Um. Not quite what I meant Google.

Posted via email from jole posterous

Tweet This

The iPad is finally here, in all its glory.

To my surprise, I don’t feel too phased by the RDF this time around, and still remain quite certain that the iPad does not (yet) have any role in my computing workflow and environment. My MacBook is without a doubt my sidekick, but for all those out there that get cranky about the 5 lbs in their backpack or hot and bothered by their poor battery life of their laptops, I can see this product really catching on. The general sense from the tech community is that this product is quite niche, and yet I think it is quite the opposite. We, the technologists, are the anti-niche. We have our bases covered for the most part, but it’s the regular consumer who would need a device like this.

I could see the iPad taking the spot of my laptop day-to-day quite easily, but it’s lacking some functionality that I would need to get my work done, and thus I will wait and look forward to the day it will undoubtedly come. 

• Flash: Despite being rather loathsome of this nightmare, the fact remains that half of my online course material in University is in Flash-powered eLearning sites. This varies from semester to semester of course, but as the perfect homework companion, I’d need something that can…well….get my homework done with.
• Multitask: My fingers are glued to Command-Tab. Not much more to say to that. 
• Dev Environments: If I’m taking a CS degree, clearly I’ll be doing a compilation here and there. I can always whip out a VNC client, or more likely an SSH client, but until those tools are proven to be efficient alternatives, it’s pretty tough to bring it to CMPUT class.

Those are the three big ones for me. I would certainly spring for a hard keyboard and expect things like proper file management to be integrated in future versions of iPhone/iPad OS, but those are relatively minor issues. Flash I predict will come very soon. Flash 10.1 is coming down the pipe, and I figure Apple simply didn’t want to share their plans with Adobe in the development of this product. Flash is a power hog, but 10.1 is supposed to improve that. Multitask will come in time. If it’s been hacked on the iPhone it will be hacked or introduced on the iPad. As for development environments, I cannot wait to see a spinoff of JollyFastVNC in the App Store so that all the power of my desktop can come straight to my tablet.

The iPad, I would say, is almost evolutionary. It’s the natural progression from the multitouch devices Apple has been churning out. As we all know, 6 months from now iPad Plus will show up with a camera and double the pixel count (jk) and everything else that was on our wish lists, so for me I’ll be holding off until then.

As for the name, I’m positive that in a few months iPad will remind us more of the Apple product than what it does now.

Posted via email from jole posterous

Tweet This

On the eve of another exciting announcement from everybody’s favorite Cupertino company, I felt it was necessary to chime in on my predictions for what the Apple tablet will look like, how it will work, and what kind of experience we can expect from this supposedly revolutionary device, and why I still seem somewhat skeptical over the idea of an iTablet.

There is no Gap

There’s no end to the amount of coverage and speculation about this product, which can be found here, and here most notably. But my anticipation is mostly in the “surprise” to come since at the moment I’m not excited for this product really. Current offerings out there have some problems with input methods, power, and well… functionality. It seems to me that the gap that the Kindle, eReaders, and these proposed media tablets are trying to fill does not really exist.
I would describe my day as having three “levels of mobility.”

• Home: At my desk with a 23″ display or two, running a Quad core processor. My computer keeps up with my workflow, it never lags behind. Video is large, clear, and stutter-free, and since I’m at my desk, that’s the only thing I would tolerate.
• Portable: I have my MacBook with me, and I’m setup somewhere other than my desk. Perhaps I’m on my bed, downstairs, outside, or in the library. I’m in class or at work somewhere, but I’m still computing. In this case, I tolerate some mild lag in my computing environment, since there isn’t really a laptop that is as powerful as my desktop and still within budget both money-wise and battery-life wise.
• Mobile: I am likely physically moving, whether on the bus, in the car, or simply walking around. I can still receive content and view it, although I don’t expect to perform a lot of input, it still is effective when it needs to happen. Loading times are much slower (or not available at all on my iPod Touch), but I can look out the window of the train or put it in my pocket for a few moments while it does its thing, and I’m not irritated.

At each of these stages, I feel that all my needs are fulfilled despite having limitations at each of these mobility levels. Most of my tasks can be performed at all levels.

So at which point would the tablet enter my workflow? Naturally it would be somewhere in between Portable and Mobile. I’m lying down or on the bus for more than a minute or two, and I’d like to read a book, watch a video, or take a note. Yet, a tablet would not fit in any pocket, and would likely need to be extracted from a bag, and thus somewhat of a hassle for that extra few inches of reading room. Why not hit up the iPhone/iPod Touch? Assuming that this Apple Tablet would be equipped with a nearly identical Operating System to that of my iPhone/iPod, what advantage in terms of functionality would really be present?

(The HP slate, a lamefest. Probably the closest thing to the iTablet that I can imagine, but maybe my imagination is simply too small for the likes of Steve.)

Put simply, the Apple Tablet seems to be far too close in functionality to the iPhone/iPod to be advantageous over it, and yet remains less pocketable and more of a pain to whip out, so any advantage is nullified.

An Industry Shift

Despite all this, and the terrible mystery of input method which I won’t address except to predict: there won’t be any, I still think that tomorrow will be revolutionary in a market sense, and here’s why.
Read more…

Tweet This

CBC’s Media “camp” inside the Canadian embassy in Haiti. http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/blog/2010/01/haiti-field-notes-aftershock.html

Posted via email from jole posterous

Tweet This

Tweet This

This is kind of “captain obvious” once you figure it out, but just for the sake of publishing this on the Web….

To have iTerm open to a certain directory for a bookmark, simply set the “Working Directory” to the path you would like to open. This seems ultra obvious, but the trick here (which I got confused about) is to not escape the path.

Usually anything shell-related requires either escaping spaces (/Users/horse/Documents/My\ Documents/) or using quotes of some kind around the string so that the command line know you’re not trying use the space as an argument delimiter.

Obviously iTerm does this escaping for you, but it doesn’t actually say that anywhere in the documentation, so here ya go!

Speaking of terminal emulators for OS X, what do you prefer? I started using iTerm when I first got a Mac, since it was far superior to the Apple-supplied Terminal.app application. As of Leopard, Apple has included a much more feature-rich version of Terminal.app, although it still seems to be lacking in the Bookmark department. You can setup different window-sets and styles, but it’s not quite the same thing as being able to just save out certain commands or SSH connections easily.

What do you think? Do you use iTerm or Terminal.app? Do you have a trick for bookmarking in Terminal.app?

Tweet This

Well the long wait is finally over. After some very dramatic overruling of the CRTC by Tony Clement, WIND is now in the market and has launched their products. The prices and concepts are impressive as expected, but the service of course is less than inspiring: for now.

Right now WIND is operating in a”WIND HOME Zone” type of billing structure, and for good reason. They’ve setup their towers in Calgary and Toronto and can charge what they need to in those areas, but when it comes to covering customers in areas outside those cities, they have to rely on (what seems like) the Belus network to provide “AWAY” Coverage as they call it. Obviously TELUS isn’t going to be giving them a stellar deal for those borrowed minutes, but as WIND grows, that will surely change.

Look familiar? I suspect WIND is using Belus' new 3G+ network for coverage outside Calgary for now.

Today is not revolutionary. WIND is truly in its infancy and is by no means offering a seamless coast-to-coast coverage solution that Belusrog offers. That being said, they are a beacon of hope of the things to come, whether it be from a nationwide WIND that will come in the next 6-18 months, or from the big three who are being pulled down from their thrones and forced to compete for once. No matter what it is, there’s no denying that this is game changing:

• No post/prepaid discrimination – no need for credit to have Data in Canada!
• No contracts
• No charge caller ID
• No charge incoming texts
• No need to pay for voice time all you really want is Data
• No long distance charge for calling the Airport from the City (Province-wide calling, not just “local” if that even means anything anymore)

On AWS…

Definitely not the AWS logo at all. More like the American Welding Society...

I’ve been trying to find a simple answer to the question “What is AWS?” and in visiting WIND’s store I think it became clear to me: AWS or Advanced Wireless System Services is just a different bank of wireless frequencies that UMTS or GSM can operate on. In the specifications for their phones, WIND describes it as either “AWS UMTS” or “AWS GSM.” I assume this means that these phones CAN use older generation non-AWS UMTS/GSM standards, but not vice versa, which explains why, for example, the iPhone cannot be used on WIND at this time.

As a future iPhone customer, this is discouraging for now, but as AWS becomes more widely adopted across the world, Apple will likely adopt it moving forward. At that point, it will be technically feasible to get the iPhone on WIND, and that’s all that counts for me. Until Apple releases an AWS iPhone, WIND will keep doing what it does best right now, and that’s drive down costs of competition to make the iPhone plans more reasonable.

Some Links

• WIND Mobile Voice Plans
• WIND Mobile Handsets
• Globe & Mail Coverage Note: They claim Rogers offers the roaming, not Belus. Also, scroll down to see a nice comparison for the BlackBerry 9700 across providers. Although it doesn’t really do justice to show just how much you’re getting for the money you’re paying.

Tweet This

I thought this graph looked somewhat odd, yet familiar. At first I thought it was like sin/cos overlapping, but then Kevin pointed out that it’s just like the Cisco logo!

I’m wondering what is generating this traffic pattern, but obviously it has to be some sort of cisco product on the network somewhere!

EDIT: Added the full logo list. Never seen the 1985 one, but matches the red.

Tweet This

Overview

This evening I decided to whip out my Evaluation Copy of Windows 7 RC that I downloaded a while back. Considering Windows 7 is now released to the public, I suppose it’s time to post a few thoughts on it.

When I first tried it out a few months ago I was quite impressed with the responsiveness of it. The installation was quick, startup and shutdown was no-nonsense, and the UI seemed to be far more refined than Vistas. Most of this review will be in screenshots, but I do want to primordially emphasize that Windows 7 is definitely a step in the right direction for Microsoft. I think they are finally starting to understand that its all about being implicit, not explicit. It is about putting interface elements where they should be, not paragraphs of text telling the user where they are, that is, where they shouldn’t be.

Windows 7 cleans a lot of the pitfalls of Vista in this area. I think my frustrations with Vista source from the fact that they moved everything around in the Operating System. Suddenly I was stuck when I needed to find an IP address or get to the device manager, or even just to get to My Computer. Everything was renamed and hidden in menus and it was impossible to find what you needed. Windows 7 on the other hand, is just like Vista in that it is the same underlying technology,
Read more…

Tweet This

(no description)

Full Size | Download

M:nikon corporation
m:nikon d40
f:f/4.5
iso:200
s:1802/1

Tweet This