Adam-Jackson

You won’t find Apple and Cheap in the same sentence anywhere on the web and that’s why I wanted to write about it. I’ve been buying and selling computers online for years and have learned a few things to make things much easier. I’ll try to keep this brief and break it down.

Assess your needs. Do you “need” the fastest, latest and thinnest computer? If not, buying a computer last-gen is a great way to save up to 40% on your Mac purchase. Anything above 3 gigabytes of ram and a 2.1Ghz Core2Duo is enough for most tasks and over 80% of Apple’s current computers meet these requirements (Mac Mini and MacBook Air excluded) but even then, the MacBook air at 2.13Ghz w/ 2gbs of ram worked great as a mobile machine and I try to push the envelope on performance.

If you have a Mac now: download MacTracker (link). It’s a great way to compare machines side by side, see their benchmarks and if they are still supported by Apple. I love the application.

Narrow it down to Two Machines: After much consideration, I’ve decided that I need a 15″ bottom of the line MacBook Pro or 13″ top of the line. (link) and these range from $1499-$1699 new from Apple. I’d also consider getting a white MacBook if cost really becomes an issue (link).

Should you buy now? Good question. My first stop is the Macrumors Buyer’s Guide (link). This guide shows you the current lineup of machines Apple sells and when they were last upgraded or revised and historical data that shows when that machine sees updates (every 6 months, 12 months, etc). Then, the professionals at Macrumors give ratings of Buy or Don’t buy. This is an excellent way to make sure you’re not buying at a bad time.

Next Steps: If you want to buy a new machine, don’t buy from Apple.com unless the machine just came out two weeks ago and you’re dying to have it right now. The other reason you’d buy from Apple.com’s online store is if you wanted a CTO model which means you’re going to add ram, update the hard drive and ask that Apple install some software at the factory. This makes the delay in receiving your machine longer and also means you will have a hell of a time returning it to Apple. CTO models are custom and Apple will raise a fit about you trying to return it.

Where to buy? Well, since you don’t need the iMac that literally just came out and isn’t available anywhere else and since you aren’t going to be configuring the machine special w/ extras, it’s safe to buy from these four places (in this order).

• Apple Refurbished site
• Amazon.com
• MacMall
• eBay

Let’s break these down. The Apple refurbished section is a collection of Macs updated daily that are unfit to sell as new. Apple NEVER sells scratch / dent computers but the mix of computers here is about 80% open box returns where the user used it for no more than 14 days, returned it, Apple did a complete edge to edge inspection on it and re-certified it as “new”. What do you get? Well, you get a Mac w/ up to $300 in savings and no shipping delays because it’s already sitting there waiting to be purchased. You have the same one year warranty as people that buy the Macs brand new and you can buy the AppleCare three year plan on that machine w/o issue. I also hear refurb buyers get some more love when you call Apple because they want the refurb buyers to remain happy. the last thing Apple needs is people not trusting refurbished machines. I’ve bought nearly half of my computers from Apple’s refurb store and swear by it and have never received a bad Apple (literally).

Amazon.com is a tax-free and often good deal way to buy a Mac. There’s an ongoing $100-$150 off on nearly every Mac they stock and you get it tax-free which, in California saves you roughly $200-$300 on a Mac (our tax is 9.5%). So if you’re buying that stock, no custom configured brand new Mac, buy from Amazon because you’ll save up to $500 more than you have by buying directly from Apple. If the Mac just came out, Amazon will ship it later than Apple would because Apple sends Amazon products AFTER the people that bought the product direct from Apple.

MacMall is the same as Amazon except you have to pay that pesky tax but the coupons, deals and such are really good on MacMall and they do bundles where you get a free printer, bag, ram upgrade and copy of Microsoft Office for like $29 w/ the purchase of a new Mac. Sometimes it can be a good deal but remember Amazon and MacMall will never ship as fast as Apple will so if you can wait an extra 10 days and save the money, I’d go for that.

eBay..this deserves its own section (more on that later).

Why buy the latest and greatest Mac over last-generation models? It’s not an issue of speed anymore. Any Mac manufacturered since 2008 has the performance for most families to do what they need to do w/o pulling their hair out. Computers are fast at any price range these days. Everything I’ve listed above is only “new” or current-gen models. It’s rare that you’ll find a last-generation mac on the Apple Refurb Store. MacMall will do a closeout deal on last generation models if Apple releases something new so check for that. The only real benefit if you’re a casual user of getting the latest Mac is the resale value and longevity of the machine. You get that brand new Apple warranty (that can be extended to 3 years), if you put it up on eBay in 2 years, you’ll get a better resale value and you get new components that technically are more reliable since they’re new. Buying last-gen machines can save you some serious dough but you lose those benefits I mentioned. Either way, it’s up to you.

eBay, oh eBay: I love eBay. I’ve been a member since 2002 (8 years which means I was only 14 when I joined the service and sold my first piece of tech). In fact, I used to budget everything up until I was 18 like paying for my car, gas, school lunch and even homecoming dance using money I made through buying and selling on eBay and getting a paypal Debit Card before I was legally allowed to own a checking account.

Anyway, most of my computer purchases have been on eBay. There were two instances I bought directly from Apple.com’s store. My latest iMac (brand new, only available on Apple and I lacked patience) and my 15″ 2.93Ghz MacBook Pro (I wanted a solid state drive, which was a custom addon directly from Apple). Aside from those machines, it was a mix of eBay & Apple’s refurb store.

eBay can be risky. I’ve had problems with it but if you’re smart and follow tips like these, you’ll be fine. Here are my tips to buying on eBay.

Use Mactracker to search for model numbers of machines and not “macbook pro” Apple model numbers look like this MC234LL/A. Here’s a sample eBay search of that model number (link). I already noticed three machines listed incorrectly. Basically they’re listed as Revision B 1.8 Ghz Macbook Air when that model number means it’s a 2.13Ghz MacBook Air Rev C w/ SSD. How does this benefit you? Well, message the seller, ask them to get the box out or flip the computer over and verify that model number is correct…Then make them an offer.You just won a great deal because people bidding on that computer read “this is a 2 year old 1.8Ghz machine” and they bid appropriately when the seller just didn’t know what they had and you just got the latest and greatest Macbook Air for $700 less than retail.

Yes, this is how I’ve bought every single Apple computer online. This is the ultimate eBay tip. Find what you want, copy the model number and search for it then find listings in that result where the seller typed the wrong details. You have to message them to confirm that model number and then you’re golden.

On eBay, only use Buy it Now. When I search eBay, I immediately ask eBay to only show buy it now. w/ auctions, it’s time consuming, you get in a bidding war with someone and you end up making mistakes or winning two computers on the same day and stuck having to pay for them. Buy it now is a great way to find a kick ass deal and you walk away in under 60 seconds. If, at your current job, you make $35 an hour, then add up the amount of time you took to read this blog post, do your research then bid back and forth on the computer you want only to not get it and have to do it all over again when you could have just clicked “buy it now” and saved yourself valuable time. Trust me. Don’t bid on computers.

Organize by “one day remaining” Find computers that are worth $2400, currently at $800 usually because the seller sucks at listing computers or put in the wrong info and message them making an offer for $1800. They’ll be amazed and go for it. You just saved $700.

A story on how this worked for me once. I bought a 17″ MacBook Pro last year, maxed out with all of the bells and whistles. I used the tips that I listed above, saw an auction with 48 hours left on a $3400 machine from a brand new eBay user. I emailed the person asking to confirm the serial number. Tip. never give out your computer’s serial number and they gave it to me. I confirmed the machine was purchased from Apple.com 5 weeks ago and had the 3 year warranty so they spent a pretty penny for this machine. Because I was skeptical I asked them to call me and said I’d make an offer once we chatted. I got a phone call from a man in his late 70s claiming he bought it for his wife for Christmas but she wanted a PC instead and it was wrapped and under the tree so they missed the 14 day return policy and then he said, “I know computers lose 50% of their value once you leave the store so I’m just trying to recoup the time it took to set it up for her and her subsequently realize she hates Macs.”

I offered him $2100 ($1300 short of retail not even considering the 9.5% tax from Apple) and he accepted. I bought that computer, sold it 6 months later for $2900. I got a compute for 6 months, made $800 at the end and bought an iMac AND a Macbook Air with the money I made.

This system works. You can make thousands, and I haven’t spent ANY money on my computers in years because I buy low and sell high because that’s the nature of things in the Apple resale value. I hope this was helpful.

Selling your Mac: Briefly, these tips for selling your Mac

• Always get the warranty. It boosts the resale value. You can buy AppleCare warranties on eBay for 50% off Apple’s price
• Always keep the box and software
• Always include a new power adapter w/ the sale ($79 purchase from Apple)
• Include any extra software for free that you don’t use or want anymore w/ the serial keys
• Be honest in your sale and claim why you’re selling the Mac
• Sell before the next model comes out. Once your computer is two generations old, the resale value really drops.

Good luck and don’t forget, my MacBook Air is on eBay right now and you can bid here.

Here’s the eBay link to my MacBook Air sale.

In September of 2009, I wrote a review of the latest Apple MacBook Air after using it for over a month. In that review I said:

Apple’s MacBook Air is the best $1900 Netbook I’ve ever owned. Apple has managed to create a notebook that can go anywhere, do anything and satisfy 90% of my needs in such a small package that it makes me wonder what took me so long to get one. Yes, there are caveats but I’m the happiest Mac user ever with The MacBook Air.

My opinion of the MacBook Air hasn’t changed. It’s still the best notebook I’ve owned. It’s simply stunning and I can’t imagine living without it. Why am I selling it?

This rumor got me thinking. The current shipping Apple notebooks were all updated before mid-June 2009. I fully anticipate a MacBook update soon w/ new 32 nanometer processors and switching away from Core2 to Core i5/i7. Will the MacBook Air get these updates? I’m not sure and I can’t really imagine going back to a full size notebook after carrying the air around for 6+ months.

My new job at Brightkite provides a MacBook for me and it’s fast enough for all of my work tasks. It’s heavy compared to the MBA but I certainly can deal with the weight for the time being. This also means, for the past 10 days, my MacBook Air has been sitting at my desk at home gathering dust because I’m not about to carry two notebooks to work with me.

My philosophy of only owning things I use once a week applies to this. If I don’t use something at least once a week, I don’t need it in my life. That includes books, CDs, kitchen supplies and even electronics. It’s been one week and I haven’t used the MacBook Air once simply cause it’s not convenient.

Another factor is that, in less than a month, Apple’s iPad will be shipping and I was hoping that it would replace my MacBook Air for 80% of the time which means 6 out 7 days a week I grabbed my iPad instead of my MacBook Air.

So, in summary:

• New iPad ships in less than 30 days
• New Core i5/i7 Apple notebooks shipping within 60 days (based on rumor and past Apple product timelines)
• Work provides me with a MacBook that is better in performance than the MacBook Air but slightly heavier.

All of those factors lead me to the only solution which is to sell my MacBook Air. If everything aligns, I’ll enter the month of April with an iPad and Core i5 MacBook Air in my bag. The MBA for work (faster than the MacBook work provides for me) and the iPad for personal things, email on the train and books.

Right now, I have to whip out the full size MacBook on the train, plug in a 3G card (that I pay $65 a month for) and make sure I have battery life left when I arrive at the office 2 hours later. The iPad will serve book-reading, email and RSS while I make my way to the office w/ its included $30 a month 3G connection. I’m pretty stoked about the iPad and the MacBook Air w/ a new Core i5 would be terrific. I’m only hoping Apple can up the MBA memory from 2gbs to 4gbs of ram and I’ll be sold.

So, in anticipation of a new MBA and new iPad and with the fact I have a laptop right now that’s pretty darn fast, I’m selling the MacBook Air.

You can bid on it here. (eBay)

The past week has pretty much rocked. Four awesome things happened this month but one I’m just gonna keep to myself cause it’s pretty personal. I did want to share details of my first vacation. As you know, I started a new job yesterday and moved into a new apartment on Sunday so what’s up with this vacation?

Me at Ultra Music Festival in 2006

For years, I’ve traveled quite a bit to tech conferences, meetups, events, parties and even for job interviews. Yeah, my United miles are really racking up. The thing is, I’ve never taken a true vacation. Sure I went to a wedding or two overnight and I did take two roadtrips last year (both sponsored and paid for by Ford Motor Company) but they weren’t vacations in the simplest means of the word.

South Beach - Credit dc32

After living in San Francisco for two years this June, it’s time to take a week off.

Photo Credit: Unknown

Each year, starting in 2004 I drove down to Miami for Ultra Music Festival. Living in Jacksonville, it was a 5 hour drive and, then it was only a one day festival. Last year, being in SF I couldn’t afford the flight but vowed I wouldn’t miss UMF 2010. In October, as soon as tickets went on sale at the kick ass pre-sale price of $99, I bought them. Near the event, tickets are $299 so it was a great price. I bought myself tickets for both days (Friday & Saturday).

UMF 2009 - Photo Credit: theambientsun

What’s UMF? Well, it’s a 2-day music festival that follows WMC (Winter Music Conference) in Miami. UMF is a 10+ year festival that features the best musical acts in the world (about 95% of it is electronica / techno) and there are 12 stages and it goes from noon to midnight (12 hours). On Saturday, when the festival ends at midnight, there’s an after-party from midnight to 5AM in the basketball stadium across the street where the Miami Heat plays also known as the American Airlines Arena. The Winter Music Conference is a SXSW style conference with panels from DJs, producers, record labels and more but it’s mostly an industry event that I don’t care to attend.

American Airlines Stadium (Location of the UMF After-Party)

My original plan was to spend the two days at UMF but I had this Virgin America credit for $150 and it had some restrictions so I had to fly in on Tuesday night for a festival that starts on Friday. What to do? Well, I rolled with it and in January, bought the ticket at a great price and will be staying in a hostel on south beach from Tuesday – Sunday. All of the years that I went to UMF in Miami and that one year I attended Photoshop World, I never once saw Miami Beach, laid out in the sun or spent a few hours at the clubs. This time is different.

UMF 2009 - Photo Credit: theambientsun

Wednesday the 25th, I’ll be grabbing my swim shorts and lying out on the beach and partying that night, the next day I’ll be doing the same. Then, on Friday and Saturday I’ll be dancing my butt off for straight 12 hours or until I literally pass out which I actually did pass out in 2006 and was revived with a Red Bull and Bottle of Water around 8PM. An hour later, I was back in the Trance tent dancing again!

Photo Credit: Unkonwn

On Sunday, my friend Victor is driving back to Jacksonville and taking me with him, I’ll spend 3 days at home with family and flying out of Jacksonville on the 31st back to SFO.

This will be my first ever vacation where I’m going somewhere that requires extended travel and a hotel room that has nothing to do with work, business or technology. I’ve never been so freaking excited in my life. Techno, South Beach, Family, Friends and Dancing. This comes at the end of the month after I’m settled in to my new job and new apartment. I can’t fully describe the feeling I have writing this / saying this out loud and all of my friends in real life are tired of hearing about it I’m sure.

I know a few of my followers will be at UMF, of course they will. Nearly 100 thousand people invade Miami for one week as the best DJs in the world ascend on this lively beach town for the largest electronic gathering in the world. I’m gonna have a blast but as it’s my first real vacation, I couldn’t be more excited.

This month will be pretty crazy. Many of you know that I took a break from Twitter where I didn’t tweet for over two weeks and I’ve come back slightly more tame about my tweets only doing 2-4 a day. This new style enabled a lot for me but closed many other opportunities. Now that we’re entering the month of March, I have been doing this new way of sharing for over 2 months and the benefits have been pretty grand. Yesterday, I shared news about my new job at Brightkite that I’ll be starting on Monday. There are many many more good things happening this month. Many are public and others will remain private under my new sharing model.

Before I talk about my move, I first wanted to address something that has bothered me since I decided to move to a new place about 3 weeks ago. This guilt I’ve put on myself is pretty severe and one that kept me from moving a while ago and that’s the feeling that I’m giving up a piece of myself simply by changing my geographical location. See, when AdamsBlock was happening, I made it clear that I wasn’t broadcasting because I hated where I lived (San Francisco’s Tenderloin District), and instead wanted to share with friends and family what was keeping me awake at night. I never knew it would blossom into a real company or that my idea would be used to place me as an ignorant racist who though the homeless were scum and had to be eradicated (not my words). In fact, I loved living in the Tenderloin and write this from my apartment in the heart of San Francisco’s historical district.

Many times, I’ve written about the ‘loin but this entry is one I’m most proud of because it explains exactly why I live here. In that post, I wrote:

I don’t live in the Tenderloin for cheap rent anymore. Trust me, my $1600 a month studio apartment isn’t cheap. The reason I live in the Tenderloin is because I want to constantly be reminded of the human struggle which we all are going through. Living somewhere that’s “quiet and safe” is completely the same except they have fancier drugs and more elaborate crimes. By living where I do, I pass a homeless shelter, free food lines and many more “outreach services”. The constant reminder that I, at any time, can lose my job and be on the streets or an unfortunate sickness or illness could land me in the same food lines and the constant reminder that I have absolutely nothing to feel “down” about because I have a roof over my head keeps me living life to the fullest.

Without a constant reminder that we are so damn lucky to have what we have, we will cease to live and seize the moment at every moment of our day. This is why I live in The Tenderloin. It’s not to gentrify the neighborhood or laugh at the homeless or experience cheap rent. It’s to feel alive when I walk to work every day and know that everything can change so fast and that I’m so lucky to be alive.

Yes, my work with AdamsBlock earned me an award from the city of SF, but I don’t think I deserve any award as there are hundreds of public servants who are unpaid that go out every day to make the community a better place and I’m just a guy who put up a webcam to highlight exactly what was going on without the filter that our media presents.

I feel like moving out of the ‘loin is my way of giving up, retreating to the suburbs and abandoning the people who I’ve grown to love and respect over the past 2 years. The reminder of what my fellow human beings are going through is going to not be a daily punch to the face but instead a blur as I ride the bus by the neighborhood I used to live in.

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Why am I moving? Well, I’m not moving out of the city because I love San Francisco. It’s an incredible experience to live in such a diverse city. My reasons for moving are the following:

• Space. I simply can’t find a large apartment in the Tenderloin without paying a ton of money. I want more space where I can be in my apartment for more than 4 hours without feeling like I have to get out of this place due to its size.
• Convenience. I don’t work in San Francisco anymore so living downtown (a 10 minute walk from my job at Yoono) isn’t necessary. I can’t walk to Burlingame and since I have to get on a train anyway, might as well move to the ‘burbs.
• Nature. There aren’t any trees downtown unless you count the Christmas Tree that is erected in Union Square each year. I miss trees, parks and the sound of kids playing. It’s comforting. I wanted to live somewhere with trees.
• Cost. Saving money is huge as well. If I could save money and have more space, that would rock!
• The personal touch. I wanted to rent from a landlord who was available, involved and friendly. Living in an apartment building doesn’t feel very personal.

With that said, I once again, got extremely lucky as I did with the job at Brightkite (applied to 3 places and found a job in 36 hours). On a Friday afternoon from 4-5PM I browsed Craigslist for apartments in my price range (below $1500) and chose 10 neighborhoods I’d love to live in

• Potrero Hill
• Castro
• Hayes Valley
• Cole Valley
• North Beach
• SOMA
• Eureka Valley
• Twin Peaks
• West Portal
• etc.

I’m sure you can get the idea now that I’ve listed a few. I emailed 6 places that interested me and on Sunday, I visited the top 3 places. It was after the first apartment that I stopped in on that I was immediately in love with. My friend Justin liked the place too but I think he was a bit surprised that I immediately left saying, “I want that place.” so, after viewing two other apartments (one on 19th ave. and another in West Portal), I emailed the couple of the first place and faxed in my renter’s application.

The new apartment is amazing. Upstairs, a married couple with a child lives as they own the home. The baby’s room is on the other side of the home and the couple works quite a bit and they’re rarely home. Downstairs is the in-law suite which is what I occupy. It’s roughly 500 square feet, quiet and spacious.

The neighborhood is Twin Peaks and as you can see from these photos I took atop twin peaks last year, I’m super stoked to be living there. (Click the photos for a better view)

Actually, I’m living on the west side of Twin Peaks so I get a nice view of West Portal, The Avenues and Ocean Beach. Sure, there’s the occasional fog but I’m just stoked to be close to nature and a 5 minute walk from the underground SFMTA Metro Rail which will take me to Caltrain so I can get to my new job.

Back to my “list”: I now have space, the place is $1200 a month so I have $400 more in my pocket each month, the location is among and surrounded by trees and down the hill from me is an elementary school with public park so I get to hear and see families spending the day at the park and kids playing but it’s far enough that with the door closed I won’t hear a thing.

The huge selling point of my new apartment is a very large deck. The deck is 20×20 feet (yes it’s huge) and the owners don’t use it at all. I walk out of a sliding glass door onto this gorgeous deck. Now, it’s been neglected so there are leaves and dirt but I’ve talked to the homeowner and he’s agreed to pay the expenses of paint, a pressure washer and cleaning supplies and I’m going to spend next weekend getting the deck up to my standards. The place where my desk will be going is right by a large sliding glass door looking out on to the deck and surrounded by trees. I’m in heaven.

Back to the owners, they’re a super friendly and very educated couple in their 30s. I’ve never had a more pleasant experience securing an apartment. Last time I came over, the husband and I discussed his home networking and he pointed out that there were Cat5e terminations already in the in-law suite so I could just plug in. Yes, he said “Cat5e” so I know we’ll get along just fine. When I suggested he up the Comcast connection from 15mbps to 30/50, he agreed and was just going to pass the cost on to me. I’ll be putting my Airport Extreme + Time Capsule into his garage where he has everything wired up to a patch panel & switch.

So a technie, friendly couple is renting to me and they support my “handyman” approach to renting and they have been a real pleasure to work with on every front.

I move into my new apartment on Sunday night and start my job at Brightkite on Monday. For the past few weeks, I’ve been hinting to Twitter that March is going to be amazingly insane as far as scheduling goes and I wasn’t lying.

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I was lucky that one of my best friends and first San Franciscan that I ever became friends with back in 2005/2006 is moving across country next week. That’s not why I’m lucky cause I’ll miss hanging out with him from time to time. The lucky part is that he sold me pretty much all of his furniture (couch, end-tables, coffee table, appliances, computer desk, chairs, lazy-boy, 40″ tV, blu-ray player, bose speakers, coffee maker and more) for just under $1400. I’ve been living in furnished apartments for the past 2 years and it’s nice to have my own furniture finally.

The only thing left to move is stuff in my apartment over the weekend like computers, clothes, a bicycle and food. I live a very minimal lifestyle so everything fits in 6 boxes. My life philosophy is to only own things that you use at least once a week so I never go overboard and only buy what I need.

I did splurge and bough an in-home bar for my new place. My rejuvenated love for cooking and diet means i cook every meal at home and that kind of morphed into another passion of mine which is alcohol. No I’m not a big drinker but I’ve always had a liquor cabinet in my apartment and now it’s no different. I’ve ventured into making cocktails and have over 30 bottles of liquor in my apartment w/ all of the tools required to make a great cocktail. The new bar in my apartment will finally display my collection and give me space to make drinks for friends that come visit.

With the extra space, friends can sip martinis or wine while I cook for them as I have been doing for months now but now they can sit at my dining room table and we can eat dinner while watching a real television on a couch (things that I haven’t had since moving to SF two years ago). I feel like for the first time ever, I’m finally in a place I can call home and my friends have made it an even richer experience.

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I’m going to miss being able to call The Tenderloin my stomping grounds. The people, restaurants, public transit and weather. I’ll never ever get over the fact that I didn’t eat my own dog food and retreated to the suburbs but if the Tenderloin could provide more space and a few more parks, I’d happily still be living there.

Thanks to my new landlords and their ridiculously cute kid for being so hospitable. Thanks to my friends for helping me find a place and moving boxes over and thanks to everyone who has lent me a hand over the past couple of years. I remember fondly the tips I got from SF locals, the job opportunities I was given from companies and the support of my family who have always been there for me. I can finally have friends & family visit me and stay at my place and I can finally host dinner parties and finally come home and relax knowing that this is mine and my place of relaxation and when things get bad, I’ll step out onto my deck, drink some tea and watch the fog cover this beautiful city. I’m so stoked about the new place and my new location.

Thanks for reading.

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Here’s a slide show of my new neighborhood

I’ve worked in many industries with some exceptional people. Since the age of 13, it’s been work work work in nearly every aspect of my life. I built houses with my Dad, worked in a lumber yard and even got a commercial drivers license and trucked building supplies all over Florida all before I was 19. At Apple, I worked with a talented group as an assistant manager of a retail store and it was an awesome job. Following Apple, I worked for an IT Consulting Group and was on-call 24/7 as 2nd in command of a team of technicians. While I was hopping around, I consistently pushed my online brand, blogged, learned and explored the web and how it connects us in so many ways. I came to San Francisco in June of 2008 to take my love and passion for online communications to the next level and it’s been a wild ride.

The first 3 months in San Francisco were spent networking, learning, exploring and getting my feet wet in many things. I was convinced that I didn’t need a full time job and I’d just do small projects that I was passionate about. Then, I fell in love with a product called Yoono and applied for a job. On September 10th, 2008 I was hired as their Community Evangelist and began spreading the word, doing QA, tech support and cultivating the growing community of users. I’ve never had more fun working on a single product. I had side projects for after hours but I worked nights and weekends for Yoono and it was simply an awesome experience for the past 1.5 years.

I hadn’t planned on leaving Yoono, nor did I fully expect to find a new job so quickly but in the first week of February I logged on to LinkedIN.com and searched “evangelist” within San Francisco in the “Technology” industry. I found three fantastic companies that I highly respect. One was an iPhone games company, another was a traditional media company and the 3rd was Brightkite. I sent sincere and unique cover letters that weren’t your typical introductions to each of the three companies. The next day I received 3 interview requests and 7 days later I decided to take the position at Brightkite.

This process took just under 9 days but that’s how things are when you don’t “need” the job but you really want it. A couple of weeks ago, I accepted a position at Brightkite as their Community Manager and put in my two weeks at Yoono.

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On Monday, I begin my new job in Burlingame at Brightkite. Last night, I had drinks with the team and spent a few hours bonding and taking a tour of their office. It’s an exceptional group of people.

Why Brightkite? Well, the same question could apply to Apple, Gwanda and even Yoono. A long time ago, I realized that if I am not fanatical about a product and its potential, I won’t work on it. This has meant that I have missed some great and high paying opportunities but that’s how I’d rather work. Brightkite is something I used religiously all of 2008 and early 2009. Their iPhone app has an excellent UI and I’ve been using their Droid application for the past day and it’s also very easy to use. Their service is location based which is something I’m very passionate about but what sets them apart from the other groups is the ability to post photos of where you are and they offer very finely tuned controls for how your location is shared with the world. As usual, there are aspects of their service that needs to be improved but I’d be saying the same thing if I’d chosen to work with Gowalla or FourSquare.

As many of you know, I deleted my FourSquare account last month. I did so because the game took over the social aspect of simply sharing your location. We forgot why we checked in and it became a competition for items, mayorships and “rent” or virtual currency (MyTown for iPhone). Brightkite is in a perfect position to take location to the next level and this excites me.

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Regarding Yoono, I’m going to remain a beta tester for them as a user simply because they are working on some incredible products and I want the nightly builds. Regarding my other small projects, I’ll save that for another post. There have been some changes lately but the gist of it is that I’m devoting all of my time, resources and mindshare to Brightkite for the foreseeable future and am extremely lucky to be a part of the team responsible for igniting the location based social networking space and the team who is going to take it to the next level.

Thanks for reading and for all of your support!

PS – Add me on Brightkite! http://brightkite.com/people/adamjackson

As many of you know, I said my goodbye to Macworld Expo last year and I meant it. I didn’t speak a peep about it not because I thought Macworld was dead but simply because my focus had shifted and IDG didn’t do a great job convincing me to come back (not that they should have, i mean c’mon I’m just a dude with a blog). Anyway, my friend Victor who is an editor at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) sent me a DM via Twitter before the show and asked if I could stop by their booth to say hi and do a quick video cast about my thoughts on this year’s show.

I picked up my free expo badge acquired almost a year ago after the 2009 show and spent 15 minutes cruising the show floor as fast as I could and talking to a few of my long time friends to see what their thoughts were regarding this year’s Macworld Expo. Then, at around 2PM PST I hopped on the stream with Victor and he whispered to me, “a few thousand people are watching.” Oh boy!

The video came out great aside from the obvious fact that I was severely nervous now that thousands were watching so my normally calm voice turned into a frightened teenager and I started talking very very fast. Either way, you can make out most of what I said.

Original Post (Via Tuaw.com) Video Below:

One more thing. I remember that the last time TUAW linked to my site was in 2007 when I was running DailyTechTalk. (link).

I started taking photographs a few years ago but it wasn’t until around May that I started going out weekly to snap photos. Now, I venture out every other day and sometimes there are photos that I deem good enough to post.

Last week, I bought Apple’s Aperture 3 software and started experimenting with processing of my images. The results are okay. I am pasting a few of my favorites below.

Taking a Photo in Sebastopol, CA (Shadow)

Sonoma Bank - Sebastopol, CA

Pesto Bar / Cafe (in an old historic bank building)

18th & Church - San Francisco

Bread Pudding - Tartine Bakery - San Francisco

Candlelight Dinner - Valentine's Day

Ascending Golden Gate Bridge - Marin Headlands

Cropped Photo of Golden Gate Bridge

Spanning The Bridge - Weird Face cause I'm trying to get the shot

The Luggage Center - Burlingame, CA

Canon G10 + G11 + Cookie (Taken with iPhone)

My photos are still just okay. The processing is something new and I’ll try to get better at it over time. All of these had some processing of some kind. As you can see some of it was minimal and other times it was pretty drastic. If you know of any online resources for improving my photo editing let me know.

I was chuckling to myself while doing my pre-writing preparation because as I jotted down the key points to illustrate in this post I realized just how stupid it is to write about the complexities and simple aspects of life on this blog using fancy big words and the tools you’d need to read it (computer, iPhone, web connection). The whole thing is just ludicrous but that’s what I wanted to talk about.

When the world is ending, everything that you fill most of your time with will cease to matter. The job you sit in traffic to get to, the bed that you financed and sleep on every night and even the time you spend thinking about sex or keeping yourself groomed. All of these things take time but when your life is ending, there’s only one thing that will be on your mind – survival.

Too often lately, I see our human nature to over complicate things and make things far more difficult or complex than they need to be. Luckily, the logical part of our brains helped us invent some amazing things. Technically, the human race is pretty remarkable and it enabled all of us many opportunities to live long prosperous lives despite the fact that humans are pretty weak when it comes to our natural survival skills.

Today, I was amazed that an event that happened in my life nearly 14 months ago was still being talked about on a small but active Internet message board. The events of December, 2008, also known as “AdamsBlock” is something I long ago abandoned for more modest opportunities that didn’t call for putting my life at risk. I hope the project is a success but it will be without my direct involvement and I’m okay with that. The small group continues to talk about their “work” toward forcing me out of my San Francisco apartment and into hiding and every month I see referral links from the message board as the same people reminisce about this one thing that they did as a group. Today’s thread was no different and you can check it out here.

I’m going to use this message board as an example for a post I’ve been thinking of writing for a while. Keep in mind, this is just an example and not a direct attack on the members of the community or their beliefs.

Let’s put a few things in perspective. Tom is sitting behind his computer, a fan of artistic self expression (graffiti) and loves talking about it and sharing his opinions with a like minded community. He types away on a Sony laptop from a coffee shop in lower Manhattan. Each day, Tom signs onto a message board powered on a co-located web server and types in text that are his opinions and other people read them. This community of a few thousand people sit and talk every day about art, politics, news and “lulz” (funny stuff). He puts quite a bit of time into this talking about others, sharing his ideas and generally “shooting the shit.” What is the value that Tom puts on this forum? What is actually occurring that is so grand or life altering about the time he spends on this message board? What is he actually accomplishing?

The same can be said about most entertainment such as video games, sex, sports and television. Taking things one step further and it can be the case for dating, our jobs, our homes and our possessions. We build up complexities to distract us from the important things such as survival.

Yes, money is survival and a social life is also integral to our survival just as much as having a shelter is important. When it all comes down to the last moments of our life, all of that doesn’t matter and fades away. I guess a logical person would compare it to hunger or having to pee – when you gotta go, most other thoughts just fade away and your priority is finding a bathroom ASAP. The past few days I did a movie marathon; Armageddon, Deep Impact, 2012, 28 Days Later, The Hangover (cause it’s hilarious), Outbreak, Independence Day and so on. The recurring trend wasn’t the human race coming together but it was the fact that money, possessions and the bullshit that we spend so much time thinking about ceased to exist and it became a movie about survival.

What can we learn from this?

Well, I think the guys on that message board are doing a fine job expressing themselves in their community just like I do every week on this blog. We shouldn’t change how we live but I think an emphasis on the fragile lives we lead is important. Remembering that on your way to work, your life can end. Planning too far out into the future is careless and a waste of time because the short term and the now should be your #1 priority. I’m not saying go to vegas and put all of your money down and I’m not saying forgo a retirement fund. I’m just saying that planning too far out is a mistake. A minor example of this was when Laura and I were dating. I bought her a plane ticket to Vegas for Blogworld. Well, she and I broke up and I lost $200. yeah it was only $200 but things change and you have to understand that if she and I lost our lives because we accidentally stepped out into traffic, those two airline seats would be empty where we would have been. Ever think about that? when there’s an empty seat next to you on the plane and you tweet, “sweet leg room!” do you ever think that the person that bought that ticket may have died on the way to the airport?

See. Things are a lot more fragile than you think. An earthquake can strike San Francisco and level the entire city as I write this last sentence and I’d most likely die and these words would live on in a Microsoft Word Document on my laptop. I could die in my sleep tonight and this was the last thing I ever wrote or The Earth could collide with any one of millions of asteroids out in space and we’d all be dead. This can happen at any time so while you plan your summer vacation, pay your mortgage or type “EPIC FAIL” on the Internet message board, remember that your life could end at any time and you gotta keep that in perspective.

Today, Scott Beale of LaughingSquid linked to an Esquire interview conducted by Chris Jones. The interview was truly remarkable but the real focus on Roger Ebert and how he beat cancer but lost his lower jaw in the process. That isn’t really important for the sake of the interview or the content contained in it as told by Ebert himself. What stands out time and time again is that I’ve read two columns by Ebert about his “condition” and each time I’m simply fascinated by how he has lived his life after  cancer. Well, let me rephrase – I’m fascinated with how Ebert views life after cancer and how he writes so eloquently about so many things that touch me personally.

The first column by Roger Ebert that I ever read was linked to by John Gruber of DaringFireball and it was titled, “Nil by Mouth“. In that post, Ebert discusses the beauty of food and how food relates to socializing and how, without a lower jaw, Ebert misses those delicate moments of very specific foods. In the piece, this section stood out to me the most:

Let me return to the original question: Isn’t it sad to be unable eat or drink? Not as sad as you might imagine. I save an enormous amount of time. I have control of my weight. Everything agrees with me. And so on.

What I miss is the society. Lunch and dinner are the two occasions when we most easily meet with friends and family. They’re the first way we experience places far from home. Where we sit to regard the passing parade. How we learn indirectly of other cultures. When we feel good together. Meals are when we get a lot of our talking done — probably most of our recreational talking. That’s what I miss. Because I can’t speak that’s’s another turn of the blade. I can sit at a table and vicariously enjoy the conversation, which is why I enjoy pals like my friend McHugh so much, because he rarely notices if anyone else isn’t speaking. But to attend a “business dinner” is a species of torture. I’m no good at business anyway, but at least if I’m being bad at it at Joe’s Stone Crab there are consolations.

When we drive around town I never look at a trendy new restaurant and wish I could eat there. I peer into little storefront places, diners, ethnic places, and then I feel envy. After a movie we’ll drive past a formica restaurant with only two tables occupied, and I’ll wish I could be at one of them, having ordered something familiar and and reading a book. I never felt alone in a situation like that. I was a soloist.

How much we take for granted a cheeseburger or soda and how much we rush through these things. This post actually inspired my recent fasting because I wanted to come back after 5 days and taste a burger like it was my first time and I will always remember so vividly sitting in In-N-Out on a rainy Monday all alone staring at the burger after not eating for 5 days and thinking to myself, “this is going to fucking rock” and boy did it!Each bite of the hamburger was truly remarkable and the diet sprite tingled my tongue and my throat. The cheese ground into my teeth and the crisp lettuce massaged my gums. Trust me, it was pretty awesome.

The interview with Ebert in Esquare Magazine was exceptional but I’m once again drawn to Ebert’s recent column in the SunTimes that he wrote in response to the interview. I picked a few parts that I really loved.

This was a conversation he was having with his wife, “Chaz”.

“Did you really have to write all those Tweets about Rush Limbaugh?” she asked me one day. “He’s a sick man. What if people had written about you that way when you were in the hospital?”

“That would be their right,” I said heroically. “Besides, he said he was fine.”

“And you wouldn’t care what they said about you?”

“Resentment is allowing someone to live rent-free in a room in your head,” I intoned. That line isn’t original with me. It may have originated with her.

This speaks loudly about many of the reasons that I’ve pulled back from being online so much. I call it “micro-celebrity” because that’s what it is only because I’ve been called that a few times. I consider it being famous for not really doing anything. I don’t think I’ve done enough to have 3,000+ Twitter Followers or 30K people reading this blog every month but I do and that comes with some responsibility and yes, some stalkers. Celebrities have it rough and without a support system, it’s easy to let things get to you. Ebert’s wife posed an excellent question, one that Laura said to me very often when I criticized others after just expressing my distaste and displeasure of being called “fat” by some anonymous commenter on my blog. Of course, I’m not as wise as Ebert nor as comfortable in my own skin to have such a terrific quote in response to the situation. I’d like to post it again:

“Resentment is allowing someone to live rent-free in a room in your head,”

Wow. This is coming from a man who has been a professional critic for many many years and has sat on both sides of the table as the critic and the person being criticized. What wisdom inherited in this quote that truly excites me about one day being able to say this out loud and truly believe it and live it.

Later in the article:

Well, we’re all dying in increments. I don’t mind people knowing what I look like, but I don’t want them thinking I’m dying. To be fair, Chris Jones never said I was. If he took a certain elegiac tone, you know what? I might have, too. And if he structured his elements into a story arc, that’s just good writing. He wasn’t precisely an eyewitness the second night after Chaz had gone off to bed and I was streaming Radio Caroline and writing late into the night. But that’s what I did. It may be, the more interviews you’ve done, the more you appreciate a good one. I knew exactly what he started with, and I could see where he ended, and he can be proud of the piece.

I mentioned that it was sort of a relief to have that full-page photo of my face. Yes, I winced. What I hated most was that my hair was so neatly combed. Running it that big was good journalism. It made you want to read the article.

It is uncomfortable to stare into the eyes of Roger Ebert after seeing his face for so many years in the newspaper. I have a bit of regret, more emotions of sympathy kick in but it wasn’t until I read the article and how he lives without the joy of food, normal conversation or appearing “normal” at least cosmetically that I actually feel inspired to live life differently with a new outlook and not one of normality where I take everything for granted. Ebert has lived his life, sure but the condition he’s in now only inspires sympathy for 10 seconds and then I’m ready to live my own life knowing I could grow old and have people who are sympathetic to my “condition” whatever that may be. His philosophy and view on how things went continues to amaze me. This part truly stood out.

I studiously avoid looking at myself in a mirror. It would not be productive. If we think we have physical imperfections, obsessing about them is only destructive. Low self-esteem involves imagining the worst that other people can think about you. That means they’re living upstairs in the rent-free room.

Too many of us focus on our looks and not trying to better ourselves from the inside out. Living a long and healthy life is absolutely essential as I’ve learned that I was recently in the later stages of developing diabetes at only 23 years old. However, focusing on our faults only leads to less action because you’re too busy thinking about it. Roger is saying that sitting in your house imagining that you’re at the store buying milk isn’t actually helping so don’t focus on the milk, hop in the car and drive.

The final sentence about low self-esteem speaks volumes to me as well. I have always had high self-esteem until I threw myself into an industry of overachievers, successful hard working people who worked very hard for what they have. All of my great friends are in their 3os and it’s difficult fitting in sometimes as they have money and know what they love and don’t like. After a few failed projects last year and rising criticism from anonymous commenters, things took a turn for the worse and I allowed a few thousand people to live rent free in my head instead of focusing on buying the milk, I sat at home and simply convinced myself that the milk I was going to buy had already gone bad. This is how I spent my last 6 months and I achieved very little.

Ebert’s words speak volumes to so many humans today and I know for a fact that he’ll be remembered by his philosophy and strong spirit more than how many thumbs down he gave to the movie, “Cable Guy”. I hope to relive the emotions i have right now while writing this blog post. I feel inspired to live and will continue cultivating that feeling for a long time coming.

Thank you for reading.

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog entry about what’s going on. Well, today I opened up Wordpress to post what’s really going on, what’s really happening and what’s really on my mind.

After writing and jotting down the specific things I wanted to cover and writing a few paragraphs, I hit the delete key. I used to never do that but since I stopped sharing it all on Twitter, Facebook and right here (beginning around mid-December), I’ve had over a dozen friends all in their 40s tell me, “I’m glad you changed what you say online. Try to keep some stuff offline and only among friends.”

So, despite that fact I want to tell you about my health, my job, my life, my little projects, my relationships with friends and my dating life. There are so many things I want to share with you guys not because any of you give a crap but because it’s my own sort of therapy and way I make many of my decisions which is to simply talk things out.

Lately, I haven’t done that. Has my life improved? Yes. Have there been things I wish I had worked out and gotten online feedback from first? Yes. I’m still in this transition of sharing or not sharing things online. It feels absolutely bizarre to not put things online, check in at locations and share my financial and health data via iPhone TwitPics. It’s still a period of growth for me and a period of trying new things. I’m not sure how it will end but the path has lead me to some new things and all at a perfect time.

Man, I wish I could say some of these things that are going on but those of you who know me, also know how to reach me and how to message me and you all have and it means a lot. Thanks for reading.