Cloud Shmoud

@software conference in Austin

Spent today immersed in the software side of social media and mobile. Very timely stuff of course, though I couldn’t get as excited as everyone else about putting web apps in car dashboards. Does your Prius really need to sync to the Cloud? They seem to think so…

Most of the new technology trends in the developer world are about masking complexity, taking all the yucky details of traditional coding and hiding them “under the covers.” Gosh what a strange and slightly disturbing expression that one, “under the covers.” They say it often. That and “literally” which they said, literally, like every fifteenth word today. Especially the guys from Google (and PS, that Chromebook fake-laptop thing? Not going work).

The nerd after-party this evening was held at Stubbs BBQ. I walked in. I walked out. I don’t eat BBQ and I don’t do long lines with strangers. And it smelled. I opted to return down the grimy, pee-covered streets of Austin’s eastern bloc in pursuit of my car and Book People.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Book People is literally (and figuratively) the greatest book store on the planet. Literally the greatest, because I seem to have a literal tick after 10 hours of Power Point slides. But also, it’s just a wonderful place with more autographed books per capita than any I’ve ever seen. As in, authors dig it.

You’re already skimming ahead, I know it, to see what I bought.

OK, skim no more. I bought Moby Dick. Moby F*cking Dick. Because I’ve never read it and the first page knocked my mismatched socks off (“…whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul…“). I also bought Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Again, first page: mismatched socks off my feet, onto the floor where a hipster chick slipped and, literally, landed on her hinny. I apologized. Literally.

One more tidbit. Someone hacked my Gmail account last night. I’m immensely curious how this happened. Perhaps it’s because I checked e-mail on a Windows laptop from the hotel Wi-Fi? Or was my phone hacked? Google did a great job blocking the mass email the virus launched at 5 am this morning (when it knew perfectly well that I would be deep in the zzz’s). And now I have a new, much stronger password. Hope I remember it.