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Archive for the ‘Writings’ Category

Google leapfrogs Apple?

24 May

Day 44 of 366: Thanks Apple!

The lat­est talk is all about how “Google leapfrogged Apple.” Yeah, right. The best com­ment so far:

Goog­gle = 1,000 dif­fer­ent direc­tions, all Beta, all half-baked.

Apple = 10 direc­tions, all pol­ished, all complete.

We’ve been huge fans of Apple TV since we bought the first ver­sion in 2007. It does exactly what it says it does. No fuss. We sub­scribe to var­i­ous shows, rent movies, or even buy them. The con­tent is avail­able through­out our Apple ecosys­tem (i.e., fam­ily room, desk­tops, lap­tops, iPods and iPads).

The com­pe­ti­tion will surely be good for Apple. I hardly think they’ve squan­dered the tech­nol­ogy lead. One soft­ware update later, and Apple TV may be more open to Inter­net con­tent. We can browse YouTube now!

Until Google starts releas­ing some hard­ware that gets actual trac­tion (unlike their failed phone), what we are left with is smoke and car­ni­val mirrors.

 
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Posted in Gear, Writings

 

Jobs: Perhaps Adobe should…

29 Apr

©TIME Magazine“Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fin­gers. For exam­ple, many Flash web­sites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other ele­ments when the mouse arrow hov­ers over a spe­cific spot,” writes Steve Jobs in a rare open let­ter posted at Apple.com.

Jobs makes his case for why Apple refuses to let Flash onto it’s touch devices. There’s more. Bat­tery life, lock-step with cross-platform com­pat­i­bil­ity, crash prone and pro­pri­etary. Bot­tom line, Flash is not the panacea techies would have you think.

Steve con­tin­ues, “Apple’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary multi-touch inter­face doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no con­cept of a rollover. Most Flash web­sites will need to be rewrit­ten to sup­port touch-based devices. If devel­op­ers need to rewrite their Flash web­sites, why not use mod­ern tech­nolo­gies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?”

My take: Some have accused me of being fol­lower of Steve Jobs. Well, if he didn’t make so much damn sense all the time, I wouldn’t be such a fan. The thing is, this guy is the lead­ing vision­ary on the planet. Lead on, Steve!

Hon­estly, I’m not miss­ing Flash one bit.

Read more…

 
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Posted in Writings

 

App Review: miniSynth

28 Mar


After watch­ing the per­for­mance of applegirl002, curios­ity got the best of me and I down­loaded some of the apps she uses. Yonac Software’s min­iSynth is an extremely pow­er­ful app for $2. The vari­ety of sounds is seem­ingly end­less. After install, we had the iPhone con­nected to a Bose Sound­Dock II and the audio was great. The keys are adjustable in size for lit­tle folks or big. By lit­tle folks I mean my kids, who were imme­di­ately enrap­tured by min­iSynth. I soon had to install it on our iPod touch and they were run­ning around the house play­ing dual­ing min­iSynth. “Hey, give me my iPhone back!” You get the idea. For $2, you can’t beat it. Appar­ently, tal­ented peo­ple can make it do things the rest of us can’t. It’s worth a try! I’m very curi­ous what it will be like on the Apple iPad. We’ll see: Six days until the first delivery!

Down­load the app at the iTunes Store

 
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Posted in Writings

 

Innovative iPhone musician

27 Mar

And she’s smok­ing hot! Even my wife said this girl will get real famous soon.  Check her out!

iPhone Musi­cian

 
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Posted in Writings

 

iPad Camera Connection Kit available for order, shipping in late April

27 Mar
Order now!

“Many peo­ple mak­ing pre-orders or reser­va­tions for iPads were con­cerned when the iPad Cam­era Con­nec­tion Kit didn’t show up on the Apple site as avail­able for order. Never fear, for the the US$29 kit is now listed on Apple’s web­site as ship­ping in late April,” writes Steven Sande for TUAW.

Yeah, I know.  I’m one pho­tog­ra­pher that was wait­ing for today!  I just ordered the cam­era con­nec­tion kit.  We’re get­ting excited about the pend­ing arrival of my wife’s iPad.  Next Sat­ur­day! Yeah!

 
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Posted in Writings

 

U.S. Drops Shamefully to Fifth in Most ‘Networked’ Countries List

27 Mar

“Last week, we told you about the FCC’s ambi­tious new broad­band plan,” writes CALEB JOHNSON for Switched. “Now, a recent report indi­cates that increas­ing high-speed Inter­net access in the U.S. might be more cru­cial than pre­vi­ously thought. Accord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal, the U.S. dropped from third to fifth in the World Eco­nomic Forum’s lat­est rank­ings of national infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy sys­tems. Swe­den topped the rank­ings, and, to nobody’s sur­prise, China and India made huge gains.”

After liv­ing abroad for nearly the last 10 years, I was shocked to see the poor state of Inter­net capa­bil­i­ties suf­fered by Amer­i­cans. South Korea is far ahead of the USA in Inter­net con­nec­tiv­ity and speed, regard­less of what is said in the report above. All new con­struc­tion within the last five years must have a high-speed Inter­net infra­struc­ture for South Korean res­i­dences. These super­high­way on-ramps give excel­lent ser­vice, fast con­nec­tions and low monthly charges.

In Mary­land, Com­cast is piti­ful. The ser­vice is extremely slow. Some­times tak­ing more than 30-minutes to down­load a giga­byte!  In Korea, this took maybe five to eight min­utes tops. Plus, the com­pe­ti­tion is nonex­is­tent, at least where we live. Peo­ple rave about Verizon’s high-speed ser­vice, but it isn’t widely avail­able … yet. I’m on a list wait­ing to hear when they will sell it in my neigh­bor­hood. I’m so ready to drop Com­cast. We started out with triple-play: Phone, Tele­vi­sion and Inter­net.  We dropped the phone ser­vice within a month (never used it).  Next week we drop the cable ser­vice (to be replaced by DirectTV). C’mon Ver­i­zon, let me drop the final shoe and put Com­cast out of my misery!

If the USA is fifth in the world for Inter­net con­nec­tiv­ity, why is it pos­si­ble that I live in one of the top 10 most pop­u­lous areas of the coun­try and I can­not get com­pe­ti­tion for an ISP?

Read more about the Shame at Switched

 
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Posted in Writings

 

iPhone-iPad to team up for field journalism?

26 Mar

One of the excit­ing poten­tials of the iPad is its use in field jour­nal­ism. Imag­ine being a reporter at an event, cap­tur­ing images, video or sound and instantly pub­lish­ing an account to the world. Sure, it can be done with the iPhone alone, but edit­ing con­tent on a tiny screen is a chal­lenge. The iPad is con­spic­u­ously miss­ing a cam­era. But will a cam­era con­nect live to the iPad, or just to upload images and video. Will we be able to plug in our iPhones directly to the iPad and use its cam­era for live images and video? I can imag­ine a part­ner­ship between the devices that would make field jour­nal­ism faster and eas­ier. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

 
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Posted in Writings

 

Creative Suite 5 is ready to launch

24 Mar

Adobe researchers are hard at work devel­op­ing new and excit­ing tech­nolo­gies for the next ver­sion of Cre­ative Suite. Of course, this means the next Pho­to­shop will rock. Ready for your jaw to drop? Check out this video to see the new con­tent aware fill option.

Find out more about the Adobe CS5 launch!

 
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Posted in Writings

 

Open Letter to U.S. Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD)

20 Mar

Rep. Frank KratovilSir, please con­sider chang­ing your vote to yes on health care reform. First, it will help Amer­i­cans in des­per­ate need. Sec­ond, it will reduce the deficit (accord­ing to the CBO, the sav­ings will be sub­stan­tial).

I’m a retired Sol­dier work­ing as a fed­eral employee at Aberdeen Prov­ing Ground. My health care is secure for the rest of my life. I have an excel­lent plan cour­tesy of the U.S. Army with Johns Hop­kins. For my fam­ily of four, we pay less than $500 a year will minor co-payments. How­ever, most Amer­i­cans will never see such great health care. That’s truly unfor­tu­nate. I’ve served in Europe and Asia, where our allies take great care of their cit­i­zens. Health care is a right in those coun­tries, such as South Korea and Ger­many. These are not social­ist nations.

As Amer­i­cans, we need to care for each other. It’s like neigh­bors gath­er­ing to help each other in times of need. It’s our duty to help each other. We are all account­able for our actions. This is your oppor­tu­nity to make Amer­ica stronger. Please con­sider vot­ing for reform.

Web: Con­gress­man Frank Kratovil

UPDATE:  Kra­tovil votes no on the Afford­able Health Care for Amer­ica Act. Remem­ber I wrote how we are all account­able for our actions? From today until the elec­tion, I intend to sup­port a true Demo­c­rat to rep­re­sent Maryland’s 1st Dis­trict, and it won’t be Mr. Kratovil!

 
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Posted in Writings