Monthly Archives

March 2010

Courier makes progress, marches on right brain

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It seems that Microsoft and Apple are set to have another Mac vs. Windows style showdown over tablets in the near future. I just hope we get arguments as classic as those based on “Look & Feel” out of the deal. Maybe even a made for TV movie?

Anyway, according to Engadget, the Courier concept seems to be edging closer to reality, with Microsoft posting job descriptions for the project team.  So it’s no longer an “if” with this product; the real question is who might the dual screen gadget be marketed towards? If writer Ross Rubin is thinking correctly, we could see a computing pole shift, with creative pros living and dying by their Couriers and iPads being used by the casual crowd.

Here’s hoping instead that Microsoft rolls the Courier experience into the iPad iteration of Office that the Mac Business Unit is cooking up AND releases an actual piece of hardware. A little competition never hurt, but let’s not start a fight that only causes customers to lose out on important innovations. This isn’t the 90s and we already have Apple v. Adobe on our plates!

(From Case for the iPad)

The world according to iPad

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Well, e-readers of mine, we are but a week away from the iPad’s introduction into society. That’s a business week, even – although the two I’ve ordered for work are probably more likely to be in my hands on April 5th. That being said, the internet is buzzing with iPad coverage. I thought I’d perhaps provide my favorite stories from today:

Read more at my new blog, Case for the iPad.

More proof that I’m not crazy

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Thanks to Jalopnik, I can now find solace in the fact that Maryland drivers really do have no concept of Left Lane vs. Right Lane:

click for larger image

As you can see, they’d have no reason at all for learning this useful Pennsylvanian tradition of getting the fuck out of the way because there is NO DAMNED LAW HERE MAKING IT NECESSARY TO DO SO.  The next time I’m left scratching my head as to why someone would think the left lane is a great place to go 20 mph under the speed of the traffic around them, this fact will offer small comfort.

Right before the scream starts, that is.

Where are you, cold fusion?

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io9 asks the question “Cold Fusion – Will It Save the World or Be Forgotten?” And it’s one I’d desperately like to have answered.  A few months back, Owen sent me a CBS 60 Minutes video having to do with the original research by Pons and Fleischmann.  Specifically, the video report showed that the original findings that had been so maligned were, as it turns out, probably correct.  This io9 piece brings even more compelling evidence that cold fusion could be a realizable dream – if it weren’t for the scientific establishment.  To quote MIT’s Peter Hagelstein, a chief researcher in the field:

Many of the people who made their name debunking Fleischmann and Pons are now in substantial positions of power, and they’re unlikely to look favorably on research that invalidates what made them famous.

Way to go, science.  Way to go.

Computing changes now

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From the introductory post on my new blog about tablet computing, Case for the iPad:

The desktop computing paradigm is stale – yesterday’s bread. If you are a computer geek, you know this to be true and I can pinpoint a great example of why: I haven’t been excited about a new OS in years. New operating systems are the holiest of holies in PC terms and the last time I actually, truly cared that one was about to be released was April 29, 2005. I preordered Tiger from Apple and was beside myself with glee at the promise of much geeking out to come. And you know what? It was essentially the same thing as Panther in 2003. By the time I guardedly, I installed Leopard in 2007, hoping to be amazed, I discovered…meh.

The same can be said for all software. Adobe Creative Suite 5 is trundling down the pike and, I hate to say it, it stopped being compelling back around Creative Suite 2. Or maybe when it became a suite. Even hardware is less intoxicating, especially since Apple has said they have more or less perfected the shape of products and are committed to a long future of aluminum and glass. There’s a cynical commodification mentality that has set in and, in so doing, destroyed the sense of amazement that once surrounded computing.

(This is going somewhere, I promise.)

The most telling symptom of a stagnating paradigm, though, is my ever-growing fascination with mobile technology. An early 2003 love affair with Nokia’s European products morphed into a complete infatuation with the iPhone at its announcement in 2007. This was computing’s future, I just knew it. The power of information truly and easily being wherever we are – whether it takes the form of maps, music, the latest prices for tomatoes, a message from your mother telling you her flight is taking off late, what have you – is immense. It makes all knowledge and connectivity accessible in ways that it just can’t be with the computer. Biggest hurdle? The tiny (though, mercifully, improved on by iPhone and its touchy ilk) screen.

Enter the tablet. Most notably, the iPad. All the power of mobile, laid back, pervasive information with a screen worthy of the two-way, media-rich flow of the modern web. This is something important. I can feel it. And I want to make sure I document the birth of this truly new way of interfacing with the digital world that is going to reshape everything in…oh…three to five years. At least as far as it touches my immediate environment in higher education, that is.

(See, I told you we’d get there.)

To quote Fake Steve Jobs’ contribution to the Wired article, “How the Tablet Will Change the World,” that got me to finally put all of this into a single blog (an article that made me think “yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking” more than once):

An ebook reader that also plays movies and music? And browses the Web? No way. Can’t be done. Well, we did it. And you can fly three times around the globe and watch movies the whole time on a single battery charge. It’s amazing. Phenomenal. Exciting. Magical. Amazing. Beautiful. Stunning. Gorgeous.

I was put on earth to restore a sense of childlike wonder to people’s empty, pathetic lives, and I must say that so far I’m doing a pretty outstanding job.

And that’s really the crux of what I’m on about here. The iPad – the tablet – makes me feel giddy and uneasy and like a million things are possible and like there aren’t enough hours in a day to explore each to the level it deserves. In short, how computing made me feel when I was a tremendously nerdy teenager tinkering into the early morning with a PowerBook 5300ce that I had bought with my lawn-mowing money, just for the fun of doing it. Just because it was new and uncharted and exciting.

To get the conversation started, I’ve collected the blog posts that I’ve been posting on my work blog and my personal blog since November 2009. I’ll be back with much, much more in the days to come.

Onward into the future,

Nick

Read: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? comic

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On a recent excursion to Annapolis’s Capitol Comics, I stumbled upon a lovely hardcover collection of a comic I never knew existed: a graphic version of Philip K. Dick’s Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep? Having always intended to read the book anyway, I figured I’d pick this up and give it a go.

Volume One – only published in December 2009, as it turns out, so I don’t feel that out of touch – covers the first four issues of the series and does so with a lush style and impeccable attention to detail that makes every single panel look like a photograph. As the four essays by science fiction authors included in the back are quick to point out, this is not Blade Runner. The original story never was, offering up more than Scott ever put in the film. With the addition of slick, poignant art, I think that the comic goes one step further than any version so far has (sorry, PKD.)

I’ll definitely be crossing the bridge again for Volume Two.