Thursday, January 03, 2008

getting rolling

It is awfully strange to be sitting in San Francisco but not in the Linden offices. I'll get to my 2008 predictions later today, but thought it worth noting what technology I've started using to craft my new, post-Linden identity and work flow. The most obvious piece is this blog, which a few people seem to be reading already. I'm used to writing longer form works -- and regularly blogged internally at Linden -- but I expect it will take a while to find the right voice, frequency, and topics for this. There are enough other places to read virtual world and technology news, so I'll try not to just echo what you are already RSS-ing elsewhere.

The next pieces are communication. My Yahoo Mail account gathered dust during my time at Linden, so rather than resurrecting it, I moved to Gmail. So far, I've been quite happy with it, especially with its new support for IMAP and helpful advice on how to properly configure it. The new Google apps for iPhone also work well for me, so I am also using Google Calendar and Reader on both my desktop and phone.

For a computer, I grabbed a MacBook -- although it the rumored thinner versions appear next week I will upgrade -- since the lighter weight and incredible battery life was more important to me than the horsepower of the Pro. Great little machine so far, plus I think a pretty good development platform for various experiments -- if something runs nicely on a MacBook today, it should run on most computers a year from now. I let iCal pull from Google Calendar so my phone is mostly up-to-date, but have not bothered with more complicated solutions to try and sync between iCal and Google Calendar yet.

I'm currently bouncing between Google Docs, iWork, and soon plan to experiment with Scrivener as writing and brainstorming tools. The Google Docs to Blogger posting almost works, but I haven't found how to have it automagically set the title, which is a shame, since the Docs editor handles Mac short cuts far better than the Blogger one.

So that's it for initial technology. Having built Ubuntu laptops for testing SL, I considered going that route, but being a Mac household -- more on my cloud of Mac Minis for television viewing in a later post -- I decided it was easier to stay with Mac.

6 comments:

Tim Allen / FlipperPA said...

Cory, consider checking out Google Apps (yes, with a capital "A"). It gives you all the power of GMail, GoogleDocs, and much more under your own domain name. I've been thrilled with it for my LLC, and it is nice to have everything under your own domain with your own branding. Also, completely free! See it here. I couldn't be happier with it. Good to see you getting back in the swing, I'll continue to follow the blog.

Unknown said...

I have been very happy with my MacBook Pro that I bought a few months ago. It has almost completely displaced my half dozen Windows and Linux machines as my "go to" machine when I want to do something. I suspect you will be very happy with your choice.

I am pondering one line in your blog, though: if something runs nicely on a MacBook today, it should run on most computers a year from now. It sounds like you are suggesting the MacBook is ahead of other systems and the others will catch up in a year. That sounds odd to me- the things the Macs seem "ahead" in, which often boil down to design elegance in my mind, aren't things I expect other platforms to catch up to. Performance or "laundry list" feature wise, the Macs are often behind their "competition". So presumably I'm missing something here.

I'm curious to see where your muse will take you in the next year or so. Presumably you'll give us some hints here?

cory ondrejka said...

My thought was that a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of RAM was still on the leading edge of laptop performance, even with the not-so-great X3100 graphics chip.

Unknown said...

Ah, yes...I can see that, Cory. I'm a geek, though, and a gamer besides, so the "cutting edge" laptops to me are the ones with SLI (dual video cards) and the like. Bear in mind that the linked article is over a year old, so that is old news :)

I've actually been rather amazed by what $1,000 or thereabouts buys you for a laptop these days: a Core 2 duo processor and a dedicated NVidia or ATI video processor with 256 or more of RAM. Of course, that's for a *windows* PC...

maddjones said...

Cory, you would be so sad to hear that we're thinking of turning in our Mac for a PC. Not for any complicated technical computer reasons - which I am sure your comtemporaries could dive into many tangents of many debates over. It's just that I'm lazy and I want a computer at home that has the same look feel and quick keys as my computer at work. I have lost count of the times I have ctrl/open apple/shift/ ... something and ended up somewhere I didn't want to be. Rather frustrating.

Just wanted you to know that while I'm bad with emailing friends I do read blogs. I am sure I will learn a lot reading yours.

Anonymous said...

Hei Cory. We got here in Brazil a blog based on SL and virtual worlds. Brazilian's know about your history and relevance on Second Life and Linden Lab, and felt sad with your Linden's shutdown. I'm particularly very glad to find you pretty new blog here. I know it isn't about SL but, wish to ask you about sharing your words to brazilian community. I just need your permission to translate your articles, with credits, to our blog. Will be a honor for us.

Best regards and a great 2008 to you!

Marcelo Posthorn
http://mundolinden.blogspot.com
mundolinden@yahoo.com.br
Brazil