New Phone - Motorola V551

I got a new phone yesterday, the Motorola V551. It's a Bluetooth phone as well as a camera and video phone. I'm looking forward to using the Bluetooth features, such as a wireless headset, and using Bluetooth software on my Mac that will make it do things like pause iTunes when I get a call, make my iChat status Away when I leave, and other cool things.

Apple Store in SLC!

This from ifo AppleStore :

Apple's job listings page has confirmed Salt Lake City as a new store location, along with the first look at four other cities: San Antonio (Tex.), Grand Rapids (Mich.), Nashville (Tenn.) and Houston (Tex.). The official store numbers now top out at 132, with 16 store numbers as yet unrevealed.

Finally! If you haven't been in an Apple store you don't know what you're missing. I've been in Apple stores in Dallas and Cupertino and they are very nice. And the Genius Bar is great. Can't wait till it opens.

Farewell Mia

I enjoy watching soccer and I especially enjoy watching the U.S. National teams, the men and the women. Women's soccer is the only other women's sport besides tennis that I enjoy watching.

Last night was the farewell match for Mia Hamm, the Pele of women's soccer. She has scored more goals than anyone, even among men. In her time, the U.S. Women's team reigned supreme, winning two gold medals and two World Cups. She has been a great role model for many around the world. It is sad to see her go.

Watching the women's team is a lot of fun because they play together so well. I play soccer as well and my team can't put together more than two passes at a time before losing the ball. A great team is always better than a bunch of great players. Mia is a great player as well as a great teammate. She didn't score any goals last night, but she had two assists and is practically always involved in someway when the U.S. scores. Joy Fawcett and Julie Foudy are also retiring. They as well as Brandy Chastain and Kristin Lilly all played a part in the 1999 World Cup victory in Los Angeles over China. They made us all proud.

Where I've Been

I haven't posted anything since the 2003 OS X conference, so some of you (I really should say none of you, since I doubt anybody is reading this) may be wondering what I've been up to. Well, shortly after the conference, I was laid off from my full-time gig and went directly into full-time freelancing via infiniteNIL. I hooked up with a local Macintosh software company and have been working the past year on new version of one of their flagship products, which we just recently released. It was complete rewrite, using the Cocoa API. I've quite enjoyed it and Cocoa (and the Mac OS X platform in general) is wonderful to work with.

I'd go into more detail about the company and product, but they don't want our relationship known as they prefer the outside world to believe they developed the product themselves. That is unfortunate, but I can understand their reasoning. I might have felt that way myself at one point, but now I'm starting to believe the more everybody shares, the more everybody gets. I'm quite proud of this product, though, as its my first shrink wrap product where I played a major role (if not the major role) in its development. And it runs on the OS X, a platform I believe in and strongly support.

I'm continuing to work on this product and other products for this company as well as some of my own personal products that I have in the works or in my mind. One product I will mention, which is the closest to being an actual product, is tentativly called Serendipity. It's still only barely functional, but once I finish it, I hope people will find it entertaining and maybe even useful once in a while. All I'll say is that its purpose is to bring people together.

The Old and the New

Well, I haven't written anything in my old blog (www.rodschmidt.com) for quite some time. Too much of a hassle to use CityDesk since I've switched to Mac OS X. Plus blogger has all the stuff a typical blog needs. So if you want to read about my sabbatical, or my 2003 Mac OS X conference stuff see the old site. Otherwise, this is where I'll be from now on.