Dropbox Vs Cloud

If I understand correctly, Dropbox allows you to access your files even when you're not connected to the Internet.

I'm pretty sure the Cloud doesn't ;)

+1 Dropbox -1 Cloud

New Wireless - Reality of 4G and How Stuff is Done

Now, I am making this post clearly not as a stockholder of AT&T or Verizon Wireless, because this information is in the consumer's interest.

Right now, when you use a 3G phone, the voice part of your call is done more or less traditionally... the voice packets go to the cell tower, and are transmitted, and all that stuff. it's sort of like a tin can and string phone, one end, other end, except there is no string. That's what made a cell phone different than a landline. It was more or less "voice" going through the air.

3G made the phone have a split personality over the analog phones of the 80s and early 90s. 3G data... texts, email checking, stock quote updates, where done over a data connection, and then voice calls were put separately into a voice connection area, from a simple standpoint. (You could look into this for weeks and weeks, it's not important the particular details.)

4G phones do EVERYTHING on data. Your voice calls, and all your emails, and texts, all go over a complete data channel.

You need to ask yourself, with a 4G phone, why would you ever pay for minutes if it's just data? You should be paying for data only. This is why Skype is so popular.

I hope 4G spells the end of "minute" plans. It should all be unlimited at that point to your "data package." For example, a 3gb data plan should include unlimited minutes until you hit the 3gb limit. Just my feelings. Charging for "minutes" when it's data is just a complete scam.

Portable Workstation Setup

I've been testing a new computer setup for use when I'm working at libraries. I have a 13" Macbook, an iPad, and a Mi-Fi personal 3G wireless router.

I downloaded an app for my iPad that turns the iPad into a second monitor for a Mac, but it requires a Wi-Fi connection to work. So I've set up my Mi-Fi into a local router and I've connected both my Macbook and my iPad to that wireless network, so now I have a second "screen" and 3G Internet access.

Dual screens and 3G Internet pretty much anywhere in the states...

I think it's a great portable office setup :)

Android Smart Phone at Prepaid Cell Rates

I heard that Virgin Mobile was releasing a true Smartphone but I was expecting there to be a monthly bill increase versus a regular Virgin Mobile phone. Amazingly, it's the same price.

Samsung Intercept first Android phone on Virgin Mobile Prepaid

In the late summer of 2010 Virgin put out a prepaid plan that started at $25 a month for unlimited text, data, web, etc, and 300 talk minutes (no free nights or weekends, sadly). I picked up the LG Rumor Touch for $129 which was actually a lot more powerful than I thought, but still not of the same class as an iPhone or an Android-based phone.

Normally a carrier charges a cell user $20-$30 a month just for the DATA, on top of the text and voice charges. With the Intercept on Virgin Mobile, it's $25 for data, unlimited text, and 300 minutes. That's just freaking amazing.

(No, I'm not a Sprint stockholder or anything. I'm just glad one company believes a smart phone should cost less than $30 a month.)

Education OS as a Theme not an Installation

Okay, I was trying to find what operating system is best for kids, from a researcher's perspective. You can say Edubuntu, you can say Sugar OS (the one that started at One Laptop Per Child) or you can take a step back and realize maybe thats the wrong question to ask in the first place.

It's pretty obvious that Windows and Mac OS (and Linux) as they come in the box are not suited for school children use. Yes, they pick it up fast. Yes, it's what adults use (well, it's what adults used before the cloud and the web took over). But why are we telling children they can set up their computer any way they want as long as there is a Start button in the lower left? We presume that exact standards are required for educational learning, I mean, in respect to stuff the same place on each individual's screen.

Okay, if I say "tap your start menu" you know where to look (assuming you're on Windows). You might set it up in the standard lower left, or you may have moved your task bar around the screen. The day you learned to use computers, you found out where stuff is. Right now, if I say "do you know where to find what time it is?" You'll know exactly where to find the time. You should be able to put your clock wherever you want, and you still understand the concept. Kids aren't stupid, they can understand where they put stuff. They know where to find stuff. The interface should be customizable because we should assume children are highly intelligent.

I think we need to stop asking "What OS is best for kids?" and realize that the most likely solution is that the OS doesn't matter. It should be customizable and themed, flexible, efficient, and reliable. If we're looking to know the answer to what OS is best for kids, we're thinking in the wrong decade. The interface is what matters. I think we should consider the "Best OS" argument dead. Themed UIs for the win!

What are we going to do with 100Mbit Everywhere Internet?

You may have seen advertisements for 4G Internet, but what most people don't know is that true 4G Internet will be 100 megabit connections. To put that in perspective, DSL connections are often 1.5 megabit and a good cable connection is up to 32 megabits. So in a few years, your Internet everywhere will be three times faster than the "blazing fast" connection you might have at home today.

What are we going to do with fast connections? A lot of us just watch YouTube, do some research, maybe some video conferencing. After all of it, we're really typically using less than 2-3 megabits as it is.

If you're a visionary, start thinking about what we're going to be able to do in 5-10 years when we're not tied to coffee shops or our own homes for fast connections.

Your laptop, netbook, or tablet will be able to connect anywhere in the future. Let's make the most of it! :)

Web Graphics Software

When I started designing web sites, I downloaded a trial copy of what was then called Jasc's PaintShop Pro. Photoshop was also available, but I was 14 years old and it was completely out of my price range (it's still about US $699). I switched to Photoshop once I had some income coming in from advertisements, but PaintShop Pro is really what got me started.

I picked up a copy of the latest PaintShop Pro this week for $50 (hall price) at BestBuy, because it was on sale and I've been using my Acer Nettop a lot recently. It's made by Corel now, but it's become an amazing product, and at $50 it's a great investment. The license is a lot like Photoshop, you can install it on a main computer and a laptop with one copy as long as you don't run them both simultaneously.

I'd like to point out that I think GIMP (free) is a great program, Paint..NET is good if you're in a hurry, and ArtRage is an amazing product if you're using a stylus and drawing pad. But on sale, PaintShop Pro is a steal.

Here's the official site. And the BestBuy link if you want to see if it's on sale.

On the Impermanence and Distraction of the Blog and Social Network

This is a topic I've been thinking on a lot since December when I was doing my initial research on multitouch technology.

When I started on the web, posting a web site was complicated. Finding a spot (a web host), learning a language like HTML and CSS, creating, uploading, debugging. Yeah, it was a lot of work. But the effort we put into getting the site online, we tried to make the effort of the actual work worth the time, too.

I understand having a hard-coded list of sites, paragraphs, links, seems a little authoritative. But that's initially what a domain was, your section of the web. Your thoughts, your feelings, your motivations. Thought out, planned, executed.

I absolutely loved many of the blog posts I came upon during my weeks of research. But there were also a lot of blog posts that were complete nonsense. Had making the post been more complicated, most people wouldn't have gone to the trouble of making a nonsense post.

I'm not arguing that posting online should be more complicated. What I'm arguing is that we should really leave the blogs to actual thoughts, and leave the quick-fast-nonsense to Twitter and social networks. Posting to those, thank goodness, is significantly less time-consuming than posting to a blog, as it should be.

On a semi-related note, I launched a web site called caffeinerevelation.com to post my thoughts, feelings, and motivations.

Enjoy.

One of the Next Killer Apps - Spare Time

Every once in a while I like to post about a topic that's more thoughts than links or references.

While I've been tinkering with ideas over the past year for iPhone apps, it seems like the most successful types do one of two things:  help us make things easier ( allowing the technology to speed up whatever task we need to do, or make it more portable ) or give us a way to spend our time ( games, etc ).

A lot of people would say that two things they can't do without are Google and Facebook.  Google helps us save time.  Lots of time.  Finding an answer with Google to our question takes maybe a minute or two, going to the library to look it takes who knows how much time.  It depends how hard a question it is.  Not all questions can be answered quickly (or, effectively at all at a library, outside of the Internet terminal there!)  So Google saves us time.

Facebook saves me time in a way.  It lets me communicate with hundreds of friends instead of telling them something one-to-one.  New job?  Post it.  Fifteen seconds.  Is it as personal?  No.  Should telling someone I got a job be personal?  No.  It's something that benefits me, but doesn't particularly drive a conversation.

Facebook also wastes time.  Lots and lots of time.  Lots and lots and lots of time.  But that's because it fulfills the second major role:  It gives us something to do with our time.  A lot of the people who spend a lot of time on Facebook are in the applications section, NOT the status update or message section.  They go on Facebook to be entertained.  People who don't use apps spend significantly less time on Facebook than those who do use apps.  Same with an iPhone.  The people who use just productivity apps on average surely use their iPhone fewer minutes per day than those who use their iPhone for entertainment.  This isn't new.  People who watch television for entertainment on average would watch it more than those who watch it merely for news.  People who read a newspaper for entertainment (say, the sports and lifestyle section) spend more time with a newspaper than those who merely read it for news alone (local, national, global).  Okay, yes, there are no statistics to back up this paragraph, but I would think for most of you it's agreeable and understandable.

The top 7 sites worldwide (ranked by Alexa) all fulfill one or both of these principles. All but one are commercially supported ( Wikipedia does not have ads, which is what makes it "valid" as a resource in my opinion ).  But what makes the iPhone great is that it can fulfill the little segments in our life that could be done just a little bit more easily, therefore increasing our spare time, to spend doing things of our choice (usually with the same technology that we use to create the spare time).  We use the same device to create time and spend time.

It's not to say that people don't like real things, like going to the movies, museums, going to rock concerts.  It's just, may I say, more quality to do them through virtual technology.  A parent can work while a child plays a game ( as the number of computers increase, which is driven by largely by the netbook market, meaning households have more than one ).  We can pull Netflix on our laptop or television instantly while our children do homework.  Technology keeps families spending time together, but we more efficiently do tasks separately, increasing our enjoyment of the spare time.

Do I think Facebook is a good use of spare time?  Personally, no.  Some people may think it is.  I think there's a a huge market for the next segment of killer apps.  Things that make spare time even more available.  Do I think it's going to be a web service?  No.  I think it's going to be a mobile app.  I think it's first iteration is going to be on iPhone, then spread to other platforms like Android afterwards.

Would you pay 99 cents a month for an ad-free, clutter-free Facebook?  I would.  That's why I think the iPhone is going to create the next series of killer apps.  People are rewarded for innovation in a way never really seen before.  There's an app for that is more than a marketing line.  It's the realization of the next big thing.

Apple's iPad, Netbooks, Multi-Touch and The Smaller-Bigger Web

Some of us will browse the web with our fingers and taps, and it's not going to be a fad.

Designers have to start considering this.  And screens will be smaller.

Designers have to start considering this.

Screen resolutions are measured in pixels left to right and up and down.  A device with a resolution of 1024 x 768 (such as Apple's new iPad, and many computers with old CRTs and not LCDs) have 1024 little dots left to right and 768 dots up and down.  But, let's go over some history to see what this is important.

When I started web design in 1996 (14 years ago) the average CRT monitor on a personal computer was 640x480.  Over the years, it increased to 800x600, then later 1024x768, which is where it pretty much stopped for store-bought home PCs.  Then wide screen came in, and we had views such as 1280x800 used on Apple's MacBook 13 inch ( 1280 across, 800 up and down) and other very close resolutions.  But now, we're having netbooks from ASUS and others (including my T91MT multi-touch netbook) with resolutions of 1024 x 600!

So, if you're designing a web site that doesn't scan for resolutions, you're going to max out at having a height of 600 pixels now, again, which isn't horrible compared to 728 ( from 1024 x 768 ) or 800 ( from 1280 x 800 ).

These netbooks will last 3-5 years minimum, so this is not "oh, for a year or two, I'll design smaller" deal.  You're going to have to take into account the smaller screen sizes for the foreseeable future.

The iPhone and iPad are capable of easy zooming, so the resolution is less particular on those. I imagine that Google's Chrome Netbook will have a multi-touch edition that also has some sort of simple zooming feature.

But as far as multi-touch goes, the iPad has no mouse.  People will be touching links and buttons, not clicking them.  This means that web sites that are going to work in a touch environment will have to have somewhat larger links in areas of the site that require interaction.  This can be done via CSS modifications by setting a separate style sheet if you don't want standard desktop users from being affected by your touchscreen version.

Just some thoughts :)