Brian Fitzgerald

I thought that this reporter for USA Today (shown here on CNBC) looks a little too much like Steve Jobs himself.

Apple today released a nearly 25 minute-long video about the iPhone demonstrating its use. There are two things that it confirmed to me. One, it seems be a great pocket-sized mac in the way that it handles email, the web and sms chatting. Second, I think that its going to be an awkward phone. The size and shape just don’t seem like something that I would want to carry everywhere.

I’m anxious to have one in my hand to make a better judgement on it. In the meantime, I’m super happy with sony ericsson phone I have (w810i) and imagine that I will probably upgrade it when the time comes with another sony phone.

It may not be often that you give your mouse a lot of thought, but I just had one of those moments where I thought “Wow! What a great mouse."

I use a Logitech VX when I’m portable and a Logitech MX at my desktop. These are basically the same mouse with some small differences that make each better for the environment they were designed to be used in. The key feature on both is a scroll wheel that is able to work (as many scroll wheels do) in a mode that sort of clicks as you scroll, and a mode that is unique where it is free to spin like the Price-is-right Big Wheel. This last mode is by far my favorite. When you are on a long document of any sort it is really nice to be able to give the wheel a little flick and have the page scroll along until you stop the wheel. The wheel is weighted to keep it moving and has a good-enough build quality that it doesn’t feel like a cheap feature as one might expect that it would.

Of course Intel doesn’t make laptops, but they often put out demonstration technology that they hope hardware manufacturers will draw inspiration from and run with. Here is a new ultra-thin laptop with an e-ink display in the lid to allow checking of calendar, email etc without opening the computer.

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First, Congratulations to Kirk Langer for his semi-annual posting. They are rare, but good.

Concerning Sun’s committing a couple people to the aqua port of Open Office, I am not impressed. Sun makes me yawn almost as much as Microsoft. First, I know that Star/OpenOffice has been around for quite a few years now, but here’s some problems I have with it…

• What does Sun know about client applications? They make servers, an operating system and Java. In many ways, they are like Apple in that they do a bit of everything but where Apple excels at creating user experiences, Sun does not. Sun shines (sorry) when they are providing the technology and tools to let others deliver great experiences. When Sun tries to do it themselves it generally strikes me as nothing more than a technology demonstration to encourage developers to take those ideas further.

• Star/OpenOffice has always felt like a “me too” application that tries hard to mimic Microsoft Office without delivering ways that people can act better/smarter. I guess simply providing a knock-off of MS Office without the enormous price-tag is a noble-enough goal, but I would much prefer that they show some innovation and publish a product that is a joy to use.

So what would I do? I’m not sure, and I’m glad that I don’t have to be the one to decide but here are some thoughts.

• I would analyze/list the “word processing” needs of our community. This would certainly include note-taking, outlining and report/research paper writing among others. What features do these tasks require?

• Tabs?
• Indenting?
• Margin control?
• Headers, Footers?

I would match these feature needs with grade levels and subject areas, then against available products to see 1) how we can deliver applications that best suit the needs of those using them and 2) how we can do this with as few applications as possible.

Developers have long realized that word processors can be evil. Why do I want my text formatted before the text has been finalized? When people send me word documents to put online, the first step is always unformatting all of that text so that I can then format it to match the site. Text-editors are much cheaper and easier to use than word processors and often do the required job just as well.

Office users feel the need, to the detriment of their document, to use strange features that have been packed into the program. Random bits of clip art get dropped in, text gets wrapped, warped and justified in unnatural ways and typefaces that have no business knowing each other are thrown together.

Many people with real layout needs use Office that would be able to better use their time in an application that was actually designed to do layout.

I don't think there is a perfect solution right now. If one is looking for something that is cross-platform and does what is needed there really is no solution outside of OpenOffice and it is good news that the Macintosh platform may finally get a version of it that doesn't require X11 to run. I would prefer to see something like Google Docs used, but at this point there are many things that it does not have, such as tabbing, margin control or headers and footers. There's hardly anything simpler than an MLA formatted document, and I'm not sure if Docs could even do that.

I'm very interested to see where we go as a district regarding this. I think that between a potential OpenOffice port, improvements to Google Docs/Spreadsheets and new web-based apps that will undoubtedly appear, it is clear that Redmond should definitely not be counting any checks before they are cashed.

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It’s hard to say anything about this without sounding insensitive, but unfortunately Wikipedia sometimes shines when there are terrible events. Here is Wikipedia’s coverage of today’s shootings at Virginia Tech University.

I’m not sure how long Contribute 4 has been out, but it has not been a long time. Six months? I was surprised to see, during the Adobe CS3 launch event yesterday, that a new version of Contribute (Contribute CS3) was being bundled with the web studios. I wanted to give Adobe the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were just renaming the product, but after a visit to their web site it is clear that this is considered a full upgrade and an owner of version 4 has to pay the same to upgrade to this new version as an owner of any previous version. While, neither I or Lincoln Public Schools (where I work) purchased any version 4 licenses, I can’t help but feel bad for those that have.

Mike Chambers has a set of training/introduction videos up on Lynda.

Apollo Alpha Preview - lynda.com Online Training Library ™

Adobe has released a public alpha of it’s upcoming Apollo development software / runtime. This looks to be an incredible technology with wild possibilities. With Apollo, HTML and Flex developers (among others) can write code as they usually do, but then have it compiled into a distributable application that people can run on their computers outside of a web browser. I really expect many cross-platform applications that are generally written in Java or even REALBasic to begin showing up in this environment instead.

Go ahead. Even if you don’t develop, you can grab the runtime and try out some of the sample applications.

Adobe Labs - Apollo

In a story detailing how some Pokémon game will be the first to tie the Nintendo Wii and DS together, an upcoming schedule sets June 4th as the release date for the Nintendo DS web browser. I’m pretty excited to see how well this Opera browser runs on a DS compared to other available portable browsers.

Chris Pultz hit me with this incredible list of 53 CSS techniques. A couple of the methods listed here are duds, but most of them are fantastic. If you don’t do CSS yet, you should look through these to see what you’re missing. If you are on CSS, then get to using them!

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Mike Potter from Adobe demonstrates Apollo at FlashInTO.

Macintosh users can now download the “WPF/E” beta from microsoft. This allows Macintosh users to play files created by Microsoft’s new “Flash Killer” application Sparkle. Once you have installed it, the plugin works with both Safari and Firefox. You can see examples of it’s use here (note the first video in the second example where they talk about the number of Macs that have been appearing in Redmond). This is exciting only because it offers hope that whatever development platform content developers use in the future, the mac should be able to display them all. I really hope that this doesn’t start pushing Flash out of the way too much, but I’d be happy just to see a lot less sites that say “Sorry, Microsoft Windows/Internet Explorer Only”.

Zoho has released their new notebook application as a part of the zoho suite and it looks uh… sweet (I had to do that). Anyway, it’s just another example of the best applications moving to the web.

The New York Times reports Sony blaming profit slides on subsidizing the cost of the Playstation 3 too much. Selling consoles at a loss is nothing new. Sony and Microsoft have both done this knowing that it will establish market-share and that they will easily make up the difference in game sales. There’s more to this than just getting consumers hooked on Playstation. They are using the launch as a way to make Blue Ray the dominant next-generation disk storage. Right now, you would be doing pretty good to find a blue ray or HD-DVD player for $500 to $600. The playstation costs this and is an incredible gaming system and content delivery device as well. One could consider this to easily be a $1000 to $1200 system and it’s getting sold for half of that. Sony has done what they have always done in the last few years, cram as much sony-universe stuff as they can at people when they have the opportunity. The PS3 could have been every bit as revolutionary as a gaming platform without the blue ray drive and actually hit a decent price. I’m actually surprised that on startup you don’t get a commercial and opportunity to purchase and download whatever crap Mariah Carey has puked out lately.

This is kind of old (as evidenced by the model of iPod shown) but its spot-on. The side with the man listening to headphones against a red background looks similar to the Zune packaging.

This article on the O’Reilly Radar credits the TiVo with forcing cable companies to demand better equipment/interfaces from those that produce their set-top boxes.

I think that a similar effect may be the best thing that will come from the release of the iPhone. While phones in other parts of the world, especially southeast asia, have seen dramatic improvements, phones in the united states have seen few interface improvements in recent years. As consumers and carriers see what Apple is doing, they will start to demand better interfaces. Motorola, Nokia and others will have little choice but to adopt interfaces based on more dynamic technology such as Flash to compete.

Here’s an article at read/write web with good information about some current web 2.0 e-learning products.

We signed on with Netflix last summer sometime. During the time that we have been members, its been embarrassing how few movies we have watched for what we have paid in membership fees. Except viewing the Ken Burns baseball documentary (which I really enjoyed), I think we could have bought the movies that we watched for nearly the same price that we paid in membership dues.

Today, Netflix announced that they will begin offering downloadable movies. This is really one feature that I had been waiting for. I figured that if anybody could do this well, that Netflix would be able to. There have been rumors in the past of them partnering with someone like Tivo to provide a direct-to-tv experience from two companies that demonstrate that they understand customers. The details of the download feature were very disappointing. It will be to computers, not to televisions and will be for windows only. Sounds to me like just another movielink/amazon unbox product.

It feels right now like there are two solid options for incorporating internet media into your home entertainment center: xbox 360 and apple tv. Of these two, only apple tv supports independent media such as podcasts.

Cyberduck - the free ftp client for macintosh has been updated to 2.7.2

iPod Observer: Analyst is Skeptical of Apple TV

I’m not saying that Apple TV is going to be a big hit. I really don’t know. I do think that this analyst is missing the point. The Jupiter analyst doesn’t see the point of such a device when one can get the content over the air or via cable/satellite. I think that the iTunes store coupled with Apple TV causes one to question the need for shelling out $50 to $100 or more each month on cable or satellite. How many shows can one really watch? I’ve counted up the shows that my family watches and there are really only five. They are all available on iTunes. If I purchase a season pass to all of them, that averages out to around $14/month over a year for commercial-free, on-demand entertainment. The savings, just from moving from Time Warner’s basic-plus package would be almost $450 a year - easily covering the cost of the Apple TV.

I’m just saying I guess that Apple is not looking to supplement cable/satellite. They are looking to supplant it. They only thing this solution is missing is the ability to watch live events such as sports, but it can display streaming video and I think that it would be perfectly capable of displaying it once Apple starts to deliver it. The telephone companies have had to face the awkward situation of providing DSL to customers that use it to get their telephone service from other sources like Vonage. The cable companies may soon have the same scenario as they provide internet to customers that then get their TV programming from another source.

Looks like a bright future to me.

It’s been a day and a half since Steve bestowed the iPhone unto us. Here’s the thoughts that I’ve had on it.

• A souped-up nano seems like an odd choice for Apple's first widescreen video player
• It would be easy to drain a battery while flying and not have a phone when you get where you're going
• It would be nearly impossible to dial without seeing it. I hope that it either has a very good voice dialing feature or another way to very quickly dial someone in your favorites. As I see it right now, a phone call to a favorite would require a push of the top button to wake it, a slide of the finger to unlock it, a screen press to get to the phone, another press to get to your favorites and finally another press to dial the number. I can dial any of my speed dials on my current phone with one button (which I can find without looking at it).
• The wi-fi seemed slow (like wi-fi on every pocket-sized device I've used). They didn't demonstrate using internet applications over EDGE, but I'm sure that it would be almost painful.
• Steve mentioned that they have plans to support 3G. That may be worth waiting for.
• I love that they put a physical silent mode switch on the side of the phone. I think a lot of people don't silence their phones because they simply don't know how. David Pogue of the New York Times said on MacBreak Weekly that you can tell whether it is in silent mode or not by just feeling it in your pocket. Briliant.
• A lot of the limitations feel like things that Cingular may be imposing. Why no iChat? Because Cingular makes a dime on each message you send with SMS (unless you have a data plan). Apple said that only Apple-supplied applications will be able to run on the iPhone (at least in the beginning). I think that this is in Cingular's best interest more than it is Apple's.
• It is not odd to me that you would not be able to purchase tracks from the iTunes store on this phone as many are saying. You can't purchase from the Apple TV either. I do wish however that you could subscribe to RSS and receive podcasts.
• $500 to $600 seems like a lot with a two year contract. But I was just walking into the office yesterday with a $400 iPod and a phone that typically sells for $200 with a 2 year contract and thinking how nice it would be if they were one device.
• David Pogue also mentioned that it was really very difficult to type on. I wonder if there is any chance of OS X's handwriting recognition 'Inkwell' being incorporated or a bluetooth keyboard being offered.
• The iPhone has Bluetooth 2. Could some decent sounding bluetooth headphones be around the corner?
• My current cingular contract is up in November. I wonder what the landscape will look like then...
  

Verizon and Adobe announced at the Max Conference last month that Verizon would begin putting Flash Lite on compatible phones. At the conference, it was spun as an advantage to flash game developers that would like a huge new audience to deploy their work to. Today’s BBC previews something much bigger however. Verizon has announced a deal that will allow VCast subscribers to watch YouTube videos on their phones. Potentially, these new phones will be able to start viewing content on any number of flash-powered video sites such as Google Video and Brightcove.

technorati tags:adobe, verizon, flash, youtube

I have really liked using textile for my post formatting as it provides easy to read and write code while also publishing very clean HTML. I have had problems with it when I mix HTML and Textile code as I do often on my web log. Textile's main alternative is similar language called Markdown. I have started working with it this morning and so far so good.

• First, I downloaded the markdown plugin for wordpress.
• Then I converted my pages using textile to plain html.
• Finally, I converted that html to markdown and pasted it back into my web log.
  

technorati tags:markdown, textile