Palm Springs, California We Now Resume Our Regular Programming

Apologies to those who could not access my site over the last week. It's stored on a server that crashes every once in a while and evidently there's no one at the controls over at my site host, so the site stays down until someone reads my service requests and restarts the machine. I'm getting ready to migrate over to a more reliable hosting service.

I've been at the TED conference all week. I was invited to give a talk. Well, mostly they wanted me to dance, but they were nice enough to let me talk for a few minutes first.

Once the conference got started, it finally fully dawned on me how big an honor it is to stand in front of that audience. Seeing Bill Gates and Al Gore in the Long Beach audience (I was at the smaller satellite event in Palm Springs) worked me into such a nervous frenzy that I marched back to my room and, for the first time, actually memorized what I wanted to say.

It was not a disaster. A video of the talk should go up in a month or two. I'll post it when it does.

Still clawing my way through the first draft. Writing books is hard!

Got an iPhone and it changed my life.

I've never been an Apple person. I find both Macs and PCs maddening for different reasons, but the PC's quirks are more familiar. I haven't yet made the switch, though I may do so eventually. Anyway, it's definitely not the inherent Apple-ness of the iPhone that appeals to me. What gets me is the infinite possibilities that are created when you combine a touch screen, GPS, an accelerometer, 3G, wi-fi, bluetooth, a camera, a speaker, and a microphone. The App Store is a wonderland of crazy/brilliant utilizations of these features.

I looked at the G1, which has all those bells and whistles plus a real keyboard. Android phones may yet pose a threat to the iPhone, but the first attempt is too clunky.

I just learned the 2008 video has been playing in Times Square since the beginning of the month.

Matt Harding Dance Video Spec HD F (1-30-09)

It plays every hour in its entirety. Some folks who run one of the screens asked if they could put it up and I said sure. I hope I can catch it in person before it stops.