BradPace.com

Dear friends and family:

We just wanted to drop you a note and wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday.  We had a great year and look forward to the New Year.

Love
Brad and Becki Pace

If you read this blog you will know I love my iphone.  And I love my iphone apps.  Being that my last phone was a Palm Treo and that I have purchased and installed many apps on both the treo and the iphone I wanted to compare the 2 processes from both a user perspective and a business perspective.

iphone app store.  I love how the app store works.  It is easy to use and navigate.  From a user perspective it is nice to know all the apps are located in one place.  One problem with palm apps was that there was hundreds of sites that sold apps.  This made it hard to know what was available.  Everything is in one place at the apple store.  It is also nice to know that apple has reviewed all the apps in the store and they adhere to some type of quality standard.  One big worry with the palm apps was if you were going to get a virus or something from downloading the app.

From a business point I think apple has nailed it.  App developers know that they can just build their apps and sell them.  Sure apple takes 30% (or whatever it is).  Plus Apple will make a ton of money from this.  I don’t think that Palm made much money from apps.  This is also good I think for the users.  It is nice to know that with only one place to buy you are getting the best (and only) price.  Some may complain that no competition in this area is bad.  But I think it works for all parties involved (users, developers, and apple).  That is why it will do so well in the years to come.

Palm Apps:  I appreciate that palm opened up their platform and tried to make it available for anyone to sell and install an app.  But just imagine if Palm had used the centralized store model that apple is using now.  That cash info may have saved palm and made them into a power in the smartphone industry.  As a user I just hated searching and pricing all the palm apps.  I never did quite trust many of them and did not trust many of the developers.  I never once purchased an app directly from the developer.  And never purchased from the palm app store.  It was always from a trusted 3rd party.  I was always worried about getting the app again if I had to reinstall.  With the iphone I know that my purchased apps will always be available.

All in all I love the experience of the iphone application process. My only problem with it is that everything goes through the itunes software on my PC.  This works great for the music, video and podcast stuff.  But I loved how the palm pc software seamlessly integrated all my contacts and notes.  I liked doing things on the PC and just syncing it to my treo.  Mostly notes.  I would take short notes on the palm and then expand on the ideas on the PC later.

Now that I am working from home it was time to upgrade my office. So last weekend we had new carpet put in and purchased all new furniture for the room. Including a single table top desk across one side of the room with some storage space. I still have my guitars and suns hung on the walls. Plus my son Jairus gave me 3 matching clocks for Christmas. On for Utah time, one for India, and one for the Philippines so I can know what time it is for my developers. I was also able to setup my new digital photo frame which matched perfectly. I also have a fish bowl on a statue of a fish. I don’t have a fish yet but I will. I have a great view of Utah Valley and on a clear day I can Provo, BYU, and all the way to Lehi. Here are some photos.

A few weeks ago I got my invite to the hulu beta. I have watched several episodes and I have to say, I love it! I think that NBC has really nailed this. It streams flawlessly both in IE and Firefox (take note Netflix). They have some great programming and tons of shows I want to see. I look forward to them really expanding their library.

I am proud to say I finally reached over 100 connections in LinkedIN (111 actually).  This is not many compared to some, but it is a major milestone for me.  I started using LinkedIn several years ago but did not really start trying to grow my network until a year or so ago. I can honestly say that I do know everyone in my network.  I do not accept or invite anyone in LinkedIN, Facebook, or any other social network that I would not feel comfortable sending an email. You can see my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/1/213/a74.

My goal is to get much better at networking and meeting new people.  So my goal is to double my network in the next 6 months.

At Search Engine Strategies (SES) this week I attended the Google dance. Me and about a BILLION other people. This is a huge party put on by Google at the Googleplex. I have never been to Google and wanted to check it out. I am not a “party guy” but I have to admit that it was fun. I only stayed for an hour or so (it took me that long to walk through the party from one side to the other).

Google’s headquarters was quite impressive. The simple white 3 story buildings had many windows and looked to be light and airy inside. They had some very nice employee areas including lunch rooms and a cafe. They also have a huge game room with video games. In the courtyard they have a sand volleyball court, outdoor couches with legos, pool tables, and even a vegetable garden. Easily one of the coolest work places I have ever seen. Although I don’t think it is nicer than the Novell Provo campus (just with more fun stuff).

The party was crazy. Tons of food, snacks, and fun. Everything was free obviously. My favorites where the video games (all racing games which I love), the milk shakes, and the candy bar. The candy bar had large bins filled with all the candy you could fill your pockets with (ok they had little google branded candy sacks). Being the master brander Google is the candy bar was color coded to match the google logo. 2 bins each of blue, red, yellow, blue, green and red. (have you ever wondered why the colors are that way in the logo? Both g’s are blue, but both O’s are not red.)

We need 500 people to pledge $50 and Seth Godin will come to Utah to speak on May 24th! Everyone who pays gets 5 copies of his new book, 1 to keep, 4 to give away. Other states are competing to get him to their state. People pay $1500 to hear him speak in other states, so this is a screaming deal. I love Seth and plan on pledging. I would love to hear him in person!

But we have to hurry…

Monday April 16, is our FINAL DEADLINE.

Janet’s blog post:
http://www.newspapergrl.com/622/get-seth-godin-to-utah-we-have-3-days/

Pledge your $50 at:
http://www.pledgebank.com/SethGodinUtah

p.s. let me know if you can help film a video to put on YouTube where we stop bald men on the street and ask, excuse me sir, are you Seth Godin???

There has been a lot of talk lately about the shortcomings of wikipedia and I understand both sides. But there are some things that are perfect for widipedia and don’t exist anywhere else. One example is the entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_games_released_as_freeware. This is information that many people have looked for in years gone by and have never found. Well here it is.

This is only funny if your high school mascott was a Rabbit. Actually we where the “Mighty Rabbits”. It makes all the difference!