Keene on Tech

For pocket video, first there was the Flip. Actually, scratch that. First was pretty crappy smartphone video. Choppy, 15 fps standard def footage that looked like it was compressed in your kitchen’s trash compactor. THEN came the Flip, Flip HD and a slew of competitors. Soon pocket HD video was as easy as pushing one red button. Great! The Flip was and still is a great no-brainer little pocket vid cam, but it just met a serious challenger in the form of the recently released iPhone 4. Why? Here are a few good reasons.

1) iPhone 4 now shoots 720p HD video at 30fps. This stuff looks good. Very good. Its not Planet Earth HD, but its still leaps better than standard def.

2) LED video light. Not as a much of a big deal, but its a nice feature in a pinch if you really need some light on your subject as long as its not too far away.

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In the past week or two there have been some interesting thoughts posted about whether we are entering into a new era of computing where the experience is largely curated. Of course the 800 pound gorilla in this area is Apple with its iPhone/iPod Touch and now the iPad. All these devices run apps through Apple’s curated App Store which has generated lots of debate about whether this is a good thing or not. The entire computing process is mostly closed and carefully maintained by Apple. Yet, their devices and software are very popular and the company has grown enormously over the past few years because of this. And perhaps more importantly, they are really innovating in the mobile space and leading the way although Google’s Android is hot on it heals. So what is the big deal about curated computing and why should educators care?

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Museums are right up there with schools and universities as some of the great brick and morter cornerstones of our society. They literally house some of the best works and discoveries of all humankind. For the largest, their collections are immense, most which the public rarely gets to glimpse except on rare occasion. A visit to a museum is one of the great things to do in any big city. However, there is history and discovery outside the walls of museums too. In cities like London, the streets literally are paved with history. And this makes for some rich new media possibilities.

Now, you can see this London history in context using several prominent new technologies which have been pulled together by the Museum of London into their newly released iphone app, Streetmuseum. The app brings together the power of mobile smartphones, geolocation and augmented reality. These are three technology areas that register highly with NMC and its Horizon Reports.

Right now, this app is not available in the US iTunes store. I did not see any information about when it might be available stateside, but if you are in the UK or Europe you should be able to download it for free from these regional iTunes stores. To see more images from the app the CNET UK news article is here.

We may see more of this sort of effort by museums who can use the power of location to add context to their collections which, once digitized, can be applied in applications such as these beyond the walls of the museum. While not every city has the rich history of London, there would be other types of applications such as installed outdoor art that can be augmented with additional information. Such innovations can broaden the reach of a museum’s mission, help gain visitors and move these venerable institutions further down the technology road.

Keene

Gotta love e-Readers and their e-book content. Save some trees and carry a lot of content around in one lightweight device. Nice! However, there is one area of e-books that is sorely lacking and until this area gets sufficiently addressed, I can see students and faculty still giving a lukewarm handshake to the arrival of e-books. This feature is the ability to have more options and features when it comes to annotating text. But, there is a workaround of sorts…

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Whew! We all can breathe a sigh of relief now that Apple's new addition to its portables family is finally out. The rumors were starting to get old. Now that it has made its debut, here come the slings and arrows, despite the fact it's a product that is not shipping "right now." As with any tech product release, especially Apple's, the naysayers come out of the woodwork to disparage it as soon as something is announced. "Its not what we wanted", "Why does it not have x,y and z features," "It can't do this, it can't do that," on and on. But what the moaners and groaners don't stop to think about is that creating technology, especially hardware and software that runs well together is not a simple task, even for well heeled tech companies. Very few are truly excellent at it. Apple is one of them. And I can't remember who the others are. So my hats off to them for wading into unfamiliar waters and giving this a shot.

Additionally, this is not a new model of iphone or laptop or desktop, it's an entirely new class of device. One could argue that Apple is testing the waters, trying this iPad out for size and seeing where it can go. This middleware technology is not for your pocket or your desktop but for your hands. And it's quite a lot of power in your hands.

People need to stop and ponder for a moment at the iPad before breaking out the harsh critic pens. This is not just v.1.0 of a new piece of hardware, this is the potential dawn of a new type of truly personal computing. Give it a chance. A company with the reach and financial wherewithal like Apple is not going to release a new device and style of computing without giving it a lot of thought. And with the iPad, my hunch is that this is only the very beginning of something new and different. Aside from the regular specs and features which are now common knowledge and commonly posted across the web, some other aspects of the device are talked about only slightly, or even noticeably, less. Here are several things to keep in mind, especially for education and educators considering this device.

 1) PDF – There was no mention of the ubiquitous format in the keynote, but its significant to make a note of it for the iPad. There are millions of PDF documents out there and I, for one, have been longing for a good device to read these with that is not a cramped iPhone screen or a screaming hot laptop that melts my legs and strains my eyes. The iPad may fit the bill very well for these documents. Will PDF be supported? I would bet my bottom dollar it will as there are a number of great PDF apps on the iPhone. And not just supported ie. Kindle which does nothing to give you any customization over the PDF, but actual usable manipulation of the PDF to suit your viewing needs (reflowing text, zooming in on images, clicking links, etc). If these get retooled for the iPad this gives new life to the PDF which many students use for everything from teacher handouts to textbooks. Some iPhone apps to keep your eye on for re-tooling on the iPad include Air Sharing, Readdle Docs, Good Reader and Readdle's PDF Expert. There are others such as Apple's own iDisk and Dropbox's iphone app (I love Dropbox, love it), but the former mentions really lead the pack.  Note – PDF is listed as a file type supported (specifically as an Email attachment) by the iPad on Apple's Tech specs for the device, it just was not mentioned in the keynote.  I would imagine it is well supported beyond just email attachments so hopefully one can sync or load PDFs to the iPad that are not associated with email.

 2) ePub - the new iBookstore will deliver its books in the ePub format which is mostly great news…mostly. This is a widely supported format that offers somewhat of an open platform for e-books to be published. The question is, will Apple go the route of Barnes and Noble (who also offer ePub formatted books) and issue proprietary files of books in the ePub format. My bet is that yes, Apple will have some propriety DRM on the books. My hope is that the iBookstore will let you upload your own ePub files for viewing on the device, much like loading up your own PDFs for viewing. If Apple does not do this, I would bet a third party app appears that does allow this provided Apple gives the developer access to the open ePub format in the SDK. If Apple does lock down the ePub format, I do hope they will eventually lift it or at least loosen the lock a little. O'Reilly has done this and actually seen sales increase of their digital books which are offered in PDF, ePub and Mobi formats, one of the few publishers that does this so be sure and thank them by patronizing their e-store when you can.

 3) The Apple A4 Processor – This custom piece of silicon technology is the most likely the child of the PA Semi company purchase that Apple conducted awhile back. This is a new breed of processor not unlike other dedicated chip makers are starting to produce. Known as SoC or System on a Chip, these offer one chip that does it all, graphics, central processing, etc on one piece of silicon making the chips energy and data efficient – i.e. snappy and long battery life. While many of the PE Semi engineers have departed for start-ups in Silicon Valley, Apple now has the in-house capability of fully making its own processors which could be very interesting down the road.

 4) The iPad OS – There were lots of bets about whether Apple would us a flavor of the desktop OS X or the iPhone OS. They have gone with the latter and this was probably a very good idea. One cannot underestimate the importance of a good OS and the iPhone is a nice one for the touch system that Apple is developing. The new pop-out menus and other interface refinements that touch offers will get us thinking beyond pull down menus and folders which is a good thing. I think the Facebook app developer Joe Hewitt says it best on his blog about the huge importance of the OS and what it can potentially do.

5) The Apps - Its the Apps people… the Apps that will make or break this device and with a touch interface on a larger mobile device, and a shiny new SDK to go with it, you can bet that developers will jump on this bandwagon too. The fact the iPad will run all existing iPhone apps (albeit scaled down unless the dev retools it) is a big deal. One can argue that the iPod Touch and iPhone were really just test cases to see if people would really…um…be touched by a new type of device. And indeed we have. So all eyes on the Apps because while the hardware makes everything run, the apps are what will make it really hum. You can bet there will be some innovative educational apps appearing on this thing right around the turn of the summer term.

The iPad is a testing ground with the consumers being the tech rats. Once they turn the device loose and see how people use it, you can bet it will be tweaked, upgraded and evolved in ways we probably can't imagine right now. Its an important product because it just might get the masses thinking of computing beyond the mouse and keyboard paradigm. It's time to think differently about how we interact with our data, our information and our hardware. The iPad may be just the thing that does this whether or not it does take off on the scale of the iPhone and iPod Touch. When the iPad finally ships, take a page from Yellow Pages and let your fingers doing the walking. Keene