Companies like SimpleGeo, SkyHook are providing the important plumbing we need to build new geo-aware apps, and are poised for stellar growth. Niche players now have an opportunity to tap into the geo-service landgrab and stake their claim. We are very much taking an active role in this phenomenon and look forward to exciting new capabilities.

Stay tuned,

Infinitely Meta Team
team@infinitelymeta.com

Is your app geo-aware? #friendspider #geofencing

It's not about HTC EVO vs. iPhone 4/3Gs

It's not about HTC Incredible vs iPhone 4/3Gs

I have a problem with the telecomm providers in the USA and how they go about building out their network infrastructure. Here's an exerpt from a Friendfeed conversation sparked by a Ping.fm post by @ChrisPirillo. I agreed with Chris' comment, but I'm sick and tired of the fanboi bashing in either camp.

My comment:

That's pretty much an apples to oranges comparison, and therefore I agree. It's a stupid comparison. I ditched my iPhone 3G on AT&T's crappy 3G network for HTC Incredible on Verizon's 3G EVDO network. I bet my Incredible gets better battery life than the EVO. I don't need (want) a 4G wimax (sucky tech) modem in addition to Sprint 3G CDMA tech crammed into a single device. No wonder the EVO is so big. How many radios does it have anyway? The EVO is an intermediate device that will be relevant until the *REAL* 4G LTE networks come online next year. I'll take Verizon 3G over 4G Wimax (especially for the price) any day (especially given 4G coverage vs. Verizon 3G. I'll also take the Snapdragon 1Ghz chip over my old iPhone 3G. There. That's my position and I'm sticking with it. Anyone want to buy my iPhone 3G?

The conversation thread: http://friendfeed.com/l0ckergn0me/a10d7582/people-want-me-to-compare-iphone-4-battery-with

BOTTOM LINE: I'm an UBER GEEK. I use whatever works best for me at any given point in time. Right now, Android on Verizon is making me a lot happier than iPhone on AT&T.

Right now, my iPad is working better than my old ASUS 1005HA netbook. I am using my iPad for more and more business purposes each and every day and I consider it to be an integral part of my workflow.

I have a Macbook hooked up to my 56" Samsung DLP HD set that I use for music streaming and watching Hulu and Youtube. I run a copy of Windows XP in VMware Fusion on this laptop. I keep all the books for my businesses on Quicken running inside XP on Mac OSX.

I have a Dell Vostro 3300 running Windows 7 with VMware Workstation 7.1 running an Ubuntu VM for active prototyping and development.

#suckitfanboys

However, each year, there is one single event that rises up above them all. While I've only had the privilege of attending one of these events, I can tell you with certainty, that Gnomedex is a special event. Chris Pirillo takes it to new levels each and every year. Now granted, there have been some controversial talks, and heated discussions in years past, but what he's put together over the past 10 years is truly special (has it really been that long?).

I was quite upset that I missed the opportunity to attend last year's Gnomedex event due to a conflict with my summer vacation. That said, I'm definitely going to be around this year, and look forward to attending.

The reason why I feel I deserve to Tungle with Chris is that I'm pouring every last bit of effort into getting my startup (StratusQ) off the ground. We are self-funded at this point, and our battle-scarred team of four are pouring every extra penny we can spare to grow the business. As such, it's harder and harder to hop on the conference circuit without having the backing of an employer or other source of funding to help subsidize costs. I'm not a serial entrepreneur, but I've been waiting patiently for over 10 years for this opportunity (see: The Art of Bootstrapping in 2010) and having the ability to network with other like minded individuals at an event like Gnomedex is what I live for.

I also happen to be a user of Tungle.me (see: http://tungle.me/brianeisenberg) , which hopefully puts me in a favorable position to win a free pass to Gnomedex. If not, I'll continue to save my precious pennies and maybe scrape up enough $$ to purchase a conference pass.

Kudos to Chris and the rest of the Gnomedex volunteers for putting together the 10th installment of this special event.

Respectfully yours,

Brian Daniel Eisenberg

@infinitelymeta

Rather than relying on external sites, services and aggregators, I'm going to try and use my blog as the dumping ground for the meta I speweth into the river. I realize that there is no silver bullet or perfect solution for this, but I'm hoping that with a few new tools, APIs, services, and techniques, I can piece together a reasonably complete archive. Once I have the archive, I can continue work on the LifeSplicing Engine I conceived a few years back.

Just an early sketch from a couple years ago.

To start, I'm looking at the Lifestream WP plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lifestream/) to see how many services I can pipe in for free. For services, sites, and data sources that don't readily make themselves available, I've got a few ideas I want to try using some RSS/ATOM/OPML trickery to normalize the floe.

This is likely going to be a very messy, noisy, and disruptive exercise. Please forgive any unwanted noise I spill into the river and remember that you can always block/delete me from your social graph if I become too much of an annoyance.

The hashtag for this party/event is #july4eastlake and we'll also entertain the Friendfeed crew in this new group I just created: http://friendfeed.com/july4eastlake

Coffee, breakfast, and some light coding / app config. Then bailed for home, which is where I'm at right now. As it's a holiday weekend, where many our out squeezing in one last extended summer weekend, I'm pretty well tied up with the reality that are my unavoidable deliverables. I've got no problem spending my weekend this way, as I know I am working hard towards something much bigger. So with that, here's a list of what I've got on tap this Labor Day weekend.

What are you all doing? @infinitelymeta me on Twitter or *Like* this post on Friendfeed to get in on the conversation. That's where I tend to hang out on socnets these days.

Happy Labor Day everyone!

Brian's Uber List

1. New range/oven delivery for unit 2214 (one of my new tenants stove broke so I replaced it with this:
   
2. Put out For Rent sign for my soon to be available 1BR apartment in Eastlake, Seattle WA 98102. It rents for $1400 and is the entire lower floor of an historic Victorian home that was built in 1908. An excellent spacious unit with great lighting. Email eastlakeassociates at gmail if interested or call 206.328.3379 and leave a message.

   

3. Java/JSF/AJAX - I'm putting the final interfaces and code tweaks in place for a project that I've spend a quarter working on. Final interfaces in place, but still have 75+ line item bug list. Need to go code complete by Monday evening to begin FTP transfer of Development VMware image from one side of our network to an internal only host. Still have A LOT of work ahead of me to finish this project and go into team only beta next week with Public Beta (internal corp net) on Sept 8.
   
4. Landscaping & trim to prep for fall. Luckily, I really enjoy this task. Especially when my 5.5 yr old nephew Logan joins me. He makes some pretty good coin and he's a GREAT helper.
   
5. Working with my friend Thom, the Ichthyogenius on our latest project, Reef In A Box that we are looking to launch in the coming months.
6. Working on the YTranslate.us engine. Coding in PHP/mySQL/Python/etc. Toying with new SMS gateway (thanks to Mona' Friendfeed post).
7. Meeting with contractor on some fix-r-up-r projects for 3 of my apts in preparation for Fall/Winter.
8. Looking for electrician to install some motion-sensor aware lighting in my back alley and in between my building to deal with my unwanted-persons-on-my-property challenge.
9. Water changes & general maintenance on my 300 gallon reef tank.
10. Prep/meet with GC on new reef tank project. Wait till you see what I'm going to build. It's gonna pop!
11. Shade garden v2. Part of the landscaping stuff I suppose, but definitely worthy of mention.
12. Replace fire extinguisher in common area to be in compliance with recent Seattle City Fire Department inspection.

That's all I can remember for now.

Follow the Friendfeed conversation.

I think right now I need to continue to focus, not lose track of what is most important, and constantly assess and re-assess my priorities in how I spend those 24 hours each and every day.

With that, I'm off to meet Sarah Lacey and friends for her User Generated Book Tour - SEATTLE.

Tomorrow I have a VERY special meeting with one of my advisors who is going to give me a personal tour of what he is working on. I'll take lots of pics, ask questions, and blog it when I get back. Then it's off to the Tweetup and finally the Gnomedex 2008 kickoff.

Hopefully this torrential rain will let up soon. Currently looking strikingly similar to the Pineapple Express weather pattern that we had back in 1997. Time will tell. Personally, I don't mind the rain. What I do mind are the CRAPPY Seattle drivers who seem to not know how to drive in it.

Onward!

- ∞ +

9. I've had breakfast AND lunch with Scoble.

8. I once strapped a camera on my head and pretended to be iJustine.

7. I got better Gadgets than Nik Cubrilovoic.

6. I got .flv video clips of Mike, Shel, Nik, Loic, & Calley talking all sorts of nonsense on Qik.

5. http://federatedclouds.com

4. http://reefinabox.net

3. http://infinitelymeta.com

2. http://refriend.me

1. http://ytranslate.us

0. UPDATE: I had to unblock Jason McCabe Calacanis before I sent my @reply on Twitter.

- ∞ +

Today, Techcrunch broke the news that they alluded to over the weekend. Essentially, a partnership between Intel, HP, Yahoo!, and a few others to build a new cloud computing platform to allow developers and researchers to test the next generation computing model.

This is a very important development that holds promise for Infinitely Meta, and the engines that we want to build and deploy to the cloud. Our original plans were to leverage Amazon's AWS cloud and Google's App Engine (and related sites/services) as the deployment vehicle for our engines, but this new project may trump both Amazon and Google. Remember that we can't yet discount Microsoft, as they are also working on building their cloud under the Mesh umbrella.

As we continue to build our prototypes, we will likely deploy our engines to whatever cloud we feel will meet our needs. Most likely we will deploy our engines across all available clouds for the highest degree of fault tolerance and redundancy.

I find it VERY interesting that the last domain I registered was http://federatedclouds.com

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