Martin Gordon's Blog

Hugh of gapingvoid has posted some "Random Blogging Notes". At first glance, it looks like a typical "How to get more traffic/become rich/etc." After actually reading it, you'll quickly learn it's typical Hugh MacLeod "f**k you and the world you live in" style (which I enjoy thoroughly), and so by definition doesn't sugarcoat any of the realities both A- and Z-listers face. Some of my favorites:

8. So you a read lot of A-Listers. Congratulations. You now know a lot of stuff everybody else knows.

9. It’s damn hard not to read a lot of A-Listers. They got to where they are for a reason.

16. The day you can write as compellingly and consistently as say, Kathy Sierra, Jeff Jarvis, Guy Kawasaki or Michael Arrington, will be the day I start taking your complaints of low traffic seriously.

40. When people ask me what the future of media is, I always answer, “RSS”. Thank you, Winer & Co. Seriously.

And to top it all off…

41. Most of the stuff on this list is wrong.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, notes, a-list, gapingvoid, Hugh MacLeod

I was sitting in court yesterday fighting a speeding ticket as I read about the death of the greatest rumor ever thanks to MacRumors' excellent play-by-play coverage. This phone is simply amazing; lucky for me my Cingular contract is up in May, so while I'd rather have an iPhone tomorrow, the timing isn't too bad. Others have picked up on something curious though: How does 2 months of FCC approval equal a June release date?

Steve's made friends
Partnering with Yahoo for email and Google for maps is a great way to not piss anyone off. Only Steve Jobs can bring Eric Schmidt and Jerry Yang on stage within minutes of each other to talk about something they're working on together (at leas indirectly). The iPhone is revolutionary and for Apple, Yahoo and Google this is a win-win-win.

Goodbye Blackberry?
I think it's preemptive to start calling for the death of the Blackberry. We still don't know what kind of Office support iPhone will have, and without Exchange syncing its dead in the water for most corporate environments. Of course, with a full-fledged web browser on board, Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a viable, yet inelegant solution. Not to mention that the excellent 2mp camera might be a no-no for some corporate environments.

What of the iPod?
The iPhone has an "iPod" software app, a name that has been reserved for hardware (with iTunes being used for software), so what's to become of the iPod as we know it? While I'm a proponent of converged devices, 8GB is simply not enough to carry around even half of my music library, forgetting about any videos I'd like to watch on the gorgeous 3.5" screen. I predict we'll be seeing a real widescreen iPod with high-capacity sometime over the next few months. The iPod interface on the iPhone looks perfect, and we'll see that on the software side. The hardware I think will look like the iPhone with the top and bottom bezels cut off.

All in all, the iPhone isn't quite the "atomic bomb" that will wake up the U.S. cellular industry as some have said. For one, it doesn’t do 3G. After dealing with slow-as-molasses internet connectivity on my Treo, this is almost a deal breaker.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Cingular, AT&T, Steve Jobs, Macworld, iPod, cellular, mobile, wireless

I'm back and settled in for my last semester of school. Needing only two credits to graduate, I am only taking two classes, which means I have class only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I realize many people would kill to have this much free time, so I'm forcing myself to take advantage of it.

My first project for this semester will be sorting through, processing and uploading the 1500+ photos I took on our 10 day trip to Spain over the holidays. It was an action-packed trip, and we were exhausted most of the time, but we saw a ton of stuff, had a wonderful time and met some great people! Definitely something I won't forget for a long, long time.

Being free five days a week means I'll have little excuse to not blog. FWIW, here are my blog stats for 2006 and 2005 (thanks to Alex King for the SQL queries).

					2006		2005
					====		====
	Number of posts: 	 	 162 		 100
	Posts per day:			 .44		 .27
	Days between posts:		2.25		3.65

	Average post length: 		1428 		1362
	Total length of all posts:   231,413  	     136,295

I almost doubled my frequency on 2006 and I think I can definitely double it in 2007.

More goals/projects as they come up. Talk to you soon!

Technorati Tags: blogging, 2007, stats, vacation, trip, Spain, photography, photos, family, school, college, graduation