Apples decides to drop their NDA. Way to go Apple! Glad you listened to your developers and came to your senses.

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/?nda

Great presentation on Lee’s passion and what we do at PointClear! Congratulations, Lee!

Go to article

For copy/paste:

http://tinyurl.com/6gngl4

I’ve been watching the olympics and enjoying it immensely, although my fingernails are now all bitten off. I’ve been struck by the commentary on the morning news stations, and also after the competition is over, and noticed that the prevailing philosophy is sometimes “gold or bust.” A silver or a bronze doesn’t seem to be something to celebrate, but instead a reason to feel disappointment. It reminds me of a favorite quip in competitive cycling (and probably other competitive sports as well): “Second place is first loser.”

I’m no Olympian but I’ve been fortunate enough to dip my toes into the pool of professional cycling. It’s both a blessing and a curse: when you reach a certain level as a female cyclist, you can compete with professionals in national events. It means you have the opportunity to race with the best, but it also means you’re not likely to win.

In my four years of competition (probably around 100 races), I’ve only won four times. Two road races and two time trials. I consider my top achievement to be an 11th place finish in a national time trial, where I competed against pros and actually beat some of them. I have been thrilled beyond belief to get 2nd, 3rd, and even 10th. Sometimes in national stage races I am thankful just to make the time cut. If people know I’ve competed in race, sometimes they will ask, “did you win?” Rarely do I get to say, “yes.”

To me, winning isn’t everything. I figure if I’m winning I should go find some better people to compete against. There are many times that something within the race (a lap led, a prime won, a rival out-sprinted, a climb conquered) is what really fuels my fire.

I’m proud of everyone who competes in the Olympics, even that guy who comes in after Michael Phelps has his goggles off, already cheering his latest gold and world record. It’s an incredible accomplishment, whether you’re first, third, or dead last.

I just finished watching an overview presentation of Subject to Change on Slideshare. Enjoy.

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When I first signed up for a Facebook account, I stumbled upon a capability to import blog rss feeds as Facebook notes. Log in to your Facebook account, click Notes, and then notice ‘Import a blog’.

Now, when I first did this, I used the following URL for our PointClear blog:

http://www.pointclearsolutions.com/blog/?feed=rss2

The problem with this, I later discovered, is that we have multiple Authors (Lee Farabaugh is the most prolific of all of us), and this URL is the feed for _all_ blog posts. The worse part is that when Facebook shows these entries, it doesn’t pick up meta-data from the feed like author. So, it appeared that notes actually written by other folks like Lee were my own. (Sorry for the virtual plagiarism, Lee).

Anyway, obviously, the solution is to use a URL that filters by author. Here is the format, which took me a little while to find:

http://www.pointclearsolutions.com/blog/?feed=rss2&author=3

By trial and error, I figured out that Author_id=3 is me, Author_id=2 is Blaine, Author_id=4 is Donnie, Author_id=5 is Lee, etc. There probably is a parameter that allow you to specify author first name or the such, but I was too lazy to look at the source code. Anyway, it works!

1. What a brilliant example of social marketing. Check out how Mozilla is generating buzz for Firefox 3 by asking folks to help them set a world record for number of downloads in one day:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord

2. From Jakob Nielsen’s blog, here is a very interesting post with the title OK-Cancel or Cancel-OK?.

We actually had this debate while working for a client (the Cancel-OK camp won):

After reading Nielsen’s blog entry, I actually think the OK-Cancel approach was appropriate after all, as most of the users for this web application would be on Windows and therefore used to the Microsoft UI paradigm.

3. Finally, here is a wonderful little classic film that I found on a physics blog, the classic ‘Powers of 10′. Wow, I’m back in the 10th grade working the projector for our Chemistry class (and irritated that no one else thinks the film is cool). _shiver_

As my friend Rebecca said when she saw I was on FaceBook, “welcome to the black hole of the internet.” Well, I guess it’s true. However, it’s pretty cool to connect to college, high school, and even elementary school friends you haven’t talked to in years. It’s also fun to see what they look like now, what their husbands/wives and babies look like, and what they’re up to.

I’ve been reading an interesting book given to me by another friend who’s on FaceBook too (and suggests I “super-poke” people…strange, last time I actually poked someone it didn’t go over so well). It’s called Surfing the Himalayas, and the Buddhist monk Master Fwap’s description of enlightment is oddly like the new world of the internet since joining FaceBook, Twitter, and several other cosmic bodies of cyberspace:

“‘Before you became enlightened,’ Master Fwap continued patiently, ‘the world appears to be three-dimensional, dull and boring. But in reality, the world is not three-dimensional, and if you are at all aware, it is anything but boring.

‘Life is composed of millions of dimensions. To an awakened mind, life and even the most repetitive tasks in daily living can never be dull and boring at all, because infinity exists in all things.’”

I have to admit that life seems to have a new dimension, because people I either never knew before, or haven’t seen in years, are now in the forefront of my mind. I’m also meeting new people and hearing about things around town that I might have never known. So far, it’s ok to be sucked into the black hole of the internet.

Having been a teenager in the late 70’s and early 80’s in Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd was (still is) a staple in my music collection. I still have to resist the urge to yell Freebird at the end of any concert (even classical) and don’t tell anyone, but I still stand and put my hand over my heart when Sweet Home Alabama is played.

Imagine my surprise when a friend of mine sent me this version of Sweet Home Alabama. Enjoy

Peace

Keith

The great folks at the Birmingham Weekly sure know how to treat women right. The Women’s Issue came out today, with an article about me, and lots of other interesting and smart women, including my friend Sarah Parcak who has a Ph.D in Egyptology, a Wikipedia page, played professional soccer, and makes the best blueberry cream cheese roll this side of Maine.

We had a great time doing the photo shoot and celebrated the issue with a party last night at the Icon Bar in the newly renovated Tutwiler Hotel.

Check out the whole thing here.

I’m having a little Junior High flashback this morning and listening to an old Connells album, hence the title of this post. This album (Fun & Games) is still as great as it was in 8th grade.

But the main reason I wanted to write is another great experience. Why is it that my good experiences all seem to involve food?!

This morning I got a haircut at Richard Joseph in Birmingham. I have been schlepping to Atlanta for haircuts since we moved here, but I finally decided that if there can be great UX/Software firms in Birmingham, there can be great hair stylists here too. And I was right.

Was it the great food (that’s included in your services), the beautiful space that is the salon/spa, the great cut and highlights I got from Emily, the shampoo/scalp massage that is out of this world, the free wi-fi (yes, you can work while you get pampered!), or the fact that this great place is right in my backyard?

Colored, cut, and sold.