jeffhester.net

As regular readers know, one of my busiest websites is BigBlueBall.com, a news and support site for instant messaging, social networks and other online collaboration tools. I registered BigBlueBall back in 1998 because I thought it was about as perfect a name as you could think up. It’s easy to say, to remember and spell. It’s adaptable to a wide range of topics. And it symbolizes our increasingly global community, collaboration and a “one world” view.

Four years ago (man, this blog has been around for a while!) I posted an in-depth explanation of how I came up with the BigBlueBall name and an anecdote about how one of my favorite musicians, Peter Gabriel, had (at the time) registered the .net and .org versions. I was curious to find out what his Real World record company would be doing with those domains, and now it’s clear. After more than 15 years in production, they’ve released (today!) Big Blue Ball, the album.

It’s fascinating to learn that Peter Gabriel had the same idea — Big Blue Ball symbolizing the global community and collaboration — with a similar inspiration; the astronaut’s view of Earth from space.

You can listen to some samples or get DRM-free MP3s below:

Enjoy!

Yes, to day is my 46th birthday. My friend Steve sent this along, and I was compelled to share.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and greetings!

This week’s Photo Friday challenge is a grab bag called emotions. Emotions, especially the difficult ones, are difficult to capture on film because of their spontaneous nature. Sports photographers usually capture quite a few, but then they are trained on watching the “joy of victory… and the agony of defeat.” I sifted through some of my own photos, and most of the emotions captured came from happy or joyful moments. The few exceptions were usually contrived. Which isn’t to say that I haven’t experienced darker emotions… just that I’m less inclined to whip out my camera to preserve the moment.

So I went for the dogs… and a happy moment. This photo was snapped on our walk at Badlands Park above Laguna Beach, and the girls here (Maggie and Lucy) are two very happy bitches. We could all learn a lesson or two in contentment from our dogs.

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in a Photo Friday challenge. This week’s challenge was “The Good Life.” I was looking through some of my photos to see if I had something that captured the essence of the theme, and I’m happy to report that life is good! And while this might bend the “rules” of the challenge, I submit to you the following collage.

Here’s to the good life!

I had a perfect day yesterday, going down to Huntington Beach with Lynn and the dogs. We rode our bikes, played on “Dog Beach” and generally wore ourselves out in the fresh air and warm sun (see pics on Flickr). We capped the day with dinner and movie (Atonement, which I do not recommend).

Today is a working Sunday, with the NFL football playoffs in the background to distract me. Here’s an overview of the things I’m working on and what’s coming down the pipeline:

Installing Photoshop CS3 on Lynn’s PC (done!). She’s taking a Photoshop class at Saddleback that looks like a lot of fun. I’m hoping I can pick up a few new tricks by osmosis.

Upgrading phpAdsNew to OpenAds 2.4.2 (in progress). OpenAds is the very best free ad server out there, and I highly recommend it to anyone running a website with advertising. It provides great tools for rules-bases ad serving and reporting. They recently received funding that will allow them to proceed with plans to offer hosted ad serving, but until then, this is truly the best option out there. I’m using OpenAds for most of my sites in the BigBlueNetwork.

Over on BigBlueBall, I’m preparing to make some staffing changes. In fact, if you’re interested in instant messaging (IM) or pretty much any other social networking tools, we’re looking to add to the staff. See this post on the BigBlueBlog for details.

While keeping these balls in the air, I’ll be spinning some plates, too. Not literally, but I am testing a number of sites and tools that show a lot of promise.

• Mint.com is what Quicken should be. It’s free, web-based and provides really clever ways of looking at your finances. As long as you’re not too queasy about them recording your login information to your financial accounts, it’s absolutely recommended. I may end up using Mint instead of the Quicken upgrade that I just paid $80 for!
• Jott.com makes it easy to create little notes to yourself, or even add items to your blog, Twitter, Google Calendar, the list goes on. You call a toll-free number from your phone and speak your message. Jott transcribes the notes and sends you SMS reminders or integrates with your other web tools.
• Todoist.com provides a really simple interface for managing your to-do lists. You can set up multiple projects and sub-projects, set due dates and view it on your PC or mobile phone. It’s similar to Mark Hurst’s gootodo, but free.

Finally, I’m also preparing a review of the various IM options available for the iPhone. I’m looking at both the web-based systems like Meebo and Mundu IM, as well as applications for a jailbreaked iPhone like Apollo IM and MobileChat. This one will keep me busy, but I want to get it done soon so I can apply the latest iPhone update (which hasn’t been “jailbroken” yet). I’ll be posting at BigBlueBall as soon as I’m done.

I’ve got a lot of little projects cooking right now, and today is my day to play catch-up. Before I give you a rundown of today’s schedule and the varied projects I’m juggling, let me give you a peek at my weekend.

Yesterday I took the day off — not such a bad idea considering it was Saturday. In the morning, Lynn and I took a hellacious ride on our mountain bikes. Hellacious not because of the technical difficulty of the ride, but because of the hill we climbed to get back home: one mile uphill at about a 7% grade is enough to make anyone’s calves just about burst. It was also my first time out with my new biking shoes that click into the pedals. And yes, I fell over, not once, but twice. I’m really looking forward to my first endo on Meadows.

After one of Lynn’s wonderful veggie wraps for lunch, I headed to the Apple Store in Irvine for an iPhone workshop. This is the more basic of the two workshops the store gives on iPhones, so I didn’t expect much, but I was curious to see if there was some hidden features I haven’t stumbled across.

There were about ten people attending, as the 20-something Apple employee gave his tour. As expected, it was pretty basic. Most of the attendees were about 15-20 years older than me (and I’m no spring chick), and were really struggling with the most basic concepts. I did, however, learn a couple of new things.

First, when viewing wide-screen videos, you can double-tap the video to fill the screen. This should come in handy, especially when I’ve watching them on my TV through the A/V cables.

He also shared a great website specifically for iPhone users. AppMarks.com is optimized for display on the iPhone, and even looks much like the iPhone springboard, with links to a number of handy iPhone web apps.

Next, I learned how you can search for nearby businesses when using the map application. Simply search for a business — say Starbucks — and all the mega-corp’s nearest coffee houses will be sprinkled across your map with push-pins.

Finally, I learned how to easily type special characters like ñ, í, and ¿ — especially handy since my Spanish 2 class starts up this Tuesday. You simply hold down the key for a moment and you are presented with other variations.

I would not recommend this workshop to your average person. This is for your mom who isn’t sure how to use a mouse. There is an advanced class next weekend. If time permits, I’ll see if its any juicier.

After the workshop, I caught the end of the Packers-Seahawks game in Green Bay. When I left for the workshop, the game had just started, and the field was dry. When I got back, it was the third quarter and there was about four inches of snow on the field. Awesome for the unpredictable nature of football in snow, and for the fact that Green Bay won.

Although I really don’t like the Patriots, I watched that game, too. They handily beat Jacksonville, but that was no surprise.

Finally, I hooked up the Xbox 360 and practiced my Guitar Hero licks until Lynn got home. It was fun to just play for a change. Something I probably need to do a little more often.

Now, what’s on the docket for today?

Well, there is football, although I will be working on my laptop. I’ll post a list of the projects next.

I recently ran across a couple of Flickr groups devoted to iPhone wallpapers, and decided to try my hand at it. The proper size for an iPhone wallpaper is 320×480, portrait orientation. And just for kicks, I used Flickr’s (relatively) new built-in editor to crop and resize the images. Click the images below for the full-size version, then right-click to download.

I’ve tagged my wallpapers, so to see them all, just click here.

If you’ve got an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you can download your fave wallpaper images to a folder, then simply sync that folder to your iPhone using iTunes. Pretty sweet, no?

I’m still trying to decide whether to jailbreak my iPhone or not. There is a very easy method if you’re running the 1.1.1 firmware, but I’ve already upgraded to 1.1.2. Should I downgrade to 1.1.1, just to jailbreak my iPhone?

Blogged with Flock

Tags: iPhone, wallpaper, photos, jailbreak

This week’s Photo Friday theme is Sunrise. This particular sunrise was captured in Laguna Niguel on my way to work during the recent brush fires in Southern California.

As you can see, I’m a sucker for sunrises.

A few observant readers noted that I’ve been less than prolific lately. Don’t expect a change today — or this weekend. I’ll be taking Rosa Maria on a road trip to Arizona, visiting Sedona and the Grand Canyon (my first time). Sure, I’ll have my laptop, but mainly so I can upload the photos I take. And I might keep you posted via Twitter.

Look for a return to normalcy (whatever that is) next week.

It’s Friday night, and instead of going out and raising hell, I’m thinking of hitting the hay and sawing logs. Don’t worry — I haven’t suddenly retired from life. I’m giving my body some much-needed sleep in preparation for My First Marathon.

That’s right, tomorrow morning I’m hopping on the Surfliner and cruising down south for the San Diego Rock-and-Roll Marathon. I’m running with South Orange County Team In Training, raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

I’ve been training for this event since the beginning of February, and it’s finally here. I’m really looking forward to the marathon. It winds it’s way through beautiful San Diego, including Balboa Park, downtown and Mission Bay. And there are 26 stages along the way with live bands to entertain and keep our feet moving.

The flip side of this is that I’ll be offline until sometime Monday night. I’ll post updates via Twitter, but otherwise it will be quiet here.

If you’d like to support my fundraising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, it’s not too late! I’m just a few hundred dollars away from my goal of $2,800! I’ll run the 26.2 miles — you help me meet my fundraising goal, ok? The easiest way to contribute is online, but you can also mail in a check. All the details are on my fundraising page.

Want to follow my marathon progress? The race starts at 6:30 am on Sunday, June 3rd. They will be publishing times at the 5k, 10k, half-marathon and finish line — all in real time. Look me up on race day at www.rnrmarathon.com. I’ll be about three hours behind the Kenyans.

Now you’re probably thinking to yourself… “How the hell am I going to keep myself from getting bored while Jeff is gone?” Try Desktop Tower Defense. DTD is an addictive, free Flash-based game that will keep you busy for hours. And there’s an interesting lesson behind it’s development.

DTD developer Paul Preece had never developed anything in Flash before. He was inspired by a friend’s project and took the plunge, using simple, hand-scrawled graphics. His website, www.handdrawngames.com launched in March, and Preece says his only publicity was submitting the site to StumbleUpon.com. The games addictive simplicity and group scoring gave it a viral quality, and soon he was generating 20 million page views a month. With most of the revenue coming from Google Adsense, he is generating in the high five-figures per month.

Preece realized that the popularity of Desktop Tower Defense cannot last forever. But he figures if he can produce one or two new games a month — something he feels is reasonable — he will have a sustainable business model.

I love those home-grown success stories. Read all the details over at GigaOm.com. Oh, and see if you can beat my high score — just add your score to the “BigBlueBall” group.