Tikkabik

This blog entry isn’t about me. This is about some of my dearest friends in the world. It’s marginally about coffee. More specifically, Starbucks Via coffee, which is instant.

The first guy’s name is Corey and he lives in Canada. Hey’s atypical for what Americans think of as a Canadian because he’s not into hockey, and he doesn’t look like the cheery, open-faced local color you see in all the Olympics crowd shots. He looks more like he should be doing stuntwork for Paul Giamatti.

This is him on the right.

In the middle is this really nice guy we met from Vancouver, where they’re had the winter Olympics this year. The three of us were hanging out at a Bears of San Francisco event a few years back. His name is Jean-Luc. His last name isn’t Picard, though. That would be really freaky.

The weird thing is that Jean-Luc and I have only ever hung out once in person. Our relationship is almost entirely online. But I consider him a real friend anyway, because I know that if either one of us could get together and hang out, we absolutely would.

I like Canadians. I like most Canadians more than I like most Americans. Here’s another Canadian I really like.

His name is Jim. Jim’s like having a brother who’s the guitar player in a rock band. You know, the guy who you find face down in a pile of Heineken bottles in his hotel room.

In Canada they have a chain called Tim Horton’s. It’s like Dunkin’ Donuts. Their coffee is absolutely horrible. This guy loves them.

I’m not the most sophisticated gourmand around, especially when it comes to coffee. My friend Corey reminds me every chance I get that my insistence on a morning diet of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is akin to coprophagy.

Corey feels the same way about Tim Horton’s that he does about Dunkin’s. When we go to Starbucks he gets something called a Breve. I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain that to make a Breve the barista needs to stir someone’s penis in the drink.

So it’s also no wonder to Corey that I fully dig Starbucks Via instant coffee packets. He still thinks I’m a copro.

This post really isn’t about coffee at all. It’s just an excuse for me to write about some of the people I love. That’s all.

This time next week I’ll be in San Francisco for Macworld Expo – indeed, my flight leaves Monday. This is an unusual show for me, because it will be the first one I will have gone to in a decade where I wasn’t affiliated with Macworld magazine.

Some things change – I’m staying in a different hotel and flying on a different airline this year, since I no longer have the corporate travel agency to fall back on, and I don’t expect quite as busy a workload as years past. But some things stay the same – I’m looking forward to seeing friends and business colleagues I only see at Macworld Expo, and I have a pretty busy schedule planned almost from the time I land on Monday.

Of all the criticisms I’ve seen of the iPad, the absolutely stupidest involves the name. iPad, some claim, is more evocative of a women’s hygiene product than it is of a consumer electronics device.

To some naysayers, this is clearly demonstrative that Apple doesn’t have enough females in its senior executive staff (that’s another point entirely – outside of their corporate comm VP, they do have a shortage of diversity on their senior staff).

At least some of this criticism is born of a skit that was broadcast on Fox’s now-defunct late-night comedy show MadTV several years ago, in which they lampooned Apple’s product offerings by introducing an “iPad” hygiene product.

But in truth, there have been, for years, other products that use the word “pad” in their titles, and no one has ever excoriated them for sounding like something used to trap menstrual blood. The most obvious one that comes to mind is IBM/Lenovo’s extraordinarily successful “ThinkPad” series of laptop computers.

Here are a few other examples:

memo pad
landing pad
helipad
note pad
game pad
numpad
keypad
elbow pad
knee pad
shoulder pad
mouse pad
bachelor pad

Still convinced Apple gave the iPad a crappy name? I think Penn Jillette can summarize best how I feel on the subject:

Games once again featured centrally with Apple yesterday as they unveiled the iPad; they invited EA and Gameloft to show off a few titles that they’ve been working on for the past few weeks. And while driving games and first person shooters make for good demos, I don’t think that’s really where the iPad is going to excel.

The added screen area is going to be great for strategy game, puzzlers, word games and many other game types that make use of the additional real estate. I think the iPad is large enough that gamers may be more reluctant to rely on accelerometer-oriented titles – it’s big enough that shifting it back and forth rapidly might be awkward and uncomfortable, compared to the iPod touch.

I’ve already read some editorials critical of the iPad from the gamer’s perspective, but let’s be clear – the iPad isn’t going to be competing with video game consoles or other handheld devices – it starts at $499, which is more than double the price of a PSP or Nintendo DSi, double a PS3 and more than double an Xbox 360 or Wii.

To that end, I suspect that the iPad will, at least for this generation, not be a “gamer’s machine,” but rather a machine to play games on. In this respect, anyway, I predict that Apple’s iPod touch will still be the main game system for a while longer, though the iPad’s bound to raise awareness (and generate some sexy titles).

Chuck Joiner asked me to join The MacJury to talk about the iPad. I spoke with him, Jeff Gamet, Joe Kissell, Jean MacDonald and Don McAllister.

We all took the iPad from different perspectives. Jeff produces a lot of Web content, Joe is an e-book writer, Jean an iPhone app developer, and Don from the video angle. I talked a bit about games and apps on the device.

I’m writing to you from the sales department of Saturn of Hyannis – now the new Cape Cod Kia, located at the corner of Bassett Lane and Stevens St in Hyannis, Mass. This is my third Kia dealer in as many years, and I am earnestly hoping that, as the saying goes, “third time’s the charm.”

When we bought our used ‘04 Sedona LX in 2007, we bought it from another dealer called Cape Cod Kia – located a stone’s throw from this location (though there’s no relation) and they went out of business only a couple of months after we bought our vehicle. Another dealer got the Kia franchise, but have since lost their affiliation, as well. Now with GM shutting their Saturn division down, this dealership needed to find something else to sell, and Kia was the logical choice. So here I am.

We’ve had a number of problems with the minivan, running the gamut from simple fit and finish issues (missing headrests, loose trim) to serious issues preventing us from using it until they’re fixed (the most recent, for example, involved the replacement of expensive radiator coolant pipes that corroded so badly they drained the radiator of coolant almost every time it was driven).

In retrospect, the ‘04 Sedona wasn’t the right car to buy. It fairs incredibly poorly in after-sales customer satisfaction indices and is inferior in quality and workmanship to other mini-vans. Unfortunately, we financed the car, and we still have quite a bit left to pay – so I am quite seriously upside-down on it; it’s worth nowhere near what I owe, either as a trade-in or a private sale. So we’re stuck with it, at least for a while longer.

My track record with vehicles has been absolutely atrocious, and I can’t figure out why. I try to take care of them as best I can, having them serviced at their regular, manufacturer-prescribed intervals. I’m not an aggressive driver, and I don’t beat on my vehicles. But for whatever reason, I seem cursed to own unreliable cars.

Hopefully I’ve finally found a dealer who won’t take advantage of me.

Microsoft’s Surface is something that a lot of us tech types have heard about, but that very few of us have actually used. Especially on the cusp of Apple purportedly ready to announce a tablet device, I was curious about how Microsoft’s implementation of a multi-touch device actually worked.

If you’re unfamiliar with the basic concept, Surface is a multi-touch computer equipped with a 30-inch display. It’s configured as a table, designed to work without a conventional keyboard or mouse. You interact with data visually by placing your hands and fingers on the Surface, and it detects your fingers and hand movements.

Practical applications for Surface vary – they’re already being used in hotels, for example, to help concierges provide directions. The Surface can recognize when physical objects are placed on it – a drink, for instance, and can identify it. You could place your mobile phone on the top of the Surface, and the Surface can sync to it, then you can move data to it by physically interacting with it – dragging an MP3 album onto the phone, or dragging contacts or other key data to it.

There’s a lot of whiz-bang technology at work in Surface, and it’s very intuitive and futuristic – a bit like a table version of that interface we saw Tom Cruise using in Minority Report, for example.

One thing I noticed right away is that the surface of Surface is matte – very matte. When it’s inactive, it looks like smoked or etched glass. My suspicion is that this is an interface decision to help hide fingerprints and other marks. The iPhone – even the iPhone 3GS, which uses an oil-resistant coating – is notorious for displaying fingerprints, because it’s covered in smooth glass. The tactile sensation of using the Surface is different, though not necessarily worse.

Surface – as an operating system interface – still has a way to go, from my perspective. The overall interface lacks the smoothness or sense of immediacy that I need a touch-based input system to have to be really immersive. Also – and this may have been simply a calibration problem with the unit I used, or an issue with the software – but I found it jarringly inaccurate in some cases, identifying my finger locations next to or beside where my fingers actually were. That led to a lot of frustration. Also, at least where tracking data in real-time was key, such as interactive graphics and games, the Surface I used was slow to the point of being frustrating.

But I have to give Microsoft credit where it’s due – they believe in the system enough to deploy them in public, and it’s pretty clear that they expect the device – or devices like it – to be used in a broad variety of applications from hospitality to business to medicine.

Now I’m even more curious to see what awaits Apple users on Wednesday. I don’t expect that whatever Apple will unveil to be comparable at all to Surface, either in implementation or in form factor – Surface is the size of a coffee table, after all.

We’ve gotten very used to the iPhone/iPod touch’s multi-touch interface, and if Surface is an example of how that sort of technology can scale on a larger device with a bigger input surface, I’m sure that whatever Apple has up its sleeve will wow us.

Yesterday was WordCamp Boston, held at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, Mass. It was the first WordCamp Boston, though they’ve been having WordCamps all over the country.

WordCamp is geared towards users of the popular WordPress blogging software, which I use for Tikkabik and which gets used for quite a lot of Web sites, actually, including The Loop, to which I also contribute.

If you’re a WordPress user – even a casual user – I’d strongly recommend checking one out near you. They’re inexpensive, ours was extraordinarily well-organized, and it’s a lot of very useful information. They had different tracks for beginners, developers, and people just trying to make the most use of WordPress in whatever practical situation they had.

One thing that just thrilled me was the number of Macs at the event. I suspect that upwards of 70 percent of those who showed up at WordPress with a laptop in tow were using a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

Almost 500 showed up for the Boston event, which I’ve inferred is a *lot* more than the organizers originally anticipated. They were practically bursting at the seams of the NERD center, so my expectation is that they’ll have to move the venue the next time they have a WordCamp in Boston.

… you magnificent bastards.

The Meat Lover’s Trio

“Golden country-fried steak smothered in savory country gravy with two sausage links, two crispy bacon strips and two eggs prepared just the way you like. Served with our NEW sausage and cheese hash browns.”

There’s a Denny’s near the Moscone Center, where I’ll be in San Francisco next month …