Archive for August, 2007

The New Canucks Logo

John / August 29, 2007 / Uncategorized / 6 Comments

I attended the Vancouver Canucks Tailgate party and new uniform launch thingy at GM Place today.

It was nice to jump on the seabus and get out of the office for a bit. Of course they picked seemingly the hottest day of the summer so far to do it. There were a lot of people lined up to for free hot dogs and a chance to hang out with FIN the Canuck’s mascot before the big event.

I was able to hook up with Rebecca and Dave from The Crazy Canucks who helped me skip most of the big lineup and get to a good spot with JJ in the shade – he was thinking ahead and got there early.

They managed to record a podcast despite the huge crowds and noise. I even make a brief guest spot on the podcast too.

Once we got inside, we got pretty decent seats, albeit on the opposite side of the proceedings. To my surprise, the event started right on time at 12:30pm and they introduced a number of key members of the Canucks organization.

But we weren’t there for speeches, we were there to see the new uniforms and logo.

Pretty much as expected, they revealed the logo design that I had spotted in a Gastown store a few weeks ago. I was hoping for something a little different or a retro design so I’m basically indifferent to the new look. I do like the addition of “Vancouver” across the front but as Rebecca said, it does make it look a little busy.

Considering they had well over 8000 people come out on a sunny day during the summer, you still couldn’t even buy a new jersey onsite. They were only selling t-shirts and taking preorders on the jerseys. Talk about a lost opportunity to sell a ton to some of the most passionate fans….although it’s not like those people won’t still buy it all up like Rebecca did:

More pictures from the event in my photo section. Rebecca and John already have more in depth coverage on their sites. My friend Dave (who wasn’t able to attend) has posted his thoughts on the new look as well.

UPDATE: The Crazy Canucks podcast that was recorded during this event is now online! You can listen to it right on the site or download the mp3 for your favorite playback device. I start mumbling around the 3:20 mark.

PhotoCamp 2007 Wrapup

John / August 28, 2007 / Photography / Comments Off

During BarCamp this year, Kris Krug hosted PhotoCamp which was actually a session within the BarCamp program and not a longer event as I had originally thought. I touched on it very briefly in my BarCamp wrapup post but thought I should elaborate on it a little more since there was lots of good stuff in there.

Andrew Ferguson started things off by giving a talk about running a photography blog and the amount of effort it takes to keep an audience – basically you have to post daily or at least regularly because there are so many photography related sites out there, fresh content is (and always will be) king. I just started reading Andrew’s blog as a result of PhotoCamp and he’s got a lot of great stuff for photo geeks on there.

Matt Trentacoste was up next and gave a talk on ‘Computational Photography’ which was very interesting. He talked about what advantages digital photography gives over traditional, film based photo editing. While I do love messing with photos in Photoshop, most of my stuff is left untouched. I did love playing in the darkroom back in high school (where I first fell in love with photography) but like Matt says in his slides(PDF), darkroom work is hard work….and also quite expensive compared to the cost of decent photo editing software. He also talked about different software that can help correct issues caused by optical distortion or noise. His last part was about wavefront coding which (if I understand it correctly) is basically the ability, in software, to correct things like blurry images – basically (or maybe optimistically) an unblur filter that would allow you to fix blurry images (assuming you had the right camera gear to take the image in the first place) without affecting other variables in the image. Really cool stuff.

Duane Storey gave a talk about his HDR photos and went through the process to get the great shots he does like the one above. He does it via post-processing software called PhotoMatrix. I still haven’t had a chance to really play much with HDR yet but want to even more now.

Kris wrapped up the session with basically an open Q&A about various software and camera techniques, managing your photo workflow (Lightroom, iPhoto, etc), what lens to buy, etc…too many nuggets that I didn’t capture.

All that got squeezed into just over an hour and a bit. Seems to me there is probably enough cool stuff to talk about, smart people to give presentations and interested people to have a stand alone/full day event for photography geeks.

Thanks to kk, Andrew, Matt, Duane and everyone else for a great session.

Another iPhone Unlock via Software Video

John / August 28, 2007 / Hacking, Mobile, Video / Comments Off

Still kinda sketchy and hard to tell since it was shot with a Nokia N95. Not exactly definitive proof but promising nonetheless. Check out the blog post from iphoneunlocking.com.

Now if someone would just release/offer for sale the unlock….

iPhone now SIM Unlocked with Software

John / August 24, 2007 / Hacking, Mobile / Comments Off

Engadget broke the story early this morning that iphonesimfree.com had managed to develop a software only unlock method to allow you to use any carrier’s SIM card with the iPhone.

Hopefully, it’s obvious that this is a big deal for a number of reasons:

it will work with Roger’s or Fido in Canada
you don’t have to track down a Super Sim or a Turbo Sim which were going for ridiculous amounts of money since they were sold out everywhere
you don’t have to crack open your $600 baby and risk frying it trying to solder some wires to do the hardware hack
they did it on my 11th wedding anniversary which is a big deal to me!
it’s the frickin’ iPhone on any GSM carrier in the world!

If Engadget says it’s real and not a hoax, then it’s real folks….game over AT&T. Sorry, thanks for playing.

The software will be available next week….no word on pricing yet. Check out Engadget for video and all the details.

Thanks to Tod for the heads up!

Email your iPhone’s music & Easily add Ringtones

John / August 22, 2007 / Hacking / 2 Comments

Erica over at TUAW.com has done it again with the “Song Sender” app which allows you to navigate your iTunes music library on your iPhone and either set a song to be a ringtone or you can even send a song to a friend via email!

You have to install the app via the secure FTP method I previously described. Once installed and ran, Song Sender presents you with a scrolling list of all the music on your iPhone. If you click on a song, the menu options (shown at left) are given. You can start or playing a song, Send to Email (which I found took awhile on wifi) or Send to Ringtones which pretty much replaces my need to ever have to run iFuntastic again (at least for ringtones). That is pretty cool!

It literally seems to get better on an hourly basis in the third party app world for the the iPhone. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Apple does to either stop or encourage this kind of development on a supposedly closed system considering hackers and programmers have been adding the functionality that everyone has been saying is lacking. So far, Apple’s only response has been patches with primarily bug fixes which are always welcome, but not much else.

Full Hardware unlock for iPhone?

John / August 21, 2007 / Hacking, Video / 3 Comments

If you believe this video:

and the blog post related to it, it appears that a hardware unlock solution has been discovered.

Apparently it requires some complex soldering but they also claim that a software unlock will be forthcoming “in less time than it takes to ship a Turbo SIM”.

Exciting stuff if it’s true!

Pick Me for SXSW 2008!

John / August 20, 2007 / Photography / 5 Comments

As SXSW 2007 was winding down, Frank and I were discussing the possibility of presentating at next years conference. We even talked to a number of panelists to get some insight into the process (special thank you to Jonathon Snook for the extended chat at the Iron Cactus!).

Once we got back home, we gave a number of presentations to various groups around the office to share the wealth of information we got from attending. This was also a good primer for us to see if we could give a presentation to larger groups as well as being the first time we had presented together.

We *think* we came up with a good topic to have a panel on and were able to get the submission in before the door closed (just barely).

Here’s the pitch we sent Hugh (the conference organizer):

Developers are From Mars and the Business is From Venus

During project development, the lines of business and web developers can often have differences of opinions due to the different ways these groups approach projects. Tensions can end up occurring amongst team members as unreasonable demands are made by the lines of business and developers provide excessive time frames & costs.

Find out how to iron out the differences between these two groups and see what career opportunities lie ahead in hybrid positions.

Frank Sandrin and John Biehler are both Web Analysts from one of North America’s largest auto insurers, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. They share their thoughts on how to bridge the gap between these two worlds and also provide some insight on what the future holds for job positions that federate the groups.

The panel details are somewhat abbreviated in the panel picker so this will hopefully give you a little more information.

If you are planning on attending (or even think you want to attend), I’d love it if you visited the SXSW Panel Picker (direct link to our panel) and voted for Frank and I (it’s in Frank’s name) as there are more panel submissions (683!) than available session slots (120) so every vote counts!

This year, anyone can vote too, not just alumni or registrants. You do have to register to vote but it just takes a minute.

The Panel Picker is currently getting hammered so try again if you have any trouble connecting.

Save money on an iPhone

John / August 20, 2007 / Photography / Comments Off

Apple is now selling refurbished iPhones…save $100 before you hack it!

Unfortunately (and as expected) this doesn’t appear to be available on the Canadian Apple Store.

Turbo SIM iPhone Unlock

John / August 19, 2007 / Hacking, Mobile / 8 Comments

Last week a new method of ‘unlocking’ the iPhone to use it with any mobile carrier emerged. Using something called a Turbo SIM (which costs $80US), it tricks the iPhone into thinking it’s using an AT&T sim card while actually using your sim card of choice.

How does it do this? You need to trim a little excess plastic off your sim card and then sandwich it with the Turbo sim card (the technical term is piggyback I think) making a sim card that still fits in the sim slot. Pretty ingenious actually.

Unfortunately, everyone with an iPhone (and no AT&T plan) found out about this and the company that makes the Turbo Sim, Bladox is apparently sold out and completely overwhelmed with orders – so much so that they actually closed their online store for now. I’ve read on some forums people offering hundreds of dollars for a Turbo Sim as well as lots of offers looking for people to help them do the steps necessary.

If you do happen to get your hands on a blank Turbo SIM, there are some fairly straightforward steps (assuming you’ve already hacked your iPhone) to make it work. This is the best walkthru I’ve come across although I haven’t tried it myself (yet). Ars Technica also has a breakdown of the method and some helpful links.

I’m not quite prepared to shell out a ton of money for a Turbo Sim just yet…it was only a week or so ago that a different, more complicated sim cloning method (aka super sim) was the ‘hot’ unlock method but it only worked with some very specific, older sim cards (mostly from Europe).

With the rapid pace of ‘homebrew’ software development for the iPhone, it’s even more feasible that in the very near future (days or weeks, not months) there will be a software unlock solution that negates the need for additional hardware. The Turbo Sim will definitely help assist in the hacking efforts in the short term.

New Canucks logo gear already on sale?

John / August 19, 2007 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments

Spotted this Vancouver Canucks hat in the window of a Gastown shop on the way to BarCamp – have the bootlegger’s already started making new logo merchandise before it’s official? I couldn’t see any official branding from the NHL or tags on it.

Some friends have the scoop on the new logo but nobody knows why this store was selling them…of course this hat could just be a stylized one. The store was closed so I couldn’t inspect it closer.

UPDATE: Looks like this isn’t such a scoop after all…Brett commented over on the Crazy Canucks post about the new logo and the fact that this is just a stylized version of the hat that has been available for years.