You know you have something going right when the spoofs are spectacular…

Then we have this dream sequence/history of Apple’s computer designs. Beautifully done, but I don’t see how they could have left out the evolution of the iMac or iPod, except maybe they couldn’t get the curves of their virtual rendition to look right…

Finally we have the latest iPad ad, that debuted during Sunday’s Oscar broadcast…

        

I love CNET. It’s one tech news source where I can find everything from straight tech journalism to flawed editorials on the latest things happening in the tech world. Take the overhyped announcement of the iPad a little bit ago, CNET provided the following excellent straight news reporting on the event:

Then there’s this excellent example of the tech news analysis by Tom Merritt and Rafe Needleman in CNET’s “Real Deal” podcast. The two put the iPad announcement into the historical context, looking at many of the previous, mostly failed, attempts to popularize the tablet/handheld class of computer. Make sure to visit the podcast website, these guys have excellent show notes and links to all of the gadgets mentioned in the video/podcast.

Then there’s this speculative editorial that wants to pass itself off as news reporting. Molly Wood is a smart, funny journalist, but she’s definitely from the media personality school of thought where snarky strong opinions are pushed to the front, generating huge positive or negative responses. I can’t watch this video without getting pissed-off. Ack. Moving on.

Discounting the noise being made by those who flat out hate all things Apple, iPhone or Steve Jobs, I’ve noted at least two trends between the fanboys and the haters. The first trend seems to be that pretty much none of the haters have actually touched the device and are making their vitriolic pronouncements based on the videos and the device spec sheet. This leads to the second observation: all of the haters are freaking out about all of the things the device doesn’t have. Oh my god, it doesn’t have a walk-in closet! Perhaps you missed that opening slide in the keynote where Jobs placed the device between a smart phone and a laptop. The idea is that the device will have things missing in the smart phone and won’t have things found on the laptop, like a three-car garage (crap, now I’m sounding like Molly Wood). Moving on.

In the Real Deal podcast, Needleman said that the Newton failed because it tried to do too much given the technology limitations of the time, whereas the Palm succeeded because it focused on a few things that needed to get done: contact list, calendar, notes and successfully syncing the three with one’s PC. Years later the iPhone successfully followed that path by focusing on being a great phone, being a great media player and being a great internet device. AND they had the wisdom to NOT try to boot-strap the Windows/OSX mouse/keyboard based user-interface to the thing. They broke with the past and focused on what needed to get done (a la Palm). Conversely, Microsoft had already been churning away in the smartphone space for years when the iPhone was introduced, but all they kept doing was trying to cram the Windows desktop (that was meant for big desktop LCD screens) onto tiny 2-inch screens and it did not take hold because Window-Mobile required seven-menu choices to do anything. Anyone remember this video from a few years ago on what it might have been like if Microsoft had produced the first iPod box?

Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Time Columnist, said it best in his initial reflection on the device, writing that the device is not something that can easily be assessed by a feature list or an illustration. I think the reason that the iPad is more than a dumbed-down tablet or giant-iTouch is that it’s not meant to be a stand-alone do-everything desktop computer replacement. In fact, it’s greatest feature might be something that has nothing to do with it’s beautiful design or the list of things it doesn’t have. The revolution that the iPhone started, of having useful Internet connectivity in the palm of your hand… maybe the iPad represents the next step as far as having an even better experience playing ones media, a more immersive experience interacting with “print” journalism in a way that books, newspapers and magazine could never deliver, and in a form-factor that’s much more natural than a keyboard and mouse. It’s not the thing, it’s what the thing connects you to. The word Portal comes to mind.

OLPC-meet-Taco-Beach by Joe Bustillos

Who needs it? asks all of the haters and most of the pundits. It’s not for the PC hardware tweakers or the hardcore gamers. Leo Laporte says it’s not for content creators, but I think that depends on what kind of content one is creating. I have begun blog entries and other correspondence on my iPhone. The idea that I can have the same access anywhere at any time and have more screen space to work with (and I can choose to use a real keyboard!), I’m in. I wrote a few weeks ago about the difference it would make having a smaller footprint than my 15′ laptop while enjoying those long afternoons cheering on my teams in my local pubs while grading papers and/or writing my blog. In fact, not long after I got my OLPC-XO netbook-sized $100 I took it to my local pub to enjoy the evening. I loved the size but the machine was just too underpowered and UI was too weird to be useful. That’s one of the things that’s kept me from buying one of the cheap netbooks, the prospect that it’d be too underpowered to do the things that I want to do. I watched the videos from CES of IdeaPad U1 hybrid, and when they used the touch and swipe gestures, the device lagged behind the finger. Two Processors and still underpowered. Boo! the The other thing that stopped me was that I wanted always-connected G3 service without having to dish out another $60 a month. I want to be able to grab my small device and write or play with my blogs while out and about. When I need to break-out the Final Cut Pro or need to spread my Dreamweaver layouts across three large monitors I have my macbook pro or my 27″ iMac to get the job down. But lately I’ve been choosing to compose and edit work while on my treadmill or on the couch. So, I guess I must be one of those “no ones” that Molly Wood was talking about (did she actually predict that there’s a market of only 2800 people for this thing? Maybe she confused this for the Palm Pre or her beloved Droid…[snark]).

You know who else this device might be for? My mom. She does email and loves getting photos of her grandchildren. I gave her a mac mini a few years ago but the combination of me living too far away to help her when the Internet breaks and the fact that she uses the computer just infrequently enough to never be very good at it makes me wonder if something like the iPad might work for her. Besides being a simplified device that’s always connected (saving her probably $30 a month to drop her DSL service!), she can use the thing anywhere she wants to, making the “computer” something that she doesn’t have to go to a special room (their spare bedroom) to do and maybe she’ll do it frequently enough to enjoy it more. Only downside (besides the price) is that I’d worry that if it fell off the couch she or dad would step on it and break it. Damn. Having a camera for video-chat would be great too (the OLPC-XO had that!). My siblings and I just bought mom a new 19″ LCD because the old CRT was … old. I think she need to break out of that room and grab the Internet with both hands, but I’m probably the only one who thinks that.

The device might not be meant for content creators, except for us text-jockeys and bloggers who like to roam when we write. But content creators, especially the vanishing “print” media, better be paying attention because this might open up a real platform to re-imagine what they could be producing and marketing. It could completely blur the lines between what used to be called Print and Audio and Video. Add social networking and citizen journalism and you have something completely different. I already have a plug-in that make my blog more iPhone-friendly, I’d love to see a WordPress plug-in that would retain more of my magazine-style blog layout. Then there’s the problem that I like posting flash videos in my posts and Adobe and Apple aren’t getting along. Damn. If they don’t fix it, then someone will because we want our videos and we’re not going to wait for h.264 Quicktime downloads. Well, Time, Inc. understands the potential. Question is whether they’ll join up or try to lash-up their own walled garden. I wonder if this might help Mad Magazine go back to being a monthly instead of a quarterly. I’d subscribe to Mad Magazine on my iPad. Too bad only 2800 posers will be buying this thing ’cause it doesn’t include a fire-alarm or any self-sealing stem bolts. Damn.

Sources:

YouTube video: Jobs Unveils “iPad” by CBSNewsOnline. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poaUbmdUcCY retrieved on 2/15/2010

Real Deal Podcast 195: Tablet computers. http://www.cnet.com/8301-17920_1-10443889-84.html retrieved on 2/15/2010

YouTube video: CNET Buzz Report: Special iPad Edition by CNETTV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggww65cg2FM retrieved on 2/15/2010

YouTube video: Microsoft iPod by romph. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0 retrieved on 2/15/2010

Apple gives every other reader reason to be nervous with iPad by By ANDY IHNATKO, Sun-Times Columnist. http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2015552,ihnatko-ipad-apple-launch-jobs-012710.article retrieved on 2/15/2010

image: OLPC Goes to Taco Beach by Joe Bustillos. http://joebustillos.com/2008/03/29/olpc-goes-to-taco-beach/ retrieved on 2/15/2010

IdeaPad U1 Hybrid Hands-On: Meet Voltron. He Could Be Amazing by Brian Barrett. http://gizmodo.com/5440922/ideapad-u1-hybrid-hands+on-meet-voltron-he-could-be-amazing retrieved on 2/15/2010

YouTube video: Sports Illustrated – Tablet Demo 1.5 by thewonderfactoryny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntyXvLnxyXk retrieved on 2/15/2010

info: self-sealing stem bolts. http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Self-sealing_stem_bolt retrieved on STARDATE -313125.89 (2/15/2010)

        

By definition, this is a “first world” problem. In the news gap between CES and the Apple event next week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I might manage my media collections between all of my computers. The buzz around the Boxee box and anticipating the need to have most of my working data in the cloud so that I can access it regardless of what computer or platform I’m using has inspired me to find a better way to work with my media. Actually this is a “problem” that I didn’t have until I moved from my one-room studio to my one-bedroom apartment and then two-bedroom townhouse. I have four macs floating around the house (and anticipate a fifth Apple in the form of an iPad-netbook-media-thingy), each with their own full copies of my iTunes library, DVDs ripped to a couple macs, and daily podcasts downloaded to all four computers. In the past I manually erased podcasts I’d already listened to on one of the four computer and my iPhone, but given how many podcasts I listen to this method is just too much work. I’d also been hoping to store my DVDs on one computer and be able to view them on any of the other devices. The upcoming release of the Boxee box has me rethinking my media sharing scheme.

Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.

One of the things that I’ve learned so far is that even though I’m using fast wireless “N” and or a fast “power” Ethernet connection between the first and second floors, ripped DVDs stored on hard drives in their original Mpeg2 format won’t play across the network without lots of buffering or dropped frames. Unacceptable. I was anticipating using my PS3 as the movie/media player downstairs (still working on that), so I had previous converted some movies to mp4 and those videos seemed to play nicely across the network. So, even though I’m a firm believer in having access to all of the “extra features” that I look for with my DVDs (and how convenient they are to access using the DVD menu system), I’ll need to rip and convert my media to a more network friendly format, like mp4 (which makes each extra feature into it’s own separate video file). Grrr.

image by Joe Bustillos

I’ve played with Boxee previously, but couldn’t break away from my iTunes addiction. With the software upgrade and set-top box, I’m thinking that this might be the solution to my Internet TV/podcast thing, either the software or the set-top box. Depending on my success using the PS3 as a media player, I still might need another set-top box for the bedroom TV. I’m also thinking that I need to plug into the NetFlix thing (streaming and disc) so that I don’t find myself buying every movie I want to see. So whatever box I get needs to do Netflix, access my music and DVDs across the network and either grab podcasts off the net or the ones stored on my other computers. Having invested in the PS3, I’m aware of the problems of getting a box that isn’t as expandable to handle all of the twists and turns that tends to happen in the media market.

Sources:
* Boxee Demo. http://www.boxee.tv/box retrieved on 1/23/2010
* FrontRow image by Joe Bustillos
* Tekzilla » Episode 124: “Should I buy a Boxee Box or a Roku or Stick With My xbox?” http://revision3.com/tekzilla/veronicapc/should-i-buy-a-boxee-box-or-a-roku-or-stick-with-my-xbox-360- retrieved on 1/23/2010
* Tekzilla » Episode 121: Boxee Box. http://revision3.com/tekzilla/2010newyear/boxee-box retrieved on 1/23/2010

        

Nope, this isn’t about grading assignments while drinking beer, though that practice clearly deserves a blog entry/study of it’s own. This one is about a unexpected discovery I made last Sunday when I needed to get away from my domicile and plant myself at a local pub to watch a day of NFL goodness. Of course having 10-page student papers to grade wasn’t going to stop me. Now, because access to a power-outlet was in doubt and previously the wifi was iffy at best, I took the unusual precaution of actually printing out all of the assignments and choose to read through and make notes on these pages before uploading the comments onto my laptop. I’m pretty fanatical about NOT printing out things, so I can’t remember the last I graded something in the dead-tree version. But I have to tell you that it was remarkably convenient to quickly flip through the pages, mark them up and then move on. And from the perspective of my small table in the bar, it was a lot less conspicuous and I wasn’t looking over a screen to see the TV(s). Weird. It was just amazingly natural to work in an 8×11 form factor.

How much more efficient would it have been if I had some device, roughly 8×11, where I could have marked up the documents (in their native electronic form), that could run all day on a single charge and had access to the Internet even when there’s no nearby wifi. Hmm. No, I guess I could make the notes on the text with my finger, but a stylus works too. I doubt it’ll have a stylus, but I have to wonder if Apple’s upcoming announcement next Wednesday will include the announcement of a device that fulfills this content creation need. The announcement better not be just a rev of the iLife suite. Ack.

Sources:
image by Joe Bustillos

        

I’ve been watching Leo since the early ZD-TV days. It feels like it was early Internet, but it really wasn’t. Here was a guy and a show that was part of this tech world that I was a part of, that no one else understood. So for their last podcast for 2009, TWiT 228, they got a bit nostalgic (and funny). Good times. This was not the case several weeks ago when Leo and John C. Dvorak made fun of the NASA Tweet-up and totally forgot about what Twitter really means. Basically they took the low road and made jokes about what the hell are you going to say in 140 characters except, “I just peed in my diaper.” Twitter isn’t about the 140 characters or what one has for lunch. It’s about the community and connections that happen over time. So, sometime Leo gets it, and other times he goes for the cheap shot. Surprise, he’s human.

It is a bit strange to feel a connection with an Internet personality (who was a Cable-TV personality from a small network before that) and then discover that there’s a whole community of weirdos like me who work in tech. Following is a short documentary featuring Leo talking about the moment we’re at right now where it’s possible for a small media company can compete with giant corporations and get their message out without all the filters imposed in the past. It’s about the individual and the community and the message. It’s not about 140-characters.

Bonus video: Here’s a video circa 1996 during which Leo Laporte predicts the future. Given next week’s Apple announcement, Leo’s talk about the power of the Newton in 1996 might be all the more interesting:

Sources:
* YouTube video: TWiT 228: The TWiT Of The Decade posted by TWiT. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaq_FoA8jmo retrieved on 1/19/2010
* The Spark Series, Part 3: OPEN by Michael Sean Wright and Marc Ostrick. http://www.eguiders.com/exclusive/the-spark-series-part-3-open retrieved on 1/19/2010
* Of Mouse and Man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzIV8BxlaQs retrieved on 1/19/2010

        

Apple reserved presentation space for the end of January and the rumor mills is cranking up around the Apple netbook-thingy… At CES2010 everyone and their brother is announcing all sorts of tablet/slate/netbook/e-book readers devices, all trying to fight against the buzz of a device that hasn’t been announced yet. Amazing.

        

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the year of the media pad/e-reader. And no, Mr. Ballmer, we don’t want to read/interact with our media on a big fat (hot!) laptop or, God forbid, desktop computer. We want something small (w/ a big screen), sexy and fast! Is this Time Inc. Pad the unicorn/Apple Tablet? Since I posted this video in my blog, rumors about the Apple unicorn/tablet have really taken off again. End of January announcement? Stay tuned.

        

This was my last week teaching Full Sail/emdtms’ LMO (Learning Management Systems) course and I couldn’t end our time together without a little conversation about Moodle. Enjoy.

Moodle is not a verb, or is it?

I’ve been hearing about Moodle at ed/tech conferences for longer than I can remember. In the early years it seemed to be an “under the radar” project bringing together the open source tech community and educators. More recently, with district administrators making decisions to roll-out Moodle, the concept seems to have shifted from a roll-your-own thing to something imposed upon teachers with little training, assistance or attempts to generate buy-in. In either case the platform has appeared to be largely text-driven and visually challenging. Wikipedia has an excellent overview of Moodle at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle.

The following video is intended to help those unfamiliar with Moodle’s module-mentality (and also for big fans of Legos!):

This next video is a good overview of the Moodle interface that includes a few commons tasks teachers might do:

For those curious for more in-depth training I located a course available through Lynda.com at
http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourseN.aspx?lpk2=47547

Other tutorials are available at: http://moodle-tutorials.blogspot.com/search/label/Moodle%20Video%20Tutorials and
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Teacher_documentation.

One of the most important thing to remember about learning platforms, whether we have a say in their roll-out or not, is that it’s an opportunity to enlarge your reach with your students and that it’s your input that changes these things from being just tools to becoming learning opportunities.

Please review these videos and info and come to our Wimba session ready to talk about Moodle.

Sources:

* moodle logo. http://docs.moodle.org/en/License retrieved on 12/13/2009

* youtube video/image: Moodle explained with LEGO short version posted by moodlefan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPZl6LLvik retrieved on 12/13/2009

* Youtube video: What’s Moodle? posted by jenericjarvis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jY9KcHwIWI&feature=related retrieved on 12/13/2009

        

As I continued to explore online teaching/learning platforms for my LMS course (Learning Management Systems), I revisited Digication, a platform that I used my last year teaching middle school technology and media classes. The following are my notes that I passed along to my students to study before our weekly online session. The last portion are three examples of the Udutu teaching module that we’ve been studying.

Digication Revisited

In between large-scale enterprise level learning management systems imposed upon educators and roll-your-own systems like moodle are many smaller online options such as Digication (http://digication.com/). I heard about Digication from an interview of one of the founders, Jeffrey Yan, on Leo Laporte’s "Inside the Net" podcast. Digication’s founders recognized the need for something more than just another place to post content, something that would cater to educators’ special needs that aren’t being addressed by overly-generalized web-portals, and at the same time be as simple to manage as an email account. Following is a Behind-the-Scenes tour of Digication and the "Inside the Net" interview of Digication founder, Jeffrey Yan (NOTE: the interview is a bit long…). Please review these items before our wimba session.

Inside the Net 35: Digication (http://www.twit.tv/itn35)

One of the things that attracted me to Digication was that it had all of the features of a full CMS but didn’t require that I code it myself or try to get the assistance/permission from my district IT. Only limitation for the free account was that there couldn’t be more than 1,000 users at my school. I’ve written about my experiences with Digication a few times on my blog:
* Digication Gets My Vote
* Classroom Website on Digication

* Utudu & You: You should be well into creating your Udutu course/unit. Make sure that you make your way through the Udutu tutorials at http://udutu.com/tutorials.html. Please come to our Wimba session ready to share your progress, frustrations and victories. Remember, you want to have your Udutu course set-up quickly enough so that your fellow students have time to visit and comment on your Udutu course (during week 4). The following examples of Udutu units are offered as an inspiration and encouragement (the first one was created by the President of Udutu!). Enjoy:

All About Web 2.0 and Udutu Genesis by Roger Mundell

Introduction to 20th Century Art by Liz Perry

Introduction to Technology Accessibility by Emily Wray

Sources:

* featured image: Study by hermes. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hermes-/421203877/ retrieved on 12/9/2009

* audio podcast: Inside the Net 35: Digication by Leo Laporte and Megan Morrone with Guest: Jeffrey Yan of Digication. http://www.twit.tv/itn35 retrieved on 12/7/2009

* videos: LMO Moments: Behind the Scenes Tour: Digication by Joe Bustillos – emdt/FSO. http://www.viddler.com/explore/joebeebee/videos/22/ retrieved on 12/7/2009

* Udutu units: All About Web 2.0 and Udutu Genesis by Roger Mundell. http://publish.myudutu.com/published/launch/1612/Course15573/Launch.html?redirect=true retrieved on 12/7/2009

* Udutu units: Introduction to 20th Century Art by Liz Perry. http://publish.myudutu.com/published/launch/12441/Course21598/Launch.html?redirect=true retrieved on 12/7/2009

* Udutu units: Introduction to Technology Accessibility by Emily Wray. http://lms.myudutu.com/LMSGadget/courses/lms/12244/Course21696/881/v2009_8_24_18_23_39/course/Course21696.html?redirect=true retrieved on 12/7/2009

        

What could we do if we had flexible display materials? As advanced as the tech seems, it still might not fly because the rolled up size still seem too big when one thinks about how small and thin and light-weight the Apple Macbook Air, the Sony Vaio X- and P-series and the various netbooks already are. Flexible display materials are just beginning to show up, but there’s something in this design that’s answering problems from when the smallest usable laptops were the 15-inch/6-pound devices. Rolling up said 15-inch devices is still going to be at least 13-inches long and a rolled up girth of four-inches diameter. That’s awfully big when one considers that a lot of people are happy using an iPhone-sized device to do a lot of their communication/computer tasks.

It really comes down to current limitations in the HCI (Human/Computer Interface) area, specifically finding the best ways to get information into and out of these devices. We are limited by the size of the displays we find useful and the size of the keyboard. All of this would radically change should we find a projection technology that presents the visual feedback via a glasses based heads-up-display (HUD), or maybe projects the image right into the eye(s) of the user. As for keyboard/mouse input, there are already projection devices being developed, but what if a virtual reality overlay technology were included in the HUD display being projected into the glasses/eyes so that one would see a virtual keyboard attached to any user-selected flat surface. Of course, if voice-recognition were really functional than the keyboard would be just a secondary editing device used more for error correction than composition. Thus with some combination of VR/HUD and voice recognition the actual computer hardware might easily be the size of an iPhone (CPU, memory, battery, communications links) that never leaves ones pocket. And if/when the input/output become neural with direct links to the brain’s visual and language centers (the wiring harness discretely hidden in a stylish hat, of course), than the hardware might be the size of a piece of jewelry like the Star Trek Next Generation communicator badges. This may all seem very far fetched, but it’s really no more far fetched than having flexible display materials that can be rolled up into a tube.

Sources:
YouTube: Future Designer laptop – ROLLTOP //Diploma Thesis// posted by orkinful, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H0K1k54t6A retrieved on 11/01/2009.
Thanks to CK for sending me a copy of the video