Part of that busy is co-planning BarCampLA-6 - if you’re in the LA area, or will be Oct 25/26, check it out!

In the mean time, I will likely keep posting to my more personal blog, Headphones Not Required, whenever time permits. It’s mostly focused on music, food, and LA, but is really just full of random.

So until next time… peace out.

I didn’t get the 3G, but instead got a friend’s old 16GB first gen… that doesn’t matter though. It’s still amazing, and I’ve fully bought into the hype around it. I’m a fully fledged Apple fangirl.

Of course, that doesn’t negate the absolute logistcal and customer service nightmare that happened on Friday / this past weekend with the launch of the 3G. Apple wasn’t prepared, and AT&T made it worse (their number porting group? Doesn’t work weekends, no exceptions… Apple didn’t know until Friday, the day of the launch, from what I have heard).

They still sold 1 million iPhones worldwide in 3 days, though.

Meanwhile, I’m posting random geeky things at Headphones Not Required in a vague attempt to keep Daily Cup of Geek more technology / business focused. Of course, that requires me posting at all.

It’s all about the user.

Because without the user, what’s the point? You might have the ultimate killer app. It might chop onions, vacuum, and change the baby (oh, and it’s free!) but if the UI is impossible and unfriendly — or even just unattractive — how will you convince users to actually use it?

Even worse are mandatory applications in the workplace. You don’t even have a choice in using it, but it’s complicated, ugly, and not remotely intuitive. Disgruntled employees shouldn’t be your biggest concern in that situation — lost productivity (and thus, lost $) is the real monster lurking there. So while making it pretty might cost some extra money, you’ll more than make it back in the long run.

My boss has said it best, I think:

I want one click. If I have to do it in 5 clicks now, it should be one click.

OK, so sometimes you can’t have one click, but if you need more than 2 or 3 clicks to get to something, you might want to stop yourself and see how you can make it easier and more intuitive to access that feature. Your app shouldn’t be a puzzle/strategy game — your users aren’t there because they got bored with the new Metal Gear: Solid game. They need to get something done, and want to get it done quickly.

Remember, it’s all about the user. Of course, if your app looks cool/pretty, but is useless… well, I can’t help you there.

I know. Any rational person would say, “But wait, Bron… wires and chips? How can they hate you? They can’t feel love or hate — they’re not out to get you.”

Lies. All lies.

A few weeks ago, I got TimeCapsule. I absolutely loved it. It took forever to run the initial back-up (160GB), but aside from that, things were dandy. I got my Airport Express to piggy-back off the network, so I had AirTunes up and running again fairly quickly (which is key… I can’t live without my tunes!). And more than anything, I was stoked to have 1TB of space to dump my digital collection of music, TV, and assortment of odds and ends (including some file back-ups from as early as 2000!).

The honeymoon was over pretty quick. I don’t blame TimeCapsule, exactly… but just technology in general.

A week or so later, after I moved to a new desk at work, my computer begin to suffer a massive failure. Whatever I did, I could only get a few network drives to work in the office. The VPN failed me. Email was hopeless (even webmail wouldn’t work, if I was “on the network” in the office). After struggling with it for 5 hours, I pinged one of our IT guys.

(Some quick specs:

I run a 15″ MacBook Pro w/ Leopard. We need Windows (XP, thank you very much) for several work apps, so I have Parallels 3.0 running that.)

After several more hours, file clean-ups, etc., we come to the conclusion that we are best off dumping my XP virtual machine. It has to be Windows causing this mayhem, right?

(Note: not actually my computer… but the feeling was very much the same.)

Unfortunately no. We’re stumped. IT guy has never seen anything like this. Hopeless. I’m on Day 2. No work is being done thanks to the drama and my computer-less existence.

By the end of Day 2, we conclude that wiping the hard drive and reinstalling Leopard is the way to go. After some missing disk drama and a painful trip to Best Buy, half way through Day 3 and I’m on my way back to being fully operational.

Except that TimeMachine back-up? Somehow it had been corrupted, and was useless.

The good news is that I thought ahead enough to back-up all of my files separately - but software, preferences, draft blog posts (I’m using ScribeFire), etc., were not lucky enough to survive the massacre and I have slowly been building my system back to where I was pre disaster.

I never thought I would be so happy to be able to work again!

That wasn’t the only technology drama. The VPN still won’t work for me; my home network crashed earlier this week; my Blackberry keeps throwing errors. I’m grateful my car isn’t more high-tech than it is (’03 Jetta), or I might be in trouble.

I joke that I’m really great at breaking stuff. Heck, that’s the main reason I bothered to sign-up with uTest. But I would call this over kill… wouldn’t you?

Both Wade and his partner, Mike Rizzo, are still working towards raising the $2,500 each required — and Wade is trying to go a step further, and raise a total of $5,000.

Please consider helping Wade and Mike out and donating on their behalf. What they are doing is remarkable, for a great cause, and is a win-win situation for everyone.

Originally I was going to participate as well, but unfortunately did not get signed up in time. However, I’m going to try to help out Wade, Mike, and the AIDS/LifeCycle event in my own way — using technology and media. Stay tuned for updates on that.

Rather than nothing going on, I’ve had the opposite problem. ScribeFire (Firefox extension for blog posting) has 10+ draft posts waiting to be finished. There have been many tech meet-ups, parties, and g33k dinner’s.

So, for now, as I clean up the place and try to get things rolling again, here’s a quick rundown of some of the highlights (past, present, and future):

• LA G33k Dinner - basically what you think. Geeks, dinner, drinks, awesomeness. Highly recommend it.
• BarCampLA - one of my last posts was actually from/about BarCampLA… if you are scratching your head, and saying “WTF is BarCamp?”, check out the BarCampWiki
• BarCampSD - this is coming up the first weekend in May! Be there, or be square…
• Twitter - yes, it’s the new black and apparently doubles as a business card as well. Frequently overheard at tech parties: “What’s your Twitter?”
• BrightKite - location updates (and yes, this can update Twitter for you)… in private beta, but I still have a few invites if you’re interested. Alternate name: StalkMe. Not sure how I feel about it quite yet…
• PicLens - really cool photo/image browsing capabilities… no, seriously, check it out
• The Flip - ridiculously inexpensive and awesome video camera. A friend just got one and is trying it out… I’m likely going to get one as well, especially if a video/blog project that I’m talking to some people about happens this summer. Come on, how cool is the Action Mount???
• I’m still living the cable free life and loving it - with everything else going on, I don’t have time for TV right now anyway

There’s more, but this will have to do for now. I will continue to dust the place off and try to get back into posting regularly. If all else fails, I may just set my Twitter updates to post on my behalf. What can I say… I am productively lazy. =)

The sessions I’ve been to so far are:

• Digital storage (Elephantdrive.com, CJ Little)
• Twiddla.com (online collaboration / whiteboard space)

But the session generating the most buzz so far is Digital Lifeforms with Travis Savo (which I sadly missed).

While I’m not doing a presentation this time (but I am participating!), I’m already thinking about a couple for the next BarCampLA (including research and social media). :)

And now I also have been convinced that I totally want to go to Burning Man!

Here’s what my bookshelf looks like:

Additionally, I have the Head First HTML book, How to Rule the World (”graduation” gift from a friend) and The Daily Drucker (gift from my awesome boss), and will soon have copies of Managing Humans (original site found here) and The Search.

I’ll admit… I should probably get a Kindle and save some trees.

Joost

The Good: According to their site, they offer up “more than 20,000 shows, with more added daily.” Joost has something for everyone.

The Bad: You have to install Yet More Software, and while it has something for everyone, that something is not in HD.

Everything Else: Don’t try this on an older computer. I’m sure it has improved from its initial days in beta, but you definitely need a solid new computer to get the most out of Joost, in addition to a steady broadband connection. But it’s free.

iTunes Store

The Good: Great selection of TV shows and movies, super easy to buy and download, fantastic video quality.

The Bad: The biggest pitfall here is the cost. Movie rentals are great, but the price of a TV series for a season rivals that of the DVD boxset (without the pretty packaging) — you’d be better off paying for cable if you want more than a series or two.

Everything Else: Super easy to put on your iPod or iPhone… but if you’re a Zune user, you’re out of luck.

ABC’s Full Episode Player

The Good: HD quality streaming if your connection speed is good enough — Lost looks better on my computer than on my TV!

The Bad: Restricted to ABC shows and you have to sit through 25 second long ads at every standard act break.

Everything Else: By far my favorite official way to get TV. The quality is absolutely stunning, and even though it is ad supported, the ads are usually pretty good and only 25 seconds long.

FOX On Demand

The Good: Very similar to ABC’s Full Episode Player, but for FOX shows (including Sarah Connor Chronicles, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and American Dad).

The Bad: It takes a few days for episodes to become available.

Everything Else: Again, I am astonished at the quality. You have the option of three different video sizes when watching a show (the largest is not full screen, but close). And there are (from my experience so far) no ads during the episodes. I just hope they serve up the next season of 24 this way!

Hulu

The Good: Huge variety of shows, with the ability to grab RSS feeds for any of them.
The Bad: Not totally keen on the navigation.

Everything Else: I need to play around with Hulu more to do it justice — the navigation quirks have turned me off in the past. Yes, when you take the time to get used to sorting out clips and episodes, it’s great… I just haven’t taken the time to do that. I think that the UI and search functionality could be improved, but it’s a great start.

What’s Next?

With 3 days to go, I still have Miro and the world of torrents to explore. The past month without cable has flown by — I don’t think I’ll be getting cable again anytime soon, even with end of the writer’s strike on the horizon, and I would definitely encourage everyone to try 30 days without cable. You would be amazed at how easy it is these days.