iPod Touch

I finally treated myself to a new gadget. It was a toss up between getting an EeePC or the iPod Touch. Although I think the EeePC is a pretty cool device and affordably priced, I decided to go for the iPod Touch. I've been looking for something that added mobility to my online life, but I wasn't up to paying at&t $80 a month for the iPhone. Granted the iPod Touch is limited to only available wifi hotspots so I am constantly looking for places I can get access. In the area I work there are a bunch of access points that show up on the grid but have not been of much use. The Roadrunner Speed Zone shows the entire section between Walmart, Sam's and Starbucks but those turn out to be not accessible by the iPod Touch. The Speed Zone tech support told me that the access points are located on Ala Moana Hotel and are pointed down to that area on Keeaumoku so it's probably due to the signal strength and/or the receiver capability of the iPod Touch. I also tried the McDonald's wifi hotspot, which is nicely touted on their website but found it a pay-only service. I can tell the Keeaumoku McD store doesn't get many users. The store manager there couldn't find any information on it and thought it was a free service. The only place that I've found to work, so far is the Apple Store at Ala Moana shopping center. No problem getting connected there but a bit out of the way for me to be hanging out during the day. So what mobility benefit am I getting out of this iPod Touch, you might ask. Well definitely I am reacquainting myself with the podcasting world. I am enjoying stuff like Buzz Out Loud, This Week in Tech, the Transmission and cool music podcasts like KEXP's Music That Matters. I've been enjoying it so much that a cop called to me while I was walking and told me to pay attention to the cars. I think he was over reacting but what the heck, it must have been a good song.

Bytemarks Cafe

I just got word this past week that I'll be doing a weekly radio show on KIPO-FM 89.3, one of the Hawaii Public Radio stations here in Honolulu. Of course the show will be called Bytemarks Cafe and will be about tech and the Internet, mainly oriented around the people doing cool and interesting things in our community. It'll be a magazine format with news bytes, interviews, cool websites and an audio pick of the week. I am always on the hunt for information like this so if you have any suggestions please send them by way. Over the next few weeks I will put up a blog and wiki for feedback but you can also contact me directly at bytemarks [at] gmail (.) com or Twitter me at Bytemarks. The air date for the show will be this coming July which gives me a little time to gather my resources and develop a format. I am totally excited about this opportunity. I've always had this love affair with radio dating back to my days at Stanford when I did a radio show there. Believe it or not, I know a couple of people (not including myself) who've actually heard that show. Another interesting side note, it'll be 10 years, this year since Bytemarks debuted in the Honolulu Advertiser as a tech/Internet column. Anyway, more details to follow. In the meantime, if you've got any show ideas, please let me know. You know me, I am game for almost anything.

Matt Mullenweg @ HMAUS

Thanks to the Hawaii Macintosh Apple Users group, Matt Mullenweg (aka @photomatt, ma.tt, automattic.com) spoke at their annual event on Saturday, April 26. Of course the discussion was mostly about WordPress and blogging but that is what the 50 or so people, crammed into the lecture room in Krauss Hall @ UH wanted to hear. It's one thing to use Wordpress, it's another thing to hear the founding programmer of one of the most popular platforms in this Web 2.0 world of ours. Matt talked about Wordpress.org for the grow your own types and Wordpress.com for the no-hassle types. He joked in the beginning about how he was going to espouse the merits of MS Vista which got a bunch of laughs from this Mac crowd. What was funny though was his initial attempt to do the preso with his MacBook Air but having to defaulted to his Vista PC when the Air couldn't talk to the projector. Ah, such is life. Matt is a young, energetic and articulate spokesperson. He demoed cool features of WordPress like the Gallery feature which appeals to the photographer in all of us. He also covered projects currently under development at Automattic.com, like monotonedemo.wordpress.com, podcast support, buddypress.com, gravatar, bbpress and others. As typical of talks like this, you leave realizing there is a lot more to this picture than originally thought. I will be spending the next several weeks/months figuring out how to put all of this to use. If you missed the talk mobile lifecaster @Hawaii was there with is portable webcam and archived the entire talk on Ustream.tv. Mahalos again to the folks at HMAUS, Eugene, Terrance and the Wolfman!

1st Annual Hawaii Geek Meet

Everyone has their passion and for Ron it's Amateur Radio. Ever since I've known Ron, now going on close to 18 years, he's been the ham radio guy. But that's what a geek is, someone who is extremely interested in something almost to the point of obsessive. Normal people might find this peculiar but deep down inside we all have our geek tendencies, if you don't then you just might be a tad boring. So whether it was Ron and his mobile ham radio rig, Paul with his solar telescope, Bob with his talking pulse meter, the medieval warriors with their broad swords, Helen with her rockets or Team Twitter Hawaii with their customer tees, what made the 1st Annual Hawaii Geek Meet such a success was the unity in diversity. It was such an interesting cross section of nearly 100 attendees. You were bound to find something captivating or learn something new in the process. I took a bunch of picture but so did everyone else. You can find all the Hawaii Geek Meet photos here. You can also read the Twitter conversation by going to TweetScan.com and scan for #geekbbq. That Sunday went by super fast. The only thing I wish for was a three day weekend. Since Monday was a work day, I am ending this post here and getting some sleep before Tuesday sneaks up on me.

Hawaii.alltop.com

Thanks to Neenz and fellow Iolani alum Guy Kawasaki, Bytemarks is now on Hawaii.alltop.com. I know Guy's been working on Truemors.com and now Alltop.com but it has really been Neenz that brought the awareness of the sites to top of mind, for me at least. I was just captivated when Neenz was telling me the story about how she met Guy and through a simple introduction and show of enthusiasm she became the point person in Hawaii for Truemors. That just goes to show, you can't be too shy about seizing the opportunity. So when I heard that Neenz was consulting with ubergeek Ryan Ozawa about a site on Alltop.com dedicated to Hawaii I figured I better get on the bandwagon. Alltop.com, the site, aggregates the best sites as recommended by folks like you and me, and vetted by people like Neenz. The Hawaii.alltop.com specializes on sites about Hawaii. They feature all the top bloggers, newspaper and television websites. You can easily move your mouse over a blog post title and the content appears. You don't even have to click through. You get it all on one page. Like reading it off a news rack. Okay, now I better get cracking on some frequent posts since I don't want to be the stale site. Mahalo Neenz and Guy!

Google vs. IT Depts.

Now that I work in an good size IT department, articles like these from TechRepublic catch my attention. I've been a longtime fan of Google and find myself using them more and more in my personal and small business computing. My Firefox home page is set to iGoogle, I am always on Gmail and get my Tweets get sent directly to Google Talk. I use Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Analytics and the list goes on. If and when Google Health was available I would definitely use that. Google is everywhere and as this article points out sits "on the biggest pile of information that has ever been collected in the world.” Enough so that Gartner has classified Google as a disruptive technology. It's not hard to imagine IT services being outsourced to Google, if not in whole, certainly in parts. It is clear that any IT shop unable to quantify and communicate its value will get outsourced. Hold onto your seats as another paradigm shift is about to occur.

Tweetcloud

I started to see people's Tweetclouds posted to Flickr and announced on Twitter so I thought I would give it a try. Information visualization has this strange attraction to me. I loved it back in the late 90's when Apple was experimenting with Project X aka HotSauce. Nowadays there are all manner of ways to visualize information. Tweetcloud basically goes through your public tweets and tabulates the occurrence and recurrence of words you use in your posts. It gives you a general idea of what you've been tweeting and any recurring themes. You can also run Tweetclouds of your friends but be aware that if they are verbose the Tweetcloud will take a while to generate.

What do I do?

That is probably the most frequently asked question I get these days. Simply put I am a technical liaison between the HMSA business units and the IS dept. Cool huh. Well, the devil is in the details and believe me there are a lot of details but for the most part that is what I do. Technology, whether it's the Internet, telecom, enterprise IT systems or networking has a level of complexity that tends to grow over time. People don't want to deal with these complexities so guys like me are needed to explain it in bullet points, break it down and keep it moving. I was trying to explain how IT was needed to handle all this claim processing to my dad and his comment was, "Don't they have a clerk to do that?" Maybe I failed in my attempt to explain but nevertheless, the fun part about it is staying on the bleeding edge with some of the new technologies and initiatives. We'll be rolling out a new hand held wireless device for employees which means new gadgets and there are social media initiatives in the brew. I'm also working on a z/OS mainframe upgrade which I am sure only a rare few of you even care about.

Now the second most frequent question I get is: Did HMSA raise the rates just to hire you? Ha, yea, right! The right answer is here. I'll leave this it to the regulators and accountants. I'll stick to technology, it's simpler.

HMSA Center

It's official, I got my badge. This is the home of my new job and where I will be spending the better part of the day. Our first day was spent in new employee orientation but I get the feeling that orientation is going to take a lot longer than one day. Where telecom has its share of acronyms, HMSA and the medical insurance coverage business has its own unique set of alphabet soup. It'll be like learning a new language all over again. I am in the IS (Information Systems) department so at least there is some familiarity there. The people are nice and everyone there seems to quite happy with their jobs. Tomorrow's another day of orientation but more importantly I'll get my laptop. I feel so out of it when I am not connected.

New Chapter Starting

It's been about 2 months since getting let go from Hawaiian Telcom and having those two months to clear my mind has been invaluable. I look back at the day I walked out of that HT exit door and see it as the day I walked into a great new life! I got to experience the culture of Bhutan, played the Samurai Game, kept in touch with the Bytemarks lunch bunch, Manoa Geeks and Flickr Friday meetups, did a bunch of lion dances for Chinese New Year and launched a Monday night tai chi practice, not to mention checking out the Maitreya project, ikebana exhibit and actually borrowing books from the public library. It's amazing what a little extra time can afford you.

Starting tomorrow I will add one more thing to that list: a new job. I will leave it a mystery for now since I haven't walked in the door yet and I still have my acceptance papers. I'll give you a hint, it is a lot more stable than telecom! I do plan to take a picture of the entrance and post it to Flickr. That'll make for a nice transition, walking out of one door and into another. Life never ceases to amaze me. Stay tuned...

Utterz

Found a new social network tool to play with. It's cool to be able to drop an audio file into a blog or send it straight to Twitter. The thing that will keep me coming back is it's ease of use. When the moment hits me, I just pick up the phone, call Utterz and the audio file gets posted. I tend to like the short message format rather than coming up with 20-30 minutes worth of audio for a full on podcast. That takes work! Now if I have an idea to share or just want to shoutout to my friends, Utterz allows me to do that. Plus I got cell minutes to burn anyway so what the heck.

Samurai Game

A haiku poem I wrote while contemplating life the morning of the Samurai Game:

Spring is in the air
The Sun pierces through the trees
Gecko leaps from rock.

And the day after:

The morning is here
Your life has begun anew
Don't waste the moment!