PhotoIllustration ChaliceMedia

OK, so Apple has done a number, Ok a BIG number, of amazing things. Enough to almost make me forget a out the oft used VHS vs Beta conflagration or the Blu-ray vs HDDVD shipwreck analogies when comparing the Big A to the Big MS… Almost.

For sure the guys and hmmm…word choice dilemma here…women at Apple know the heck out of HOW TO MARKET STUFF. Whew! These are the folks who made bazillion a household word. But…

There’s a really interesting (albeit brilliant) methodology happening in both the iTunes and App stores–OK, so it’s really only one store… Or a million… One or the other, who knows. My point is that they have really developed an art form in taking the concepts of cost and price OUT of the purchase equation. You don’t really get the confirmation a.k.a. Reminder that you actually spent money, until the next day or two, along with the bazillion other emails flooding your inbox.

Talk about separation of price and value….

Then again, once you buy an app, you NEVER EVER see the price of that app again. Unless, of course, you follow Apple’s rules to the letter and your wife has her own Apple ID for her iPhone–then you can use her phone to remind you how much you paid for your apps. Ok, Ok. I know that I COULD just keep all of those app store receipts… But, isn’t that just a little too organized?

By now, you’re wondering “he said snake oil, when is he gonna get to the snake oil?”

NOW, he said in reply. These kinds of Cost/value separation things are pervasive throughout the bazillion apps on the store. Oops, I mean the Apple App Store–R in a little circle. I’ve noticed it a lot when it comes to Free apps. OK, nothing wrong with Free. Free is good if it does the job. Free is good if the data migrates seamlessly to the Upgraded e.g. No ads, no limits, no something or other that the REAL version has…But they never actually tell you what the differences are.

Free to upgrade is good when you know the limitations UP FRONT. Free is NOT good when you have to reenter everything. Free is NOT good when you can’t export the data. Free is NOT GOOD when you would have spent the buck or four or ten upfront had the sales pitch been straightforward.

NOT SNAKE OIL.

—

Written with Pad & Quill, on the iPad

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

Both and the staff behind it worked simply and efficiently. Corrections were made and verified within a could of days.

Kudolicious!
Ron

Disclaimer Time

There is a “company information” website (one of many in the websphere) that is showing this company, ChaliceMedia LLC, as a bit (ha!) overstated.  Some of the details:

• 16 “verified” contacts – who, knows I may be one of them but I’m only allowed to click on 15 contacts…
• Among them … a COO, an executive assistant, a head of security, the founder of BeriCraft Aviation (FICTITIOUS), a Key lawyer, and…
• A principal, tech services background (that’s Moi), and…
• nine other employees.
• Then, the profile shows 50-100 total employees (ha! — screw it — double ha! there’s just… let’s say it together… Moi)
• The really fun part is the $10 – $25 MILLION dollars in revenue. (HA!*10³)  – this is overstated by a minimum of 2,000 times.

All of the above is BUNK, and most of it isn’t even listed on our FICTITIOUS websites. So…. every time I build a website you will see content similar to that below on either the FRONT PAGE OF THE SITE or on a page conspicuously labeled DISCLAIMER.  It’s just a different medium. Can you imagine the researchers for these companies going into a book store (or having a bot crawl the fiction offerings at Amazon) and come up with these bogus profiles?

A major frustration is that I cannot CORRECT this information on ANY of these websites.

In today’s mail I had a VIP thing to an interesting conference in San Francisco in March… If you are the person who sent it, thanks… but in all HONESTY, I’m probably not the VIP you think I am.

Sample disclaimer:

Important Disclaimer

CheapCXOs and SeemsFree are fictional companies. Any resemblence to actual organizations is stricty satirical.

CheapCXOs.com and CheapCXO.com are part of the SolaceCreek Site Network from ChaliceMedia.

The Solace Creek site network, the village of Solace Creek, Colorado and all other references contained herein are fiction.  Any resemblance to actual persons or places is unintentional.Solace Creek, Colorado; Boulder-Springs, Colorado; The Solace Creek Statesman; The Boulder-Springs Journal; Acolytica; York Broadcast Network; SeemsFree; BeriCraft; and other businesses and communities contained herein are fictional components of the Solace Creek Stories.The people of Solace Creek, Colorado, Boulder-Springs, Colorado, and the surrounding areas are fictional as well, although some of the place names used in the stories may be actual places for realism.  The political and corporate characters in the Solace Creek Stories may be composites of real public figures.

All material on The Solace Creek site network, and it’s included websites are proprietary to, and copyright ChaliceMedia LLC, all rights reserved.  For clarification on any of this website’s content, please refer the Contacts page at the home site of ChaliceMedia LLC.

And the key company-wide disclaimer information regarding fictitious entities — https://chalicemedia.com/disclaimer

If you ever have any questions about ChaliceMedia, contact us

Thanks for your patience, best regards
Ron Heimbecher, ChaliceMedia LLC

In putting together the Twelve Days of Christmas project on Hoarseman, I ran across some of the most stunning artwork in the history of mankind (Wiki Paintings www.wikipaintings.org) It’s amazing that the more you struggle with learning or practicing something, or even working at something you have experience in, the greater your appreciation for those who are truly brilliant in any field.Most of the work in the collage below (11 Pipers is the Twelve Days connection) is by Vincent Van Gogh, of whom I’ve always been a fan, with the addition of some new discoveries from Gerard Terborch and James Whistler.

Another discovery led me to an article on an interesting British officer, and an acquaintance of T.E. Lawrence — yeah the Arabia guy — Richard Meinertzhagen.

‘Nuf from me. Go explore on your own and have a marvelous, fantastic wonderful Holiday…or enjoy your day at the movies. Here’s the collage.

iDraw is a vector graphics tool, with an amazing amount of functionality in a tablet app. So far I haven’t run out of layers (there are some apps that require an in-app purchase for additional layers beyond a certain point.

Here are a couple of samples from the Twelve Days Project.

Corel PaintShop Pro Photo X4 is the latest generation of an app I’ve been using on the majority of my design work for the past several years… Since it was JASC PaintShop. It’s a full featured blast.

Here’s the latest, for the Fifth Day of Christmas.

Hey, have fun. Happy Holidays.
Ron at ChaliceMedia

Thanks to Dave Anderson for sharing this on Facebook.

A very interesting presentation on what “life” might really be.

Ron

There's a Man With a Gun Over There

I just got an email from Twitter reminding me how they’ve optimized sharing for iOS5® platforms. I’m sure they have a zillion ways to know that many times every week, my Twitter activities happen with my iPad®. BUT, I have NOT upgraded my iPad to iOS5.

Why?

Several weeks ago, I had a four-day nightmare upgrading  iTunes® from 10.3 to 10.4 on my Windows 7® desktop — for non-Apple speaking readers, iTunes is a requirement to sych and back up the data and apps on the iPad. Backups would not work, synch would not work, the iTunes Store would not work — as if I was in the mood to actually buy anything from the iTunes Store in the middle of this mess. I tried everything that was suggested on the Apple® Support page — EXCEPT re-installing Windows, yeah, like that will happen some day when I’ve got a couple of months free time.

So I checked the Community forum. Dozens, if not scores of people were having exactly the same problems. A savior arose from the multitudes with a plan — that worked. Simply revert one of the services components of iTunes to the prior version.

“Hurrah!” echoed throughout the known universe, and all was well.

Then just prior to the release of iOS5, I learned that in order to install iOS5 on my iPad (and Monica’s iPhone) I would have to — excuse my French here — have to upgrade my freaking iTunes yet AGAIN.

But of course, they would have fixed the Window problem… of course. The byte gods certainly wouldn’t let it happen any other way.

So I checked the Community forum BEFORE I downloaded the upgrade. Yikes! Within minutes of the 10.5 release, the forums were flooded by people having exactly the same problem as with 10.4 — that was the bad news. The BAD (beginners, please notice the upper case for emphasis) news was that the 10.4 solution DID NOT WORK.

So. I will wait. And still be able to back up my iPad. A new savior will arise from the multitudes.

It won’t be me.

Ron

For when the brain gets too full

This is a tiny post today in response to a recent article in wired magazine about why eBooks “Aren’t There Yet.” There has been a lot of discussion in my LinkedIn Digital Publications Group about what the article says, and doesn’t say. The thing is, maybe they aren’t asking the right questions. Maybe they are making too many assumptions based on the status quo… heaven knows that’s a human trait as certain as a yellow Lab chasing a tennis ball.

I had a brief response to my group (below) — haven’t had any feeback yet.

Posted comment to Digital Book World group on LinkedIn in response to the conversations on the Wired article.

“Could it simply be that as long as ebooks are viewed as just another “medium” they will always be — just another way to get a book out?

As long as the world is moving with the “same books” different format concept it will stay this way.

Bytes, Bits, pixels, data packets, broadband, Retina screens, capacitive touch, gesture navigation, alternative paths, instantaneous automatic updates, back lighting — all of these are magic dust.

Or have we forgotten that the main reason for books in the first place was to tell a story?”

Ron

Ro Yo adorns the new ChaliceMedia icon.

If you’re one of the 172,367 real human beings who have dropped into our world a number of times (about 5 million as of June 2011), they you might have noticed that there is a lot of new artwork coming on line. The key driver for this is our ongoing project to make sure that every site in the ChaliceMedia universe is mobile-web enabled within the near future, we want to ensure that all of our icons are compatible with Apple® “i” products and much of the Android® marketplace. Already, we have completed the transition on all 19 of our WordPress sites, and 13 Blogger sites. We’re running tests on Joomla, Drupal, and other applications at this time. The images in upcoming posts show a few new renditions of our rabbit Ro Yo Rabbit™ for specialized uses.  To follow our progress, keep checking the ChaliceMedia StoryWorld.