AaronEiche.com

Today was the iPhone OS 4 announcement/meeting/thing – Basically a press conference for Apple to tell the world how awesome they are. This is not an uncommon thing and the reaction isn’t uncommon, but I am getting tired of it. It goes something like this:
Me: “Hey Cool, iPhone OS 4 has multi-tasking in it”
iPhone Detractor: “[Android|Palm|WinMo] has had multi-tasking forever, iPhone is lame, and you suck.”

Or possibly:

iPhone detractor: “Apple fanboys are so thick-headed. They always talk about how awesome the iPhone is, but [Android|Palm|WinMo] has been doing since version x.x and it has feature y…(ad nauseum)”

Continue reading ‘But *my* phone already does that…’ »

Well, I tried, and everybody I know tried. None of us made it. It’s unfortunate, but I don’t think any of us are going to die. If you haven’t heard about SparkFun Electronics’ Free Day, it may be that you just don’t care. If you didn’t care, it seemed to me for a moment that you were the only one.

Continue reading ‘SparkFun Free Day Fallout.’ »

DRM, You’ve probably heard of it. Digital Rights Management. Bane of legitimate users, irritant of illigitimate users, hopeful tool of content owners. By those 3 statements, I mean to simply point out that the DRM effort ultimately fails completely. To the public, it seems like Industry Execs implemented DRM simply because they wanted to prevent piracy. To the conspiracy theorist, DRM was implemented because those execs wanted to force consumers to buy the same content again and again. They say that it’s really about you having to buy a movie once for your TV, and once again for your iPod. For the Media industry itself, it’s a way to protect their investment from malicious thieves. The internet is full of people who want to watch everything they offer, but refuse to pay for it. It’s downright Un-American.

Continue reading ‘Being a lousy advocate: Me and DRM’ »

You know I’m an Apple nerd. No one who builds a Hackintosh and sticks it in a G4 cube should be considered anything less than such. Naturally you’ll be able to guess that I’m also an iPhone nerd. I owned 3 phones prior to getting my iPhone. A throw-away Nokia that I don’t remember the name model number of, a Nokia 6600, and a T-mobile Dash. With the latter two, I was certain that I’d gotten the device closest to the perfect smartphone. Both failed me though. They just didn’t do everything they were supposed to.

Though I had long argued that Apple never would, they made a smart phone… and it was glorious. Besides the occasional hiccup (MMS, Copy & Paste,etc) the iPhone was a dream. At the initial release, it wasn’t an option for me. My wife and had decided to go with Tmobile because they offered a deal that made it more practical for us. Free calling to any 5 numbers.

Continue reading ‘The iPhone Dilemma’ »

I’ve had a love affair with the Electric Vehicle (EV) for a few years now. I wish I could say I found it on my own, but I really only got into after watching Who Killed the Electric Car? Since then I’ve had dreams of building my own EV, and occasonally dreams of simply buying one. If you would have asked me two years ago if I thought we’d ever see EVs from major automakers, I would have told you “no”. Back in 1999, lots of companies leased EVs because of state mandates in California. As soon as those state mandates went away, so did the EVs. The Auto companies hated being told what to produce.

Continue reading ‘The Second Coming of the Electric Car’ »

If you would have asked me about e-readers a year ago, I would have told you that I knew Sony made one, the Kindle was pretty awesome, and there were a bunch more that were too expensive and far out to deal with. If you asked me three months ago, I would have told you that I had Kindle 2 Fever, and the Sony reader didn’t hold a candle to it.

Continue reading ‘Waiting for the E-Reader war to heat up…’ »

With the recent announcement of Google’s Chrome OS, I think the dreams of many of us are beginning to show signs of reality. Those dreams have to do with computers, and how they work.

Right now, we’re in sort of a strange limbo when it comes to computers. Many many years ago, computers were not like they are today (duh, you say.) The most common computers were terminals, and they were basically screens, keyboards, and a bit of electronics that connected you to a machine somewhere deep in the bowels of your company or university. I never really had to use one of those. The benefit of these machines was that they were cheap. You bought one computer, and a bunch of dumb terminals.

Continue reading ‘Google Chrome is a good idea, but there’s a coming problem.’ »

Back in February I decided to make a change to this website. It had gone from being a professional showcase to a blog. Part of the change was inspired by my seeing blogs out there where people made money. The formula is a common one:
“Hey! I can write stuff, and people will visit my site and I’ll get advertisers, and they’ll pay me!”

I don’t know if we’re still in the golden age of the paid blogger, but over the past 4 months I think I’ve realized something: Continue reading ‘Finding my Footing’ »

First off: No, I was not actually present at the keynote this morning. I was watching updates flow in through the news feed while at work. I wish I had been because it was a busy day.

Continue reading ‘WWDC Keynote reflections’ »

A few years back I started to get more nerdy than I had ever been. By more nerdy, I mean that I began to take an interest in a wide variety of things that leaned on the technical and electronic side. I became interested in making, modeling, and very much the “DIY” (Do-It-Yourself) mentality about things. If you haven’t heard of this phenomenon, it’s more of less born out of the desire to be creative and productive. The availability of materials and the lowering of costs has enabled individuals to create things that weren’t practically possible ever before. It’s gained the name “Making”.

Continue reading ‘The garage you’ve always wanted: TechShop Portland’ »