Apparently I am REQUIRED to weigh in on the latest and greatest piece of hardware that comes from our retail overlords, Apple. So says the almighty Steve Jobs. All praise Steve Jobs!

I have been consciously waffling on posting about the iPad for over a month. For those of you who know me, I am neither a champion of Apple nor Microsoft. I am not really a full on Linux geek, either. I am comfortable on all platforms. I have obtained (not bought, but not stolen) an iPod touch and enjoy using it, for the most part. I say all this to assure you that the following is not fueled by any specific love or hate for the overall Apple products.

I am a computer and technology Geek. I give all platforms equal chance.

This being said, I do not want an iPad.

Wait. What? But you must ant an iPad. You have an iPod and you like gadgets. Get an iPad. You’ll like it!

That’s right. No iPad for me, please. And now I’ll tell you why:

It’s an iPod touch made bigger.

With so much hype surrounding the iPad, one may first think that this must be a wonderful, revolutionary device, but it isn’t. There have been pads before and there will be better pads to come. Some may be coming sooner than you think. Apple themselves have already made one “pad” called the Newton. So what makes the iPad so newsworthy? It accomplishes everything that the iPod touch does in a bigger package!

Huh?

That’s right, it is just a big iPod touch. It does have more screen real-estate and applications can be made that are only available on the iPad, but when it comes down to it, the only thing that would be better in any way on an iPad than an iPod would be watching movies or consuming other visual content. Even this has it’s trade-off, namely having to hold the device at the proper angle to comfortably consume this content. Okay, so people that want to drop $500 (well actually up to $1200) to watch a movie or surf the web on the toilet, reclining on the couch, or reclining in the easy chair would be happy. After all, why watch a movie on a TV when you can enjoy it having to hold a 1.5 pound screen in your lap?

I DO see where the iPad COULD be useful. It is an intuitive device, so someone who is technology inept could work well on it.

[Yes, I am saying that the iPad could be a "Laptop for Dummies" device. If you don't agree, tell me why!]

So far, this is stuff that has been spewed endlessly by others and I’ve just been reiterating already tired material.

Well here is where I go into why I personally am becoming frustrated with where Apple has gone with their technology. I have a number of media items (songs, pictures and movies) housed on my media PC  that just won’t fit on my 16 GB iPod. In fact, unless my iPod (or an iPad) had approximately 300 GB of storage, I wouldn’t be able to hold the media that I would want to be available to a device like the iPad. I happily live with a storage limitation on my iPod due to it’s size and the fact that movies are just not all that great to watch on it. The iPad however, opens up the more comfortable large media consumption that the iPod just couldn’t deliver. And here lies the real problem in the iPad: the only way to get the full capacity of the iPad is to use remote files. This wouldn’t even BE a problem if it weren’t for the fact that the only way to use remote files on the iPad was through streaming services. Why can’t the iPod or iPad sync wirelessly with a FULL library? I have a LOT of media files. It would be very difficult to have to pull up iTunes (or even another media manager), select the file I want moved over, and then hook up the device and sync it. That’s not even considering the fact that it HAS to be in a certain format. If I could remotely browse my library (while I was on the same Wi-Fi network) and pull a desired file on demand, I would want it. I would want an iPad so bad that I would be doing some very degrading things right now to get one. Sure, I want expandability. Sure, I would LIKE a camera. But for what this device is, it lacks a very core functionality that it could easily have that would truely make it the revolutionary device that it is being touted to be.

There are a lot of Android tablets coming out VERY soon and I am pretty sure that networking and file browsing will be a basic function in these devices, allowing for exactly what I’m looking for. Not only will these devices offer more functionality in a basic way, they will be expandable. Will they overtake the iPad, unfortunately they will probably be looked on as too “complex” by the technophobic masses to be as widely accepted as the heavily mass-marketed iPad. Woe is the world.

Someone please make a device that truly embodies portable media consumption. I beg you!

-Mike

I wished upon a star until it landed on runway 9.

If you haven’t heard of Skype by now, I imagine the you’ve been living in a cave for the past year or so. Skype isn’t the only independent VoIP provider (there is also MagicJack and Vonage off the top of my head), but Skype is the only one that I am aware of that currently offers a connection offering that is a wireless hand held. In fact, Skype has two of these handsets offered on its products page and you can find more via Google. But the question is; Is it worth using this service, especially in lieu of a cell phone?

I have a Netgear SPH200W phone and live in a suburb type area. While Skype has only released numbers for my area a very short time ago, I can say that not having an incoming number does not make a significant impact to the service expectation when out of your house. I recently lost my primary employment and since I was about 20, my cell phone has always been provided to me by my place of employment. As I did not have any speakable income to rely upon for a monthly cellular bill, Skype seemed a good way to be able to have an open line of communication available. This being said, this post is based upon three solid months of a WiFi Skype phone being my primary “cell” phone.

The raw facts are this:

• Once you leave your house or a connected hot-spot, you cannot receive calls. You do have voicemail, but those alerts won’t come to you either until you connect to a hot-spot.
• You are dependent on open hot-spots.
• You have no control over the quality of a hot-spot.
• The service carries a fraction of the cost of a cellular service.

So you may be thinking that the facts make this sound like a pain in the ass to use. Contrary to this, I actually found that using a WiFi phone has it’s advantages. Cost is the biggest advantage. An unexpected advantage, though, is that I found that I was in control of communication. If I didn’t want to be reached, you couldn’t reach me. I still had a pay-as-you-go solution for kid emergencies, but most of my friends and family knew that I had the Skype and that was it. They could leave me a message and when I got it, I could return the call if I felt I needed to. We have gotten so used to having a cell on us that many people forget that it is not REQUIRED to answer every ring. Furthermore, it was a little surprising who was put off that I wasn’t going to be immediately available for contact at all times. My closest friends and family were all good with it, but some people seemed to be upset that I wouldn’t be able to take their call immediately if THEY wanted to contact me. These were people that I am not their emergency contact or close support group. I really wondered why they would need me all that badly. The answer was that they wouldn’t. So it was nice to have a buffer from those that I don’t have to have immediate contact with. After all, this was how things used to work when answering machines were the big convenience.

Next you would think that it would be hard to get a hot-spot. Not so. I can tell you that Burger King and some medical offices have completely open hot-spots, but auto shops normally don’t. You would think that a shop where you have to wait for an hour to get your car fixed would have one, but no. Schlotzkey’s, on the other hand, rules! Great sandwiches AND open WiFi! Residential areas are also a good thing here. Another unexpected benefit came from the WiFi issue. I couldn’t drive and talk. BOOM! Instant safer driver. If it wasn’t important enough for me to sit at the nearest hot-spot, I couldn’t make the call. It’s not that it wasn’t easy enough to find a hot-spot, but I suddenly found that I annoyed my wife a lot more with stupid questions. If I had a decision to make at the grocery store, I had to make it. It would be nice for grocery stores to have WiFi, though. They are just to big to pickup the signal from the CiCi’s pizza next door. That is really the only time I missed having a cell. To bug my wife about what type of frozen pizza she wanted (as if I didn’t already know).

Some of the time the hot-spot wasn’t of high quality. But if I had a good signal, the other party normally told me that I sounded fine. I take that as quality is not a big issue here. So really, most of the seemingly negative fact had beneficial balances, if you don’t feel that you MUST be connected at all times. The only other thing I really kind of missed about being tied to the Skype phone is that all it does is be a Skype phone. No games, no browser, no ringtones. What I really want to do now is get a WiFi ready BlackBerry or maybe a Nokia N97 and use a Skype application on a more robust platform. While I still don’t have really gainful employment, $700 for that equipment (especially just for review purposes) is not really an option for me. But I am looking at using Skype to host a dedicated number for my little computer consulting side business. The fact that I can just leave the Skype phone in the cradle when at home and then check it when convenient when out, makes this a GREAT business solution with a low cost of ownership in my eyes.

If anyone wants to donate the equipment to test Skype on other platforms, let me know.

-Mike      (a.k.a. itninja)

I told you I would explain why I felt comfortable referencing Wikipedia as a valid source in a post on the use of the term Democracy (here).

Who seriously uses Wikipedia as a trusted source?

A ton of college students and Joe Schmoe. And who can blame them? It’s fast, free and easy.

But is it a good idea?

I believe the better question is: Are the alternatives really all that much more trustworthy? The fact is that WikiPedia is just like ANY reference source. You don’t REALLY know who wrote it (unless you ARE the one who wrote it, of course).

Wait, wait, wait! What do you mean “you don’t know who wrote it?” The fine people at EB wrote that good Ol’ encyclopedia for us! Who are you to say they’re wrong?

But who are you to say they are RIGHT? The fact is, encyclopedias are written by humans. Often written by humans without credit to the author. Is that author an expert on the subject? What were the sources used for the information? Even a BAD research paper is required to have sources in order to be accepted as a bad research paper. Otherwise, it may as well be a work of fiction. And this is my point. Most accepted reference sources don’t site THEIR sources or don’t even give writing credits. So the question is: Why should we blindly trust them?

Ok, so maybe I’m putting blind faith in classic sources. But why trust Wikipedia? I heard that they are just publicly written articles without any editing.

But therein lies the beauty of Wikipedia. It IS a set of publicly written articles. But who else would want to write an article about a semiempirical quantum chemistry method, developed by Roald Hoffmann (Extended Huckel method) but someone who was ACTUALLY interested in such an obscure topic. Not someone who is just simply assigned the topic. Not only that, but instead of no editing at all, the whole thing is edited by the public at large. That means that if someone who knows the subject BETTER comes along, they can change it. Yep, just like that. In addition to that, an article must have SOURCES to be valid. That means that if the subject is important to you, you can track down where the author got THEIR information and verify its validity.

So is Wikipedia the perfect source? Should I use it for ALL KNOWLEDGE?!!

NO!! Egads you are dense, mysterious inquisitive voice! It just means that you can verify that the article is telling a reasonable approximation of the truth. Maybe. Fact is, Wikipedia gets errors, vandalism, and attacks like many other sites and references. While the big guys in the encyclopedia world are quick to disagree that the error rate could be relatively close between their product and Wikipedia, there are studies that show just that.  The Wikipedia article that mentions this (reliability of Wikipedia) even sites the source and says that it was not a peer reviewed study.

You see, there is really no way to be sure of the source of your information unless YOU wrote it, but then it is not a reliable source outside of yourself. It is a catch-22 from which there is no real escape. I,of course, just don’t believe that a paper should be counted against due to Wikipedia being sited as a source yet not if some independent article or paper is cited when the party reviewing the work is not studiously following up on the sources for full verification. And by that I mean track down the bastard that wrote the source and BEAT the truth out of him (or her). Or at least read the damn source articles. It would be much easier to allow a citing to Wikipedia.

Data Recovery & Computer Forensics Blog.

If you are here, you may be of the geek persuasion. At least that is what the authors here are. Being that as it is, I thought the site linked above to be of the highest quality in informative yet geeky fare. If the admin of that site reads this post, kudos to you for making what many would consider a dry subject interesting enough to be read and yet still informative enough to hold the attention of a professional in the same field.

I have added this blog to MY favorites and fully intend to keep reading.

Insight into my mind for one brief moment: When the title of this post floated into my consciousness after the subject matter beat me upside the head, I then proceeded to start relating it to My Three Sons. Just thought I’d share. There was no point to that particular thought.

Anyways…

So a thought occurred to me a few moments ago: Why do I have three browsers when I only use one?

I could say that it is due to web design work, but we both know that I would be lying then. Well, I know why I have two of them. Firefox is my current browser of choice and Internet Explorer came pre-installed on this operating system (or when I am logged into Kubuntu, Konqueror is the pre-installed). The pre-installed choice is quickly forgotten about. So why do I have a third, unused browser just taking up space? I downloaded Google Chrome at the time because, like smoking, it was the cool thing to do. But then I disengaged from the in crowd, distanced myself from the “I want to think I am non-conformist, but I am really subconsciously just conforming to my idea of nonconformistism to be secure in conforming to something” crowd, and even chided myself for making such a bad after-school-special joke about it being the “cool thing to do”. I  looked at why I actually installed Chrome. It was the interest in how browsing could be changed and made better. I read the comic and was genuinely impressed with some of the ideas that they decided to implement into this new browser. So why am I having to ask myself why I still have it? That’s easy. It’s incomplete. I know several people (including myself) who flocked to Chrome because of its intuitive interface and faster rendering. I tried to switch to it exclusively but kept having to pull this or that up in Firefox because it was easier or there was no plug-in  support for Chrome yet.

Unless you want to go through the trouble of using the Dev Kit, you just can’t mold Chrome into your own functional browser… yet.

They said they were going to be adding the ability to add plug-ins and add-ons (as you can easily do in Firefox), but where is that functionality? Where is the RSS integration? Where are the small things that would allow me to take advantage of this fast rendering and independent threaded beast that I long to be alone with? I still will have Chrome installed and might even jump on it every now and then. I just wish that since some of the code comes from the Mozilla project, I could use my favorite Firefox add-ons and manage plug-ins. Just adding this functionality would have me dropping Firefox as my main browser like it gave me some bad disease. Not that I dislike Firefox. I would just keep it as the mistress from that point.

Guess this kinda turned into a rant about how Google Chrome is taking too long to come of age. Hmm. Gotta try to keep from doing that.

Have Fun

-Mike