When you get a bunch of geeks together a lot of information gets pass along very quickly. Luckily this month’s lunch attendance was small where the six of us, @pineapplejuice, @hawaii, @exbor, @carolyhi59 and @madmarv, could claim a table at La Pizza Rina. Even so, there is no way I can record all that info. So what I did this month is try to curate my notes. Here’s what we came up with:
Websites:
If you want to find out about what is happening in the social media scene you must check out @Hawaii‘s new website Hawaii Social Media.com. You’ll find up to date highlights on events, workshops and the occasional provocative article about SM in the local media.
Carolyhi59 brought up DomoDoesTheWorld.com. A creative group collaboration that chronicles the adventures of Domo.
Madmarv reminded me about Unconferenz 2011 and the fact that it is only 5 months away. Tentatively we are looking at the 3rd week in Feb 2011. I will be more specific as soon as I hear back from KCC.
We also talked about the end of Metromix and the rise of Nonstop Honolulu. They are going to give TGIF in the Star-Advertiser a run for their money. Nonstop Honolulu has strong sociable personalities whereas TGIF is pretty nondescript. I’m not even sure who is behind their Twitter account.
Miscellaneous:
Madmarv remembers we talked about DVR to DVD recording. Fringe. Social media in politics. Furloughs. A smidgen of gadget geeking. Civil beat.
Carolyhi59 tweets us: My DVR is a Toshiba HDD/DVR model # RD-XS52SU. It’s at least 5 yrs old. I found it on Amazon.com.
Hawaii said he advocated just getting a DVD recorder, available at Costco and Walmart. Otherwise, TiVo all the way!
Pineapplejuice recalls us talking about: Mufi’s flyer, and how that self-described social media expert said that no (political) campaign was using social media effectively, general mobile device show-and-tell, and geolocation services - Foursquare, Gowalla, and now Facebook Places – and how FP doesn’t work on my phone for some reason.
Exbor tweeted the fact that we got into deep conversations with the group. He also reminded me that we talked about Google’s new Phone Service and suggested this Lifehacker tip.
That’s it for now. If you are interested in finding out about the next Bytemarks Lunch, just sign up for the Bytemarks Yahoogroup and you will get the notifications. Some of you might think Yahoogroups is old school but back in 2003 when we started the group, Yahoogroups was it! Mahalo to @hawaii for these lunchtime photos.
If you look in the back room of some of the most traditional practices in Hawaii, you will find tech. In this case it was the Jodo MissionBon Dance. An annual event that I have grown fond of for is home town feel and great camaraderie. Each year there is the standard food fair of sushi, bbq meat, musubi and my favorite chili rice with hot dog. Every year there is also the iconic Waffle Dog. It’s notoriety was sealed back in the days when KC Drive Inn was a landmark eatery in Kaimuki. KC Drive Inn closed in March 2005 but the Waffle Dog lives on. Dayton Asato, grandson of the owner of KC Drive Inn, Jiro Asato, carries on the Waffle Dog legacy with these custom made waffle irons that press out 6 batter encrusted hot dogs. Asato makes these units available to community groups for fund raisers, hence the ones at the Jodo Mission. The waffle batter is secret but the hot dogs are the kind you find at Foodland. (I wonder if anyone has gotten creative and used those fancy sausages from Costco?) Shown in the photo is master waffle maker Lianne Kitajima and her apprentice Tricia Murakami. Notice the flipping action to get it out on the tray in one piece. Lianne tells me there is no formal training for this, it is all OJT.
As you venture into the Honolulu community events scene, I am sure you will find future Waffle Dog sightings. In the meantime I did find a “how to eat” a Waffle Dog video from Traci Toguchi, who obviously loves it whether eating it or pitching it. (Thanks to Ryan Ozawa for the Twitpic.)
Props go out to Mei Jeanne Wagner of Laird Christiansen Advertising for putting this short video together. Ryan and I spoke to Michael Smith, Artistic Director of the upcoming Cirque Du Soleil show Alegria back on June 9, 2010. Alegria will be coming to Honolulu on October 15, 2010 at the NBC Arena. This is the first time our interview was repurposed for an upcoming event. We are quite flattered.
The GoAkamai.org website got rolled out this past Wed. 8/11 to quite a bit of media attention. Articles appeared in the Star Advertiser and pieces ran on KHON2, Hawaii News Now and KITV. There were even a couple of sites like this one and this one that liberally lifted the Star Advertiser article right onto their blog. [Ed. note: the two bloggers have since reformatted their blog posts to give proper attribution to the Star Advertiser article. 8/16/10] Obviously this is a very popular story. The GoAkamai site provides real time traffic stats on the major freeway routes through the Honolulu to Ewa corridors. Previous to this, people would listen to their radios for traffic updates to find out what road conditions were like. I’m not sure how this will impact the psychology of leaving from work but as you watch the traffic conditions from 3:30pm to 4;30pm you can literally see the colors change from green (no congestion) to yellow (moderate) to red (heavy) to black (stop and go). You can watch as the obvious bottlenecks get choked during rush hour. I suppose if you see the entire H1 airport viaduct turn black, which I have on many occasions, then staying in town for another half hour might not be a bad idea.
ICx Transportation, the company who built the website is quite experienced at providing this integrated information resource which brings together doppler radar sensor data and up to the minute camera shots of the major intersections. Areas like the San Francisco Bay Area and New Jersey also have systems installed like the one in Honolulu. Each site references the number 511 which you can dial for the latest traffic information. Something we do not have here in Hawaii. It is also clear that the highway systems in both the Bay Area and New Jersey area are much more extensive than here requiring an ICx system that scales to include orders of magnitude more sensors and camera. I did notice a mobile version of the 511.org site which hopefully will be available soon for GoAkamai. Of note, ICx Technologies is also involved with the City and County of Honolulu and State of Hawaii’s Dept of Transportation’s Joint Traffic Management Center that just broke ground on the Alapai Transit Center. It will be interesting to monitor what new features get added to the GoAkamai site as the JTMC and rail projects get underway.
We will get a chance to talk to Glen Fromm from ICx this Wed 8/18 at 5:00pm on Bytemarks Cafe KIPO-89.3FM, Hawaii Public Radio. He’ll join us as a news guest to share some insights into the building of GoAkamai.org.
As commented by MacProHawaii, we’ve had a full month of watching US military exercises in Hawaii. The final RIMPAC 2010 exercise was an amphibious assault by the joint forces of the US Marines 3rd Battalion and Royal Australian Regiment. In the above video the amphibious assault vehicles (AAV) are shown leaving the USS Cleveland. Our opportunity to watch the deployment of AAVs from the USS Cleveland was preempted by mechanical problems. Understandably, the USS Cleveland is one of the oldest ships in the fleet, commissioned in 1967. It’s planned decommissioning is for Sept. 2011. But with the combination of Marine Lance Cpl. Kevin Beebe’s video and this video, both shot during RIMPAC 2010, you get a good idea of what the transition from ship to land is like. Once on land the dozen AAVs and 100 troops stormed an area on Kaneohe Marine Corps Base. Their mission was to take this insurgent training camp over the hill. This video by Gabriel Yanagihara nicely captures the exercise. The white smoke billowing from the AAVs is to obstruct viewing as one group of Marines took out a mock insurgent camp. Another group of Marines held the high ground and provided cover fire for the advancing troops. You will notice in the video the constant up and down of the troops as they maneuver for position. I was told it is like a mantra they repeat: I am up, they see me. I am down. Basically it is to minimize getting shot as a standing target. Though out of our field of view, when the Marines finally took the training camp there was a crescendo of gunfire, much like what you hear at the end of the firecracker strand during New Years Eve. I am not surprised this blogger lost her job as a PR person for the Marines. This certainly was not a SNOOZEPAC.
At this month’s Bytemarks Lunch, I invited Paul Dickey and Edward Wright from Verizon Wireless to talk about Motorola’s new Google Android phone, Droid X. I did get to see (and touch) one back in June but it wasn’t until now that I actually get to play with one. On first appearance, the feels big. I am used to the iPhone 3GS and the Droid X is about 10% bigger in size, but the two phones weigh about the same. The 4.3 inch 854×480 display is much better than my 3GS screen resolution but iPhone 4 users are already enjoying crisp viewing with their new hardware. The Droid X comes with an 8 megapixel camera with flash and can shoot HD movies. It also has an HDMI port that you can plug into your television for content viewing. Paul showed us a video he took with his Droid X of an F-18 landing on the USS Ronald Reagan. It looked as good as any hand-held video camera. Moore’s Law, which states that computing power will double every 18 months seems to apply directly to smartphone capabilities.
The Droid X demo unit I have is running Android 2.1 (Eclair), not Froyo (Android 2.2) which is not slated to come out until late summer but I also heard as late as November. A couple of cool features with Eclair is the Live Wallpaper. Instead of a static photo you can now have clouds wafting across your screen or in my case autumn leaves floating in a pond. But this is just eye candy. More interesting is the voice to text feature. As an input option, you can speak your messages into the Droid X. Where ever the keyboard comes up, there is a selection for microphone. The key to its operation is short, well articulated phrases. You can’t as an example dictate this blog post. The speech recorder is sensitive to pauses so will automatically stop once a second of silence is encountered. It works great for phrases like “are you available for dinner tonight?” or “where is the nearest Starbucks?” The translation feature is cool too. You can speak Japanese to it and it will give you an English translation. Great for the next time you are in Harajuku ordering sushi. You can also use the voice feature for navigation. GPS knows where you are so when you tell it where you want to go, it will give you directions on how to get there. Another feature of the Droid X is Motorola’s integration with Swype. Thank goodness Motorola dropped the physical keyboard. It was built into the original Droid and I thought it make the phone heavy and the keyboard, to me, was unusable. Swype is a text input selection and allows you to draw the words on the keyboard. Well, when I say draw, it more like connecting the dots or letters. So if you were to want the word “lunch” you would connect the letters with your finger. For those of us that are used to typing with two thumbs, it takes some getting used to. But, if you a new to these screen keyboards, Swype beats the one-finger hunt and peck.
Right now I am enjoying Pandora on the Droid X. Downloaded it from the Android Market. Droid X is a fun phone which we will be talking more about on this week’s Bytemarks Cafe (Wed. 8/4 at 5pm on KIPO 89.3FM) when we talk about smartphones in general with Angela Keen and Brian Dote. In the meantime I am going to kick around the tires and see what else the Droid X has to offer.
That image to the right is not the Admiral’s Barge. It’s the Sea-Based X-band Radar or SBX. But had it not been for Rear Admiral Dixon Smith and his “Barge”, I would have been able to get this close up view. The SBX is one of those vessels you see out of the corner of your eye as you drive on H-1 past Pearl Harbor. It’s distinctive appearance cannot escape the golf ball comparisons. You’d have to have a pretty big club to whack that puppy, but I digress. Seeing the SBX does make you think: 1. What is it? and 2. How does it float? The simple answer to 1. is it’s a big floating radar. The SBX, part of the DOD’s Missile Defense Agency , has a mission is to patrol the Pacific and monitor rouge countries like North Korea. I started to see SBX float into Pearl Harbor a couple years ago ever since North Korea got more active with their ballistic missile tests with claims of having the capabilities to send one all the way to Hawaii. Which brings me to question number 2. The radar system is build on a Russian designed platform originally used for oil rigs. In this photo you can see the huge floats that the main structure stands on. The SBX supports a crew of about 80 personnel. That flat platform you see extending from the main deck is the helicopter landing area. I wondered how people access this vessel once out at sea and that platform was pointed out to me.
Now getting back to the Admiral’s Barge, I (and a few other guests) got invited by Navy Region Hawaii Public Affairs to join Rear Adm. Dixon Smith and his wife Kiki on an afternoon cruise around Pearl Harbor and Ford Island. Besides my wife and I, guests includes Henry Kapono and his wife, Mark Platte (Hawaii News Now) and his wife and Agnes Tauyan (Navy Region Hawaii, Public Affairs) and her husband. The main destination was the Arizona Memorial which I had visited once before decades ago. It was quite a humbling experience to stand in the Memorial atop the sunken USS Arizona where more than a thousand men gave their lives. We cruised up along side the USS Missouri and docked a the Arizona Memorial to spend a few moments to honor those fallen soldiers. The time there was special since the last tour group had already exited leaving the entire Memorial to the 10 of us. The cruise continued around Ford Island, along the NOAA docking, then past Hospital Way on the Hickam AFB side of Pearl Harbor and finally back to Merry Point in the Southeast Loch. I overheard in conversation, it looks like the NOAA offices, currently spread around O`ahu will consolidate on Ford Island sometime in the near future. Sounds like a good thing since their big ships are located there. The bustle of maritime activity in Pearl Harbor never ceases to amaze.
This has been the month of RIMPAC 2010 and the PACOM and PACAF offices are working overtime to expose the media to all the varied activities taking place around Hawaii. This past Friday, several of us joined the crew of the C-17 on a practice mission over Hawaii Island. We met at the Hickam Gate at 4:45am and the flight left at 6:30am early Friday morning from Hickam Air Force Base. According to Lt. Col Andrew Lashikar, Commander of the 535th Airlift Squadron, there are a total of nine C-17′s assigned to Hickam Air Force base. Lashikar said, “Participating in RIMPAC gives us a great opportunity to conduct joint exercises with our fellow branch services.” The mission over Hawaii Island was for two C-17s to drop off a simulated cargo load of about 12,000 pounds each. The transport planes flew to the military training area Pohakuloa, on the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. The C-17 went from an altitude of 5000 ft. to 500 feet to facilitate the drop. Two 6000 pound palettes were then jettisoned from the rear of the plane and parachuted to Marines below from Kaneohe Bay, 2nd Battalion. I shot a batch of photos and posted this video of the palettes as they flew out the back of the plane. Lashikar told me that the exercise over Pohakuloa is very much like a mission to Afghanistan. The hilly, rocky terrain is very similar to what you might find in the mountainous areas of Afghanistan. But in addition, Hawaii’s environment is also similar to recent C-17 relief efforts to Haiti and American Samoa. The C-17, which is not armed, participates in both support mission in battle zones as well as humanitarian efforts in the Pacific region.
After a brief touchdown in Kona, the second part of the exercise involved an intercept by a squadron of four F-16s from Hickam. The planes could practice escorting a distressed or hostile aircraft with flanking maneuvers and close proximity flying. It was quite the sight to see these fighters flying along side our plane. The photo to the right is out the rear door of the C-17. The challenge for the F-16 was to match the speed of our plane. Quite slow compared to what the F-16 can muster. Several members of our flight got the chance to venture to the edge of the rear of the plane tethered to a cord. To me it was a thin veil of safety as the thought of how futile it might be if you were dangling outside the plane flapping in the wind attached to that tether. Thankfully that scenario only existed in my mind. We safety returned to Hickam, personally much richer for the experience and appreciation of the C-17s support capabilities.
