iPad standing tall after 48 hours
Update: Read part 2 of this review.
After spending most of the last 48 hours with the iPad in my hands I have to agree with Walt Mossberg that “…this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly…” The folks at Apple like to shake up entire industries – iTunes and the iPod certainly changed the music business and Apple is now the largest music distributor in the world, and the iPhone showed the stodgy telecommunications industry what a phone should be, while Apple sold over 70 million so far. It’s too soon to know whether the iPad will have the same impact, but the early results suggest that it certainly has the potential.
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Posted in Business, Mostly Tech
Google Fiber Optic Test
Google today announced an initiative to build broadband networks in local communities around the US as part of a test. Quoting Google:
“We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”
The full announcement can be found on Google’s blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-our-experimental.html
If you ever wanted fiber optic broadband to your home, office, or school now is your chance. Go to the following page and submit your information:
http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi
Good luck, and let us know if you win.
Posted in Business, Mostly Tech
Regardless of what you want to call it (smartbook, netbook, web book, e-reader) 2010 will be the year that we all realize we need a fourth computer device in our lives, and wonder how we got by so long without it. By the end of 2010 our personal IT infrastructure will fall into four categories:
Desktop computer – The old standby, and still the best tool for most work. Prices are low for powerful, multi-display devices that have high quality speaker systems and can serve as a media hub for the whole office/home.
Notebook computer – The only way to travel with most of your office in a backpack. Large keyboards, decent screens and good battery life make today’s notebooks ready for serious work. Some people are starting to eliminate the desktop computer in favor of using a notebook full-time, but the most powerful are too big and heavy for frequent travel.
Net-smart Book-tablet – This is where the new category fits into the lineup. It’s a device that is smaller and much lighter than a notebook/laptop computer, but bigger than a cell phone with an 8 to 12 inch screen for easy reading. It is primarily designed for consuming media, that is: reading books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs; watching television, movies and YouTube; browsing Web sites for work, school and fun; and listening to music. Skype will allow you to use these wi-fi devices as a phone, but some will no doubt be sold with cell phones built in (the Kindle already includes a cell radio, but only for data). The current crop look mostly like small notebooks, using a clamshell design. But the old notebook form factor isn’t very convenient for reading on the couch, in bed, or in the bathroom, and weight is a big problem. Expect the new 2010 generation to be very light and more tablet-like, or have clever folding or sliding systems so they can be held flat. You’ll take this new device places you would never think to bring your notebook, but not everywhere like your cell phone.
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Posted in Mostly Tech
Motorola Cell Phone 1983
Back in the old days it was easy to buy a cell phone – if it made phone calls you were good to go. At some point the cell phone became the “smart phone” which is really code for “universal communications and entertainment device that fits in a pocket.” It’s pretty amazing really, but a short list of things I expect my phone to do these days includes:
- Web browser
- E-mail device
- Contact and calendar management
- Task managment and notepad
- Instant/text messaging
- GPS moving map with audible turn-by-turn directions
- Watch television shows, movies and YouTube
- Music player (and music store)
- Mobile hot spot providing Internet access for multiple computers
- Manage my Netflix movie queue
- Still camera and audio/video recorder
- Weather reports with animated radar images
- Animated airline flight tracker
- Make phone calls
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Posted in Mostly Tech
Sorry to be a downer at the beginning of summer, but this is important so pay attention for a few minutes. How long has it been since you made backups of important files? If you make regular backups, have you checked them to be sure they really work to recover your data? Are the only backups in the same room as the original files?
A friend called for help last week. Her computer picked up a nasty virus that left the Windows XP machine unable to boot. It was an older computer that was about due to be upgraded anyway so she bought a new model. She had nightly backups of the most important files, documents, accounting and tax records, and things like that so she was up and running quickly with no stress.
However, she had many gigabytes of photographs, videos and music that were too big for her to back up conveniently so the only copy was on the virus-infected, internal hard disk. We solved that problem by plugging her bad Windows drive into one of our Linux machines and copying the files to an external USB drive.
After solving her problem we went shopping and found that large-size backup drives have gotten really cheap. Our first stop was Staples. They have a 1 TB external USB drive for $149. A 1.5 TB drive is only $179. After that we dropped in at a new Best Buy that just opened yesterday. I don’t know if this is a short-term special, but they had a 1 TB external USB drive for only $119. That’s a lot of storage for the average user and at that price everyone can afford backup.
iDrive Backup Solution
Another backup option that you should consider are the “cloud” storage providers that put your important files on their servers in a data center somewhere. That’s really good because it protects your valuable data from flood, fire, vandalism, etc. Two companies to check out for this service are Mozy and iDrive. These services are very reasonable – for about $5/month (both Mozy and iDrive will even give you 2GB for free!) you can have off-site storage for your most important files.
The solution I prefer is a combination of local and remote backup. Keep local copies of everything on one or more large USB drives. Also keep remote copies of the important stuff.
Whatever you do, have a plan for backup. It doesn’t cost much and will eventually save you a lot of time and money.
Posted in Mostly Tech
MiFi portable Internet hotspot
UPDATE: As of early June the MiFi is also available from Sprint.
We usually recommend Sprint in the US because of their fast data network, but Verizon has a really interesting new device coming out soon that will make us get a Verizon account for the first time ever. This little thing is a wireless Wi-Fi router, like the one in your home or office, but it has a rechargeable battery and it connects to the Internet through Verizon’s 3G cell phone network.
You can now have your own personal hotspot, for multiple Internet users, wherever you need it. Think about that for a minute. Now your team has Internet access anywhere:
- remote or outdoor job sites
- conferences and trade shows
- a sales presentation where you don’t have time to figure out the customer’s network
How often have you walked into a customer’s conference room and then had to crawl under the table in a skirt looking for the network connection? How often has the customer said “Sure we have wireless Internet” only to find out that you can’t get connected, as valuable presentation time is wasted?
David Pogue of The New York Times was the first to get his hands on the MiFi. Read his initial review here. David’s followup comments are available on his blog.
Verizon doesn’t have any information on their Web site yet, so we’ll have to wait and see about features in the router, battery life, Wi-Fi signal strength and more. But if this is as good as it looks, Verizon has us as a new customer.
Quick Followup:
A couple of days after writing this Sprint announced they would also be offering the MiFi, starting early in June. Read their press release.
Posted in Mostly Tech
The Firefox Web browser is quickly becoming the only software you really need on your computer. And that will make lots of people happy because it will simplify their lives.
Firefox showing my current add-ons
The online replacements (think Google Apps or Zoho) for your basic desktop office software like word processing, spreadsheets, project management, accounting, and e-mail are getting good enough to replace their desktop cousins. They work in Firefox and any other Web browser, saving users the trouble of buying, installing, and constantly upgrading their programs. But where Firefox really outdoes the competition is the huge collection of "Add-ons." There are thousands of add-ons available at the Firefox Web site. These add-ons can replace almost all the other software people normally have installed on their computers.
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Posted in Mostly Tech
We have been proponents of Google’s mail service almost since the day it was announced. Low cost (or free), huge storage space, secure IMAP, plus all the resources of Google to keep making it better. Over the past couple of years we’ve helped a number of companies move off of costly private mail systems, and everyone has been happy with the result.
But, no matter how big Google, Amazon, Yahoo, or anyone else gets, or how much money they have, their services will eventually go down. Volumes have been written in just the past week about Google’s Gmail outage. Read the official Google blog post, or yesterday’s Wall Street Journal story.
So this seems like a good time to encourage our readers to take time this weekend to pick up some new ideas to help make your e-mail more reliable, and use a nice free program to back up all of your Google mail.
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Posted in Mostly Tech
