If Andy Ihnatko wasn’t so funny during his presentation Saturday at MacFest, the annual event put on by the Houston Area Apple Users Group, you’d have to feel sorry for him.
Ihnatko — who once was falsely accused of being Fake Steve Jobs — is coming down to the final deadline for a book he’s writing about the iPhone, but nevertheless agreed to fly to Houston from his home in New England. He’d been up late the night before, grinding away, and had only gotten three hours of sleep.
“This presentation brought to you by . . . ” he said, holding up a can of Coca-Cola, one of many he’d knocked back since getting up.
Not only is Ihnatko flying around the country when he should be home writing, the topic he’s covering is a moving target. In the weeks that he’s supposed to have been putting the finishing touches on his book, the iPhone’s price was cut by $200; Apple announced it was creating a Wi-Fi-based version of the iTunes store for it; hackers released iPhone unlocking software; and those who did unlock the phone discovered that the latest update from Apple turns it into an unusable brick or breaks most of the unauthorized applications that have been installed on it.
To illustrate the dilemma, Ihnatko showed a photo of his iPhone, which had so many third-party applications on it that the home screen icons scrolled down out of sight.
His book is due out in December, which leaves plenty of time for more tectonic shifts in the iPhone’s landscape. No wonder Ihnatko’s losing sleep.
MacFest also gave me the chance to finally meet Bob LeVitus in the flesh. Yep, even though I recruited him years ago to write his Dr. Mac column for the Houston Chronicle, we’ve only communicated via phone, e-mail and instant message. We spent some time at Goode Co. BBQ on Kirby talking about many things Macintosh. He’s a great guy!
MacFest wasn’t the only tech event in Houston this weekend. The folks participating in Startup Weekend Houston — a collaborative attempt to conceive, design and launch a Web 2.0 company in just a few days — on Saturday came up with an idea and a name for their new company. From the event’s blog:
We’ve settled on a name! tipdish!
Tippers & Dishers
Think, the tipping point and “dishing” the news. So, “bloggers, podcasters, newspapers, radio people…anybody who gets information out is a Disher. And the Tipper is anybody who has information they want to get out, like a press release, news item, whatever. They want to get information to the public in a crazy way,” says Chris Doelle, Floater (mid-management).
And the “elevator pitch” for the business:
The only place where marketers and influencers connect for brand placement in social media.
I normally cringe at most Web 2.0 names, but tipdish is not bad. It was one of three proposed for the business. The two rejected: mediaconnectr.com and mediamatchup.com.
There’s already a placeholder site up at www.tipdish.com. (Memo to the dev and design teams: Check how your CSS looks in Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista. You have some issues . . . . ) The process continues today at the offices of the Method Agency, and you can catch a live feed. There’s also coverage at the StartupHouston blog.
By the way, how do a bunch of tech geeks unwind after a hard day of coding, brainstorming marketing ideas and building a business plan? Why, with yoga, of course!
Update: I notice the Startup Weekend Houston team has wisely added capital letters to the name. It’s now TipDish. Capital letters are good — they help a name stand out in a sea of text.
Also, Monica Danna of Houstonist is liveblogging today’s proceedings.
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