We Are Not Sekiaku

By Matt in OS X, Diversions

We picked up Leopard yesterday, and after getting it installed, we tried out all of the new features. Leopard handles networking brilliantly now, the new Finder is superb, and there are tons of small, undocumented changes that make the whole experience better.

“Alex” — the new text-to-speech voice included with Leopard — though sounding pretty good (and breathing!), seems to have as much trouble pronouncing our name as everyone else. Hear for yourself:

This isn’t, however, the sort of harmless misreading that produces pronunciations like “Sakusaku.” Unfortunately, sekiaku (積悪 in Japanese) means “many sins; long-standing evils.” Rest assured: this is a coincidence.

With any luck, the first point release — Mac OS 10.5.1 — will correct this egregious error. More Leopard notes to follow.

A Good Day

By Matt in Diversions, Business

The sun is shining, a faster internet is coming, and the mail brought wonders aplenty:

Homemade corn chips (not mail), Caribou’s latest masterpiece, some stylish new Field Notes and a package full of Japanese pamphlets and goodies from my friend Sam, who’s abroad and fashioning baline, cat skin, and human hair into puppets. Awesome!

And we have a new mascot for September, Bruno:

A lot of you have been asking a few important questions:

1. What exactly is Sakuzaku? What do you do?
2. What is Addressful, and why should I sign up?
3. How’s it going?

We’ll address these questions in a short series of posts over the next week or so, as work on Addressful continues and we continue to organize the business and start on a number of different projects. But, briefly:

Over the last few weeks Cody’s been handling the daunting task of ironing out the production, staging, and development environments for our applications, setting up our internal systems, and dealing with the myriad business-, accounting-, and tax-related issues an LLC entails. And all while starting graduate school in computational linguistics, and still doing 20 hours a week of consulting work for Japan! I’ve been designing interfaces for our projects, sorting through dozens of résumé submissions, moving and organizing a couple months’ worth of notes, emails, and conversations into our internal wiki, and reading some really good books. And we’ve been to two AIGA Honolulu talks by some great designers.

We’ve done a little sightseeing, swimming, and surfing around blue Hawaii, too; look for more pictures in our Flickr photostream. And we’ll be uploading videos to our Vimeo account.

But it’s not all pictures and movies around here; we’ve got a lot of web development work to show off, too — what will hopefully be the start of a growing portfolio of different projects. We’ve also got some things to say about design and usability on and off the Web.

So if you haven’t done so already, go ahead and sign up for the Addressful beta. When we’re ready to launch Addressful, you’ll be the first people who get to try it out and help us iron out the bugs and make it just perfect.

All right, back to work. Stay tuned.

iPhone Acquired!

By Matt in Diversions

The whole journey, documented from morning to night.

Countdown

By Matt in Diversions

Here I’ve sat since just before six this morning. The line grew slowly, but it’s nearly out the door now; must be over 300 feet long. I was the fourteenth, but there have been shifts and substitutions and now I’m not sure exactly where I stand. I’m not worried about securing an iPhone though.

The line here is low-key and friendly. We’re inside, it’s air-conditioned, and we’re in the first twenty. Maybe the other end has a different atmosphere. I’ll take a walk down there when six o’clock draws nearer.

The Apple Store is closed, black curtains and metal gate blocking what is undoubtedly a massively interesting briefing session before the unveiling.

I’ll compile another video tonight from today’s waiting footage. Until then, you’ll find me here.

I Plan to Buy an iPhone

By Matt in Diversions

I will be in line early Friday morning to wait for an iPhone. The options for those of us in Boston are numerous, but it’s no fun to wait at a regular AT&T Store. The real action is going down at the Cambridgeside Apple Store, and I’ll be first in line.

I’ve spent some of today preparing and, of course, documenting the preparation process. For those of you curious about how this end of Sakuzaku functions, I invite you to watch Chapter I of our epic two-part video blog series, “Bridge to Ballyhoo: The Story of Sakuzaku’s iPhone Acquisition,” available right here:

I would have stayed overnight (and had prepared to do so), but both of these Apple Stores are inside malls. Calls to the security departments of both the Cambridgeside and Chestnut Hill malls were answered with incredulous exasperation.

The Cambridge location is more city than suburb, more exciting. Its mall also opens two hours earlier, so that’s where I’ll be. Come by, it’ll be fun. I can tell you a little about Sakuzaku, and I’d love to talk about anything internet-related, anything creative or artistic, especially music. I’ll have a deck of cards, Infinite Jest, and a couple hours of laptop battery life. See you there!