Fresh from Alaska.org is a shiny new Alaska iPhone app for your next visit to the 49th State! This is without a doubt the most featured rich iPhone app dedicated to the Alaska experience! There are loads of features packed into this app, but the most striking of all is the price…it’s FREE!
Download the Alaska App via iTunes.

So, what can this app do?

GPS Location Aware Guide & Map
My vote for the coolest feature has to be the built-in map that recognizes your location via GPS then displays cool sightseeing opportunities, places to eat and things to do nearby. It’s claimed to include more than 30,000 hand-picked locations to choose from all around Alaska. Pretty cool! My personal experience showed hundreds of options all around the Anchorage to Eklutna areas. For a local, this feature is actually pretty slick…I bet you’ll find a park nearby that you never knew about!

Audio Tours
If you’re looking for some historical background or just curious about places, buildings and wildlife in the area – the audio tours are a neat addition for the tourists. (Some locals could learn a thing or two also!)

Great Videos
Alaska Channel (Alaska.org) is already well known for their travel videos. Basically you get high quality previews of Alaskan scenery in the palm of your hand. Great eye candy.

The Alaska Postcard
For travelers and locals alike, the Alaska postcard feature built into this app is pretty cool. Basically you can take a photo with your iPhone and attach it to a cool looking template that resembles an old school postcard. Type in a message and send it to friends, family and jealous coworkers. If the recipient has a somewhat modern email application, they’ll get a really gorgeous email with your photo (theoretically taken in Alaska). Nicely integrated and great feature targeted primarily at Alaska visitors.

The Library and Ask Bob
These features are really aimed at people simply trying find out more things to do as a tourist or looking for the inside scoop on traveling around Alaska. There’s a solid list of categories to choose from in the Library. If you’re looking for a personal travel guide just Ask Bob!

Conclusion (at least for now)
I’ve only had the app installed for a few hours, but I can tell you that this is definitely an impressive effort – not just for Alaska, but for ANY free iPhone app. Kudos to the developers and to Alaska.org for putting together such a great application! It was definitely a hefty download at more than 260MB, but for what it can do I am not surprised at the file size. Go check it out!   Download the Alaska App via iTunes.

The Alaska App was originally developed by Catapult Consulting.

Another cool idea from Quirky is the new Pivot Power, a clever “twist” on flexible power outlets. I can definitely see the application for this in my home and office. It’s amazing how many outlets go unused due to awkward AC/DC converters and ridiculously large chargers for cell phones, etc.

At the time of this writing, the Pivot Power is in the Pre-sale (“Commitment”) phase with a price of $25. Visit Quirky.com for more!

It’s not very often I stumble upon a press release, new product or demo video that truly rattles my cage. What you see in this demo of Time Magazine’s new tablet application is a glimpse of what the future of news and media will look like for the foreseeable future. Watch the video after the jump.

For the first time in a long time – I’m blown away. The copycats will be fast on the heels of this app, and I believe that’s a good thing. Funny…maybe Steve Jobs did know something about the future.

Here’s a “making of” video which demonstrates the app on the Apple Ipad.

1. Time Magazine App | app.time.com
2. Get an iPad locally | www.machaus.net

A short video produced to introduce Anchorage citizens to the concept of working to bring Google Fiber to our city. Visit www.googifiak.com for more about the Anchorage Google Fiber bid. Hurry, we need you to nominate Anchorage before March 26th!

It’s T-minus 20 days to the application deadline and Anchorage needs to get fired up (or maybe lit up) about the Google Fiber Initiative! If you’re not familiar with this “contest”, let me explain. Google is planning to build out some of the fastest Internet connections in the U.S.A. – and all we have to do is let them know WE WANT FASTER SPEEDS in Anchorage.

Do this first.

Go now to Google’s page and fill out this form to nominate Anchorage!

What would you do with 1 Gigabit Internet?

Let’s put it this way, 1 Gigabit is more than 100x faster than just about anything you can buy today in Anchorage. That kind of performance can open up a whole new world of opportunities, business, creativity and entertainment options we only dream about today here in Anchorage.

Some examples:

• Download full length HD movies in less than 10 minutes.
• Participate in real-time 3D training college courses from home.
• Stay in touch with loved ones around the world in high quality video chats.
• Launch a new online business right here (no need to move Outside).
• Watch the Iditarod Insider online (okay, this one is link bait I admit it).
• No more lag – rejoice gamers!

You have support.

The City of Anchorage, the Mayor and loads of other community members are working to launch a site, campaign and let everyone know about the Google Fiber Initiative. Right now, the website www.googifiak.com is up in rough form and has the basic information about the initiative. The important thing to note is that the Municipality is working hard to present a formal bid (RFI) for Anchorage. With some luck, good planning, word of mouth and YOUR support (you did Nominate Anchorage already, right?) – we will Googifi Anchorage!

More choice, faster speeds and price competition.

Not to be forgotten.. there’s more to this than just bringing a big fat Google fiber connection to Anchorage. There’s a skunkworks team of local nerds, geeks and engineers that are proposing to build out an open access wireless or WiFi option for Anchorage residents (hence the “ifi” in Googifi Anchorage). The bottom line goal for this combination of public, private and individual project will be to:

• Performance: 100x or more than the speeds we have today
• Competition: A new option for Internet in Anchorage
• Price: Get more for less
• Options: How about a city wide roaming WiFi with gigabit speed?

Get involved.

• First, tell everyone!
• Blog about it.
• Make a YouTube video about what you would do with 1 gigabit internet!
• Join the Facebook group.
• Call your Mom, she would love to hear from you anyway.

Hurry the Deadline is March 26th!

Miracles never cease! After nearly two years of whining, stamping my feet and having near conniptions – MTA has introduced new internet plans that have dropped my ISP costs by $40 per month. Finally!

MTA’s Big Gig internet plans are marketed as the answer to the “power users” that need more data usage in addition to having fast speeds. While I agree there are probably quite a few folks who do nothing but email and browse the web – the idea that “power users” are somehow a special class of internet citizen is really becoming an outdated notion. Facts are, nearly everyone today is uploading images to Flickr, posting videos on YouTube, watching shows on Hulu, renting Netflix or playing online games with their XBOX 360. All of us are now “power users”, so it’s probably a wise move for MTA to respond to this demand now – before everyone becomes a whining noise maker like me.

While this is generally great news, my exuberance for this new plan is limited to the fact that I am saving forty dollars a month. It’s still a sad state of affairs being on the edge of the broadband world. I’m sure there are many who have it worse, but I can’t believe that today, in 2010, that we are still paying more than $100 for 768K DSL service. I won’t go on about the state of affairs regarding Alaska internet options – you can check out my previous posts.

So, the short story.
Thank you MTA for taking steps in the right direction…

Just a quick look at one of the products available for pre-order at Quirky. Originally pitched as a “keyboard garage” with a few USB ports, the final design is almost exactly that – plus it has 6 USB ports on the front!  I can’t wait to get mine and replace the hideous USB hub cluttering up my desktop.

Granted, you can pickup a USB hub for less than $20 in some cases, but I haven’t seen anything as cleanly designed, doubles as a nice place to park your keyboard and potentially a nice monitor stand. For example, check out these innovative (albeit) fugly models by Belkin. Functional, yes. Pretty, no. The Quirky spacebar is obviously targeted at the Apple keyboard and Mac fanboys, but that’s okay with me. Haha!

At the time of this writing, the spacebar is nearing the end of it’s Pre-sale (“Commitment”) phase with a price of $42.

Go place your commitment by joining Quirky (use my referral URL) http://www.quirky.com/?r=318c27fe3acbde5a0e4af0b4ae291a68 and pick up the spacebar or maybe the newly released PenZen desktop “organizer”. I can’t wait to see the spacebar in the wild (and on my desk).

Once I get it, I’ll be sure to post a full review!

-Kevin

I recently came across Quirky.com in my search for ways to take something from idea to reality. Having recently moved on from my old company, I had some time on my hands – plus my partner had recently come up with a really cool software idea that had grown into something bigger, better and infinitely more complicated to create (i.e. hardware).

We began our search like many probably do, by reaching out to friends, local contacts and scouring the web for advisors on LinkedIn, etc. What you quickly discover is that turning an idea into a real, tangible and physical product is going to take quite a bit of two precious commodities: Time and Money. So, unless you’re already independently wealthy or have family ready to bankroll a year long development and speculative business – you’re going to get frustrated looking for alternative ways of getting it done.

Enter: The Social Product Development business, aka “Quirky”.

The quick intro.

-

How does it work?

The basics.

• Sign up and start engaging the community with ratings, comments and voting on products you think have a chance to succeed.
• Submit your idea (the more you can diagram or describe via a YouTube video, the better) – this will cost you $99.
• Your idea is judged, graded and voted on by a jury of peers, lurkers and professionals
• The process of vetting the idea takes about a week
• If your idea is chosen, it goes through a series of design, marketing and development steps that finalize more about the product name, design, tagline, etc.
• Off it goes to production. Stand by for 8 weeks, give or take.

Making money.

• Based on the idea, the amount of “influence” that each individual has in the process – the revenue per sold item varies.
• Generally, the person with the idea is going to earn about 12 cents on every 1 dollar for items sold via Quirky’s store.
• For products that go “big time” and sell wholesale, the rule is about about 4 cents on the dollar. Not bad at all, considering the investment to submit the idea was only $99.

Protecting the idea.

• At the point of submission and review process, the idea is yours and only yours.
• Obviously, there’s some public exposure here – but that can work in your favor too.
• If your product makes the cut, you DO transfer the rights of that idea to Quirky. After all, they do have to front the costs to prototype, manufacture and build the sales channels.

To get the whole scoop, visit the quirky.com site and read the FAQs under the Learn section.

-

My idea.

TBD Product 0032

My concept will be in the Idea Evaluation stage until around Valentine’s Day. I’d love to give away the idea here, but the goal is to get you to visit Quirky and check out my entry under Product 0032. I’ll give you a hint, it’s under my name and the title of the idea is: Dynamo Phone Case.

As this develops and I have more experience with Quirky, I will definitely follow-up with a story or two. Thanks for checking out my idea and I hope I get your vote too!!

-Kevin

I’ve been navigating to each site and editing with the browser for years and to have a single tool with access to all my blogs is a dream. Loving it. This is my first attempt using MarsEdit and so far I’m loving the simplicity! As a matter of fact, I think I’ll just stop right here and save my draft without having to be connected or logged in. (Clicks Save as Draft)

Really, not much else to add here except that I am impressed overall with the tool. Uploading the image was dead simple, adding links and entering text is incredibly straight forward. One note of caution to the novice blogger and those with zero knowledge of

HTML formatting

, the management of

text size

, formatting and so on could be a little confusing. It’s definitely not a WYSIWYG editor from what I’ve seen so far. In fact, I had to CREATE the macros to make the list markup for Pros and Cons below.

My super quick review in summary:

Pros:

• Simple
• Manage several blogs in one place
• Clean UI
• It works!

Cons:

• Does require some HTML skill
• Needs a simple WYSIWYG toolbar

I’ll go look at Ecto and see what I think…

Blogging is by no means a new thing these days, nor is it really all that novel. The topic of backlash from bloggers has also been talked about for at least four years now. So why an article on “blogger backlash”? I’d like to share my own experiences about how blogging can have local implications and express my views about the backlash I’ve received as a result of this website.

You said something we don’t like 

Earlier this week, I was summarily ostracized by the current chairman of a local club when he informed me he would be actively barring me from volunteering my time to promote their club and the upcoming events. I had offered and already started giving my time, expertise and resources to build them a new website, produce a series of video podcasts, shoot video of the events and create a social media buzz to drive attendance. There was just one issue…the big event was sponsored by a couple of prominent Alaska companies.

Here’s what I received in reply to my offer to help promote the event, he wrote:

“I can not give you permission to shoot video of the participants, the events, place cameras or any other such thing when it come to the sponsored event.. as you can see by the name of the event I do not represent any of the title entities. Your history with both sponsors and your outspoken detractions of sponsor name in particular, make things difficult for me. I can not and will not jeopardize the relationship between sponsor 1, sponsor 2 and sponsor 3 let alone my club.”

Man, all I wanted to do is help! Obviously, I was both angry and disappointed by this reply. In the end, my response was a very cordial and simple reply.

“Too bad, I would have enjoyed helping out. Good luck in the future.”

Is there a moral to the story?

As a result of this exchange, I did some soul searching, reviewed what I’ve written or said about certain Alaska companies and other entities in the past to see if I had somehow “crossed the line”. What I concluded is that some people just aren’t ready for transparency, open dialogue and public discussion about the good, the bad or the ugly.

Whether or not I was right or wrong is really not the issue here. Companies, organizations and individuals are already talking behind your back, spreading both truth and lies. Should I be shunned for simply starting the conversation about local company business practices or the critical opinions I might have about any product, service or customer experience?

In short, the lesson to be learned is that speaking out about established networks of friends, businesses, politicians or individuals can have negative implications for the author.

Separation of personal and professional

One thing that seems obvious is that our personal and professional lives are separate, but connected when convenient to further some sort of agenda. I could just as easily point that statement right back in my own face, and I do. That said, there is an ongoing and ugly trend to actively silence naysayers or those who would call a turd a turd. Sorry folks, but if it stinks, I’m not about to call it a rose.

My personal feelings toward anyone may be negative, neutral or positive, but it does not restrict my interest in doing business with them. Additionally, if the entity or person I have negative opinions toward were to come forward and engage in a discussion – I’m even more likely to adjust my opinion once there’s been an effort to reach some level of understanding!

It’s all about relationships. If you receive criticism or negative feedback, consider it an invitation to share your side of the story. Adversity only strengthens you! (well, it does me anyway)

Moving on

I strive to never to lash out or criticize indiscriminately. The opinions, stories and information I share here are based on my experiences which do not necessarily reflect or represent the “final word”. That is the very reason for a blog – to initiate dialogue, to open a forum for EVERYONE to share in the conversation. We, the viewing, consuming and sharing public now control the conversation – it’s up to the businesses, organizations and committee members to get involved in this public discussion.

Will this sort of blackballing or shunning cause me to change my opinions, reduce or filter my comments or discourage my interest in sharing my point of view? Absolutely not. In fact, it’s exactly this sort of nonsense that strengthens my resolve and encourages me to keep doing what I’m doing.

Excuse me as I step down from my pedestal.