With the horrific earthquake in Japan destroying lives and devastating communications lines, trying to connect survivors of the disaster was nearly impossible Friday and into Saturday with phone lines down and SMS unavailable throughout much of the country. One man, stranded 10 miles from home, found a way to connect with his wife, 8 months pregnant, using Beluga, the group texting application launched at the end of 2010, recently acquired by Facebook.

The user, who goes by the name of "Aaron", posted his story to Beluga's community support site, saying:

"Beluga kept me in touch during the massive Tokyo earthquake yesterday

I just wanted to give a huge thanks for making Beluga. I live in central Tokyo, and the earthquake yesterday overwhelmed all mobile lines. No SMS and no voice calls at all were possible for nearly 10 hours. But for some reason Beluga worked, and allowed me to stay in contact with my wife, who is 8 months pregnant, while we were apart. It took me 3 hours to walk the 10 miles home through Tokyo since all the trains were out, and I could have kissed my phone every time I got a message from my wife. Thanks for making Beluga free, even though after this I'd gladly pay for it!"

One can imagine the sheer terror of being separated from one's spouse after such a devastating quake (and all the related aftershocks and tsunami), and the utter relief the man felt with every single notification that hit his phone as he walked the 10 miles home from Tokyo. The headlines continue to be filled with amazing photos of devastation and continued concerns about safety, and we will no doubt hear many more stories of loss and, as with other world disasters, stories of hope, rescue and heroism.

The power to connect people and families is an incredible thing. Jon Perlow, cofounder of Beluga, posted it Facebook with a simple "Wow", adding on the support site, "We're glad to hear Beluga was able to help. Our thoughts are with you and all the people in Japan." A breath-taking story.

Chalk one up for the world of group texting, and the ability for new forms of communication to deliver experiences previously impossible.

On Friday, I participated in a panel at SXSW discussing the rising world of mobile photo sharing, specifically addressing two approaches - mass broadcast of photos through sites like Twitter and Facebook, or limited sharing, such as that espoused by Path, who famously has limited sharing to your self-selected network of 50 people. During our panel, Danny Trinh of Path let slip that the company is planning a feature that will let you tap existing photo sharing accounts you may have, and import them into your Path, making the service a better and more full account of your event history.

In our discussion, Trinh doubled down on the service's limited sharing approach, advocating the select network more accurately reflected human nature, best exemplified by the famous Dunbar's Number (150) which shows humans typically interact with a smaller number of close friends, rather than blasting out to thousands of loosely connected followers. For Path, the magic number isn't even 150 or 50, but 15 - fifteen amazing connections upon whom you could call to ask for help if you were in the hospital, for example, he said.

Trinh spoke to how sharing photos with a select group of people sets up memories - and how scrolling back even a few weeks of photos brings back the feelings of the event where the photos were taken. With this in mind, combined with the service's relative newness, he said the company was investigating the option to let users import photos from external photo sharing sites (assuming Flickr and Facebook are top of the list) to extend these memories within Path itself, even if Path was not the original source. The idea could possibly be like MemoLane, where one could scroll right to left to go back in time and see one's prior history.

During the panel, Trinh also spoke to the company's design philosophy, saying features often would make it to the very edge of code release only to be pulled at the last minute because they weren't quite perfect. He also promised Android support was planned in the near future, and speculated the company might eventually move into including video as part of one's Path. But if you're expecting Path to open up outright, don't hold your breath.

Here in Austin for SXSW for my third time at the conference, one thing has already been achieved which I never attempted before - a completely Apple free experience. After some thought, I opted to join this year's conference while leaving my MacBook Air at home, in its place taking the ChromeOS powered CR-48 notebook from Google's pilot program instead - not due to some ill will toward Cupertino, but as the device helps solve some of the major issues that plague industry events of this type - network access and power. Seeing my fellow Apple addicts clustered around power outlets with white cords draped to and fro today has already helped validate that decision. Meanwhile, Google has quietly been upgrading the ChromeOS experience, so we early beta testers can feel more confident using what's not intended to be the final user experience.

As noted in my initial feedback on the Cr-48 at the end of the year, the device sports an incredible battery life, approaching that of the exceptional span seen in tablets from Apple's iPad to Android tablets including the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Instead of the less than two hours of uptime I've come to expect from my MacBook Air during typical use, the CR-48 easily bests six hours of steady work, and probably can do eight if I'm not making it sweat.

Meanwhile, as regular event goers know, between 3G network access and WiFi, it's not uncommon for one or both to be down at a megaconference like SXSW, even with great planning and best intentions. The CR-48 gives me something of an escape hatch - coming with 100 MB of free 3G network traffic from Verizon, which I tapped into a couple times with WiFi going wonky. This isn't an option on the MacBook Air, of course, barring the laptop's tapping into my Android through a WiFi hotspot.

Planning ahead, I knew it made sense to overweight the convenience of power and WiFi with the CR-48. Since the December review, ChromeOS has been regularly updated over the air, including fixes to the much-maligned trackpad, and new in the last day or so, the addition of true windowing, going beyond a series of tabs in the Chrome browser to separate windows that act as separate screens, much like Mac OS X's Spaces functionality. Now, I just have to hit Control-N to spawn a new browser window, and click the new window icon in the top right of the screen to switch between panes. Considering the overwhelming majority of my own activity with my laptop is Web-based, with increasingly less being done through desktop software, my cloud centric life is very comfortable on the CR-48.

Barring an overwhelming tractor beam pull from the makeshift Apple store featuring new iPad 2s, I expect to leave Austin on Monday with the same number of devices I came here with - three. Between the CR-48, my Samsung Galaxy Tab and my Android-based Samsung Epic, I can do everything I need to, including schedule my SXSW itinerary with the show's dedicated app. My weapon of choice doesn't have any branding on it - it's a black monolith that simply executes. I don't expect to see a lot of other CR-48s here at the show, but maybe by 2012, there will be a greater ChromeOS contingent. If they keep the battery and wireless strengths a focus, I can't see why not.

Editor's Note: Part three in an irregular series of stories from my 12 years in Silicon Valley. The first discussed interviewing for my first job, while the second discussed the role.

Finishing School While Starting My Career

In early 1999, I was simply punching the clock at Berkeley, wrapping up my final semester before graduation, taking the minimum units needed to complete my double major. Most days, I would show up arguably as the best dressed guy in classes, wearing button down shirts and often slacks, preparing for my Valley job instead of the more laid-back style of my classmates, whose tastes were quite varied. For the most part, my classes were in the morning. Following their drudgery, I'd drive down 101 and reach Burlingame.

If lucky enough to get there in time for lunch, I'd drop off my bag and leave immediately with my colleague before doing a lick of work. If we timed it right, we could even go hit a bucket or two of golf balls at the local driving range and quickly grab a sandwich before returning to the office, still making it to our desks in time before our boss came in, having seen closing bell on CNBC. Some days we made up for it by working late into the evening and letting traffic settle, but other days, we didn't get much done at all.

Even in a time when other companies were seemingly filing to go public with no revenue, our particular lack of direction couldn't last long, and it didn't.

A No Revenue Company Doesn't Exactly Scale Well

About six months after joining the project, it was clear the company's lead investor was fatiguing from the lack of traction seen in our SEO product, and grew tired of being told, often loudly in Russian during more heated arguments, that he didn't share the same vision. After one flareup, one of his partners was assigned to work closely with us to get an idea of our tasks and goals to see if the company could be made valuable, and thus, the investment saved.

Even the partner seemed uncertain about what he was supposed to do. He had a hard time reconciling what the company said it did with what my colleague and I spent the most time doing - including our site rankings, IPO market predictions and the occasional interview with an industry luminary, like one I did with Scott Gannon, the then director of ecommerce at IBM. He seemed impressed with how we had managed to accomplish much in an odd work environment, and confided one saving grace for us both was that "we were cheap", which we knew.

The situation was coming to a head, but it wasn't exactly clear just what would be the result.

"You Two Are Laid Off. I am Fired."

By late April 1999, I came into the office one day and the bad news had come. My boss sat me down and said the lead investor had chosen to withdraw his money after all, and no additional funding was in sight. As a courtesy, my colleague and I would have two weeks to wind things down and then we would be done. I was told that it was through no fault of our own, that the mistakes were his, effectively adding that while we were laid off, he had been fired.

This was obviously disconcerting. I had enjoyed the work we had done, and liked being part of the Valley. But given our lack of traction, I was not surprised. My colleague and I surely took a longer lunch than usual that day, though I can't remember exactly what happened.

The next day, the first in my two weeks of continuing to wrap things up, I was standing by the office printer, and an employee from our sister company said there was somebody he would like me to meet who was going to join them soon and that it was especially important I come in the next day. The new hire, a VP of Marketing, had apparently heard I had done some successful things even though our venture had practically flat-lined. This was an interesting turn.

The following morning, I was introduced to the new VP and in our discussions found we had a shared interest in many things including the future of communications, a shared love for all things Apple, and with my graduation from Cal looming, he was eager to start his new job with someone already on board. In the space of 48 hours, I had gone from facing unemployment to quite possibly starting a new job before the last one was up, simultaneously drawing two paychecks.

The American Dream: Watching Your Boss Pack Up and Leave?

Having agreed to start my first role as a Web Marketing Manager for "Technology Workshop", a poorly named but well-intended motley crew of Russians looking to change the world of Web communication, the job transformation was indeed an odd one. Joining the sister company meant that I hardly had to change a thing. My desk stayed the same. My computer stayed the same. Even my email address and phone number stayed the same, while who I worked for shifted. Over the ensuing months, of course, I had to take calls about the last role, and they eventually stopped.

One day in my first full week of work at Technology Workshop, Greg (my old boss) came back into the office with boxes. While I tried to face my computer monitor and keep working, I couldn't help but notice as he took down his things, his books, notepads and other items and packed up to leave. There was little joy in it as his dream had been stopped. But there was some real awkwardness as the junior employee stuck around only to see his boss, boxes in hand, turn to shake hands for one last time. After some muffled goodbyes to some of my other new colleagues at the new company, he was gone.

My new job had started. Same desk. Same phone. Same e-mail address. Same office. New project.