You can search all over the Internet and find out about the specifications and tons of opinions on it. Here are mine.
First, I think the name is silly. The people guessing that Apple was making a tablet came up with dozens of better names. Does no one at Apple have access to Google? It would have taken less than five seconds to search “iPad” and find the years old MadTV skit.
Next, I am not impressed. They showed nothing in their presentation that made me want to have one of these over a netbook. However, I see potential. To me, the ultimate success of this device will depend on two things:
- What applications get designed to fully use this device. The best idea I’ve seen floated so far is a “cash register” type application since one of these plus a couple of peripherals is cheaper than most computer registers.
- The next revision of the hardware. Apple is notorious for withholding features. They like to put just enough in a product to make people want it, but hold back enough features to be able to also make revision two, three, and four worth buying too. Expect the next version to have the front facing camera most people feel is missing, and more memory.
Lastly, I think they priced it almost perfectly. The only way it gets better is if AT&T subsidizes the price of the 3G version in exchange for a 2 year contract. Personally, I wouldn’t want the 3G, so it is priced right as it is.
To me, at the moment, the deal breaker is the keyboard. The virtual keyboard looks like it would only be comfortable using if I can manage to have the device at a 45 degree angle allowing me to type and see the screen. This means that I’d either have to be hunched over the device, or to be lounging on the couch with my feet propped up allowing my lap to hold it up at a usable angle. But that’s because the biggest feature of a portable computer for me is writing, and the iPad seems to be aimed more at people who are more interested in reading and watching. This could be saved if someone makes some sort of clip on keyboard and screen protector (i.e. – the keyboard folds up over the screen, kinda like the clam shell design of a laptop). But it would also have to more than double the weight of the device because you can’t have the screen be heavier than the keyboard in that sort of design.
Another missing element for me that I don’t think will ever make it into the Apple design is the ability to use a stylus. I like to do digital art (doodling more than anything) but I don’t like doing it with my finger. Perhaps, if the iPad sells well, Wacom will decide to make the Cintiq into a full blown art tablet.
Overall, as I said before, I see potential, I even see this as being a device that plenty of people could put to good use, but just not me. And that’s okay.
Personally, I’ve never been a big newspaper reader. Mostly, though, its because I never wanted to spend the time reading the news, not for any dislike of newspapers themselves. I wasn’t replacing the newspaper with TV, radio or websites, I just avoid most news outlets since they tend to report primarily bad news. If I had the inclination and the time, I probably would subscribe to and read the newspaper, because I do like the format.
But like the title says, print is dead, or at least is dying.
The thing I like most about newspapers that is lost as they move to the Internet is that they are a snapshot. You can go to a library and pull up a newspaper for 40 years ago, or even just a month ago, and see exactly what was considered news on that day, exactly what was fit to print. Try doing that on CNN, or even the sites of print newspapers. You might be able to gather a collection of stories that were published on the site a month ago, maybe piece together an idea of what was newsworthy on a particular day, but not really. With news websites’ penchant for “updating” stories and new information breaks, often rewriting rather than just appending, news reported on a Monday might carry the date and time stamp of Friday when the story stopped developing.
I would absolutely love to see news websites that mimic print news papers. Big publications of stories once a day, with an archive so you can always pull up a previous issue, and then maintain a “breaking news” blog type feed that puts out mini stories and facts and things happen throughout the day, all of which will be rolled up into full stories for the next day’s issue. But I suppose, perhaps, I am in the minority about this, seeing as how every news website out there is following the CNN.com style layout of “news now” and anything that doesn’t make the front page that minute is lost to the search field, which even defaults to a web search instead of a site search.
A man can dream though…
Being born in 1974 means that my impressionable youth is crammed with the television and movies of the late 70′s and early 80′s. Chief among my earlier memories are those of watching Fantasy Island on TV. I am dismayed that only season one has been released on DVD. I’ll likely purchase it someday, but I don’t have the heart to rush out and get it since no further seasons have been released.
Even more disheartening though was learning of the death of Ricardo Montalbán. He brought to life both Mr. Roarke of Fantasy Island as well as bringing us, arguably, the best villain of the Star Trek franchise in Khan Noonien Singh, from both the TV series and the epic Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.
Rest in peace, Señor Montalbán, in soft Corinthian leather.
Back in 1986, or it may have been 1987, I didn’t realize that a simple trip to the local video store was going to introduce me to one of the most widely known names in the world today. In fact, I didn’t even realize that such a momentous thing had occurred until my brother told me about the recent developments earlier this week.
You see… my brothers and I, as kids (who am I kidding? nothing has changed really as we grew up), liked to watch really awful movies. The Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror section of the video store was the best. And in 1986, a little movie called Troll was released. It is the story about a boy named Harry Potter (Junior, his father is also Harry Potter), who learns to use magic to fight a troll who is attempting to take over the world, or at least to turn it into a place full of magical creatures.
The only reason this has come up is that it seems the original writer and director of Troll, John Carl Buechler, wants to remake his film, with a larger budget (£20 million) and according to various sources Warner Bros. is trying to stop him from infringing on their copyright. The question is, can you copyright something you did not create first?
Its not as if this is some random director trying to make waves by making a film with a character named Harry Potter. This is a man wishing to remake a film he made 22 years ago and utilize the same character names he used 22 years ago, 4 years prior to the 1990 bolt of inspiration that J.K. Rowling claims began her endeavour of the now more well known use of the name.
As far as I know, Buechler has made no attempt to sue Ms. Rowling, to force her to change the name, nor to ask for any monetary compensation, he only claims that since he used the name first in a copyrighted work, but didn’t copyright the name specifically, it places the name “Harry Potter” in the public domain where anyone can use it.
Who is going to win? Personally, I feel that Buechler is right, at least in the case of his movie. He used the name first and should be allowed to continue to use the name in remakes of that work. But we’ll have to wait and see what the courts decide if Warner Bros. continues to head down that path.
All in all, it makes me paranoid about the things that I write. Now I’ll probably have to make sure I google every name I make up just to make sure that no one else made it up first.
I admire the sentiment, and I even respect the effort… but seriously, who are they kidding?
The parts that I like about it is that people should do more to conserve. I recycle, I replaced as many lights in my house as possible (and tolerable) with low energy bulbs… I try, and I’d like to think I succeed, even if just a little. My ongoing battle with junk mail isn’t just about trying to stop getting junk, but also doing my part to reduce how much of that wasteful crap they print. At least with junk email, there is no real waste, except the couple seconds a week I spend reviewing the junk folder before deleting it. And any effort to raise awareness has its merit.
The line that really gets me, though, is this one:
Organizers say the concerts will be as green as possible, with a tally of energy use being kept and proceeds from ticket sales going to distribute power-efficient light bulbs and other measures that will offset the shows’ greenhouse gas emissions.
This is what I mean by “Who are they kidding?” Directly from their quote, they will be distributing power-efficient light bulbs as part of their emissions offset. That’s a laugh, because 90% of the bulbs they give out at the concerts will be left on the ground or tossed into the trash (ironically, creating more waste than if they’d just not handed them out at all), and of the 10% that make it home with a concert goer I’d guess that maybe 10% of those will actually get used. So we are looking at 1 in 100 bulbs given out being put to use. That’s 99 bulbs in the trash or sitting unused in a garage or closet.
That’s almost as bad as the idea of buying emissions credits. “Well, we’d really like to help the environment, but rather than change our product or production, we’ll just write a check each year to pay for the offset.” Umm… what? The only possible way this works is if the money used to purchase credit is spent preventing or removing the exact amount of or more pollution the credit is buying. Otherwise, you just end up with the same pollutions and a bunch of money sitting in someone’s bank. I feel like I should have heard about buying emissions credits on Snopes where they would promptly debunk it as yet another email chain letter like that Nigerian gentleman who wants to give me millions of dollars.
It all just doesn’t make any logical sense…
Let me just get this out of the way… I like Kelly Clarkson’s music. There, I said it, now let us move on.
CNN has a story up today about Kelly canceling her tour. And on one hand I feel bad for her because she was having poor ticket sales and I feel bad for her fans because the ones who did buy tickets won’t get to see her (No, I didn’t buy tickets), on the other hand I’m kinda glad to see another arena tour fail.
Don’t get me wrong… I love a good arena show. But there is a certain type of arena show I like. For example, in August I’ll be going to see Def Leppard, Styx and Foreigner. And whenever Poison puts on one of their Glam Slam Metal Jams, I’m there. I love a good festival show, like the local radio station 99x’s Big Day Out. But a huge arena show needs bands that demand it, or needs to feature a few bands. U2, prime candidates for a solo arena tour. Same with the Police on their current reunion. Not only do they have a huge library of their own music which will easily fill two hours on stage (plus an encore or two), but they have the current pull to fill the seats. While each band on my 3-band August show ticket could have at one time filled an arena on their own, these days they haven’t had a whole lot of hits.
Kelly Clarkson is a pretty good artist. She sings well, performs well, and all in all I like her. I would definitely go see her live… if it were a smaller show. For her Atlanta date, she was playing the Arena at Gwinnett Center, half house (which is actually more than half), running her about 8,000 seats, give or take. For $50 to $70 (plus handling fees), that’s just too much to wind up being in the nose bleeds for an artist with only her third album coming out and a handful of top 40 songs. Now, put her down at the Roxy or the Tabernacle and drop the price to $15 or $20, I guarantee she’d be a sellout. Heck, in a smaller venue I might actually be willing to pay that $50 or more for an artist who is know to hang around and talk to the fans or put on an awesome show. For $50 I expect to be able to watch the artist perform, not to watch the artist perform on a giant TV because I’m too far away to watch the artist.
I see the draw of the arena show, the same draw it always has had: more money and less time. You play one show, 5,000+ people at $30+ a head, even if you only take home 25% of that, its $37,500+ for one night. Do a tour of 20 or 30 of those and you can probably net near a million dollars. Plan it right and you can do that tour in under 3 months, and take the other 9 off to work on songs and plan your next tour, or maybe do a leg through Europe or Asia. Meanwhile if you do the little shows, you have to do more of them, you have to stay on the road. A year, 18 months at a stretch maybe, at least that’s what those guys on Behind the Music always say. It would be hard work… like, I don’t know… working retail every day, or sitting in a cubicle punching out programming code. Except, you’d be in music, and seeing the world, and making a living entertaining people and putting smiles on faces. Arenas always seemed to me to be a way to facelessly rock as many people as possible.
Maybe I just need to catch more bands on the upswing. I went and saw No More Kings play down at Smith’s Olde Bar, and I and my friends chatted with Pete Mitchell for nearly a half hour. But that doesn’t cover it entirely… I’ve seen Better Than Ezra in concert a half dozen times, once or twice they were part of a festival where I got to see twenty bands, but mostly they’ve been at places like the Roxy, or Underground, or even in the Centennial Park, and even though I’ve never met the band, their shows felt more personal, they were better.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. Ms. Clarkson, if you or your people read this, come to Atlanta, play a small show, I’ll be there and I’ll sing your praises.
Time magazine has run a story about the Best Invenstions of 2006.
Their cream of the crop is YouTube. Obviously the runaway success (company sold for like $1.6 billion) of it all had an impact on their placement on the list. Sharing things on the internet isn’t new, but it really has never been more easy. Consider YouTube the ultimate of the “right place, right time” set. It could never have happened five years ago.
Now… my opinions on the rest of the list…
As a proof of concept, the Horizon Fuel Cell makes me kind of giddy in a “Wow, not that is a giant leap forward” sort of way. Sure, this is just a toy, but it proves to more than just science geeks that an engine really can run on water. Awesome.
Yeah, the Tesla Roadster 100 costs $100,000, but the sheer fact that Tesla Motors put out a fully electric sports car that can do 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. Well, its just cool, and in a weird way its them finally living up to the Tesla name.
The Clever car is an ideal… its great, until that idiot in his Hummer literally turns you into a chunky paste. Perhaps one day when cities become more compact and the roads aren’t so full of people rushing to get somewhere they live too far away from. The Mark V falls into that category too, and 3,145 miles per gallon just sounds too good to be viably true unless society changes to allow such flimsy vehicles.
First to enter in on the “Duh” category, the Black & Decker Simple Start answers the question of “What if my car battery dies in the middle of nowhere?” as directly as possible. Nice.
I’ve never really been on a boat, but part of me always glorfies life at sea. I would either want an old wooden pirate ship, or a sun21. Maybe a combination of both. Oh, and I’d also need an Innespace Sea Breacher. SeaQuest DSV here we come!
My wife really needs a Loc8tor. The hovering bed, however, I don’t think anyone needs. And as cool as the concept of the Wovel is, you would just look like such a dork using it. My older brother and his soon to be wife have ruined a section of carpet in their home, which would have been prevented by the self-lifting Oliso iron.
I hate seafood, and really I had never considered that it took two minutes to kill a lobster when you boil it, but if you have, don’t worry, with the CrustaStun you can now electrocute them in 5 seconds. I imagine the lobster tank at the local restaurant to be like a miniature death row leading to the electric chair now. And while faster isn’t always better, something inside me both cheers and cringes when I read about the Moo Bella icecream machines. There is no doubt about my cringing when it comes to the pudding-like coffee espesso. But the fruit and vegetable Lotus Sanitizing System definately looks cool.
First in the “man, I wish I had that” category is the NanoNuno umbrella. Adding to that in the “man, I wish I had that as a kid” subcategory is Nike’s Macro React clothing. No, I didn’t wish I had a dress, they make shirts for men. And just as I’m getting my hopes up, they make me weep for the future with the Hug Shirt. Why is it that I imagine this being sold by Apple, it being called the “iShirt” and them adding music and videos to it?
I’m not even going to bother linking to any of the crap in the Toys section of the invention list. Its all crap. Okay, the talking mirror is kind of neat, but really if you have a talking automated house, the talking face isn’t really any better than the disembodied voice, because, honestly, unless you install like 40 of these things, what are the chances you are going to be in the room with the mirror when stuff happens? Oh, and NASCAR sucks.
The new drunk driver test that measures skin’s light reflectivity scares me just a little. Part of me is scared by the possibility of being falsely identified as drunk with it, and part of me is scared by the possibility that its never wrong. “No, Officer, I’m just a naturally dull person.” I can’t, however, say anything bad about Gardasil, a vaccine for a virus that can cause cancer. Good work. On the other hand, I’m a little weirded out by Allerca’s hypoallergenic cats, bred for your comfort. And in the “one step closer to cyborgs” bin goes Realive, a suit that helps people with muscle rehabilitation by triggering the affected arm to mimic the movements of the “good” arm. Cool stuff. In the “but can they be trusted to use it for good” category comes a water-harvesting machine that sucks clean water right out of the air.
Woodshop teachers of the world rejoiced at the invention of SawStop’s finger saving saw, when it detects that the blade is sinking into flesh, it stops and retracts, leaving the user with only a nick. People trying to dispose of bodies were not amused. Another entry in the “Duh” category of inventions that just make sense and its just so F-ing cool that someone actually invented the damn thing, the LifeLine, so that no firefighter has to simply jump and pray again when things go bad.
The military, of course, invents stuff all the time, and a few of their items made it on the list… first up is the Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (BEAR), go figure, the military invents robots and they save lives instead of ending them. Next we get the M80 Stiletto, a boat that weighs 45 tons and only draws 3 feet of water (for you non boat people, that means only 3 feet of the boat hull is submerged, so it can go in really shallow water). Lastly we get the StrawJet, a machine that takes straw and turns it into quality building material.
I really see no good purpose for the Power Flower, I mean, I think it looks ugly. On the other hand, solar cells that are so thin that they are printed directly onto building materials like this solar skin is just awesome. And the paper-thin, flexible lightbulbs from CeeLite make me hope they will replace ugly disgusting flourescent lighting in office buildings everywhere… not to mention my own kitchen.
And that is the end of their list, and this is the end of my post.
It looks like they are at it again… Evolution versus Creation. Although now, the creation side of the debate has come up with the theory of ‘Intelligent Design’ which is basically Evolution except that its not random, God planned it this way. I shrug when I think of this fight, because to me there just doesn’t seem to be much place for an arguement. I mean, if the religion side were asking only that evolution not be taught as a random series of lucky genetic combinations and focus only on the scientific evidence of DNA relations between species that indicate an evolving path, that’d be fine. But they always seem to want to take that extra step and make the schools teach God.
Its hypocritical… they say Evolution teaching is against their and their children’s beliefs, but they want to replace them with teachings that will be against other parents and children’s beliefs. The class is science, its about what you can prove and what you can theorize from what you can prove. We can prove DNA similarities between species. We can theorize an evolutionary path. Done. Why ask the schools to speculate on the nature of God? We can’t “prove” that God exists, nor do we have proven facts that point toward God as a theory. God is speculation. God is faith.
Plus, this is elementary school, middle school and high school. And if they are going to teach God, then I demand they teach all the other religions too. By the time we are done, public education will look like a comparative study of theologies. And really, I wonder if these people fighting evolution would like the school to teach other religions… I doubt it.
|
Projects Business Application
percent: 15 / 100 (15%)
Untitled Web Game
percent: 25 / 100 (25%)
|
Recent Comments