Need a little privacy while watching that movie on your iPhone. Long for that Big Screen viewing experience. You can have it if you’re willing to look like an ass clown.
My friend Tom grabbed this must-have item at MacWorld and brought it to the Coffee Zone where I tried it on.
Your iPhone goes in a little sleeve at the front of the bill and the lens slides forward and back for proper focus. Like sitting in row 10 of the Bijou.
I LOVE Twitter. It’s where I follow the insights and links of 131 like-minded souls. I tweet with some regularity but it’s the sum of these parts that makes Twitter so valuable/interesting to me.
paper.li compiles all of those tweets into a daily “paper.” While I prefer to follow my Twitter stream on my iPhone app or Tweeti on the MacBook, paper.li offers a better answer to: “What do you see in Twitter?!”
It’s like having 131 hand-picked editors, commentators and comedians, continuously scouring and curating the web just for me.
It was almost 2 years ago that I imagined an app (I was thinking iPhone) that could help sufferers (and their families) of Alzheimer’s Disease. The post generated a fair number of comments, the most recent of which points to info about an Android app that does some of the things I suggested in that first post.
I am endlessly fascinated by technology. How we use it and how it changes us. The photo is of a couple of regulars at the Coffee Zone. I remember when dad switched to the iPhone. And later when he started asking me about the iPad. It seems ages ago but it was only months ago.
She plays games on the iPad and watches Netflix movies. But there will soon be nothing she cannot do on the device.
It’s inconceivable (to me) that she won’t have this with her in class. That will be delayed because not all of the kids will have them and etc etc.
I can’t even imagine how this will change education. Of course, education will have to change but that seems inevitable.
We’ve had hallway discussions at our company about the various tablets and platforms (Android, Windows, iPad, etc). My friend Phil (a very smart guy) assures me a lot of companies will take the “safe and secure” route of Windows devices.
But the kids in this little girls class could care less about Word and Excel and all the rest. They want to have fun and create and that will be on the iPad (for the forseeable future). You can take it to the bank.
Shot and edited on the iPhone by Jonathan Brownfield.
Tom Piper demos Laser Pico Projector. A little pricey at $450 but a cool gadget. Just not sure if/when/where I would use it. If the setting is cozy enough for this wee projector, why wouldn’t I just use my laptop or iPad? If I didn’t have those with me, however, the projector (almost exactly same size as iPhone) fits easily in my pocket. What do you think?
Top 40 radio was just what it sounds like. The 40 most popular songs played over and over and over. The idea –as I understand it– was people would rather hear the popular songs more frequently than have a bunch of new stuff mixed in.
The little station I worked at had a longer play list. Maybe 100 to 150 songs? It was pretty loose. Nobody got too upset if you mixed in something not in “the box.” But it was pretty easy to get burned out on the most popular songs if you played them every…single…day.
By the time I left in the mid-80s, I’d heard about all the music I needed for a while. And the only easy way to listen to music at the time was… on radio stations with very “tight” playlists. Somebody else was picking my tunes.
It was nearly 15 years before the iPod rekindled my interest in music. I ripped the few CD’s I had and started buying music on iTunes. It was nice.
The idea of “streaming” music didn’t immediately appeal to me. I wanted to “have” the songs. But when Pandora came along a couple of years ago, I gave it a try and was immediately hooked.
Now I start each day at the Coffee Zone (6:30) by popping in the ear buds and firing up one of my “stations” on Pandora. More on those in a moment.
When I hear a song I like, I give it a thumbs up. If I don’t care for the song, thumbs down immediately rejects it. I think you can reject up to 5 songs an hour. If I want to give my station more variety, I can add and artist or a song and Pandora will start mixing in similar music. It isn’t perfect but over time, Pandora gets better and better at playing songs I like.
And I can have as many stations as I want. If I’m feeling funky, for example, I jump over to my Al Greene station.
Pandora keeps a record of every song I vote up or down, including the date and time I did so. You can check this out if your interested. I can also bookmark songs and/or artists and post a link to Twitter or Facebook.
I was surprised by some of my choices. And by the percentage of new music by artists I’d never heard of. And songs I don’t think I’d hear on our local radio stations. And certainly not commercial-free. You can listen to 40 hours of Pandora a month for free. I opted for the paid version (Pandora One) which cost $36/year. Best money I spend.
Apps for the iPhone and iPad, of course.
I’ve had a computer on my desk at home since 1984. A lot of them. Zenith, Gateway, IBM, Dell and, most recently, a Mac Mini. No longer. I’m selling the Mini.
Oh, there are still lots of computers around the house. The MacBook Pro long ago became my main box (slab?). And there’s the iPad and the iPhone. But it felt like the end of an era.
This weekend I’ll replace my printer and scanner with a wireless all-in-one from HP and as I started making room, I was struck by how many usb hubs and power-strips were being relegated to a box in the closet.
Yesterday I had a chat with one of our IT guys about where things are headed from a business perspective. Are we getting closer to the day when a company tells a new employee they can use their own computer (any flavor they choose) and hook into the company content via the cloud.
I took a little further and suggested the device of chose would be some sort of tablet, not a laptop. Whatever shakes out, things are going to be much different for the users and the IT folks who support them.
Blackberry users will ask, “Why?” iPhone users ask, “Why wouldn’t you?”