reviews

Fabulous BBQ in Napa: BarBersQ

Hit up a new BBQ place this weekend up in Napa called BarBersQ. In my recent BBQ adventures I hadn’t run across a place quite like this.The food was top notch and the setting was not what you would expect from your typical BBQ joint. It’s a an indoor-outdoor “fine dining” setup with an elegant design and of course great wine selection.

It’s only about 50 minutes from San Francisco so totally doable for a dinner spot. Worth checking out if you are in the bay area — here’s the yelp link.

Next up will try to get to Gorilla Barbeque in Pacifica. I’ve driven by it a few times but never eaten there — looks pretty awesome and it’s in an old train car — must be good !

Upgraded to iPhone 3GS from 3G. Veridct: Worth it !

Read lots of coverage last week that for those with iPhone 3Gs, you may want to hold off on the 3GS upgrade. Most reviewers had two rationals — 1) the upgrade price with how at&t works wasn’t very attractive and 2) that the spec upgrade wasn’t dramatic.

So a few thoughts on the upgrade and the whole 3G vs 3Gs debate:

On the pricing, it is true that at&t handled this pretty poorly and “penalized” those who bought the 3G in that they weren’t eligible for the new 3Gs pricing. On the other hand early adopters have traditionally always paid a premium. But more importantly, even at the non-upgrade price, if you look at the annual “cost of ownership” with monthly cell bills easily in the $100+ range, adding $200 to a device price isn’t as dramatic as one would think. I have a few accounts with at&t, and was lucky that one of them was upgradeable, so I got the better price.

Re: the spec upgrade. For anyone like me who started with a TI99, moved to the Apple IIe world, and then upgraded to 286s, 386, 486DX, etc — you remember what a big deal it was when the processor got a speed bump. It made tasks that once took 10 second takes just 2 secs.

It was with that in mind that I read the excellent blog by John Gruber, Daring Fireball, and his post titled “The Next iPhone” that I knew I would upgrade:

So, that guy was the first one on the team to get a Pentium-based machine, running at, if I recall correctly, 90 MHz. (The rest of us all had 486-based machines.) A few hours after he’d started using the new machine, word started to spread about just how fast it was. “You should see him do a build.” Soon there were a dozen of us crowded into his office, marveling, maybe even slobbering, at the speed of his C compiler’s progress bar.

A new computer almost always feels faster than the one it replaces. In the old days, though, every few years you’d get a computer with not just a faster processor but a next-generation processor, and the resulting performance increase was dramatic. For the Mac, those were bumps like the first 68030s and 68040s, or the first batch of PowerPCs. For the PC, the 386, 486, and Pentium.

Based on information from informed sources, I believe the processor in the next-generation iPhone is going to be that kind of upgrade.

(emphasis mine).

So last week I ordered the new 3GS, and after going through a day where all my phones were bricked as at&t sorted out the activation ( 3 phone calls to “611”, 2 trips to the at&t store, and 4 sim cards ! ) I can now safely report that the processor upgrade makes a huge difference.

The way I use the device I’m often switching between applications, clicking on links, etc — and things now just bounce right open without delay. Search is snappy, and that annoying text entry lag that still popped up on occasion is totally gone. Browsing is faster too, and many iPhone optimized sites like Google Apps actually feel like native apps now. Add in the video feature which rivals Flip for quality (original, not Flip HD) and the 32 gigs of space, and it’s a big upgrade.

Bottom line — just the speed improvement of the processor and the underlying performance makes this a worthwhile upgrade for heavy users out there. Speed wise, everyone I’ve shown the new device to who also has the original 3G , comments that it’s hard to go back to the original 3G after using the 3GS for a few minutes.

Sync Skype Chat History on Multiple Machines With Dropbox

Skype is awesome. We use it a ton here at Automattic, and it’s my main communication service for staying in touch with friends and family who are spread out all over the world. It’s also still the best text IM client out there. And now with the iPhone app, I can make int’l calls on mobile without thinking about it.

The one issue though I’ve had lately, is that I rely on Skype so much, that when I use a second machine I find myself looking through Skype chat history for a link or reference, only to realize that it’s stored locally on another machine.

In my quest to find an ideal backup solution, I’ve been testing Dropbox which allows you to sync files between multiple machines. So I took a crack at trying to get my Skype chat history to sync. A quick google search brought up this post which I followed:

Step 1) Quit the Skype application on all machines
Step 2) Move the "main" Skype chat history files to the Dropbox directory:
"mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype ~/Dropbox/"
Step 3) Create a symlink from the original folder to the Dropbox folder:
"ln -s ~/Dropbox/Skype/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype"
Step 4) On your secondary machines, remove the /Library/Application\ Support/Skype folder, and just insert the symlink:
"ln -s ~/Dropbox/Skype/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype"

And it works ! One issue to be aware of: If you are logged-in and running Skype on multiple machines at once, you can get file conflicts and Dropbox will create secondary files – which kills the whole sync idea. So for this to work, you need to quit Skype before you plan on using it on another machine — which isn’t a bad idea anyway since leaving it open just means missed messages.

And lastly, I posted some of this to the Dropbox forum and one member there recommended a slightly different method where: “The original stays where it is. Without moving it, one creates a symlink. Its symlink goes into the Drobox folder.” I tried that method early on, and at least with Skype, the chat history kept getting written locally and never updating the Dropbox folder.

So for now this is working nicely for me. I do wonder if in the future Skype would ever offer up a secure way to store chat history with them. I also did see mention of a new service that tackles this issue for IM history in general called im-hisotry.com — looks interesting but haven’t tested so far as it’s Windows and Linux only.

For anyone thinking of trying the symlink method, as with anything like this, please backup your files before attempting this, as YMMV.

Baby Blues BBQ

As I mentioned a while ago, Dinosaur BBQ in NY is the best BBQ I’ve ever had.

In SF I’ve had Memphis Minnies a few times, and Rodeside BBQ. While people in SF tell me that those are the best, I wasn’t completely blown away.

Luckily I’m happy to report that I’ve found the next best thing to Dinosaur here in San Francisco: Baby Blues BBQ:

baby blues bbq

baby blues bbq in SF

It’s in the Mission / Bernal Heights area and maybe a tad pricey — but definitely worth it and has a very Brooklyn kind of ambiance if you are into that 🙂

[ Blogged from WordPress for iPhone app ]

2008 Year-End Wrap-Up for My Blog & iTunes

Last year this time I posted some stats from 2007 about this blog, and I spent a couple of minutes today doing the same for 2008, plus looking at iTunes for similar types of “buzz” data:

Top Posts (based on pageviews):
Apple MacBook Air Commercial – Catchy Song
The Great Sync on OS X: Google
Switched to Google Apps for Personal Email
Garmin Nuvi 350 portable GPS navigator
Quick Tip For BlackBerry Users When Call

Top Referrers:
automattic.com/about
ma.tt
stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http%3A…>
google.com/reader/view
twitter.com/raanan

Top Search Terms:
apple air commercial song (or a slight variation of this )
comcast blast
garmin nuvi
viigo review
installing leopard

Top Clicked Links:
phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.w…
yaelweb.com
google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/sync
plaxo.com/downloads
photomatt.net/2007/06/20/raanan-joins

From iTunes – looked at top songs played. What was interesting is that since I almost always just click “shuffle” – the distribution is pretty much flat among 1000 or so albums, but the ones listed below had a slight edge:
Mosh Ben Ari: Live ( earlier post )
Daniel Salomon: Haifa 87
Hadag Nachash: Live
Habanot Nechama
The Idan Raichel’s Project: Within My Walls
Avishai Cohen: Shaot Regishot ( thanks Yoav )
Roy Adri: Until End

Here’s to a happy, safe, and quiet start to 2009 !

Leasing VS Buying a Car

Seems like a very popular topic these days – do you buy a car or lease one.

Having lived in NYC for a very long time until recently, I was happily and blissfully ignorant of the car culture — couldn’t even think past the cost of parking 🙂

But I went ahead and leased a car when we moved to San Francisco, and after being asked by a few people why I went with a lease, I figured I’d share some thoughts here:

Leasing Pros:

– I NEVER want to own a depreciating asset.  Buying a car is like owning an investment that loses money every day — similar to all of our 401K these days :).   Why tie-up lots of capital/cash in something that only goes down ?
– I like new tech.  I want a new car every 24/36 months with the latest safety advancements, bluetooth, iPod, GPS, etc systems.  The idea of an old car makes no sense to me.
– Green technology.  With biodiesels, hybrids, and plugins cars getting better, why do you want to own a “gas guzzler” for very long ?
– Your Needs change. You may start with a sedan and need a station wagon a few years later — why lock in for 10 yrs to a single car ?
– Auto companies change.  The car you bought might be part of a dead or bankrupt auto firm that will not produce parts to fix your car in the near future.
– Maintenance.   Most cars have a 5/10 yr or 50K or 100K miles coverage plans so everything is taken care of.  With a lease I never have to worry about rhe possibility of paying for large repairs since I’ll return the car well before the coverage expires.
– And the biggest item for me – leasing means you can afford a high-end car that would be prohibitively expensive to purchase.  A lease is the difference in value between the new car and the value when you turn it. High residuals make for low lease payments, and high-end cars retain their value.  So don’t lease a mid to lower tier car.

Leasing Cons:
– If you drive more than 15,000 miles per year, the lease can start to get expensive
– Some people hate monthly payments and prefer to own
– When you return the car on a lease they can hit you up for costly repairs.  There is actually decent inurance against this.  Make sure to pay this insurance up front, and not how most leasing companies recommend – which is to put it into your financing.  That only adds to the cost of a relatively low priced expense.

So there you have it.  Assuming car companies learn to adapt and get through this economic downturn ( or get a PC like biz model as Arrignton suggests ) I think you’ll see more and more people leasing and getting good deals.

7 iPhone Improvements

I’ve pretty much been a lifelong BlackBerry user from the two-way beeper days before picking up the iPhone 3G a couple of months ago.  I also lead our WordPress for iPhone app so I got sucked into the iPhone world a bit more than I expected 🙂

Overall I’m super happy w/ the iPhone 3G so far – the browser rocks, having an iPod on me at all times is ideal, and the typical slick Apple UI is a joy to use.  Now with the 2.1 update, my biggest gripe – occasional keyboard lag – has been solved.

Like anyone though, I have a few other complaints/suggestions, and I figured I’d summarize them here with a digg inspired “7 feature requests/tweaks/fixes” I’d like to see:

1) Automatic zoom on double-tap.  Some emails and web sites zoom in perfectly when you double tap.   Others don’t zoom at all, and require the pinch/open gesture to control the zoom.  I’m sure this is a CSS things on the content site, but would like to see an option to override that.  One big offender is google email alerts – almost unreadable in iPhone mail with a tiny font, it requires the gesture to zoom in.

2) Google app support isn’t great and is buggy.  I get a “Safari cannot download this file” for my email on google apps.  Speaking of which, where is the native google calendar “sync” app – which works beautifully on blackberry

3) No way to search mail on the iPhone is a rally bummer.  I guess I got spoiled on the blackberry to the very slick google apps email client.

4) Photo browsing on the iPhone really kicks-ass, but the iPhoto sync options are too basic. Instead of “all” which is gigs for me of photos, or last import – which can be very random – how about a setting for “last 200 photos” – or “top viewed” photos ?  This issue for me would also be helped by a native Flickr app.

5) Battery management. Lots of people have complained about the battery.  I actually think the real issue is that it’s so fun and useful to use the iPhone that people are just using it way more than they did with their other phones.

But the bottom line is that the iPhone battery is running out mid-day for lots of people, and that is simply unacceptable.  So my suggestion, a smarter battery management system.  The system should guard and protect the most essential functions of the iPhone, which in my mind are the actual phone functions and SMS.  How could this be done ?  How about a setting that would trigger rationing and battery saving features when the battery hit 50% – such as dimming the screen, changing to manual for email, turning off wifi, etc.  Basically kick in all the suggestions Brian Lam of Gizmodo has made, but only when the battery is at X% – and have that X be user defined.

6) Way too easy to call someone by mistake. Make the contact screen selection ask you to “call” or sms” – I often try to click the arrow to the right to send a text, and call the person by mistake.

7) Add more shortcuts like the “home” button. I have my settings for “double clicking” the home button going into my phone favorites.  I’d like to see a few more options like one to take you to camera mode, and the other to the iPod.

And not even worth putting on the list since it’s so obvious, but copy&paste – pretty tough not to have that at least within an app like email.

So we’ll see what Apple has in the works, and being the gadget guy that I am – also keeping an eye on the BlackBerry Bold which should be out soon — looks pretty sweet.

Like a bunch of people that I know who do this already –  I’m not against carrying two devices 🙂

Cuil Search Engine Thoughts

Like everyone else I watched the frenzy over the launch of Cuil, a new search engine founded by several ex-Googlers.

After using it a bit, there is definitely something nice and elegant about Cuil, and I noticed that Matt was going to use it for a few days to get a better sense of it as well.

As I’m sure 99% of people do, I typed in my own name to see what results would come back, and was shocked by the results 🙂

On the one hand, it correctly identifies me as a multi-dimensional athlete – baseball, basketball, and boxing ( thai kick boxing in my case ).

On the other hand, it appears that Matt has taken over my “look & feel” UI aspects, as it clearly shows his head-shot on my blog.

So why is Cuil showing these results ? How does Cuil have the confidence and “chutzpah” to make these associations ?  Ouriel may have stumbled on the answer based on his recent post to twitter:

“CUIL in French is like “Balls” (the dirty meaning)”

Ahh !  Now it all makes sense 🙂

But seriously — it’s good to see another search engine play – and hope we see some great innovation and search improvements overall.

Mosh Ben Ari in NYC

If you are in NYC the next few days and into reggae/world/israeli music, try to catch Mosh Ben Ari.

Sunday he’s playing a free concert as part of summer stage in central park and Monday night downtown in the lower east side @ Pianos — a great spot for music. Then Tuesday July 1 in Brooklyn at the Williamsburg Musical Hall

I was able to see him last week in San Francisco at the Independent and it was a great show.

For those who have never heard of him, here is a clip of a live show below, with tons of other clips and a 3 part interview of him all on youtube.