Month: August 2011

Been playing around & researching a few tech things these days so I thought I’d write them down. 

1. I bought a Kindle 3 a few weeks back. Actually I bought two of them. One for Lauren on her birthday and one for me. Lauren hates reading on her iPad. She thinks it’s too heavy and cumbersome. So far she loves her Kindle. I picked one up for myself as well. I really like it. My favorite part is the ability to read outside with it which comes in handy this time of year.

The only problem is that my daughter Sophia basically took it over this weekend so now I’m back to my iPad. Inevitable I guess. 

2. Like most, my camera of choice is the one I carry with me – the iphone4. It takes very nice casual photos but it fails in low light or if you need a quick autofocus. So on our recent vacation, i brought my Lumix GF1. The biggest hassle with cameras is getting photos out of the camera and on to the web.

I bought the ipad camera connection kit and it worked out great. Couldn’t be easier. insert the card, transfer pix, and then upload from the 3g ipad. it was a breeze. I’ve missed the Lumix. I’ll definitely be taking it with me on more trips. 

3. I’m planning on doing some kayaking and rafting this year. Didn’t see anything at the local Apple store to keep my iphone dry. Some folks on Twitter suggested that i stick the phone in a ziplock bag. I’m sure that would work but it seems like it would get in the way of the camera. @joevc suggested the LifeProof, so I’ve got that on order. I’ll let you know how well it works. 

4. I spent sometime the past few weeks having an affair on Rdio. basically i’ve been sleeping around with Spotify. There is a ton of hype and enthusiasm around Spotify. Truth be told, I’ve been a Spotify subscriber for many months now but never really got into it. I thought it was because most of my friends weren’t on it because they hadn’t officially launched in the US. But now that they are in the US, I’m still not loving Spotify.

It’s likely because of a few things: a) I don’t care for desktop software. b) i’m not a big facebook user and spotify leverages the fb graph and c) my limited fb graph doesn’t share my taste in music. 

So i’m back in the Rdio camp. Rdio just came out with a sweet ipad version of their app. it looks great. Between rdio, exfm and soundcloud, i’m in a happy music place.

(the only feature request I have for rdio, is they need a family account with user sign on. my daughters tunes are messing with my profile page). 

5. This weekend, our firm @sparkcapital made the jump from MS Exchange to Google. Everyone has either an iphone or android. I’m thrilled. I’m now on the hunt to make our Google lives even better. My friend Brad wrote a post awhile back on some nice add-ons. Let me know if you have any other suggestions. You can tweet me @bijan or send me an email – bijan at sparkcapital dot com. Thanks! 

I’m exactly half way through reading Life, an autobiography by Keith Richards. 

Growing up two favorite rock bands dominated my vinyl collection. The Who and the Stones. 

This book by Keith is absolutely fucking fantastic. All the stories behind the music. How he met Mick. The drugs. The first tour. How he learned the guitar. 

One of the coolest parts is when he discovered open tuning and removing the 6th string so his guitar only had five strings. 

In various chapters of the book Keith references his 5 string guitar set up as something where having less strings gave him more space and more creativity. 

A great line from the book:

“with five strings you can be sparse; that’s your frame, that’s what you work on. "Start Me Up,” “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” “Honky Tonk Woman” all leave gaps between the chords". …..“it made me realize that silence was the canvas”.

Silence was the canvas. What a powerful concept. 

I think the same powerful concept exists when you see a beautiful web site that respects and embraces the white space instead of trying to fill it up. I think 140 characters is a five string guitar as well. Or the single purpose post type in Tumblr. Less is more. 

This is an amazing book. 

(pls excuse the typos and lack of links. wrote this on my iPad )