Live from NY! Best wishes for 2003!

// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish

Took a road trip to NY today for a few days with family. No traffic and a sleeping baby - the only way to drive. Medium to strong coverage on the hiptop so far. Must sleep now.

// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish

There is nothing quite like a couple of feet of snow on Christmas day when you don't have to travel anywhere. Cook up some cinnamon rolls, warm up some hot chocolate, turn on the Christmas tree lights, dim the house lights, put on some music and then enjoy watching the snow fly around in the night sky.

Besides the picture of the snowy lobster trap I took with the hiptop camera (above), I also used the regular digital camera to captures some scenes around town the day after the snowstorm. There are also a couple in there of us getting out in the snow on Christmas before it turned too blizzard-like.

Aside from a bit of digging around my car, I didn't have to do any digging myself. They know how to handle snow here, and on the morning of the 26th as I walked to work plows, plow-enabled pickup trucks, bulldozers and other big machines capable of moving snow around were buzzing around and making the roads easy to navigate. Some plows even took care of the sidewalks.



// mikepop AIM: drjellyfish

Happy Christmastide to all this fine evening. In my part of Maine, it's been snowing for over 14 hours now, and we've had official blizzard conditions for most of them. Too dark for pics now, but I'm planning to take some on my walk to work tomottow. Goodnight!

// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish

For those on a hiptop case quest, Amazon now carries the leather black/orange one.

hiptop Case at Amazon.com

to quote from the site, the features are:

• Genuine full-grain leather
• Protects phone from scratches, moisture, bumps
• Magnetic snap closure keeps phone in place, yet quickly accessible
• Horizontal design for better comfort
• Compatible with T-Mobile Sidekick
• Unit Weight: 1.6 oz.
• Size (in inches): 2.94 x 4.59 x 1.13

// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish -----End Original Message-----



// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish

Over the past couple of weeks, the towns in this area have been holding little Christmas celebrations - tree lightings, bonfires, Santa arrivals, craft fairs and so on. It has been all quite enjoyable, much to my pleasant surprise.

It's been kind of like that movie Funny Farm with Chevy Chase, where he buys a house in Vermont, where he comes to hate the townspeople (the feeling is mutual) and in an attempt to sell the house to some other yuppies, he pays all the townspeople to stage a Norman Rockwell Christmas. Except that in this case, everyone seems to be actually doing this for their own pleasure (or at least no one has clued me in to where I should collect my cut). I feel like I am on the set of someone staging a typical traditional New England Christmas, but it turns out it is for real.

Anyway, if you are near the coast of Maine at Christmastime, you can not avoid the lobster tie-ins. As you might be able to tell from the photos above — a lobster-trap christmas tree and a wreath decorated with a lobster buoy - a nautical theme prevails.

Here is a much better picture of the lobster trap christmas tree. And lest you think I exaggerate, observe Santa arrive by lobster boat. Complete with the Lobster Elves. I am not making this up.

// mikepop

Just wanted to give a shout out to one of my favorite contemporary (1999) Chistmas story, Olive the Other Reindeer. The book has fantastic illustrations and while the animated version (no DVD yet, unfortunately) has quite an altered storyline, how can you dislike a Chistmas special with a scene like this one? Check your local listings for showtimes.

An order of magnitude better than that other Chistmas reindeer (Randolph? Reginald? Rucksack?) story.


// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish

In a column for the San Jose Mercury News, Dan Gilmor calls Hiptop Nation "a fascinating experiment with wireless weblogs." (It's way down there at the bottom of the article)

Hi Dan!

Another quote: "Consider the more than 10 million camera-equipped mobile phones in Japan."

Yikes; I better start optimizing the backend code to scale more efficiently (;

Thanks to everyone here for making things fascinating!

// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish

Hiptop Nation gets a reference in the O'Reily Emerging Technology Conference description:

"The Social Software track explores work designed to support two-way communications in groups, from retrofitting broadcast mechanisms with conversational tools (weblogging, trackbacks), publishing systems that treat community involvement as central (Kuro5hin), to the integration of multimedia and/or mobility (Hiptop Nation) into the communal repertoire."

So the next time you are at the airport/cafe/bus stop using your hiptop, and someone asks what you're doing, simply reply:

"I am integrating multimedia and mobility into the communal repertoire. Would you like to pose for me?"




// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish

When winter starts to close in and the days are short and you are starting to feel a bit gloomy after eight days without any sunshine finding its way through the clouds, nothing lifts the spirit like a little cosmetic surgery.

After so many backend tweaks, I wanted to polish off the look and feel of the frontend a bit. So I called in some expert help in the form of the fabulous May Woo, a Hiptop Nation regular. (Be sure to check out her Hiptop Shortcut Sticker collection too). She designed the logo and coordinating stylesheet. Thanks, May!

Of course, if you prefer the blue/green colors for your personal blog link, you still have that choice (along with some others).

// mikepop via hiptop AIM: drjellyfish