GeekBeat.TV is a short video show, hosted by Cali Lewis, about technology news, current gadgets, and amazing research projects that will affect your future. I have a passion for technology, and I work hard to find the most interesting, most compelling, most exciting stories out there, and tell you about them in a quick five minutes.

The GeekBeat.TV team is a wonderful group of people and I’m thrilled to be part of it! See 3:48 as Cali introduces all of us. For the complete show notes, see GeekBeat.TV/15.

I will be responsible for writing various tech articles for the website. You can see my first submission here: Top 5 Must-Have iPad Games!

My future articles will be posted at GeekBeat.TV Articles by Daynah.

For more tech news, be sure to check out GeekBeat.TV. Thanks for reading!

Full Sized Flash Slideshow | HTML Gallery

Jordin Sparks Battlefield Concert, Club Nokia, Los Angeles – 7/9/2010

Taken by: Daynah
Cameras: Canon EOS 5D Mark II and iPhone 4

More Information:
Beatweek Magazine | Jordin Sparks

Here are some examples of my work at Beatweek Magazine:

• Interview with Felicia Day, star of The Guild and Dr. Horrible
• Top iPad Cases: Beatweek 75 (75th Issue Special Awards)
• iPad Case Review: Speck Fitted
• iPad Case Review: M-Edge Leisure Jacket
• iPad Bag Review: Urban Tool PocketBar
• Apple iPad FAQs
• How to Add a Camera to your iPad
• iPad Hands-On Review
• Top Bargain iPad and iPhone Apps (for week of May 31st, 2010)
• iPhone and iPad App Review: Glee
• iPad and iPhone App Review: Words with Friends
• App Review: Qik Live for iPhone
• iPhone App Review: Hello Kitty Parachute Paradise

Timeline: November 2008 – Present

You can read more of my reviews and writings at Beatweek Magazine here.

Beatweek is the publication for music, podcasting, iPhone, iPod, iPod, and social media lovers. Publishing as a website since January 2004, Beatweek evolved into a magazine in 2007. Since that time Beatweek Magazine (formerly iProng) has released more than seventy issues whose cover story interviews have ranged from famous musicians (Lady GaGa, Ozzy Osbourne, Katy Perry, Al Green, Weezer, Carlos Santana) to actors (Heroes star Greg Grunberg, Felicia Day) to podcasters (Goodnight Burbank, Doctor Floyd) to famous athletes (Olympic gold medalist Natalie Coughlin).

Visit Beatweek.com for more information about this publication.

You can read more about the project in greater detail in the Website Creations and Design section of my portfolio.

Of all the things I learned about this year at the conference, the most exciting was learning what direction HTML 5 is heading in. Last year, I learned about the new <video> and <canvas> tags, but there’s so much more now.

This year’s conference was much bigger than the previous years. The conference sold out quickly with 5000 attendees. There were sessions going on in every room on the second floor of Moscone West Hall. I was most impressed with the bigger Developer’s Sandbox. It was 4 or 5 times bigger than last year’s. It was great talking to companies and developers who are already implementing Google products into their products.

Although I was drained from attending all the sessions, I didn’t want to miss the Google After Party. It’s actually a very geeky event with food and robots! The MakerFaire was in town and they had some amazing displays, robots, and man-powered machines all over the party.. definitely something you don’t want to miss while at the conference.

There was a lot of fun and excitement at this year’s Google I/O. There were many amazing announcements as well, including the Web-M project (standard video codec), new features in Android Froyo including support of Flash, Google TV, and our fabulous gifts for attending — the Sprint HTC Evo 4g — a gorgeous smartphone running Android!

Below is a summary of all the sessions I attended. For more information on each session, please follow the links to the Google Waves. The official YouTube videos will be coming soon. For more information about the conference, see the official Google I/O 2010 website.

Summary of each Session

Bringing Google to your Site – In this session, we got many different examples on how we can add Google to our websites. Some examples were using custom searches (now with auto-completion), Google Feed API, Adsense with AJAX (new), SideWiki, Buzz API and Google Font API.

Beyond Design: Creating positive User Experiences – In this session, I learned that there are 7 principles for creating positive user experiences: 1) Be fast 2) Be yourself 3) Engage in conversations 4) Be willing to give up control 5) Be polite 6) Be prepared for failure 7) Be reliable. Examples of these principles were also talked about.

Developing with HTML 5 – This session was great since the presentation itself was written in all HTML 5 tags and coding. If you flip through the presentation, you can try out the bleeding edge features available for browsers in the near future. Some new HTML 5-specific tags and features are offline data storage, JS APIs, <head>, <hgroup>, <nav>, <section>, <article>, <aside>, <footer>, new form field types, <audio>, <video>, <canvas>, new CSS selectors and font support, transitions, and so much more. Run the presentation in a Chrome browser to see what lies ahead.

Ignite Google I/O – This session was a lot of fun. Ignite sessions capture geek cultures in a series of 5-minute speedy presentations. Each speaker gets 20 slides that auto-advances after 15 seconds. Topics were of various topics, from surviving the North Atlantic ocean and breaking world records, to our habits of searching on the internet, to playing battleships in a pond. It was very entertaining and super geeky.. and is best if you see the videos once they’re up.

Google Analytics APIs: End to end – This session was given by a UCR Alumni, Nick Mihailovski! This session demonstrated advance techniques of tracking statistics on your website using the Google Analytics API. For more information, see “What is Google Analytics”

Surf the Steam: Google Buzz, Location, and Social Gaming was not my favorite session since they spent a few minutes talking about the new Buzz Api, and then started stepping through code on how to implement the BuzzBingo game. The one thing I learned from this session was that there’s a new Buzz API — great if you want to create a social game!

SEO Site Advice from the Experts was an excellent session. It was a panel of SEO experts who went through a list of submitted sites and let us know what the site is doing right and wrong about SEO. They talked about how important it was to use text on your webpages, how meta keywords aren’t indexed by Google because people inflate them, branding techniques starting with the domain name, content needing to be above the fold, page ranks, 301 redirects, and much more.

Optimize every bit of your site serving and web pages with Page Speed – In this session, I learned about a new project called Page Speed. It’s an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on. Developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them. Showslow.com is a demo website that shows the speed of websites. For more information, see Page Speed.

HTML 5 Status Update – In this session, the Chrome team went over new features in HTML 5 we should keep an eye out for. Their demo of the new Gmail was fun and quite intuitive. Drag and drop attachments as if it was a desktop app. New areas in HTML 5 include Offline storage, Media, Networking, CSS3, and Platform Integration (drag and drop, notifications, geolocation).

Interesting iPhone / iPod Touch Apps

I didn’t get to see all the iPhone apps at the show, but of the ones I saw, there were the interesting ones:

• Abvio.com – makes three fitness apps – Runmeter, Cyclemeter, and Walkmeter. The 2.0 versions have many innovative features like mapping out your run (or walk/bike ride) via Google Maps by tracking your on GPS. (iTunes)
• Navigon – an impressive GPS system. The new version features beautiful 3D graphics rendering, built-in social networks features, and automatic route customization based in part on past driving habits. (iTunes)
• QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite is the first and only full-featured Microsoft Office productivity suite for iPhone/iPod touch with integrated access to multiple cloud services. iTunes
• Farm Frenzy 2 – a new version of the cute farm game for kids. Educational game that teaches children how to count and how to take care of a far. I heard that Farm Frenzy Ice Age is just around the corner! Full Version: (iTunes: Full | Lite)
• Cisco WebEx Meeting Center – allows you connect to Cisco WebEx meetings right on the phone! iTunes
• Square is an app that can accept various payment cards. This is a great tool for small businesses and street vendors! Only a small iPhone headphone port adapter and an app – both for 99 cents. Read more..
• Fastrac – helps you plan your day at Disneyland! Select all the rides you would like to go on and what day. The app will calculate what time you should go on each ride, making sure you’re never standing in line too long! (iTunes)

One thing I would strongly suggest next year is to have more space for the developers in the App Pavilion. Exhibitors only had 1/4 of a small table to stand at and to show off their products. Once Friday and Saturday came, it was just too packed.

Favorite Booths

• Targus engaged with the audience via social media. They gave nice bags away if you sent out a tweet about their booth. They also tossed bags and t-shirts into the audience! Most importantly, they had this bag that I just love for my future Apple iPad.
• Smule was such a fun booth! They demoed their “I Am T-Pain” iPhone app and had conference goers singing and auto-tuning their voice. It was great! Pictures!
• Office 2008 for Mac was so cute! They had people dressed up as each one of the Office products. And they’d dance when I ask them to..

Great Learning Opportunities

My favorite thing about attending conferences is all the learning opportunities available. There were various sessions happening all over the expo floor as well as specialized classes and workshops in Moscone West. Some sessions I attended were:

• GameSalad is a software that allows you to make iPhone/Mac Games without any programming at all. They were located in the expo floor, so attendees were able to take various learning sessions offered by GameSalad. Sessions varied from beginner to advanced. Read more..
• Market Symposium SA: Web Development: Tools, Trends and Technology – I attended this session by Nick Floro on my second day at MacWorld. It was a great session on various Web 2.0 technologies. Read more..
• US982: Demystifying iPhone (& iPad) App Development: A Non-Technical Overview for Decision-Makers and Idea People – was a session meant for non-technical uses, but I found it quite informative. Ron walked through all the phases of iPhone App Development, starting with the idea all the way to contracting a developer and putting the app in the store. In addition, I loved all the resources he provided.
  My favorite part was when he showed up some tools for designing the user interface.

I had an amazing time and I can’t wait until next year!

I spent most of my time in the 3 major halls, hoping to cover all the latest in technology for you! Here’s an overview of products that I really enjoyed at the show.

• EnTourage Edge a ebook reader/tablet hybrid
• Lenevo Ideapad Hybrid – new laptop and tablet in one!
• Nokia Booklet 3g is Nokia’s new netbook
• Cocoon Innovations has some nice and stylish bags for all your gadgets. These bags also come with GRID-IT! organization system that I really like. New bags are not on the website yet.
• Case Mate – launched a new line called “I make My Case” where you can design your own case from famous artist’s artwork.
• (*)Speck launched some lines of iPhone/iPod Touch cases — Fitted ArstProjekt, Fitted, and Satin Skin.
• Gelaskins has some beautiful artwork for your devices.
• Tru Protection – has some very nice anti-glare screen protectors for various mobile devices.
• ZipCar is a similar to a rent-a-car service, but no attendants are needed. You just pick up the car at your reserved time and go. They now have an iPhone app where you can reserve the cars.
• AlgebraPrep is a series of new iPhone/iPod Touch apps to help students prepare for Algebra math classes.
• Parrot AR.Drone is a wifi helicopter with 2 cameras on it. You can play it with augmented reality games on your iPhone / iPod Touch!
• OnStar iPhone App – launched last at CES that lets you control your Chevy volt with your iPhone.
• Lego Universe is a new massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) coming out that uses Lego people!
• NVIDIA 3D Vision allows gaming in 3d. Supercool. More..

I’ll be doing blog posts for the individual products later this week. You can read them over at my blog and iProng Magazine.

New: Listen to iProng Magazine on MacCast!

Recently, I had the opportunity of interviewing Felicia Day, star of The Guild, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and more. The article is the cover story for iProng Magazine’s 50th’s issue, and one I’m very proud of. This special issue was released today, hope you enjoy the read!

More articles and writings..

To read more about it, please see UCR Libraries (3rd Redesign)

Read more about my digital scrapbook artwork.