Keene on Tech

photo: www.gizmodo.com

Let’s all hope the rumors of Apple’s tablet computer are true or else there will be a lot of tech writers who will have to eat their lunch. The much rumored and speculated “iTablet” may make a debut sometime early next year, possibly in January. If such a device exists it will be one product launch that may out do all the others in recent memory, including the iPhone. Let’s hope Apple does not disappoint.

Along with the written speculation, there have been a number of artist mockups too about what the device will look like. These are are pretty much the same, a slab of technology with about a 10″ touch screen. What you don’t see in these drawings is the software and interface interaction. Sure, it will be some flavor of OS X obviously, but it will be how we interact and use the thing that will capture the imagination more than just an artists rendition of the physical device.

As the rumors swirl, its easy to try and imagine what the device would be like to use and I believe there are plenty of hints already out there in the form of your iphone and iPod Touch. Some may ask, just what will make the tablet better than an iPhone and even a 13″ MacBook or MacBook Pro? Why would one want one and what is the big deal anyway? Well, ask yourself that question too about the iPhone when it came out. We have had cell phones a long time and the new models rolling out never really got us all excited. I mean it was just another phone. But Apple showed us something quite different. I suspect they may do it again with the tablet. “See, now this is a TABLET!” is what the thing may scream. Its not just another netbook or laptop…its a new way of interacting with not only hardware, but software and all the media of today’s digital diet.

I think the big deal is going to be in the touch screen no doubt. Currently, there are no small form factor devices that have given users an adequate experience. Much as I love the iPhone, the screen does get a little small at times, but it is ALWAYS there. Pull it out of your pocket and bam, there is the web in your hand and 85,000 other things you can do with it too.   No, you are not going to put an Apple tablet in your pocket, but slip it into a small case and it can easily disappear in a backpack or purse without the bulk of even a Netbook. Hopefully Apple will find the sweet spot for screen size. All bets are it will be in the 10″ range. Such a device could give the Microsoft Surface a run for its money in the portable space.   

And while the iPhone is a great media consumption device, it does have its limits. Its not a great tool for editing media unless you like working on very small screens. And its not great a producing media, although its getting better with video in the 3GS and a better still camera. Typing out more than short emails is not a fun experience. Ditto for taking notes or any sort of long form writing. Also, editing video can be done on the 3GS but its not great at all. Same for photos and audio. Watching video is nice, but I don’t want to watch Lawrence of Arabia on it.

What I think will be so great about a tablet will be the opening up of the mobile world to larger touch screen devices and what this will mean for computing in general. In addition, I can see the value of a touch screen computer on your desktop. While Apple’s new Magic Mouse is quite cool and will pave the way for more touch versatile input devices it could be something like a remixed tablet that begins moving us further down this road. Our current input devices still work pretty well, especially the keyboard on desktop systems, but we need to move on to other paradigms in the next few years. However, its when you get a larger touch screen on a mobile device mobile that things get interesting, as the iPhone showed us in small, elegant ways. I personally like how easy it is to flip through home screens, open web pages, and even closing and launching apps is effortless (lets not talk about typing shall we), not to mention all the creative ways people have come up using the screen through the Apps. Unleash a larger screen space on developers and who knows what we will be flicking with our fingers. Its pretty easy to make the leap into what a slightly larger screen with the same touch capabilities as the iPhone will be like…it will be the same, only better.   

I can see an almost full sized virtual keyboard, some interesting touch screen multimedia editing capabilities and hopefully some nice integration with things like HDMI TVs and your desktop computer. Borrowing a page from Wacom’s Cintinq line, it would be cool too see the device as a small secondary screen for your laptop or desktop. An integrated iSight and possibly down the road, a LCD projector would be nice too. Essentially, the tablet would become a sort of sketchpad of the 21st century allowing one to both consume and produce media with ease. One intriguing possibility would be that the device can replace your keyboard on your desktop offering you a completely new way to interact with your desktop system (or home entertainment system) while giving you the freedom of mobility. This thing will change its use simply by what device you are using it with. This may be the device that starts to really pull us away from the mouse and keyboard. Look at the small wireless keyboard Apple sells for its desktops and Mac Mini and imagine that form factor as a touch screen device paired with your desktop. Now that would be interesting (and more comfortable). Imagine having several people with tablets being able to interact with each other’s desktops or a single larger display. It could be a very interesting collaborative device. And while its not doing anything it can be the ultimate portable digital picture frame on your desk, but I digress…

And of course, with all the ebook excitement, such a tablet would take the digital book and magazine experience to a new level making the Kindle and its E-Ink brethren look positively 19th century. One notable area absent from the slew of ereaders hitting the streets is of course color and screen resolution. This leaves glossy coffee table photo books out in the digital cold. A device like what Apple may bring to fruition could fit a niche for this content giving viewers rich color images (and hopefully HD video) paired with a super high resolution touch screen (iPhone screens have twice the resolution dpi of your desktop displays). Low resolution displays (and projectors) have long been the bane of presenters who can fit more on one piece of paper than on one computer screen (thank you Edward Tufte for that insight). Comic books too are perhaps an area that an Apple tablet could breathe new digital life into. And then there would be the gaming and all the cool potential of field based computing that could be done on a device with multiple sensors, and a high res color screen. Mobile mapping may never have looked so good…

So while we wait with baited breath for a new device from Apple that may (or may not) actually exist, ponder the possibilities of what it may offer by looking and thinking closely at its little brother the iPhone. Perhaps Apple has used it as the ultimate test bed for “the next big(ger) thing.” Only time will tell….and that time is coming soon.

Keene Haywood

There is a new iPhone app on the horizon called SekaiCamera. Its not out yet and some are skeptical that it can really do what it proposes, but the demos at conferences have been well received. It is being developed by a company in Japan called Tonchidot. The app uses the iPhone’s camera as a “lens” onto the world where tags pop up in the field of view showing items people have tagged in the area you are looking at. You really need to see some of the video demos to get a sense of it. If its the real deal, it will be one amazing application. Do a Google search for SekaiCamera for links and go to this one at TechCrunch for some more eye candy. Don’t trip!

Tagging is one of the Web 2.0 buzzwords. Everyone is doing it, especially for content that lives on the web through services like Del.icio.us. But what about the myriads of files on your computer? For Macs, tagging has taken off in a sideways trajectory. There are a number of tagging applications for the Mac out there (Leap, Yep for PDFs and TagBot come to mind) but these use a less than perfect approach by embedding the tags (recognized as a tag by a special character along with the tag word) in the files Comments. Then Spotlight can index these for finding later. These are interpreted as tags by applications that recognize the special character and keyword typed in with the character. It works, but its not really an elegant solution. The tagging applications have done the best they can with this method. Recently, there has been several advancements in tagging for the Mac. A new application called Tags (appropriately enough) from GravityApps is a very elegant solution that does not embed the tagging data in the spotlight comments. I am not sure of what it is using, but I don’t think it is OpenMeta. What is OpenMeta? This is an open source framework developed by Tom Anderson and designed to give Apple’s Leopard OS the ability to tag literally any type of file and it does this by not necessarily using the Comments portion in a file (at least from what I understand). It truly writes the tagged information into the file where it travels with the file and stays safe and secure. Tom Anderson is one half of Ironic Software which makes the excellent Leap, Yep and Deep applications. Deep in particular is a very innovative application that does use the OpenMeta framework. Deep is essentially an image browser for your computer that can find and sort images on characteristics like color. It really is great even in its early incarnation. Leap is a wonderful complement to the Finder for finding and organizing lots of files quickly. And Yep is the same thing but particularly for PDFs. I could write a post about each of of these apps. But the focus here is on tagging and this new OpenMeta framework that has been unleashed. So far has been adopted into Deep (updates to Leap and Yep are forthcoming) and by HoudahSoft’s fine search tool called HoudahSpot (it can search based on tags crated with OpenMeta). And its worth a careful look at Tags from GravityApps. I think that it probably will be implement OpenMeta if it doesn’t already. Its a great start for a new tagging application.

For those who work with video and need to convert between formats, the exceptional VisualHub was the de facto standard for good conversion quality and low cost. However, the developer stopped work on this app late last year and people were wondering what would take its place. The developer released the source code (after pleading from the online community). Now a couple of folks have taken it upon themselves to keep the underpinnings of VisualHub alive, but under different application names. One of these is VideoVangelist. I am not sure if this developer is using the same source code but the app does what VisualHub did. A recent update was just released. I have not had time to fully check it out. It is worth trying if you are looking for a good tool to convert video but can’t drop the cash for the most expensive options out there. Its only $10. The other solution which utilizes the same open source encoder, ffmpeg, that VisualHub used is Handbrake, which is free but won’t give you as many output options. HandBrake now handles individual files (it used to handle only process video ripped from a disk). Another effort at reviving VisualHub is TranscoderRedux but its not as far along and requires some compiling code and experimenting. Its a not quite ready for prime time application. Oh and this is for the Mac BTW

Keene

So what happens when you reach the maximum number of apps you can install on your iPhone? Does Steve Jobs congratulate you with a phone call? Do bells go off next time you log onto your iTunes Store account? Just what the heck happens? Well, dear readers, I pushed the limit to find out and here is what happened. But first some numbers… There are 16 apps installed by default (and cannot be removed) on an iPhone/iPod Touch. You can install an additional 128 apps plus the 4 in the app bar at the bottom of your screen (the dock, if you will, of the iPhone). This brings the grand total to: 148 apps on 9 screens (this is the max number of screens you can have). This is the most apps can have installed at the moment (OS upgrades may allow more in the future). And yes, I have succeeded in completely filling my iPhone with apps. Perhaps in 2019 there will be an iPhone that can store all 100,000 apps that may be out by then. I just hope they come up with some other way to find and organize them as flipping through screen after screen does get a bit old, even with just 9 screens. But I digress…

Anyway, I was wondering what happens when you go over the digital threshold into the unknown. What happens is this – Your app will install but it won’t show up anywhere on your screens because they are full. When you go back to the App download page in the AppStore on your phone, it shows that the app was installed but of course you can’t see it on your device and you can’t re-download it. The trick is to delete an app and then restart your iPhone/iPod Touch. Then when the device boots up again the app will finally install and will be seen in the space where you deleted a previous app. Whew! I thought my iPhone might start smoking or worse, but alas its not too bad to go over the limit, but it would be nice to get some sort of an alert screen to give you a heads up.

Also, don’t worry about deleting an app. The iTunes Store keeps track of what apps you have downloaded, either free or paid, and will allow you to download the app again if it senses that the app is gone from your phone when you next sync it with iTunes. You must be logged into your iTunes account in order for this to work.

Just in case anyone out there is wondering… in the words of The Marathon Man, “Is it safe?” Yes, it is safe so download away.

Keene Haywood (The University of Texas at Austin)

oh my…

Cloud computing. Predicting weather is tricky enough, predicting how technology can behave is an even dicier proposition. Whether one is a PC or Mac user, you have probably heard about the trials and tribulations of the rollout of MobileMe. I think Apple has been a bit humbled by its missteps, offering formal apologies and every other day updates on the service via an Apple blogger. This rather rocky public meltdown is a probably a good time to bring up cloud computing in general and why its important. Technology Review has an interesting article worth reading as it touches on issues with cloud computing and how this may affect those who depend on it. Cloud computing is not necessarily new, but it is a fairly new concept to the public at large. The TR article gives a nice simple summary of the concept…

Cloud computing has been touted as a potential tool for everything from improving business infrastructure to helping consumers keep tabs on their contacts. Storing data in the “cloud” of the Internet rather than locally allows users to access that information anywhere and at any time.

The big hitch with cloud computing is connectivity, and the quality of the connection in particular. What the whole MobileMe mess brings to light is that if one is computing in the cloud, whether it is just to sync contacts or actually using webapps such as Google Docs or Google Spreadsheets, if your connection goes down or is unreasonably slow, you are dead in the water in terms of your work. And that just is not acceptable for many users. This singular dependency is what makes the idea a little unnerving. This and the fact that most of your data will reside on servers across the globe and not on your hard drive sitting on your desk. Google’s solution to the cloud issues is found in their Google Gears (Firefox only on Macs) technology which they rolled out over a year ago. The idea is that one can still use the webapps offline on a local machine and then sync it to the cloud when you get back online. As the IT article points, out, this is probably the way forward, but we are not quite there yet. Also worth mentioning is Adobe AIR who is also throwing their hat in the ring with this web app development environment.

Associated with cloud computing is the idea of pushing data to a user when it becomes available. Blackberry users are the poster children for the push movement and Apple is trying to join their ranks by offering “push” solutions with MobileMe. However, they have abandoned using the word “push” specifically because of the various problems with MobileMe (lost emails, sluggish performance, etc.). They do still have the cloud in the graphic design for the service however. Pushing email is one thing, pushing lots of other data can be quite another issue. While many of us have come to accept broadband Internet connections, there are still many, many people who do not have fast connections or 24/7 connections. This can especially true in schools. I believe cloud computing is here to stay and it will become more prevalent, especially as the world becomes more wired with faster Internet connections. It is a new way of working and interacting with information. What we are seeing now are the hiccups (or in Apple’s case a belch) associated with implementing and adopting new technologies. We will get there one way or another via Google Gears, Adobe AIR, MobileMe, Research in Motion (BlackBerry) or some other technology yet to be unleashed. But one thing is for certain. It will indeed be a push.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Apple fans may be so overly enthusiastic about their devices because Christmas comes several times a year for the faithful when Apple releases new products and makes new announcements. Heck, the rollouts should be on an iCal calendar pushed out by Cupertino HQ. In any case, the four pronged launch last week of the iPhone 3G, the 2.0 version of the iphone software, MobileMe and the iPhone/Touch Apps store gave much fodder for frustration and joy. When I upgraded my iPhone to v.2.0 and started loading up on free apps, I was a kid in a candy store. How cool!…Well that excitement lasted about a day when all of a sudden my apps were crashing left and right. I could not get anything to launch after the initial installation. Hmmm…. it turns out that its easy to forget that the iPhone is running the Mac OS X and now that applications are being installed, all sorts of “interesting” things can start happening. The two gotchas that kept my apps from launching was the fact that I did not have much space on my iPhone left over. Actually, I had just over 1 GB of space (I have an 8 GB non-3G device), but it seems that may have not been enough. The iPhone uses disk space on its solid state drive as virtual memory so it needs free space to load applications and execute them. I ended up deleting my music off the iPhone to free up space and tried launching the applications again. Then they all worked (for the most part). Some were a little sluggish as I am not running on a 3G phone and just about all the apps I have need to access the web to do their thing. So if you are having app problems, check to see how full your phone is and unload little used music or movie files to see if that helps.

The second issue is launching apps if you need to sign onto a wireless network. If you need to authenticate to the network, launching apps before you do this will cause the application to crash and in some cases the iPhone to reboot. This is understandable, but it would be nice to perhaps have a message saying the network needs to be activated before the application can be launched. Maybe this is not the problem, but after I was logged onto the network, the apps launched just fine.

Covering the problems with apps launching are the folks over at iPhone Atlas who posted a special report about troubleshooting crashing apps. There is also talk of Digital Rights Management issues or problems with Apple’s firmware. A patch, v. 2.0.1, is supposedly in the works and should be imminent. One of the scapegoat apps has been the highly touted WHERE which is a location based app that feeds you information about your surroundings using the iPhones geo-referencing capabilities. It has been sluggish to work or not working at all, although some improvements have been seen. It has lots of cool potential so give it some time, both for Apple and the developers of Where.

People hold the bar pretty high for Apple. Launching a new platform is not an easy task. People can be quick to criticize the downfalls, but overall, despite the hiccups, things could have been worse with the launch of not only a new piece of hardware, but also significant software. Patience please! If users are still having problems a few weeks down the road then perhaps the gripe meter can be turned on again, but for now give it some time, take a deep breath and reboot when necessary.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Unless you have somehow happened to miss the news the past few weeks, today Apple finally rolled out its long anticipated new 3G iPhone along with the MobileMe and the new iPhone Apps store. And somewhere over in Cupertino, there are no doubt dozens and dozens of Apple employees who dread these rollouts. Hyped to the hilt and covered by the media to a suffocating extent, any new product out of 1 Infinite Loop always faces slings and arrows to some misfortune as well as praise. The antiperspirant must be handed out in cases at Apple’s HQ during these times. Today’s rollout was no different. From glitches activating new phones in Apple Stores, to issues with iTunes and MobileMe not behaving properly, there have been stumbles across the board angering many who are used to “they just work” products. Welcome to the world of technology!… On the bright side, the one seemingly smooth rollout has been the new iPhone and iPod Touch Apps now accessible in the new iTunes v.7.7. There is already a rich offering of apps, many that are free and even more that are priced at a modest $9.99 or less.

MobileMe promises to offer some Web 2.0 twists and revamps to the aging .Mac service which ceased existence sometime in the past day or so. Promising over the air “push” synchronization, MobileMe keeps calendars, contacts and emails synced and accessible across multiple computing devices and is touted as “Exchange for the rest of us.”. This is the really new feature with the iDisk still in the mix. The switch to MobileMe has not been smooth. Server outages and sluggish response of the web apps through the browser have plagued the new service today, but it is hopeful these things can be resolved quickly.

And then there is the new iPhone 3G. Fast and furious, slick and slim, the new device promises a few pluses over the original iphone. The details of the new device can be found all over the web so no need to re-hash this here. The 3G network capability and a better GPS system are the really new features that make this model attractive, but be cautioned the 3G phone will use more battery power (you can talk and surf the web simultaneously) so turn off 3G if you are not in a 3G area. A big addition in the 2.0 iPhone software is support for Microsoft Exchange with push capabilities giving corporate users an excuse to ditch their Blackberries. This is all designed to work with MobileMe in the computing cloud.

I want to return to the new Apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. While neither the new iPhone and MobileMe are truly revolutionary, the opening of the Apps store for Apple’s new portable devices is quite newsworthy. Its worth one’s time to browse what is already available for download now through iTunes 7.7. Some of the educational apps look very promising. This really marks the dawn of development for an entirely new way of interacting with computers, phones and information. The innovation is in the hundreds of developers who will begin rolling out applications with new possibilities never before seen in software for the masses. This is what is truly the good about today’s news. MobileMe and the iPhone 3G are very nice and all, but give me the apps and the shiny new iPhone 2.0 software that works on the old iPhones as well and I’ll be a happy camper for now. Plan on hearing more about the new apps here in the near future.

Have a good weekend and welcome to Hello World 2.0 courtesy of Apple and its band of developers.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

When Apple bought the NeXT OS almost twelve years ago to save its own troubled next generation OS efforts, the Mac platform suddenly became a very viable platform for researchers in the fields of medicine, physics, biology, geology, chemistry and genetics to name a few. Built on the tired and true rock solid foundations of UNIX, the new Mac OS X was now capable of running many UNIX programs developed by scientists. One computer could run Mac OS X and Unix. Furthermore, when Apple integrated Intel chips into their computers along with Boot Camp and third party virtualization programs such as VM Ware and Parallels (let’s forget about VirtualPC shall we) began appearing, Macs now supported Windows as well, giving three bangs for the buck. Now, one computer replaces three on the desk of researchers… Apple has not lost sight of the fact their boxes are being widely used in research and has a dedicated portion of their web site for Macs and Science found here. The site has a wealth of information, but in particular the Productivity Lab section has some nice short tutorials for using various applications such as Keynote, iWeb and iWork (Pages and Numbers along with Keynote) and Ambrosia’s SnapzProX to present and share scientific research. I think there are better screen capture apps out there now such as the new ScreenFlow, but SnapzProX has a long track record and is quite capable. In addition, there is a link to the MacResearch.org web site which is not affiliated with Apple, but is a site where researchers can find forums, tutorials, reviews and articles about applications and techniques that apply specifically to science researchers. The mission of the site is:

MacResearch.org is an open and independent community for scientists using Mac OS X and related hardware in their research. It is the mission of this site to cultivate a knowledgeable and vibrant community of researchers to exchange ideas and information, build a community knowledge-base, and collectively escalate the prominence of Apple technologies in the scientific research community.

The web site is worth exploring and bookmarking if you are someone at an institution that has lots of research being done and uses the Mac platform. Or if you are running a lab that caters to researchers and are considering the Mac platform, this site might give you the information you need to make an informed decision. Some of the articles may fall more towards the technical side of things, but there is a wide variety of information presented so it caters to many levels of expertise. Macs are not just about its iLife or Pro media applications, they are also powerful tools for expanding our knowledge of the world and ourselves through cutting edge research.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Many of you use VisualHub for your video compression needs. It’s a great program that offers a wide range of options for video compression. But you may not know as much about AudialHub, which is developed by the same company. AudialHub does for audio what VisualHub does for video. It’s a great tool for converting audio into just about any format you need. What is particularly cool is that you can actually manipulate audio inside a video file, so no need to feed it audio only files. However, what I wanted to highlight here is not the software which is very nice, but actually the user manual. Most of the time people just dive into a program and hardly ever open up the manual. In this case, AudialHub’s manual is actually worth a read because it contains some helpful information about audio and audio codecs specifically. This is good information for those new to digital audio files and explains the different codecs in plain English. The entire manual is not long (40 pages). In particular chapters 3-5 are worth reading about codecs and CD/DVDs and audio. Even if you don’t end up using AudialHub, the manual is worth keeping around on your hard drive as a simple reference. Both a trial of the software and just the user’s manual are found here. Happy converting!

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)