Musings

Yesterday evening I finally found the opportunity to view the content covered in the latest Apple Keynote.

Steve Jobs showing off the iPad at the 2010 keynote

I was genuinely excited to hear information about a product that could do more than what an iPhone can do. For the past two years, I was paying close attention to the Netbook market and was hoping there would be the possibility that I can carry something lightweight, provide enough battery life to last me (8-10 hours under duress; videos or decent gaming), and yet be more affordable then a low-end laptop. Obviously affordable 3G service would be a plus, but not a deal breaker. After thorough investigation of Netbooks with dedicated graphic cards and viewing their performance via Youtube, all hope seemed to be lost. But then, there was a glimmer…

Nope. The keynote was a little over 90 minutes. A little too long for my tastes. The last 10-15 minutes was a summation of the contents discussed in the feel of a commercial. Other things that were appealing to me were:

• iWorks – the full office suite was pretty cool, but really nothing new in the tablet world. They also stated that they were selling each iWork app at a price of $9.99.
• 3rd party developers invited to discuss their usage of the iPad SDK – pretty neat on what some of them are doing. Props to the Gameloft team on designing an FPS. From my iPhone gaming experience though, it’s extremely difficult to work with virtual controls. I recommend Bluetooth capability for external devices: keyboards, mice, controllers, etc. The closest I’ve seen was a keyboard dock to the device (Where’s the mouse?!).
  

  iPad with keyboard dock

Other than that, I’m honestly seeing nothing more than an oversized iPod. The prices seem reasonable ($499 for the 16GB base model), until you start lumping in the other fees (the base model does not include 3G, which would add another $130, with 3G service at either $15 or $30 per month).

In response to Steve Job’s declaration of a 3rd niche that this iPad will fill: I see no improvement on how holding the Internet in both hands. I can easily navigate to websites and view them with no issue. The iPad still has no Flash support. Holding the Internet in the palm of my hand is pretty effective to me. Perhaps Apple is aiming for the older generation, or the digital art students who can not stand away from their Wacom pads.

What kills me is that their software is really slick with the glitz and glamour. But with the prices they propose and the restrictions they impose on software, I can wait for some company to create a more affordable clone and provide the software freedom on their device. This would really allow me to take full advantage of hardware that I paid for.

Sorry Apple: you haven’t sold me on the iPad. I’ll probably invest my money in a powerhouse laptop.

Hardware, Toys

The iPhone 3.0 software update was pushed out this past Wednesday and I was excited to see what new things Apple had in store for us. After leaving work without taking a lunch break (roughly about 3:30PM, which left me about 2-3 hours till my summer networking class), I made it a point to come home and update (since they did not have the update when I got up that morning). Below was the set of update release notes I got when I finally got through:

Phone OS 3.0 Software Update
This update contains over 100 new features, including the following:

• Cut, Copy & Paste with shake to undo
• Landscape keyboard in key applications
• Enhanced Messages application
- Send and receive photos, contacts, audio files, and location via MMS*
- Forward and delete single or multiple messages
• Added search feature in Mail, Calendar, Notes and iPod
• Spotlight search across iPhone
• Support for CalDAV and subscriptions in Calendar
• Improvements to Safari
- Performance
- HTML 5 support
- HTTP Streaming audio and video
- Auto-fill usernames and passwords
• New Voice Memos application
• Sync Notes with a Mac or PC via iTunes
• Internet Tethering over USB and Bluetooth*
• Browse and download movies, TV shows, and audiobooks from the iTunes Store**
• Stereo Bluetooth***
• Wi-Fi auto login
• Enhanced Stocks application
• More Parental Control options for Apps, Music, Movies and TV Shows
• iTunes account creation and login**
• YouTube account login and access to subscriptions, ratings and favorites**
• Shake to shuffle
• New languages, dictionaries, and keyboards
• Find my iPhone and Remote Wipe via MobileMe (subscription required)**
• Support for more Exchange policies
• Create and send Exchange meeting invitations
• Search mail on server (Exchange Server 2007 and supported IMAP servers)
• Search LDAP company directory
• VPN on demand and VPN proxy support
• Encrypted configuration profiles
• Encrypted iTunes backups
• 1,000 new developer APIs, including:
- In App Purchases
- Apple Push Notification Service
- Accessories support
- Peer to Peer Connectivity
- Embedded Maps
- iPod Library Access
• Bug fixes

Products compatible with this software update:
• iPhone
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3G S

* Compatible only with iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S and requires support from your wireless provider.
** Not available in all regions or in all languages.
*** Compatible only with iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S.

For feature descriptions and complete instructions, see the user guide for your iPhone at: http://www.apple.com/support/manuals/iphone

For more information about iPhone, go to: http://www.apple.com/iphone

To troubleshoot your iPhone, or to view additional support information go to: http://www.apple.com/support/iphone

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

What immediately drew my attention was Caldav support, which means I can sync my google calendar with my iPhone, and through the native Calendar application! In the past I’ve only had Caldav support through thunderbird and modified my schedule through that means. I was only able to read my schedule through the google app, and even then, it was cumbersome with the authentication. One thing I haven’t figured out is how to show multiple calendars for the same Google account. Another thing that looked interesting was VPN on Demand and VPN Proxy support. I have not tried this, but I have verified that there are options available to enter server information.

I’ve also played around with the new voice memos app and attempted to record in a classroom setting to get a feel for how sensitive the microphone can be. I would say I was positioned about 4-5 rows of seats from the speaker, and surprisingly, the recording turned out pretty good when syncing with my home machine. It’s obviously not “CD quality”, but it is enough to extract information from meetings or classrooms. When I viewed the file size for an hour long recording, it was only about 166 megabytes. The iPhone that I have has a capacity of 8 gigabytes, so it would be possible to be a full time student and have enough for a weeks worth of class recordings, which helps with absorbing information if your trying to pay close attention to the lecturer while writing notes down at a frantic pace.

I’m very curious on where to find a list of detailed changes from this update. I’ve noticed things like the call forwarding functionality now contain an icon on the screen when forwarding is enabled (a thing I’m grateful for because of the poor reception at my residence). Also, when text messaging, the text will appear in the message bubble with a load button, instead of a pause.

I’m sure I will find more nuances as I use the phone with the updates more, and maybe even more as I delve into the iPhone SDK.

iPhone

Ok, so maybe it’s not that new anymore, since I got it a couple weeks ago.

People are thrown into this “operating system war” between PCs (those with the Windows operating system) vs Macs (those with MAC) that can be witnessed on online forums, marketing campaigns, and even university classrooms! They have limited exposure or knowledge of differences between the two, and therefore have to make decisions on what is best for them.

On one hand, I feel that systems packaged with Windows are much more cost effective then their Mac counterparts. Although there’s a plethora of neat features and eye candy with the Mac, the software packages that these companies provide have just enough functionality to get the average Joe by. Microsoft has a tremendous advantage with funneling people into using their word processing/spreadsheet applications.

On the other hand, I feel that the engineers at Apple have really done a great job with the operating system they developed. The user interface is slick, and they really make installation/configuration cake for the average user, while still catering to the enlightened with the Unix-based feel under the hood. Some of their proprietary software is cool too, such as iPhoto with the face recognition logic as a feature.

One thing that I believed that apparently isn’t the case was the idea that all Macs were built and housed in the US. I was actually surprised to find out that my Mac Mini that I ordered online was coming from a location in China! The processes of waiting for my Mac to come in and dealing with customer service with their not-so-solid product application/ordering were not so pleasant. It was also annoying to buy an adapter to convert a mini-dvi signal to vga, but I’ll let that slide considering that my monitor is in need of serious updating.

Another gripe is that I also thought Blizzard entertainment was Mac friendly in terms of BOTH application installation and support! I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to install my copies of Warcraft III and the expansion pack. The installation went fine, but patching to the latest and greatest fixes caused the expansion portion of the application to no longer function. After browsing a few online discussion forums (none of these resources were on Blizzard’s Warcraft III support site), I found the fix was to install up to the version before the latest, and then upgrade to the latest. I somewhat feel that this is also the same case on World of Warcraft, but I haven’t played it recently due to conflicts in the time commitment involved in gaming and those of graduate class and work.

The primary reason why I got this Mac was to develop iPhone applications, so as soon as I go through a few examples of Objective-C and start writing my own code, I’ll be sure to post! (I have not forgotten continuing my writing on Ruby, so stay tune for that as well).

Hardware, Toys, iPhone

So I took it a step further: enabling ssh and taking advantage of Touchterm on the iPhone to pursue training in Ruby on Rails. It takes a little getting used to in order to operate VI, but the touchterm app makes it easy to switch between modes. With screen size being the only limitation, I figure this is a more productive way to pass time on the road.

I’m somewhat skeptical of the framework, but we shall see if I can download the necessities (rails,gems). I’m posting from my phone at the moment, so unfortunately I can’t grab the address I want to download the archives. To be continued!

UPDATE: Hosting apparently does not have the necessary concessions to host a rails application. I guess I’ll need to setup a box first

iPhone iPhone, Ruby, Web Development

It’s been a long time in the web development world, and I accidentally blew away my photos while attempting to upgrade my Wordpress version. Apparently the host thought it would be a good idea to make a copy of the new Wordpress blog and NOT upgrade my old blog.

However, the bright side to this is I can now update my blog on the road! As some of you may notice, this blog is using Word Press as Blogging Software. With the iPhone released, the really cool feature about upgrading this software is that I can now take advantage of the Word Press iPhone App.

Lately I have found it very difficult to blog because of extra time that I have to put into personal obligations… I’ll get better though I promise!

Uncategorized

So, I’m all for being able to transfer information seamlessly between the various devices that I own. Evernote is a note taking application that allows a person to take notes and media between different mediums. I found this appealing as I have my iPhone with me virtually everywhere, and if I’m not on my iPhone, I’m close to a computer.

On the iPhone, I can snap photos, use an existing saved photo, or record a voice memo and attach them to my written notes. There are also clients for the Mac and Windows OSes. It’s cool that there is also a built in firefox plugin to snap photos from web browsing and to be able to view it through my phone.

I have also been syncing my google calendars through thunderbird for easy scheduling. For instructions on how to do this, view the post on Ian Fernando’s blog. He’s even got a video supplement to the instructions in case the writing is ambiguous, which I found to be the case. I am also able to view these through my iPhone, through the google application.

His blog also has a post of an app that allows syncing through the iPhone.

Enjoy!

Organization, iPhone

Happy Belated New Year to everyone! After taking care of a few personal items, I am back to continue posts and participation in the programming world. I must honestly confess, I have not started on my new years resolutions like I said I would, but I will begin sometime soon.

I was browsing for applications to add to my iPhone 3G that I did not already have, and I found a couple different websites reviewing the top iphone apps of 2008: Gizmodo’s “The Best iPhone Apps of 2008″ and Lifehacker’s “What’s Good (and Free!) in the iTunes App Store”, and I’ve found that some of the applications work wonderful and are absolute “must haves”. Other applications have me skeptical, primarily because they are not free. A good number of the applications in Lifehacker’s articles no longer are free, which is even more frustrating.

Below are the applications that I use, in alphabetical order. I have yet to buy an application from the App store.

BigOven: Ever get into the situation where you are interested in trying a new recipe but you fail to jot down the ingredients before heading to the grocery store? Enter BigOven, an application that allows you to search for recipes. I’ve used this a couple of times, especially during the holiday season for queries such as “Christmas cookies” or “Apple pie”. Also at home and want to try to cook something with ingredients you already have? You can enter ingredients in the search and out come results that use some of the ingredients you have.

Chess – About a couple years ago, I’ve had a friend invite me into online chess play. Now, I like the concept of being able to make turns at my own leisure, but often I’ve found it inconvenient to get onto my machine, log into that website with a browser, and make a move. With this concept incorporated into the iPhone, it has allowed me to eliminate a couple of the steps. This application, created by NewToy inc., allows me to tap the application icon, view who made moves in each games and when, and make moves for each game.

Free RSS – Having a RSS application on any mobile device makes browsing the Internet a much easier task. If you have the address for a RSS feed, you can enter it through the application. Optionally, you can detect RSS feeds by browsing websites through this app. NOTE: Lately, I’ve been seeing many crashes, particularly when I am browsing websites to elaborate on the many feeds I have. I do hope they have this resolved in future releases.

Facebook – For those with facebook accounts, this application makes it very simple to browse profiles and view profile pictures. You can essentially all of the basic functions as you would on a normal web browser session. There is limited support with facebook apps, which is not a problem for me. You can even take photos with the iPhone and add them to albums on the spot! I do look forward to future development of this app, hoping for the ability to “poke” others through the iPhone

Fring – What makes this app stand out to me aside from other instant messaging apps, including what I believe to be an official AIM app, is the fact that your user remains online if you have the application backgrounded. I’m still sifting through the different applications, as what I’ve noticed is that there is no notification that you’ve been sent a message when the app is backgrounded…

MySpace – myspace.com’s iPhone application. I don’t really view myspace too much, but lately I’ve been getting messages from others and the application allows me to easily view the messages I receive.

Radiolicious – How I came to find the application was through one of my favorite radio stations: WFNX. I’ve yet to test this out, but stay tune for a better review. Now I have a means to listen to my radio station at work, which is a plus! Edit: Streams my favorite radio station just fine, but the app eats up battery at an ALARMING rate! I think I’ll just stick with my podcasts, unless the radio station has a contest or the app improves their battery consumption.

Shazam – This application is absolutely amazing. I’ve always been haunted by songs on the radio that I just could not put my finger on. I’ll hear the song incorrectly and type incorrect lyrics into a search engine, hoping someone would share the same mishearings as myself, or I would forget to search entirely. This application is even nice enough to point you to the App store if you wish to purchase more of the artist’s work.

TWC – TWC, or “The Weather Channel”, is a better application then the built-in Weather App. You can view the weather radar, get severe weather alerts, and even watch weather report video for the area that you are in, aside from getting current, hourly, 36 hour, or 10 day forecasts.

Twitterific – I’m late in jumping on the <a href=”www.twitter.com”>Twitter</a> bandwagon, but this application allows me to make posts, assign GPS or photos to my posts, or view others. My only gripe about this app is that you cannot add users to view through the app.

VNC – Most useful remote application available on the iPhone, mainly because with RDP lite, you’re limited to the operating system you’ve put on: Windows XP. Decent app, but slow (as expected).

Software

This article “Is there a Santa Claus? – A physicist view” was taken from Physlink.com, which was reportedly taken from the January 1990 edition of SPY Magazine, and I’ve seen this a few years ago, but it never ceases to humor me.

Consider the following:

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).

This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.

On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that ‘flying reindeer’ (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.

We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each.

In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second.

Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.> In conclusion – If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

Also, for giggles, check out NORAD’s Santa Tracking.

Happy Holidays to all!

Christmas

So while in conversation, a friend recommended that I try the BitWise IM Client. Now to be honest, I’ve never heard of this messaging client until it was brought up in conversation today, so I was curious to do a little research on it.

The first version was released in 2004 and the instant messaging client is known for being a medium for secure communication. Wikipedia states the following:

Both RSA and Blowfish encryption are used to encrypt data exchanged between users. BitWise IM uses 512-bit RSA (up to 2048-bit RSA for Professional users) to negotiate pairwise symmetric Blowfish keys over an authenticated channel. 128-bit Blowfish is used by default; Professional enables Blowfish keys up to 448-bit.

As the BitWise IM code is not public source, the security of the software cannot be readily established. However, there is a white paper on the company’s web site describing the encryption process used.

My assumption is that the primary users of this instant messaging client are those who are working in a collaborative environment as the features described on the page include a whiteboard, conferencing capabilities, and file sharing.

I was able to sign up with very little hassle, and because it is not a main stream application such as AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo Messenger, I was able to secure a name of my liking. One thing that I found interesting was the notion of a “Super Buddy”, where you make yourself available for people to contact and to be randomly added to someone’s instant messaging client. Now normally I would outright reject this, but I am on the assumption that most people using this are industry professionals and I would consider this a form of networking, so I’ve volunteered to become one.

The interface is very simplistic, so I don’t feel compelled to supply a screenshot. If anyone wants one, I will post one. There are some really cool IM sounds that are included with this though

The application is cross-platform, so I’m able to run this on my ubuntu boxes along with Pidgin.

Instant Messaging, Software