And now for something completely different…

Some of you may already know that I’m an avid mountain biker - I have almost as many bikes as I do Macintoshes (which is a little scary).  Well, the gym I belong to is sponsoring a spin-a-thon to support the BikeTown Africa Project.  On Sunday, we’ll have a gym full of people pedaling like mad on stationary bikes for four hours to raise awareness and money for BikeTown Africa.

What’s BikeTown Africa?

Founded in 2005 by the Kona Bicycle Co., the Bristol Myers-Squibb Secure the Future Foundation, and Bicycling Magazine, the BikeTown Africa Project provides new, well-built, low-maintenance Kona AfricaBikes to home health care workers in sub-Saharan Africa to facilitate the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.  Just $100 covers the cost of donating one bike, including training its user on maintenance and repair.  Using a bike, a health care worker can visit eight or more patients per day instead of one!

What can you do?

The Weight Club and Virginia Tech University Honors are holding the spin-a-thon on Sunday.  I’m participating and raising money from sponsors because I think this is a very worthwhile cause - it’s putting long-term, practical resources on the ground to help combat a huge health issue.

I’ve set up a page so you can sponsor me for the spin-a-thon here:

http://store.eSellerate.net/stclairsoft/biketown

You can give as little as $5, or as much as you want in $5 increments by buying more than one of the ‘donations’.  I’m personally covering the payment processing cost, so your entire donation will be given to the BikeTown Africa Project.  The spin-a-thon is this Sunday, so please make your donation before noon on Sunday.

Update: Well, the spin-a-thon is over (hence the crossed out donation link) but thanks to readers here and to the dedication of a a lot of folks at the Weight Club and VT University Honors, we raised $7440 for BikeTown Africa!  Thank you!!

- Jon

Yes, I’ve been a negligent father - I didn’t blog about Ben’s release of Mathomatic for iPhone.  It’s a very cool port of Mathomatic, an open source symbolic algebra engine that’s been around on the desktop for quite a while.  Ben’s integrated it into a very slick package, and the equation formatting and display is really top notch.

Yeah, it’s pretty geeky, but I have to say it’s also VERY cool!  Whether you’re doing homework, simplifying some equations for use in your own development work, or just want to be amazed at what you can do on an iPhone these days, it’s worth playing with - check it out!

Yes, my son is now officially kicking his dad’s butt on the iPhone side of the business.  Ben had NetSketch ready at the launch of the app store, and even as an impartial observer (as much as I can be, anyway), it’s an impressive piece of software.

NetSketch brings collaborative drawing to the iPhone and iPod Touch.  You can draw on the iPhone’s screen in full color and share your work with others over WiFi - pretty cool!  If you collaborate with your friends, everyone’s changes are shown in the drawing in real-time.  And NetSketch is vector-based and offers infinite pan and zoom - so it’s easy to add detail to your work and you never run out of room.

Here are some drawings made with NetSketch:

I have to say it’s darn nice for $5.99, and the networking capabilities really set it apart. I can see this taking over in classrooms and meeting rooms this fall

Take a look at http://www.netsketchapp.com/

I had MacJury duty Tuesday on Chuck Joiner’s MacJury show, contributing to a discussion on stolen Macs and the hilarious Back to My Mac recovery of a stolen laptop. We also talked about Starbucks’ new WiFi rollout and speculated on their possible plans as a “media hub cafe”. Check out our random ramblings

Ted Landau at MacFixit has posted a column celebrating Default Folder’s 20th anniversary.  Ted’s a long-time Default Folder fan and one of the most knowledgeable guys around when it comes to troubleshooting Macs.  It was a real honor to get to sit down with him for a virtual interview :-)  And embarrassingly, I hadn’t actually realized that this year marks Default Folder’s 20th anniversary until Ted actually asked me when the first version shipped.  We’ve gotta plan a party and a big sale or something!