Earlier today, Apple announced the tablet computer the world has been waiting for. And it isn’t quite a tablet or a computer. It’s more of an entertainment device – a “third category” as Steve Jobs put it – and one I don’t really think the world needs.

I’ve never been really excited about the idea of a tablet, so I was biased from the start. A keyboard is pretty essential to me for anything, I type very fast and have no patience for anything that slows me down. That said, I was still curious to see what Apple was going to do beyond making a really big iPod Touch. I mean, this is Steve Jobs, I expect to see a paradigm shift, a massive step forward, a change in the way we do things. That’s where I’m disappointed.

The iPad is a big, expensive ($499 for the cheapest version without 3G), iPod touch.

The positive – there are going to be people who will love this thing (other than the usual Apple fan boys/girls). It’s gorgeous, and if beautiful design is your thing, you’re going to love using this. It’s a nice entertainment device, a decent size to watch television on, iPod, and a good ebook reader. If someone doesn’t have access to a television or other computer, this could fill that gap. Maybe someone with roommates or college students. Business folks will also love whipping this out in a meeting to do a presentation. Assuming, of course, that they don’t mind presenting in Keynote. It’s also going to open up an entirely new world of computer gaming as people innovate with the touch screen interface. Someone who travels a lot would like this as well (battery life is reportedly around 10 hours) – so long as they don’t mind using the screen to type, or carrying another laptop/netbook.

There definitely IS a use for this. I simply don’t think that now is the time for it. It won’t replace a computer – you can’t run Word or PowerPoint on it, you can’t even do something as simple as keep AIM open while surfing the web – and it isn’t a phone either. No camera, no GPS, no keyboard, no Flash. How many programs are you running on the machine you’re reading this post on? You couldn’t do that, it’s clearly not intended for work. This would have to be complimentary, an entertainment-focused device in addition to a computer and phone and a television…and that’s where it loses me. The costs don’t work out.

I’m not the average user, I know that. I have an iPhone, iPod, Netbook, Kindle, and Macbook Pro, and they all have different uses for me. I rarely watch videos online, that’s what the Roku and TiVo are for, and I like being able to curl up in bed with a kindle without having to worry about touching the screen or it rotating. I have absolutely no use for the iPad, it doesn’t offer me anything at all beyond what I already have.

Then there’s a name. Immediately after the presentation was over, the word iTampon was trending on Twitter. The name iPad was not. The jokes are never going to end (in fact, they started years ago), and it gives me crazy giggles to think that there’s an iPeriod app for the iPad.

The bottom line is – there is nothing revolutionary about this. It’s pretty, it’s cool, I’ll absolutely drool over it when I see it, but that’s about it. If any other company had announced this, I would have shrugged. But it’s Apple – I expect innovation, and there’s very little.

Oh well. But hey, it’s first gen. I’ll wait until next year for the brain implant.

A few weeks ago, I went on a short trip to the Grand Canyon. A friend of mine and I had planned a trip to Las Vegas, and really just threw the Grand Canyon in there as an additional “why not” type thing.

It ended up being unbelievable, and without a doubt the most memorable part of the trip – Las Vegas doesn’t even come close.

A quote from the recent Ken Burns special on PBS works well:

When the Creator made it, he forgot to create a word to describe it.

I don’t necessarily believe in a Creator, but this still fits. There are no words.

We went to the South Rim, to Grand Canyon Village, where you can go to various different spots to look around (or if you are so inclined, hike in). Our first view of the Canyon was around 5am, right as the sun was about to come up, and it truly took my breath away. We all felt a need to whisper, we didn’t want to disturb the beautiful peace in front of us. Even my pictures look amazing, and I’m a pretty lousy photographer using a fairly old camera (the friend I went with IS a photographer, so most of my pictures for posterity are hers), although the majority of my sunrise pictures didn’t come out due to low light.

The first time I went to Paris, I felt an instant connection, an immediate need to spend more time there. And I did – a few years later I spent over a week in Paris staying at a friend’s apartment and simply tooling around the city like a Parisian. I hope to do that again, many, many times.

I feel the same way about the Grand Canyon, even though the experience is completely different. I want to spend more time there, not staring at it from above, but inside of it. I want to go down the Colorado, see the things that you can only see by river.

What amazed me the most, and I think a large part of the reason I need to go back – its not want, its need – is how untouched it is. Even up on the Rim, it’s not a huge resort town with lots of cars and hotels. It’s a very bare National Park, with basic cabins and campgrounds everywhere you look. There isn’t any entertainment – the entertainment is all around you, miles and miles of nothing.

It’s not just a big hole, as Chevy Chase said. It’s a spectacular look into history, at something created by the earth itself. It is amazing to think that something like this wasn’t planned, that it just happened, and yet, it did.

I am already looking into taking a river run sometime in 2010/2011 (these things have to be booked ages in advance), I want to plan and book it before the magic feeling the Grand Canyon created in me goes away. I know it will – feelings like that wear away with distance and time – but as long as I’ve already planned my trip back I can maybe keep some little piece of it alive.

Years ago, a woman around my age stepped up to the edge of the Rim, looked at the Grand Canyon for the first time, and was so stunned by the view that she fainted, falling in. As sad as that story is, I totally get it. The feeling is that incredible, your breath is taken away, and I can’t wait to feel it again.

You can see all my pictures from the Grand Canyon here.

There were a large number of sponsors at BlogHer, all giving out a large number of products to people. There were also individual bloggers who were sponsored by various companies to go to BlogHer and pass out schwag on their behalf. It all felt a bit like a movie poking fun at product placements. The Green Session sponsored by Clorox? Lunch sponsored by Ragu?

I think the problems people had with sponsor related things at the conference can be broken into three groups. The conference sponsors themselves, the sponsored bloggers attending the conference, and the amount of schwag received at the conference.

1. The Schwag

People complaining about there being *too much schwag* simply haven’t attended enough conferences to see that this is what happens.

I remember needing an extra suitcase each year to bring home all the stuff I got at E3, and loving it. Don’t want it? Don’t take it or give it back. People do have the ability to say no, don’t they?

There was a schwag recycle area, and when I showed up with my stuff, there was someone standing right there who took almost everything I was giving back off of my hands. She also gave me a cute little travel candle that I rather like.

I would also be a total hypocrite if I complained about the makeup/fashion sponsors, because, well, I love what I got. I adore Lush, the new lip balm thingy is pretty neat, Mary Kay has great lipstick, and let’s face it, Ann Taylor has now given all of us the most stylist USB drive we will ever see. We ARE women, and it makes sense to me that there would be brands targeting women here.

2. The Sponsors

All conferences need sponsors to survive.

Let’s face it, sponsors are absolutely necessary. Maybe the conference needs very clear tracks to it, like others tend to do. The mommy blogging track sponsored by Wal-Mart. The Geek track sponsored by someone else (there weren’t very many geek sponsors). And an independent track nobody sponsors so there is no feeling of favoritism.

3. The Sponsored Bloggers

Biases and priorities need to be made clear.

A number of bloggers at the conference were sponsored, given scholarships, or paid (I’ve heard all three terms used to describe the same thing) to go to the conference on behalf of some brand. While there, they would then promote the brand or hand out product wherever they were, be that on a panel or at a party.

It is a given that the name of the company you work for belongs on your conference badge if you are there for the company. It should be no different with sponsors – if you’ve been sent there by random brand name, your badge should say “Sponsored by Random Brand.” That makes it very blatant, and may even prevent some people from accepting these sponsorships in the future.

Thank you to the sponsors.

Without the sponsors, the conference fees could easily have been in the thousands, as most conferences are. Many women would not have been able to go, and, well, I’m not going to need to buy laundry detergent for a while (and as a girl who doesn’t have a job, I appreciate that).

BlogHer is a conference that is growing in size and maturity, and as it grows, it will need to follow more of the standards that other conferences do. But please – sponsors – hear the message of “thank you” louder than any other. We appreciate all that you’ve done, and look forward to seeing you again next year.

I’m on the plane now headed back to San Francisco, after a fun few days in Chicago for BlogHer. I have mixed feelings about the conference, which I will get into, but I do want to make sure I say this up front:

I had a wonderful time, met some amazing people, am glad that I went, and have already bought my ticket for BlogHer ‘10 in NYC next year.

We only criticize that which we love, right?

So, onto the critiquing. I think this is going to end up split into a couple of posts, since as usual, I got rambly.

Where were the actual experts?

BlogHer had lots of panels run by various women, but very few actual “experts” to speak of. Seeing people who’ve been blogging or twittering for a year being elevated as ‘expert women in technology’ really gets to me. It’s just like being able to drive a car and claiming you are an expert working in the automotive industry.

The real expert, respected female bloggers weren’t at the conference. Where was Kathy Sierra – who knows better than anyone what can happen when you become too exposed as a blogger. Where was Sarah Lacy, who’s published one (second one is on the way, I think) book on the industry, and is now a regular blogger at TechCrunch. Gina Tripani from Lifehacker. Kara Swisher from All Things D. Megan McCarthy, Molly Wood, Natalie DelConte.  They don’t blog about Pampers, but they are very widely read female bloggers. What about Veronica Belmont, Amber Mac, you could call them video bloggers.

It does a lot of harm to hold people up as experts when they’re not, or at least, not without very explicitly narrowing down the field they are experts in. “This person is an expert at talking to 50k people on twitter about random stuff,” is very different than “this person is a technology expert.”

And it is, unfortunately, a gender thing. Men would never put up with it. If some article came out in the New York Times calling a guy who wrote a couple of blog entries over the last year a technology expert, Michael Arrington and others would have their hides. Men, understandably, don’t consider someone an expert until they’ve proven themselves. Women, for some reason, are a bit more loose with that, and will sometimes consider a woman an expert because the woman themselves said that they were.

When we allow the media to elevate women with no practical industry experience as technology experts we leave the impression that there aren’t any better experts out there. And THAT is terrible.

If there are going to be expert panels, they should be run by actual experts. Not someone who has 10,000 followers, and therefore thinks they know all about Twitter. Want to do an expert panel on Twitter? Get someone from Twitter on the panel. Panel on Wordpress? Get someone from Automattic. Most of the panels at BlogHer would never fly at any other kind of conference. Harsh to say but, well, assuming the panels even got started because of the sponsorships (which I’ll cover in another entry), the panelists would have been laughed off the stage.

What are these non-experts teaching people anyway?

Teaching someone how to download Tweetie is helpful, but only touches the surface of what a lesson on Twitter should be.

A session on privacy and identity that tells people to use the privacy features on Facebook to protect themselves is misleading and dangerous.

This is what happens when people are running sessions on technology they don’t fully understand themselves, and why you really do need “real” experts to do the teaching.

Thank god for the geek lab!

The vast majority of sessions I went to were what were called “Geek Lab” sessions, held in one side of one little conference room. I learned PHP, Apache, htaccess, and CSS. Of course, I didn’t have time to learn much…while other sessions were 1-2 hrs and held in a large room, ours were 1/2 hr each and competing for attention with another session on the other side of the room.

It very much left the impression that these “women in technology” didn’t actually care about the technology part, and that’s a horrible thing.

Please guys, don’t see this as typical.

My biggest fear is that men will look at BlogHer, and assume that all women online want to write about hand cream, be paid to go to conferences, pitch air freshener, and couldn’t care less about the technology running the tools they’re using. It’s NOT TRUE.

BlogHer has to change to be a bit more accurate. Merge with Mom 2.0 or something (which really is a conference for ALL mommy bloggers) – or make a concerted effort to be what they claim to be…an open conference for all women bloggers. Merge with She’s Geeky or work with the Webgrrls to give the tech bloggers some sort of presence there.

They also need to pay more attention to their “expert panels,” and who’s on them. Expertise aside, a panelist who was sponsored by some company to go to BlogHer is obviously going to promote that company. If that’s not disclosed (as it so often isn’t), the credibility of the panel is shot.

It’s all fixable.

And that’s the good thing. These are all things that can be changed. None of the current content needs to be excluded, it just needs to be promoted more realistically for what it is. “Learn about Twitter from someone who has tons of followers,” instead of “Meet a Twitter expert.” Get someone from Twitter to do the actual Twitter expert panel. Learn about privacy from Parry Aftab instead of someone who thinks Facebook’s privacy controls are the end all and be all of content management.

BlogHer just needs to use the same quality control for their panels that other conferences use and ensure that their panelists have the credentials, experience, and knowledge necessary for whatever their panel topic is.

As I said above, I will totally be at BlogHer next year. And I would love to do whatever I can to get the right people into the right panels, to get more actual technology content into the technology conference, and make this next BlogHer a bit more inclusive for ALL female bloggers.

During the closing keynote, a conversation started about how people could be “addicted” to twitter. My first thought was, if your friends think you’re addicted, you need new friends.

But in all seriousness, to me, Twitter, email, Facebook & IM are much more useful communication tools than the phone. It is pretty expected that people will be available by phone at all times. I don’t see a difference – especially when you consider that my phone doesn’t always work (thanks to AT&T). I can almost always check my email or Twitter.

I do not understand – AT ALL – people saying “I’m not going to check my email for a week.” I don’t get how that is any different than someone saying “I’m not going to answer my phone for a week,” which you know nobody ever will do. It’s simply a different form of communication.

It is an accepted fact that people are using email less because they’re moving to Facebook or IM. I would bet that people are using their phone less as well – I know in my case, if the phone rings, something is wrong. Isn’t saying “I’m going to avoid email” just shutting yourself out from the rest of the world?

It is not uncommon for me to have a conversation that starts on IM or Twitter, continues on SMS, moves to Facebook, then ends up in person. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one either. I have some friends I talk to on Twitter (privately), some on Facebook, some on MySpace, some on email. Nobody calls me, which is fine with me, all of my “real-life” friends have picked whichever format they’re most comfortable with and talk to me there.

Whatever method we use for communication, it’s clear that there are positives and negatives. I just wish that people would look at them for what they are….email is a phone call in text form, IM is a twitter sent to your screen….don’t shut it out because of what it is.

It’s the message, not the medium!

I’ve been too busy today to write anything so far, which I think is a very good thing!

I spent this morning, and early afternoon, in GeekLab sessions, learning all about the inner workings of Wordpress. I think I may actually have learned enough that I know now why you get that 404 page if you try to leave a comment, although I’m not about to fix it on the fly, I need to dig in, learn a bit more php first, and so on. But this has been a lot of fun, in the past two days I’ve gone to sessions on PHP, Apache Server, htaccess, and CSS. SO helpful.

I was also interviewed today for a segment on PBS’ Frontline about “Digital Life.” Pathetically, I have had a number of dating experiences that have unintentionally popped up due to meeting people online. I’ve dated people I’ve met through ICQ, Friendster, and IRC, and really, not all of the experiences were terrrible (although, as I pointed out to them, I’m still single, so what’s that tell you?). The producer was laughing, but hopefully that’s a good thing. The documentary will air on PBS sometime in January 2010, but bits and pieces will be online in a few weeks – I will post a link here as soon as it’s out.

Tonight there are parties and more parties, I’m sure I’ll end up at a few. Last night I ‘took it easy’ (relatively speaking), and only went to the official cocktail party here, and the Blogalicious party over at Lush in Macy’s. It was very cool to meet the LawMom ladies, though, and totally worth the cab ride over. Plus…Lush? Say that and you’ll get me anywhere.

All in all, this is just an awesome experience, and I’m so glad I came.

This session, the final of the day, is the “Community Keynote,” where BlogHer community members read some exceptional blog entries. I love this session!! I was part of it last year, reading an entry about Twitter, but dear god, some of the other entries people read were amazing. Way out of my league, they were incredible. I went from laughing to crying within the hour, and still read a lot of the blogs I discovered through there.

So! These are some of the highlights from today, although I do recommend checking out the link at the bottom and reading them all. Amazing blog entries, every one.

• Melissa Davis was the first to leave the audience in tears. Very touching story about her Uncle getting in an accident at 24, developing paranoid schitzophrenia, and becoming homeless. Amazing, because she focuses on her uncle – the man – and what his personality was like, what he enjoyed doing. Not on the fact that he was mentally ill and homeless. *and I’m already in tears*
• Karen Walrond had a blog entry about Obama, written back in January. Great quote “it’s not always easy living in a country where you look different.” Sad to hear the passive aggressive racism she’s seen. As recently as December “well, you’re not REALLY black, are you?” Unbelievable.
• JD from “I do things so you don’t have to.” She told a story about what she did when she was 10 yrs old, fell off a picnic table, exaggerated how bad it was, and ended up spending a night in the hospital. It sounds simple here, but believe me, the actual blog entry was very funny – faking the concussion was fun, staying in the hospital was not!
• One of the few BlogHim’s at the conference, Mike Adamick! He blogs in a bunch of places, including the SF Chronicle. Main takeaway? Cell phones are “People Avoidance Machines.” I He’s spent entire parties “on the cell phone….easier than hiding in the toilet.” I LOVE IT.
• Now another BlogHim – Black Hockey Genius – makes an appearance. He wrote this post as a letter to his daughter on her birthday. It is a very sweet post I’m sure any parent can relate to (hell, I’m not a parent and _I_ relate). He’s making everyone cry.
• Danielle Henderson from Knotty Yarn, Subject line of entry “There is something stuck in my vagina.” Very, very funny, something that I think most women can relate to, but I don’t recommend any men read, so, link to her blog, not this specific entry. Hysterical. Women who want to read the exact entry, check it out here.
• Tanis Miller from Attack of the Redneck Mommy (@redneckmommy) talking about raising a disabled child. Very touching – “why can’t people see past the wheelchair or the way he turns his head to the side so he can see, and look at the person he actually is.” She brings home the point that people who insult disabled adults or children are insulting HER children, they’re insulting relatives they may have, that someone you love could end up the punchline to a joke if people don’t stop. (and yes, tears again…)
• Grace Davis had me digging out the tissues with her entry about surviving child abuse. The best quote, I can’t even read it without tearing up – “Forgive yourself, you’re the one who deserves it.” There are a few quotes that can bring me to tears, I guess that’s a new one to add to the list.
• Ok, this is too perfect for me. An ode to diet coke by Wendie Aarons. I may have found someone who’s actually more addicted to diet coke than I am! I can’t do the blog entry justice at all by describing it here, she’s hysterical. And bless her for going off on WTF is diet coke doing putting vitamins in there??? Love it.

This was, and always will be, my favorite session of the conference, and I HIGHLY recommend any women (or men) considering attending BlogHer next year (in NYC!!) make sure to attend this session.

A full list of the blog entries featured at the community keynote are over on the BlogHer site.

…well, that’s not what it’s actually CALLED, but that’s what it’s about.

Interesting comment about people dismissing BlogHer as a conference because they think we only talk about makeup and shoes. Zappos, Lush, and MaryKay may all be here, but I’m learning CSS and PHP. I’m here for techy stuff, the makeup’s just an added benefit. And hey, if Adobe or someone had wanted to show up, I’d love that free copy of Photoshop. But, alas, they’re not here. I did get an interesting laundry strip thingy from Tide, though. Hah.

People also completely forget that not everyone here is a mommy blogger with 4 yr old kids (it seems like they’re targeting the toddler group). Strawberry Shortcake stuff is cute, but utterly useless to me. I’ll give a buncha this stuff to my niece, but she’s too young for most of it. This conference isn’t called BlogMOM. There IS a blogging mommy conference, and believe me, I’m not going to it. Maybe we do need a geeky girl conference? I loved She’s Geeky, what if that was blown out into a multi-day sponsored thing? Hmm. I see potential.

The whole “dismissing this solely because makeup sponsors are here” reminds me a lot of a Quake tournament I ran a while back (with Vangie). Winners, or finalists, in typical tourneys at the time would get mice, speakers, etc. In our case, we flew all the finalists to NYC, took them to Elizabeth Arden for makeovers, and Killcreek & John Romero took them out to lunch. The finalists were finalists because they kicked more ass in quake than anyone else (just like the other tourneys), but we most certainly catered to their tastes. Just like they’re doing here, I will actually use this shwag (well, some of it), instead of giving it all away like I do for most conferences. I don’t see anything wrong with that, and I don’t think it reflects on the conference CONTENT in any way.

Anyway! The purpose of this session was to discuss Sarah Palin’s effect on feminism, or lack thereof. A lot of interesting conversations, and very different views on the topic. One interesting point (made by one of the speakers, I can’t remember who) was that the mere fact that Palin thought she COULD run for Mayor, Governor, then VP, shows she’s a feminist.

I’m not so sure. I think we’d need to know more about how she got started in all of this – I’ve read too much that says she was only chosen as a VP candidate because she was a beauty queen to believe that 100%. But it is an interesting thought.

Personally, I have issues with the tag “feminist.” It contains a lot of negative connotations to some people that I really don’t like. Sarah Palin never identified as a feminist until recently, for exactly that reason – conservatives aren’t about to embrace a feminist. Why is it so negative to say that I’m a strong woman, I believe I can do anything a man can do (assuming I’m physically capable, there are physical differences between men and women), and don’t anyone dare dismiss what I say solely because I’m a woman. I think it’s possible that a ‘few bad seeds’ have spoiled the bunch for us, and it’s something we need to change.

Ok, enough ramblies for now, off to find wireless so I can publish this thing!

Ok, so I admit, I overslept and missed the opening Keynote. The person coming to clean my room woke me up, at least, so I made it down in time for the morning session I wanted to attend.

My purpose in being here – other than to meet all the awesome women here I’ve talked to online for ages – is to get a deeper understanding of Wordpress. I’m a little behind. I don’t know PHP, and I don’t know CSS. So, I can’t fix what’s broken. Right now, if you submit a comment, you’ll receive a “page not found” after. The comment will submit, but there’s no “thank you” page.

The problem is unfortunately not with my theme (which the kind folks over at wordpress.org had suggested), as I’ve tried a number of other ones to fix. The problem was a Wordpress update. Not this past update, but the one before (or the one before that, it’s been updating like crazy lately).

It drives me nuts that I don’t know how to fix. I’ve been learning some basic PHP (I tend to learn a language a year, last year was Ruby, this year PHP), but still have a ways to go before I can truly dig in to the nuts and bolts of this blog.

This morning was a session on CMS and Wordpress, this afternoon a session on CSS. PHP session tomorrow. I’m doing what’s called the “Geek Lab” track. I love that they have this, since I really don’t need a session on MommyBlogging or Blogging to Book. Just not my thing.

Speaking of Mommy’s, dear lord did I get a lot of kiddy stuff. Heather….I will have lots for Alice. But I’ll go through the schwag in another post, it deserves one.

Now to pack up and find the room for the next session!

(Funny note – I was at lunch when I wrote this, but had to come outside to get online. I swear, no matter how hard ppl try (and did they ever try) wireless at conferences is messy.)

Back in November, I left my position at MySpace to move to San Francisco and work for a teeny weeny startup. I definitely missed the startup world, and really enjoyed working in a 6 person company. After Yahoo!, AOL, and MySpace, it was like getting back to my roots.

But, things change, I am no longer working on Operation Turtle, and find myself in one of those funny “wow, I could almost do anything” situations. I wish the best for the folks left at OT and hope that they do get to show the world how incredible the product truly is. I’m moving on, though.

What do I do next. I’ve been emailing various folks, applied for a few positions online, but have saved most of the applying for jobs until I’m back from BlogHer in chicago next week (there’s nothing worse than applying for a job and then being unavailable). I’m a product person, so obviously, that’s what I’m looking at, but this is one of those moments where, theoretically, anything can happen.

In what is a sick twist of, I guess it’d be irony, I had been thinking for months now how much I missed writing, and how cool it would be to take a year and do nothing but write. Write the ‘great american novel,’ so to speak. Now, while it’s safe to say that whatever I write will most likely not be publishable in any form, it is still good for me and my own sanity to get something down on paper. I feel better when I write. And, well, let’s face it, it takes a little while to find a new job. While I hope I find something great and wonderful soon, I’m still gonna have some free time on my hands.

So I’m, slightly unexpectedly, back on the job market. Who knows what I’m going to do. But as always with me, it’s sure to be an adventure.