It definitely was a fun & educational weekend a couple weeks ago here in Boston for 2009’s Voices That Matter: iPhone Developers Conference. The hundred or so attendees all had their MacBooks out, taking notes, downloading presentations, and even coding as some of the speakers demonstrated the challenges of tomorrow and the best ways to tackle them. It was great to be in a building full of smart people — mostly developers, some designers, and some business folks — and be able to get different perspectives on where the iPhone and mobile in general is headed.

There were 20 presenters in total covering topics  ranging from app submission best-practices, to advanced accelerometer techniques, to hybrid app development, and more. I thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of my favorite presentations and share some of the documentations (if available). Read more →

This is really interesting. Google Labs is experimenting with allowing users to incorporate their various social network profiles with their Google accounts. What this’ll do is provide a section in your search results that pulls content from your “social circle” that’s related to your search query. These results can come in the form of blog posts, tweets, pictures, and more. And it doesn’t just pull from your direct circle of friends but your extended networks as well — very cool. Check out the video above for a brief overview or see Google’s post here.

If this interests you, check out my friends over at Pinyadda. They’re are a bit ahead of the curve by building a social platform that collects news and various articles based on the sites and topics interest you the most; sort of like if Twitter or Facebook took on RSS.

Looks like the people over at the CNN’s Web Design teams have been busy. I think I need a bit of time to digest and get used to the new design before I can say if it’s a real improvement, but first impressions are also important:

• a bit jarring visually compared to the previous design/template — felt very RED and a bit heavier.
• I kinda wish they could have taken the new design across the entire site (minor criticism)
• looks like there’s more emphasis on media visuals. Video especially feels like it has more prominence.
• homepage gets a little bare below the fold.
• news pulse feature is great. It’s basically CNN’s flavor of Digg, but with ‘popularity'(???) driving the rankings.
• better integration of social features. comments are nice (why no facebook connect?), more prominent linking to facebook, twitter, & others, nicer iReport, and again NewsPulse is great.

Overall, I think CNN.com has a cool new design. CNN is setting the bar in the online space for news and media companies by proving their users with a very clean, slick look and feel, adding lots of great new features, and emphasizing their strengths in multimedia and social media. Sure there’s the whole issue of creating more serious revenue from these ‘sites’, but I think CNN’s strategy is to simply grow an audience first by concentrating on user experience… and the money will eventually follow (right, facebook?).

Just installed a WordPress plugin called Lifestream. After some headaches around upgrading to PHP5.0 and tweaking some CSS, I was finally able to get it running properly. Lifestream publishes all the activity from my social web “life”. So it’s basically a dumb facebook feed that is just part facebook activity… you’ll also see music I listen to on Pandora, apps I’ve rated on the iTunes App Store, new blog posts, stuff I Digg, my tweets, etc.

Check out my lifestream here.

Contrary to what Gizmodo posted today, I actually think this Verizon ad is somewhat clever. It may seem like the marketing execs over at VZW are getting a bit desperate with this obvious attack at the iPhone, but I think — despite it’s corniness —  it’s pretty smart and targeted.

Of all the US carriers, it’s safe to say that VZW has the collection of the least exciting mobile devices. AT&T, Sprint, & T-Mobile all have flagship smarphones, and perhaps Verizon is now ready to put some money behind their own, The Motorolla Driod. The specs are impressive and so is the Android 2.0 OS. Personally, I think the iPhone is still the device to beat, but not everyone buys into what Apple’s selling. And with this new Moto supposedly being “the Android device to beat,” I think this is a clever attempt at wooing all the smartphone users with contracts expiring and also those people that haven’t yet found something exciting enough to buy that isn’t an iPhone.