The Stanford Newton User Group held its 10th Anniversary meeting tonight at Printer’s Inc. in Palo Alto. It’s amazing that we’ve been convening here for 10 years now! The cafe has outlived the bookstore next door as well as the cafe across the street (La Dolce Vita is becoming a Harmony Bakery)!
I tried to webcast the event this evening using my PowerBook, iSight, and EvoCam. Using the wireless hot spot at Printer’s Inc., I set up EvoCam to take a screenshot every 2-5 seconds and upload it to tow.com. There’s no sound, but I think readers were able to get an impression of what the meeting was like.
Our Guest of Honor for the 10th Anniversary was Newton developer, Brian Parker of Sealie Computing. This 23-year old has developed some killer applications for the Newton — and you thought that no one used these things anymore! He’s already written an AOL Instant Messaging client called NewtChat, as well as Napalm, the Palm OS emulator for the Newton! He bought his first Newton back in high school, around the time of the Newton’s demise (February 27, 1998 for those of you keeping track). He started developing games for it in college. Since then, he’s gone overboard, writing some very useful tools for the handheld that just won’t die. Perhaps one day, he and Paul Guyot will team up and write the Newton emulator for the rest of us. Where oh where can we get the Voyager chipset instructions?
After the meeting, Rosie let us ride his electric skateboard. It’s a normal-looking skateboard with a motor underneath it. The control is a hand-grip looking wireless device with a trigger that you squeeze to accelerate. I once tried skateboarding as a kid and couldn’t get the hang of it. This skateboard, on the other hand, was really easy to navigate!
And now for some photos from the event.
tow.com 