Here are Nokia phonecam dispatches from the better half of the family who are meeting my in-laws somewhere in Pennsylvania so that they can take custody of our ten-year-old dog Cody for a few months while we work on moving closer to Washington, D.C. I think we are really going to miss her next week when the rhythm of morning and evening walks changes. Cody, however, will get a huge yard to run around in, and be fawned over by her "grandparents." I think she'll get over us soon. ;-(

- mike lee - palo alto, ca

...at the Westin and a Hiptop sticker sighting!

Flying back to D.C. this morning.

- mike lee - palo alto

I am taking a pause here in front of Palo Alto City Hall (pic 6) to post some pictures of my day of meeting with Hiptop-using friends. This morning I met up with the Marvelous May Woo at Hobee's Restaurant for brunch. Like the time we first met in Manhattan over a year ago, we talked for a long time about a thousand things over the giant coffee cake (pic 3). Then, after a quick stop into the Apple Store, May moved on. 15 minutes later, I got an e-mail and Vox Message from the Legendary Leigh Klotz of Hipme.com and Graflex.org to meet up at Coupa Cafe. Over coffee in the back of the cafe, we traded stories about our work, and Leigh showed off one of his 4x5" format Graflex cameras. It's very likely I'll be back to the Bay Area for projects, so it was great to hear from May and Leigh about more local people and places to visit.

Onward...

- mike lee - palo alto, ca

Out of the blue yesterday (Thursday), Joe Britt, founder and CTO of Danger, e-mailed me to see if I wanted to visit because he saw here on hiptop Nation that I was going to be near his office. During the conference lunch break, Mark and I took a 10-minute taxi ride over to Danger HQ, which is right behind Fry's Electronics.

I paused in front of the building (pic 1) to take a photo of the sign, and right at that instant, my Sidekick II did a hard crash. Bah! Well we went to the lobby where the receptionist paged Joe for us. Joe greeted us warmly and mentioned that the building was previously occupied by Pacific Data Images during the time they produced Shrek 1. That might explain the old scary sign (pic 2) by the parking lot. Joe noticed that my SKII was frozen, apologized profusely and assured me we would stop by engineering for a hard reset, which turned out to be the magic Danger paperclip in the reset hole while pressing the power button. This was a once-in-a-lifetime event where the creator of a consumer product I own was there in person to help me with a problem.

We toured the hardware and software engineering floors, and along the way, had a nice conversation with Joe's wife, who turns out to have gone to design school with John Maeda. We stopped by marketing for some Hiptop 2 t-shirts, and also loaded up on stickers from the bottomless bowl (pic 5).

Joe described the early development of the Sidekick 1 in amazing detail, and we got to see the earliest prototypes. Investors can rest assured that I saw nothing new because Joe is very responsible for the company's intellectual property. Joe did show off the staff version of the Sidekick 2, which has a transparent plastic case.

The office decor was very utilitarian and un-corporate. The space was by and large dimly lit presumably to the liking of the coders. Many of the offices and cubes were super cluttered with random-looking conglomerations of Sidekick parts, desktop computer gear, testing equipment and digital culture paraphernalia. It was good to see that their VC money was being used wisely because everyone didn't have Aeron chairs. The cars in the parking lot were normal makes (pic 3) reflecting the reality that that Danger hasn't gone public yet.

On our way out, we grabbed sodas from the cafeteria, and Joe posed for a photo with me outside. There we were also introduced to "Sidekickme," who helps moderate the Hiptop.com bulletin boards.

The visit was a genuine treat, and my Sidekick 2 has now been touched by the hand of its creator!

- mike lee - palo alto, ca

No time to type up or add links, but here are two of the most popular talks from the pre-lunch session. The first is a major study on how kids multi-task in consuming media to be released in Feb. 2005, and the second was on the economics of personal digital media networks.

- mike lee - palo alto, ca

Techniques for simulating brain surgery are being presented. The speaker quipped that patients don't want to hear that their particular procedure has never been tried before, so highly realistic simulations are becoming integral to planning procedures.

- mike lee - palo alto, ca

Demos of cutting edge high technology or pajama party... What would you do? Ah, I'm a geek. I'll stay for Clifford Nass' talk on Stanford's CHIMe Lab.

- mike lee - palo alto

My boss and I walked thethe morning demo booths, one of which was Dr. B.J. Fogg demoing the BuddyBuzz system. Now we're at the bookstore.

- mike lee - palo alto

Lab founder Byron Reeves is greeting the audience of existing and prospective corporate partners and describing how Media X offers cross-cutting, interdisciplinary access to technology at the Stanford campus. The program is only two years old, but has signed, and is continuing to sign, many corporate partners. Today were quickly sample the breadth of projects going on around campus so we can have conversations and set agendas. It's kind of like open mike day because the presenters are only given five minutes to do a stand-up.