Last month, I received an e-mail from Di-Ann Eisnor, Vice President of Platform & Partnership for Waze asking if I’d be interested in being part of a TV piece for ABC7 (KGO-TV, San Francisco). I had exchanged e-mails with Di-Ann around the time I wrote those blog posts in late-2009 and early-2010. I was more than happy to help promote the Waze/ABC7 partnership by appearing as the “wazer” who showed off the system.
Just before Christmas, I spent a few hours in the downtown Palo Alto Waze office filming the piece, including a drive around Palo Alto showing off the App. It was fun meeting some of the Waze crew, including CEO Noam Bardin.
I learned that at one point early on while talking to local investors, Waze ran a report of people using the App locally. I guess my user name kept coming up again and again. That was when I would go days without seeing another Waze user on the map. Now, they are everywhere, just passing the 10 million worldwide user level.
For the past week, ABC7 has been promoting the partnership on all of their newscasts (and on KOFY-TV). If you haven’t seen it, reported by ABC7 News reporter Jonathan Bloom, here it is:
Starting today, ABC7 News traffic will be using Waze for on-air updates during their morning news broadcast.
If you have not downloaded and tried Waze yet, you can do so via your amartphone App store. You can connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts as well.
If you have any questions about Waze, let me know!
Like so many other Mac users, I’ve used Quicken for many years and Quicken 2007 for Mac since it was released. I went looking to see how long it’s been and I really can’t tell. I have transactions going back to 1994, but I know I’ve not used it for that long. It has been a while, however.
As I mentioned in To upgrade or not to upgrade to MacOS X Lion? in August, Quicken’s lack of a Lion-compatible version was something that has kept me on OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) on my home computer (I have made the move on my laptop, however).
In late October, I started seriously looking at Quicken 2007 alternatives. I looked at quite a few and after consideration, I thought I landed on Moneydance ($49.99) for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of it’s ease of use and long-standing use. I didn’t want to start mid-year, so I decided to hold off until mid-December to look at this change for real.
On Tuesday, Dec. 21, I downloaded the trial version of Moneydance, converted my Quicken file and started to double-enter transactions. Moneydance’s trial version allows 100 entries to be entered before you have to pay for the full version. Luckily, importing data and connecting to financial institutions do not count toward the 100 entries. Within a few hours, I had all my information synced up with Moneydance and was ready to start using it in earnest starting January 1.
Then, on Dec. 22, Quicken Mac users got an e-mail from Aaron Forth, General Manager, Intuit Personal Finance Group, stating they are working on a solution to make Quicken 2007 for Mac “Lion-compatible” by early spring with a link to this Web page.
This made me stop and think about the change I was about to make. I could stay with a program I am very familiar with by staying with Quicken. It sure is attractive, but early spring!?!?! Didn’t they get the message like the rest of us that Rosetta programs (including Quicken 2007) wouldn’t work with Lion?
I guess it comes down to the thought if Intuit will follow through; if they will charge for the upgrade; and, if it’s even an upgrade in the pipeline. I have a feeling they are just working on a way to simulate Rosetta on top of the same six-year-old program, which, as many before me have written, is way behind its Windows counterpart. It’s just too little, too late.
So, with this in mind and after using Moneydance more Friday and today, I have decided to move forward with my initial plan, purchase Moneydance (with a discount if you LIKE Moneydance on Facebook).
Goodbye, Quicken 2007… I can’t say it’s been fun, but I am looking forward to a long dance with Moneydance.
I was driving home last night, listening to music on my iPod through my iPhone when I received two texts and a phone call alerting me to the passing of Steve Jobs. While I wasn’t shocked, I was definitely saddened by the news.
Everyone knew he was sick and had been for some time. I remember reading years ago how he had said he’d work for as long as he could meet his duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO. On Aug. 25, he had resigned from Apple and who would have thought that just six weeks later, he’d be dead.
Even having worked in Palo Alto for over 20 years and knowing Jobs frequented the areas I was always in, I never ran into him or met him. Sure, I’d see his Mercedes around town (everyone knew it was the one with no license plates, just a bar code where the license plate was supposed to be) but I never had the pleasure of meeting him. There was this one time, however, while in Whole Foods I overheard someone say “Steve Jobs is here” — I resisted the urge to go through the store to find him!
I have always admired what he was able to do. Building a company; getting basically fired from that company; starting another company, and bought another; and then his triumphant return as iCEO of company he had co-founded in 1996.
In the years since his return to Apple I had come to think the ”i” stood for “inventive” or “imaginative” or “innovative”. I am confident it stood for all of those, plus more.
Upon reflecting further, the 1997 Apple “Think Different” advertising campaign has been swimming around in my head. Jobs though differently, and as I thought more about the text that ad, which undoubtably he had strongly contributed to, I thought more and more he could have been one of the 17 iconic personalities presented. The ad reads…
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?We make tools for these kinds of people.While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs did Think Different. He challenged us to rethink what we knew about computing, how we worked with data and how we interacted with media and music. It appeared he was never happy with the status quo. Always pushing. With the team he assembled around him, he helped change the computer industry, the music industry, the movie industry, the way we shop and mobile telephone and technology.
Yesterday, after I turned off my iPod and turned on the radio, there was someone talking who said something like, “There are people who live in the past, the present and the future. Steve Jobs lived in the future.”
I couldn’t agree more. The technological world is a better place because of Steve Jobs and this “Mac Fanatic” will miss his influence on it.
So, here’s to the crazy one. The rebel. The troublemaker. The one who saw things differently. While some may see him as the crazy one, I see genius. Because the person who is crazy enough to think they can change the world, is the one who does.
After waiting beyond the normal two-year cycle for a new iPhone and weighing the AT&T vs. Verizon decision, I upgraded my iPhone 3G to an iPhone 4, staying with AT&T in April. At the time, I was hedging my bet that a) there wouldn’t be a new iPhone in June (I wanted the new phone to take with me on my vacation to Washington DC and New York, mostly to use to take photos), and b) the new iPhone when it was finally released wouldn’t be that much better.
I think I won on both accounts with yesterday’s announcement of the iPhone 4S.
While the addition of Siri is pretty cool, I wonder how much it will actually be used. The better camera is a great addition too, but not a deal breaker for me.
Overall, I was more interested and am more excited about iOS 5 and what that will bring to the iPhone. Back in June, I wrote a post about what I’d like to see in iOS 5. I’m pleased that at least some of the features I identified as wanting will be there. Reminders look great, especially since they are location aware (hopefully it won’t kill the battery!) and I’m excited about the notification center and iCloud (or at least the potential of iCloud). I was disappointed that iMessage wasn’t a true IM client. How hard would it have been to add iChat integration into it?
The bottom line here is the iPhone 4 is still a good phone. The iPhone 4S brings more power, but overall, it’s a minor upgrade (today).
What worries me is if this phone is so much more powerful than my iPhone 4, what may be on the horizon are applications that will either not be available for my phone (i.e. Siri) or will make it crawl as my iPhone 3G did prior to being replaced.
If Moses had his choice, which one do you think he would pick?
This is chart from Reuters is probably the best comparison table of tablets (or pads, depending on your camp) I’ve seen.
Via Reuters
No question some will gravitate one way or another, but with the price-points being about the same, it really comes down to the features needed.
While I’m a huge Apple fan (really, you didn’t know that?) and would probably lean iPad 2, the Samsung looks pretty nice. Apple will need to play a little catch-up with iPad 3 hardware when it comes out. But, for me, it would come down to the OS. With iOS 5 on the horizon, I think Apple is still way far ahead of the other OS out there.
Hi. I am Frank. I'm an Internet programmer/graphic designer/computer IT guy, living on the San Francisco Bay Area Peninsula. See more about Frank Bravo...
Last month, I received an e-mail from Di-Ann Eisnor, Vice President of Platform & Partnership for Waze asking if I’d be interested in being part of a TV piece for ABC7 (KGO-TV, San Francisco). I had exchanged e-mails with Di-Ann around the time I wrote those blog posts in late-2009 and early-2010. I was more than happy to help promote the Waze/ABC7 partnership by appearing as the “wazer” who showed off the system.
Upon reflecting further, the 
