9:30 pm - "On the ground in San Francisco. Nights here really are quite cool and windy. This excites me for some reason."

I wrote those words in my journal (yes, on paper) on July 19, 2007, when I decided to fly up for Wordcamp on a bit of a whim. Although my journal entry was brief, it marks a pivotal moment in my life. I remember I was in the airport and going up an escalator to get to the BART station. As I reached the top and looked out over the city for the first time, it was like I'd taken my first breath full of energy and life and possibilities, and I immediately knew that something in this city was waiting for me. The moment was so intense, the memory of it can bring tears to my eyes.

Dear friends, I am pleased to announce that I have found the opportunity I sensed that day. In just a few short weeks, I will be leaving San Diego to join Palm's Developer Relations team. PreDevCamp was the most humbling and exciting project I've ever undertaken, and I'm honored to be in an even better position to serve this new community of developers. As an application reviewer, my priorities are now to help you guys develop the highest quality apps possible, and ensure the review process treats all developers with the respect they deserve.

I'll be joining Chuq, the community manager that we already know and love, new directors Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith, and a host of other crazy talented folks. What I'm looking forward to the most about working for Dion and Ben is that they're so passionate about driving the future of the Open Web in a mobile environment. I've merely dabbled with the idea before (and listened to many of @hober's infamous drunken rants), and I'm excited to have a chance to become a participating member of this community.

As eager as I am to join Palm, departure is bittersweet. San Diego is where I discovered myself, and with the help of some really awesome friends I've learned that my truest source of happiness is to be active and genuine in my communities, and never be afraid to follow my passions. As Barcamp San Diego and twitter empowered San Diego with a thriving new community, I was empowered myself and decided what I wanted to do with my life. For that reason, San Diego — and the people here — will always have a special place in my heart.

The next two weeks will be a whirlwind of activity to wrap up my last obligations, see as many friends as possible, and ship me and my cat up to Sunnyvale ASAP. The realization that I'm really doing this comes in waves, so I'm doing everything I can to cherish my remaining time here. You will be greatly missed, San Diego, but be proud that it is your legacy that will carry me through this next adventure.

Crack your knuckles and grab your caffeinated beverage of choice, because PreDevCamp is only a week away!

When: August 8, 2009 at 10:30 am

Where: theHIVE, 777 11^th Avenue [map]

Cost: Free, but please bring $5 to chip in for lunch

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW!

I'm pleased to announce that preDevCamp San Diego will be hosted at theHIVE, downtown's most fashionable co-working space. Jason and the team have made a huge contribution to the SD tech scene by graciously hosting events such as SD Ruby, Django SD, SD Tech Founders, and the upcoming Ignite event. Check their website to learn about the space and the creative professionals who work there, or stop by for the next free Jelly co-working day and say hi.

Survey
What do YOU want to learn at preDevCamp? We've created a survey to get a feel for your background and what you'd rather focus on. It's also a dang good way to get an idea of what the event will be like. Click here to take the survey!

Schedule
As always, keep in mind that this schedule can and probably will change.

• 10:00 - Doors open
• 10:30 -- Introductions: Who you are, what you do, and what you'd like to build
• 10:45 to 12:30 - Intro to Pre development, SDK installfest, hello world, HTML5, services api, frameworks
• 12:30 to 1:30 - Lunch
• 1:30 to 5:30 - Open hacking and group discussion: website optimization, mobile UX, webOS internals hacking (running servers, homebrew apps, etc), whatever else comes up
• 6:00 to 6:30 - Demo your app, prizes
• 6:30 - Closing remarks
• 7:00 - Cleanup
• 8:00 - Afterparty at one of downtown's fine drinking establishments

What you can do
The conference might be a week away, but here's what you should start doing now.

• Brainstorm for app ideas. PreDevCamp San Diego will be very hands on, so start thinking about what app you'd like to build. I'll be announcing at least two contests in the next week, so make it good.

• Install the SDK, which is conveniently available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. We can help you get this set up if you need it, but it'll save a lot of time if everyone can get this done before the event. And remember to update to the latest version if you have the beta SDK installed!
• Play with the emulator. If you don't have a Pre, spend a few minutes with the emulator to get a feel for how webOS handles multi-tasking and notifications. Be warned that the gestures are rather addictive!
• Connect with other attendees. There are over 1000 people registered for preDevCamp around the world, and they're all as awesome as you are. Get to know them on Facebook or our irc backchannel at #predevcamp on irc.freenode.net.
• Help get the word out. Post about preDevCamp on your blog or send a message to your favorite mailing list. There's also a Facebook event you can use to invite your friends.

That's it for now! If you have any questions, please catch me or Dave on twitter or shoot me an email. Happy hacking!

1	Jan
2	Feb
3	Mar
4	Apr
5	May
6	Jun
7	Jul
8	Aug
9	Sep
A	Oct
B	Nov
C	Dec

1	1
2	2
3	3
4	4
5	5
6	6
7	7
8	8
9	9
A	10
B	11
C	12
D	13
E	14
F	15
G	16
H	17
I	18
J	19
K	20
L	21
M	22
N	23
O	24
P	25
Q	26
R	27
S	28
T	29
U	30
V	31

Mine was born on May 31, 2009...only a week before I bought it! Most of the dates I've seen are within the last half of May. When was YOURS born? Let me know in the comments!

PS:  And yes, I did set up a birthday remember for the lil' guy.

1. Open the Mail application and go into Preferences and Accounts.
2. Under accounts, tap your Gmail account
3. Under Default Folders, change the trash folder to [Gmail]/All Mail

That's it!  Since this hack usurps the delete functionality, I'd still prefer that Palm add a dedicated "move to folder" button.  This button could, for example, move the message to a "default" folder when tapped, or pop up a list to choose the one you want if you tap and hold.  Still, the workaround is preferable for those of us who can't live without archive.

Update: Lifehacker commenters mentioned that the Pre does allow you to move mail to a folder, but for me this would take 5 taps: menu > move to folder > scroll, scroll (I have a lot of tags) > All Mail.  Like most hacks, changing the delete folder isn't perfect but for some it may be better than the alternative.

In all fairness...I've been a Palm fan for years, but I'm not too brainwashed to say that there's a place in the market for both. Pre and the iPhone each have pros and cons, and the Pre meets my needs the best. For me, having a physical keyboard, carrier availability, and choice of development platform are high priorities. YMMV.

Now with that said, WebOS and Synergy are amazing new technologies that are full of possibilities, but I fairly and lovingly admit that certain aspects of the Pre reinforce the fact that it's a v1.02 device. Things you'll love: everything about the hardware, how easily it integrates with online services, beautiful multitasking, gps navigation, and push email. Things you might not like: unoptimized calendar experience, short battery life, and limited application selection. The people currently best suited for the Pre are early adopters, users without advanced requirements, and linux hackers (I'm trying to find a way to SSH into my phone as I write this). Since there are so many people excited about this device, I hope to see Palm engaging the community to incorporate our feedback into future updates (which I expect within a month or two).

...that got a bit too involved, didn't it? The Pre's a great phone. Buy it, bitches.

Meet your new organizing team
To fill in for whurley's and Giovanni's unfortunate departures, Greg Stevenson and myself will be stepping in to help co-ordinate the various preDevCamp events around the globe.  Greg has already been hosting some webOS training sessions (pre-preDevCamps, if you will), and will be invaluable bringing this knowledge to the community.  And while I've helped plan a barcamp or two, I'm positively giddy for the chance to help build a stronger community and facilitate knowledge transfer on such a massive scale.  Combined with Dan's experience bringing preDevCamp where it is today, I think we're going to make a wonderful team.

New target date:  August 8th
The second major announcement is regarding preDevCamp's target date.  Several cities have expressed concern about organizing events on such short notice and without guarantee that the SDK will be available.  Palm hears our cries about the SDK loud and clear, but there's a lot more involved than just making sure everyone has a copy of the software.  We still don't have a confirmed SDK release date, but I'm very optimistic that pushing the date back to August 8th will give Palm time to finalize these issues.  And while August is later than the expectation that was originally set, it's still only 9 weeks after the launch of the phone (recall that the iPhone SDK was released 9 MONTHS later).  Also, 9 weeks is the same amount of time it takes to make kittens.  Coincidence?  I think not.

More content coming soon
Momentum since the phone's announcement has ebbed due to a lack of developer-related news, but now that the cone of silence is being lifted we can start featuring content created by Palm and other preDevCamp members.  The goal here is to provide maximum visibility to emerging community leaders and create a repository of reusable presentations, therefore lowering the barrier to entry for someone interested in talking about webOS but might not be sure where to begin.  Plus, I plan on releasing a series of articles on how to recruit developers in your community, how to sell the event to sponsors, and share other experience I've gathered on how to host a successful conference.  Now that we have a target to shoot for, expect to see a lot more activity on the preDevCamp blog!

What you can do
Some cities are still moving forward with June 13th events, and my personal opinion on this is kudos to you for getting a head start.  There's a lot of learning to be done in the next few months, so I encourage you to use this time to help create our public knowledge base.  Write a blog post on something you've learned.  Record a presentation and upload it to the preDevCamp slideshare group.  Get to know other developers and provide feedback for each other.  And don't forget to keep your city's preDevCamp blog updated!

Learning as publicly as possible will show the world that the preDevCamp community is leading the way to webOS enlightenment.  Are you ready?  Let's begin.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the direction of social media and what it means to me, and I've found myself uninterested at best. So we share stuff. Big damn deal. There's so much content being shared to me that I ignore almost all of it now, at least compared to what I was consuming a year ago. No offense to any of my contacts, but I've reached the point where enough is enough, and while all that firehose of content is still in my input stream, I've altered my patterns to only consume what's relevant to my interests at that moment.

For example, tweets are skimmed while walking up the stairs (Confession #1: Or when I'm in the restroom. Hey, just being honest), but hundreds of messages may be ignored if I decide to do something more interesting for a weekend. Neglected RSS feeds pile up to the dreaded 1000+ mark. I used to have a level of background stress because I was "behind," but after learning that I'm no worse off without this information, I now have no regrets using the "mark all as read" button with reckless abandon.

The content's there, now make it relevant.

While too much content isn't a bad thing (until you reach the point where you're so unable to manage it that it becomes easier to ignore), I didn't bring up the previous rant and confession to focus on content filtering. I think that's a problem to be solved with some sort of relevancy engine, something that reads in your context, available resources, and attention profile, and feeds you the data that's most useful to you at that moment. But even that intelligently consumed content can be made much more useful if I have a highly customized layer to help me organize my own meaning for that data.

But there's bookmarking tools, you might say. And tags. With these tools, you can organize content however you want. To be honest, I could never get started using bookmarking services until just a few months ago when I started using Mento.info, because it has a nice balance between the metadata robustness of a bookmarking service and the relevant content highlighting of a tumblelog. (Confession #2:  the first service was actually ma.gnolia, but only for a few heavily-frequented topics. And all those links are gone now, bless ma.gnolia's heart.)

Bookmarking services are flexible, but that also means they're very generic. Their biggest flaw is that even when given the option of clipping content, you're recording a copy of what someone else said or likes or thinks is useful. What if I like the author's advice, but find that it doesn't work for me 100%? Feedback can be shared publicly in comments, but they're merely a footnote to the original content.

The first step of social media was to make everything public; the next step is to make it more applicable to your individual situation.

I've come up with an idea I call a personal information layer. This data layer is a different concept than annotation as found in services like Diigo, where users' adjustments float like post it notes. The personal information layer should look and interact just like the original content, but customized to the preferences for an individual user. Recipes are a good example. I may like much more sage than the original author called for, or perhaps my oven requires an additional 10 minutes cooking time. The content is way more valuable to me when I can alter it according to my taste and needs.

Remixing is hard enough now. What happens to copyright in an Internet like this?

This question felt a lot easier to deal with when I was trying to keep the data in the personal information layer truly personal (read: private), but it just won't work that way (Confession #3:  also, I loathe the idea of building another social graph). Even individual adjustments to public content is useful data, so there's value in sharing it. But this will be harder to defend than deep linking and reblogging...this is making potentially minor changes to someone else's otherwise verbatim content and collecting it all under your own name. Simultaneously collecting and customizing data is another step towards the ideal Internet, but at what point does Emeril's pie recipe become Brittany's pie recipe? What's the significance if it was Kathy's version before Brittany saw it?

I can't predict how the Internet community will respond to any of these challenges; I don't think anyone can until a demo is released in the wild to see how people react. And of course, I wouldn't go through the trouble of documenting all these questions and ideas if I didn't have a hell of a use case I hope Dave and I have time to experiment with over the summer.

What's a DevCamp?
We haven't had many developer camps in San Diego, but they're like a BarCamp centered around creating applications on a common platform or language.  Users just like you will lead sessions covering everything from basic functionality, differences between the Pre and existing Palm devices (and the iPhone!), brainstorming sessions, and lots of group hacking time.  From what we know about the Pre's webOS so far, applications are written in super easy HTML and CSS, so just about anyone should be able to get up and running after an intro session to the webOS SDK.  But even if HTML ain't your style, we'll need people to come up with application ideas and help test the code other people create.  Palm will also be releasing an emulator, so you can still participate even if you can't buy the hardware before the event.  If you're a creative type and have been getting excited about the Pre, you need to sign up now!

Help wanted!
If you're interested in throwing conventional organization out the window and helping find a venue and some sponsors, don't forget to check that pretty little volunteer box on the registration page so I'll know to get in touch with you.  If you're interested in sponsoring, contact me and Giovanni Gallucci.

Watch the preDevCamp San Diego blog and the @preDevCamp twitter account for further information, and start spreading the word now that San Diego's going to kick some webOS development ass sometime in the next five months!

It all started when I received a message on Flickr inviting me to participate in a photography contest on a saltwater aquarium site.  I have a ton of great images from the California Academy of Sciences that I could submit, so decided to check it out.  The rules are pretty standard, but the following declaration they requested gave me cause for alarm:

I YOUR NAME certify that I am the author and sole owner of the material I am submitting to Aquariumslife.com. I understand and agree that Aquariumslife.com may use my material anywhere on Aquariumslife.com. I understand and agree that Aquariumslife.com may resize my material if needed. I understand and agree that I remain the owner of the Copyright of all material submited [sic] to Aquariumslife.com and that a Copyright notice will be add [sic] to my picture.

Copyright notice will be added this way: ⓒ YOUR NAME 2008.

This immediately reminded me of Flickr users who go out of their way to add those copyright notices to their photos and specify that all rights are reserved, do not use without permission, etc.  I respect that some people need to maintain extremely tight control, but being so limited in how I can share these works (and link back to them) drastically reduces their art's value to me.  The copyright symbol is a mark of disgrace, and I want nothing to do with it.

I mentioned my predicament on Twitter and got some enlightening (and memory jogging) responses.  I remember now how copyright is automatic and exists for all creative works.  It means that you have control of the work, but the copyright (and the copyright symbol) isn't what makes someone a creative dictator or anarchist.  The license is what specifies how others can use the work.  That license can be all rights reserved or one of the Creative Commons licenses, but the copyright still exists.

I think why this was a point of confusion for me is because I've never seen ⓒ specified on a photo without the intent of all rights reserved, and I didn't want the stigma of a more restrictive license just because of this contest.  I wrote the organizer back to say that I would prefer that my photos not be watermarked at all, or to use CC-BY-SA if they must add something.  I may be over-drawing the line, but there's no shame in defending your principles.

What is @sdjobs?
@sdjobs is a Twitter account that publicizes Internet technology jobs in the San Diego area, keeps the community updated on the job market and layoff announcements, and offers general job hunting tips.  I'll also provide some much needed sanity checks by pointing out how unreasonable some job descriptions are.  Searching for a new job is never easy,  and I want to help keep San Diego's spirits up and let people know that they're not alone.

Why Twitter?  Why not just start a mailing list?
Because Twitter is a notification system built inside a social network.  With Twitter, users have more options for where and when they receive updates.  A casual job hunter may only want to check the web page every once in a while, but someone trying to get an interview for a competitive position may want to be updated as soon as possible.  Mailing lists only send email, requiring the user to search for third party tools to get this kind of flexibility.

How you can help
Even if you're not looking for a new job, one of your friends probably is or will be in the near future.  The best way you can help is to be prepared with leads and advice...and let me tell ya, it's way hella cool to watch someone's face light up when you send them a job lead.  And I am but a cat herder, so I can only do so much without you cats sending in job openings at your company and relevant content that you stumble upon.

I picked Rosie the Riveter as my icon to communicate a very specific message.  As the global economy begins it's death spiral, local communities will have to band together tighter than ever before to support ourselves during the impending collapse.  No government bailouts can help us more than we can help each other.

We can do it, San Diego.