After seeing Microsoft's offering for the living room at the Consumer Electronics Show this year in Las Vegas, I was actually sad when Macworld (held the following week) did not announce a similar "living room experience". It was anticipated that they would announce a new Mac Mini, but the conference came and went.

Yesterday, on the verge of Apple's 30th birthday, they finally released the new Mac Mini at a private event. In typical Apple style, it was a secretive, invite only affair that everyone wanted to be at. At it's core, the future was displayed in the upgrade to the Mac Mini product line, which is less then a year old. The new Mac Mini, not only leverages the new, faster chip set from Intel, but provides a truly digital, home entertainment system at a price point that seems unimaginable (when compared to the stereo components and computer it can replace). The new Mac Mini, smaller than a box of Kleenex, connects to your TV and stereo system allowing you to surf the web, edit home movies, watch DVDs, and email from your couch.

I have the first version, which didn't include the remote control capabilities or what is known as "optical outputs" for the latest technology in sound output. It's been the most pleasant computing experience of my life. It simply works. It maintains itself and provides more things for me to play with than I have time for.

For those of you that don't yet have a computer hooked up to your TV, this is the one you want! While most of my blog entries are focused on my own ideas, I had to write about this event. We are finally to the point where computers are leaving the office desktop and showing up in our living rooms, pockets and cars. They will connect us to everyone and everything in a time frame that will seem faster then the advent of the Internet. I imagine that within a couple of years, most of my dreams of an integrated multi-media lifestyle will be available. Broadband in the homes, Wi-Fi in every coffee shop and soon to be city, third generation cellular networks, all provide the communications platform for these new devices to share all of our personal media with us anywhere we are. Watching your TiVo'd episode of your favorite show will be just as easy on the bus as it is in the home.

I was lucky enough to receive an invite to ski what may become the Bitterroot Resort between Lolo and Florence, MT. As the ski resort is still in planning, there are no lifts so they will take us up the runs on Snow Cats and we get to ski a half-dozen or so. Unfortunately my camera batteries are dead so we’ll see if anyone else has photos, otherwise I may re-edit and write my commentary.

UPDATE: Cell Phone Camera Photos of Bitterroot Resort

Riding up the mountain in the back of the cat. Mike and I showed up late so they left one cat behind waiting for us for our first trip up the mountain.

Riding up the mountain part-way with view of Bitterroot Valley (Lolo, MT) and Missoula to the north.

We had a small group of people (about a dozen) skiing and we took some groomed runs and some fresh powder runs (we were first to ski them). Two snow cats met us as the bottom and hauled us up each run, all day long.

I must say it was a great time and I’m thoroughly impressed with some of the plans they have for building the resort. I was shocked that it may take 40 years before reaching the maturity of some well-known resorts but if they get Forest Service cooperation, we could see some lifts as early as next summer on phase 1.

Thanks to Jim, Lacy and of course my host Mike for a great day of fun in the sun!

My handy little digital compass and thermometer in my truck’s rear view mirror tormented me with the fact that it was -4 degrees while driving to the office this morning. Even after warming up for 20 minutes, my truck still was stiff with turning, etc. Brrr! I guess this gives me a good excuse NOT to be doing yard work - woo hoo! Thankfully my toys lately are all indoor.

I just put together my 2nd r/c airplane, a pylon racer called the shoestring, and my buddy Travis and I flew our airplanes and my helicopter yesterday evening at one of his father’s buildings. I wish I had 10 more batteries for each, but then again, our significant others probably wouldn’t appreciate us showing up home that late. We each have 3 batteries for our butterflies (worlds lightest indoor r/c plane), 2 batteries for our pylon racers and I have 3 batteries for my helicopter. On average 8-15 minutes’ flight time per battery means we did get some good fun in, despite the blistering cold outside.

If we get good flying our indoor planes I think we’ll purchase outdoor planes and fly them this summer. Anyhow, that’s my whining about the cold weather and productive entertainment solution to it (aside from watching Olympics on television) - DVR gives me freedom from TV schedules, thank goodness.

Almost a year ago, the little firefly hit the wireless scene with its lively glow and child accessibility. It’s a phone for kids. It makes it really easy to call mom and dad, and for mom and dad to call their kid. It’s got only a few buttons to keep things simple and provides complete parental control. As a wireless geek, I have to comment on what I think is one of the cutest gadgets I’ve seen. It’s got to be one of the coolest toys in Toys R Us now. And with any first generation device, there are a lot of other things this phone could do in the future. While I don't have kids today, I was one and remember how my over protective mom always wanted to know how I was. Having lived in two households, I also know how valuable it is to the kid to have a way to reach both parents whenever they want. Below outlines my initial thoughts on the current product and ideas for Firefly Mobile's future.

Safety
The 911 button is a great start. Add a GPS to the phone so that you can offer the e911 service that allows our 911 centers to better determine the callers position without requiring their input, and you’re really set. As I see it, with kids there are a million possibly scenarios of them getting themselves into trouble or it finding them. I’d go beyond 911 & e911 and add an alarm function that blasts a high pitched alarm sound when activated. This could be used for those situations where they’re stuck in something or even worse, someone is trying to take them somewhere they don’t want to go. None of these measures handles all situations a kid could find themselves in, but the more mitigated the better.

Location
Presence has become a popular term and concept with the advent of instant messaging. Most versions now even show when the person is on their computer versus a mobile phone and some are getting smart enough to tell the difference between someone at home and at work. But, what about true presence? This is a valuable concept when it comes to parents. Knowing where your kids are can be invaluable to a little comfort while at work. The next generation firefly needs to better integrate the GPS technology available today. The firefly should not only let parents call their kids, but should let them know where they are and notify them if they leave a predefined safe zone. Learn more. This is the key feature of the Wherifone by Wherify Wireless.

Communication
As our wireless infrastructure and technology advances, so will our abilities to communicate. It seems to me that mom or dad would much rather see their little ones face then simply hear their voice. My bet is that we’ll see versions of these kids phones in the short future that allow video to be sent and received. Imagine what a parent would pay to see their kids smiling face at lunch time. Thankfully, these aren’t for teens! Imagine having your mom trying to see what you’re up to…

Additional Ideas

• Quick Messages or Alerts - provide parents the capability to send a text message to their child reminding them of something they need to do or where they're suppose to be; could be SMS or email


• Calendar Function - kids schedules are almost as crazy as a business executive; keeping track of it all could be easy with a web based calendar that sych'd with the phone similar to Danger's Hiptop


• Games - can't we let them have snakes at least! make them cherish it so it doesn't get lost easily


• Lights, Camera, Action! - why can't they have a way to take pictures and send them with little messages to mom, dad and the grandparents

As my aunt is an artist, and early adopter, I grew up owning hand-me-downs of every Macintosh model built up until the PowerMac 7200/90. Upon enrolling in college, I then made the switch to PCs with my first laptop (a Compaq Presario) and then Dell P3/600 Desktop. For 10 years I’ve been working on PCs (primarily notebooks from Toshiba and Dell) and this past year I decided to buy a couple Mac Minis, mainly to act as web terminals for telivisions in my home. I liked them so much that I decided last month to make the switch, ordering my MacBook Pro. I eagerly await its arrival. I still use PCs and just purchased two new ones for my office (developer workstations) and will likely upgrade my current Dell Laptop to either another Dell or and IBM ThinkPad. However, I have officially made the switch - now Apple just needs to send me the darn thing…

Ordered: January
Est. Ship Date: Feb 15
Est. Delivery Date: Feb 23 !!!

Enjoy!

While I was in college at The University of Montana, I helped teach others about web design and development. One of my indendent studies was to create a tutorial that could teach students the basics of web application design/development, and provided them source code so they could run the demo on their PC.

As I no longer host my personal site in a Windows environment, I had kind of let my resource section of my site “die”. I just found that the University of Montana Business School is still hosting this tutorial so I though I would furnish a link:

ASP / VB Script Tutorial

Enjoy!

I just saw the movie “Firewall” with Harrison Ford. I thought it was great entertainment and would recommend it.

I’m pleased to say that employee number 1 is not myself, but is definitely adding value to the company. I have tasked him with completing some store setup/automation programs to allow me to take the next step in growing Goomzee Commerce, either reseller, area rep, affiliate or franchise marketing.

The new program will allow others to log in and create stores without any technical knowledge whatsoever. I’m looking forward to these improvements as they take us one step closer to 100% touchless account provisioning (automatic order, domain registration, credit card billing, server setup and now store setup).

I’m very please with progress and excited about the other tasks we’ll be tackling. In addition, I’m now able to wrap up a side project and allocate more time to new ventures.

Well I must get ready as I am speaking to a group of MBA students for a course sponsored by MADE. We had a nice dinner last night at the Depot (thanks Jeff!) and met some of the speakers. I guess I better get people rallied for hours of snacking and commercial critiquing, oh and I think there’s a football game on the tele today as well.

Goomzee has moved into a new office in Rose Park Center. I established the office primarily for business meetings and a place for developers to work on product enhancements and creation/support/enhancement of new products. My time will be split between my home office and this new office, periodically working alongside my employees as needed.

Finally a whiteboard!

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This past month I have purchased 2 planes and just bought a new helicopter, all intended for indoor radio-controlled fun. I learned real quick that flying devices require a lot of concentration and some trial/error when learning to fly - in short, buy spare parts as you’re likely to break lots of them.

The kitten looking on as I open up the new toy “is that for me?”.

I test flew the helicopter in my living room, with minimal space, but managed to maintain a hover in front of the television long enough for Jamie to take a photograph.

Helicopter hovering in living room during first night of flying.

Of course, I broke the helicopter as it bumped items in the living room, breaking pieces that I had already purchased replacement parts for. I have re-built it a few times now, usually after my idiotic attempts to fly it in a space about 5 feet cubed. Once I find a nice open space for flying, I assume I’ll then not need it, but at least I’ll run less risk of breaking parts and the bank.

Norton/Symantec Ghost has long been a network administrator’s friend/foe. I have always been supported by sysadmins or technical architecture teams so I had never a need to set up workstations and create images of drives to rapidly deploy a configuration to all machines in the lab or network. Well I had a crash course this week and finally got it all to work - I thought I would share how with others so they don’t feel the same agony.

I used Norton Ghost 8.2 Corporate Edition. It is similar to Ghost 2003. I hear Ghost 9 and current version, Ghost 10, have some easier handling of my situation but again, I had to make due with what was available - IT mantra, I reckon.

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