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I purchased my iPad the first day it became available in early April and have been anxiously awaiting for an iPad version of my favorite productivity utility — dropbox. As many of you know, I use Dropbox with all of my partners and vendors to effortlessly exchange files. I also love to use dropbox to simply keep files available between all of my computers and to some extent, with my iphone and now my ipad.

Today I read in Techcrunch that an iPad version of Dropbox is now available on the iTunes store.  Of course, I quickly headed over to the store and downloaded it — I was on my iPad when reading the article so it was really easy for me to do so.

The App is nicely done and makes good use of the added real estate on the iPad screen to allow users to browse and preview files.  It’s very easy to view photos, videos and even to preview basic documents like excel spreadsheets.

One really promising feature is the ability to open documents in the 3 Apple productivity apps — Keynote, Pages and Numbers.  I tried the Numbers import and it worked as advertised.  The missing feature of course is the ability to store files FROM these app directly into Dropbox.  This would give us true cloud-based storage for the iPad — a feature which is greatly needed.

Dropbox has attempted to solve the iPad-storage failings with a new Mobile API which they dub “Dropbox Anywhere.“  To make this work developers of Apps need to build functionality for these API’s.  A few 3rd party developers have already done so such as Fuze’s FuzeMeeting app, Dictamus, Air Sharing, GoodReader, QuickOffice and Sprite Mobile’s backup tool.

A NEEDED FEATURE

What I would really like to see in this App is the ability to allow users to email a file attachment right into a Dropbox folder. If we had such a feature, there would be less need for developers to adapt their Apps and users would be able to realize the benefits of two-way cloud storage NOW. We cannot count on Apple to ever make use of Dropbox’s API’s (unless of course they elect to purchase Dropbox), but the Apple Apps do have a feature to email files as an attachment. So imagine if Dropbox assigns an email address to each user account — similar to the way services like Google Groups allows users to email files to an online storage account. Users would be able to specify a folder, either via the subject line or through a naming convention in the email address. Is this the ideal method? No. Would it work and accomplish the need? Probably yes! Dropbox, are you listening?

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When the New England Patriots went up to the line last night on 4th and 2 from inside their 30 yard line, I thought for sure that they were trying to draw the Colts offside and could not believe when they snapped the ball. I told my son and wife that it was the worst coaching decision in history — in any sport!

Most of the sports analysts I have heard last night and this morning seem to agree, although when I look at it today from an analytical perspective, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad decision after all. In poker, which I play quite a bit, we often apply math to various scenarios. The math is only one factor that must be taken into consideration when making a poker decision, but it helps establish a base decision making criteria.

Many of you want to quickly dismiss an analytical approach to making this decision, but in truth, most football decisions come down to playing the percentages. The same football analysts who are dismissing the decision to go go for it on 4th and 2 are using math to justify their dismissal of the move. Their arguments usually go something like… can’t he trust his defense to stop Manning and the Colts? They would have had 70 yards to move down the field and Patriots  had been stopping them most of the time. Most stands for a % in these analysts’ minds. Is it 40%, 50%, 60%. It has to be something, right? They are also making the mistake of applying math to some of the decision and not all of it — sure NE can stopping the Colts some significant % of the time, but how often will they make it on 4th and 2 and even if they miss, how often will the Colts score from 30 yards out?  These are all factors that must be looked at.  If not, why not?
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As a kid I always looked forward to visits into New York City when my parents would take me to a see model railroad exhibitions during the holidays. I’ve continued to love model railroads and was just amazed when my dad forwarded me a link to the Miniatur Wunderland exhibition in Hamburg. Isn’t this just incredible?
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As many of you know, I formed a new company and am in the final stages of launching a new app for the Apple iPhone. We recently realized that our Apple Developer agreement was not registered with our official name in the contract. How could it have been? We initially were christened as ‘The iPhone App Company’ but Apple didn’t allow that for trademark reasons. Lucky for us, ‘TheAppCompany.com’ was available and actually works out better since we will be making apps for all popular mobile platforms.

So it shouldn’t be too difficult to change the name in the contract. Right? Not right! The first hurdle is contacting Apple. The developer portal on the their website lists no contact phone numbers so we used the email form on the website. Fast forward a week and we still hadn’t heard from Apple. We did some searching around and after about an hour of surfing from page to page and reading how everyone agrees that there isn’t a phone number we finally found one. It’s clearly very, very difficult to get this number because a guy from Scotland answered the phone on one ring and was extremely helpful — he must not receive many calls!

I gave my new Scottish friend my reference number from the email I sent and he explained how it can take weeks to get someone to read the email, but now that I’m speaking with him I’ll jump to the front of the line. He was right, because that day I heard from a rep that the change is being processed and today I was asked to fax the appropriate documents to prove that we are in fact who we claim to be. Three days later and I received the official notice. THE APP COMPANY is now an official iPhone developer!

I’ll give you more details shortly about the app. You can visit theappcompany.com for a bit more information. Be sure to read the ABOUT page to learn about my fantastic partner Jason Moskowitz.

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During a family vacation a few weeks ago a good friend was telling me about some of the seminars he has attended. This friend is a successful real estate agent and often attends seminars by people like Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, etc. He was mentioning that he had walked on hot coals, broke multiple wood boards without any martial arts training and was able to bend a spoon. His spoon exploits piqued my curiosity when he explained that he didn’t simply bend the spoon, he was actually able to corkscrew it — twist it like it was a piece of paper. He explained that his ability had nothing to so with strength, but involved believing it was possible and harnessing the power of the mind. He likened this to the stories we have all read about when mothers are able to lift a car to free their children.

I was skeptical of this and assumed, if he was able to do it at all, that the spoon must have been made of extremely thin metal. My friend is in good shape, but his build is very average and he would never be confused with an NFL linebacker. That night we had the friend and his family over for dinner at the condo we were staying at and after a great meal and a few drinks I brought out a spoon. The spoons at the condo were far from thin. In fact, they were extremely thick and heavy. I could not even budge the metal when I tried to bend it the long-way. My friend had claimed not to only be able to bend it, but to corkscrew it like it was paper! The friend looked it over and appeared to want no part of it. He hadn’t attempted his mind-bending on a spoon this thick and it had been a few years since he had bent any spoon.
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