South by Southwest - First Impressions

I flew in to Austin for South by Southwest Interactive and just like CES, it was cupcake time! The night I arrived at South By Southwest, or “South by” as it was referred to by more than one person in Austin,  I went to a house party, and boy was it full of bearded people. When I heard stories of hipsters and beardos (it’s a word) living in Austin in numbers that rival San Francisco, I was skeptical, but yea, there's tons. One of the most interesting encounters I had was a conversation that went a little something like this: “Are you here for South by?” “Yea, I flew in this afternoon” “Oh cool! Where are you from?” “San Francisco.” “Don't move here...”. OK, I won't! But I can see why people flock to Austin (a chamber of commerce member told me it has grown by almost 1 million folks in the last ten years or so), especially from San Francisco and the bay. It's clean, the weather is nice, the people are friendly-ish, and there's tons to do. Plus it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to live there. So yes, Austin is nice. I liked it.

I think SXSW is something that is best experienced. You can read or hear about it, but until you're actually there none of it really makes sense. I heard there was going to be lots of music, lots of parties, lots of lounges, and lots of people. All that is true but the way it all comes together is actually pretty spectacular. The bars and clubs around downtown Austin get skinned from the outside and are branded with company logos throughout. The streets get blocked off and stages are set up. Bands come out and “festival babes” fill the streets giving out fliers, chapstick, and trinkets, trying to get folks to tweet and mention their companies.

The tweeting thing is kind of interesting. I was approached by a very pretty lady, and asked to tweet about something, in exchange for a set of Logitech 500VM headphones. That struck me as odd, usually you have folks tweet in order to be eligible to win something or other, but to give out something that costs $60 for one tweet seemed a bit like overkill. Granted I was probably “lucky” and not everyone got a set of headphones, their cost was quite surprising. Also, it's a good thing that I'm not a member of the press so I could accept them! The amount of swag that you could get on the streets was staggering. It made me wonder if companies put aside $5 Million for “SXSW Swag” in order to burn through their left over budgets. The answer is, probably.

One of the things I found most strange was the exhibit hall itself. It felt almost like an afterthought. Granted, the focus of SXSW wasn't on start-ups and tech when it first started, but it seems to be headed in that direction now, and the exhibit hall left something to be desired. Maybe I was a bit spoiled by CES, but it seemed a bit cramped. The nice thing though, there weren't many iDevice and phone cases! Those seemed to dominate both CES and MacWorld, the last two large tech events that I attended.

But SXSW isn't about tech (not really) it's about music! And there was lots of it. One of the most interesting bands that I saw was called rdgldgrn (red gold green, but without the vowels). Rdgldgrn is a DC band that mixes rock and rap, I dug it. I also met Theolodge which is a neat name,  not sure if it’s a play on “theology”, but he’s a Florida rapper, and he’s quite good. Check out his song with Imogen Heap “First Train Home”. Pretty much ever genre was well represented and you couldn't walk around downtown Austin without hearing bass coming from somewhere.

SXSW was a blast, and I can’t wait to go back there. I liked the vibe, I liked the city, I liked the food, and I liked the people. I always had a soft spot in my heart for Texans (I lived in Dallas for 3 months), and Austin is filled with interesting folks. I’ll be looking forward to my next Austin trip, and hope to see you there at the next South By…just make sure to get your hotels books a year in advance.

*EDIT/UPDATE* -> I realized that I said to book your hotels a year in advance but I didn't say why, here's the financial breakdown of why you should plan way ahead:

My plane ticket from San Francisco to Austin on the days that I wanted to be at SXSW would have cost $1300 round trip, whereas a few days prior it would have been $350. I decided to fly in to Dallas instead for a more reasonable $400 and then rented a car to drive down to Austin from Dallas (I recommend flying in to San Antonio or Houston if you need to, they are closer to Austin). Renting a car in Dallas and then returning it in Austin after 5 days (the duration of my trip) would have cost $1600 (returning a car to a different location costs more money). I decided to rent a car in Dallas, drive it to the Austin Airport, return it, and get another one for the remaining 4 days. This worked out to $250 for the car from Dallas to Austin (essentially a 4 hour rental), and another $240 for the 4 days that I had the car in Austin. So it was less expensive for 4 days of renting than just the one-way trip. In conclusion, plan ahead! But if you don't make sure to play around with different transportation options so you don't get screwed!

And here are the pictures:

The cupcakes I was to deliver

Torchy's Tacos. If you go here, get the street corn.

Random guy in a bed...mostly naked...

rdgldgrn performing

Matthew Lesko!

Me and the fire fox.

Matthew Inman of Oatmeal fame. I met him at the Indiegogo party!

If you look closely above the building, you'll see hundreds of bats.

Find my name?

I like that # still means "pound" in some instances!

Wine in a cup! As seen on Shark Tank.

The "after".

Those hubcaps are not OK.

I liked the solar charging stations all over Austin.

The Hannibal food truck.

Path's cute posters.

This is a "Long Island Iced Coffee". It's as good as you imagine.

Homeless in Austin. Even they are tech savvy.

Texas.

Playing Around with the Microsoft Surface Pro

We bought a Microsoft Surface Pro for the office and I got to use it in a real world test. The Pro is actually pretty fun to use, I'm currently using the stylus to write this post and it's pretty fun to write cursive again. I was just thinking about not being able to and not needing to write manually anymore. With the Pro I can use the stylus (quite a nice one by the way, with multiple secondary buttons) to write manually, which I am getting quite the kick out of.

Pro's design is pretty interesting, and I'm not sure it's in a good way. There is a bit of a ridge surrounding the device, which makes sense as there is a kickstand at the bottom of the device that clicks out, but there is nothing at the top, which makes it a bit odd that the ridge is present. It makes it a bit hard to quickly orient the device if you take it out of a bag or pick it up without looking. Apart from that the design is pretty nice and I was able to quickly figure out the buttons and get comfortable with the layout.

The camera front and back cameras are OK, but nothing to write home about. The screen is 1080p and looks pretty good in most lighting situations that I used the Pro in. One of the most interesting additions to the Pro are the "covers" that you an attach to it. When I first received the Pro we got a Touch cover to go with it. The Pro does not ship with a cover included and so we decided the Touch cover was the way to go. That cover is flat, and has almost no tactile feedback to key presses. This led me to make a lot of spelling mistakes, the majority of which came from missing letters, as I could not register whether or not the key was actually pressed. I type fairly quickly, so I'd go over my work and notice a lot of misspellings.

We then got a Type cover which has raised keys, not unlike those you would find on a laptop. The keyboard surface is a bit smaller than a standard keyboard, but it took less than 5 minutes to get used to it and start typing with very few mistakes. One thing to note is the track pad, it feels OK and has a few multi-touch gestures that help scrolling. It's smaller than you find on laptops, especially multi-touch ones, but it's usable and helps navigating the UI in desktop mode, if you don't want to poke the screen. Another downside is the speaker system. It’s not powerful, and my Nexus 7 feels louder.

The current iteration is fairly compelling, but may not be the best thing since sliced bread, as they have a few things they need to work on. Mainly the weight. A lot of Macbook Air and iPad users noted that this was a bit heavy for them, but on paper, with a type cover it is only 0.5lbs heavier than an 11" Macbook Air, the fact that it was noticeable to some folks was a bit worrying though. The less powerful (read: useful) Surface RT is lighter, but the Pro is the best bang for your buck. 

It even plays games fairly well. The normal assortment of mobile games is available, and it played Jetpack Joyride like a champ. I decided to test a bit further though and installed Steam on it to see if we could get a few "big kid" games rocking and rolling on it. The Pro played Portal at 1920 x 1080 without an issue. Very impressive.

Overall the Pro is a good start and I can't wait to see what version 2 and 3 are like. Others (like Dell and HP) have started using Windows 8 on form factors similar to this and on Ultrabooks, so there will be lots of other offerings in this space in the near future. I like where this trend is going.

A Good Day To Watch A Good Day To Die Hard

My sister was visiting from Iowa and we made plans in San Francisco for the afternoon, so what do we do to pass the time? Go see Bruce Willis blow some shit up of course!

A Good Day to Die Hard stars Bruce Willis in his 5th go-round as John McClane. Lets be honest, the plot in these movies doesn't really matter. What matters is how many things get blown up, and how often John McClane says "fuck". That was my biggest problem with Live Free or Die Hard, it was rated PG-13 and that took a lot of the edge off of the movie. Warning, the next paragraph contains what is regarded as the plot to this movie.

There is a plot in A Good Day to Die Hard, and it revolves around something that I love dearly, Russians. As a Russian, it makes me giggle when we are depicted as bad guys and hungry for world domination. I for one, have no interest in world domination because it seems like a lot of work, and I'm more of a hands-off type of leader. Anyway, the plot is about a Russian bad guy that's locked up in prison. His name is Komarov (which derives from komar, which means mosquito, so his name means, "he who is a mosquito"; that's not in the movie, but a bit of Russian trivia for you) and he's played by Sebastian Koch. He's put in jail by a rising star in Russian politics, Chagarin (played by an actual Russian, Sergey Kolesnikov). The Americans want a file that Komarov have and they orchestrate a rescue, while Chagarin tries to orchestrate a murder. Both go awry and the CIA operative Jack McClane (Jai Courtney) has to go on the run and help Komarov find his secret file that can put Chagarin away for past war crimes.

That whole previous paragraph is not important. What is important is that there's an awesome car chase sequence about 15-20 minutes in to the movie and it was one of the most impressive ones that I have ever seen. Is it better than Ronin or the original Italian Job? Probably not, but it is up there.

*EDIT: I'm not the only one take notice! Apparently A Good Day to Die Hard now holds the record for most cars destroyed in a film at 132! Wow!*

My sister said it best, there was about 10% dialogue and 90% explosions in this movie, which is probably why at the time I'm writing this, it has a whopping 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. The good news? 82% of audiences liked it. What does that mean? Well, it means that artistically, this movie is about as interesting as watching Jackass. However, as a way of keeping your attention and making you giddy from explosions, this thing is amazing. There's a "passing of the torch" moment as well, so I think we can expect to see Jai Courtney take over the franchise and we'll get little cameos from Bruce Willis in the next film: If I Die, Let it be Hard.

3.5/5 from me, because plot does somewhat matter in the grand scheme of things, but as a diet coke + popcorn movie, this thing is fantastic! Go see it, but not on a first date.

Gangster Squad - Like Watching Someone Play L.A. Noire

I went to see Gangster Squad last week and didn't have many expectations going in to the film. I knew Ryan Gosling was in it. I knew Ryan Gosling was pretty. I knew Emma Stone was in it. I knew Emma Stone was pretty. That's pretty much good enough for me (Josh Brolin really isn't my type).

Anyhow, Gangster Squad is the story of how a group of Los Angeles cops go off the clock and take down Mickey Cohen, a notorious L.A. gangster and not a nice Jewish boy like myself. The squad was started by Police Chief Parker (played by Nick Nolte), who selects Sgt. O'Mara (Brolin) to go outside the law and take down Micky Cohen (Sean Penn) by any means necessary. O'Mara selects few folks, including Sgt. Wooters (Gosling), and they go on a rampage taking down Cohen's business'. There's no spoilers in this blog post, but if you click on the Micky's wiki page above, you can see what happens to him.

I was pleasantly surprised by this flick. The cast that they assembled was really good, and it was a pleasant surprise to see Giovanni Ribisi pop up on camera. Emma Stone was gorgeous, as per usual, and Ryan Gosling's accent made me giggle whenever he spoke. I'm not quite sure what he was going for, but it was start contrast to Drive, where he spoke about 3 lines of dialog throughout the film. Drive, by the way was on of my favorite movies of 2011.

If you play video games or know someone that does, ask them about L.A. Noir. Watching Gangster Squad was very similar (in tone) to playing the game. You get a sense in both that the characters are all flawed in some way or another and Sgt. O'Mara specifically reminds me a lot of Officer Phelps from the game. Both come back from the war, and they don't know how to re-insert themselves in to normal, day to day life.

I give this a solid 3.5/5 and one of the only reasons I ding it is because at parts the story sagged a little. I'd have liked to learn more about Micky Cohen's rise to power. Plus there was a part of the movie where it looked like they either changed film types, or shooting styles, and it was a smidge jarring (most of the film looked a bit grainy to me, but the last few scenes were crystal clear).

Anyhow, go see it. It's lovely. And Emma Stone is Emma Stone, or Ryan Gosling is Ryan Gosling, wherever your interests lay.

CES 2013 - My First One!

2013's CES was my first time at the show, and it certainly didn't disappoint. It was busy, loud, educational, gorgeous, and network-y. It started with my mother running the car over my luggage, that luggage contained the handouts that I was flying to Vegas to hand out. Those that know me, will probably not be shocked to hear that I was cool as a cucumber. She thought I was crazy for not killing her and was concerned that I would have a mental breakdown. I did not, and after re-creating the broken handouts, I was ready to deliver the cupcakes and packets that I was dispatched by Backblaze to Vegas to give out.

The cupcakes that I had to deliver.

Once that was done, I was on to the show...

Best of CES -

 I really liked Zuvo Water. It was a cool idea and the way that the filtering works makes it a great water purification system for any region of the country.

I also really liked the Pebble watch, but I backed it on Kickstarter, so I'm excited about it anyhow.

Another really cool piece of tech was Samsung's Curved OLED screen. It was gorgeous and the curved form factor made it stand out as a living room showpiece.

Worst of CES-

iPad and iDevice and Android covers for phones and tablets. It seemed that 70% of the show floor was geared towards things to cover up your mobile gear. The only one of those that was interesting was a skin by a company called ZeroChroma, which had an awesome case. Everyone else...meh. (Full disclosure: ZeroChroma had an RV that gave me and a few others a ride to the show, saved us a 30 minute wait).

The CES app for mobile devices. For a conference about innovation, the app looks like something out of a 2003 feature phone. Total garbage.

The app had to update every time you launched it. Awful when everyone is fighting for bandwidth. Garbage.

The UI. More Garbage.

And here are the pictures of the rest of the show!

My dream car (Dodge Viper). Here's the new one. Yummy.

I found a Backblaze customer at the show! There were more than 1, but he was the first!

This was called the Solowheel by Inventist. This little ditty really captured my imagination.

This was gorgeous. Not the model, but the Hyundai Genesis that she was showing off. So pretty.

Sony's massive circular dome of coolness, showing neat videos above their displays.

Sony's 4K television, playing a Taylor Swift music video. So...half awesome.

Sony's immersion gaming/video set up. You put on the gear and you get 3D/Surround gaming. Pretty neat.

 

Not sure who Konka is, but they had a neat waterfall-writing display.

 

Samsung's framed television display. This one got a lot of attention, and was very pretty.

Samsung was also showing off transparent video glass for store displays. Very cool in person, loses a bit on video.

Another neat little thing from Tat'z. I put my face on my thumb. Folks at my local sports bar hilariously said that now I was actually capable of shoving my own head up my own ass. Hah.

Polar was showing off their heartbeat monitors by having members of the United States jump-rope team perform. They were consistent!

Dropcam was showing off their cameras and was using +Brian Wilson's Oceangaze as a demo! 

Pebble actually exists and now has a release date: January 23rd, 2013! I took a picture with the Pebble CEO +Eric Migicovsky, with a Pebble on my wrist. I can confirm that it is glorious.

And here's the lovely little fellow itself. 

Monster Cable's Awards Ceremonies. A bit blurry, but Alicia Keys performed that night.

Some Alicia Keys singing. She has an awesome voice. I was impressed.

CNET's Brian Cooley and Molly Wood tape a segment.

The Ubuntu phone. Pretty cool! The Ubuntu folks gave me a free copy of Ubuntu! They're too kind!

The Razer Edge, CNET's best of CES winner. A tablet that can run games, and run them very well and with peripherals. It was pretty damn cool, but the controls felt a bit wonky. Hopefully they'll iterate!

Parrot's AR Drone 2.0 demo. They were dancing. Neato.

Cute sign on the Las Vegas strip. Not CES related, but I got a kick out of it.

Stunt and Gimmicks threw what was possibly the most productive and fun party of my first CES and I can't wait for the next one. I got to see some very cool stuff, including the Instacube, Zuvo Water, Agloves, and Kubi from Revolve Robotics.

 A jello bathtub was created.

Bathtub networking ensued. 

LG's OLED TV's. These things were amazingly thin and look incredible. They immediately made me regret not having more disposable income.

LG was also showing off large touch display tech to be used in museums and any place where an informational touch interface would be neat.

3D is dead huh? Tell that to LG and these people all wearing awesome glasses, watching an awesome display. I think what The Verge meant was that companies weren't pushing it as heavily as last year. This year it was all about 4K resolution. Notice the guy on the left trying to touch it.

What you can't see clearly is the 3D image that LG was blasting all over a huge wall. It was very very impressive.

Sony's 8K television. This thing was crazy, you could get about a foot from the TV and not see pixels. The blacks were not very vibrant though, but that's OK for a prototype.

Samsung's curved OLED screen. Supposedly it's more natural for the eye to view the TV with the slight curve in it, but when I asked a Samsung rep why they built it, or what the point was, he just said, "We did it because we could." Well played.

Star Craft 2 player Idra plays against challengers at a demo booth. If you could survive for 15 minutes, you got a power supply.

I went to Evil Dead the Musical in Vegas on my last night there. I took a photo with some cast members...and unexpectedly got drenched in stage blood.

This is what you look like after being drenched in blood. Walking around Vegas looking like this did not give me as many weird looks as I had thought.

That's all folks! It was a good trip and I hope to revisit it next year! 

*Edit* Just for fun, I took all these photos on my HTC EVO 4G LTE. Some pics are gorgeous, others are a bit dark. It worked really well as a point and shoot though.