Celso Martinho

So, here we go again to San Diego for the 2008 edition of my (by far) favorite conference. eTech's program was a bit disappointing when announced a few months ago but as time went by it turned itself into one of the most interesting ever, check it out. So good that I had the decline a rather tempting invitation for another conference in the same week. Sorry Nuno.

The thing about eTech that I love most is that, for those of us who live from and to the Internet, the ultimate unpredictable invention created by man, this is as close as you can get to a glimpse of the future. Your levels of inspiration boost. And you get to see the industry developing eTech's prophecy for the upcoming months, with scaring precision. Hopefully your business, at your scale and with your stack of problems, will run in a better direction too.

Also, eTech's diversity is amazing. It's not just coding and Internet, it's the social behaviours, the hardware, the content, games, finance, hacking, art, biotech, you name it, but in the end I feel we're all geeks and nerds presenting and attending and relating all sessions to the one thing that we're passionate for: Technology. Well, Tim O'Reilly puts it better.

Anyway, expect some blogging from San Diego. eTech has a huge online coverage, both from O'Reilly and the blogging community, so I'll skip the obvious and focus on the specifics that I find most worthy. Posts will be in English this time, sorry.

On a side note, são impressionantes os números da China Mobile relativamente aos iPhones "piratas". E no outro dia falei com alguém que teve acesso a uma estimativa da Óptimus sobre o fenómeno em Portugal (não me perguntem como é que a rede consegue saber a marca e o modelo de telefone mas aparentemente há algum tipo fingerprint dos telemóveis e há pessoas a medirem isto), quer-me parecer que se alguém pudesse fazer as contas e agregar os 3 operadores iria ficar surpreendido, pelo menos a julgar pela amostra FOAF que conheço.

E já que estamos nisto, achei interessante o rumor de que a Apple está a ultimar o negócio com a Adobe para incluir um player de Flash no iPhone. Na minha opinião é bem jogado e já vem tarde. H.264 é o futuro de qualquer maneira, mesmo no Flash. O Youtube já tem todos os vídeos em H.264 e este ano vão investir largo em HD (sort-of). Aliás, a Adobe na eminencia de perder o bundling e o push do player por parte da Microsoft  com o trio Vista/IE/Silverlight, bem que deve contar com os Googles e as Apples da vida para garantir a estabilidade dos 98% de penetração. Go.