Media Mash Up

It’s been a great birthday so far!

A quick side note one of my favorite soda companies is launching 3 new flavors. Distortion, typhoon, and white out 

At the end of last week a source online for new technologies aquired a device pictured said to be the new Iphone 4g or Iphone HD. From the look of it not only is the device shaped more like the traditional ipod but it

also has redesigned buttons on the side. It appears to have the new iphone 4.0 firmware installed. However the device quit working shortly after it was acquired by the source. Some interesting features to note are that it has a front and rear facing camera. A micro sim card tray and a higher resolution screen. If you have heard of the possible new additions to the next version of the iphone then you have heard of iChat which would utilize the front facing camera. While this appears to be the new iphone based on a number of the features, a Japanese company came forward saying the device was a knock off of the actual iPhone and that it was actually their device. That of course I will let you be the judge of. On a personal note, I don’t believe that this version is anything near the next device we will see from apple because of the huge design shift and rigidity of the device. Apple tends to be a device company that makes lines of devices that are all very uniform in design. This device however would not in shape or design resemble the current iPhone iPod, or iPad. 

Lloyd

So I recently discovered a new little internet toy! I’m sure all of you noticed the new search bar at the top of my page. So at first glance it is easy to tell what makes this site different. The first thing is the fact that on the home page you have a connect with facebook and sign in with twitter. the second thing is the actual search results. One thing that really popped out to me on this site was the fact that you could change the results in each of the results sections without having to reload the page. One of my biggest qualms with searching IS the fact that it takes FOREVER. The results page on leapfish pulls up a number of different results you get everything from Google, Yahoo, and Bings results in one section that you can change between, all the way up to  shopping results from amazon and ebay. The interface is really smooth and has some great built in features, something that I have always loved to hate is YouTube. You see with YouTube what has always kept me away is the lack of a good way to run through the results. Whenever I spend time on YouTube I find myself watching videos I dislike to find the couple that I like, Well Leapfish thought of a solution for that. On the search results page one of the coolest features is you can put your mouse over the image for the video and it immediately starts to play. I could go on and on all day so I’ll leave you with a couple of things. Create a login in page, you will notice the homepage is organized by widgets you can change. When you create a login you can change all of the content that shows up and where it shows up! So you get your news while checking your facebook and twitter and getting search results from 100’s of websites. Email me if you have questions! I know you will love it. 

Lloyd 

Now that my blog content has changed, I have started to gear my posts more towards things going on in the media. You will notice a lot of my posts have to do with the ipad at the moment simply because I’m obsessed and reallllllly want one! Not only that but as I have been working with technology more and more I have started to realize really how AWFUL Microsoft products are. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Microsoft made a sub par product, the manufactures of hardware related to this software is in most cases cheap junk. It is blatantly obvious if you are to look at 2 machines, the mac book air, and the dell adamo or adamo xps. At first glance the adamo looks like a well constructed machine very similar in design to the mac book air with some even cooler features than the mac book. However examination of the best buy laptop that is only a number of months old that has broken pieces and nasty stuff all over it, should tell you how well this machine will hold up. Especially because if you turn around you can go to town on the mac book air, but when you look at the mac book air you notice nothing is broken. The outside and inside still look clean. The unibody aluminum case has no screw holes or signs that is easy to take apart. When you use it the shiny aluminum stays cool and it IS fast. So anyways the point of all this being is that on my wall I have an embedded system that runs different versions of linux from GoS to ubuntu in one neat package. On my laptops I run windows xp and windows 7 ultimate. I have an xbox 360, and a server that runs windows home server. So believe me I do use microsoft products. My phone, that is a different story. If you would have asked me a year ago what phone do I have I would have told you windows mobile. I would have been the first person to advocate microsoft products and bash apple. Why? because Apple has a strangle hold on hardware and software. To me I thought you should give more freedom to people with your products. You should let people do what they want with what they buy from you. To really understand why this is something that is very important about apple that has been at the core of its foundation since its inception, you have to go back to the beginning, back to the home brew computer club in my area of the silicon valley in the mid 70’s. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs created the first computer and marketed it for $666. It was such a success that a few years later the Apple II E was launch in the mid 80’s. Most people remember the apple II e as the first real computer with a monitor and keyboard. By this time Apple was a growing company and Jobs started designing the Apple Macintosh. For all purposes the Mac was the first modern computer as we know it. It functioned on the first GUI available to the public. It had the first mouse and during creation Jobs pushed the designers to create a revolutionary machine. That is exactly what Jobs created. However Jobs has always been one to throw current to the side for future technologies. While this is great for the people who are ahead of the curve this tends to not go over well with the general public so the Mac flopped. While it was an innovation of the times it was far too advanced for what the public was ready for. Jobs has always and will always have a vision for his machines that is far greater than the dells or HPs. While you get freedom with a windows machine. With an apple machine you get less freedom but you have the backing of a company with apples reputation for quality and future technologies. 

I pulled this article from tech crunch @ http://www.leapfish.com/Share_Bar.aspx?u=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/8xVMR30dUOA/&t=NSFW:+I+Admit+It,+The+iPad+Is+A+Kindle+Killer.+I+Just+Wish+It+Weren%2019t+Going+To+Kill+Reading+Too&q=

If you would like to read the original article in form on tech crunch be my guest! If not here it is. For one reason or another, I’ve spent the past few weeks down at the TechCrunch offices. As a result, it’s proved almost impossible to avoid iPad fanboy hysteria. Mike has already said that the device “beats even my most optimistic expectations”, Jason was one of the first in line at the San Francisco launch and even Sarah – who until now didn’t have an iPhone – hassuccumbed to its charms as a work/play device for long-haul travellers.

And then there’s me.

I’m still not convinced.

No. Strike that. I am convinced. And that’s what worries me.

As I’m contractually obliged to never let you forget, I write the occasional book – and as such, I have a vested interest in the future of the medium, both in print and in digital form. One of the labels attached to the iPad – along with laptop killer and television killer – is Kindle killer. Why, the argument goes, would someone buy a dedicated e-reader devices for (low) hundreds of dollars when for (high) hundreds of dollars they can have a device capable of displaying books, movies, web pages and just about anything else?

It was a question, frankly, not worthy of an answer. Or at least not one that wasn’t accompanied by a roll of the eyes. Almost everyone who described the iPad as a Kindle killer chose to ignore the fact that no matter how nice and shiny Apple’s screen technology is, it’s still not designed for reading books. Without e-ink, such as that found in the Kindle, you eyes get tired after a few pages – which is fine for replacing a newspaper, but is basically useless for a book. I wrote as much back in January.

“Just wait and see” said the fanboys, “wait til you get your hands on an iPad before you jump to judgment.”

“Hmmm,” I said, “Ok…”

Well I waited, and now I’ve spent long enough playing with an iPad to jump to judgment. And you know what? The fanboys were right. The iPad is a Kindle killer, but for all the wrong reasons.

Let’s finally put to rest the myth that the iPad is a good way to read books – it isn’t. Without e-ink – who’d have thunk it? – your eyes get tired after a few pages. You find yourself wishing you could print out the rest of the book and read it properly, away from the screen. Even the way that Apple displays books – in their Delicious Library rip-off way – suggests that they consider books to be just another kind of app. Something to fire up, play with for a couple of minutes and then swap out for the next five minutes of Flight Control.

The iPad is emphatically not a serious readers’ device: the only people who would genuinely consider it a Kindle killer are those for whom the idea of reading for pleasure died years ago; if it was ever alive. The people who will spout bullshit like “I read on screen all day” when what they really mean is “I read the first three paragraphs of the New York Times article I saw linked on Twitter before retweeting it; and then I repeat that process for the next eight hours while pretending to work.” That’s reading in the way that rubbing against women on the subway is sex.

And yet, and yet. There’s no doubt that the iPad is a beautiful device for almost everything else. It’s perfect for reading newspapers – Alan Alan Rusbridger’s space-filling fanfic not withstanding – and it’s perfect for email and web browsing and movies and games. If you have to carry around one device – for your commute to work, for an hour in a coffee shop, or on a long-haul flight – then the iPad is the one to carry. Which is precisely why I’m so worried for the future of books, and for reading.

For a few months, the Kindle – or the Sony Reader, or whatever e-reader floated your (Three Men In A) boat – was the perfect take-anywhere device. Sales of ebooks soared as first early adopters, then everyone else, left their paper books at home and started carrying around something smaller and lighter that still gave them access to their reading material.

Those same people are now the ones who will buy iPads, or presumably any one of the myriad alternatives that will soon be flooding the market. But those people don’t want to carry around two tablet-shaped devices to help pass their commute, so they’ll make the sensible choice and leave their Kindles at home. Sure, the Kindle is unarguably the better reader device, but what many booklovers (myself included) have arrogantly overlooked is that it’s not competing on a level playing field with other e-readers. It’s competing against the whole universe of portable entertainment. “This ebook hurts my eyes – I’ll just surf the web instead.”

Even for those who love books enough to persevere with reading without e-ink will soon face another problem with the awesomeness of the iPad. The device does so many different things so well that there’s a constant urge when you’re using one to do something else. Two or three pages into a book, you’re already wondering whether you’ve got new mail, or whether anyone has atted you on Twitter. One of the joys of reading is to be able to shut yourself away from distractions and lose yourself in a book. When the book itself is packed with distractions, the whole experience is compromised.

The first effects of this – I suspect – will seem like great news to publishers, who are increasingly frustrated by Amazon’s control over the ebook market. Having made a mental and financial commitment to their iPads, readers are unlikely to retreat back to their Kindle’s when their eyes start to hurt trying to read hundreds of pages on Apple’s device. Instead they’ll return briefly to physical books to scratch their long-form itch. They’re still portable, affordable and readable – and carrying one with you doesn’t feel like wasted space in a way that carrying a Kindle and an iPad would. Physical book sales will rise, Kindle sales will drop.

Soon though, especially as more and more commuter friendly apps appear on the iPad and publishers push out more video content to further distract us from the need to read for prolonged periods, the idea of carrying a book will go back to seeming unnecessary.

And at that point the iPad will indeed have killed the Kindle. But, for millions of casual readers, it will also have killed something far more valuable: the experience of reading for pleasure.