Techcraver.com | Craving tech, craving life!

For those of you who don’t know, I am not writing for Download Squad any more.  I have moved over to GigaOm and I’m writing for Web Worker Daily and the flagship GigaOm blog.  It has been a great move for me as I really enjoy writing for the new network.

Now for the news.  While at DLS, I was lucky enough to make the front page of digg a few times with some of my posts.  Well Friday, I posted a story on GigaOm about the mobile market and how it will be transformed by touch interfaces this year.

I noticed yesterday it made Techmeme!  Here’s the link to my story on techmeme.

For those of you who don’t know about Techmeme, it’s an aggregator of all the hot topics and influential conversations happening in the blogosphere.  It’s an honor to make it onto Techmeme.

Obligatory screenshot below

Last weekend I enjoyed my first Gnomedex, a tech conference hosted by Chris and Ponzi Pirillo. Seattle was the backdrop for this fantastic conference. Chris asked for feedback via our blogs, so that’s the intent of this post along with generating some discussion.

Gnomedex is an interesting conference because it’s single track, meaning there’s one session per time period and everyone sees the same speaker at the same time. The audience is varied. There are bloggers, videocasters, podcasters, general tech enthusiasts and marketers.

With all that said, the sessions as a whole were very useful. I didn’t enjoy the first session hosted by Robert Steele. As I said on Twitter, I think mixing politics and tech is great, as long as the tech is tied to somehow. Mr. Steele had no focus in his talk and this became very apparent during the question/answer period. He dodged a few questions, in my opinion, because he didn’t have a decent answer.

The Calacanis talk at the end of Friday generated a lot of buzz on the internet and became a meme in the coverage on Gnomedex. It was so entertaining for me to be in the same room while Calacanis is speak, Winer is heckling him, and Scoble’s using twitter to comment on Calacanis subject matter. It was like being in the middle of a tomato fight. Fun stuff.

The following day, Cali Lewis and her husband Neal spoke about the rise of their video podcast. Even though it wasn’t popular, I enjoyed it. I am a fledgling pod/videocaster so it was fascinating for me to hear their story. Thank you to Cali/Neal and Chris for bringing them on stage.

I had some amazing hallway conversations. I met some great people including Andru Edwards and Britt Raybould. Also it was a joy to meet Scoble and Chris.

Also take a look at my flickr photoset.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I’m all registered for Summit to Surf, a ride that starts on Mount Hood in Oregon and finishes in Hood River, OR. I’m SO excited to do another ride. As you may know, I rode in Reach the Beach and the Gorge Ride in the last two months.

Summit to Surf is a fundraiser for the National Diabetes Association to raise funds to fight Diabetes. A person in my family was just diagnosed with Type II diabetes so it’s a personal ride for me.

If you’d like to make a donation, please visit my ride page. Your donation is tax-deductible and every dollar goes to fighting diabetes.

On Saturday, Sean, Leo, and I conquered 40 miles of the Historic Columbia River Highway. It was an awesome bike ride that was more strenuous than Reach The Beach. The hills were steeper and we were biking into a 35 mile an hour west wind. That was brutal!

Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.
We had a wonderful time and I can’t wait for next year! Next ride I’m going on is the Summit to Surf on July 28th.

Here are more photos.

Well I had so much fun doing the Reach the Beach ride that I’m doing another long ride this weekend!  While we were at the Reach the Beach, my wife saw a flier for the Gorge Ride.

This weekend’s ride is a 40 mile trek from The Dalles to Hood River and back on the Historic Columbia River Highway.  I’m doing the ride with my brother so it should be a lot of fun!  We’re going to go through the Mosier Tunnels and have a combined ascent of 2900 feet.  Yikes!

I wish I had a road bike as this ride is all on-road.  Either way it’ll be a lot of fun!

Yesterday I rode in Reach the Beach, a great fundraiser for the American Lung Association of Oregon to fight lung disease. I rode with my brother Sean and 8 of his buddies. We all stuck together throughout the 36 mile mountain biking course.

We left Grand Ronde, Oregon at about 9:45. The beginning of the ride (about 7 miles) is on-road and then you go off-road on logging roads for a uphill-downhill-uphill mountain course. After meandering through the woods, you end up on 101 for the final 10 or so miles into Pacific City. The ride is beautiful as you wander alongside the Nesctucca River through lush and dense forest. The 9 of us has a wonderful time hanging out and experiencing this together.

My wonderful wife met me at the end and we all enjoyed a great meal and beer to cap off

a wonderful day. It was SO much fun and it really meant a lot to be biking for such a great cause with my brother. I can’t wait for Reach the Beach 2008!

Check out my photoset for more photos.

I was riding my bike around yesterday and I came across this sign. You know how many real estate agencies have automated call-in where you can enter in a code and get information on a specific property? Well this Realtor is smart enough to allow us to txt for more information! Brilliant!

This is kind of like in Europe where if you’re waiting for a train, you can txt a code with the Stop ID and find out when the next train is coming. I wish Tri-Met would employ this in the Portland area, rather than they’re little call center that’s only staffed part of the day.

Technorati Tags: sms, realtor, real estate, txt, biking

My training in preparation for Reach The Beach is going very well. I am *really* enjoying getting out on my bike and going for longer and longer training rides. I’m lucky to live on the edge of town which puts me very close to some amazing country roads that make for wonderful rides. I ride by hundreds of cows, lots of Alpacas, and the other day I was surprised to see a deer cross the road right in front of me. I have been faithfully biking 3-4 times a week and I’ve kicked it up to 30-35 miles with a nasty hill at the end. I live at the top of a hill that is roughly a 400 foot ascent in less than 3 miles. It’s great practice for the ride - which is only two weeks away from today! Yikes!

My fundraising is going pretty well also. To date I’ve raised $290. I’d love to be able to raise some more before the race, so if you’re interested in donating please see the previous RTB entry.

Technorati Tags: biking, fundraising, reachthebeach

I bought my SD800IS from Dell. I was really excited because I ordered it on Friday morning and it arrived yesterday (Tuesday). Really fast delivery considering I chose the free ground shipping.

Anyways on to the good stuff! This camera is awesome! Such a huge improvement over my Powershot A80 that I bought over two years ago. Power on speed is amazing and the time between when I press the button and when the shot taken is super fast! The images look amazing - even in low light. The higher ISO combined with the image stabilizer makes for great images!

Now that the gift-giving holiday is over - what did you all get?

What I already got:

A buddy of mine gave me two great software packages for my Mac - OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner Pro.  Look for a full review in the coming weeks!

What I am getting soon:

As I stated before, I’m getting a TV soon.  In addition, I’ve settled on a camera.  I’m going to either get a SD700 or an SD800 - depending on price.  I almost bought one about 2 weeks ago but the prices have gone up!  I’m hoping the prices drop during a post-holiday sale or something.

So, what’d y’all get?