Category: General

When the first iPhone was released, it was expensive, limited to 2G (EDGE), and didn’t offer tethering. I was out of contract but I was in graduate school and tethering was my killer app. So I waited. Nine months later the price dropped, the first jailbreak was released, tethering was possible, and I ordered one.

It wasn’t long before I petitioned Steve for a ‘toy mode’, so we could let our kids play with the iPhone without direct supervision. This is an update for that request. I want user profiles, just like my Mac has.

I want to flick the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad off and set it down on the couch or coffee table. When my wife or child grabs it, they must enter their security code to use it. After they do, the device unlocks and all their apps and settings are presented. Email, calendars, saved Safari passwords, applications, etc.

Parental controls would be nice. Specifically, I’d like to prevent the kids from doing anything on my iPhone that costs money (make calls, send SMS, etc). Selecting the apps they are allowed to see/run would accomplish this nicely.

Without profiles, I won’t be able to use the mail, calendaring, password saving, or other features on the iPad. If I did, I’d risk the kids moving my appointments around, or deleting email messages. With profile support, the iPad immediately becomes fully usable by everyone in the family. It would get a lot of use. I’d buy one. If the competition for it became fierce, I might buy another.

The iPad size is excellent. It’s just right for toting around the house. The dock is a great feature, I’d buy one for the kitchen counter and another for my nightstand. I would not buy the keyboard dock. I’d buy the bluetooth keyboard instead, since it can be used with a Mac and the iPad.

There are some great games that are very playable on the iPhone 3GS. They would be even more fun on the iPad. Hands down, this is a far better gaming/education device than the iPhone or iPod Touch. There’s no doubt it’s better for reading books, browsing web pages, and managing email.

But is it really ‘better’ at music than an iPhone or a Mac? It can’t hold my entire music library, making it less ‘good’ than a Mac. It’s worth putting up with the iPhone storage limits because it fits in my pocket. The iPad has neither ‘best feature.’

It appears the iPad is better at displaying photos, but it can’t take any. Where’s the camera? This device should be able to take pictures and support video conferencing in the same way as iChat on a Mac. The lack of this feature is a compelling reason to wait for iPad 2.0.

The iPhone and iTouch are personal devices. Laptops are shared devices with user profiles. I would leave the iPad laying around the house as other family members would surely enjoy using it. The iPhone OS is designed around use by one person. The restrictions offered are all or nothing, making them far less useful for multiple users. The iPad needs profiles so we can all use it and have exclusive access to our personal data (email, calendars, saved passwords in Safari, etc).

I’ve used my iPhone as an in-car video player. I play the audio through my car stereo via bluetooth and hang it between the seats so the kids can watch a movie. The iPad could be far better, with the larger IPS display and longer battery life.

Perhaps, instead of leaving it sitting around the house, I need to customize my dash to fit an iPad. The next version of Motion-X GPS Drive for the iPad will take mobile navigation to the next level. That idea has some serious potential.

It’s a bittersweet day. We bought the Fusion a year ago, as the Jetta replacement, but we really like the Jetta and have not been eager to part with it. But we’re cleaning house and it was on the list. Last week a kindly fellow from Canada responded to my craigslist ad and now the Jetta has a new home. Farewall little buddy.

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As with all systems, the results reflect the [lack of] planning that went into them. Since I had goals greater than just getting rid of all the paper, the next step was defining what exactly I wanted. In a nutshell, I wanted all my paper documents more accessible (ie, find them faster on the computer than I could in the file cabinet), easily backed up, and securely stored. I also want a ‘system’ in place that makes it easy to prevent the accumulation of paper in the future. The following feature list embodies my goals:

1. Tagging:  Tag documents with metadata about them. Examples:
2009, Receipt, Gas, Shell
2009, Receipt, Climbing, Trekking Poles, REI
Statements, Investing, Vanguard, 401k

2. Custom Fields: places to store specific types of data. For example, dates, prices, expense category, pay method, etc.

3. OCR: The files in the cabinet are orderly and it takes mere seconds to put my hand within an inch of the right document. But it might take 10 minutes to search through that file folder to find the document I’m after. Once scanned, each document is a PDF among hundreds of thousands of PDFs. OCR is the key to being able to find documents faster on the computer than in the file cabinet.

4. Spotlight searchable. Spotlight is the search technology built into my mac. It can index and search most document formats, including PDF. In order to be useful, the OCR results must be searchable via Spotlight.

5. Aggregation of numeric data: Perform summary math on contents of custom fields. Ie, when I select a group of receipts, automatically sum them all.

6. Backups: Make it easy to use standard backup tools to keep the documents safe.

7. Security: It must be easy to keep all the data reasonably secure. Fortunately, this can be easily accomplished on the Mac by creating a sparseimage and storing the document library on it.

8. Open & Future-Ready: The file format of all the documents must be an industry standard with multiple vendors supporting it. PDF is one such standard. In addition, once the documents are “archived,” I want the ability to manipulate them with external apps. For example, I may want to re-run the OCR against all my documents in a couple years when the technology has further improved.

Part 3 will explore the workflow used to achieve my goals.

Remember this incident next time I’m in Africa. Wild elephants are not to be trifled with.

Mid-summer, when the economy was sitting in the doldrums, there was a tempest in a teapot regarding the economic stimulus. One side argued that a second stimulus was called for. The other had buyers remorse, wishing we hadn’t done the first one. I argued that we had done enough and the only missing ingredient was time.

Some time has passed, and things are looking up. It appears that Bush and Paulson’s $700 billion TARP program may actually turn a profit. And it’s not just TARP; the Fannie-Freddie rescue could turn a profit too. The good news doesn’t end there.

A friend recently asked, “Is it just me, or are other people also seeing a lot more job offers lately?” Apparently it’s not just our industry that’s perking up: “A monthly gauge of U.S. online labor demand soared in August at its fastest pace in four years, indicating steadier footing for nationwide labor demand…”

A recovery in the job market typically trails a recession by 18 months. And there’s still plenty of hurt left in the housing market, but it sure seems like the worst of it is behind us.

Someone finally helped me understand why I don’t enjoy watching the news. It’s well worth the read, as is the linked article by Atul Gawande on the high cost of health care, which I linked to previously because I thought it was so excellent.

Biking 10 miles to work is almost fun. After all, it’s downhill nearly the whole way. Riding that same 10 miles home is not as fun, because it’s nearly uphill the entire way. But it keeps me in modest shape as it’s a challenging ride. But for the last 4 rides home, I’ve had a headwind all the way home. Tonight it was 6 mph steady with gusts of double that. I’ll sleep well tonight.