I love this so, so very much.

So this dude doesn’t like how time is measured. Seconds are too fast. Our concept of days and weeks is meaningless. It’s hard to look at the big picture when we’re counting every moment of our life in seconds and minutes instead of memories, experiences, and years.

So he creates a new clock. Actually, he kickstarts it. So far he’s raised more than double his goal and if you pledge $120 or more you get one of “The Present” once it’s produced in early 2012.

The clock is… beautiful. It’s simple. It’s obvious. And it’s wonderful and I want one. Just watch the video after the jump.

Part of this is my experiences. I remember traveling to Europe in early 2007 and taking hundreds if not thousands of photos. I took maybe 20 at my high school graduation. When I traveled to Japan I took hundreds more. I took maybe 100, total, in my first semester of college. I’m not sure what it is that makes travel experiences more powerful—to me, anyway—than some of these big life experiences. Maybe they’re just prettier.

But I think a bigger part of it is the limitation of technology. Until recently (with my iPhone, which I’ll talk about more in a moment), I’ve bounced between cameras. I had a point-and-shoot digital camera for a while, and used it a fair amount from 2007 through 2009. It took the vast majority of my travel pictures.

I received a Nikon DSLR for my birthday in 2010. I love it, but it’s big and bulky, and unless I’m going out somewhere with the sole purpose of taking photos, it often doesn’t make the cut for fitting into my backpack. If I’m driving it’s a little different, but my travel is most frequently by bike, so it’s a little more limited.

With my iPhone 3GS I took a fair amount of pictures, but they were never particularly good. My desire for a high quality way of capturing memories on the go was never quite fulfilled by the relatively poor camera and processing power of the 2009 generation iPhone.

With the iPhone 4S things a little different. The camera is phenomenal. It takes incredible photos, and it takes them quickly. It easily bests any photos I’ve ever taken on a point-and-shoot camera, and I’m pretty well convinced it comes decently close to the shots I’ve gotten on my DSLR. It’s changed the way I think about photos, and it’s led me—already, in only week—to take more and more photos, capturing more and more memories, and sharing those experiences and memories with others. Which is kind of the point, isn’t it?

I am a technologist, and technology plays a big part in my life. I’m not ashamed of that. But it’s interesting for me to hear people complain about the role of technology in our lives, and often make fun of the “geeky” class. I’m frequently asked, “Could you go one weekend without your phone?”

Yes. Easily. But why?

I like being connected. I love taking pictures—especially photos that are big and beautiful and can really resonate. And I love taking them quickly, without having to think about it, without having to plan in advance. My iPhone helps me do that, and I like that.

Anyway, long story short, I like taking photos and I like my iPhone. That’s all.

It’s been a good week, but hectic and stressful. I found out we’ve secured a new townhouse across town, so I will be moving soon. I guest lectured with TechChange on Wednesday, which was a blast. I attended the NASA tweetup on Thursday with Chris Golden (@chrisgolden), which was obviously awesome. And then today I hit up the Give To The Max Day training event at AARP.

On top of all of that, I got my new iPhone 4S. Obviously, also awesome. See my first iPhone 4S photo below, as proof (of course, it’s a photo of Walter Cronkat).

Tomorrow, Joe Gizzi (@districtjoe) and I are taking off for New York City on the Bluebrain DC to NYC trip. It’s going to be an amazing weekend. A little about the trip:

Please join Bluebrain for an exclusive excursion to New York City to experience their new location-aware album Listen to the Light in Central Park. Trip includes bus transportation, Listen to the Light experience in Central Park, You Are Here: Washington DC art exhibit featuring DC artists, and an after-party at Lit Lounge (featuring DC’s Shark Week and Cracked Latin). We are truly excited so many awesome DC things are happening at the same time.

In other words, it’s going to rock.

I probably won’t be online much during the trip, but I’ll be taking pictures (on my new iPhone!) and tweeting my way throughout the weekend. Rest assured there will be an awesome wrap-up blog post once it’s all over. If anyone is living and/or staying in New York this weekend and wants to meet up for an impromptu tweetup, let me know! Just give me a shout on Twitter, @alexpriest.

1. Wired: “It’s kind of like having the unpaid intern of my dreams at my beck and call, organizing my life for me. I think Siri on the iPhone is a life changer, and this is only the beginning.”
2. TechCrunch: “We’ve all seen the science fiction television shows and films where people talk to their computers like human beings and the computer understands them. That future is now.”
3. I own an iPhone 3GS. So, my 2-year contract is up. And… duh. Of course I’m upgrading.

I was thinking about the death of Steve Jobs, and how we idolize some very specific people in society. Think about all the people you look up to. I know my list includes people like Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Malcolm Gladwell, and even my sisters.

All these people are amazing. But take a step back and pretend like they aren’t. Pretend like they aren’t famous, like they aren’t people that everyone looks up to. Pretend like they aren’t media figures and people that the world will, without a doubt, memorialize after their death.

Now, aren’t they just people? They are people who, at some point, questioned things just like we do. They struggled with crazy relationships and self-esteem. They stressed about their career and what their resume looked like. They looked at religion and struggled to figure it out. They got in fights with their parents. They struggled with money, they were—at some point—unemployed.

In so many ways, they were just like us. Just human.

Part of this, I think, is me reconciling my ambition with my youth. Last night, I had a bit of a panic attack. I heard about Steve Jobs’s death, and on top of my sadness I began to think about how little I’ve accomplished in comparison. At how, in the past 22 years, there are so many things I’m proud of, but so few things that have changed the world.

Today I let myself catch a breath. I started thinking about how, at some point, Steve Jobs probably stood in a shower at a gym somewhere and wondered what the future would hold for him. Just like, probably, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Malcolm Gladwell, and countless others have probably done.

Everyone starts somewhere. Ambition is essential. Youth is temporary.

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently—they’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them… about only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

The death of Steve Jobs tonight is devastating. It’s devastating to a generation of technologists and geeks, to business leaders and politicians, and to young people like myself who have looked up to—and will always look up to—Steve Jobs and his legacy.

Maybe it’s fate or maybe it’s just an odd coincidence, but tonight I was listening to the most recent episode of Radiolab, titled “Loops.” The episode covers loops of all kinds, but one segment near the middle sticks out in my mind, especially tonight. They discussed the death of whales.

When a whale dies it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. And it stays there. Whales live for anywhere from 50 to 75 years old, and after they die, their body sticks around for another 50 to 75 years. Other animals feed and live in and on these fallen creatures, until another whale falls and new universe is created—a new loop begins.

I think of Steve Jobs’ quote above, about the misfits. I think about the whales. And I think about the world we live in. Perhaps these things aren’t so different.

Steve Jobs lived an tremendous life. And he was the heart and soul of this cycle, this “misfit loop.” The rest of us live and thrive and are inspired by his innovation and passion, and his refusal to comply with the status quo. We’ll continue to live and thrive and be inspired long after his death. And from us, someday, there will come another magnificent misfit, continuing the loop ad infinitum.

We’re all in this misfit loop. Steve Jobs stood out because he changed the world. He didn’t start the loop, and he most certainly will not end it.

First, I’ll admit I am biased. I own a 3GS and I definitely plan on purchasing the 4S. Obviously, I’m looking to paint this situation in the best light for myself as humanly possible. But there’s a few things I think all the complainers out there are missing when it comes to today’s big iPhone announcement. Four, actually.

1. Apple really, truly, honestly does not care about numbers. Look at the history of their products. The only lineups to ever have numbers in product names are the iPhone and the iPad, and even then—in the iPhone’s case—it wasn’t in a way that made sense. Think about it: we went from the iPhone to the iPhone 3G (#2, for those of you keeping count) to the 3GS (#3), to the 4 (#4, the first one to actually line up in sync) and now to the 4S (#5).

   Whether or not you think this is a big “leap” from one generation the next, this is indeed the fifth generation of the iPhone. The iPhone 5, if you will. Hell, I’d even bet a macaron that the next iPhone won’t be called the iPhone 5 but something completely different. Microsoft gave a big f*** you to numbered products with the Xbox 360, as did Nintendo with the Gamecube and the Wii. This isn’t really that different.

2. 

   Siri looks ridiculously cool, and might totally change the game. If—and this is still a big if, until it’s been tested—Siri lives up to the promises made at Tuesday’s briefing, it might change the game in the smartphone world in a way that Apple really hasn’t done since the first iPhone.

   Voice recognition technology has completely, utterly sucked for pretty much ever. If Apple has finally somehow managed to get it right, then this is a breakthrough that extends far beyond just the smartphone market.

3. Upgrades are more about guts than flash. The upgrades in the iPhone 4S are, obviously, far more about the innards of the device than the external appearance, which looks virtually identical to the iPhone 4. My question to you: did any of you really think the iPhone 4 was that ugly? I kind of liked it. The power behind the device, and the pieces that make it work, are the most important parts.

   Apple has made some very significant strides in the iPhone 4S with the processing power and the camera, and that should not by any means be discounted.

4. Why an iPhone 5? I dare you—anyone—to make a valid argument why Apple should’ve released an iPhone 5 today (and one that I can’t rebut with a sufficient answer). Design? No, because the iPhone 4 design is smart, pretty sexy, and just works. Sales? No, the iPhone 4 is the best selling smartphone in the world, and sales have actually increased over time. Stock price? No, because Apple is already one of (and occasionally, the) biggest companies in the entire world. They’re sitting on a mountain of cash and Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, and every rational stakeholder could really care less as long as Apple keeps churning out sexy products that work.

   Consumers will buy the iPhone 4S in droves, and no one is disputing that. AAPL may have taken a hit today, but the day the iPhone 4S launches I’d expect some seriously impressive gains. There’s simply no real valid argument for them to release a totally new design and a totally new model.

In retrospect, it really does make sense. And I think in a few months, we’ll look back at this Apple announcement as simply the one that the media got utterly wrong, while Apple did it 100% right. Who knows if the iPhone 5 is on the horizon. I, for one, don’t particularly care, but as always I eagerly await what innovation Apple thinks of next.

The narrative so far has been that this is finally a legitimate competitor for Apple’s iPad. It’s got decent specs, a huge brand name, and it’s running the Android operating system. Oh, and it’s $300 cheaper.

Meh. I wouldn’t count on this being a competitor for the iPad any more than the BlackBerry Playbook was (that being, not at all). Instead, let’s look at this from a different angle: content.

Amazon could care less about making hardware. They’re in the business of selling products, and it doesn’t matter whether that’s their own product or someone else’s. Is the profit margin a bit different? Sure, but at the end of the day, Amazon doesn’t care what it’s selling as long as it is selling something. They sell Apple products, BlackBerry products, DVDs, hardcover books… it doesn’t matter what it is, they’ll generally sell it.

So that in mind, why on earth would they release a product to compete with the iPad when they can simply sell more iPads and continue to make money? Because it’s all about content.

The Kindle is a gateway drug for entertainment. And the one product Amazon hasn’t quite been able to crack has been content (with the exception of MP3s, which seem to be doing pretty well)—until the Kindle came along. With the Kindle they slaughtered the publishing industry, completely rethinking the way your average consumer buys books and consumes content. They priced it right and included only the features customers needed. Not surprisingly, they’ve sold like hotcakes.

The Kindle Fire is opening salvo of a new battle, this time for video content. Netflix has been king of the streaming video playground for quite some time, but recent developments suggest they could be faltering. If Amazon can get the Kindle Fire in enough consumer hands, with easy access to paid, streaming content through Amazon (and not Netflix), then they’ve just converted a whole slew of users looking for entertainment on the go. Once watching on the Kindle Fire, users gain an awareness of Amazon’s desktop streaming offerings and Amazon has an opportunity to jump into the streaming content industry in a big way. Netflix, watch out.

But today I’m taking charge. No more email insanity for me. No more folders. No more stacks and stacks of emails waiting to be organized and filed away into folders. I’m making the switch back to gmail after a long stint on MobileMe, and I’m changing my organizational habits, too.

From here on out, when an email hits my inbox it will do one of six things:

1. Get deleted. If it’s not something I’m ever going to need again, or something that is clearly archived elsewhere (e.g. Facebook group notifications, LinkedIn messages, etc.), it gets deleted as soon as it’s read.
2. Get filtered. If it’s something I don’t necessarily need to read every day, or something that I want in one very specific place, then it gets filtered. This includes emails in the Technorati editors group (which flow very freely!), new followers on Twitter (an easy look at new follows on a day-to-day basis) and various job lists, etc. that I might be on.
3. Get replied to. If it’s something I can reply to quickly, and I have my computer or phone handy, it will get responded to. Simple as that.
4. Get marked for follow up. If it’s not something I can reply to quickly, it gets marked “Follow Up” and goes into a new labeled inbox, just below my normal inbox (thank you multiple inboxes!).
5. Get marked hold. If it’s something I need to hold on to because I’m waiting for a response from someone else, then it gets put in the hold box, in yet another inbox below my Follow Up inbox.
6. Get archived. Everything else gets archived. I can search for it if I need to. Specific projects I’m working on will get their own label as necessary.

Yes, it’s a little ridiculous how excited I am about not filing things away into millions of teeny tiny useless little folders anymore. Life is good.

So USA Today gives me way more credit than I probably deserve, but they’ve given me the privilege of hosting a roundtable chat on blogging and social media this Thursday, December 2.

In the chat we’ll talk about how to get started blogging, some of the different blogging platforms, and how you can leverage all the social media tools out there to build your own online brand that effectively represents who you are and what you have to offer the world.

I hope you can join me for the chat! Post any questions you have in advance of the chat on this page and then come right back to this page on Thursday morning at 11:30 a.m. to join in the conversation. Looking forward to chatting with you then!