Drum roll, please.

Merriam-Webster gave the honor to 'w00t'. American Dialect Society gave it to 'subprime'. Locavore earned the dubious honor from Oxford.

Not one to shy away from popular fads on the internet, I wanted to play along. After careful consideration and some deliberation with Dawn, I have chosen the mattbeckwith.com word of the year: podcast.



Ok, so some of you might catch me on the technicality here. Oxford named 'podcast' their word of the year in 2005. I started listening to podcasts in 2005 and in the time since I have all but given up terrestial radio. Driving nearly three hours a day, I used to be an NPR junky. Nowadays, I might just need to pull out the owner's manual for my car stereo to figure out how to turn on the radio.

I subscribe, and listen, to 67 podcasts. Most are weekly, some are daily, some are between monthly and weekly. I listen to shows on technology, news, management and couple-casts, among others. So, is 'podcast' the word of the year because I spend so much time listening? There must be more to it than that, right?

Of course. 2007 brought so many great podcast moments. Some highlights:

September - Podcast and New Media Expo
May - Pizza Go Here is born
April - Beckwith Family Podcast is launched
April - Manager Tools conference
April - My Mostly Trivial "appearance"
February - Tour of California
January - Macworld / Mac podcast meet-up
January - I started writing for Typical Mac User

Through podcasting, we have met some great people, in the real-world and in the podosphere. I've had the chance to spend some time with some of the brightest, most interesting people I have ever met, way too many to list. We are grateful for the amazing people all over the world that have allowed us into their amazing lives.

Podcast.

If you have a computer and a pulse, there is a podcast for you. You don't need an iPod. Download iTunes, go to the podcast directory and take a look. While you're there, check out our show, Pizza Go Here.


Me and Victor, one of the kings of podcasting.

Podcast.

Months after we were first teased with demonstrations of the next release of Mac OS X, Leopard was unleashed today. I arrived at the Apple Retail Store about 4:30 and waited with a bunch of other Mac faithful. The best part was seeing the reaction on the faces of the passers by asking what we were standing in line for. Just as the Apple website countdown clock hit zero (we were all verifying on our iPhones) the doors flung open to enormous applause from the gang of Apple employees. As they cheered and high-fived us, we piled into the store to claim our copy of Leopard.



Now for a couple of observations. Leopard was not the only thing flying off the shelves. It's no secret that Apple retail stores are sales powerhouses (see Apple Stores Now More Profitable Than Tiffany's Per Square Foot) and anyone at an OS launch day can easily see why. Anecdotcally, nearly half of the people I saw snatching up Leopard were also buying external hard-drives. I recommended the LaCie Big Disk 1TB drive to a fellow shopper but they sold out of all of them in just a few minutes. Gone, too, were the 500GB LaCie drives among most other high capacity external hard-drives. The cool thing was to see just how many new Mac users there were joining in on the fun of a new OS launch.

Two hours versus twenty? Waiting on line for the iPhone was great fun, but doesn't come close to the excitement of the Leopard launch. Sure, it might've been because we got my iPhone at an AT&T store but I still think the excitement of the crowd was still higher today. I mean, the iPhone is cool because it is a phone and it has the look and feel of Mac OS X... but Leopard is Mac OS X!

Well, I just glanced over to the PowerBook and see that the installation is complete... time to get to work. I opted for an erase + clean install on that computer. Later this weekend - the iMacs get the upgrade.

Rock on Leopard!

Did you get Leopard? Waiting on the fence? Mac-curious? Check out the greatest Mac podcast on the net - Typical Mac User.

Check out some pics here.

Dawn and I made the drive down to Ontario (California, not Canada) for the 2007 Podcast and New Media Expo. We have met a ton of other podcasters and are having a great time.

Last night we met up with some other podcasters at the Couple Cast meet-up at the Ontario Mills Mall. It was great to meet Dan and Cj from Love Long and Prosper, Steve and Dawn from For What It's Worth, Matt and Amy from the Redboy Podcast, Rob and Tina from Learning to Fly Together and Barely from Barely Podcasting. There were a lot of other podcasters there but we didn't get a chance to meet them all.

It was great to finally meet Steve and Dawn from For What It's Worth. We have been listening to their podcast for a long time but really wanted to meet them to personally thank Steve for the Pizza Go Here art work.


Today, we met Chuck and Kreg from Technorama (and others), Doug Welch from Career Opportunies (and others), Shelly Brisbane from Shelly's Podcast, Rob Walsh from Podcast411 and Today in iPhone, Ken Ray from Mac OS Ken, Tee Morris from Billibub Baddings and Podcasting for Dummies, Adam Raimer from Mad Town Aces, Don McAllister from ScreenCastsOnline, Aaron from the Big Show, Charles Cadenhead from Mostly News and Desperate Husbands, and a bunch of others.

Congratulations to Chuck Tomasi on being named the co-author of the upcoming Podcasting for Dummies book, along with Tee Morris!

Tonight we had dinner with Steve Holden from Tech News Radio and the Jersey Boys Podcast and Mike Auzenne from Manager Tools. Afterward, we hung out with Victor, Adam, Steve, Chuck, Kreg, Mad Marv, Chris from Amateur Traveler, Steve from Geek Cred - thanks guys for letting us hang out with you.

Check out the pictures here.

Wow! That's the best way to describe this phone. Since January I have been eagerly waiting for the iPhone. Could this small device truly be all that Apple and AT&T said it would be? Was it really going to perform like those great videos Apple released in the last couple of weeks? For the last several years I have carried about 10 different cell phones and a few different PDA's and Blackberries. I have never found a device that did a good job of syncing my life (e-mail, calendar, contacts, etc.) and have been stuck with a Razr for the last 18 months, waiting for the iPhone.

After spending 20 hours in line with Emily, I finally got an iPhone in my hand shortly after the AT&T store re-opened. The employees of the store were great and added to the carnival like atmosphere. Once I got home I took the iPhone out of the box and connected it to my iMac. My activation went flawlessly and my number moved from my Razr to my iPhone in just a couple of minutes. Syncing my pictures took the longest time but by 7:00 I was making calls and sending e-mails.




Although it could have been due to the plethora of blogs, podcasts and the Apple videos about the iPhone before it was released, I had no problems whatsoever setting up or using the device. The menus and functions are all very intuitive and most have a similar look-and-feel as their Mac counterparts.

I couldn't browse the internet using WiFi the first night but once I edited the static IP WiFi options on the iPhone I was on my wireless network. I have pretty slow DSL so I didn't mind using the Edge network. Websites really looked great on here. I bet the NY Times got a lot of traffic because that was one of the first sites I could think of to visit.



Visual voicemail is awesome! Instead of "dialing" in to the voicemail system and fumbling my way through the menu to find the options for greeting there is a "Greeting" button once I selected voicemail on the Phone menu. I was purposely missing some calls just to get a voicemail... something I would have never done with any other phone! This feature is amazing!

Google maps has great detail on the satellite view and looking for directions was a snap, even without GPS. I will never get lost again (yeah, right)!

The camera feature is cool... with it's full screen view finder and the pictures seamlessly work iPhoto. With good lighting it takes pretty good picture!



The typing did take some getting used to... notice I said "did" and not "does". After a full day of e-mailing and texting I've got it down! Typing is very comfortable, more so than on my Blackberry and faster than traditional predictive text. I really like how it guesses my mistakes when I "fat-finger" a word. I thought I was going to be disappointed that I can't text page pictures but it is so easy to e-mail which is even better!

All in all, this is the greatest phone ever and I had a blast waiting in line with Emily and the other iPhone iPhans!

Time again to plug two great podcasts. If you have an iPhone (or just want to learn more about it) check out Today in iPhone. Rob does a great job covering the iPhone. Also, check out Victor's show and blog at Typical Mac User.

Check out the pictures here.

Yes, it's 2:00 am and Emily and I are camping out in front of the AT&T store to get the iPhone (for me... not her). We are 5th in line so I am all but certain that the greatest-phone-since-the-invention-of-the-phone will soon be mine.





Only 16 more hours to go!

Are you getting an iPhone? Then you have to check out two great podcasts, Typical Mac User and Today in iPhone.

While I was waiting for my flight in Sacramento I took a screen shot of the speed test I ran. Not bad for free.



Now in Dallas, with a little bit of time on my hand, I figured I'd spend the $10 to get online. Such as in life... you get what you pay for.

It's 8:30 in the morning in sunny Sacramento. I should be on an airplane approaching the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. All of the passengers boarded before 6:00 am and it seemed as if we would be heading out quickly. Then, the pilot came on the cabin radio and said that the aircraft had been "turned off" the night before and the technicians were now having a hard time re-starting all of the computer systems. After a complete re-boot of the plane (several minutes), they powered everything up and discovered that the computer was not going to work - I wonder if American Airlines is running Vista!

So, all of the passengers de-planed (I love this term), retrieved luggage (shouldn't it be de-checked luggage) and got in line at the AA ticket counter to re-book another flight.

An hour of standing / sitting / standing in this line and what can I do? Well, fire up the PowerBook, of course... after all, Sacramento International Airport has free WiFi.








*** 8:32 am update ***

Just as I finished publishing this entry a nice woman working for American Airlines walked down the line asking everyone if Dallas was their final stop. I was the only one left who was not traveling any further than DFW so she plucked me from the line, much to the disgruntlement of the others, and took me right up to the counter and got me checked in for the 11:30 am departure. Coincidence? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was the power of my blog entry that got me plucked out of that line, that line that had at least a few more hours left.

Tired? Yes, but it could have been a lot worse than five and a half hours.

*** 12:30 pm update ***

Well, 11:30 came and went. At 11:50 the agent announced that our replacement plane hadn't yet left San Francisco. The departure time on the gate board now reads 12:50 pm. Yikes!

Even though we have never owned a video game console we have wanted a Nintendo Wii from the first time we saw our young nephew play with his. Well, wii finally got one; Dawn and the girls surprised me with an early Father's Day gift. We only have Wii Sports and have played Tennis, Bowling and Boxing. The Wii was so easy to set up and connect to our home network. We all had a lot of fun creating our Mii's (even though Mak was a little perturbed that Nintendo didn't really offer her shade of red hair). Here's a picture of us - if anyone knows how to transfer high quality Mii's from our Wii to a computer please let me know.

I am a self-professed podcast junky. One of my favorite podcasts is Mostly Trivial, with your host Johnee Bee. After doing some research on the penny-farthing bike I bought recently, I decided to pitch some trivia questions to the show. I was driving home from work, listening to podcasts, and Mostly Trivial started to play. I was blown away when Johnee Bee introduced the category as 'bicycles'. I'm practically famous! Finally, I knew all of the questions.

If you haven't listened to Mostly Trivial, give it a try. It is a short, very well produced weekly show.

Check out the episode I contributed to here.

Click here for Mostly Trivial on iTunes.

My first trip to Macworld was great! We had an absolute blast at the expo and afterward at the Mac Podcasters meet up. Check out the piece I wrote for the Typical Mac User Podcast (http://typicalmacuser.com/wordpress/?p=237).

The non-Mac highlight of the day had to be meeting Sinbad. He is a true Mac fan and it was great to talk to him about his thoughts on the iPhone.



Check out the pics here.

Macworld Conference & Expo is next week and Mike and I will be there on Thursday!



We have all been inundated with rumors of the iPhone and an early release of Leopard; iTV seems to be a no-brainer, as does a re-vamped iLife / iWork.

Here are my predictions (ok, some of them are merely hopes) for Tuesday's keynote presentation:

1. There will be no iPhone (although Jobs will make jokes about it).
2. Leopard will be released earlier than originally announced.
3. iWeb will be completely re-vamped to integrate one-touch publishing for hosting services other than dot-mac. It will also finally give us a simple file management system and easy editing of css attributes.
4. iTV will be the grandest announcement at the event as it will contain many more features than we were led to believe.
5. Mac Spreadsheet will be lame.
6. The 100 GB iPod will be finally come out, the next version will be WiFi and Bluetooth.
7. dot-Mac will be upgraded with increased storage space and iCalendar sharing improvements.
8. A mammoth 42 inch iMac is released.

Maybe, just maybe, there will be some other updates as well:

a new lisa?

a new Newton?

There you go. Enjoy Macworld!

Due to overwhelming fan outcry, I have finally posted the video for Hopes & Prayers on YouTube (check it out here). Ok, so there are really no fans... but I thought I'd post it anyway. The song was recorded in early 2003 in The Outback. Jason wrote the song, played all of the instruments and sang lead vocals; Rich and Tish sang background vocals and I got to put the whole thing together. I have always thought this was the coolest song I ever worked on... in fact, it is so cool, it needed a video. Enjoy!

You can also view the full quality version of the video here.

We always knew that this day would come... the day that we would need an external hard drive. So, a few months ago we bought a 500 GB Lacie Big Disk. It's hard to believe that the first computer we owned as a family had a 2 GB hard drive (the same size, ironically, as the card in our digital camera) and there weren't a lot of others with a hard drive that big! Needless to say, with our music collection and digital pictures, we could barely survive with the 100 GB on the PowerBook and 80 GB on the PC. What pushed us over the edge was our quest to convert all of our VHS to DV. With 60 video tapes or so there are hours and hours to copy... stay tuned as we will be posting some of the classics.

What goes better with a new domain and a new external hard drive? A new host! Our new site is hosted and registered by GoDaddy.com. Their prices can't be beat and their service is amazing... they have 24x7 live phone tech support and service... wow... what hosting company does that.

The new hard drive has also given me the chance to re-organize all of our photos (Dawn's going through all of our photo albums and boxes of pictures). Sometimes a picture jumps out and slaps you in the face... like this one... any guesses where and when it was taken? Let us know by clicking on the 'Comments' link below. Gas for under a buck?!?! Wow!





... plus, new pics of Emily, Makenzy, Chris, Rachel, Elizabeth, Pamela, Kenny, Maryssa, Mike, Shauna, Tony and Christina and even Pong Master Bruce and his family added to the 2006 pics page!

We were in the process of updating the site... hadn't decided which program is better. iWeb is really cool but the structure is difficult and there are only a handful of themes. RapidWeaver has been the tool of choice ever since I stopped doing it on a pc and will continue to be my favorite on the mac.





See ya!