I made my first friend on the Internet when I was 14 years old. It was over a service called Quantum Link, which later grew into a little company, that I know you’ve heard of, called AOL. Chris lived on the other side of town from me, and it was odd to actually meet someone from your local area in a chat room. We exchanged phone numbers one night and called each other once a week or so and talked on the phone. We met at the mall downtown a couple of times, mind you this was in the late 80s and early 90s. I don’t think my parents thought there was a chance I would meet a pedophile over q-link. So Chris and I met. He wasn’t a creep. He was everything he said he was and I was nerdier than I said I was, which he already knew and was okay with.… [Read More]

Every year, I watch WWDC with interest. I watch it from a consumer standpoint, and not a developer standpoint. I fully expected Apple to release a hardware product at WWDC this year, but last year, the developers were quite upset that Apple had forgotten about them in all the iPhone 4 hype. Certainly Gizmodo’s checkbook journalism and the sensation that this caused in the media, so huge actually that the story reached CNN, was a show stealer.

This year, was entirely unlike last year. This year, the WWDC keynote delivered by Apple focused on developer tools and developer features in Apple’s upcoming offerings for their devices. Of course, I’m talking about OSX Lion, iCloud and iOS 5.

There is a great article on iCloud by Andy Ihnatko in the Chicago Sun-Times that tells you everything you need to know about iCloud in a way that only Mr. Ihnatko can. You can read the article for yourself, but this quote sums it up nicely, “Apple forcefully made the point that iCloud is meant to do no less than replace the PC in its current role as the hub of the digital experience, and relegate it to the status of Just Another Device that syncs data between itself and everything else”.… [Read More]