tow.com

Yesterday was the 13th Anniversary Stanford Newton User Group meeting. We’ve been holding it at the Printer’s Inc. Cafe ever since the beginning in 1994. During that time, many stores have come and gone on South California Avenue in Palo Alto. Last night, time ran out for Nora’s Cafe, located next to Cho’s and Kinko’s. I was walking off my dinner at The Counter with my friend, Bryan, when I noticed that the insides of Nora’s was completely empty! I found out from the people cleaning the place that the owners of Nora’s had not been paying their rent. Doh!

I’m not sure how long Printer’s Inc. Cafe has left; over the years, their prices have increased and their hours have reduced. A lot of Stanford students used to come to Printer’s Inc. to study and to satisfy their coffee fix. Today, with many on-campus eateries to choose from, most students are staying away from California Avenue.

Present at the SNUG meeting included Peter, Flash, Lunatic, Dave, Glen, and Lewis. We’ve represented the core of the group for the past six years, I reckon. The big topic of the evening was, of course, the iPhone from Apple. Flash, Glen, and Lunatic were seriously considering purchasing one when the iPhone becomes available in June. A few meetings ago, Lunatic was demonstrating how a future Apple device would be made today. He took his iPod, plopped it down on top of the Newton’s screen, and said, “Newton sized screen in a device this big.” Sure enough, iPhone sports a 320×480 screen in an iPod-sized case. Though it’s doubtful any third-party will be able to write apps initially, I hope one day that Paul will work his magic and port Einstein to the iPhone. We’ll have to ditch our styli in favor of our fingers, but I think we will be able to manage.

Speaking of Einstein, Lewis and I have finally gotten around to bringing the video from the 2006 Worldwide Newton Conference to the Web. Lewis is posting the videos up onto YouTube, the first 10-minute segment from Paul’s speech you can watch right now. He’ll be posting the other segments in the coming days and weeks.