My Virtual Dave

I received an invitation to register today for Apple’s iPhone Tech Talk World Tour.  Always being one to enjoy absorbing more information, I eagerly jumped on this to register for my nearest location.  Boston was not one of them.  HMMMMMM  Ok… I will live with that.  SO I then looked at the next closest location NYC.  FULL.  Already?  HMMMMMM Ok…  Next… um  well I’d love to hit the San Fran one, but all the west coast dates are during a business trip I have planned, so it narrows it down to Austin or Chicago.

I picked Chicago.  Curious as to where the venue would be held, I tried to google where it might be.  Then I ran into a blog from someone who claims they registered, awaited their confirmation and was denied.  This person claims that Apple selectively hand picked developers based on the company, web site content, or status within the community. Read more…

When I first started programming, I remember carrying a long cardboard box around.  I would walk into the computer lab, find the nearest workstation, sit down and start typing away.   Each time I felt I had that next line of code perfect, I would hit a key and the din of a series of mechanical arms would fill the air as they punched a card and spit it out to then be added to the collection of cards that resided in my box.  Once I felt my perfect program was done, I would take my box to the window on the other side of the lab, and I would hand my neatly stacked and labeled cards to the seedy looking guy on the other side of the window.  I would fill out a form and that was then wrapped around the cards and held with an elastic band and I was off to my class.  I would then ponder for a period of time what fabulous results would spring forth from my masterpiece. Read more…

Starting a company is easy.  Whether the company is a DBA (sole proprietor), LLC, or a S or C corp there are many things you should know about.  Wait… I should say NEED to know about right?  Well lets see.  There are the regulations and then there is what is really happening out there.   Now I cannot attest to percentages or statistics of how many are following the process or not, but in my personal experience, there are many that do not. Read more…

When I was in high school I took a photography class.  I was pretty good at it.  The teacher said I had the ‘photographer’s eye.’  Perhaps I inherited the trait.  My father was a photographer in the Air Force during the Korean War.  I still even have several of his cameras from that era.

Over the years, my skills and love for photography advanced.  I upgraded from one camera to the next and went SLR.  I bought lenses, set up my own dark room and processed my own prints.  Then came digital. Read more…

Passion.  I believe it differentiates many people.  We all have passion.  But do our passions align with our ambitions?

When you are an entrepreneur and you are starting your own company, your passion is at its peak.  However, where you place your passion can directly drive you to success or failure.  Passion does not mean instant or guaranteed success, what passion does is keep you focused and provide you energy to drive you toward success. Read more…

My friend Carl Ford called me last week.  He is writing an article on iPhone application download statistics and the phenomena surrounding the hype of Apple’s success around the iPhone App Store.

His question was quite simple, and I wish I could have answered it better.  You see Carl has this thought that I may be some mindful guru around what is happening in the iPhone community.  Perhaps that is because he knows I participated as a contributor to the original iPhone hack team that worked to unlock the first gen phones.  That was the effort that many people think acted as a catalyst to get Apple to open up the interfaces and platform and pushed them to release the SDK for the iPhone. Read more…

Good question!  My son was just getting ready for his new school year.   He is in high school.  I find that a funny observation I have is the older I get the younger the teachers get.  I remember when I was younger.  I probably had all the same experiences as a lot of you.  I felt that my parents didn’t understand and that things were more complicated than they realized.  Reality was, I think I was making things more complicated. Read more…

Most open source turned into TechnoCrud. Code that is barely functional hard to support and has no developer following. Its amazing how much of it is out there. The only redeeming quality about it is that it acted as a learning tool. A very expensive one mind you.  Don’t get me wrong there are many valuable, robust, open source applications on the market.  I use it myself.  However what I am referring to are the projects that lost developer support, or never got the following and eventually the contributor community shriveled up and died. Read more…

Incenting employees is a great way to acheive desired results. Its only human nature for people to modify their behavior to achieve something they want. But why do they fail?

We live in a rule based society. We grow up our entire lives having to live by other’s rules and in some cases we don’t even understand the purpose of the rule. For example. Did your mother tell you that the rule was you couldn’t go swimming for a half hour after eating? Sure sure… people think that it was because we would get cramps. The reality is that we would rush through our meals and want to run straight for the pool while our parents were still sitting and eating their meals. The truth is they didnt want to have to get up and come watch us swim so we wouldnt drown. But they didnt tell us that, they just made up a rule and a reason and we accepted it. Read more…

At dinner last night we were pondering the saying “When one door to happiness close, another one opens.” I went to look up the origins, and found versions from Helen Keller, Alexander Graham Bell, and Buddhism.

In all cases, the quotes were around change and how we deal with it. The Chinese believe that discomfort is what causes change and inspiration. But what happens if change is thrust upon you. Was it your discomfort or someone else’s. Perhaps your discomfort was recognized or cascaded into someone else’s discomfort, whether individually or societal. Read more…