I already had the PDF on my dropbox so I thought I’d try to use something like GoodReader. Lord help me, they’ve updated it to use iCloud but I have no idea how to use my dropbox with it. FAIL. So I went directly to the Dropbox app, found the file and hoped that there’d be an option for me to select which app to view it with. Ha! No luck. I got another generic PDF reader with no annotation enabled. Then I remembered that Circus Ponies’ Notebook app (for both the mac and iPad) imports the PDF either as a file to be clicked and viewed, or as a annotated pages. So I dropped the 184 page dissertation into Notebook on my mac, imported as annotated pages, saved it onto my dropbox folder and then opened it up all ready for reading and marking up on my iPad. I had four other articles that i wanted to review so I created a separate Notebook file, and dropped four other PDFs into their own separate tabbed sections of the Notebook. Talk about having a powerful tool and not knowing about it.

I just watched the Apple Education event keynote and I’m very excited about what I saw. If you haven’t seen today’s keynote yet, run, do not walk to your local device (I got a better connection via my iPad projecting the keynote to my TV) and sit a spell. Nope, Schiller will never have Steve’s dynamic style, but the content is definitely something that we need to be keenly aware of. In a word they are taking book publishing and specifically textbook publishing, and taking it to the next level. The textbook will not be a static collection of words and images frozen at printing but have the portability of a book, the videos and interactivity of a networked computer and the freshness of blog pages, while retaining formatting, typography and layout that tends to be lacking in web-based textbooks.

I was going to try my hand at getting Udutu to work for my stand-alone copyright unit but I’m now going to investigate the possibility of using iBook Author to make the unit. Now we know where all the iWeb brain-power went over the last couple years. And I’m curious to see Full Sail will continue to experiment with iTunes U, in that iTunes U seems determined to become it’s own LMS and not just a lecture delivery vehicle.

I’ve been getting emails from QuarkXpress begging me to check out their new iPad/ePub friendly $299 app (if you have a previous version of QuarkXpress). They’ve got to be peeing their pant. I wonder how Schoology feels about Apple putting more effort/muscle behind iTunes U with added assignment and communication features. Yikes.

Enjoy. jbb

brian tong and molly wood - image by CNET

Anchored by two very smart and funny tech-observers, Molly Wood and Brian Tong, the once daily podcast seems to have fallen victim to the talk-show radio syndrome where news stories have become launching points for venom and hyperbole. Back when Tom Merritt was part of the crew the balance between news reporting, analysis and rants was well managed, entertaining and worth listening to/watching. The revolving third seat, since Merritt’s departure, has been manned by good people, but all seem to be either too quick to go into rant mode or no one can be found who is strong enough a personality to maintain the news/analysis/rant balance. I’m sure that there are probably constructive reasons for the change, but the reduction of the podcast from daily to weekly isn’t a good sign. And for me, with the rant-a-thon, I can hardly make it through even the weekly sessions.

Case in point, news item: Apple’s Siri voice-service is under scrutiny over it’s apparent aversion to giving info when asked for assistance looking for birth-control. Siri doesn’t seem to have any problem giving assistance when asked for where one can score pot or how to dispose of a body. The latter example, obviously meant to be humorous while the former… well, have you read the Steve Jobs biography? Molly Wood goes into rant mode about Apple’s obvious nanny-mode control issues. Apple had previously responded that it wasn’t a political statement and that, after all, the service is still in Beta. One of Wood’s co-hosts offered that it could have also been a CYA thing, with Apple not wanting to be sued in the future when someone under-age uses Siri to get info and then gets an abortion. Wood wouldn’t have it and called Apple “Beta” explanation bull[shit], and continued the rant. I shut off the podcast and deleted the episode.

What it comes down to is that there’s no one there to pull back on the rants and maintain even the illusion of journalistic balance. It was a little understandable when they were under the pressure of doing a daily tech-news show that they would riff on the headlines and not spend too much time to dig deeper into the stories. And given the ongoing nature of most of the stories and the incomplete record of the events, one does need the analysis. Problem was and is, especially when dealing with anything Apple or Steve Jobs, Wood and Brian Tong always assumed the worst, most controlling, evil motives. To their credit they’ve earned their skepticism over Apple’s motives. Wood has seen how Apple marketing has been savage in their pandering and mistreatment of the press and Tong worked for Apple in the early years of the Apple Stores (which I guess qualifies one for … wounds). Alas, having been poorly treated by individuals or organizations… well, if one is going to be a journalist one needs to rise above it. Where’s the objectivity when one automatically goes for the “evil” reason. I’m not saying that one shouldn’t be skeptical and just buy the marketing fluff, but there is a middle ground that C/NET and Buzz Out Loud seem to have lost a long time ago.

Sources:

• Buzz Out Loud 1568: That’s just the Google Maps guy, ignore him. http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-57334959-10/buzz-out-loud-1568-thats-just-the-google-maps-guy-ignore-him-podcast/ retrieved 12-30-2011.
• Petition To Correct Siri’s Apparent Anti-Abortion Bias Collects Nearly 30,000 Signatures by Laura Bassett/Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/siri-abortion-petition_n_1124281.html retrieved 12/30/2011.

Uploaded by techaudottv on Nov 24, 2011
Video comparison between Microsoftt’s Tellme and Apple’s Siri. The results speak for themselves.

More than 1 Million views!! more than 2,000 comments. You guys are certainly opinonated.

I wonder how many of you read the post wrapped around this video? http://www.techau.tv/blog/microsoft-tellme-is-not-the-same-as-siri-video/

Triumph of the Nerds

Watch Steve Jobs: One Last Thing on PBS. See more from STEVE JOBS – ONE LAST THING.

Watch An Interview With Steve Jobs on PBS. See more from NOVA.

When I first heard about iCloud’s photostreaming feature I was really hoping that I’d finally have a much better workflow for my photos than being tied to my iPhoto library that was getting much too big for my little macbook air’s little SSD. Sure enough, once I got my macbook air, 27-inch iMac, iPhone and iPad all on iCloud photos taken on my iPhone started magically showing up on all the other devices, just like Apple had promised. Yay! I started imagining that, with all devices being synced, I could just choose the best place to edit and organize my collection and the results would flow across to all the other devices. Well, the images flowed okay.

I started with an image of a restaurant menu from a favorite sushi place using my iPhone’s HD setting, which meant that the iPhone produced two images automatically. Then once I had the images on my iPad I decided to rotate it so that the words were in proper orientation. I did it to both versions of the image. Okay. Now out of the four images I wanted to keep one and toss the other three, but there was no delete option for any of the four images hosted on the photostream. Um… yeah, not good.

Getting images effortlessly flowing from camera (phone) to any connected device is good, not being able to toss any image posted in the photostream is completely flawed. I come from the school where one might easily take 300 images to come up with three decent ones. Granted I’ve been know to post 100 of the 300 images on my flickr photostream but even then I’m deciding what images to post and which ones to toss. It just seemed inconceivable that one is forced to keep any image that gets on one’s iCloud photostream and the only way to pull one down is the pull all of them down (AKA disable photostream) or to wait for the undesired image to be the 1001st image. What?

Then, when I was experimenting with the iCloud photostream I made an event folder in iPhoto and added some images off of the stream and now the name of my stream seems to be connected to this event folder. Ugh. I’m afraid to add any of my pre-stream images from my iphoto library to the stream. At the moment it seems to distinguish between photos saved in the photostream and photos saved locally (on the “camera roll” on the iDevice), but does that mean the same images in both places are being saved twice. And when I organize my photos on my macs in folders (by events), will that organization get lost in the stream if I drop the photos back into the stream. The lack of controls makes me wonder. I mean, I wonder if the only way to organize my photos and share the organization back to my iPad and iPhone is to hook the devices back to a host Mac. Ugh. This is definitely a version 1.0 product.

I was able to find several video tutorials on YouTube about how to “delete photos” from photostream (one example listed below), but they were all about temporarily disabling photostream on all devices, then deleting all photos on the photostream and resuming using photostream… Not the workflow that i’m looking for. Damn.

resources:

• photostream screen grab by joe bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/2011-10-27-photostream.jpg retrieved 10/29/2011.
• iCloud logo by Apple Inc., http://www.apple.com/icloud/ retrieved 10/29/2011.
• “Photostream Your Photos on All Your Devices” by Apple Inc., http://www.apple.com/icloud/ retrieved 10/29/2011.
• Delete Photos from Photo Stream in iCloud – iOS 5 [LONG VERSION] by docrock808, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MRhMtBeCkQ retrieved 10/29/2011.

Uploaded by HKtechnews on Oct 7, 2011
http://hktechnews.com/hong-kong-pays-tribute-to-steve-jobs-at-apple-store/

The Joy of Tech by Nitrozac & Snaggy

After the premature obit-twitter post from What’s Trending a few weeks ago, I searched twitter and news-sites to make sure that this wasn’t another hoax. Sadly, it wasn’t. My girlfriend and I spent most of the rest of the night watching Leo Laporte‘s TWiT.TV Live coverage of the event. As much as I know that many outside of the tech field won’t give a moments pause over this, but watching Laporte and friends, it felt very much like a gathering of the tribe memorializing the passing of one of our best.

Image/Website by Boing Boing

Over the course of the past 18-hours I’ve seen a number of wonderful tributes, stories and creative works related to the life of Steve Jobs. Boing Boing skinned their website to look like an old Mac OS desktop. One of the more interesting posts was by Gizmodo’s Brian Lam who had been in the center of the stolen iPhone 4 controversy last year. His post, titled, Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole), began with his interaction with Jobs when Lam was new at Gizmodo and how Jobs expressed his fondness for Gizmodo’s geeky coverage of gadgets. The most telling part of the story was that even in the midst of the negotiations to get back the stolen iPhone, when it was apparent that fondness Jobs had for Gizmodo was going to end, as Jobs ended the phone conversation with Lam asking, “”What do you think of it [iPhone4 prototype]?”

Lam said, “It’s beautiful.”

Written tributes abound. Ars technica had it’s staff write about The first time I used an Apple computer was… It was interesting to see how many staffers when back to the Apple ][ and how many were from the macintosh or later iMac eras. The newly reborn BYTE website (formerly magazine) had it's editors and contributors share their memories of Jobs. In a separate BYTE article, Jerry Pournelle, the godfather of all tech-journalism, weighs in on Job's journey and vision that we got one step closer to with the iPhone and iPad. Finally, one of the more touching and insightful comments was posted by John Gruber in his Daring Fireball blog when he recalled the last time he saw Jobs, at last summer's WWDC, and noted new grass-stains on the heels of Job's famous grey New Balance 993 shoes and what that might have meant (Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot).

None-too-surprising, the visual tributes to the man who believed that technology was at it's best when it empowered our human need to explore and express ourselves through the arts, would find speak out loudly and passionately at Job's passing.

"Eternal Flame" by XKCD

"iSad" by Gregory Wadsworth

"ThankYou Steve" street art in Hollywood - photo posted by rob sheridan

"Thanks Steve" by Jonathan Mak

The Joy of Tech by Nitrozac & Snaggy

I was lucky enough to have attended the 2007 Macworld keynote when Jobs unveiled the iPhone and one in 2000 when Jobs had just returned to Apple, became iCEO and introduce OS X to the world. One thing that has stayed with me about the 2007 keynote, besides the energy in the room when the iPhone was revealed, but at one point when there was a technology glitch and Jobs had to riff a bit while the minions fixed whatever had fouled up behind the curtain. Jobs got to talk about how he and Woz would pull pranks in the old days and there was a definite sense of nostalgia in that moment with an equal sense that this was going to be another moment to be remembered for a long time. I won’t soon forget that I was there when the iPhone was introduced to the world.

I never met the man personally but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t felt the pressure wave from the dent he left in the universe. Gone too soon, but never to be forgotten, he will live on in the lives of millions who know that this thing is about something more important than a technological device or an American corporation. He believed in a place where Liberal Arts intersected with Science and Technology for the betterment of the human soul. Some thought that was just hype and marketing, a reality distortion field. I choose to believe that this little wedge in history, the Apple/Jobs Phenomenon, is an opportunity for us to remember and do the great things that humans can do when we get past our prejudices and fears. Steven Paul Jobs 1955-2011, thanks for leading the way. It’s our turn to live different(ly).

Sources:

• image: Thanks Steve by Jonathan Mak, http://jmak.tumblr.com/post/9377189056 retrieved 10/5/2011.
• youtube video: Steve Jobs’ Think Different Tribute Video by Fuego7, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeN5TJxxX2E retrieved 10/5/2011.
• image: Steve Jobs has died by boing boing, http://boingboing.net/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-has-died.html retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole) by Brian Lam, http://thewirecutter.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-was-always-kind-to-me-or-regrets-of-an-asshole/retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: The first time I used an Apple computer was… by ars technica, http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/the-first-time-i-used-an-apple-computer-was.ars retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: BYTE Remembers Steve Jobs by BTYE staff, http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/personal-tech/consumer-services/231900188 retrieved 10/6/2011.
• article: Steve Jobs: Jerry Pournelle Reflects by Jerry Pournelle, http://www.informationweek.com/byte/commentary/personal-tech/smart-phones/231600299 retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot by John Gruber, http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/universe_dented_grass_underfoot retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• image: eternal flame by XKCD, http://xkcd.com/961/ retrieved 10/6/2011.
• image: iSad by Gregory Wadsworth, http://twitter.com/#!/aggregart/ retrieved on 10/6/2011
• image: “ThankYou Steve” street art in Hollywood – photo posted by rob sheridan, http://instagr.am/p/PcYQs retrieved 10/8/2011.
• image: The Joy of Tech by Nitrozac & Snaggy, http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1600.html, retrieved 10/10/2011.
• youtube video: Macworld keynote 2007: Introducing the new iPhone PART 1, posted by leocg, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ftf4riVJyqw#! retrieved on 10/8/2011.
• article: MacWorld Bound – Hurry Up and Wait by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/2007/01/08/macworld-bound-hurry-up-and-wait/ retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• article: MacWorld 2007 Debrief by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/2007/01/28/macworld-debrief/ retrieved 10/6/2011.
• article: Steve Jobs Macworld 2008 Keynote in 60 Seconds by Joe Bustillos, http://joebustillos.com/2008/01/25/steve-jobs-macworld-2008-keynote-in-60-seconds/ retrieved on 10/6/2011.
• youtube video: To Steven Jobs on His Thirtieth Birthday, uploaded by technologizer, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d1uMcVl8NQ4 retrieved 10/10/2011.
• youtube video: TWiT Live Specials 95: Tribute And Remembrance Of Steve Jobs by twit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u_V9MIPBP0&feature=channel_video_title and http://twit.tv/show/twit-live-specials/95 retrieved 10/6/2011.
• Steve Jobs Documentary 2010 posted by computertwit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgiEG-NsAB0&NR=1 retrieved 10/17/2011.

1. Open iChat. On the menu bar select iChat >Preferences.

2. Select the Accounts tab at the top.

3. On the left side-bar under Accounts, scroll down to the ‘+’ button to add a new account.

4. With AIM selected under the Account type you can either enter your existing AIM information (screen name & password), or choose ‘Get an iChat Account’ to create a new AIM account. If you have an existing AIM account you can skip to step 8 after entering your screen name and password.

5. If you click the “Get an iChat Account…” button your web browser will go to the “open an account” for the service that you’ve selected in the “Account Type” selected in step four (above).

6. Fill out the information needed to create your AIM account.

7. After entering all of your information make sure that you write down your selected username/screen name and password in a separate location to keep on hand for future reference. After filling in your information and submitting it, you will receive a “Congratulations!” confirmation message.

8. Now that you have your AIM account created, go back to the iChat application to finish the AIM account set-up. Enter in your screen name and password that you just created. After entering, select ‘Done’. Your newly created AIM buddy list will open up.

9. Make sure to share your new account with classmates, professors and friends. Having an IM account only helps if others know about it. Following is a video that’s a little dated on using AIM with iChat followed by Apple’s iChat Basics video. Enjoy.

Sources:

Full Sail University, Digital Literacy course, iChat_AIM_Account_Setup.PDF

https://new.aol.com/

MacMost Now 113: Using iChat with a Free AIM Account. http://youtu.be/mN2Qrtg1kdQ retrieved 9-16-2011.

Apple Find Out How Mac OS X iChat Basics. http://youtu.be/BMmCvcZW3wc retrieved 9-16-2011.

This is kind’a scary. Long ago I decided that I should not be ashamed of my continual attraction to computer/iPad/iPhone cases any more than what I’ve noted of the attraction of my female friends to all things shoes and accessories. So here’s my latest acquisition in the world of iPhone 4 cases, the Book Book for iPhone4 by TwelveSouth. My one and only venture in filio/wallet type iphone cases was Griffin Tech’s Elan Passport Wallet, which I only used once or twice and then exiled to the “was a good idea at the time” drawer.

So the book-book was a complete impulse buy and the first thing that I noticed was that, in keeping with the vintage book look, the case has no cut-out in the back for the camera. I take a lot of pictures with my iPhone so this should have been a real deal killer. Funny thing was that the Elan Passport had the camera cut-out but didn’t make the cut, so why is it that I’ve kept using the book-book case? I think that the book-book does a better job being a phone-case/wallet hybrid than the Elan because of the little ID window and bill fold pocket that’s missing in the Elan. Also, there’s something fun, for those who have known me for years, that I’m carrying around what looks like a little book (bible?). Oh yeah, when I finally looked at the video from Twelve-South (above top), I realized that I could take pictures by lifting up the red tab and sliding the iPhone up just enough to uncover the camera lens. Not too elegant, but it gets the job done and it’s a fun case (almost as much fun as the video implies).

So, the deal is that when the DVD is finished burning and spits out the burned disk DO NOT click the DONE button. Take out the burned disk and slide in the new disk to be burned. If you click DONE you are telling iDVD to reset for the next project. Ack!

This reminds me of the word/color game where they quick flash the names of colors in front of you, requiring your to say the name of the color but the word is printed in a different color so you have to stop the visual cue and go with the literal word. It think they think they simplified the process so that it does not require a button click, just drop in the new disk and go. But if you’re done, click DONE. Alas, we’ve all been trained to respond to pop-up windows by clicking on the button, without reading what the button says. Oops. Wow, even Apple can get UI wrong. jbb

image by MacRumors.com

So for those up us with current accounts or those who want to keep their previously created iWeb site on the Internet, we have about a year to figure out how to replace mobileme hosting. This applies to all current emdt students and graduates from the past three years. Those who did not activate their mobileme accounts are out of luck and will need to find alternatives right now. I’ve been looking through numerous articles ranging from speculation to top ten lists on the iCloud transition and possible solutions. I will list them in the Sources section below.

iWeb on Dropbox

I found an excellent step-by-step instruction on how to host any website using Dropbox’s Public folder here: http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/HostWebsites. I’m going to adapt their instructions for our purposes.

Basically the idea is that we are going to save our iWeb site to a folder and that folder will be in the Dropbox Public folder. The dropbox folks note that “You are limited to client side scripts and HTML since Dropbox cannot run any server side stuff.” With that limitation in mind lets begin.

1. Create a folder in your Public folder in your Dropbox folder (in my example I created a folder called month11 - remember to avoid using spaces or punctuation in your folder title)
2. In iWeb, from the Site Publishing Settings page, in the Publish to: menu select Local Folder
3. Still in the Site Publishing Settings page, in the Folder Location section, chose the folder you created in step one. Leave the Website URL blank for the moment.
4. If you are working or updating an iWeb site save your work (file menu > save).
5. After you’ve saved your work (or if you are just moving your website to the new location), select the Publish Site button.

Because of how iWeb creates it’s folder structure you might have to search around a little bit before you find the correct folder and html file that will act like your index.html or home.html file that you want to put in the Website URL section of the iWeb Site Publishing Settings page and to bookmark and share.

In my example website (above) I created a folder in my Public folder named month11 and called the website edm613 (which iWeb name as a folder inside of my month11 folder). When I drilled down I found a folder named Home and the Home.html file that I needed to point to get the functional website URL: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/[DropboxID]/month11/edm613/Home/Home.html. Remember that after the domain name, such as dropbox.com, upper case letters make a difference, so be aware of this in your URL. Also the designation [DropboxID] will be your special dropbox ID number. Finally, because iWeb wants complete control of the folder where your website is saved to please do NOT remove or rename any file in the folder you’ve chosen to save your iWeb website to. If you are successful you should have a fully function website now. enjoy.

test iWeb site on dropbox

Domain Names: The dropbox wiki ends with the following information:

If you own a domain, you can create a CNAME record that points to dl.dropbox.com. From this, you can create links such as download.yourdomain.com/u/[DropboxID]/interestingpicture.png. For more information, see here: http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=7897&replies=17.

Alternatively, you can use TinyUrl or bit.ly to create a shorter, custom link to your page or setup a redirect from a domain name you already own.

Sources:

• Ten ways to replace iWeb and MobileMe hosting By Steven Sande, http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/13/ten-ways-to-replace-iweb-and-mobileme-hosting/ retrieved 6/22/2011.
• From iCloud to Dropbox: 5 Cloud Services Compared By Brian X. Chen, http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/06/cloud-services-compared/ retrieved 6/22/2011.
• What to do with your MobileMe-hosted site post-iCloud By Geoffrey Goetz, http://gigaom.com/apple/what-to-do-with-your-mobileme-hosted-site-post-icloud/ retrieved 6/22/2011.
• MobileMe: Some speculation about the transition to iCloud By Steven Sande, http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/07/mobileme-some-speculation-about-the-transition-to-icloud retrieved 6/22/2011.
• Apple reviving expired MobileMe logins for iCloud transition By ipodnn staff, http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/11/06/16/requires.ios.5.os.x.lion/ retrieved 6/22/2011.
• Opinion: Why Apple scrapped MobileMe for iCloud: What went wrong with MobileMe By Jackie Dove, http://www.macvideo.tv/distribution/news/index.cfm?newsId=3286864&pagType=allchandate retrieved 6/22/2011.
• MobileMe Support By Apple, http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/ retrieved 6/22/2011.
• Make Your Own Website By by SebastianH/DropBox, http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/HostWebsites retrieved 6/22/2011.
• Steve Jobs Confirms Discontinuation of iWeb in iCloud Transition By Eric Slivka, http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/12/steve-jobs-confirms-discontinuation-of-iweb-in-icloud-transition/ retrieved 6/22/2011.
• image: Clouds by karindalziel, http://www.flickr.com/photos/nirak/644335254/ retrieved 6/22/2011.

Though there’s no new news here, this is an amazing encapsulation of the WWDC keynote address… Alas, it doesn’t answer the burning question: But what about iDisk’s future???

In typical Apple-style with it’s lightning-focus on delivering the perfect user-experience across three different platforms (desktop/laptops, handhelds and tablets) Jobs proposed the next step in the online evolution. I was there, at a Steve keynote in 2000 when iTools was introduced as an easy way to make websites and send email iCards. Contrast that to today’s announced iCloud services, where we’re not posting websites but making our media seamlessly accessible across multiple devices. Alas, there are still some of us who are just looking for online disk space where we can host our webpages and associated media. Apparently, and not too surprisingly, “we’re” in the minority.

A cursory survey of friends and family pretty much confirms that almost no one really is into creating websites or having an online presence beyond a Facebook account. There are a few, very few, among my geek friends who created slideshow galleries back in the day, mostly of their kids, and there were a few who did blogs back in the LiveJournal days. But as the tools have become more and more powerful, I see virtually no draw amongst my friends and co-workers. A couple years ago I gave pro-flickr accounts to my four siblings. One is being used by my niece to share photos of her first born and another account was taken over by a brother-in-law for his business. The others went unused. None of my immediate co-workers have a personal blog, though they all have personal and professional facebook accounts. A few coworkers use Twitter but I don’t know if any use it personally or just have a “work” account. So, what an online presence means for most is mostly about micro-posting/social networking a la facebook and having this connection available on one’s handheld device(s). And, except for our current dependence on using MobileMe to host student capstone project websites (which could easily be hosted anywhere else), I do not know that anyone would care at all if iDisk or the web-hosting part of MobileMe disappears. Does this, my concern about creating and hosting my own sites and blogs… does this put me ahead of the curve or terribly behind it? I love what Apple has done over the years and plan to continue to explore new ways to use my iPad2, Apple TV, etc., etc. But somehow I do feel like I’m getting lapped and left behind. Adios, mm, we hardly knew ye.

Addendum:

The same day I wrote this post Steven Sande at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) speculated about the transition from MobileMe to iCloud, with the delightful subtitle: “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.” Sande listed the following four speculations about what this transition will mean:

• Speculation #1: Web-based versions of Mail, Contacts, and Calendar will be de-emphasized
• Speculation #2: iDisk disappears
• Speculation #3: Gallery is toast
• Speculation #4: So long, iWeb hosting

Though completely based on speculation, Sande seems to agree with my fears that those of us needing web-hosting are going to be EOL’ed. Awesome. I guess I need to look into how/whether one can post iWeb sites using DropBox hosting (next post…). Check out Sande’s article here: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/07/mobileme-some-speculation-about-the-transition-to-icloud/.

Resources:
CNET News: Steve Jobs introduces iCloud, http://youtu.be/O_C1TZIT-qQ retrieved 6/7/2011
Apple – Introducing iOS 5, http://youtu.be/LLJIef-e-7g retrieved 6/7/2011
MobileMe: Some speculation about the transition to iCloud by Steven Sande, http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/07/mobileme-some-speculation-about-the-transition-to-icloud/ retrieved 6/9/2011.

Job’s ended his keynote introducing the iPad 2 on Wednesday saying, “technology alone is not enough, that it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.” It’s an important point that gets missed in all the noise and hype and features lists from all the tablet PCs introduced over the past year and going back over ten years. My first thought was whether this was something that might meet the needs of my 80-year-old mom in Arizona. See, my mom cares nothing for the latest or greatest, but to her computers have pretty much not been worth the effort since I set her up with one of my hand-me-down PCs about 14-years ago. All she does is email and occasionally attempt to print out photos for her children and grandchildren, so you’d think that that wouldn’t be a big deal. But like I said, it’s been largely a missed opportunity for her.

Having watched her pattern of usage (or the lack thereof) over the years I’m anxious to see if the iPad (version 2) can meet her needs in a way that other PCs have not (including the mac mini she currently has). It comes down to down to three basic ideas:

1. Reliability/Simple UI
2. Usable-in-any-room
3. Value-Add/Worth the effort

Reliability/Simple UI

It’s a mistake that almost every geek makes when they decide to pass on their older systems to siblings and elders, to assume that because the siblings’ and elders’ needs are less complicated that a hand-me-down system will do. The problem with this assumption is that those of us who use computers every day for hours on end for years on end have no idea how much we put up with when it comes to tech-troubles. We’re unaware of what a pain in the ass technology tends to be. We’ve been doing it for so long that it doesn’t even consciously register for most of us anymore. Such is not the case if the recipient of our hand-me-down gear is a tech novice or tech phobic. Every unexpected beep or boop is another excuse not to use the thing or requires a tech-support call to yours truly. So, the computer has to be rock-solid, uncomplicated, with the simplest UI (user interface) possible and still get the job done.

For my mom that meant getting her off of the hand-me-down PCs and buying her a mac-mini. That solved most of the reliability problems but there have been some UI problems because she got used to the PC way of doing things. And since I’ve moved to Florida mom’s main tech-helper, my older sister, is a PC-die-hard and her “fixes” have tended to leave mom confused about what she did wrong. Consequently, when mom runs into problems it “encourages” her to just not use the thing. That would be a FAIL.

When I was visiting over Christmas I showed her my iPad, but couldn’t really get her to play with the thing. Taking on learning a new device is very much like learning a new language and one cannot learn a new language over a weekend. So, as intuitive as the device may be and there are few computing devices as intuitive as the iPad, it still requires using it enough to get over whatever learning trauma one may have had at the hands of previous computer platforms. So we have to free the usage of the device from former habit of where and how we used to use our computers.

Usable-in-any-room

My mom has a computer room set up in one of the spare bedrooms. I have no real idea how frequently she might go there to check her email but I do know that when it doesn’t work it’s a simple matter of just ignoring the room until one of us asks her if she got our last message. So, how about we reverse the pattern and instead of her visiting the computer room every once in a great wall, let’s take the “computer” and have it on the couch where she spends most of her evenings, or the kitchen table where dad reads his paper every morning. Let’s make her routine of checking email be as easy as picking up a book and catching up where one left off.

She could accomplish the “usable-in-any-room” requirement with any laptop, netbook or tablet. But remember the objective is to keep things simple enough that her focus isn’t on learning how to use computers as much as not thinking about the device and just checking emails or photos of her kids and grandkids. Besides, having a 10-hour battery life, which few other devices offer, really makes the thing something that one can spent time with in any room at any time.

Value-Add/Worth the effort

As much as it might seem to those who know me that I get all of the latest tech because I’m in dire need of a 12-step program, I think long and hard about how all of the pieces need to work together and whether it’s worth it to me given the expense. So, I have no expectation that anyone should use this stuff unless there’s a real reason that’s important enough for them to make the effort. That’s been part of my frustration with how technology hasn’t met my mom’s relatively simple needs.

One thing that I’m keenly aware of, living across the country from my family, is how much better it is whenever we’ve used our iSight cameras and I’ve called in to some family event on the West Coast and had conversations with these faces that I’ve known all of my life. It’s so much better than being on the phone getting passed around the room, a peripheral voice that’s not really part of what’s happening. Alas, prior video-phone “solutions” have been way too complicated, requiring there be geeks on both ends of the call to set things up. For me, and I’m hoping mom, FaceTime and the built in cameras are the killer app for iPad 2. I mean, if we can’t have jet-cars, the least we can do is easily connect with our loved one across the world with a simple click on the FaceTime button and then be speaking with a familiar face.

March 11

There are enough changes from version 1 to version 2 that I will probably get one for myself, but I’m going to get one for mom first. I know that I’m probably going to have to do some instructional videos for her first, just to get her up to speed, but that is part of the fun of what I do. I spend a lot of time knocking these things around and separating the wheat from the chaff (and believe me, there’s a lot of chaff), and finding the stuff worthy of sharing with those whom I care about (and will have to do tech support with, if I get it wrong… ack!). It’s great when one can see the human potential beyond the technology in one’s hands.

Ahead of next week’s unveiling of Apple’s iPad version 2 we’ve received a video review of this magical cutting edge product. Apple seems to have another home-run on their hands… Can hardly wait to get mine!

Love the 1984 motif, but most thought that this was an ad FOR the iPad. I wanna see the apps that do all the stuff the guy does in the ad when the Motorla XOOM is released. BTW, leaked Best Buy ads list the XOOM at $800 and that one is REQUIRED to sign up for Verizon 3G for at least one month in order to activate WiFi on the device. Huh? Go get’em iPad killer(s)!