Brandin.com

Happy New Year From Brandin

brandin — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:55:01 +0000

Happy New Year!

I hope this letter finds all of you well. I managed to find time over the course of several late nights to gather my address book, but ended up having to wait until after the holidays to sit down and write. Lots go through my head when I do this and rushing the letter won’t do any good for your enjoyment. I would hate to have the worst happen, losing touch with those I grew up with or made a difference to me.

2011 was a year in transition for me, after graduating from the College of Business at CSU Long Beach the prior spring. Throughout the year, there was a lot of traveling to and from the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Dallas, and Portland, attending conferences and meeting with prospective business partners and tech start-ups regarding my next step.

After three and a half years, I departed my full-time involvement with PeacePartners Inc., in Long Beach. While the staff was much loved for its atmosphere and attitude, many knew that it was a matter of time before I was going to move on to bigger and better things. It was this time last year I had announced to many colleagues and friends that I was planning to move on, possibly even relocate, in search of my next move. I was grateful to have started here as an intern back in 2008 while I was working for the CSU Chancellor, and two years later, becoming full-time staff. I am thankful for the chance I had to be with them, especially considering how hard it is for students to find opportunities while in college. They have been greatly missed and I hope to remain good friends with everyone.

On a related note, after a five-year run, it was time for me to depart from my managing duties with athletics for the rowing team at CSULB (Beach Crew). It was a hard decision to make but everyone gave me their best wishes as I departed from the everyday duties. The response was overwhelming, going beyond the CSULB campus, throughout many western collegiate institutions. I have to say that in the past five years I was involved more off the water than actually in a boat. I met so many people from around the country. I am glad that there is a sense of respect for the institution up and down the state. I am honored to have been the voice for the team for all of those years. Today, Matthew Dalton has taken over my duties as the General Manager of Rowing. We talk on a weekly basis, sometimes even daily. I have retained my involvement with the Beach Crew Alumni Association as an ex-officio member of the Board of Directors, not to fully abandon my relationship from my roots. Sometimes I miss Long Beach and the chance to travel around the country.

Unrelated to rowing, a former professor of mine from the CSULB College of Business keeps inviting me back to teach a seminar to students during the spring semesters. The topic changes from introducing students new kinds of information systems beyond the classroom, informing students about current changes in the industry, and defining applications for mobile devices. The grant I helped obtain from Boeing is still going strong, which obtains testing equipment and funds a course for students seeking careers in mobile device applications.

As of September 2011, I have moved out into a place of my own residing on the north end of Lake Mission Viejo in South Orange County. Views of Modjeska and Santiago Peaks can be seen from the backyard since we’re in the foothills. I live with two former rowers from Orange Coast College, one I have known since middle school.

In October, out of the blue, I received a phone call from a company about five miles from my home, inviting me on board to their team of 12. The company, RockLive, was founded in 2010 by two brothers and has already released two major mobile applications for iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. RockLive has very good connections with other companies, including Apple, Twitter, Facebook, EA, and several celebrities. I have to say I never saw myself working for a game company. There are hard 10-12 hour days to be worked, and I’m usually on-call when I’m not working, but I think the commitment will pay off soon. We’ve already been featured in major news sources, including a feature with me in it on Bloomberg West. Maybe a year from now we’ll be all over the news.

I can write pages about this past year, but I think this sums up a year in transition, getting back to the things that mattered, and fulfilling my desires in life. I wish all of you the best, good health, and prosperity this year.

Best Regards,
Brandin

Letter to Congressman Gary Miller: Stop SOPA

brandin — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 07:36:01 +0000

All,

Feel free to copy-and-paste to use in your own letter. You’d have to rewrite it a little, but it should help. Find your representative in the house and tell them to stop this when Congress is back in session after the winter recess.

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Congressman Gary Miller
42nd Congressional District (CA-R Mission Viejo/Brea)
200 Civic Center
Mission Viejo, CA 92691

Dear Congressman Miller:

The “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or SOPA, gives corporations the power to blacklist websites at-will and it violates the due process rights of the thousands of Internet users who could see their sites disappear.

This bill (HR 3261) was intended to discourage illegal copyright violations, but it addresses this problem by giving corporations far too much authority over free speech on the Internet. It deputizes the private sector with broad powers to disconnect the URLs of any website corporations contend are behaving improperly. We can’t let corporations become the Internet’s judge, jury and executioner.

SOPA not only lets companies silence websites but also allows banks to freeze financial deposits to the accounts of website owners, potentially forcing falsely accused Internet enterprises out of business. The bill was intended to discourage illegal copyright violations, but it addresses this problem by giving corporations way too much authority over the way the Internet works. It deputizes the private sector with the power to disconnect the URLs of any websites corporations contend are behaving improperly.

These are the sorts of heavy-handed Web controls you’d expect to see in China, not in the United States.

It gives private entities unprecedented power to rewrite the Internet’s domain name system (DNS), which translates your website request into an IP address to connect you to the correct location. After receiving a complaint from a company like Viacom or Sony Music, the government can force Internet providers and search engines to redirect users’ attempts to reach the websites that they choose. As such the consequences for free speech would be grave. The bill not only gives record labels the authority to “disappear” content from the Web but could also land someone in jail, where they would face severe penalties and a long prison term.

The idea that SOPA would protect against online piracy and other Web crimes is a Hollywood pipe dream. As a technical solution, redirecting DNS would be virtually useless in stopping sophisticated online piracy — but it would have a strong deterrent effect on casual producers and consumers of Internet content. I work for an entertainment company that provides digital mediums for major celebrities, such as Justin Bieber (who has publicly rejected this bill), Mike Tyson, 50 Cent, and Pauly D (MTV). Pioneers of the modern Internet, including Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the first website, and Dr Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the modern domain name system (DNS), have publicly rejected this as well.

Opponents of the bill include Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, LinkedIn, eBay, Mozilla Corporation, the Wikimedia Foundation, and human rights organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU, and Human Rights Watch. On December 22, Go Daddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar, stated that it supports SOPA. This prompted users from Reddit to organize a boycott. In addition, Jimmy Wales announced he would transfer all Wikimedia domains from Go Daddy. The same day, Go Daddy rescinded their support, with its CEO saying, “Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better… Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”

House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren (CA-R, Folsom) told Politico’s Morning Tech that he had “very serious concerns” about SOPA’s impact on DNSSEC, adding “we don’t have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it. I can’t afford to let that go by without dealing with it.”

Congressman Miller, if you are confused by any technicalities that are being introduced to you in congress, I personally would like to clear this up with you at your Mission Viejo office. Our representatives in the House who are dealing with this bill don’t get it. Concerns about SOPA have been raised by the Tea Party, progressives, computer scientists, human rights advocates, venture capitalists, law professors, independent musicians, and many more. Unfortunately, these voices are not being heard. We can’t let corporations become the Internet’s judge, jury and executioner. If SOPA is allowed to stand, we could see the private sector’s police powers expand to a point that undermines the fundamental openness of the Internet. SOPA violates our right to free speech. Please vote “no” on SOPA. It puts the open Internet at risk.

Sincerely,

Brandin J. Grams
iOS Web Application & Server Engineer
Mission Viejo, CA

Merry Christmas

brandin — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:18:50 +0000

Merry Christmas to everyone. It’s the time of year again where I can sit down and think about myself for a change, though it’s not as long as it used to be. Maybe I should write the next addition to “The Things That Mattered.”

Apple’s founding contract expected to bring $150,000 at auction

brandin — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:25:43 +0000

The signed contract that established what would become the world’s most valuable tech company is one of the highlights of an upcoming auction, and is estimated to sell for at least $100,000.

It was revealed on Monday that the document which founded Apple Computer Company in 1976, will be sold by Sotheby’s in an upcoming books and manuscripts auction, reports Bloomberg.

The original three-page draft is signed by co-founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, and is the third most-valuable lot being sold in the December auction.

“This is a foundation document in terms of financial history, social history and technological history,” said Richard Austin, head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s in New York.

Wayne, who was the original owner of the contract, met Jobs while working at Atari Inc. and was later promised a 10 percent stake if he could persuade Wozniak to join Apple. The three founders drafted the official paperwork on April 1, 1976, effectively establishing the fledgling computer company that would turn into today’s tech heavyweight.

On April 12, however, Wayne withdrew as partner, receiving $800 for his share of the company. Sotheby’s notes that he subsequently received another payment of $1500, though by the end of 2010 his original stake would have been worth an estimated $2.6 billion.

A manuscript dealer, who acquired the founding draft from Wayne, sold the documents to the auction house in the mid-1990′s.

“It was right before Jobs rejoined Apple,” Austin said. “At the time, everyone thought that Apple was pretty much finished.”

Jobs, whose closely guarded personal life was recently exposed in a biography by Walter Isaacson, was seen by many as the driving force behind Apple’s dramatic turnaround in becoming one of the largest companies in the world.

The tech guru’s untimely death in October generated an enormous amount of press, which is part of the reason Sotheby’s is selling the documents.

“With everything in the news, this seems to be the time to do it,” Austin said.

Included with the original contract is a statement by the County of Santa Clara noting Wayne’s withdrawal from Apple as well as an amendment to the original draft.

The auction will take place on Dec. 13 in New York.

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

brandin — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:14:56 +0000

By MONA SIMPSON
Published: October 30, 2011

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.

We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.

I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.

I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.

Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.

That’s incredibly simple, but true.

He was the opposite of absent-minded.

He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.

He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.

For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.

He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.

His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.

He was willing to be misunderstood.

Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.

Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.

Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”

I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”

When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.

None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.

His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.

Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.

Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.

When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”

When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.

They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.

This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.

And he did.

Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.

Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.

Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?

He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.

With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.

He treasured happiness.

Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.

Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.

I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.

I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.

He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”

Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.

For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.

None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.

Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.

He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

—

Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.

Here’s Why Apple Launched The iPhone 4S Instead Of The iPhone 5

brandin — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:03:26 +0000

By Henry Blodget | Oct. 10, 2011, 10:23 AM

Business Insider

When Apple launched the iPhone 4S instead of the iPhone 5 last week, I initially thought it was a disappointment and a mistake.

If Apple had launched the actual iPhone 5, I thought, they’d have sold more of them.

And that’s probably right.

If Apple had launched a radically new iPhone 5, more of the folks who currently own iPhone 4s would have upgraded, so Apple would have sold some more 4S units. As it is, the iPhone 4S is likely to appeal primarily to iPhone 3G and 3GS owners, non-smartphone owners, and non-iPhone owners, most of whom (like me) are presumably stoked to buy the iPhone 4S.

But viewing the 4S as disappointing ignores Apple’s likely thinking behind it, which Asymco analyst Horace Dediu explains very clearly here.

The thinking is that most iPhone 4 owners are still bound by the 2-year contracts they had to enter into when they bought the iPhone 4, so they’ll be less likely to now upgrade anyway (barring carriers waving those contracts, which they might have if Apple had released the “5″).

So the 4S isn’t aimed at these folks. It’s aimed at the other three categories of iPhone 4S buyers:

Pre-iPhone 4 iPhone users (~70 million of them)
Non-smartphone users (1+ billion, who can now get a 3GS for free, if price is an issue)
Non-iPhone smartphone users (Blackberry, Android, Nokia)

The release of the forthcoming iPhone 5, meanwhile, which presumably will be a more radical upgrade from the iPhone 4, will likely be timed to appeal directly to the ~70 million iPhone 4 owners who will just then be starting to come off their two-year contracts. The iPhone 4 was released in the early summer of 2010. So the two-year window for these contracts will begin to roll off in the summer of 2012 (next June).

As I previously noted, the number of reports about the “iPhone 5″ leading up to last week, as well as the specifics about its design (bigger screen, etc.), suggest (to me) that Apple’s work on this phone may already be quite advanced.

So it wouldn’t be surprising to see Apple launch the phone next June, when the iPhone 4 folks begin to come off their contracts.

In short, Apple’s thinking about the iPhone 4S may have been as follows:

It has to be good enough to get iPhone 3G and 3GS users drooling (check)
It has to be good enough to get non-smartphone users to want to upgrade to it or the free 3GS instead of an Android phone (check)
It has to be good enough to get some Android and Blackberry users to switch (check)

And, for good measure, it’s possible that Apple even considered fourth and fifth factors about the iPhone 4S:

It has the same form-factor and supply chains as the 4, so it will be easier to ramp production to the desired levels (without having a huge gap in production capacity between the 4 and 4S).
It isn’t such-an-amazing-upgrade that the ~70 million iPhone 4 owners stuck with their iPhone 4s for the next year will be pissed that they upgraded a year too soon.

So I shouldn’t have considered the iPhone 4S launch disappointing, except for me and other 3GS owners—because we’ll get locked into contracts on the 4S and miss the 5. Sure, relative to expectations it was a disappointment, but otherwise it appears to have been typically brilliant.

Official Cause of Death for Steve Jobs Released

brandin — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:26:17 +0000

Bloomberg reports that official details of Steve Jobs’s death have been released by the Santa Clara County Public Health Department. Jobs died at home at approximately 3 P.M. local time on October 5. The official cause of death: respiratory arrest brought about by his pancreatic tumor. Most of us assumed that was the case, but this is one time we all wish we’d been wrong.

Apple was reportedly aware of Steve’s condition and notified local police days in advance. The empty “reserved” seat during Apple’s latest event and presenters’ somewhat somber demeanors seem to show that executives were aware of Steve’s decline. The fact that they were able to put on the presentation anyway, and that it’s only in hindsight that we realize what they must have all been going through, strikes me as evidence that Apple is in very capable hands indeed.

Steve Jobs’s occupation on his death certificate was listed as “entrepreneur.” That doesn’t even begin to cover it.

A memorial covers the sidewalk in front of Steve Job's Palo Alto, Calif., home on Oct. 6, 2011.

My Thanks to StevieJ (Steve Jobs: 1955-2011)

brandin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:05:28 +0000

I wanted to wait a few days to see what other news would come out of the woodwork. I feel the time is right to post something regarding the passing of Apple’s Co-founder, Steven Paul Jobs. For the past several years, I knew it was inevitable, he wasn’t going to be the CEO forever. But the legacy he left behind is astonishing and the spirit lives on. I was fortunate to attend several of his keynotes in person, starting with the Macworld 2007 keynote, where he revealed the first-generation iPhone (and prank called a Starbucks). He most recent and last keynote that he appeared at was this past June at the 2011 Worldwide Developers Conference at Moscone West in San Francisco. Today, I am a proud shareholder of Apple Inc.

Steve built a company, but more importantly, built a company that shares his vision. After witnessing a lot of their operations in person, whether a shareholders meeting or a conference, you feel a sense a confidence in Apple’s management that will sustain itself for a long time. Things will never be the same without him, but I am happy to see that there is faith in the management to keep Steve’s spirit alive.

Steve was more than just Apple. The work he did at Pixar was nothing ever seen in the movie industry. I was a huge fan of Toy Story back when I was a kid. No matter what company it was, Steve was good at taking something that was nothing at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and made it “just work.” During Steve’s absence from Apple, NexT was born, and the world’s first webpage was created using a NexT machine. A lot of people don’t realize that today.

In 2009, I was fortunate enough to meet Steve Wozniak, Jobs’ high school buddy and second Co-Founder of Apple, at a digital art exhibit in San Francisco.

Going back to 1989, at the age of three, I got my hands on a small and compact Macintosh SE that was in use at my grandfather’s medical company. Through the 90’s the Mac was a part of the family, and part of what would end up being a driving force in my career. In 2003, I took a brief absence from the Mac, only to return to it in 2006 after I had dumped Windows for Fedora Linux.

On Wednesday, October 5, 2011, I was at a hardware store picking up small parts for a project that was on my list since high school. On the way home I heard on the radio that he had passed on.

Prior to his resignation as CEO last August, Steve was known to respond to messages sent by the public. It wasn’t hard to figure out his address (sjobs@apple.com). Of course, it was probably regulated by his assistants, but if you were lucky, you’d get a short response. I decided to send something to him. I received no response, which was expected. Perhaps he read it. Who knows.

From: Brandin Grams
Subject: Thanks Steve
Date: January 17, 2011 12:33:16 PM PST
To: sjobs@apple.com

Dear Steve,

I’m sure you’re getting swamped with messages right now, if these are even getting to you. Part of me said to leave the poor guy alone, he gets enough of it from his fans and the company. Then there was a part that wanted to express my gratitude because the time would come sooner or later. I could write page after page here, but I’d rather respect your valuable time. Words can’t completely describe my amount of gratitude.

I don’t see myself as a “Fanboy” or a “Stevefanatic,” but rather as someone who looked up to the man as the one with the vision, to manage for the mission, and keeping the eyes on the big prize. More importantly, I respect those who strive to share the leader’s vision with colleagues. To influence them to follow can be such a toilsome task at times. How do we do it? There is no fixed path. You have to define what I like to call, the people element. We make mistakes and we take blame, but doesn’t it feel good when you’ve proved a point? Regaining that respect in not just your own company, but the in the industry is commendable, and that is something great that you did. I have been impressed with everyone’s commitment at Apple to keep that vision alive and I think the majority or its users see the same thing. I ran into Steve Wozniak in-person not too long ago. What a man.

Personally, the work you did at Pixar meant a lot more to me besides the amazing innovations that have, and still, come out of Apple. I was such a fan of Toy Story back in the day. To see such an animation hit the screens was so motivating to me when I was a kid. “I want to do stuff like that too,” I remember.

Back in 1989, at the age of three, I got my hands on a Mac for the first time, a Macintosh SE to be exact. I don’t know exactly what sparked my interest, but little did I know that this was going to become my life’s work. Still at such a young age, I found myself getting into trouble, taking things apart that I shouldn’t have, being the “go-to” guy for people I shouldn’t have, and the list goes on. Today, it’s a respect that I take pride in, and others see the same thing. When I look back, it was all well worth the trouble. In recent years, I received a WWDC Student Scholarships from Apple, two years in a row, and I hope to give back to those opportunities through excellence in innovation as I venture on in life this coming year. I am a proud shareholder, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Time is short. It’s a precious thing, never waste it. I admired those last few words of your’s from the Stanford commencement speech to, “…stay hungry, stay foolish…” and “don’t settle.”

Steve, no matter what happens, thank you for your hard work and being someone to look up to. I wish you the best and a good recovery.

Sincerely,
Brandin Grams
Long Beach, CA
http://www.brandin.com

So to end, thank you Steve. Well done. Rest well.

Darpa: U.S. Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk

brandin — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 21:18:56 +0000

By Katie Drummond @ DarpaWatch

Sure, we’re all plugged in and online 24/7. But fewer American kids are growing up to be bona fide computer geeks. And that poses a serious security risk for the country, according to the Defense Department.

The Pentagon’s far-out research arm Darpa is soliciting proposals for initiatives that would attract teens to careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), with an emphasis on computing. According to the Computer Research Association, computer science enrollment dropped 43 percent between 2003 and 2006.

Darpa’s worried that America’s “ability to compete in the increasingly internationalized stage will be hindered without college graduates with the ability to understand and innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come…. Finding the right people with increasingly specialized talent is becoming more difficult and will continue to add risk to a wide range of DoD [Department of Defense] systems that include software development.”

The agency doesn’t offer specifics on what kinds of activities might boost computing’s appeal to teens, but they want programs to include career days, mentoring, lab tours and counseling.

Of course, Darpa’s launched student-oriented publicity stunts before. But events like last year’s red balloon hunt were directed at pre-existing geeks — the balloon-finders were a team of MIT aces.

Now, Darpa’s now hoping someone, somewhere, can come up with a way to make future philosophy majors change course. And they want to get ‘em while they’re young: Darpa insists that programs be “targeted to middle and high school students, and include methods “to maintain a positive, long-term presence in a student’s education.”

A long-term presence that includes evenings and weekends. Rather than incorporate computer-based activities into academics, Darpa wants the programs to be extracurricular, “perhaps as an after school activity, weekend, or summer event.” Tween girls and minorities take note, because Darpa’s especially got it out for you:

Finally, the decline in degrees in CS [computer science] is particularly pronounced for women and minorities…. Proposals that have plans that specifically increase the number of women or minorities in their activities are encouraged.

WWDC 2011 Keynote: iCloud, iOS5, OS10.7

brandin — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:00:24 +0000

And Good Morning! It’s 8:40 AM and I’m sitting down on level 2 of Moscone West. In about an hour we should begin seating on level 3 inside the Presidio show floor to see Apple’s latest and greatest. The SteveNote starts at 10:00AM. We know for sure in Apple’s PR last week that this keynote will address the future of iOS5, OS10.7 (Lion), and the long-anticipated cloud service. Apple is expected to highlight their focus on being better, not first to market.

This is the first time I’ve reported an event with this new CMS as I can now update on the fly. It’s strange writing an article as it happens rather than after the fact, so bear with me.

The nice gentleman next to me offered to take some photos of the event. I don’t think I’ll be able to post them until after the event because we’re packed in here really tight.

Steve had a standing ovation at 10:01 AM. “We have an awesome morning together…we’re talking about three things today, all about software…lion…iOS5….and interesting new cloud stuff.”

Phil Shiller and Craig Federighi come out on stage to talk about Lion. MacOSX was launched 10 years ago and has grown with many features. We were shown a snapshot of “Cheeta” 10.0. Lion has 250 new features, but he’s only telling us about 10.

Multi-Touch gestures: built throughout the system
Full-screen applications: very important for notebooks. Developers have a simple platform to use. More than one full-screen application can run by swiping desktops.
Mission-control: a birds-eye view of everything you are running. Switch apps with a single tap.

Craig came out on stage to show us Lion in action. The most popular demo was iChat’s new photo-booth features that are aware of the space around you. We could spend hours on this. Phil continues…

App-store: The MacApp store is now #1 to buy apps. In-app purchases are now built-in. Apps can run in a sandbox to protect data. The Apps can also auto-update.
Launchpad: launch apps with a gesture you create.
Resume: similar to apps on the iPhone/iPad, apps can resume where you left off, without have to save a document for example.
Auto-save: Lion saves your documents automatically. You can even “go back” to where you last started (versioning).
Versions: Documents can also be duplicated based on a pervious version. You can also store a manual “snapshot.” Only the differences are saved to save space.

Craig comes back out to show us the above in a demo. Craig accidentally quit Pages and forgot to save his work. He didn’t need to.

AirDrop: Easily share documents with a friend’s mac. No more sneakerswitch (USB stick). It’s an auto-discovery setup on a ad-hoc wifi connection.
Mail: New MacMail application laid out similar to the Mail app on the iPad. The search function now suggests what you are trying to find. The “conversation view” lines up all messages together in one continuous view.

Craig shows us once more of AirDrop and Mail.

Developers now have 3000 new API’s to integrate into their apps.

How can we get it. Lion will be available via the Mac AppStore. It will be 4GB in size. The download can be used on ALL personal authorized macs. Lion will be $29, same as Snow Leopard. Developers will receive a preview of Lion today and it will be available for customers in July.

Scott Forstall now takes the stage. He goes over recent achievements of the iOS devices, which is now the largest mobile OS @ 44% of the market.

Here comes iOS5. It’s a major release for developers and customers. 1500 new API’s for developers and 200 new features for users. Scott shows us 10 features:

Notifications: More than 100 Billion notifications have been pushed to devices. iOS5 now has a Notification Center, a single place that can bind together all notifications by swiping your finger from the top of the screen on down. Stocks and weather are also included on the top. The notifications will no longer interrupt you application. You can even see it when the lock screen is enabled. Scott showed us this in action.
Newsstand: Subscriptions to magazines are now archived in the Newsstand, complete with background downloads when new issues are ready to read.
Twitter: People send 1 billion tweets a week. iOS5 makes it easier using a new function of the Settings app. All other apps can now integrate tweets in publishing/sending options. Twitter usernames can be saved into your contacts.
Safari: Two-thirds of mobile browsing on iOS (90% including Android devices). Single scrolling separate the content, full-screen for the user. Users can add pages to the “reading list” to review at any time. Tabbed browsing was added to switch fast from different pages.
Reminders: The new reminders app can store all those things you have written to do on paper. Users can assign locations to reminders. All reminders sync with iCal.
Camera: the camera on the iPhone4 is the most popular camera on published photos. The volume button can now be used to zoom the camera. The camera can be access from the lock-screen to quickly take a photo on a moment’s notice. Gridlines are included on the preview screen. Quick image enhancements are included to fix blemishes (i,e, red eye).
Mail: Draggable address and flagging. Search the entire contents of a message. S/MIME is now supported for enterprise accounts (i.e. MS Exchange). The keyboard on screen is detachable for someone to type with their thumbs.
PC-FREE: (wild crowd) No syncing is necessary with a PC. We live in a new Post PC world. Setup and activate the iOS device right there. Software updates are automatic and are “delta” (difference) updates. “If you want to cut the cord, you can.”
Game Center: iOS is the most popular gaming platform on mobile devices. 50 million game center accounts were created in less than 9 months, 30 million with Xbox over 8 years.
iMessage: iPhone users have enjoyed SMS text messaging, what about iPod Touch and the iPad. iMessage is the app for you. Delivery and read receipts, typing indicators, and fully encrypted. (question: does this eliminate SMS texting?) Yes, it works on WiFi AND 3G networks. iMessage is built on top of the push notification system.

iOS5 is available to developers today via the developer seed. iOS5 will ship to customers this Fall. It will work on iPhone 3GS, 4, iPad, iPad 2, and the third and fourth generation iPod Touch.

Steve comes back out to talk about iCloud.

“10 years ago we said that the PC would become the digital hub for all of your stuff. It worked well for a long time through syncing. It no longer works because our devices have changed…keeping everything synced is driving us crazy.” The Mac and PC are their own device. Your digital hub will now be in the cloud. All of your devices can sync automatically with each other. The cloud is more than just a big hard drive. iCloud stores your content and pushes it to all of your devices. Nothing to to learn. “It just works.”

Steve: “But why them, they are the ones who brought MobileMe!”

Mail, contacts, and calendars are synced like before. No ads! MobileMe today ceases to exist. It was $99. It’s now free. What else comes with it?

The AppStore can now sync past purchases to other devices. There is no extra charge to distribute the apps. iBooks works the same way. Wireless backup works automatically. Enough said.

Three more apps! The Documents app stores all documents worked on the device. Apple’s iWork suite integrates with iCloud services.

Steve talks about the “file system” story. iOS handled all documents without revealing this confusion. iCloud solves this issue. iCloud Storage API’s will be available. Macs and PC’S TOO!

Photo Stream lets us share all photos between our devices. There’s nothing new to learn. It’s even built into AppleTV. What about the size of these photos? Only the last 1000 photos are actually stored on the device unless you choose to do differently.

The final app for iCloud… iTunes. You can now distribute your music to your other devices that you own… no additional charge. It’s the first time we’ve seen this in the music industry.

Again… ALL FREE SERVICES. They want all users to adopt these services. “That’s iCloud.”

Users will switch to iCloud through a setup option when they get iOS5. Photos and documents are not counted as the free 5GB. Today, developers can grab the 4.3 beta to begin testing. iCloud will deploy when iOS5 is released to customers.

STEVE HAS ONE MORE THING!

Ripped music in iTunes can be imported via WiFi or a traditional cable. Users can “rebuy” the songs, but iTunes Match will take the non-iTunes songs and give you the same benefits of a purchased song. iTunes Match will upgrade the format to 256 kbps AAC-DRM free. It does a “scan and match” not upload of your library into the cloud. iTunes Match will cost $24.99 a year.

That’s it folks!