. I think the professional social network has a lot of potential, just so long as they stick to being pure professional, and not try to deviate from that core.

Foursquare
I had a Gowalla account before I used Foursquare. What won me over was how Foursquare had apps for my Android device, as well as Blackberry and iPhone. Gowalla, like many other companies, only had an iPhone app. I think that's what prevented them from find the success that Foursquare found by releasing for all platforms at the same time. I'm not saying Gowalla is legacy or bad in any way, I just think, they would have done better if they approached the check-in, location-based social network like Foursquare did, by pushing all smarphone platforms.

I think Foursquare is still going through a lot of growth. There was a period of time in 2010 that I swore off from using the service, and started to use Yelp just because their service had better uptime during peak hours. But it wasn't until when I was in Bangkok, Thailand, did I notice the power of Foursquare. Because it's powered by the users, in that any user can add a location to the service, that it was so immensely popular in Bangkok. Yelp, unfortunately did not have a presence in Thailand at all.

Foodspotting

I would describe Foodspotting as a social network for foodies that is picture-driven. I think this is a great example of how the future of social networks isn't in one huge social network for all, but rather in specific and very niche markets. Foodspotting is obviously catered towards foodies that take pictures of their food, that is their culture.

Initially they only had an iPhone app, but in March 2011, they finally released an Android app-- so I was finally able to join and contribute from my phone.

Google Plus (G+)

This is the newest social network from the search giant Google. It's not quite open to the public, but I'm using it as a beta user currently. I often think of Google's rather disappointing past attempts at social networks: Google Buzz, Google Latitude and Dodgeball, and Orkut.

Things I would like to see with G+ is better integration with Google Reader, Music, Maps, Blogger, and Picasa. Although the latter is somewhat already the case.

I consider G+ to be a nice medium between Twitter and Facebook. Circles is a fantastic way to organize friends, and although many would say that the same feature is in Facebook, I would argue that's not quite true. With Facebook, when you friend someone, by default it's mutual, and the relationship is immediately two-way.

On G+, and even Twitter, by default it's initially one-way-- someone can follow you, but you don't have to follow back. This is a fantastic noise control. I hope to blog more about this in a post all it's own.

Spotify
I haven't been so excited about a music driven social site since Lala. I really enjoy discovering new music and playlists, and overall storing it all in the cloud. That was what Lala was before Apple bought them and closed them down. I was pretty mad at Apple for shutting down such an awesome service that was still in it's infancy. But anyway, Spotify has made it's way into the US now, and I jumped on from day one pretty much, and immediately jumped to paying a premium account.

Since the birth of the mp3, music has long had it's hand in the social network. People just want to share/steal music. However the record labels has made all of that troublesome. But all of that could be a different blog post all together.



What does the future hold? It's hard to say. But looking at the history, at least my history, of social networks, we can see a few things:

1. Social networks, like all popular things in the real world, they come and go.
2. The very niche social networks are becoming popular or at least seem to have staying power .
3. There are still new social networks and communities to be discovered.

The Internet is very much about connecting not just information, but people and their interests. The traditional social networks that tries to be everything, I think will soon discover that they can't do a good job to please everyone. Users will find a better hangout that delivers a better social platform for their specific interests.

Recent Camera Gear Purchases

I've recently made some camera gear purchases.

I upgraded my Rebel XT to a Canon 60D a few weeks ago. I also got a Canon 60D battery grip with Canon EW78D Lens Hood. Overall, I'm very happy with these purchases. I love the 60D, it's such a great step up from the Rebel XT, which I purchased 5 years ago. It feels good to use, and the pictures are also great, as expected from Canon. I really love the LCD swivel. Most important, it's just a fun camera to use.

The battery grip is a great add-on to the 60D. It does add quite a bit of size and weight to the camera, but the battery life it gives is amazing! I still have yet to drain the dual batteries-- I think I can literally take photos in the thousands before a recharge. The hood is an official one from Canon. I've had other hoods before, but getting a real one makes a big difference. The quality is there, and I love how the hood can be reversed to save space.







Canon 60D size versus Rebel XT


60D with grip versus Rebel XT


The lens hood works on my Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Standard Zoom Lens

I also supported the Capture Camera Clip System on Kickstarter. I like the idea behind this, but I must confess that I haven't really used it that much yet. It doesn't see to quite work well with my 60D with battery grip, as the camera is just too big to comfortably hook to my side. Don't get me wrong, it holds, it's strong enough to, but it's just not convenient. I still prefer my camera strap from Black Rapid.



With all this new gear, I had to replace my old backpack with a new one to fit everything in it. I went with the Lowepro Fastpack 350 (Black). So far I've been very pleased with it. It fits my 15" Macbook Pro, my 60D with grip and hood (inversed), and all my lenses! I have yet to take it with me on a faraway trip, but I hope to soon.



And last but not least, I got a new Android smartphone. I replaced my Google Nexus One with the HTC Sensation 4G. I personally consider this my most important device, as I have it on me at all times. It has my Gmail and Google App emails, my contacts, it's my camera, phone, GPS.. everything. I may not always have my DSLR on me, but I will most definitely always have my Android smartphone with me.