CogBlogged from ‘April, 2010’

I finally passed my certification, confirmed after a rigid test of endurance at the Sportsman’s Chalet in Strawberry Arizona (branch offices at Falconetti’s in East Vancouver) created under the influence at Disinformation’s Generator

I got a nice memory pingback when reading a the recent update from Evernote — later below I’ll go back to my experience trying this, but they were describing their approach about designing a new version of their app for the iPad (THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT iPADS. THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT iPADS. THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT iPADS.) Designing the new interface was a daunting task. First, we made an advanced prototype by cutting out a roughly-tablet-sized piece of cardboard, writing “iPad” on it, and carrying it around for a few days. We would bring it to meetings, hold it in different ways, and try to imagine what Evernote would feel like on this form factor. We looked pretty stupid and people made fun of us mercilessly. We printed out Photoshopped UI screens and taped them to the “iPad” to get an idea of font [...]

This past Thursday I did the dog and doggie show, a keynote for the CATS 2010 Online Conference (CATS = Community of Academic Technology Staff for the California State University system). This was a reincarnation of one I first did for Faculty Academy in 2007, and on the Australia 2007 tour. This time I took a few stabs at the myth of Information overload, calling on the great Shirky spirit of pointing to filter failure. This version has its own site with the regular list ‘o links… How do we deal with the never ending onslaught of new technologies, resources, and media? How can we face this brave new world without a sense of dread? Is there an app for that? “Keeping up” is a myth, and the way of dealing with this is creating, sustaining, and being in your extended networks of friends, colleagues, and even people you don’t [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Yeah, I go an iPad with the coolest wallpaper available. Heck, I’ll share it with anyone who wants it. Frankly, I am uttering a collective yawn at the irrational exuberance at one end and the irrational vitriol at the other of the iPad spectrum. It’s just static filled noise to me. For me, you cannot understand a technology by making your opinions based on other people’s opinions. You have to get your paws on it. So I have to say in your hand, not even powered on, the iPad is seductive. It is much smaller, thinner, lighter than I imagined. It’s thinner than my iPhone. It’s thinner, smaller, and close to the weight of my recent issued of Wired, and its a freaking computer. The battery life is astounding. The quality of photos and video is stunning. The responsiveness of the orientation change [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Iago A.R. Just because you can, does it mean you should? An interesting series of events, but I am left baffled as to why some web site would feel its okay to republish my blog post in its entirety, with the barest minimum of attribution. In this morning’s email was a trackback notice (remember what those were the rage, like in 2004? Bueller? Bueller? oh maybe its just me) that a site had linked to my Ten Albums post. I’m not going to name the site, but thinking I would see maybe a blog post that mentioned or linked to mine, I was a little startled (not that little since this happens a lot) to see that this site was not writing something about my site; they had my entire blog post listed in their site, like it was one of their articles. All [...]

I love photos and I love maps, but I’ve not been the best at doing both together. I almost never remember to go back to flickr and place my photos on the map, so less than 10% of my photos are geotagged. I really want the process to be automatic, the best I do is on my iPhone photos which can geotag at the time of the camera shot. Back in January, I saw a story on the new GISTEQ Phototrackr, a very small and portable GPS device. The principle simple- the Phototrackr records your locations and time stamped at regular intervals, and software then can “locate” the photos by matching (or interpolating) by the time stamp on the photo. cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I was stuck for a while… because I could not get my MacBookPro or my PC to even recognize the device. The GISTEQ [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by ·Music Moves My Feet· I will definitely show my age era here. Yes, you kids with your “digital buy a song for 99 cents mix it up on your pod” may have something special you will blog about in 20 years. But for me, in many ways, there was nothing like the music that defined the Album Rock period that ushered me through those teen years. It’s one thing to have a good song, but an Album, for many musicians, was a concept, a whole, and there was not only the music, but the art on the cover, the liner notes, the stamp on the disc… it was a feast. What do you get in an iTunes download? Just bits. So I had a hankering to come up with a list of ten albums that were formative to me- not the ten best albums [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by myoldpostcards It’s hard to stay shiny. A few weeks since moving to Chrome for my primary browsing, a few dents: Lack of Java. Not supported. Just means I have to launch Safari to sit in an Elluminate webinar. Very minor damage, just an annoyance. Irregular frame targeting. Some of the messaging from windows to frames seems amiss, most notably in using phpMyAdmin where some queries seem to pop into its own tab. Just a scratch we can ignore. Inability to render RSS. Put a URL in your Chrome bar for any RSS feed- whadyya see? Raw code. Yechhh. to see the RSS you have to view the source. Unsightly and embarrassing if your neighbors see that dinger. The dreaded “Aw, Snap” I cant do anything screen. Some pages just bork- this one was for a Paul Saffo ComputerWorld article. From what I can sense, [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by ooki_op iPad. That’s it. iPad! Yep. iPad. Got one? iPad… Nope. I sit on the sidelines taking in the iPad frenzy. Over the last few months, rarely have so many firm opinions been founded on so much lack of actual information. but now that changes. A bit. I have a hunch there will be two types of people. Those who hate iPads and those who have one. (woosh is the sound of me ducking). The Cory Doctorow slam is that if you cant rip it apart or code unix on it, it’s no good. Of course what can I say, the dude got like 12,000 comments on a post. Hell no, its not a hacker’s machine. So what? I am looking around my house at many appliances I use but don’t feel the need or desire to pry open and hack- my Samsung TV, [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Luca Zappa This is more of a narrowly constructed and certainly not data-driven observation, and I admit at the front that I am just as much a part of the problem as the next node, but I am seeing in my own streams of communications more dropped connections all the time. Sure, in the days of cards and letters, the receipt of a warm letter lead to the reflex of a reply, and carrying the letter writing modes of conduct into the first years, decade of electronic mail, there was a similar pattern. I wrote, you replied, I replied, you replied, and it ended at some mutually understood point when there was nothing more to say. I wonder what was the recognition part that this had been reached? Does it just happen more quickly now? Of course now we have all these different streams [...]