Where's Wil?

Whilst in SF, I had the pleasure of going out drinking with Kevin Rose, of digg.com fame. I hooked up with Kevin through top chap David Prager, who I got talking to through our TWiT associations. Kevin moblogged this pic from his Treo, which I have duly pinched.

It was great to hang with those guys, see the digg offices and learn more about their plans for world domination. Dan Burka, their design guru, is an incredibly cool guy that deserves severe recognition for coming up with the look and feel of the new digg v3.

I'm in LA today, having had dinner with Alex Albrecht last night, making this a thoroughly diggnation-dominated week. Waiting at the airport for my ticket home is a bit of a drag, but I can at least reflect on what has been a thoroughly awesome week Stateside. Kevin and Alex are coming to London in September, and I look forward to getting thoroughly mottled with them again.

I've spent the last few days out in California on sort-of holiday. I'm out here relaxing, chilling and seeing some industry contacts.

I drove from San Jose, where I'm staying, up to the Napa Valley above San Francisco. After seeing Leo Laporte in Petaluma, I drove back and witnessed a gorgeous sunset over the Californian countryside.

I honestly had no idea northern CA was quite so stunning. The only place I've seen that betters it is Tuscany.

The weather has been insane here - 116F, or 47C. I've never experienced anything quite like it.

I had lunch with John C. Dvorak, America's favourite tech pundit, as well as Patrick Norton, host of DL.TV. I'm off to see the guys at Digg tomorrow, before heading down to LA to see some friends there.

Note to the world - driving in America is mental. No one signals when they change lanes, and everyone drives bumper to bumper. Accident potential ++.

I checked out the Google campus down at Mountain View (more pics in my Flickr page). It was really bizarre - sitting in the garden outside, you can practically feel the intellectual stimulation. It's got great vibes - it's easy to see why so much top stuff gets created there.

My colleague Tim Smalley has done an outrageously good job breaking down the featres and performance of Intel's new processor, the Core 2 Duo (codenamed Conroe). The poor chap worked through the night to finish the article for the 5am deadline - that's dedication! If you're curious about processor speeds, prices and architectures you should check it out.

I'm reminded, sometimes, of the genius world that we live in today. I was visiting my parents at the weekend and decided, in anticipation of the two hour drive back home, that I wanted some music to listen to. A quick search of the charts reminded me that the new Lostprophets album was out.

Despite being a band basically aimed at emo teenagers, I happen to think Lostprophets are pretty awesome. I didn't have time to drive into town and buy a CD - besides, CDs do nothing except sit on my shelf once ripped. A quick trip to the iTunes Music Store and the album is on my Powerbook within 10 minutes.

Being able to go, click a button, have my credit card charged automatically and then transfer the music to my iPod to listen to is just brilliant. iTunes + OSX + iPod works so incredibly seamlessly, and it is such a contrast to Windows offerings that require subscription services, then paid downloads on top, then integration with Windows Media Player, then a DRM-compatible portable player... the Microsoft way is just so clunky when compared to Apple's service.

It's nice to appreciate that we really have made progress with this digital world of ours. This was a tangible experience that interested me. The album's sweet, too.

If you haven't already played it, go and get LocoRoco for the PSP. It's an absolutely stunning game that really gets back to the roots of 'fun' gaming. It's also one heck of a lesson in character design and music scoring for games - both areas where the game is really strong. The emotion the audio/visuals create is pretty intense.