A minute later a man and his daughter came to the counter with fabric of their own. I rang the bell again; this time with more gusto. The result was the same leaving Linda to use the only tried and true method of getting help at Wal-Mart. She went hunting for anyone who looked like they worked there. Her expedition was successful and, although the gentleman she brought back with her didn’t look that thrilled to be there, he cut the fabric and we were on our way.

Nothing out of the ordinary, perhaps, but this is Wal-Mart we’re talking about; the company that pioneered computerized inventory control, the company that championed RFID and self-serve check out. Somehow this lo-tech bell seemed totally incongruous. If we were in Target there would, at least have been a call box that announced “Customer assistance needed in the sewing center”.

This is an interesting confluence of old-fashioned and high tech and I would guess that perhaps “the bell” was a local solution as opposed to a corporate solution. I would probably file this under “old habits die hard”.

Quick update.

Wordpress released a “bugs fixed” version of the iPhone app on August 4. Despite previously expressed trepidation, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to Wordpress 2.6. Wordpress and iPhone app are still fully functional after upgrade to 2.6.

This is my first post written via my iPhone. More accurately, it’s my first post ’started’ on the iPhone. I still don’t have enough patience or facility with the iPhone keyboard to create a text intensive post that way.

When Steve Jobs featured a Typepad interface App during the Apps store segment of the iPhone 3G introduction I knew that a Wordpress app would be imminent. And so it was that, on July 22, Automattic Inc. released Wordpress for iPhone. True to the Wordpress mission the application is Free and Open-Source; meaning that anyone can contribute to the development of this app.

Having a lot of eyeballs vetting the App is probably a good idea because there are some problems. I am currently running Wordpress 2.51 and, although Wordpress is encouraging everyone to upgrade to Wordpress 2.6, I think I’ll wait a little while.

My mother also has a Wordpress blog and a new iPhone 3G. When I visited the other day I was anxious to show her the Wordpress App. She was still running Wordpress 2.1 so I had to update her blog to Wordpress 2.6. Some of the reviews on the App store had complained that there was trouble with the Wordpress app on 2.6. Sure enough, my mom was unable to get the app to run.

Now she’s hoping for the bugs to be worked out of the App so she can post while she’s in Japan. Her plane is in the air as we speak as are my plans to upgrade to Wordpress 2.6 and, potentially, lose my iPhone functionality.

Before my children were born there were lots of preparations to be made. We stocked up on parenting books, baby clothes, baby furniture, quilts, toys, mobiles, diapers, and all the other supplies and equipment of parenthood. It was a big deal! The preparation and anticipation were all consuming.

Lest you jump to any hasty conclusions, I’m not about to equate having children with acquiring a new iPhone. There are, however, some interesting parallels.

The Preparation

Once the iPhone 3G and MobileMe were announced I knew my time had come. I had been resisting the siren call of the iPhone up until this point but this was simply too tempting. I have been a .mac subscriber from the beginning but I never took full advantage of its features. I half-heartedly entered some events in the calendar and subscribed to the Red Sox season schedule. I had imported a list of contacts a while back but it was incomplete and not very useful. I had published a couple of photo albums a few years back but I could never remember how to access them. I had even used iWeb to create a website but, ultimately, I found Wordpress much more to my liking. I always had high hopes for the iDisk feature but it was like a black hole for documents. I never knew what had been synced with what and so it wasn’t reliable enough to replace jump drives.

All of this changed for me with the MobileMe interface. Knowing that changes I made in MobileMe or to any of my Macs would be instantly reflected on all other devices was the functionality I had been waiting for. For me, it trumped all of the other reasons I had been cobbling together to justify the use of an iPhone.

So, in preparation for the homecoming of my shiny new iPhone 3G, I set to work. The infrastructure needed to be in place so that, as soon as I first cradled the iPhone in my arms (errr…my hand) it would be fully functional. I started with ‘Contacts’.

My Contacts were incomplete and the list on my old Sprint phone wasn’t much better. So I set about deleting old business contacts that I would never have a reason to get in touch with along with people I knew were no longer alive. I divided the rest into 4 categories: Family and Friends, Old Business Contacts, Academic, and Services. The next step was a lot of fun. By going to my email inbox I was able to easily import everyone’s current (and complete) information into Contacts. I also added a number of friends and colleagues using this method. I was amazed how much information I had at hand. As a finishing touch I imported pictures of most of my family and friends from iPhoto.

iCal was the next project. I entered my academic calendar, conference dates and deadlines, my son’s academic calendar (he never seems to know when classes begin and end, or when his breaks are), and important family events. The next step is to set Linda up on MobileMe and to link to her calendar.

The next MobileMe tab to tackle was Galleries. Well, I obviously had to create some galleries. So it was back to iPhoto where I lost myself in nostalgic reverie for a couple of hours. When I was done I had a gallery for my wedding and familymoon, Red Sox games, and a few others for vacations and special interest categories.

Next was iDisk. This turned out to be more problematic. First of all, I wasn’t able to upload any of my iWork documents to MobileMe. I initially thought that this was a glitch that would be fixed and I moved all my Word and PDF files first. But, after a few days, a trip to the support forums informed me that Pages, Keynote, and Numbers docs are not individual files. Instead they are packages that can only be uploaded to MobileMe after being archived. I decided, instead, to upload these documents to the iDisk folder on my Mac. From there they were automatically synced to MobileMe.

Finally, I decided to visit the Apps store. So I fired up iTunes and entered a whole new universe. I will talk about this more in my next post but, suffice it to say, there were 15 really cool and free Apps waiting in the iTunes Application folder for my iPhone’s ‘first sync’.

So after many hours of preparing the nursery (errr…I mean the supporting software) I was ready to bring home my brand new, 4.7 ounce iPhone.

“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for individuals to denounce the corporate bands which threaten to homogenize our cities and our souls, we must celebrate the powers that make us unique and declare the causes which compel us to remain independent.”

Thus begins the Declaration of Indiebound. Indiebound is the creation of the American Booksellers Association and it has been formed to encourage local bookstores, as well as other independent retailers, to join together in the belief that “healthy local economies help communities thrive”.

I discovered the ‘declaration’ tacked to one of the sturdy old wood columns of the Fountain Bookstore located along the cobblestone streets of Historic Shockoe Slip here in Richmond Virginia. The Fountain is a wonderful bookstore; full of charm, personality, and a selection of books that would warm the heart of any self-respecting book lover.

While we’re on the subject I have to mention the Delocator website. This site is the brainchild of xstine; a global media artist whom I heard speak at the MiT5 conference back in the spring of 2007. The idea of delocator is to guide people to independent alternatives to chain cafes, bookstores, and movie theaters.

You can enter any zipcode and a list of independent coffee shops, bookstores, or movie houses will appear. There is also a version that will work on Google maps and your cell phone. It is a great service made better by allowing anyone to add their favorite independent shop. When I got to my computer (I decided to wait for the rush to die down to get my new iPhone) I saw that the Fountain wasn’t on Delocator. The Cafe Gutenberg, a very cool Richmond cafe just a couple of blocks away, was. I corrected the imbalance by adding the Fountain Bookstore to Delocator.