Adidas Rowing Shoe

About 15 years ago I was a college student (really) and for my thesis from Syracuse University’s Industrial Design program, I created a clip-less rowing shoe (i called mine “shell-shock”).

Last night i was reading the latest issue of Fast Company that is talking of the innovation and products created for athletes and came across an Adidas shoe for rowing!

It contains most of the ideas I had regarding a shoe 15 years earlier. When I was at Syracuse I was part of the SU Crew Team and crew quickly became something I enjoyed, was good at and an athletic “love”.

I noticed that the shoes (at that time) were simple athletic shoes literally bolted into the shell. Many times the athletes walked around barefoot and climbed into a shell and laced up shoes that were the wrong size and uncomfortable.

I applied the clip-less pedal design from bikes and thought for a number of reasons, this would be a great solution (and it appears it was). The other aspect of the old design was safety. I did know of boats that capsized and in panic un-tying ones shoes was not the first thing that came to mind…

I’m glad to see I was not off the mark – just ahead of my time 🙂 I spoke with Vespoli about my design (I believe I even gave Mike Vesploi a copy of my thesis following graduation and speaking with him at the Charles in ’94). If it makes rowers perform better, more comfortably and safer – I’m all for it!

mobile me

apple is re-branding dotMac as mobileme (starting around the same time that the new iPhone hits the streets – July 11).

the improvements in space and interface look good, but really the selling point comes from what mobileme does in connection with the iPhone (edge or 3g). push email (which will also come from exchange with iPhone software 2.0 – due also on July 11) is a big selling point.

also having changes made to the calendar and contacts update to the phone without plugging in will make the world of difference. the physical sync thing is getting kind of old. i’m really looking forward to next month and what this will all bring to the table. more to come when i get my grubby hands on ver 2.0 of the iPhone software.

i'm back

so it has been a while, hasn’t it…

i’m working on a number of things and sleep should be moving up in priority. things are going well at home – work is actually a bit overwhelming and really i need to keep stepping up in so many ways and so many places.

i’m really thinking about what it means to lead (i frequently kid about being the follower – but this is a lot of truth in this). i do a lot of thinking out loud – i don’t trust myself and look for “backup” from others and really at the end of the day – what i have been thinking of doing is what should be done so why not skip the middle man…

the day job is testing me in a number of ways:
sticking to my guns
providing reasonable intelligence as to “why”
making “executive decisions”
dealing with the praise and pain that comes with making decisions

more to come since there is a lot more to do…

Verizon – OH MY GOSH!

So I have really liked what Verizon is providing in their FIOS service (TV is great, phone is, well a phone, and internet is FAST!). CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS!

After making their analog to digital switch about a week ago (only 8 months before the FCC requires it), our TIVO stopped working (we were using analog broadcast after all) but it was perfect for recording Lost, “So you think you can dance”, or the kids PBS Shows… all gone. now we get hours of red screen with text telling us to “go-digital…”

I bit the bullet (the story behind why I waited so long to upgrade the Tivo is another LONG story and I’m tired) and bought the new TIVO HD (with the cable card slots) so we can skip the cable box and record the 100’s of channels right into the TIVO in all the digital glory (and HD in some cases).

I got the box today. Came home tonight to get the new TIVO set up and running and get the cable cards fired up – what did i get?

2 (count ’em – 2) westell 802.11g pcmcia wifi cards! HUH? Come on, how many times… I explained to the sales/customer service person i spoke with about what i wanted (2 single stream, or 1 multi stream cable cards for my TiVO HD). She understood (or so i thought). I asked her about them. I asked if they had multicards to record more than one show at a time – she said no…

Thoughts, experiences, why me…

Firefox 3.0 coming June 17 (Tuesday)

Firefox (mozilla’s browser to beat all browsers) is planning on releasing Firefox 3.0 tomorrow (Tuesday, June 17). This is a huge update to the Firefox 2.x that has been around for the last year or so.

Firefox 3 looks good, works really well and will advance a number of things. Something to consider – if you are a big add-in user, confirm that the new versions are compatible with 3.0. I have been using this with the pre-release versions and have been very impressed – BUT actually have backed off recently with “issues” involving gmail.

I seem to be the only one, but…
Let us know.

iPhone 3G is OFFICIAL

First, iPhone for all iPhones will appear early July (bummer). I was hoping for “it is available today”, alas.

The iPhone 3G is starting at $199 (with 2-year contract).
Slimmer, good battery life, faster 3G internet, microsoft exchange support, GPS (not the way it is working right now – though it works well).

Check out the information on Apple’s site (and view the fun little ad)

Cell Phone Simplicity

Here is a nice little article by my fave – David Pogue in the NYTimes.

My wife and i have been using a number of these services and aside from being free – they are awesome, simple and make life easier. our frequent favorite is jott.com. between the two of us, walking or driving somewhere and thinking of something just at a time when you have no other way to log it – is perfect.

get home and there it is, waiting in the inbox – saying “don’t forget about me”

i have used goog-411 a couple of times and every time is has saved us the time and the $ from calling just good ole 411 on any phone. check it out.

anything else you love that David missed – let us know.

Firefox 3.0 coming soon (this month?)

So mozilla has been releasing “release candidates” of firefox for a few weeks now (rc2 was made available on Wednesday). all this being said, i really like the new firefox, BUT i’m using 2.0.14 right now since i have been having issues with gmail and firefox 3.

anyone else? i have been able to view the mail, but frequently if i select a email or attempt to work with an email – NOTHING. safari continues to work fine as well as firefox 2.x but 3 is flaky when it comes to this…

we’ll have to see if google or mozilla make the changes to get firefox and gmail to work properly TOGETHER.

Mac OS 10.6 coming in 2009?

with WWDC a mere 4 days away, rumors continue to float about. 3g iPhone – BIG, dotMac update – rumbles, new MacBook – MAYBE but this one has hit a lot of people aside the head:

Mac OS 10.6 coming for developers at WWDC for release 1Q2009! According to BOL #738 (and Gizmodo) it makes a lot of sense. This is a conference for developers…

the talk is it will not be a huge bell and whistle feature upgrade, but a security, stability and code update (to bring it to intel ONLY). 10.5.x could be the last PowerPC (backward compatible) version of the Mac OS moving forward (and 5+ years into this – makes sense). Thoughts, let us know.