This is dedicated to those who see their computers and BlackBerry’s and tablets as work tools.
Tag Archives: iPad
Garageband on the iPad
I fiddled around with Garageband when I got my first MacBook but couldn’t really figure out much to do with it. Figured it was just for musicians. Today I tried out the new iPad app and discovered a completely different experience.
First, there’s something about using your fingers that just seemed so much more intuitive than a cursor. And they’ve made the iPad app for people like me who can’t read a note of music or carry a tune.
I’ve only started playing with Garageband so won’t attempt a review, they must be all over YouTube and the Apple website. But here’s my first effort.
Quick! I need to speak Italian!
Five years ago I used this elaborate timeline to illustrate where I saw myself in relation to others in terms of technology awareness. A little out front (at the time) of most of our company… waaay behind the Smart Kids.
For much of the past 15 years I’ve been annoying people (mostly at work) with the latest gadget or –more recently– app. There were early adopters like me; others who would get on board once they clearly saw some proven value to their current job; and still others who jammed their fingers in their ears, chanting “la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”
This group always referred to “the Internet thing,” and to this day think Twitter is about what you had for lunch.
But something has changed. People are starting stop by my office or my table at the Coffee Zone and ask for a crash course in all this stuff I’ve been yapping about. It’s as though they woke up one morning and realized, “Shit! I’m way behind!”
Let me hasten to add, there is NOTHING I know that any reasonably intelligent person can’t pick up. But just as you can learn to speek Italian from a series of CD’s, you won’t really understand the language until you live in Genoa for a few years. It’s a cultural thing.
If I had to guess at what has brought this on –if, indeed, something has changed– I’d say it’s the iPhone and the iPad. The web has moved from your desktop (which you leave behind every night at 5 o’clock) to your pocket.
These latter day Luddites are hearing more and more expressions (from customers!) the meaning of which they have only the vaguest idea.
I’m doing my best to purge any “I told you so” from my thinking, but the simple truth is, a lot of these folks won’t catch up. They’re trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide. By the time they scramble up and over… everyone will have moved on.
Ehi, aspetta per me voi ragazzi!
Onswipe. Flipboard for WordPress
If –as I believe to be the case– most folks will do their web surfing on a tablet device (probably an iPad), I want to be ready. The minimalist theme (Thesis) I have on smays.com looks fine in a browser on the iPad but there’s more to it than that.
You just interact differently with the iPad: leaning back, swiping with your fingers, sharing on Facebook and Twitter… it’s a different experience and –for many– a better browsing/reading experience. Which brings me to Onswipe, a WordPress plug-in that optimizes your blog for a tablet. Think Flipboard.
I’ve only played with Onswipe for an hour or so but can already see a number of changes I’ll be making in coming days and weeks. The plug-in is new and still needs a few tweaks but I’m sure they’re on the way.
One thing Onswipe might do is breathe new life into older posts. The MENU button in the top right corner of the page pulls down to reveal the categories into which I’ve placed posts. If, for example, you were interested in what I might have posted regarding RADIO, it’s a little easier to find and browse with Onswipe.
If you’re reading this on an iPad, you’re feedback will be most appreciated.
“The Internet is over”
The Guardian sent Oliver Burkeman to SxSW where he realized the Internet is over:
“If Web 2.0 was the moment when the collaborative promise of the internet seemed finally to be realized – with ordinary users creating instead of just consuming, on sites from Flickr to Facebook to Wikipedia – Web 3.0 is the moment they forget they’re doing it. When the GPS system in your phone or iPad can relay your location to any site or device you like, when Facebook uses facial recognition on photographs posted there, when your financial transactions are tracked, and when the location of your car can influence a constantly changing, sensor-driven congestion-charging scheme, all in real time, something has qualitatively changed.”
We can probably stop saying “digital” media since all media is digital. Same for “online identity.” We only have one identity and unless you’re hunkered down in a Montana cabin, it’s online.
As long predicted, the Internet/Net/Web is woven in to all that we do. Like electricity and indoor plumbing. We don’t think about it. It has become invisible. We’ll stop saying (as I did above) “online” because we’ll never be “off line.” (Yes, I realize there are lots of people in the world for whom this is not the case. It will be.)
I wonder if I will miss the Internet when it is no longer an identifiable thing? Something I can “get on?” A place to go.
The goodness of GoodReader
Barb is attending (and speaking at) a legal conference in San Diego this week. The photo shows some of the documents she insists she might need access to.
In the bad old days she might have shipped these to her hotel (and back). For this trip they are all neatly organized as PDFs in GoodReader on her iPad.
The Ego Tunnel
I’ve been doing a good bit of reading about consciousness, reality, ego and such. A lot of it is tough sledding. LIke Thomas Metzinger’s The Ego Tunnel, which –according to this review– is “for the curious and fearless lay person wanting to know who, precisely, we are.”
The best I can do with books like this is highlight the portions that make some sense to me and stick ’em here, completely out of context. [More excerpts]
“When we speak of conscious experience as a subjective phenomenon, what is the entity having these experiences?”
“Why is there always someone having the experience? Who is the feeler of your feelings and the dreamer of your dreams? Who is the agent doing the doing, and what is the entity thinking your thoughts?Why is your conscious reality your conscious reality?”
“Yes, there is an outside world, and yes, there is an objective reality, but in moving through this world, we constantly apply unconscious filter mechanisms, and in doing so, we unknowingly construct our own individual world, which is our “reality tunnel.” We are never directly in touch with reality as such, because these filters prevent us from seeing the world as it is. The filtering mechanisms are our sensory systems and our brain, the architecture of which we inherited from our biological ancestors, as well as our prior beliefs and implicit assumptions. In the end, we see only what our reality tunnel allows us to see.”
“In dreamless deep sleep, nothing appears: The fact that there is a reality out there and that you are present in it is unavailable to you; you do not even know that you exist.”
“It is unsettling to discover that there are no colors out there in front of your eyes. The apricot-pink of the setting sun is not a property of the evening sky; it is a property of the internal model of the evening sky, a model created by your brain. The evening sky is colorless. The world is not inhabited by colored objects at all.”
“What is really happening is that the visual system in your brain is drilling a tunnel through this inconceivably rich environment and in the process is painting the tunnel walls in various shades of color.”
“The brain constantly creates the experience that I am present in a world outside my brain.”
“Consciousness is knowing that you know while you know.”
“Now-ness is an essential feature of consciousness.”
“There is no immediate contact with reality.”
“Flagging the dangerous present world as real kept us from getting lost in our memories and our fantasies.”
“From an evolutionary perspective, thinking is very new, quite unreliable (as we all know), and so slow that we can actually observe it going on in our brains. In conscious reasoning, we witness the formation of thoughts; some processing stages are available for introspective attention. Therefore, we know that our thoughts are not given but made.”
“There is more to an existence worth having, or a life worth living, than subjective experience.”
“Most of us do not value bliss as such, but want it grounded in truth, virtue, artistic achievement or some sort of higher good. We want our bliss to be justified. … We want a reason for our happiness.”
When the technology disappears
“One of the things I love about the iPad, for instance, is when you’re using the iPad, the iPad disappears, it goes away. You’re reading a book. You’re viewing a website, you’re touching a web site. That’s amazing and that’s what SMS is for me. The technology goes away and with Twitter the technology goes away. It’s so easy to follow anything you’re interested in. It’s so easy to tweet from wherever you are.”
— Twitter founder Jack Dorsey on Charlie Rose
A little child shall lead them
I am endlessly fascinated by technology. How we use it and how it changes us. The photo is of a couple of regulars at the Coffee Zone. I remember when dad switched to the iPhone. And later when he started asking me about the iPad. It seems ages ago but it was only months ago.
She plays games on the iPad and watches Netflix movies. But there will soon be nothing she cannot do on the device.
It’s inconceivable (to me) that she won’t have this with her in class. That will be delayed because not all of the kids will have them and etc etc.
I can’t even imagine how this will change education. Of course, education will have to change but that seems inevitable.
We’ve had hallway discussions at our company about the various tablets and platforms (Android, Windows, iPad, etc). My friend Phil (a very smart guy) assures me a lot of companies will take the “safe and secure” route of Windows devices.
But the kids in this little girls class could care less about Word and Excel and all the rest. They want to have fun and create and that will be on the iPad (for the forseeable future). You can take it to the bank.
First iPad on (and before) Missouri Supreme Court
Missouri Supreme Court Judge Mary Russell received an iPad for Christmas and she stopped by the Coffee Zone on Saturday to get some tips on apps. In this photo Mac God George Kopp is showing her something on his iPhone (that’s my Barb in the middle).
Judge Mary is rightly proud of being the first member of the court to have a iPad and mentioned that one of the attorneys arguing before the court this past week used an iPad for notes. Another first.
I’m telling you, these things are going to be everywhere