David Russell

What’s the latest?

Flickr and company have just released an awesome app for iPhone. It’s the perfect blend of both worlds, feeling native to the iPhone with that Flickr experience you expect.

Until now, I primarily used Mobile Fotos (iTMS link - $2.99) for Flickr on iPhone. It’s a third-party app that works fairly well, but the first-party app easily outpaces Mobile Fotos. Not to mention the fact that the new app from Flickr is completely free.

For mobile uploads to Flickr, I generally use the upload by email feature. It’s fast, easy and can hit Twitter, too. But the upload options on the new Flickr app are very comprehensive and I am considering the option of uploading via app. For some instances, it might be more ideal.

Flickr App for iPhone [iTMS link]

Tagged: Flickr, photos, app, iphone

National Community Church is an absolutely amazing assembly of people who love Christ and are devoted to seeing the people of Washington, DC experience Him in a real way. At the helm of this community is one of the finest leaders I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Mark Batterson loves his family, serves this local church and edifies the global church. To serve Pastor Mark and the church over the past three-plus years has been the experience of a lifetime. If you don’t know about this community, you should. And if you do know about this community, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This place is grand.

Missy and I love life with our young son Andrew and we are anticipating with sheer excitement the arrival of our baby girl, due just one month from today. In fact, parenthood has really re-shaped our thinking. Lately, we have grown to miss “home”, the place where our families live and work and play. Yes, Washington has felt like home. We have been very comfortable here, truly blessed to live and work in such a stunning city. But as our hearts started to shift earlier this year, our definition of home was slowly re-structured. Sure, we’ve hopped on many planes and visited Alabama often during our tenure in Washington. But we know now that what we’d really like is the opportunity to once again call Alabama home, to see our kids grow up knowing well the faces of their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

In the midst of this came an opportunity—one that makes a great deal of sense and one that really feels like God has prepared! In two weeks, Missy, Andrew, our yet-to-be-born baby girl and I will move to Birmingham, Alabama, where I will join the team at Church of the Highlands. Chris Hodges is truly one of the great church leaders of today and I am excited about joining the Highlands team. Pastor Chris is an inspiration to many and I count it an honor to serve under his leadership.

At Highlands, I will be working within the Technology Department, under the expert management of Denny Hodges. I’ll tackle all things web and work alongside a great web designer, Bradley Koltas. It is truly a full-circle experience. In 2002 and 2003, I played guitar at Church of the Highlands and led a Highlands small group at the University of Montevallo before departing on a journey to help plant a church in Montgomery, a journey that ultimately led to our arrival here at NCC. (Like I said, full-circle!)

As much as we are thrilled for the new opportunity, we are also saddened to depart National Community Church. It is not an easy goodbye. We have close friends here. Even Andrew loves his little buddies! There is no doubt we will miss these friends, our great church and this fine city. What an amazing experience it is to live and work in the most important city in the world! I have high expectations—true faith—that God will continue to use NCC to reach people who desperately need the love of Christ and that He will amplify the efforts of this community in order to build the Kingdom in unprecedented ways!

Thank you, friends and family, for offering up a short prayer regarding our transition.

Missy’s Perspective on our Transition

This morning, Google announced a new operating system named for their recently-released Web browser, Chrome. Google Chrome OS is a PC-architecture-based operating system that Google claims will be “open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks.” It will be built on the Linux kernel and feature “speed, simplicity and security.”

Personally, I am very excited about this. There are definitely many opportunities to expand our thinking when it comes to the operating systems we use every day. In fact, our mobile phones have already begun stretching our thinking about this. Think: iPhone OS, Google Android, yes, even Windows Mobile, et al. They all work much more simply than our desktop operating systems, reduce overhead and form factor and yet still allow us to get a few things done. No, we aren’t designing in Photoshop or having serious coding sessions on these devices, but that might not be as far off as we might think.

Generally, I am a proponent of the cloud. But there are reasonable concerns about the drawbacks, namely privacy and security. As soon as we relinquish control of our data to services like Flickr, Facebook, Google, even Twitter, there are certain risks that come into play. In a sense, this would be no different with a Google OS, which will merely create a specially-tuned environment to host the Chrome browser and allow the user to very quickly boot up and access the Web.

Applications on Chrome OS are Web applications. Developers building apps for Chrome OS won’t build them for Chrome OS, they’ll build them for the Web. It’s not exactly mind-boggling by today’s standards, but it’s obviously shrewd of Google to approach a competitor like Microsoft or Apple with something completely different and with less legacy than what those competitors offer consumers (much like Google did when they released the Chrome browser last year.)

This is the start of something very cool. When I first heard the news, I quickly wondered if the world really needed another operating system (even as much as I am in favor of choice and competition.) Upon hearing the general idea for the execution of the Chrome OS, I feel confident this will be a very usable product even though as it stands it will probably be somewhat niche for a time. Netbooks are an obvious first playground. But I’m sure there will be a natural tendency for some to migrate all of their use to an OS like this. If you live on the Web, why not have your OS get you there in a flash?

Google Chrome OS is the start of a new trend in operating systems. The Internet is the new OS.

Google Announces Chrome OS
Would You Miss Windows With A Google Operating System? - NYT Bits
Fascinating analysis of a 2004 prediction that Google was crafting an OS - Jason Kottke

A few months ago, I was making my rounds in domain-land and noticed a very high profile TLD had expired, davidrussell.net. Now, it’s not the most amazing domain in the world for most people, but it is the second most amazing domain in the world if your name is David Russell. And my name happens to be David Russell.

The previous owner, David Russell from New Zealand, must have let the registration lapse. After a few days monitoring whois, I noticed the domain move from the 30-day grace period and into the delete phase. Oh boy! I knew I might have a shot at this, so I read up on the subject at a four-year old article from Mike Davidson. The information still packs a punch today and I decided to take Mike’s advice and enlist the services of Pool.com to register the domain on my behalf as soon as the domain had been completely deleted from the registry and was available to the public.

On the delete day, I monitored whois like a hawk to see who would win the domain. (There could have been others interested and doing the same thing I was doing, so it was not a certainty that I would acquire the domain.) Domains usually delete starting around 2:00 pm ET and the actual drop can happen any time within a window of a few hours. So around 1:45 pm, I started querying whois in Terminal every 5 to 10 minutes. Around 2:45 ET I noticed the domain ownership had changed hands. I had checked only minutes earlier and the information hadn’t changed yet. So this new registrar snapped the name up fast! It was a domain registrar out of Canada called The Black Cow. I checked their home page and saw the Pool.com logo. I logged into my Pool.com account and saw the confirmation that the domain had been acquired on my behalf. Woo-hoo! Within about 20 minutes, the domain was actually resolving to my server at 1and1. Holy cow. That was blazing fast. (In order for this to happen, you’ll need to set up your DNS settings in your Pool.com account prior to acquiring a domain. They’ll automatically assign those settings to the domains they purchase on your behalf.)

So I’ve moved away from davidrussell.org. I still own it, of course, along with many other TLDs associated with my name. But davidrussell.net is my new official domain. The website migration is mostly complete. If you spot any dead or problematic links, let me know. Within a few days, I’ll have my email completely migrated as well.

If you are eyeing a deleting domain, I highly recommend Pool.com. I was absolutely impressed with the speed at which they acquired this domain for me.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times—if a top-level domain that matches your name is still available, you are not being wise leaving it unregistered. Snag it now! ...Now!

Pool.com