Tell your parents and other Luddites: easy ways to get with it

The most frustrating thing for me when someone I love is old-fashioned is that I know that embracing something new would actually make their lives easier.  I don’t want my grandmother on Facebook so that she’ll feel cool.  I want to be able to share pictures of me and my friends with her, and for her to share her life with me, even though we’re 3,000 miles apart.  (P.S., my grandmother actually is on Facebook, and she is awesome).

The New York Times has a great checklist of easy tech upgrades (some are behaviors, not products) that will instantly make your life easier, better, more streamlines, etc.  Tell your friends.

Here’s the short list:

1. Get a smartphone.
2. Stop using Internet Explorer.
3. Upload your photos to the cloud.
4. Get music off your computer.
5. Back up your data.
6. Set up a free file-sharing service.
7. Get free anti-virus software.
8. Get a better deal from your cable, phone and Internet provider.
9. Buy a lot of charging cables.
10. Calibrate your HDTV.

For my less-than-tech-savvy friends and relatives, I would stress #3, 5, and 8.  Google’s new site Teach Parents Tech lets you send really patient, friendly, parent-friendly videos that walk your loved-Luddites through a variety of things, like buying cheap airfare, adjust your computer’s clock, change your desktop image, and other easy tasks that can make a world of difference.

But backpacks are SUPPOSED to weigh 150 lbs

 

The schools are in New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, California, Arizona, and North Carolina.  They are public and private, high- and low-income, college prep and 50% dropout.  What they have in common are administrations that are embracing the iPad as an educational tool, and students who are learning in a new way as a result.

First, the objections:

1. School budgets are already too tight, and teachers are underpaid and in short supply. Why spend money on gadgets before we take care of the fundamentals?
2. Technology has not been proven to improve test scores or otherwise be more valuable than good teachers, good training, and good books.
3. There are other devices that would accomplish the same thing that cost far less than an iPad.

And now, the responses:

1. This objection is a logical fallacy, like “why give money to the National Symphony when there are homeless children starving?”  It’s not an either-or, even with finite budgets.  You have to approach any problem from multiple angles, and technological devices are not what’s standing between good teachers and their deserving salaries.  PLUS, we think of books as inherently cheap, but any student or teacher will tell you that a semester’s worth of books for high school or college runs $500 and up, and buying used isn’t always an option, especially for science texts that are frequently updated.  Daniel Brenner, the superintendent for a Long Island school with an iPad program, says the textbook and printing savings for two classes alone are $7,200 per year.
2. Another fallacy – first of all, even if there wasn’t evidence that technology has great educational value, these iPad programs are perfect laboratories to test that very hypothesis.  Secondly, there are mountains of data that actually indicate that very proposition, which is why countries like Uganda and Peru have committed to providing One Laptop Per Child for every one of its school-age citizens.
3. Granted, the One Laptop Per Child program itself is an example of being able to do a lot with relatively inexpensive technology, but have you ever picked up OLPC’s computer, the XO-1?  It feels like a $100 computer.  I love the OLPC program; in fact my brother worked for them in Peru last summer and it was a life-changing experience.  But they’re no more a reasonable replacement for an iPad than a bicycle is for a metro-transit system.  Technically, they’ll both get you there…but seriously, folks.  Yes, there are other tablets out there, and I’m sure schools will get on board with the new Android tablets being announced at CES this weekend.  And I hope they do, because the schools don’t all have to go iPad.  But the iPad has definite advantages – obviously, since regular people opt for them instead of cheaper Android and other options every day.  We shouldn’t be criticizing schools for making a cost-benefit analysis that may favor a more expensive option.  The pros and cons of paying more for a potentially more versatile iPad over another option can only be evaluated by each school.  This objection just sounds like Apple backlash to me.

Let me just say that many students’ biggest excuse (consciously or subconsciously) for skipping homework is complaining about how much they have to carry home, and how heavy their backpacks are.  Seriously – take a look at how many wheelie-bags are in your local middle school.  So I see an advantage in just how un-daunting a slim little tablet is compared to stacks of scary-looking, giant textbooks and binders.

Any school’s decision to spend a large amount of money on a new program should be carefully considered, and no one should be jumping on any technology bandwagon just to feel cool.  But we should be applauding schools that take risks in order to keep students engaged and excited, not attacking them.  Even in the best college preparatory schools, some children get lost in the shuffle, or just don’t respond well to traditional textbooks and essay assignments.  And of course, students at the highest-risk schools need every potential advantage they can get.

Additionally, these kinds of technology programs at schools are not only valuable for finding new ways to teach the old subjects.  They have intrinsic value, because they get students familiar, from a very young age, with the power of technology to make their lives richer, more interconnected, and more exciting.  Many people take skills about using email, search engines, online bargain-hunting, and other technology for granted; or they just assume that younger generations are “born knowing this stuff.”  But of course they aren’t.  The key is EXPOSURE, and if nothing else, pioneering schools offering iPad and other technology programs are giving their students that opportunity.

 

Via The New York Times.

Let’s Get Physical

In the wake of Wired’s stunning exploration of how the Internet is really grounded in the physical realm, TEDIndia’s Pranav Mistry demoed his SixthSense device, which allows the physical and data worlds to interact with each other.

Watch the actual demo of SixthSense at around the 6 minute mark in the video – you can use any surface as your interface, and even do the snapshot gesture outside and actually take a picture.  Check out the video, seriously no words can do justice to how FREAKING COOL this is.

I love the gestures in Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch, and MacBook trackpads – because they’re intuitive, not just pre-set shortcuts.  And that’s the key that Mistry and Jobs both see – the future of computing is that intuitiveness: making things easy to use without sacrificing power.

Mistry makes another excellent point: most people aren’t interested in computing, but in information. Even most geeks ironically love our gadgets more when we barely notice them at all.

via Om Malik

Everything Bad is Good for You

Ok, technically no one is decrying the brain-rotting effects of search engines (except those weird Bing “Search Overload Syndrome” commercials).  But in the vein of Steven Berlin Johnson’s excellent book about how supposed “sensory overload” is actually making us smarter, Science Daily reports that “search engine use is not just part of our daily routines; it is also becoming part of our learning process.”

The study observed that searchers use the engines to confirm their own knowledge, not just to find unknown answers – enriching the learning process. Also, subjects actually used search engines differently according to their learning styles.

My general philosophy about all kinds of media, including interactive media like search engines, is that they are all just tools, and our benefit and detriment stem from our use of them, and not inherent value. So this study is encouraging but not particularly surprising, I think.

I look forward to how scientists and educational researchers will use search engines and similar programs to further interactive and learning, especially in elementary school. Nothing spurs a kid’s imagination more than the discovery of possibility.

(via BoingBoing)

A World Without Jobs

No, no, not the literal jobs like the up-to-17% unemployment rate. I mean the Savior-of-Apple Jobs, el Steve-O, The Turtlenecked One, Mr. One-More-Thing. What would our world be like if (gasp) he had never gone back to Apple at all?

Mike Arrington posits that very question today, and while he mostly comes up with “no iPhone, and no Android,” I think the answer is actually more profound than that.  Jobs is responsible (indirectly, obviously) for HP’s “The Computer is Personal Again” campaign, for taking mp3 players from the realm of “cute little gadgets that techies and some runners used” to ubiquitous device that no self-respecting person between ages 12 and 40 would be without.

Mostly, Jobs is responsible for returning Apple to mass-market products still driven by exceedingly high quality standards.  He riskily bucked the uber-customization trend: he had better taste than you, and there were limited options (candy-colored iMacs notwithstanding).  He was a dictator, yes, but a benevolent one.

Jobs’ hyper-controlled and often-criticized ad campaigns transformed marketing strategies not only for the computer and technology industries but across advertising clients.  Everything he touched seemed to turn into a cultural touchstone, without most of the population knowing exactly why they knew what an iMac or an iPod was (remember how revolutionary the original candy bubbles and white bricks were?).

I am, admittedly, an Apple fangirl, but I’m not blind to the shortcomings the company has had in product development and brand management over the years.  And Jobs is hardly the Golden Messiah he is sometimes (even in this post) trumped up to be – how much more profitable could iMacs have been if Jobs had never insisted on the hockeypuck mouse?

But missteps and egotrips aside, it’s hard to argue that the man doesn’t have a certain Midas touch.  More importantly, he proved that consumer-driven can also be performance-driven, and beauty-driven, and simplicity-driven, and – the king of them all – highly lucrative.

*This post does not endorse unauthorized file sharing

Engadget’s got an always useful post about getting content off an iPod or iPhone.  For Macs, the main tool is Pod to Mac, while PCs should use SharePod.  There are also instructions for manual copying, but most people will probably want to stick to the software solutions.

Thanks, Ross!

Who is the target demo?

Personally, I greeted the MacBook Air’s debut with mixed emotions.  On the one hand, I had been one of those die-hard 12-inch PowerBook users who kept that adorably portable pro notebook running long after I should have switched to an Intel model.  When I finally caved and got an MacBook, I lamented that a single extra inch of screen made the whole thing much more unwieldy.

So I was glad to see Apple hadn’t abandoned those of us who didn’t want mega-screens on an ostensibly portable device, but I was disappointed that the Air’s big draw was thinness, not overall size.  It was still wider and taller than the 12″ PowerBook, but it sacrificed the 12-incher’s disk drive and (relative) affordability for a solid state hard drive with questionable advantages.

In other words, the Air was a vanity device, not a desktop replacement, or even an Apple netbook.  I wasn’t giving up my MacBook just yet.

The rumored Apple tablet, supposedly coming out next year (possibly at MacWorld or WWDC?) has some similar issues.  Described/fantasized as an iPod Touch on steroids, it would have none of the functionality/desktop-replacement-ness of a notebook with none of the portability of an iPod Touch.

So what is the appeal again?  It looks super sexy?  Yeah, that worked out well for the Prada phone.  Apple already knows that usability trumps specs: that’s why the first iPhone was such a hit despite lack of 3G, MMS, true GPS, and a whole host of other features that were already standard on other PDAs.  Not to mention the triumph of Wii over PS3.

The New York Times explores five reasons why tablets haven’t been successful.

“One more thing…” – Jobs phasing self out?

Many have noticed that Steve Jobs looked less than stellar at Tuesday’s press conference, and that he delegated many of the announcements to other Apple gurus.  It looks like SuperSteve is phasing himself out of the limelight, which could be important for Apple’s stability (and that of it stock price) when the inevitable happens and the company has to continue without the Oracle of Jobs.

We all know what happened when Steve left the first time, but that was abrupt and less than prudent.  Now, with a long-term gameplan in place, Apple stands a good chance of continuing Jobs legacy of inspiration and perfectionism (because we all know his talent lies there, and not in engineering or development).  I’m pleasantly surprised that Jobs himself seems to have recognized the importance of a smooth and gradual transition.

Here’s to a much-deserved and bittersweet retirement.

Free Metro WiFi? Not so much…

Computerworld’s Craig Mathias wrote a nice opinion piece criticizing the idea of free citywide WiFi access.

But mostly I objected to government getting involved in what should be the province of the private sector and the (admittedly flawed) competitive free market. Sure, it’s enticing to think that a wireless telecommunications service, and broadband at that, could be made available for free. But since base stations and network management systems and such are clearly not free, what we’re really talking about here is whether one group of residents (and usually visitors) should be forced to pay more in taxes or fees so that others can pay less or, if the system is truly free, nothing.

He also points out that no one expects other telecommunications services, like phone service, for free, so expecting WiFi to be free gets in the way of systems that should be universal but paid.

My own take is that there already are soooo many problems with how the FCC and other government agencies regulate regular broadcast airwaves. I see no problem, and in fact encourage, private businesses to offer a uniform and wide-reaching system of paid-for wireless Internet access that goes beyond the craptacular “hotspots” offered by the likes of T-Mobile et al.

The municipalities would be involved just like they’re already involved in broadcast media, but no more. They’re not service providers, and would make poor ones if forced into the role.

UI Trumps Hardware

Why Is iPhone Better? Here’s My Story…
The point of the story is that despite being somewhat deficient in terms of hardware relative to some enterprise phones, this thing is designed to make my life easier. I have owned many smart phones, most of which ran Windows Mobile in one way, shape or form. I even had a “local restaurants” application specifically for my last smart phone that I used a few times. I was NEVER able to accomplish ANYTHING in 90 seconds. So, at this point I don’t care that EDGE is slow – I was able to do what I needed to do on the EDGE network in 90 seconds while waiting for a train to pass – I wasn’t able to do that with the fastest EVDO tetherable enterprise-class Smart Phone on the market.