Everyone who has looked at the history of Apple – in particular the Mac have learned about how Steve Jobs went to the  Xerox Parc laboratory in Palo Alto California and learned about a piece of hardware called a “mouse” and a user interface that used graphical windows that could be moved, closed, opened, re-sized, etc. Essentially not using a Command Line as everyone was back then with the Apple II and the IBM PC. The result was the Mac….

Here’s a great dramatization showing that event. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u70CgBr-OI from a movie I really love… “Pirates of Silicon Valley.”

Here’s an actual news expose, which shows almost the same thing…. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYkZUu9MUxs&feature=related

Steve Jobs loves to quote Picaso, who said: “Good artists copy, Great artists steal….”

Both of the above sort of infers that Apple might have stolen the idea, but in reality, according to Marc Bernstein (currently in charge of Xerox Parc) Apple shares were exchanged in return for the visit and demonstration…. and the rest, as they say, is legend and history.

Well I was reading one of my ZDNET news feeds today, about how the newspapers or news in “Print” is being slowly transitioned over to tablets and in doing so, may still live on. One of the amazing things, that I had not seen before (that I can recall – some of the people in the video look eerily familiar ) was an effort by the Knight-Ridder News organization to try and visualize what and where the future of newspapers were going.

In 1994, note the year, they put together a video simulating how people could use a piece of technology that they called The Tablet and showed what it might look and work like…. The similarities are beyond stunning!

I had a tablet computer some time around that time. It actually was a combination book/tablet in that the keyboard could be removed and just the tablet part could be used with a pen. I think it was called the Concerto.

It was no where near as thin or light and weighed a ton! It also wasn’t color! Nor was it any where near as capable as what is shown in the concept video (ie this technology didn’t exist back then, the functionality that you see is completely simulated).

There is no doubt in my mind that this was in fact the birth of the Apple iPad…. some 16 years earlier. Watch the video, it’s 13 minutes long (worth every second) and be amazed…..

They actually made an iPhone App, but it is pretty boring, it looks like it was designed for the original iPhone. It is just a list of news articles that one can click on to read, how sad that somewhere along the road, that after all that effort and research their vision and dream was lost. What an advantage they might have had…. similar to Xerox actually. Funny that….

Still I have to thank them for coming up with the idea, and I am sure Steve is too…..

Enjoy!

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I am not as active on the site as I would like to be AND that there is a LOT of garbage out there, I have to crank the security on this site way up.

As a result many of your comments, as innocent as they appear to me, don’t get through to my ok-ing them. I’ve pulled what I thought were the most valid of the bunch out of the cesspool and it is possible that there are a few other’s that I have missed. If I did, I again apologize.

This all has to do with the garbage out on the web these days, the spam robots out there are ferocious! When I first set up this site, it was literally buried by them. I would get hundreds of garbage replies a day and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep up with manually deleting the stuff out there. My only recourse was to tighten things up as much as possible.

Unfortunately, this usually causes any quick one liners to get put in the spam filter, but why the others about Gipp Forster or the CherryPal fell into it boggles my mind, it could be the ip address or it could be something else. I really don’t know.

I will try to take a much closer look in the spam sewer in future – in hopes of rescuing other valid comments, but until then, let me again apologize for missing your comments. They really REALLY are appreciated. Even if the computer doesn’t like them….

Rick

I did a quick drop in to the store today, to check out a piece of technology that they “used” to be good at. Door/proximity alarm systems…. they used to have oodles of stuff like that. Of course they used to have oodles of things “technical” and geeky…. but not any more and it’s getting worse.

A bit of background, my wife’s office is moving, and they can’t see the front door  ( which is a little odd, but there you have it ) so she asked me to find a mat or some time of system that would ring and alert them as to when someone had entered the premises. To me this is a n0-brainer, there are TONS of things out there that will do that for her. Heck Radio Sha…. errr the Source used to have one in every store and tons of them in the back…. I told her I’d check them out and get back to her.

So I dropped into my local y0u-know-what-by-now, and went to the back where all the cool things used to be…. it’s a LOT and I mean LOT smaller than it used to be… every time I go in there it seems to shrink….

As an aside, every time I do go into that section of  “you-know-what” it seems all the sales clerks instantly go on break! It happened again today, there were 3 uniformed people in the store and as soon as I went into the “technical” area, they all went in the back and I could hear them arguing about how….. no no I’m on break right now…. I mean come on, I’m not in there THAT often for them to recognize me…. In reality though, it’s because NONE of them ( all in their early 20′s or earlier I think ) know nothing about that sort of  “stuff”. All they know is how to sell cell phones and maybe TV’s…. but I digress.

Eventually, one poor soul comes out of the back and walks right past me ( I’m the only one in the store by the way. )  I finally grab his attention after the third try and tell him I’m looking for their proximity or door alarm systems. He looks at me, curls his lip ( I kid you not… ) and says, “Nahhh don’ sell that”…. Suffice to say I voiced my incredulity and told them that they used to sell tons of them, and they were well stocked in that area…

I small glimmer ( but only in one eye ) comes on and he says “Oh… ma’be here…” and points to a discount bin ( 1 ft by 1 ft ) hidden under a larger discount bin, in it held the remains of their once mighty line of products.  Thankfully there was one proximity alarm left hidden amongst the dozen or so spare alarm parts.

I mentioned how unbelievable it was that this was all that was left of what they used to carry, he kinda shrugged his shoulders and said ” They don’ sell” and walked away!! I snapped back that the reason was that they were only interested in selling cell phones any more! Man I was ticked on several levels.

I suspect within a couple years “The Source” will be renamed “The Cell Phone Source” because they will certainly soon not be worth going into for anything else! What a pity …

On the other hand, it looks like “Radio Shack” in the states has learned it’s lesson ( hopefully ) and is asking its’ clientèle and people in general, what products they think they should be carrying to “re-become” the DIY ( Do It Yourself ) store….. one can only hope they will succeed AND once again come back to Canada.

Time will tell I guess…

So as you can no doubt tell by the post title, I’ve fallen down the Rabbit Hole. And while I’ve never been a fanboy of Microsoft, or Apple. I am kinda falling into a trance with what Apple has done, how well they have done and where they are going. To the point that I have their iDisk running on my Ubuntu desktop…. Wow. Just where will this lead to next?!

It all started with my daughters iPhone, it broke on her and she had to send it away for repairs ( at no cost to her I might add. ) Since it was gone for a while she started to reuse her old Blackberry and it quickly reminded her of what she liked about it, and what she didn’t like about her iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, she likes the iPhone, but not the fact that her partner and her kids like it more ( all the apps and games on it. ) To the point that it was either in “their” hands all the time, or being charged! The Blackberry worked very well as a phone, email, text messages and camera…. but no games for the kiddies…. So when she got her iPhone back she decided to stick with Blackberry.

So she sold me the phone… My current phone ( before iPhone so to speak ) was a Windows “smart phone” that didn’t work as well as it should have, if at all, and I was getting frustrated having to pull out the battery to reboot the sucker every time I wanted to use a different “feature”. Frustration doesn’t begin to describe the issues…. So I decided to giver her phone a try…

So after jumping through a whole bunch of hoops, it was mine. There were a few challenges with it. One of the first was getting it updated and synced with iTunes running on my Ubuntu Virtualbox. More at my end than on iTunes….. which eventually turned the phone into a paperweight for me….. But thankfully Apple designed in a feature to resurrect an iPhone with screwed up software and it worked… Matter of fact it worked better than anything I’ve ever played with in a long, long time…

So I got some apps on it ( mainly free ) and found the functionality and interface beyond intuitive…. I had a reason to use a smart phone and have it always with me and always charged. Now I was beginning to understand why people like and have smart phones! Wow! It really wasn’t all hype!

So my iPhone experience, made me think…. “What about the iPad2?” It was just being released and my laptop was rapidly dying. Maybe I could use the iPad as a make-do until I could set aside the funds ( now starting to roll in from all my web support activities ) to get a new one. I figured if all else, I could use it for reading PDF documents that were just too frustrating to try and read on my Kindle 3 ( did I tell you about that one….. maybe later – ). So I ordered one on-line. Because I wanted the “free” engraving…

The iPad finally arrived and what can I say…. The angels almost started to sing once I started using it! It really took the experience and functionality of the iPhone and took it several levels higher! It’s become my morning newspaper, and my research engine and my multimedia centre and so, so much more! It really is hard to describe. The iPad isn’t anything like a computer ( although yes that is what it is! ) It’s an experience…. and until the other tablet makers get that into their head, they really don’t stand a chance!

Well while using the iPad I come across  Apple’s “MobileMe” software ( I was originally trying to find a way to sync my calender on my computer with the calender on my phone. ) Essentially MobileMe gave me 10GB of “Cloud” disk space called iDisk ( storage space on the Internet,) yet another email address, and a sync’d calendar with my iPhone  (more about syncing Ubuntu later – maybe…. )

But again…. it’s about the experience. Everything works seamlessly! The MobileMe email is accessibly as an application ( don’t have to log into anything anywhere else, ) but I can access it from either my iPhone or my iPad and if I delete a message from one, it disappears from the other… I didn’t have to do anything to make this work. It just does! And it does very very well. If I find something during my research on my iPad I just have to click an icon and can instantly send the link to whomever I choose from my contact list and the sent message is saved and available instantly from either of my apple devices…. So then I took a closer look at iDisk ( that Internet disk drive. )

It’s all well and good to have that much storage available on an Apple product, and they do seem to have something out there for Windows, but what about Ubuntu??? What about my platform. Well with a bit of research I found that solution too. It’s not quite as seem-less, but it’s working ( more on that one later too – I hope! ) So now I can instantly copy files/pictures/whatever from my Ubuntu machine, put them on my iDisk and instantly have them available to both my iPhone and my iPad. Freakin’ Brilliant!

This article is getting a bit long, so let me close by saying that TeamViewer ( another article on that one too later I hope. ) Also runs on Ubuntu AND the iPad and even the iPhone ( but my eyes aren’t that good anymore to make use of it ) So here we were in Quebec City, about 400+ km from my base computer and we were showing off pictures of our grandsons on my iPad. My wife asks me to show a recent picture of the youngest one wearing a great fedora  which his aunt gave him for his birthday ( which he looks great in by the way. )

Unfortunately, it wasn’t yet copied over to my iDisk and only resided on my Ubuntu machine at home. So using TeamViewer I logged into my machine back in my office, copied the file to the iDisk there and was able to then load the picture up in my iPad. All done in under two minutes! True story! Did I look good or what!

So…. the “?” in the title. Well Apple has announced a major improvement in their laptop line, using Intels “SandyBridge” technology. Making their laptops one of the fastest, and most powerful laptops out there. If you recall I’ve been saving my pennies for a laptop and I should have enough in another month or two….. My wife says it’s a no brainer as to my choices, and I have had an amazing Apple experience to date. So…. I’m wondering…… Interesting times ahead.

Stay tuned!

The trick is that you will need to download and install on your kindle a “book” application that is available off of the kindle users forum. This book has approximately 50 already available newsfeeds but more can be added later using their web interface.

I’ve found that the easiest way to get the feed you want  on the book you installed is to:

1. Set up the feed online through your normal web browser on your computer after you have logged into the forum. The Kindle User Forum will then assign it a number based on your account.
2. On the kindle, open up the book and go to tools then add a new feed. Page down to page 2 and enter the number you generated in step 1. Then open that feed.

In future that feed will be presented at the top of your “book” along with any other feeds you have subscribed to. Just click on the feed link and it will open automatically in your Kindle Browser.

You can certainly do all this on your Kindle, but I find that the ease of using the computer and cutting and pasting links and such to be so much easier. Now note that I really glossed over the instructions. I just wanted to show how easy it was. Follow the prompts and guides online and you shouldn’t have any issues.