FaceTime for Apple's iPhone 4

Well, Apple is at it again. With the newest version of the iPhone, the iPhone 4, Apple has just released one of its most innovative and engaging features to date, something which, in this humble blogger's opinion, will revolutionalize the way that we communicate interpersonally.

Since the days when Captain James T. Kirk explored the expanses "where no man has gone before," and I suppose long before, man has dreamed of the day we could use technology to facilitate highly efficient, highly portable interpersonal communication.

Those days have arrived.

Introducing FaceTime for Iphone 4.  It's a revolutionary way to communicate, and just like the brand name implies, it is a way for iPhone 4 users to view each other and interact face to face. In simple terms, video conferencing for your mobile phone.

But what struck me as very powerful and very memorable was not simply the tech, but the way in which Apple chose to inform its consumers about the functionality of this particular product. They say that a picture is worth 1,000 words, and if that is true, it must also hold true that a video about a minute and 52 seconds long at 30 frames a second must be worth about 3,360,000 words.

So they didn't need any words.

Instead, producers chose to play an old Louis Armstrong favorite, When You're Smiling. The lyrics begin:

When you're smilin'....keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you
And when you're laughin'....keep on laughin'
The sun comes shinin' through

Then, we see five of the strongest use cases for the product illustrated on the screen, and some of them are very powerful. First we see a one year old baby crawling around on a bed, and a mother holding up the iPhone 4's FaceTime to allow conferencing between her baby and an unknown individual. Cut to a successful looking young businessman in a hotel room setting and BOOM! I'm instantly engaged as I fall under that demographic. Just weeks ago I sat in a Manhattan hotel room myself and said goodnight to my wife and little ones via Google talk on a MacBook Pro. The downside? I had to be in a certain place at a certain time. How much more convenient to have the portability that FaceTime offers, with face to face human interaction literally in your pocket. How many times would I call my wife just to see her face and watch her smile as we talked? If this is sounding all too sentimental, it's because Apple has done a remarkable job at appealing to the traveling daddy demographic.

Next up: Cut to a young lady in black cap and gown. It's moments before graduation, and she is sharing the moment with her grandparents no doubt half a nation away. So covering a completely different demographic here, singles, or more specifically, graduates - or anyone who wants to share a specific event with others. Beautiful.

Elegant. I love it, even though to be honest at this point in my life this fits me personally less than any of the other use cases depicted.  Graduating girl holds up her iPhone 4 and shows us how simple FaceTime is to use. And the music plays on.

In the third situation, a woman shown studying receives a FaceTime request from one of her girl friends, which she accepts. Her friend is out shopping and in a matter of seconds we understand just how easy it is to communicate with your peers as the caller displays a variety of new outfits and the girlfriend nods her approval or laughs with dislike for some outfits. We get the picture, there are a variety of situations where communication with others is vastly improved by utilizing the moving image. 

Now this next sequence was particularly moving, especially given the day and age in which we live with so many away on foreign (or not so foreign) soil, sacrificing the time they could be spending with family in service to their country. Couple that with fear, the nervousness, the excitement, the anticipation, and sheer joy that a young father experiences all at once upon becoming a father. It is my personal experience that the ultrasound is one of the most sacred and special times that a father experiences with the regards to the birth of his child, as he is not carrying the child and therefore does not experience the reality of the pregnancy on a day to day, hour by hour basis as does his wife. And the first ultrasound often occurs before kicks can be felt, so for me seeing evidence of the ultrasound was a real eye-opener. A welcome to reality, please come again soon moment. 

But back to the genius of this work: when we first see the wife come onto the screen to speak to her soldier husband, she mouths the words "I love you." and that speaks volumes to me. They obviously are in a loving relationship and she is sharing this moment with him of her own free will. His look of humility and utter awe for the magnitude of the moment was played beautifully, and the soldier was particularly well cast. This moment takes the Lacanian film theory of The Gaze and nearly flips it on his head, as we are watching on a screen a man watch his wife on a screen who is in turn watching him on a screen. It begs the question, who is watching us? But that is for another day.

 I love the slow pan into the soldier, and as we get in tighter, it is revealed that there are tears in his eyes. It's not cheesy, I don't feel that the media is trying to be something that it is not, as it doesn't feel that there is gratuitous emotion, but the scene feels raw and chock full of feeling.

In the last use case we see a woman signing to his wife or girlfriend. We don't know if he is deaf, she is deaf, or if they are both deaf but it doesn't matter. Even though this use case probably serves a much smaller slice of the population, we see the need for it and the amazing doors this opens for those who communicate in sign language. 

All in all, an outstanding job by Apple and Director Sam Mendes. 

See for yourself. Enjoy!

Apple

YouTube

Ultrasound Today!

What do you think we're having - A boy or a girl?
So far Buddy is going with boy and Lissie says it's all girl.
What is your guess?

Moab Trip May 2010

Took a much needed get a way with the family down to Arches last week. I've been pretty busy the past 6 weeks or so and it was very nice to spend the whole day together just soaking in the sun and wind and feeling great. We're going to make this a family tradition every May I think. Little Sarah is my little hero, she walked all the way up to the "Wainbo Wock" all on her own little feet. I only had to carry her for a few minutes on the way back when she got a little tired. She is a champ. All my kids are little explorers, I love it!!

Oh yes, nobody rocks the white socks and sandals like I do... ;)

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FreeWorldMagic

FreeWorldMagic.com - Free Magic Trick Videos -

I was thinking tonight about a side business that a good friend and I started back in 2006. FreeWorldMagic.com - it was a magic trick video site that never quite got off the ground. We had a lot of fun making these magic trick videos and they had a fairly high production value, all things considered. We never made millions or sold to google after a summer of haggling on our buy-out price as we had planned, but had a great time doing it!

This was our highlights video.

Sony VX2100 3CCD MiniDV Camera - Amazing picture quality - $1,100

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Wardrobe Discrimination?

So, I have been in the middle of switching banks and so have been writing checks lately, right? Something I have not done for the past 12 years or so. I have also been working in a less formal environment and so been wearing more business-casual clothes lately. Over the past couple of weeks I have been fueling up my car at a certain gas station in Saratoga Springs and have found it interesting to be asked for my ID. Being a non-smoker, non-drinker, non-check writer, and generally not going to any type of rave or gathering where the clientele were over 21, I am not used to being carded, and it kind of irked me that I had to take out my wallet and prove who I was in order to use a check. This happened two different times over the past two weeks.

This week I needed to dress in my suit and go to my home office, so when I got out at the gas station, I followed procedure and wrote my check, handed it over and reached for my driver's license, and...nothing! The attendant walked off to process my check, with nary a thought of who I might be. There was no eyeing the picture, no hard, searching, squint into my eyes, nothing. I was not carded, and the thought came into my mind that it was because of my appearance; I looked like a clean cut businessman and of course that means I can be trusted.

I thought that this experience may have been an outlier, that it was just a fluke, a coincidence. Twice carded in plain clothes, once not carded in more formal attire...until it happened again. Two days later I was there again, same gas station, same scenario, I reach for the ID, and....rejected! The attendant is off running my check through some new fandangled contraption that makes it act like a debit card. Lucky me.

I thought that this certainly could be no coincidence. We're 2 for 4 here. Now, to level the field a bit, (I know what you are thinking), and no, the station attendant didn't just learn my name. I went to the station at four different times and was served by four different attendants.

Was I the recipient of wardrobe discrimination? Does that even exist? Do humans treat eachother differently and even have a different level of trust for people that are dressed more and less formally? I am certain that we do, but it has been many years since I have felt any type of discrimination or persecution, and so the feeling was new to me. Not since I was a white boy growing up in south Texas or a Mormon youth in inner city New Jersey had I felt any type of discrimination or prejudice, be it positive or negative.

I am fascinated by human beings and how we think, reason, and react to one another. I think that in another life I could have been quite happy as a researcher or even a psychologist. Maybe a high school drama teacher. It is absolutely fascinating to me that as humans we categorize, we prioritize, and we judge based on our own life-experience, which for any one person is going to be fairly limited.

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Far From Perfect Over Spilled Milk

Do you ever do anything as a parent that just kind of makes you feel awful inside? I did tonight, read on dear reader, read on...

So I was at home spending time with the kids tonight. And Mary was out with the girls. Earlier Lisa called and said, Oh Jimmy, are you all alone and babysitting tonight? At which point I told her, no, that fathers don't "babysit," fathers father, and spend time with their kids. As if I were a hired hand for my children! But that is one for another evening.

So all was going well until Braden spilled all of his milk all over the kitchen floor. Now, normally I don't get mad, I mean, accidents happen to all of us right? But the way that this particular accident happened really could have been avoided. He was holding a sippy in just his teeth and flinging his head all around as if he were Ozzy and we were recreating Crazy Train.

Add that to the fact that at that very moment I heard a terrifying scream coming from upstairs, no doubt from Lissie who had been taking abuse from Scott.

And so I got mad. I did. I barked at Braden, "Dang it! Clean this mess up now! I'm going to save your sister!" And I ran past little Sarah, with those tiny, wide eyes that were just about to fill up with instant tears that rip at your soul.

When I got things settled upstairs, I came back down to check on the damage in the kitchen. Both of the wee ones had gathered all of the washcloths (about a dozen) and were doing their best to mop up the split milk. When I came around the corner I was surprised to see them doing this but more surprised to realize that this was my command and that they were merely obediently following orders.

I resolved right then and there to try and not let small accidents ruffle my feathers and get in the way of what is most important in family life, expression of love and an environment conducive to receiving love.

I know that I am far from perfect. Times like these just show me how far.