01.29.10
Posted in Home at 12:18 pm by JohnB
I was hooked. All day Wednesday I was looking forward to Steve Jobs speech and the announcement of the Apple Tablet device – that which we now know as the iPad.
The secret was poorly kept, key figures had dropped hints and clangers and at least one NDA seemed to have expired 12 hours too soon, but nonetheless the anticipation for the formal unveiling was significant. I’m a reader, I like to read and my library will testify to this. Not only do I consume new books at a significant rate, I’m also happy to re-read books often a number of times. I’ve also out in quite a few air and hotel hours over the years and I do enjoy killing time with a good book. For this reason I’ve been hanging my nose over e-Book readers for the last few months looking for ‘the one’ which would satisfy my need for ease of use, portability, battery life and library access. The number of books being ‘e’-d is on a significant upward curve and this was pushing me more and more towards an electronic rather than paper buying habit – much the same way that I now purchase pretty much all of my music on-line (good by DRM and good riddance!).
The problem I had was that all of the e-readers I picked up and tried left me feeling decidedly bleh. They were, it felt, a bit… backward, a bit simple and just a bit one-dimensional. Certainly not something I could justify £200 and upwards upon.
I love my Macbook. It’s just a simple Black one, nothing ‘Pro’ here, but it’s in almost constant use, even at home where I’ve got the big machines, and I have used it to read stuff on too, but the problem is that it’s the wrong shape. Wide-screen is great for movies and I love having desktop acreage to spread out upon but it’s 90 degrees out from what I want when I’m reading – web-sites are bad enough but at least these are, mostly, formatted for the standard screen. And then there’s that big bit sticking out the front… the keyboard. Great when I’m typing (some would say essential) but decidedly in-the-way when all I want to do is read. Plus I need to put in on something, it’s not a hold-in-your-hand device. The MacBook is not an e-book reader.
The iPad though, certainly looks like it could be. iBookstore fills me with a warmth of anticipation which (I know inside) is going to be tempered, at least initially, because my favourite SciFi authors won’t be available. The reader application looks like it’s going to deliver the ease of access and flexibility that I’ve been looking for too. So far – tick!
Now then, let’s look further ahead. The Times application they showed was lovely. Seriously, newspapers online should be multi-dimensional and this one is a massive step in that direction. I don’t read a daily paper in print, but I consume a huge amount of information from “Teh Internetz” – SIDEWAYS STEP! do you remember Ananova? This little darling was touted as the rebirth of news consumption, aggregation of the stories YOU wanted and delivery to you personally. It fell far short of this, but I’d probably put a few pennies a day into a service which delivered this to me in a digestible and multi-dimensional format ir not just text.
Anyway, the morning news is something which people ‘do’. My partner Sarah drags over the MacBook in the morning and scans three or four websites every day. Scrolling up and down, up and down because the laptop is the wrong shape for this kind of information. The iPad would certainly make this exercise easier. Once again, for making life easier – Tick!
But here’s where I start drifting off. Remember the iPhone initial release? Remember the depression that set in after the hype blew over? Remember how everyone said it was a mistake for Apple to get into a market which Nokia, RIM and Microsoft were tearing up? Remember how utterly, utterly wrong everyone was!
My problem is that I can only ‘feel’ the use I’d get out of the iPad, I can’t describe it in any way which would justify the £4-500 it’ll cost me.
My email I can happily do on the lapdog, as can my notes, scribbles and musings which get turned into various documents and psts along the way. My music lives on my iPod and will continue to do so. Movies are a significant variable, I still love DVDs and will more that likely switch, formally, over to BluRay in the near future. Or will I? Am I destined to ‘go digital’ in this area too? Anyway, the point is that this is not currently a consideration for me.
I want an iPad, believe me! I want the beautiful technology, the ergonomic lines and the overall sleekness and beauty of the idea. I’m a geek and happy to be one (although in more formal circles I use the term Technologist!). And PLEASE, this is not a “Well PC tablets have been around for ages – the new <ASUS, HP, Acer, blah> one will do all of that too” argument. Yes they may, I’m sure.
This is about my gut feeling, and that says “you’d like using this”. I’m having trouble finding a reason to disagree.
It does look good though...
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01.09.10
Posted in Home at 10:31 am by JohnB
Silesti.net has been a bit of a mish-mash – no excuses here, it was by intention – but I’ve decided that my ‘work’ focused stuff, especially the Hosting Thoughts podcast and my commentaries on Hosting and Cloud technologies, deserves a space of it’s own.
There are, of course, many reasons for this but primarily my words are being used as a reference both generally and specifically by Planet Technologies and I feel that there needs to be a more focused area for them. After all I’m sue that the other stuff on Silesti.net, while interesting (of course!), aren’t necessarily too relevant!
I’ll be cross posting some/most of the stuff back here anyway, but take a gander over at Hosting-Thoughts too.
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06.10.09
Posted in Home, Work at 4:03 pm by JohnB
It’s been a while since I felt the urge to share my desktop life with the world. It’s been a busy old 6 months, new technologies and solutions are bubbling up to the surface and keeping on top of them has been a challenge in itself, let alone actually doing the jobs I’ve got to do.
I made a decision a few weeks ago that if I was going to be espousing the benefits of Cloud Services, as well as assisting businesses with understanding how to take advantage of them in their various different guises, I should really see what it’s like to be a small-scale consumer of these things and I set out to make MY life as easy as possible using the technologies associated with The Cloud.
Virtualisation is the main hanger for these service. Virtualised storage means access from anywhere – in theory. Virtualised machines provide portability and flexibility. So here is my situation.
I use Macs as my workstation of choice, there are many reasons for this, but suffice it to say that I can do what I want and need to do with ease. There are however a couple of items which mean I also need a PC- read Windows – environment to work within:
1) Visio – I do systems architectural diagrams and exchange these with others
2) Project – Project plans need to be built and shared
3) Groove – As a virtual team we use Groove for shared document library storage and for projects
These applications are not available for the Mac – Boo Hiss MacBU in Microsoft! I know that there are alternatives around which will read file formats etc, but the important thing is that I exchange these with others and I’ve not found a ‘clean’ conversion which works both way in any of the options. Groove is simple Windows only.
My adopted solution is to use Parallels Desktop for the Mac and run a virtualised PC o take care of ‘that side of things’ in my working life. now this has been fine for many months and I actually run the PC off a Firewire connected portable drive so I can use it on my iMac at home and my MacBook when on the road; a nice solution as far as it goes but there is still a catch. My data lives on that Windows PC image. If it goes, it’s gone.
This would be bad in a number of ways, all of which are, I’m sure, clear to all. YES! I could take regular backups, but that is mitigation not resolution I needed to be more portable and more de-risked. My solution is a Cloud Service: Microsoft Live Mesh.
The Mesh allows me to publish a folder structure and subscribe to it from many devices including Mac’s natively, updates are made through the Mesh to all of the devices and things are kept up to date. I no longerneed to carry data around with me. But if we think about it, that means I actually no longer need to carry my Windows PC around with me either, I just need access to one wherever I am.
A new virtual PC was created on each of my device ‘locations’ and was added to my Mesh, now with the right aaplications installed and my Groove workspaces also synced, wherever I am I have access to my data. The Mesh also lets me access my library via the web so if I’m guesting on someone else’s PC for an hour I can still work (No Groove, but.. well… a move to Mesh for the team seems VERY likely!). It’s also worth noting that our email service at Planet is hosted, another Cloud service, so it also follows me around or is accessible via OWA.
I should also mention that my new virtual Windows PC’s are running the Windows 7RC. As I write this, I have a Mac running OSX Leopard with Parallels running Windows 7 AND a Windows XP virtual machine too (Groove syncing!!) and eveything is right with the world. I can leave me desk go to another location and have EXACTLY the same functionality, data and access without carrying anything other than my login details This makes me happy.
And things seem to be moving along nicely too. I read with GREAT interest the updates coming to OSX with the Snow Leopard release, in particular the inclusion of Exchange server support in the OS! As quoted from the Apple site “something even Windows PCs don’t have”.
But I am a multi platform user and I have to say that Windows 7 DOES seem to work… on the whole. I’m aware that it’s RC and that there will be a few niggles so I’m living with them for now, but those aside, it’s reasonably speedy (remember I’m running virtualised too) and easy to use. Having bypassed Vista, my XP tuned brain is re-learning how to do things, but it’s not too bad! Niggles a around file extension handling – especially with Groove!!! – and the way it sometimes provides a little too much technical info about a file type. The apps work well and I’ve not broken anything yet.
Anyway, think about the Cloud but not as a distant goal for corporate strategy, think of it as something hat, with a little planning can free you from the constraints of 1 system, 1 OS and 1 location, wander free and be productive for now is the time!
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