Category: Technology

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Photography Technology Travels

London Part 2

On Sept 15th, 2011, I began the lifestyle that would define me for the following months; that of a backpacker. My goal was to explore the world, learn about other cultures, and meet new people solely through mobile applications and social networks. Armed with an unlocked iPhone and 7 days worth of clothes, I made my way around based on the recommendations of friends and followers.

When I awoke Monday morning, Blair was determined to show me what she claimed was “the best place to get bagels” in Europe. Growing up in New York, I was spoiled rotten with great bagels, so I was instantly skeptical of her claim.

It turned out that this place was also somewhere that Lis Rock had already suggested via Twitter based on her travel experiences. And interestingly, there is a competing bagel shop right next door as well. So we decided to try both to determine which was better.

For me, the litmus test of a good bagel shop is their toasted poppy seed bagel with butter. These bagels had little in common with American style bagels. They were smaller, softer, typically plain (as opposed to seeded or spiced), and near-as-I-could-tell neither shop offered the option to have them toasted.

Unfortunately, only the second of the two shops had a poppy seed bagel on their menu. However, the shop without the poppy seed option turned out to have much better butter than the first. Ultimately I was left unable to make a conclusive decision on which was the better bagel. As far as I am concerned, neither were bagels, but I still enjoyed the experience.

After breakfast, Blair and I wandered through the city to the flower market. There we relaxed while listening to street musicians and just watched the hustle and bustle of people around us.

We then took off exploring through the city checking out the aFrom there, she took me to the financial district to check out the architecture as well as St. Paul’s Cathedral. I finally got to visit the famed Covent Garden shopping district and once again took the advice of Jim Binder by checking out a pub called the Nag’s Head. 

The Nag’s Head was an Irish style pub with an extremely short bar and a variety of Adnam’s beers on tap. We rested there with a pint and some snacks briefly before heading back to meet up with her husband Patrick, for dinner at a pub near their flat.

The following day Blair and I took a suggestion from my aunt to visit The Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum was hosting an exhibit entitled “The Power of Making,” which explored the ways people can create things of beauty or function out of the unexpected. Perhaps the most interesting example of which was this amazing Crochetdermy bear.

We wandered a bit more from there and met up again with Patrick at the Albion. Before calling it a night, we caught up with some of his friends for a quick drink and conversation. I had to head to bed as the next morning I was off to Paris via the Eurostar.

Despite cramming a lot in, my time in London was as laid back as I could have hoped. From there on out, the real trip was set to begin.

Full London photo set.

Categories
Photography Technology Travels

London Part 1

On Sept 15th, 2011, I began the lifestyle that would define me for the following months; that of a backpacker. My goal was to explore the world, learn about other cultures, and meet new people solely through mobile applications and social networks. Armed with an unlocked iPhone and 7 days worth of clothes, I made my way around based on the recommendations of friends and followers.

Traveling from Brighton to London seemed like it would be easy enough. However, when I arrived at the train station, I found that service to London had been canceled due to some sort of security issue. All was not lost however, as one of the friendly train attendants were able to help me figure out a route into the city using a variety of transfers.

I eventually arrived in East London and specifically to Cheshire Street, where my friend Blair and her husband Patrick live. Although she’s originally from South Carolina, I know Blair from Chicago, where she lived briefly to attend the School of the Art Institute’s graduate program in painting. At some point, Blair left to study abroad for a semester where she met Patrick. Fast forward a few years, and they are now married and living together in London.

My visit to London just happened to coincide with the Bermondsey Street Festival, where Blair was showing some of her artwork. Unfortunately, it also coincided with Patrick being out of town for a friend’s bachelor weekend.

After resting a bit at Blair’s flat, we made our way over to the gallery for an opening cocktail reception. There I met several of her friends and other artists who were participating in the show. I had a thrilling discussion with one gentleman, Alex, on the artistic merits of digital tools for artwork and the case for, and against, and the brilliant Japanese animation film Akira.

The next day I set out with Blair and several of her friends to the actual Street Festival. After an hour or two, I decided to split off from the group to venture out and explore London. I figured I would take the time to get to know Gowalla‘s newly revised iPhone app and its ‘Gowalla Guides’ feature. For those unfamiliar with Gowalla, it is a location-based social network that previously was built around “checking-in” to a venue similar to Foursquare (which I wrote about when it debuted at SXSW ’09.)

Recently Gowalla decided to concede the check-in war and revamp their app in a different direction. Their approach was to feature ‘city guides’ and recommendations of things to do. I was a big fan of the old app, so I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to give the new one a go.

First things first, I head off to find the Apple Store Regent Street. 

Yes, I’m a nerd, I know. But Apple Stores are a godsend to travelers in all seriousness. The stores feature free Wi-Fi, clean bathrooms, water fountains, and usually (but not always) a place to sit down for a while. Apple is also very particular about where they build their stores and the design of them. So if you can find a city’s Apple Store, not only will it generally assure that you’ll see some beautiful architecture, but you’ll also find a lively shopping district with good (albeit expensive) places to eat.

Once I’d caught up with everything I needed to, I popped open Gowalla to look at what was nearby. When I saw that London’s famous Picadilly Circus was a short walk away, I decided to head off in that direction. From there, I made my way to Green Park and eventually Buckingham Palace.

The Palace is a sight to behold that, unfortunately, was closed when I arrived at 6pm. Thankfully, I was still able to see the guards from the gate and talk to some of the assigned police officers. I also got a bunch of great shots from the monument across from it.

I wandered on further through the Palace parks and noticed that I could see the famous ‘London Eye’ from the park. So I decided to walk towards it, where I eventually discovered Big Ben and the bridge between them. The area around Big Ben was very alive with street performers and tourists, and I got a good laugh watching them. From there, I decided to take the advice of Jim Binder via Twitter and caught a cab over to ‘The Old Red Cow’ for a bite and a drink. Sure enough, Jim’s suggestion was spot on, and ‘The Old Red Cow’ was a cozy bar with a great atmosphere, a friendly bartender, and a heck of a burger. Shortly after that, I headed back to Blair’s via the Underground and called it a night.

Photoset now posted here.

Categories
Business General Photography Technology Travels

Grid Meets Road – World Travel in the Digital Age

On the 19th of September, I will embark on an adventure that will almost certainly change my life. I am heading overseas to Europe to travel full time until February of next year.

Along my way, I will use digital devices and social media tools to explore and find what to do in each respective city. I will document my experience on this blog, Flickr, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, FourSquare, Gowalla, Tumblr & maybe even YouTube. I will attempt to find places to say either with friends from these services or using sites like CouchSurfing and AirBnB.

The idea is to “crowdsource” my adventure, asking for you, the reader, to supply me with input as to where to go, what to see, etc.

My end goal will be not just to explore the world but to really test the limits of our global communications network, the so-called “global community.” Can we, “the internet,” actually supply what one person needs to know on such an adventure? How connected are we really through these services, and how easy (or hard) is it to maintain the relationships with your loved ones while traveling full time?

I have also submitted a panel to next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival and hope to share the results of my trip with you there and eventually publish a book on the experience.

I will share more details about the trip as we get closer to leaving, but for now, I could use your help.

Please do me a favor and vote for my panel to be accepted to SXSW… the voting period ends tonight, Friday the 2nd, at midnight. You can do that here.

Also, if you’re interested, you can donate to my experiment as well here.

Anyone who donates me any money (it doesn’t matter how much or little) will have their name on a slide at our SXSW presentation should it be accepted. Thanks!

Categories
Business Technology

On Apple Rumors: A Tale of Two iPhones?

In the time I spent working for Apple Retail, I was constantly asked about rumored product releases, and more often than not, the customer asking would fail to believe that we employees didn’t have any sort of advanced knowledge. That really was the case, and even if we did know something, we couldn’t tell them anyway, so why bother asking?

I guess because that wasn’t 100% true.

The thing is, while we almost never had advanced knowledge confirming new products, we were all engrossed by the Mac news/rumor sites. Although we were contractually obligated not to contribute to them, nothing stopped us from talking and speculating to one another during lunch or at the bar after work. As an employee, you get to know Apple’s psychology pretty well, and it was often easy to tell which stories were real and which were fake.

So while we didn’t officially know what was coming down the pipeline, it was often the case that we “knew,” but we still couldn’t talk about it. There is a certain amount of buzz to rumors combined with timing and the company’s actions that would make it clear that something was up.

Recently sites have been talking about the next iPhone being only a mild upgrade and referring to it as the “iPhone 4S”. For as long as it has been around, I’ve HATED this rumor.

There seems to be an assumption that because there was an iPhone 3Gs to follow iPhone 3G that Apple is going to repeat this pattern and even call it the “iPhone 4S”. The major flaw in this conclusion is so obvious it boggles my mind that sites miss it.

The iPhone 4’s “4” in its branding is different than the 3G’s “3”. The 4 in the iPhone 4 represents it being the fourth model of iPhone, whereas the 3 in the iPhone 3G represents the 3G speed of its connection.

Apple is a company tightly fixated on branding. Even if the next upgrade were a small one they simply wouldn’t just slap an “s” on the end of the “iPhone 4” and call it a day instead of releasing an iPhone 5. Regardless of what the marketing name would be, it would still be the 5th model of the phone. They especially wouldn’t then just call the next phone the “iPhone 5” the following year as it would actually be the 6th version and so on. The logic is broken.

Branding aside, it also seems clear to me that after waiting more than a year, Apple’s going to do more than a modest bump to the iPhone. While the iPhone 4 is doing exceptionally well after 15 months on the market, the changes will need to be significant if only to keep consumers interested and competitors behind. The rumors of a larger screen, better camera, and a tapered form factor seem to gel with that.

Meanwhile, the now two-year-old iPhone 3GS is the second best selling phone on the market. It is clear Apple benefits from giving customers the choice of a lower-priced option. This one-two punch has served them well at retaining market share in the face of Android so the logical conclusion would be that an iPhone 5 will be announced this fall, and Apple will keep the iPhone 4 around discounted like they did the 3GS.

But the rumor is that the next iPhone is also now coming to Sprint and T-Mobile too, which would make sense. The problem is T-Mobile’s 3G network uses a different frequency than AT&T, so if Apple wants to support them, they need to introduce either a separate phone for their network or a phone with a chip that is compatible with both networks. Meaning they’d have to manufacture three different iPhone 5s for the 4 different carriers, and that’s not counting storage sizes or colors and this still leaves them without a low-cost option on T-Mobile’s network.

Then I start thinking about this and the fact that before the Verizon iPhone 4 was launched, there were all sorts of antenna redesigns that leaked that contained SIM card slots, which the Verizon phone does not and now suddenly similar things are showing up again.

All signs seem to be pointing at it, but no one seems to notice. My gut says that Apple is planning to launch not one, but two new iPhones this fall, and both will be available on all four major US carriers. I believe we will see a mildly revamped iPhone 4 and an “all-new” iPhone 5.

Apple will, however downplay the 4’s revamp with a comment like “the iPhone 4 has proven to be the most popular phone in history, and it’s not slowing down so today we’re making it available to T-Mobile and Sprint customers too”. No new name, and no upgraded specs, they’ll want the press to focus on the iPhone 5, not a bunch of internal changes to a 15-month-old device.

How will they do this? Instead of individual models for individual carriers, I believe that both the revised four and the new five will have both CDMA and GSM chips in them will be compatible with all four carriers right out of the box.

Externally this does away with customer confusion as most people don’t know/understand/care about the differences between cellular networks and frequencies; they simply want to buy a phone and have it work. Secondly, this dramatically simplifies their product line, inventory, and manufacturing and allows them to further leverage the economies of scale that CEO Tim Cook so masterfully does already.

Wouldn’t be half bad for his first public move as CEO either.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Categories
Business Chicago Technology

SEO Food For Thought: Critical Mass Chicago

In Chicago there are two prominent “brands” that operate under the name “Critical Mass.”

One is a digital PR agency.

The other is a monthly gathering of cyclists who flood the streets with bikes on the last Friday of every month.

One represents brands such as Clorox, Nissan, AT&T, and Rolex on the internet. Including brand monitoring and campaign management.

The other has no branding, no official leaders, and a very loose digital presence.

Guess which one has better SEO?

Excuse me, I’ve got a bike to go ride.