[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjgE3ltXU68]

Looks like it wasn’t quite as hot there.

At the beginning of class today, I relayed the story of one of my students from last semester and her quest for a job.  I hope she’ll be blogging about it soon on WebPubNET, but basically she was successful in securing employment for working a personal network. She made a point to come to a guest speaker engagement (consisting of one of my former students and her employer), asked questions during the session, introduced herself afterward, traded contact info.  Had a few followup conversations, received an invite to a lovely party, and then ultimately found herself getting called in for an interview.  She is now gainfully employed by Trademark Media as a Design Technologist! Participating in a community really works. And, this isn’t a random situation or one-shot deal.  I have been constantly impressed with the power of tapping my former students to place my current students.

We talked about the frenzy for the new iPhone and Apple’s processes to handle the demand come the release of the 3G version on Friday.

Google just announced its own entry in the virtual space with Lively.  It’s sort of a Second Life competitor, but right now, it is different in that it is not one cohesive “world.” Here’s the YouTube video we looked at for Bobcat Village, TX State’s Second Life island.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRNP6IJwY90]

We looked at an article on Microsoft’s Vista, the much criticized operating system.  Apparently, Microsoft is going to take a harder line, not letting customers purchase new hardware with XP on it, the old, reliable OS.  This looks more like a PR move, in combating criticisms from competitiors (read “Apple”).  Good luck with that.  Anyone I know that has used Vista thinks it is a piece of junk, a big step backward.  Now that Bill Gates is gone, I think you will see more of this hard line approach to customer issues  via the management style of Steve Ballmer.

Finally, we discussed YouTube’s strategy for adding pre-roll and post-roll ads to some of their videos.  Most of my students felt that it was something that was bound to happen eventually, the free ride was going to be over sooner or later.  As we know, Google owns YouTube.  They are only going to be placing ads on a small percentage of videos that are preapproved by advertisers.  That does two things, insures advertisers that their products/services won’t be associated with potentially questionable material in some YouTube videos and it limits their liability for potentially generating revenue on copyrighted material.

Here’s a quick rundown of some things I found interesting this week:

• Here’s a neat iPhone timeline
• Great article from Mashable on How to Live Blog a Conference.  Good tips, definitely something I will discuss with my classes next time we do a project like that.
• Article from Forbes.com and what will happen to Apple when Steve Jobs is gone, entitled Jobs 2.0. All companies have a succession plan in place for top leaders, and Apple would be no exception.  But, how do you replace someone as brilliant and charismatic, and whose leadership has been tightly wound with the company image itself?  It’s something that occasionally occurs to me, then I try to block it out, because I don’t want to think about it.

Hope everyone is having a happy 4th weekend!

If you purchased a Mac in the past year or so, and it includes the new iLife ’08 package, you might have noticed that iMovie ’08 looks completely different. It’s really a different program, and a bit difficult to figure out. Maybe you just wish you could go back to the old iMovie HD (’06) version. Well, you can. Apple has a free download of it at: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html

It’s only for people who have ’08 installed. I guess lots of people were complaining. And, some features were missing, like the ability to speed up or slow down a clip.

I know this now makes my life a lot easier, allowing me to use my new super-fast computer with the old familiar iMovie.

Now, if you want to see the video of the WWDC Keynote, it’s here.

This was Apple’s home page.

Watch the Ad.

These images were on the Apple Store within minutes of Jobs finishing the keynote:

Features:

• as expected 3G service – did lots of comparisons, Jobs actually called it “amazingly zippy.”
• Longer battery life
• GPS
• Lower price!!! $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB, plus 16GB avail in white

But no video, camcorder capabilities. Why?!! And, not available until July 11.

During the keynote, lots of cool apps were introduced:

• Associated Press – ability to share stories, photos with friends, report on news yourself
• Neat medical apps
• Band – create music
• Lots of games
• Push notifications – for example, getting notifications from Ebay on your auctions

From MacRumorsLive.com

Not sure what is the best place to get Apple info today. I’m following the twitter feed on Summize and checking the Fortune blog . Silicon Alley Insider says they are live blogging, too. It all goes down at noon our time (10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern). I’ll post first images from the Apple Store as soon as it goes live!

This is what’s on the Apple Store right now!

Update: Just found this site at iphonealley.com that claims to be doing a live audio stream from WWDC.  Hopefully it will work.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1811814-1,00.html

Josh Quittner writes in Time on the future of the Internet, what will be the next great platform?  He identifies three major parties, Apple, Google, and Facebook, all approaching the industry in a slightly different manner. I like the Marc Andreessen quote, “Trying to decide which will win is kind of like debating whether beef, chicken or lobster is going to win the market for food.”  This isn’t a horse race, so I wish we’d stop treating it like one. There’s probably room for elements of all three strategies. But, it is interesting to study the diffusion of technologies and try to predict the “next big thing.”