Sachin Agarwal’s Posterous

$10 to the first one to identify all these people. Drinking games shall commence now.

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There are SO many file sharing services out there. Yet, there's no good way for me to upload a 500MB zip file of photos, and share those files with my friends. After an event like a wedding, i need to be able to send *the full size images* to others, and they need to be able to download them with no accounts and no fuss.
 
MobileMe has solved this. I can easily upload files to my public folder on my desktop or via the web interface. Then in just 2 clicks I can get a public or password protected url to give to my friends. I can set an expiration date and forget about it.
 
MobileMe isn't the most successful product out there. But I've always been a supporter because it's all about quality, it's all about doing things right. *Because* it's a paid service, they can offer IMAP email, be totally ad free, and now offer dead simple file sharing. For $99/year ($50 with the employee discount), it's a steal.

It really doesn't get any simpler than this.

Ever since I got my Canon 5D Mark II, I've been looking to buy more camera memory. My 8GB card fills up in no time since I shoot RAW (25MB per photo) and 1080p video.

I'm not suggestion the iPhone support flash. I hate flash. It's the modern java. It just creates ugly, bloated, slow, non native apps. 99% of the time, a native solution is far better. Other than for cross platform games, there's no good reason to use flash on the web.
 
But I'm talking about flash video files on the iPhone, ".flv" files.
 
FLV files are just container formats around audio and video streams. Often, these streams use common codecs like h.264 that the iPhone already supports. So why doesn't Apple simply write a quicktime component that plays flv files?
 
Then, web developers wouldn't need to go out and re-encode all their videos to mp4. All they would need to do is detect the iPhone user agent, and wrap the flv file in a quicktime embed.
 
Instantly and easily the iPhone could play most (all?) web video! It seems like a super easy win for Apple: they support a ton of websites that simply don't work today, it's an easy change for the developers, and Apple can still hold firm to not supporting flash as a whole.
 
Some background info:
 
There seems to be confusion in the web world around what mp4 is and what h.264 is.

• Audio and video codecs (compressor/decompressor). These are h.263, h.264, mp3, aac, etc. 
• File formats (containers). These are mov, mp4, flv, avi. They are the file that holds one of more audio/video streams that are encoded using a codec 
• The player you see on the web. This is almost always flash, but would also be quicktime, or any other piece of software that can take a container file (mp4), decode the streams, and display it. 

 
I'm saying that given flv files are simply containers around commonly used and supported codecs, it's strange to not play them natively.
 
I guess Apple is winning the war against flash so there's little reason for them to do something about it now... Websites are encoding their video in mp4 files so they play on iPhones, and websites are avoiding flash whenever possible since that means no iPhone support.
 
Only Apple could choose to not support the biggest web video distribution platform, and win.

 

We tried to go to The Creamery in SOMA for lunch today, but the kitchen was already closed at 1pm. Are you kidding me? This is at least the fourth time I've been there and have failed to get service.
 
Garry and I have tried to schedule coffee meetings there before, only to find out they had closed at some crazy early hour, 4pm on weekdays. How can a business stay open like this?
 
I chatted with/complained to the guy at the register today, telling him how I've *wanted* to give them business, but haven't been able to. He explained that since The Creamery is family owned, they can't afford to stay open when business is slow. Unless they are full, they go home.
 
This sounds like the wrong attitude to have. Whenever you are starting a new business, whether it's a restaurant or a web startup, you know you have to work your ass off to get it going. You have to create a great product, and then build a clientele. The Creamery seems to be failing at this.
 
My parents owned indian restaurants in LA when I was growing up. I remember when we were just getting started, there were nights we served 10 people dinner, all night. But we still had 6 employees in the restaurant running a professional operation. I remember nights when a customer showed up right at 10pm, when we closed. The employees went home, but my parents and I stayed for another hour and served the customer.
 
You cannot expect to keep a business open only in the best times and have it succeed. It really sounds like they simply don't want to put in the time and work hard. Well, they lost me as a customer.

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When I was growing up, I went to Disneyland at least once or twice every year. Anytime we had visiting family, it was my duty to take a day off from school and show them around Disneyland. I loved it.
 
On this day when everyone is remember the king of pop, here is the full version of Captain EO. I probably saw this over 20 times growing up. Sorry, this one is not in 3D :)
 

I got a white iPhone for the first time. W00t

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