Aiya Iluvatar

XKCD - Eternal Life, UNIX style

via xkcd.com

So, Will I get an iPad?

 A question I've been asked several times in the last few days.  I'm very impressed with the tech, and the design is breathtaking (no doubt why Jonathan Ive did most of the talking).  Many people seem confused, decrying missing features they expect on a phone (i.e. Camera) or on a laptop (i.e. DVD Drive.)  As Apple has explained, this is a NEW category of device that doesn't fit in with either existing paradigm.  I think the iPhone OS is the right choice, assuming it's beefed up some (which it appears to be.)  The addition of iWork is genius.  I have no use for Numbers, but Pages and Keynote are part of my everyday work.  The idea of being able to run presentations from the iPad instead of lugging around a laptop is VERY appealing.  (See Nick Knisely's post)  The keyboard dock looks amazing.  Several questions remain for me:

1. Flash Flash Flash.   Apple is touting this as the ultimate web-browsing device, but without Flash, A LOT of the internet is unavailable.  While I love Safari on my iPhone, the lack of flash has me running to my laptop all the time.  What's the point of a web browser if I can't watch Hulu or Homestar Runner?  And many sites, including the NYT which Apple demoed the other day, rely on Flash animation to deliver part of their content.  An "ultimate web device" that can't deliver one of the primary formats of the web is not ultimate, and could be a deal breaker for me.
2. I have a lot of Kindle books.  I assume the iPhone Kindle reader will work on the iPad, but will Amazon add the code to make it a native iPad app at full resolution?  It would seem to make sense since Amazon's revenue stream is mainly from books.  Also, the Kindle is really not in the same category, being half the price and using Digital Ink technology rather than LCD.
3. World of Warcraft.  OK That WOULD be cool, but a more general question - how much more powerful will native iPad apps be?  How much capability does the new A4 processor have and how big an application can an iPad run?  Where will the breaking point be between what can be done on the iPad and what still needs to be done on a computer?
4. iPad?  Really?  As a blog post from Bust magazine notes, did they have any women involved in this process?  If they had, I'm guessing iPad would have been off the table as a name immediately.

So the question is still up in the air for me.  I drank the Apple kool-aid a long time ago, so most likely, I will be trying to acquire one.  But the lack of Flash is a very serious drawback in what otherwise looks like a very useful and interesting product.

David+

Geeky Reviews

A few quick geeky reviews of things I am using that I find interesting....

First of all, the Amazon Kindle I received as a Christmas present (although it arrived in late January.) There are all sorts of general reviews of the Kindle all over the web, so I'm not going to go over the pros and cons. This device is obviously a 1.0 release and has some bugs in design and needs some features. But how has it changed my reading over the last few months? First of all, the electronic delivery though the cell network is brilliant. I can order a book and have it a few seconds later. I get Newsweek delivered before it hits the newsstands. I love it. The reading experience takes some getting used to, but I got over that quickly. It's great to be able to carry around Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver (which is a thick book), Philbrick's Mayflower, and Newsweek in the same small package. I really am finding my Kindle to be a great way to read, and I look forward to what Amazon does with future releases.

Secondly, I had the need to generate a 19th-Level Dungeons and Dragons character a couple of weeks ago, which can be a pretty daunting task. Luckily, I happened across The Only Sheet, an Excel worksheet that assists with character generation. It uses Visual Basic, so you have to be running a Windows version of Excel (I run Excel 2003 under Parallels Desktop). It is amazing. You can download class and race files for just about everything in all the books, and changing one thing changes everything on the Character Sheet. It made generating the character a small task, rather than one that could take hours. It even has a live play mode that allows you to use your laptop during play and add "buffs" as you go. I highly reccomend it to anyone who is serious about D&D.

David+

books, D&D, gaming, kindle

The Changing Nature of Information

This is an excellent video about how the web has changed the very nature of information and how it is experienced and found.

Technorati Tags: information, internet, web, youtube

Selznick Scientific makes my iPhone happy!

For years, Password Wallet has been one of the most useful pieces of software I have owned. There are plenty of password managers out there, but PW was my choice because of it's really powerful (448 bit) encryption, Mac support, and full synchronization with Palm devices. When I switched over to my iPhone, PW was one of the things I missed the most. I assumed that it would be a long time before the application could make it to the iPhone, since you have to hack your iPhone to get third-party applications on it. Imagine my surprise at this announcement:

"PasswordWallet for Macintosh 4.x (sold separately) now includes the ability to export your passwords to your iPhone. You can view your passwords anywhere and at any time on your iPhone while still keeping them protected by PasswordWallet's powerful 448-bit blowfish encryption and your master password."

I'm not a coder, so I have a hard time understanding EXACTLY how this can be done, but it has to do with encoding the entire file and the application needed to read it into a bookmark, which you sync with your desktop version of Safari. The Safari browser on the iPhone reads and decrypts the wallet file (after input of the the password).

This works very well, if a little slow. I'm very happy with the product.

Thanks, Selznick Scientific, for relieving one of the few issues I've had with my iPhone. You have my admiration for doing it in such a clever way!

David+

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, macintosh, Selznick Scientific, software

Continued iPhone Gushing

Ok, So I've had my iPhone long enough now for Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field to wear off. Even after the initial blush has worn off, I love it and find it more a part of my daily work and play all the time. Micky and I went on a trip to Texas a couple of weeks ago. The Google Maps feature was indispensable. We wanted to find a Birkenstock outlet in Memphis, and the iPhone pointed them all out. We wanted to find a Chili's somewhere between Texarkana and Dallas, and were sent to one way off the highway that we never would have known to exist. In both cases, we simply punched the address into the Nav system on our Honda CRV, and we were routed there instantly. It made our travel a lot less stressful. In addition, I was trying to help broker a church property purchase on the road. I was able to view .doc files sent to me by e-mail, vastly reducing my stress level. Another wonderful thing has been Google Reader's optimized blog reader. I always have interesting reading available to me wherever I go.

Still loving it and feeling a lot better about my initial 29 hours in retrospect....

David+

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, technology

The iPhone experience

Well,

After thinking long and hard, I decided to be an early adopter of the iPhone. My Razr was getting old in the tooth and needed replacement. Micky saw the gleam in my eye whenever an iPhone commercial came on. She turned to me and said, "It's obvious you're going to get one of these." She knew it before I did.

The iPhone is a collaboration between Apple and AT&T Wireless. The influences of these two companies are obvious in the product. Much as grieving has several phases, iPhone buying has two - the AT&T phase and the Apple phase.

Stage one - the AT&T Phase. My characterizing phrase: "KHAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!"

Since the nearest Apple store is in Nashville and lines that were several days long, I decided to try my local AT&T store. I stopped in a day before and they told me that they indeed were getting iPhones. They would close at 4:30 on Friday and re-open at 6:00 to begin selling them. I got in line around 5PM and was the 12th person in line. Small towns have their advantages! It took around 40 minutes for the people in front of me to process through, then an account rep sat me down, looked at my existing account, and made sure it was "ready" for iPhone activation. They then sold me an 8GB model, a case and a car adapter.

For those of you not aware of what is being attempted in the iPhone, Apple is trying to change the Cell Phone buying experience from waiting around in a cell store for an hour while they activate your phone to buying a package and taking it home, with the activation happening there. This makes the iPhone more like an iPod. The theory is, you plug it in and it just works - like any other Apple product. This may have been how it happened in Apple stores, but of course, AT&T couldn't make it this simple. I spent 20 minutes doing "pre-activation" stuff at the AT&T store, then went home to plug in the iPhone and go through the activation process. I entered my cell number and my iTunes id. I then got to this screen:

Without activation, the iPhone is a brick. You can't use any functionality. What's even more fun (and they don't tell you this) - the second you begin iPhone activation, the sim chip in your old phone is deactivated and your old phone becomes a nice paperweight. This wouldn't be a problem if "additional time" meant a few minutes or even an hour. "Additional Time" in my case meant 29 hours. Thousands were in the same boat as me. Online forums were filled with people like realtors and lawyers upset that they were being put out of contact for a day or longer without warning.

Obviously, despite their aggressive advertising and plenty of time to prepare, they were not ready for the hundreds of thousands of activations that came through on Friday night. It was the expected sub-par service from AT&T with little information or care for the inconvenience of their customers. Finally, my iPhone activation came through. It still has to be seen if AT&T will get my billing options right.

Phase two - the Apple phase. Characterizing phrase from Micky, "OK, That IS cool!"

When it's on, it works as well as the commercials show, and more so! The interface is slick and works like you would expect from an Apple device. The screen is gorgeous, and plays downloaded and ripped movies well. The Safari Web browser is the first real browser on a cell phone that I have seen that is really useful. The Photo application blows everyone away who sees it with its page turning and zooming. SMS is nicely executed, as are the Google Maps feature and Yahoo Weather. Mail is easy to use with my .mac account.

What needs to be changed? After all, this is 1.0 of a new product. I generally agree with Rob Griffiths on Macworld on his top ten needed iPhone apps. I would like to see sytemwide cut and paste implemented. I would also like to see a password wallet included, as that is one function I miss from my Palm.

I would also like to see it work with Google Docs. I suspect Google is working on that.

In total, I LOVE by iPhone. It really is a new paradigm on what a handheld communications device should be like. Thanks for liberating the cell phone, Apple!

David+

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, technology

New Episcopal Blog

There's a new blog in town, epiScope. It's run by the Episcopal News Service with the following description:

"Mostly we'll track references to the Episcopal Church in online media ... provide links to full documentation and source material ... do a little "rumor control" where it's needed ... provide a moderated forum for public discussion of substantive issues raised by stories and opinion pieces... and provide a way for the wider Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and the general online public to interact more directly with ENS and Episcopal Life writers and others at the Episcopal Church Center in New York and on the road.

Using a blog, rather than relying solely on ENS or Episcopal Life, permits us to work virtually in "real time" on breaking stories, instead of waiting for a full story to be written and edited and a page to publish on the main website. We'll always do a complete followup and link back to epiScope's pages once it's published."

Ayia Iluvatar is listed as an Episcopal Blog under "Eyes Center" (as opposed to "Eyes Left" or "Eyes Right") along with Entangled States, Anglicans Online and The Anglican Centrist. I'm pretty happy to be there.

I wish them the best of luck. It will be nice to have the ENS in the blogosphere in addition to us talking heads.

David+

Technorati Tags: anglican, blogging, episcopal, web, religion

Review: ECP

Church Publishing released their first foray into publishing for handhelds this week: eCP (Electronic Common Prayer).

"eCP: electronic Common Prayer is a downloadable application for PalmOS handheld devices that puts services of the Book of Common Prayer and Daily Office readings at your fingertips. The calendar screen shows today's date; the current liturgical season and color; the commemoration of the day; hyperlinked collects, prefaces, and full texts of Daily Office lessons, psalms, and gospel readings. The hyperlinked BCP services give you flexibility for hospital calls, outdoor celebrations, camp and daily personal devotions."

I downloaded the program and paid the $29.95 since the program does not have a demo mode and won't even open without a registration code. I frankly have to say I am pretty disappointed. I already had a BCP in iSilo format on my Palm and the downloadable daily office from the Mission of St. Claire. I also use a Palm OS Bible from Olivetree software. The first thing that is noticeable about eCP is that it is SLOOOOOW. I have a Tungsten T5, which is actually a pretty speedy little device (It can play video, after all.) The program (which takes up 10 MB of memory) took over a minute to load. It looks like the program is written in Java, which may account for why it takes so long to run. Inside the program is a BCP, a calendar, a daily office and a bookmarking function.

What I was hoping for was a daily office function that would ask you some basic questions (Which invitatory? which Lord's prayer? etc.) and then generate a file with the entire text of the office so that you could read it straight through - kind of like what the Mission of St. Claire site does, but on a random-access basis. Unfortunately, the office in the eCP is simply a text of the BCP with all the rubrics and options left in and hyperlinks to the psalter and office readings. If it's not Eastertide, there's really no point in having to scroll past the Easter opening sentences or the Pascha Nostrum every day - a computer program should be smarter than that. The links to the psalter and readings are to those modules (not to the readings for the day) so you still have to set bookmarks and all of this works at a snail's pace (might work faster on a Treo - hard to say, but it's still a lot slower than the iSilo BCP). If I was reading the daily office with people who were using a traditional BCP, I would fall behind.

I like books. I am comfortable with nice ribbon bookmarks. If I am going to adopt a technology, it needs to have advantages over the existing technology of my Daily Office book and Galley's The Prayer Book Office. In the case of a Palm program, it needs to be more flexible and useful than the free resources I already have and use. With eCP, I can't say that either of these criteria are met. I hope that future versions might leverage more of the advantages that can be gained with an electronic resource, rather than simply being an enhanced e-text.

David+

Technorati Tags: anglican, BCP, eCP, episcopal, Palm, PDA

Online Survey

There is a survey regarding the future of the Episcopal Church's online evangelism at the national church's web site here.  If you are a regular reader, please give them some feedback.

David+