Another semi-useless spot on the web…
The iPad is truly amazing in that anyone can use it with very little direction. I made the mistake of letting my 3 year old son use it. He’s now addicted to it; he loves to see pictures and hear the Toy Story Read-Along book.
If I pull out the iPad, all he wants to do is play with it. I almost have to wrestle it out of his hands. Maybe by the time he goes to kindergarten, I’ll give him one!
(You can see I’m a bit worried about him dropping my very expensive device.)
I’ve now had an iPad for a few weeks now, since they became available to the public. When I first saw them introduced, I didn’t see me getting one because, as an average consumer, I didn’t see it fitting into my life.
An iPad managed to land at my feet and I’ve completely changed my tune. This is the device for the average consumer. Granted, the price right now is a bit high, but I think that the iPad is going to revolutionize a number of fields including textbooks, newspapers, and portable computing. While I was impressed with the iPad when I first started playing with it, it wasn’t until the next morning when my wife picked it up, that she said she could see how it could be used as a textbook. She had seen my Sony Reader and was unimpressed with it, but the look and feel of the iPad puts it in a whole different class.
While I’ve done some iPhone development in the past, I don’t use an iPhone (I can’t justify the monthly cost). I use my iPad everyday to read news, RSS feeds and email. It isn’t going to replace my desktop, but I’m excited to start developing applications for the device.
The iPad is the future of tablet devices.
I wrote a few weeks ago that now that I have an iPad, my seldom used Sony Reader PRS-500 had no use to me. On the MacBreak Weekly podcast, I heard about
gazelle.com where you can sell old gadgets and get money. I didn’t have high hopes as I usually keep gadgets to the point that they have very little value.
A few days after I received my iPad, I went to the site, setup an account, and received an offer for the Reader. It was more than I expected and with a code from MacBreak Weekly, I got a bonus and then by selecting an Amazon Gift Card, I got another 5% bonus. Gazelle.com was easy to use, they sent me a pre-paid shipping label and within a week after they received it, I got a gift card for $116! They actually upped the value when they received it because I misinterpreted a checkbox; it said “rechargeable battery”, I said no because I thought it meant a separate one.
Not a bad little deal for me to clean off my desk and get a few bucks for a device that I no longer use.
My subscription to my hosting provider, VPS Link is up for renewal and the cost to renew for what I have is $35/month or $360/year. So, it was time to find a new provider that offered similar specs. After a lot of research, I found VPS NOC that has a very similar offering (at least for my needs) for $13/month.
As I like to manage my own VPS, I chose an unmanaged plan. I moved everything over today and we’ll give it a try. There weren’t many reviews I could find on it, so at most I’ll lose $13 (they do have a 7 day money back guarantee, but I’m not sure I can fully evaluate during that time) and some time.
A few months ago, I received email from Sony saying that they needed to upgrade the firmware in my Sony Reader PRS-500 to support the ePub format as Sony was moving away from their own format. Sony paid for shipping in both directions and returned the unit to me fairly quickly. While I think it was great that Sony did this, it was a bit short sighted on Sony’s part to require me to send in the device to do an upgrade when other company’s like Apple do firmware updates right through iTunes.
Then a few or two ago, I received another email from Sony saying that the last firmware upgrade caused shortened battery life and they needed to do another firmware upgrade. The same day, a large empty box with lots of bubble wrap (far too much to protect the Reader) came for me to ship the Reader back. Again, a failure on Sony’s part to not allow end user firmware updates.
My Reader arrived back yesterday, the day before my iPad was set to arrive. The timing made me laugh as I need to find a new home for my Reader that I likely will never touch again. It’s amazing how far Sony has fallen from grace. This example shows Sony’s poor planning and poor quality control which cost them a lot of money in shipping and repairs to bring my Reader up-to-date (all the shipping was 2nd day UPS).
Anyone want to buy a Sony Reader PRS-500?
Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about a security issue with Mac OS X server. Well, Apple has finally addressed this in the latest security update and latest Snow Leopard Server. I even got credit in the security update notes for reporting it! One thing I’m a little confused on is the fix, “The issue is addressed by removing this configuration option.” I’m going to have to download the update and see what exactly they mean.
One of the things I enjoy about going to Macworld Expo is finding something I didn’t know I needed. A few weeks back, I was diagnosed with tendonitis in my right arm. I’ve been wearing a brace on it and trying to do some exercises to help it. At Macworld Expo, I stumbled upon a booth for an ergonomic mouse.
I’m not a huge mouse person as I have been using trackballs for many years. However, I listened to the HandShoeMouse pitch, put my hand on a mouse and within minutes, I bought one. This mouse was not cheap (it cost $89 which apparently is a $40 savings), but how much is my health worth? I use a computer all day long and if I have pain, it will seriously impact my ability to earn money, so it is a small investment.
I’ve been using the mouse for about 2 weeks now and am pretty used to it by now. The only quirk I’ve had is that it goes to sleep and you have to press a button on the mouse to wake it up. The developers of this mouse have really put a lot of time and thought into it. It has a rechargable battery that recharges via USB when it gets low; and the light on the scrollwheel lights up when you need it to recharge. They were also very insisitent that they didn’t want it to have any drivers which sold me even more; plug and play.
Time will only tell if this mouse will help me, but it is definitely worth looking at if you use a computer for long periods of time which these days is just about everyone I know.
Pros
Cons
Summary
I’m pretty pleased with this purchase and am hopeful that it will help with my current injury and help prevent future ones. I still need to look into getting a very smooth mousepad as my desk is a little rough and I’d like a bit less friction when moving the mouse; maybe they could have included one, but I guess mousepads are a dime a dozen these days (maybe not the real smooth ones).
Today, I got all my gear ready to go for a run and found that my trusted Garmin Forerunner 305 failed to turn on. I put it back in the charger and it went from Charging in Progress to Charging Completed. The device turned on when connected to the charger, but when I removed it, it died. So, the battery on it is toast.
My options are:
My Forerunner 305 lasted almost 4 years, so I’m pretty pleased with how long the battery lasted. While a replacement battery would probably be the cheapest option, I’ve been having problems with the speaker on it, so I have no idea when that will go out. A replacement is the second, least attractive option. As I’ve been wanting to get the 405 for a number of reasions, I’m using this as an excuse to upgrade (like I need an excuse)!
Once I get the device and start using it, I’ll write a review. I’m sure the review won’t be as popular as my Forerunner 305 review that still gets comments almost 4 years later, but I’ll write something.
Hey Garmin, if you want to send me something to review, I won’t send it back!
I finally got around to backing up my Time Capsule last weekend as I needed an offsite backup for it. While I have an offsite backup for my MacBook Pro, I didn’t have an offsite backup for my Time Capsule which has my wife’s backup on it as well as my own Time Machine backup. The AirPort utility has an option to archive the Time Capsule to a USB hard drive. There are 2 problems with this option; 1) it is all or nothing with no incremental option and 2) using it takes the Time Capsule off the network for the entire backup. When I did the backup (before I discovered #2), it took about 6 hours to backup.
So, using this option is obviously not geared towards people like me that want to do an offsite backup every week. I realize that I’m not the average user, but how hard would it have been to put an rsync-like feature so that incremental backups can be performed. So now I mount a backup drive on my media center machine and mount the Time Capsule volume; then I do an rsync and can do an incremental backup. Time Capsule stores backups as sparse disc images with bands that are about 8 MB, so the entire disc image “file” doesn’t have to get backed up.
This is not as easy as it could be, but now I’ll be able to store a backup offsite on a weekly basis.
When I read the live blogs of Apple’s announcement last week, I kind of thought that the device has pretty uninteresting to me as an individual. I did, however, think that it had great potential for vertical markets. Medical records and pre-hospital emergency care come to mind immediately. There are, of course, lots of other potential vertical markets for it. At $500, the device is quite cheap for a vertical market.
A day after the announcement, I went to Apple’s Web site and after watching Apple’s video, my view on the device for a consumer, has changed dramatically. The device looks very cool and I could definitely see myself using one for surfing the web on the couch or reading books (I sometimes use my ancient Sony eBook reader).
As pointed out on the MacBreak Weekly podcast, Apple has basically created a device that people didn’t think they needed into a device that lots of people will believe they need. Only time will tell if this is true, but I would not be surprised if it was.
As someone who has written iPhone applications and has been a long time Cocoa/Objective-C developer, I’m excited to start developing applications, even if they are not my own ideas. I love writing code and a “new” platform will make things very interesting.
Now I just have to figure out how to justify purchasing one or find someone to buy me one!