In the last couple of years we've done a good job in Phoenix of making things happen and getting good conferences with good turn out happen here in the valley and a couple of the annual big events have been making a home in November. This grouping has been dubbed Geek Week Az and there are a LOT of things happening and some big names and I wanted to organize that information and list what's going on in one location. It's not pretty but here's what we've got coming for you in Phoenix in November.
I'll be tweaking this throughout the coming weeks to keep it as accurate as I can. If you are organizing an event or have more information that I left out hit me up here: chuck-at-rynoweb-com

High Profile Events

Ignite Phoenix 5
Tuesday Nov 3 – 6:00pm – 9:00pm, Tickets, hashtag: #ignitephx
Tempe Center for the Arts – map

Tedx Phoenix
Friday Nov 6 – 6:00pm – 9:00pm, Tickets, hashtag: #tedxphoenix
Mesa Arts Center – map

Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference
Thursday Nov 12 – 7:30am – 7:00pm, Register, hashtag: #azec09
Desert Willow Conference Center – map

WordCamp Phoenix
Friday Nov 13 – 8:00am – 5:00pm, Register, hashtag: #wcphx
Arizona Grand Resort – map

PodCampAz
Sat-Sun Nov 14 – 15, Register, hashtag: #podcampaz
University of Advancing Technology – map

Other Important Events in November 2009

Desert Code Camp
Saturday Nov 7th – 8:00am – 5:00pm, hashtag: #desertcodecamp
DeVry University – map

SustainaBIL Conference
Sunday Nov 8th – 11:00am – 7:00pm, Register
ASU SkySong – map

AZIMA – Build Your Tribe
Tuesday Nov 10th – 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Tickets, hashtag: #joinAZIMA
Tempe Mission Palms – map

Creative Connect
Tuesday Nov 10 – 6:00pm
Tuomisto Bell Studio Foundry – map

Gangplank Hacknight
Wednesday Nov 11 – 6:00pm – 9:00p, hashtag: @gangplank
Gangplank – map

Developer Ignite 2
Wednesday Nov 11 – 6:00pm – 9:00pm, hashtag: #devignite
Gilbert Community Center – map

Social Media Club Phoenix
Thursday Nov 12 – 6:30pm – 8:00pm, hashtag: #smcphx
Desert Willow Conference Center – map (after #AZEC09)

There are also some pretty interesting after parties to attend but currently we haven't planned anything, YET… I'll see you all there!

Location Map Provided by Eventification

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

November in Phoenix for Geeks

I'd like to clarify things with the last post about my switch from Android to iPhone.  I didn't get too specific because one, I felt stressed to get the post out quick and 2 I felt stressed about the video.  Partly why I suck at updating this blog, but whatever.

I keep getting asked to elaborate a bit and now that I've had the iPhone 3GS for a couple days I have some more details and insight that may interest those who have pondered a similar switch.

• I had an issue with with apps on the G1 as they don't store on the SD card and the actual handset has only like 256mb of on-board memory so I had to keep uninstalling apps to add new ones.  iPhone has a 16gb hard-drive – nothing to worry about (and a 32gb model is available also).
• The keyboard typing logic is much smarter on the iPhone; less mistyped words and I seem to be faster typing on the iPhone than the G1 (while using the software keyboard).  I think the keys are better placed as the screen seems wider, but they're not as tight together and I can type pretty quick and even better on landscape mode.
• GPS on the iPhone locates me much faster than android and it seems much more responsive to movements and rotation.  The original G1 demo videos had Google maps rotating the little street view guy to the direction you were looking but for one, I never used that specific functionality (no need), and two, it was so far buried in the map menu's it wasn't fast enough to be useful in my opinion.
• Apps wise…  and this partially ties into GPS but BrightKite and Foursquare actually work for finding where I'm currently located (despite their own individual software flaws).  The BrightKite app on Android would always keep me stuck at my last check-in point even if I hit "dismiss guess" 10 times.  Searching worked for finding and checking in but that's not the point.  Only once out of about 30+ check-ins so far did I have to search for the place I was at on the iPhone's BrightKite app.
  There wasn't a Foursquare app (there was FourDroid but it was beyond horrible and FourSquared is in limited alpha at this point) on the G1 Android platform so I can't compare apps, but the mobile version of their site didn't have nearly the features the iPhone app has (but the iphone app doesn't have venue search yet either so).
• Battery life… perhaps too early to tell because I've been hammering my iPhone with new apps and download tons of apps/games to test and also beta testing for a new GPS-based game called 5thDimension so that has been sucking the battery down.  But with that said – I'm not getting any less battery life than the G1.  Batteries in gadgets in general suck so I know there will be no dramatic change either way.

iPhone quirks at the moment

• Having some duplicate entries and split records with contacts that have synced from my Google Apps account.  I've heard from a couple iPhone users they have the same issue and I'm hoping that's one of the issues addressed in the 3.1 update coming in a few weeks.
• The lack of settings options for the system and individual apps.  For one I'm used to going into the app and then doing its settings, but iPhone has all settings for everything in one spot. Again something to get used to but I can't have different sound volumes for sms versus ringer tones… can't set ringer to a sound but then have sms/emails vibrate… it's all things make noises or all things vibrate – nothing in between.  And certain alerts seem much louder than others.
• Ringtones have to be hacked to work but there's a great way to create free iPhone ringtones (thx to @amysellers and @leaky_tiki for the find)
• Alert sounds… how do I get new ones? fail
• The protective Incase case I bought was $37 bucks after tax… holy crap!

Anything I currently miss from Android?

• the simultaneous background processes was pretty slick on Android, not gonna lie, but in all practicality I don't really miss it and I have yet to run into, or foresee running into, any position I'd be in to where that would be a vital feature I absolutely needed.
• I kind of miss Android's ability to "tab" into other apps while they're running, but I think that's just a work flow issue that I'm not completely used to yet as the iPhone you have an app open or closed – nothing else.  Again nothing big that I foresee a problem with once I get more used to the flow on the iPhone.

I'm sure there will be more things I forgot (always is) but you can follow me on twitter for the smaller bits of info and all my other random stuff I post about.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Android to Iphone Part 2

Related posts:

1. Android G1 to iPhone 3GS

I know there are going to be a couple laughs and a few fingers pointed, but I can take it, so here it goes… I've migrated to an iPhone 3Gs on AT&T from my G1 Android on T-Mobile. Yup – that just happened.

Watch the video for details.

I don't want to explain exactly what the video covers but in general the Android and HTC G1 combo are growing too slowly and I think have some road blocks coming along the road. This isn't to say the iPhone OS is perfect – far from it but it's had much more time to grow up and I realized I can't wait for Android to grow up. Regardless of my switch I'll watch the maturing Android OS and see how it goes and you never know what will happen – but for now I've taken the contract break from T-Mobile and moved over to AT&T.

Comments are where you should ask your questions and I'll reply to them here so everybody can contribute. This isn't something that should turn into a flame war but if you must. There are good things about both platforms and there are a couple things I'm leaving behind to make the switch so neither is perfect. Talk to you soon, cheers!

Full Sized HD on YouTube.
Also on Vimeo & Viddler for further commenting.

UPDATE: I've added some more insight in a second post after using the iPhone for a couple days: Android to iPhone Part 2

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Android G1 to iPhone 3GS

Related posts:

1. Android to Iphone Part 2

I've been held back from attending SXSW before for money reasons and also for not being able to take time off of work, but I made a promise.  After reading all of the tweets, blog posts, podcasts and hearing the chatter from everybody from 2008 I made a promise that I would get to SXSW Interactive in 2009 no matter what.  That time has come and I'm happy to say that I will see you in Austin at the Omni and around town!

I've created my card that I'll be handing out so look for that and you can vote for my card on SXSW Cards too. Feel free to leave feedback on the card as well in the comments.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Attending SXSW Interactive 2009

Yesterday the big 3 announced the adoption of a new relationship attribute for the header link tag in order to specify a preferred version of a page where there may be different ways to access it and to help avoid issues with duplicate content.  It's nice to have an option for when you take over a badly built site where there isn't a budget to rewrite a lot of code and do a million 301 redirects but this is just a band-aid on a larger problem.

This is why architecture of a project is important and if you build it right the first time, you don't have to worry about this being an issue.  There are always times however that a bot will surprise you with some weird entry URL so as a guideline, it's good to monitor your analytics and do simple 301 rewrites as they happen, if they happen.  Also just for kicks, there's already a WordPress plugin from Joost de Valk (thanks man) to handle it on your blog, and an extension for Magento too!

Read More:
- Google, Specify Your Cononical
- Yahoo, Fighting Duplication
- Live, Partnering to Solve Duplicate Content issues
- SEOmoz has a really detailed write-up too

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Canonical Rel Attribute Just a Band-Aid

A friend of mine, Steve Belt, recently tagged me in a meme to explain seven things about me that you, as a reader, most likely wouldn't know from talking with me on a normal basis.  This has all the feeling of those lame myspace bulletins, but I feel the added transparency can help open me up and it seems fun and the bottom line; it's content, something I'm otherwise lacking, so here we go:

1. I was involved in mixed martial arts before it got trendy and have been through about 13 years on and off of Jiu Jitsu and Pankration training.  I originally got started because I was a skinny kid who had a bigger mouth than body to back it up.  One of the fireman (my dad was FD) was a 4th degree Black-belt Instructor and had started transitioning to Jiu Jitsu, and after talking with him I did some physical labor and electrical work in his condo he taught me everything, which led to classes and clubs later on.  Currently I'm not active, but I would like to get back into some Krav Maga or Savate training but they charge far too much.
2. I can't get enough information, whether it be reading more blogs feeds or simply watching endless hours of Discovery, Travel, History or Military Channel. I love knowing everything.  It's sometimes a curse.
3. I love math, physics, astronomy, and history.  This leads to my interest in reverse engineering everything, how things are made, or the reason a dragster was a tenth of a second from crossing the line first.
4. I originally went to college for Aeronautical Engineering and got 3/4 of the way through before being introduced to programming for the internet and never looked back.  I like the puzzle aspect and problem solving of programming, even though it stresses me out at times.
5. I live and breathe competition.  This goes for sports, work and even conversations; I can't help it and it aggravates people but I definitely don't like to lose.
6. I can name just about every single military aircraft on site, new or old, including x-type and training aircraft.  And, just for kicks, I'll throw in that I love air shows and love fly-overs at games or racing events.
7. I actually do enjoy volunteering, although I don't do it very much.  In the past I've built 6 houses and 4 parks with playgrounds for Habitat for Humanity using my construction background.  I've volunteered at Burn camps (summer camps for kids with severe burns) through the fire department and helped with construction and remodel projects for widowed military wives.  I like doing it because it makes me feel good but I do pick and choose the recipients.

Thanks for reading and now I'm passing the flame and tagging 7 friends so you can learn more about them as well:

• Paul Martinez (@phxwebguy) – http://www.paulpowered.com
• Justine Ezarik (@ijustine) – http://tastyblogsnack.com
• Clint Comer (@clintus) – http://idoitdigital.com
• C.C. Chapman (@cc_chapman) – http://cc-chapman.com
• Jeremy Tanner (@penguin) – http://jeremytanner.com
• Andrew Hyde (@andrewhyde) – http://andrewhyde.net
• Jeremy Vaught (@jeremyvaught) – http://jeremyvaught.com

These are the rules to play the game:

1. Link your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

7 Things About Me

MySpace has become the Goodwill / Walmart of social media sites. My leaving this late in the game may surprise many of you (assuming I would have left long ago) but I have hung out for some not-so-internet-savvy friends, but have finally made the decision official; I'm deleting my MySpace profile and not looking back.

Most already know the garbage dump that is MySpace but for my personal reasons this is why I'm leaving there for good:

• Friend requests… fake accounts… hot stock-photo girls adding me to spam their site or pics… Poker groups… ugh leave me alone.
• Site Errors when trying to use the site are out of control. They've fixed a lot of them but still with the errors. Even though the messages say "This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group" I can't deal with it. If they could they'd have to rebuild the site from the ground up – it's a wreck.
• It's become too band/music oriented, for me at least. Sites like last.fm work better for me discovering music.
• Every "new feature" they implement is already on Facebook, or other social sites – they don't innovate, they copy and not well mind you.
• It's run by a bunch of suits who couldn't explain the meaning of "social media" if it was on a cue card.
• The blogging feature is a joke. No RSS feeds? Nuff said. If you don't know what an RSS feed is yet… you fail – watch "RSS in Plain English"
• Photos.. IF the uploader even works it's not a good photo management system. They recently added the URL for the photo and the embed code but again… way late and there's no tagging, searching, grouping with other people's images, multiple sizes, etc… Flickr.com is the way to go and works so much better and can work with any other site.
• MySpace mobile… fail – is it that hard to make a semi-feature packed mobile version of your site? that works…? I mean I can log into my frickin bank and do mobile banking but I can't read or see a comment or messages… ugh
• The bulletin lists… Do I really care about the last person you kissed or thought about? Really? It's the reincarnation of the dreaded "Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Best Joke Ever" email chains… just stop already!
• Advertisements… granted I block ads with AdBlock Plus for Firefox but how much frickin adspace does one site need? Christ!, they sell out all the usable interface.
• If you actually use your myspace page for your business – you fail – it just proves you don't know what the hell you're doing and there's a 98% chance you're not hitting your target demographic by doing it – you just heard it was the right thing to do by somebody who also didn't know what the hell they were doing. (unless you're a band / DJ, or stripper / escort, or a car model / go-go dancer – notice the groupings lol)
• Even some of my most non-internet savvy friends who don't even have a MySpace profile have recently created Facebook profiles and have found me on there all on their own, and more are coming online every day. Facebook is finally digging in deeper and hitting those scattered and lost souls and helping to connect them with the rest of the world.
• And finally, the scene is tired and dead. MySpace used to be the hot startup and place to be (years ago), until all the problems became clearly evident to everybody and the spammers and phishers abused the system. By the time MySpace did anything about it, the damage was done. The people in the know have moved on.

Thing is, I set it up so I'm private, dumped all the people I didn't want, blocked bands and most friend requests, and it has become silent for a while now. So silent that I very rarely even log in anymore. The only real reason I've kept my profile for so long is that there's some people that just haven't gotten with the times and are hanging on to MySpace. It's time though that I move on and if they'd like to use real social media and friend me on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or any of them they can, but I'm not hanging around anymore for them.

See my about page for where else to find me.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Why I Left MySpace

Today is the official public launch for the .ME TLD (top level domain).  It's like a .com but it's a .me – dig?  If you have a fairly popular name such as Chuck Reynolds, then I suggest you get out and secure your name before the next guy/girl.

I can't say enough about how important personal branding is these days, and I do blabber about it all the time, so secure your name and your kid's names because the internet isn't going anywhere and managing your reputation online starts with owning your personal brand.

Most registrars should have active registration for .ME today.  I personally always use NameCheap for all my domains but if you are like the rest of the sheep you can use the other guys.

So what domain.ME did you buy today?  I got ChuckReynolds.me (which for now I'm just forwarding to my .us name) – couldn't get Geno.me though… doh

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

.ME Domains for Personal Branding

Adobe Flash (previously Macromedia Flash) has long been a stealth containment of information, hiding its information from search engines.  The ever important need for your site's content, including your all important keywords/keyphrases, to be properly indexed by the search engines has left flash web sites in the dark.  I've personally stayed away from using flash in web sites for anything more than non-content related interaction areas or animated galleries, slideshows, floorplan navigations, etc; basically anything not including copy or anything important to search bots.

So yesterday Adobe and Google announced that Google, and soon Yahoo (after they "work some bugs out"), will be improving their indexing of Flash files.  This won’t solve all the problems with Flash content showing up on search engines and it's not the complete and total package but it's a great step in the right direction for Adobe Flash and their users.

So what's going to be indexed?

All "textual content" in Flash files.  It's not everything, including images and any descriptive text that those would contain, but will at least start to index your keywords and phrases.

What's not going to be indexed?

I'm not a Flash expert by any means so I'm not real sure how Flash files are built but if you include your text in that initial movie, you're okay, but if you pull data from XML files or another .html file Google currently won't include those.  Also if you include your SWF file by way of certain Javascripting, Googlebot may or may not recognize that.  They didn't get specific on that part but if you read into Googlebot's javascript ability I'm sure you'll figure it out.  (Give it a little more time and I bet Google figures that stuff out though.)

So now what?

I'm in no rush to start developing things in Flash just because of this news but it is good to know that Adobe is working on getting this done.  I still have my qualms about Flash and the way most web sites use it, its accessibility issues, and the problems of users having older versions and having to update, etc.

I still say web site content and its navigation should not reside within a flash file and should be semantically marked up for the best search results and best accessibility.  This news also worries me that the people making those crappy flash sites will only use this news to justify their bad sites/code are just that much better.  Fail.

Read the news from Google and from Adobe for source information and some more details.

EDIT: (19 July 2008) – Google has rolled out an "update that enables support for common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, including SWFObject and SWFObject2″.  So one of the first issues with their news they've already fixed.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Flash gets some Search Engine Love

I need to start off by saying I'm an avid use of Google Maps much more so than Yahoo's or Mapquest's or MSN's (mapblast) – I like the functionality, features and data presented with Google maps over the others. In a real world situation, such as having clients find my office, I wanted to know what was really the most updated image/data and best resolution between the mapping sites.

Points to note: I used the same address of 140 S. Ash Ave, Tempe Az 85281 for all. Each image was screenshot with windows print screen and cropped to the same size and saved out as a quality 75 JPG from photoshop. (FYI – I only added white covers to hide the advertising on Mapquest and they also had no data on the furthest zoom level so I had to back it off one notch. Also mapblast (MSN) doesn't even offer satellite views and is sooo horrible of a User Interface I excluded them from this experiment.  As a late addition (30 April @ 1900) I added Live maps because I forgot about that one initially – thanks to @paulsutton and Ben Atkin for pointing that out).

Google Maps:

[Map Link] – [Flickr Photo Link]

Live Maps:

[Map Link] – [Flickr Photo Link]

Yahoo Maps:

[Map Link] – [Flickr Photo Link]

MapQuest:

[Map Link] – [Flickr Photo Link]

As you can see the resolution and zoom level in Google Maps is of much higher quality and with the ability to edit the marker in Google My Maps, I was able to better show where our actual office is instead of being in the middle of the street down the road.  After reviewing Live maps I'm somewhat of a fan of that as it offers a satellite view and also a "birds eye view" which is like an isometric view.  Both Google and Live have very clear high resolution images but again because of the overall functionality, and editablity of Google… I still will use that

Conclusion?  I'll keep using Google Maps – maps.google.com – keep an eye on Live maps.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Online Satellite Mapping – which is better?