Happy Holidays from the Buraglio boys!

Untitled, a photo by buraglio on Flickr.

Me and my boys

883AAC7B-00F4-433A-B89E-E2844BF5F6AB, a photo by buraglio on Flickr.

Chilling out on a Saturday morning.

Zach is here!

Zachary Dean Buraglio arrived at 4:10PM on December 16, 2011.  Everyone doing well, and Zach got to come home the very next day!

iMessage; I've been left wanting

I had very high hopes for iMessage. With the release of iOS 5, one of the big new features was iMessage, the ability to do Blackberry messenger style messaging on an iOS device. I had really hoped that this would be something like wifisms or the DeskSMS app for Android. At the very least I was hoping for iChat integration with iMessage.

This didn't happen.

Don't get me wrong, iMessage is still really cool. I can see most of my contacts that have an iPhone or iOS 5 device on my iPad. Unfortunately, there are some significant limitations.

I have to have the Apple ID of anyone that I want to be able to iMessage from my iPad. This can be problematic for a few reasons. Some folks use a role account for stuff like this, like a specific email address that is only used for that service. They may not want to share this address, or, more likely, I'll add it as a contact and accidentally email this address at some point, which could result in delays or never getting a reply depending on how often this address is checked.

The authorization process of adding new addresses to iMesssage seems to be clunky and, in some cases, doesn't work. I was also a bit put off by having (although not absolutely necessary) to add another email address in a username@me.com address. As an aside, I was happy to note that the ability to blanket forward all @me.com email to an existing email address. Very nice option, thanks Apple.

iMessage doesn't integrate contacts. If I iMessage from my phone using the 10 digit number, then message the apple ID, iMessage isn't smart enough to integrate these together as a common contact. Instead, it shows them as separate threads.

I was also really hoping for decent iMessage logging, available via iCloud, never mentioned but it was a pie-in-the-sky desire of mine for this new feature.

Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with iMessage. However, I'm cautiously optimistic that some of these limitations will be addressed soonish.

Another thing that would be nice to know, since this is being positioned as a "blackberry messenger replacement" is, what is the security policy on chat logs? I'm sure this is in the EULA somewhere, but I have yet to read it all. Does anyone have any condensed version? Maybe Im a bit naive, but my impression of BB messenger, and RIM services in general, seem to be pretty "on the side of the people".

Here is a decent write-up of the features and limitations of iMessage.

Cross posted to nickburaglio.com and tech.buraglio.com

Evocative?

A major TV network hit me with a nastygram telling me that my T-Shirt that I had made, and never sold or even bought for myself, was infringing on their copyright and trademark of a certain high school character played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar that carried a giant phone. I dare not even mutter the name, which was in the title of the shirt, for fear that the media giant come and take away my will to live.

OK, I was probably naive in using the name. I profusely apologized and left the unsold product off the market.

The kicker, however, was that they claimed that the image, that was a picture of me (who looks NOTHING like Mark-Paul Gosselaar), was "evocative" of their copyright and trademark.

Wow, that is a stretch. A big stretch. Here is the text that I received:

"We own the rights to the character "[name I dare not mention out loud]" and the design is still nonetheless evocative of our copyright and trademark. You have been put on notice. Thank you for your prompt compliance."

For reference, here is the image, wholy created and owned by me (and also a picture OF me).

Caffe Ladro

Some friends were nice enough to pick me up some of my favorite coffee from Seattle, Caffe Ladro.
I first had caffe ladro back at the supercomputing conference in Seattle in 2005 and I've loved their stuff ever since.

The last frontier...

I spent some time up in Alaska recently (Fairbanks, to be exact) and I have to say, it was pretty intersting. I taught the ipv6 workshop and participated in a few other talks at Joint Techs, Summer 2011. I didn't have a ton of time to spend all around the last frontier, but I did get to do a bit of light hiking and exploring on my last day there (before Delta Airlines botched my return flights).
I think other than the conference (which was really good), the highlights were certainly the food. I had an Elk burger at The Pump House, ate myself stupid at the Alaska Salmon Bake, had a few really good brews and a delicious bison burger at Silver Gulch Brewery, and hung out until the sun went down (wait, it never sets in Fairbanks in July) at The Marlin. (Yelp). All were totally worth while. While Fairbanks was a little smaller of a college town, it's a big city in Alaska. If I ever make it back there I'd really like to hit up the Chena hot springs. If I had it to do over again, I would have taken my nice DSLR camera and made another trip to Silver Gulch (the northernmost brewery in the United States). Oh, I also saw the northernmost Denny's, which was proudly displayed on a sign.

I grabbed a few pictures with my iPhone and my point and shoot available here or in this slide show.