Dustin Bachrach Blog

Pick your election results online at CNN

Dustin Bachrach — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:36:06 +0000

As the tech-craze is hitting mainstream media outlets, these old folks are finally “getting it” and actually coming out with some pretty sweet stuff. As the United States presidential election occurs today, you can head over to CNN’s Election Calculator and place your bets on which way each state will go. This makes for a lot of fun tonight as you see whether you picked right or wrong. What’s really great is that the CNN website is pretty slick and very up-to-date with technology. Everything is very interactive with a nice design polish that really seems to go with all the Web 2.0 sites popping up around the internet. Although it’s made in Flash and not the hip ruby on rails or AJAX, you still have to congratulate CNN on getting out of their old-media offices and hopping on the new trends coming out of Silicon Valley.

In case you were wondering, here’s my picks for the election followed by CNN’s guess. What are your picks?

iLovePhotos Mac Desktop App Officially Launched

Dustin Bachrach — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:29:39 +0000

Great news: we have officially launched the desktop app iLovePhotos, and you can download it for free right here (Mac only). We still have a long development process of fixing up bugs and adding a bunch of features we still have on our minds, but we want to get the app out in your hands, so give it a spin and let us know what you think.

iLovePhotos is an incredibly easy way to take your thousands of photos and tag those photo with the people are in them. It then makes it fun and quick to share those photos with all your friends. The app also creates awesome slideshows using our intelligent slideshow algorithms. My favorite part is that by simply dragging your contacts to the filter bar, you can easily find photos that have certain people in them. This is great when you want to show your friends a picture from a year ago that had you, your best friend, and Steve Jobs in it. Simply drag those 3 faces to the filter bar and there is that photo from a year ago proving that you have met Steve. Super cool.

Have you tried iLovePhotos? What do you think? Is tagging your photos something you’re willing to do in order to be able to search them in the future?

iLovePhotos Demos at DEMOfall 08

Dustin Bachrach — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:05:17 +0000

The photo tagging app iLovePhotos that I’ve been working on since the start of the summer with the great crew over at Blue Lava just demoed today in San Diego at the DEMO conference. Lorenz, our CEO, gave an awesome speech (with the help of Cory on the demo machine).

The demo went very well with no bugs coming up, and I think it showed a good bit of what our app can do. Our team also worked long hours right up to the point where we had to give the laptop over to the folks at DEMO. I’m really impressed with where the program has come in the last months, and we can’t wait for all you users to take it for a drive and love it.

Cory has also made a great video demonstrating more of iLovePhoto’s features that you should definitely check out if you’re interested. I think everyone is really going to enjoy the result of all the hard work we’ve put into the app.

If you like what you see, be sure to head over to iLovePhotos.com and sign up for the beta.

Denver Airport’s Free Wifi: The Future of Internet

Dustin Bachrach — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:42:57 +0000

I’m currently in transit between Honolulu and San Antonio, and for a few hours I’m hanging out in the Denver Airport, which is amazingly boring. The one thing Denver does right is WiFi. I don’t fly too much, but I’ve never been to an airport that offered free WiFi. LAX makes you purchase a T-Mobile hotspot pass, and I believe O’hare does as well. Getting free WiFi in the lovely San Antonio International airport sucks just as bad.

Honestly, we’re well into the internet revolution, and we’re really starting to need to have internet access at all times. Yes, we have our new 3G iPhones and our EVDO cards, but WiFi is still the best. It really won’t be that long from now where you can walk through any metropolitan city and catch wireless signals without having to use any cell towers. Google’s already doing this in San Francisco, but this really needs to pick up speed because the demand is tremendously high.

For instance, just take airports as your example. How many people pass through an airport in one day? How many of those people are on business? And then, how many of those want to answer emails and communicate with their colleagues. Plus, you have to consider all the tourist traffic that wouldn’t mind hopping online for a few seconds to check their blogs, or see the scores for their favorite sports teams.

There is a HUGE demand, and the answer is not to install hotspots and charge for it. That alienates users, pisses people off, and restricts people from actually using the internet. I’m only at the airport for a few hours. I’m not going to spend 10 bucks for a day pass. I’ll just not get online. Instead of charging a fee to get online, airports and all wireless providers should act how Denver has.

When I logged in, I see a screen informing me that I can get free WiFi. I just need to watch a quick commercial, and then browse all webpages with a header that offers quick links to flights and such (probably able to disable this somehow with GreaseMonkey).

I see this as the wave of the future. I honestly don’t mind this type of advertising. It’s well worth the little time I have to look at the ad in order to get free wireless internet. Not only do users like this, hotspot creators should love this too. In an oversaturated web marketplace, advertising is becoming less and less effective. I don’t think I have ever clicked on a Google AdSense ad, and I rarely click on any kind of banner ad, but here is a chance to show a full 30 second video ad to a user, who most likely will watch it because they have nothing else to do. You’re going to get serious eyeballs with these kind of ads.

All in all, this a win-win for both the companies providing the WiFi and for the users accessing it. We get free access to our ever-more digital lifestyle, and companies can make real money off of advertising.

I think a cost breakdown between 24-hour passes bought at hotspots and users willing to watch a 30 second ad will favor the free/advertising model significantly. It’s only a matter of time before companies realize this, and we will start to get numerous wireless access zones around the city, airports, and eventually everywhere. What do you think? Would you prefer free, ad-supported web viewing over paid internet access?

Photos from Hawaii and the Office

Dustin Bachrach — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:29:54 +0000

I just posted some pictures from my Hawaii trip up over at flickr. I’ve been having an amazing time out here on the island. I can go have lunch out on the beach, take a quick swim and then walk around the hooker-filled streets of Waikiki. Unfortunately, most of my day is consumed at the office in downtown Honolulu. I snapped a couple shots of our work area too. Take a look.

Waikiki Beach

Absolutely gorgeous.

Office Building

Sweet architecture.

Our offices

I really like how our work space is laid out. We don’t really have our own cubicles. It’s all a connected area, and I feel that we are much more of a team because of it.

My Rig

Sweet 8-core Mac Pro with dual Dell displays. Also have my Macbook over on the side.

One of Our Huge Posters

Hot!

How I Code

Know that I’ve been programming on a dual display setup, I think Dell is going to be cashing a check from me soon. I love being able to code and develop on one screen and run the app on the second display. This let’s you see the debugger on one screen and interact with the app at the same time on the other. It’s incredibly useful, and I’m really thinking about buying some monitors.

iLovePhotos Elevator Pitch

Dustin Bachrach — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:41:07 +0000

For the last week I’ve been hanging out in Honolulu, Hawaii working on a sweet new startup called iLovePhotos. We are creating a great photo tagging Mac app and a great companion website. Over at TechCrunch’s Elevator Pitches, my boss Lorenz has detailed what we do. It’s a great summary of our product, and I hope you can go check us out and give us your input, and also maybe your vote if you dig our stuff. You can also head over to iLovePhotos.com and sign up for the beta.

Good WWDC Summary Plus I’m Quoted

Dustin Bachrach — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:41:25 +0000

The MacNewsWorld has a nice summary of WWDC. I was also asked to comment for the article, and if you read around, you’ll see some of my thoughts. In a few days I hope to have a write up of my overall thoughts on WWDC here on my blog. As of yet, WWDC has been amazing, and I’ve learned a great deal.

Make sure you tune in for my next post on WWDC, and in the meantime, do you have any thoughts on WWDC or what was announced?

Arrived in SF. “WWDC’s a coming.”

Dustin Bachrach — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:32:43 +0000

I made it into SFO alright and am preparing for an excellent WWDC experience. If you are in town and going to be attending the conference, I’d love to meet up with you. Send me an email or catch me on Twitter. Here’s a couple pictures from my pre-WWDC trip.

Stopping by Moscone early

Golden Gate from below

Relaxing with the Golden Gate in the background

My Free Apple Tee

Can’t wait for tomorrow. How about you?

My WWDC 2008 Session Choices

Dustin Bachrach — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:50:02 +0000

I’ve made my initial list of sessions I want to attend at Apple’s WWDC this June. I’ve chosen the obvious ones like the keynotes and state of the unions, and I’ve emphasized on some graphics sessions and some iPhone related sessions. If anyone else is going to WWDC, please comment on what sessions you plan on taking. I’d love to get some feedback from past attendees on what sessions are good and not so good. Also, I’d love ot hear about any developer parties that people are going to. Although I won’t be able to attend on Thursday and Friday, here’s my planned schedule for the first 3 days of the conference:

Monday

9AM - Keynote
2PM - Mac OS X State of the Union
3:30PM - Developer Tools State of the Union
5PM - Graphics & Media State of the Union
6:30PM - WWDC Welcome Reception

Tuesday

9AM - iPhone Application Development Fundamentals
10:30AM - Networking with Bonjour
2PM - Introduction to Game Development for iPhone
3:30PM - Mastering the Mac Graphics Architecture
6:30PM - 3D Graphics for iPhone using OpenGL ES

Wednesday

9AM - What’s New in Objective-C
10:30AM - What’s New in Cocoa
12:30PM - Lunchtime Speaker
2PM - Core Animation Techniques for iPhone and Mac
3:30PM - Core Data Tips and Tricks
5PM - Latent Semantic Mapping
7:30PM - Apple Developer Awards
9PM - Stump the Experts

Which sessions are you attending?

WWDC 2008 Here I Come

Dustin Bachrach — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:02:12 +0000

I just found out I received a student scholarship from Apple for WWDC 2008. It will be very exciting to head out to San Francisco and learn from the best at Apple and meet some other 3rd party developers.

Anyone else going?