BlakeAtwood.com

The day: Friday, July 11.
The event: Apple iPhone 3G Launch Day

I joked with my wife the night before that I wanted to get to the AT&T store at 5am. She thought I was serious. I reminded her that we live in a relatively small city. Surely there would not be much of a line.

Our fair city is not quite as small as I thought it was. Or, as one of the AT&T reps told me a few days before, at last year’s iPhone launch, they had many people come up to our city under the same assumption that not many people would be buying one. There was a line then, and there was a line now.

Upon arriving at 7:30am, we were approximately the 51st and 52nd people in line. Three hours and 4 pounds less (it’s Texas, it was hot, and I sweat) later, we finally made it into the air-conditioned coolness of the store, only to be told it’d be a 7-10 day wait for the next shipment. At least we got on the waiting list.

To add minor insult to major sweating, upon reviewing my confirmation email from AT&T regarding my iPhone purchase, I saw that AT&T had ordered a white iPhone for me instead of the black one I’d requested. I guess I’m not cool enough for a black one. However, it was just yesterday (Tuesday), that the next stock of new iPhones came in. I decided to cave on the color point, deciding I’d rather have the phone now than white for a swap, an exchange, or the next shipment. After all, I’ll be getting a case soon. Or I’ll just spray paint it.

Upon getting the new phone, my old iPhone went to my wife. She was terribly excited to receive it, until this morning, when we couldn’t get her voicemail set up. After more than a few hours of angst and calls back and forth with “try this” or “try this” to no avail, we finally got the situation solved by setting up the voicemail via an “old-school” way - calling her number and pressing * to access her voicemail. Situation solved; she can now actually receive important calls at her work.

To make matters worse as I was trying to help my wife with her voicemail problem, my new iPhone began acting up. The proximity sensor (the thing that turns the screen off when it’s by your ear and turns the screen back on when you take it away from your ear) began acting in reverse! Do you know how difficult it is to use a touchscreen when it’s turned off? Eventually, I figured out that my old iPhone silicon case, which now housed my new iPhone, was somehow causing the problem. Removing the case removed the problem. But doesn’t that seem like a strange problem?

It’s been a technological roller-coaster ride these last few days and makes me wonder why I sometimes have to be an early-adopter. The headaches sometimes don’t seem worth it, especially when I assume certain companies (ahem, Apple) are impervious to screw-ups. As evidenced by the long lines and backed up iTunes servers on Friday, their vaulted status, in my estimation, has been taken down a notch.

I blame my genetics for the urge for tech. My grandfather bought expensive calculators and, when they were new to just about everyone, computers. As he passed away before the advent of the Internet, I have to wonder what he would even think about an iPhone.

Intrepid, determined, professional TV reporter Charlie Rose was presented with this moral dilemma.

Click through to see if he thought his face or his MacBook Air was more important, then come back.

The story reminds me of one I heard from a professional wedding videographer I had the pleasure of working alongside for a season. He was shooting a wedding at some exotic locale, running along some sandy shoreline, trying desperately to get from point A to point B before whatever shot he needed could escape. His feet flew out from under him, and, carrying a $20,000 camera (or more), did what was required of his profession: He landed with a thud, and maybe a few cracks, but the camera survived.

Here’s to hoping Apple can get Mr. Rose something for his pain.

DirecTV (to which I happily subscribe) will have an interactive, multi-screen presentation of the Masters this year. How providential that this is the same year in which I was afforded the opportunity to go hi-def, widescreen, plasma, and large. I may need to take a 4-day weekend.

After all, it’ll be the start of Tiger’s Grand Slam year.

Via Phil Cooke at The Change Revolution:

Media theorist and writer Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death) has a pretty brilliant comparison of the two visions:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with feelings instead of facts. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions. In 1984, Huxley added, that people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. We must face the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”

Uh.

Yikes.

I’m going to go find a hole and hide there until time travel is invented and I can back a few thousand years when we didn’t have to worry about any of this.

Online backup of important data is not only the wave of the future, it’s already here. I recently helped my grandmother buy a computer from Dell and one of the options was online backup via Dell (at an extra cost, of course). There are many, many companies that offer backup services. iBackup.com is an online storage site and may have something that sets it apart from the pack. Their software creates a mapped drive or folder on your computer for easy drag-and-drop saving and backing up of your important files. Subscription plans vary based on the amount of storage needed, from 5 GB at $9.95/month or $99.50/year to 300 GB at $299.95/month or $2999.95/year. These prices are comparable to other services, and, when it comes to your important documents, pictures, and videos, it’s a price you’ll be glad to have paid.

Unfortunately, my mouse usually takes the brunt of my frustrations. The "program" can be purchased (seriously) at www.screensmasher.com.

I’ve been busy the last few weeks attempting to get my church to tread into this century. There’s more we could be doing via the Internet, but it’s difficult to steer a large group of people to adopt new technologies for communication. So here’s a list of a few things I’ve incorporated over the last few weeks:

1. A blog specifically tailored to a new Bible study class covering the book The Worshiping Artist. Why we hadn’t tried this before, I don’t know. Discussion seems to be going well thus far. Also, the leader of the study (also the Worship Pastor of the church) is updating it himself. If you’re interested, check out www.fbcgt.org/dale . I’m also working on getting staff members to blog about their points of interest.

2. A forum for all church members. It has yet to be published, but if you’re reading this then you’ll be treated to a sneak peek at www.fbcgt.org/thehub . Forums may be a little foreign to some people, but they’re highly useful once understood. They will, hopefully, be used for the multiple ministries at the church, events around our city, for each individual Life Group, and also for leaders and other groups that might require a certain level of privacy for their discussions. I may be most excited about the prospects of this forum, but I’ve also been in this position before of starting a forum for a church, only to have it’s popularity wane in relation to the amount of time it’s "new."

An aside about the forum - it’s called theHub because I’d actually already created a forum called "the forum" using different software than what I’m currently now using. I had been using bbpress, as it syncs with wordpress, our publishing platform, somewhat easily. Unfortunately, it’s not as mature as some other options out there. One of the main problems for me in regards to that is the inability to restrict certain discussions to certain people or groups. So I turned to the big daddy of forums, phpbb. While I’ve never used it before, I’m learning it and liking it. And I like the sound of "theHub." It is a central meeting place, after all.

3. Video Podcasts. We’re not doing this yet, but we’re very close to it.

Slowly, surely, and with many a technical glitch to go, the church creeps ever onward into the vast, uncharted waters of the Internet.

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Why don’t you take a Kissimmee vacation? The irony in that is that it’s close to Disneyland and I just posted about a Baptist church.

I read an article today in Creative Cow Magazine (www.creativecow.net) about the “war” between hi-def and lo-res. You wouldn’t think those two factions would have so much animosity towards each other, but who am I to dictate cultural policy?

As it stands, the “war” centers on the fact that, contrary to supposed opinion and many long-held prophesies, the adoption rate of hi-def content viewers is vastly inferior to the numbers of the lo-res youtubers. The article cited the following as barriers to more hi-def viewers:

• poor sales of the PS3, which includes a blu-ray hi-def dvd player
• the need for repurchasing, at a premium price, your entire dvd collection
• the cost of hi-def televisions
• the ability to receive and record hi-def programming via cable or satellite (meaning you don’t have to buy more content)

On the other hand, Youtube has ushered in the age of democratic video - by the people, for the people, all the time, anytime, with any content, at resolutions heretofore unwanted by professionals. They’ve had tremendous growth. If your video goes viral, you could have millions of viewers, worldwide. Youtube is an independent content producers’ best outlet, and, as with the web itself, content is king. Content trumps clarity.

As long as your story is clear, today’s kids don’t care how it looks - just that it speaks to them. Make them laugh with singing silk trees, make them cry with an old man singing a Coldplay song, make them think, make them stop. Whatever it is, just make it and get it on the web - that seems to be the moral of this “war.”

As the article asked, will this year be the year of hi-def? Like last year and the year before it were supposed to be? I doubt it. The solution now, as the article also suggested, is to be ready for both. If you make content and have the ability, create your movies with both technologies in mind, in hi-def and web-ready. If you lack the equipment, shoot lo-res, upload, and call it a day.

What do you watch more? Your hi-def TV or that certain youtube video that everyone’s seen a million times?

How could I not appreciate this company? Drums shells for computer cases…it’s brilliant. Expensive, but brilliant.