I see one big problem with Ping: it is based on the Apple ID. Currently, my family shares one Apple ID and iTunes account. This makes the Home Sharing functionality in iTunes actually work. Ping is much more personal. It makes music recommendations based on your listening. Apple needs to rework its Apple ID model to allow master and child accounts. Doing that today creates an unworkable federation of Apple IDs.

AT&T just sent me a nice email about the theft of my private data last week. I find it interesting that this message was sent at 9:45PM on Sunday night.

I took some pictures durning the WWDC Bash (formerly known as the Campus Bash) this year in Yerba Buena Gardens. The band OK Go played. They were really good. I wish their set had been longer.

I took a walk on the peninsula and took a few snapshots. I have a few more to upload shortly. The pictures are of the Golden Gate and of some houses on Baker Beach. I also took some pictures of the Palace of fine art and Pier 39. There are also a couple of cloudy pictures from Pacifica.

I found BlueHost on a site that was comparing it to HostGator. I was experiencing problems with HostGator looking for an alternative. So far the set up for BlueHost has gone smoothly. I was able to copy over my existing site and database. The site popped up. Success. A few hours later I got a phone call to confirm my registration. Unlike my other ISP, they wanted to verify that my phone number was valid. I appreciated that.

I was shopping for a hosting provider to replace HostGator.com. I know someone who uses DreamHost.com so I decided to give them a try. The price seemed right and they offered a free trial. I signed up. After 2 hours trying to get a simple FTP connection the home directory I gave up. There were just too many limitations. Their service is all geared to an all inclusive package that includes domain registration and DNS. Their system is not designed for someone who just needs VPS hosting.

With just over a week left until Steve Jobs takes the stage for the keynote address at this years annual World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, I am thinking about what we might see. After every keynote there is always a short-lived euphoria that results from being inside the reality distortion field followed but a postpartum depression. There are usually two results from a WWDC. Either you are blown away by something that no one knew was coming or you are disappointed because all the crazy rumors did not come true.

There are a number of big magazines out there that have created their own iPad application such as Wired, Time, and Popular Science. At $5 per issue it is hard to justify buying them over the newsstand version. Wired magazine as a monthly is a pretty good deal because the digital version is less expensive than the paper version. Time magazine however is not a good deal at $5 per week when I can get an annual subscription for a couple dollars per issue.

I recently bought a polarizing filter for my camera and finally got a chance to try it out. I was immediately impressed with the results. I still need to do more experimentation with it bit I think It will serve my needs. Since I use an autofocus DSLR, I bought a circular polarizing filter. I chose the Tiffen over the Hoya strictly on price. In my quick experiment I had the sun to my right. I took several shots rotating the filter through its axis.

If you want to send insecure email from your iPad, there's an app for that --or at least an open port. After setting up my iPad 3G I noticed that I had an extra SMTP server listed. This server was both unprotected and insecure. For the uninitiated an SMTP server is used for sending email. Historically this was a service on Port 25 that was provided by your ISP. In the case of an iPad 3G with AT&T service, AT&T is acting as your ISP and would traditionally be the one to provide you with both an email address and an SMTP server to use with it.