Or, as Apple puts it, "Hello, tomorrow."

Back during the keynote at WWDC 2006, when Jobs and co were introducing (Mac OS X.5:) Leopard, I remember one moment when everyone in the packed room quieted down in a moment of anticipation. This was when Scott Forstall (who was at the time, speculated by the Mac press as being an heir apparent) was down to the final item on his initial ten item preview of Leopard features. Number ten. Time Machine. After letting its name build itself up through the audience over a few minutes of expert simmering and vague narrational introduction, Scott clicked on a little icon in the dock, and the screen fell away to reveal one of Leopard's most guarded and revolutionary features: that all of our Macs, come October, will gain the ability to travel back and forth through our personal timeline in a mysterious and star studded realm that the people at Apple called Time Machine. Continue reading...

Here it is. The party took place at the Aftermodern art gallery on the 13th, and I think I can say with confidence that it (almost) went without a hitch. So here's the obligatory followup post, in a kind of photo journal format, with photos picked out from the search, "Delicious Generation", on Flickr:

The hangout scene outside, comprised of smokers, sweaty Mac geeks, and everyone who showed up but couldn't get in. Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid. Continue reading...

We're down to the last 25-50 spots or so to fill, and there's stlil over 200 people in the moderation queue. Crap.

I'm looking to fill this party with people with awesome stories to tell, and sweet things to show off. The goal is that any random person you meet at the party will be able to strike up an awesome, memorable conversation.

Of course, there's only so much I can infer from the hopefuly guest's company and comment. So if you're not on the guest list right now, and think you deserve one of the remaining spots, EMAIL ME ASAP.

Talk about too much of a good thing. (And a nice alternative to coffee for getting the ole brain warmed up this morning.) For your amusement, here's a glimpse at the massive pileup that has accumulated over the night in the party site's backend/guest queue: Continue reading...

Update: If any of you readers are SF residents are know the city well / want to help out planning the party, feel free to hit me up on AIM. (VCard to your right.)

"The "Delicious Generation" is a breed of young developers who embrace interface experimentation and brash marketing. The term "Delicious Generation" was meant as an insult, but they wear it as a badge of honor." - Leander Kahney, Scott Gilbertson, Wired.com

I think it's fair to say that this is the most substantial article so far about, well, "us". The Delicious Generation. And the cool news is, it's super positive. Oh, and Wired apparently thinks it's a pretty big story. (Edit: Apparently digg users think so too.) Sorry Apple.

I've kinda kept quiet for months, through a lot of public shitting on us by certain individuals. I feel that, as a 19 year old student, I handled this pretty maturely, keeping my cool. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you might want to check this Wired.com article out as a refresher course on the "Heist controversy", and this lovely post by Paul Kafasis that sparked the Delicious Generation controversy. In it, he talks about making positive steps for fixing the schism in the Mac community, while simultaneously making grandiose, vicious statements like this one: "Disco's smoke effect is now infamous for being a sign of the fall of the Mac." (Oh really Paul? And who exactly said that... BEFORE your post?) What makes it worse, is that, from a marketing perspective, I can make a real case that the controversy was designed to boost sales for his apps. (I mean, he IS marketing for Rogue Amoeba.) If you don't believe me, check out his next post put up a few days later. Yeah, it's just a list of his apps. Great blogging material there.

So anyway, we've actually been working on an amazing Delicious Generation party over the past couple weeks. And we're actually trying to, well, piece together the schisms in the community, repair burned bridges, that sort of deal. There are Apple people showing up. Reps from Yahoo. Youtube. For Digg fans, Kevin Rose will be chilling. And of course, the best of the best in Mac indie software development, showcasing their latest and greatest, and demoing some awesome, upcoming stuff. The generation's Godfather, Wil Shipley of Delicious Library fame, will of course be making an appearance as well. We're working hard to make this an unbelievable party (no cover fee!) for you guys, and that's with an open bar, great food, free t-shirts and live jazz. Yeah, we're just ballers like that. (Just kidding. Thank the sponsors.)

It's going to be awesome. And now, to take my five minutes of vindication here. Paul Kafasis, I assume you will be at the conference. In which case, if you have the balls to RSVP and show up, I'll offer up the microphone for a few minutes, to say whatever you please. Look, you left a flaming bag of shit at our door, and here I am, tossing toilet paper at your house. I am offering an opportunity here for you to say a few words, crack a few jokes, and make peace. You do that, and I will once again have respect for you.

So I hope to see everyone there. Aaaand, I'm out for the night. Good times indeed.

A note: Please don't take any offense if you, well, can't get in. The venue is small, and honestly, I'm expecting a lot of RSVP's. So apologies in advance to those who will get kinda shafted on this. Lesson learned: get a bigger venue next time.

Ahh, finally back home. WWDC was quite a vacation, but now it's time to get back to work... on My Dream App of course.

I know the last teaser was relatively void of details, so consider this post Teaser 2, the Hollywood style sequel with less plot and more big name stars!

So first off, I know I said I was on vacation, but that's not entirely true. I did spend a good part of the break meeting up with people, discussing My Dream App, and inviting several of them to join the project as guest judges. (Gasp, judges?!) Below is a photo from a particularly awesome lunch that yielded three new guest judges for the event: Dave Watanabe (NewsFire and Acquisition), Allan Odgaard (Textmate and recent ADA winner), and Nick Jitkoff (Quicksilver). They'll be joining the much-talked about Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster, and soon hopefully some other developers judging in that particular week.

From left to right, Austin Sarner, John Casasanta, Me, Nick Jitkoff, Jason Harris, Rosyna, Allan Odgaard, and Dave Watanabe

But that's not all, there's more! More guest judges I mean. Some other people who recently joined as well for guest judging for other weeks: lead TUAW blogger Scott McNulty, the Simonesque critic John Siracusa of Ars Technica's FatBits, Jim Dalrymple of Macworld, and the recently Business Week'd Kevin Rose of Digg. Then there's UI design guest judge week, with Adam Betts, Dave Lanham, Jasper Hauser, Piotr Gajos and Gedeon Maheux currently on board.

Developers? Bloggers? Tech media members? UI designers? Judging?! What is this??

Well, it wouldn't be a teaser without leaving some things for the imagination. But I'll leave you guys with this. I really, really believe this is going to revolutionize software development. Now, normally me just saying this alone would probably get tagged as crazy talk, but a lot of the people I mentioned share that belief, which is why quite a few of them joined the project on the spot. We're going to be lowering barriers and making things more transparent than ever, and it's going to result in some kickass software.

Oh, and I guess since it's obvious it's some sort of a competition, I might as well mention what we're trying to get together as prizes. Macbooks and iPods will be a small part of the prize packages. So dust off your thinking caps and start thinking killer app ideas!

So the Apple Design Awards were announced today, and the biggest news from it, of course, was Inventive / Widget Machine co-developed iClip lite taking home the award for Best Dashboard Widget.

But wait, going back a bit, this was the first ADA ceremony I had the opportunity to attend, and the whole thing was a pretty awesome experience. The event was held in a pretty atmospheric room, complete with a fog machine, purple lighting, and thumping music, and the second coolest part (besides accepting the award) was the opening video sequence, which featured all of the entered applications flying past the screen. Really, really cool.

After each of the winners were announced, runners up first, winners second, the winners were demoed by Apple User Experience Evangelist John Geleynse, who did a pretty good job showing off all of the winning apps. (I wouldn't have wanted to be in his shoes, demoing Scientific Solution winner, EnzymeX! (By the way, the developers of that application have a great article about the infamous ADA "cube" trophy which is a pretty interesting read.)

Accepting the award with John was unreal. That's about all I can say at this point, I'm still recovering. I really wish UI designer for iClip lite Piotr Gajos and programmer Chris Willis could've made it out here to experience it.

So anyway, more photos and more reactions to come soon, for now, a complete list of the winners, listed in chronological order of announcement:

Best Student Application:
Runner-Up: PhotoPresenter by Arizona Software
Winner: LineForm by Tribar Software

Best User Experience:
Runner-Up: Boinx FotoMagico by Boinx Software
Winner: iSale by equinux

Best Widget:
Runner-Up: WeatherBug Widget by WeatherBug
Winner: iClip lite by Inventive and Widget Machine

Best OS X Graphics:
Runner-Up: Unity by Unity
Winner: Modo by Luxology

Best Automator Workflow:
Runner-Up: Lecture Recording Workflow 1.2 by the University of Michigan School of Dentistry
Winner: Build Real Estate Catalog/Ultimate Productivity Action Pack

Best Developer Tool:
Runner-Up: F-Script by F-Script
Winner: TextMate by MacroMates

Best Game:
Runner-Up: Wingnuts 2 by Freeverse
Winner: Sims 2 ported Aspyr

Best Scientific Computing Solution:
Runner-Up: FuzzMeasurePro by Christopher Liscio
Winner: EnzymeX by Mekentosj

Again, more on this tomorrow, but wow, pretty amazing experience!

While yesterday's preview of Leopard didn't show too much (I'm talking about the "top secret" features that Steve left out this time around), it did show enough to, well, make quite a few shareware and freeware applications somewhat obsolete. We all know that Apple doesn't have a problem scalping the Mac shareware market for good ideas (think Watson), and ultimately I don't have a huge problem with it as long as Apple's solutions are better. But whether it's justifiable or not what they do, they have done it, and are continuing to do it with OS X Leopard. Here's a list of existing 3rd party applications that are going to find themselves losing a lot of sales or a lot of downloads in the upcoming months with 10.5's upcoming release. Or, alternatively and rather optimistically, you can take it as a list of applications to hold you over and in many cases provide satisfying near-Leopard functionality until you can get your hands on the upgrade. Continue reading...