It’s a been a little while since I’ve given any kind of update on our progress with STRIP for the iPhone platform. We’ve been hammering away at our data model and at this point I think we’ve arrived at a fairly stable first implementation and work-flow for the app. After changing it what seems a billion times, I think we’ve got it. For now.

There are still some tweaks we need to make before we start the beta of the initial version. Also of note: wireless backup and sync won’t be available in the initial version. It will be done, oh yes, and it will be done well, but not in time for the first release. We want to at least get this out there for Strip fans to test it out and make sure we’re going in the right direction here. This feature is really important to us, as it’s one of the features that really made the previous versions of Strip stand out, and we’re committed to its implementation.

We’ve put together a mailing list just for Strip (low volume, announcement only) for those of you who want to be alerted directly when we’re ready to do the beta. Sign up for it over on the Strip page.

We still need to put together an export tool for old Palm OS Strip users who want to migrate to various systems, and a means to import that export into the iPhone version. We intend to have that piece in place by the end of the beta, before we go live, but I can’t commit to a time-frame just yet.

Thanks again for your patience as we work hard to get this right.

On the 37Signals blog today there was some talk about Axl Rose and Frank Sinatra, two musicians I love to gab about:

Sinatra’s one take style produced classics. Axl’s dithering produced a pile of mush. We can all learn something from that. It’s easy to fall into a trap of nitpicking over things that don’t really matter. Instead, focus on the essence of what you’re doing. Press record, get it done, and get it out there.

Lately I’ve taken our first takes on demos for the new band, or just scrapping them and coming back to it when the time is right. Sometimes that means a different approach, sometimes a better room sound. I almost always go for a first take on a guitar solo, if I don’t double it with another one for maximum shred \m/.

With that in mind, an update on our progress with Strip should be forthcoming.

Something is apparently cooking over at unspace, the people who’s brainchild was the RubyFringe conference last Summer.

I’d been thinking of trying to put together some kind of geek talent show or battle of the band geeks or what have you, and talking to some other hackers about it (as in Zed and Hampton), and this is bringing the idea back into my head. (I’m a bit of a ham, so I’m inclined to do these sorts of things.)

Zed’s Freehacker’s Union (FU) is a really cool group/grouping/idea and he’s pretty into doing technology and instrument hacking and the idea of putting together regular presentations or performances. I had been thinking of just trying to find the various Rubyists and hackers in the amorphous community who have bands or performance projects and get them all to play some show together in tandem with a conference like RubyFringe or as some kind of accompanying nighttime event. There seems to be interest in this sort of thing. Hampton had mentioned he was looking to put together some kind of website or page presenting hacker music projects (or maybe mixtapes??? just occurred to me now).

Anyway, enough thinking out loud from me, there’s work to be done.

July 9-12: the nerds are planning something!

My daily workspace is in Brooklyn at the Williamsburg Coworking space. I have to say it’s been a pretty rad place to work, and it’s way better than working out of the house or in a corporate office park. Needless to say, it’s your coworkers and environment that make it worth doing, and I’ve been pretty lucky that this space is run by a politically active art collective, and the people who show up here are all creative, positive folks who are also good coworkers; no one is noisy or rude, etc, and the atmosphere is quite relaxed.

In addition, we sometimes have really cool events here:

on friday, we will host “work at jelly” and at 2pm we will pipe the inaugural session of “Jelly Talks” featuring Chris Messina (Board member, OpenID) and Dave Morin (Senior Platform Manager, Facebook). starting at 5pm, we will break into a vivacious happier hour! we hope that you can clear your schedule, snag your laptop and join us – this friday (25 July) from 9:30 till 7pm!

I realize this is a bit late notice, but if you’re in Brooklyn today, feel free to drop by, say hello and check it out.

My friend the writer Warren Ellis is full of good ideas (and various poisons), and the one that he’s been kicking around to some of us lately is really compelling. He calls it PAPERNET:

The social letterbox may just be as simple, in the first instance, as a dedicated Gmail account, where I can just press Print without opening the attached document. In kicking this around within a Secret Society, my friend Alasdair Watson knocked together a proof-of-concept in an hour — email comes in, paper comes out. Automagically, like a podcast that spits out paper.

It’s not like a fax machine, where some bastard buys your number and there’s a sheaf of junk hanging out of the thing in the morning. It’s roll-your-own one-sheet POD. And it’s also subscription-based POD, if you know someone who semi-regularly does interesting things with a sheet of paper and decides to share. They’re either sending directly to your letterbox-email, or you’re on an announcement-only mailing list (or Google Group). Or, as I say, as simple as me pressing Print so they’re spat out for me to take to the pub, or on a train journey. And if they’re not especially personal, I can just leave the buggers on the table or the seat when I’m done with them, too.

Wouldn’t it be cool to set something like this up, the input AND output end of it?