Want: iPod on iPad able to browse desktop iTunes à la Home Sharing. Watching WWDC videos on iPad w/o having to sync first–yum.

I received a few recommendations for Air Video and StreamToMe. I’d forgotten that I’d downloaded Air Video but hadn’t set up the server; I’d also forgotten about StreamToMe even though I subscribe to Matt Gallagher’s blog.

I fired up the Air Video Server and started it serving the iTunes U playlist. Connecting and browsing from the iPad client was simple and straightforward. Trying to stream a WWDC video paused to buffer annoyingly often–which I blame less on the software than the 2GHz Mini it was running on, which probably also had the misfortune to have Time Machine kick in at the same time. But it doesn’t seem to have a functionality I implied by the “Home Sharing” reference: Copy the video to the iPad to watch elsewhere later. StreamToMe looks to have similar features (and lack thereof) to Air Video, so I didn’t test it.

I appreciate the recommendations, I really do. But neither of these can get past the one requirement I didn’t specify: I don’t want a third-party solution. My tweet was really a passive-aggressive desire to have Apple implement this.

I have fully committed to iTunes being my central media repository. It serves 157GB of my music, 148GB of movies, 100GB of TV shows, 144GB of iTunes U videos (primarily WWDC videos) and a variable amount of audio and video podcasts. As a result, I don’t have many files in formats foreign to iTunes, which both these applications seem focused on solving and I expect they handle admirably.

Both of my AppleTVs can access any file in the desktop’s iTunes library, even though with 40GB and 160GB drives they obviously can’t hold copies of everything. (True, I can’t instruct an AppleTV to copy files to itself, but I don’t feel the desire to pick it up and take it elsewhere, either.)

My iPad cannot access all the files.

My laptop can browse any file on the desktop’s iTunes library; thanks to Home Sharing it can copy any file just by dragging it to the local library. It can even browse other libraries that are shared on the network.

My iPad cannot copy files to its local library, or browse other shared libraries.

The “digital plumbing” is there in DAAP and Home Sharing to make this happen, but third party developers are left to write their own servers to support their clients. I have no reason to distrust InMethod or Matt Gallagher–and I’m pretty sure that either of them can write a better server than I ever could–but each additional server increases the likelihood of conflicts and security problems, so I don’t want to install and maintain additional, practically redundant servers.

I want a digital hub; one machine serving the same media in different ways is not a hub.

During the iPad announcement, Steve Jobs positioned the iPad as a third type of device “between a laptop and a smartphone.” In my experience, that’s an astute description. In regards to media handling, though, I feel the iPad still behaves much more like my iPhone than my MacBook Pro.

Phone and Laptop Prep

Earlier this week, I changed my phone from syncing with my desktop to syncing with the laptop. Last year I had an older laptop without much room on it for my music, so the iPhone was pretty much read-only during that time. Now I’ll be able to update any new podcasts as well as clear out those I’ve managed to listen to.

As long as I was losing all my application data by linking to a new library (I really wish there were a better transition available for that) I decided to finally bite the bullet and install the 3.0 OS. Beta 5 combined with a 1st Gen iPhone caused me quite a bit of grief to install, but I finally got it going and have been using it since.

I’ve trimmed my music playlist on the phone to make room for more videos to watch while traveling without having to pull out the laptop. My paper book for the week will be Cordwainer Smith’s “When the People Fell” which I’m already partway into, and I have Marcus Zarra’s “Core Data” epub in Stanza on my phone.

I’m somewhat paranoid of losing my phone in general, and the idea of leaving it behind in a swarm of almost identical phones at the conference only amplifies that fear. My normal desktop photo is my wife and daughter, but in a room of people who have just met me–and have never met my family–that won’t help. To improve chances of recovery, I have changed my desktop to my business card. It doesn’t fit perfectly, and I haven’t had the time to rearrange the graphics, but my name and email address are legible for anyone who might find my phone.

External Hard Drive

I installed the latest Snow Leopard developer release onto a portable drive, a Maxtor OneTouch Mini I’d bought a while ago. I haven’t been actively developing against Snow Leopard, so if/when we receive a new dev release at the conference, I will feel free to install over it.

Tip: If you are going to bring an external drive to run dev releases, reformat the drive in advance to use GUID Partition Table or it won’t boot your Intel Mac. That’s a really annoying thing to discover after you’ve gone through the OS install process.

Power

Hotel room outlets are a crap shoot. When you actually find outlets you can reach, they’re usually mostly occupied by appliances already. I always bring along my Monster Outlets-to-Go mini power strip. This thing is just one of those brilliant simple ideas, executed well.

During sessions, I don’t know that I’ll need much power. I’ve found that when it comes to note-taking, I’m more of a paper person than a laptop person. I’m not to the point of buying Moleskine notebooks, but I find writing easier and quicker to edit and annotate than a keyboard, and I focus more on the presentation itself. A paper notebook is also much less awkward to carry around and balance on your lap.

I am planning to carry a power adapter for my phone, though. Like Brent’s suggestion to stay hydrated, phone battery tends to be something you don’t think about until you’re critically low. Carrying a charger should allow me to grab a charge as needed.

Keep In Touch

I found Twitter to be invaluable last year for finding out about both sessions and social events. For those I follow in my closer social circle, I have their updates text message me; everyone else I can check as I wish. I just need to remember to disable the text messaging before I go to bed, then re-enable in the morning.

During the day next week, my Twitter stream will become somewhat cryptic: I tweet the session number and room I’m in (e.g. “101 Presidio”) when in a session; if you’re in the same session hall, you can then choose to look for (or avoid) me.

Feel free to follow me, but don’t be offended if I don’t follow you back. To limit the flow from Twitter, I have a general rule of trying to restrict myself to following people I have met in real life. Feel free to say “hi” and I’ll almost definitely follow you back.

I look forward to meeting as many fellow developers as possible this week, and wish you all a successful WWDC, however you define “successful.”

My wife and I have registered with the State of Washington as “Goracke Consulting, LLC” (the word “Corporation” is not allowed in an LLC name–who knew?) doing business under the name “Corporation Unknown.” It’s been an interesting process; not difficult, but filled with worry about not “doing it correctly” at each step. We made the final step of opening the business bank account on the last day of the year, and are ready to officially enter our first full year of business.

Since last year’s simple goals worked out pretty well, I think I’ll state my business goals for this year. In no particular order:

• WWDC
• C4
• Ship It!
• ?
• Profit!

(Hoo-boy, that joke never gets old.)

I have a couple dev-related posts I’ve been meaning to get out of my head which should be appearing soon. One of them will (if all goes as planned) include shared code I hope people will find useful.

Happy New Year!

Now, C4[2] opened registration and sold out while I was off on a weekend getaway. I hadn’t attended the previous two years, but was hoping to make it happen this year. There’s not much I can do about that except say “bummer” and look on the bright side: I had been very close to booking a flight and room when the dates were first announced, and I haven’t had to spend the day canceling reservations now.

What is the next Mac dev conference this year, and where should I set up my tent for the line?

Most significant is the new logo done by our friends at SkyCubeMedia. Thanks to Sky (and my wife’s initial sketch), I now have a site identity I can carry around (in the form of business cards) to WWDC.

Corporation Unknown will serve to track the course of my progress to an intended career as an independent Mac software developer. No, I don’t hate my job (even though it’s not Mac development), but I do feel that this is the long-term path to my career happiness and further success. We will track milestones on the way to launch, and share insights gained along the way–both in business and code.

Obviously, there is a product planned; it’s not Web 2.0, and it’s not going to change the world as you know it (in version 1.0, at least). It will be easier to use than what’s out there, yet more powerful at the same time–and I already have plans for more powerful future versions.

Let us begin…