Category: tech

Want to know what’s happening? Listen to Twitter

news and notes, tech

Check out this story from Baristanet.com. This is just a snippet that I edited;  you’ll have to click on to read the rest of the story:

Last Friday night… an alert came over from Breaking News Network, which caught my attention:

*Smoke Condition*| Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), 10 Toler Pl| smoke condition in the control tower has all air traffic shutdown for the airports…

…we turned on the car radio to see if the local news had anything, but heard nothing…

I didn’t think any more about the incident until yesterday, when I read a blog post by Tom Evslin, chief technology officer for the state of Vermont, who happened to be sitting on a plane waiting to take off…Evslin, being a captive to the situation, tried harder than I did to find out what was going on. Using twitter he… (click here to read the rest: http://www.baristanet.com/2011/03/twitter-and-ewr/

 

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Has Apple has killed the desktop computer?

Notes, tech

Here’s what I mean: when I first started consulting I had two computers – I had a desktop to do the majority of my computing work and I a (less powerful) laptop for my presentations and for when I wanted or needed to work remotely.

When Apple came out with the iPad and now the iPad2 and then a hundred or so plus compatibles, it may have killed the need for the desktop computer. Today’s laptops are just as powerful as the older desktop and have as much power as most people need. If you need extra storage space, hard drives are cheap- you can buy a terabyte hard drive for under $70 and you no longer need to buy an expensive docking station to attach a monitor and a keyboard -you simply plug them into a USB port.

So your laptop is now becomes your desktop and if you want something smaller and lighter and more portable to do to do presentations, you grab an iPad or Xoom or a Blackberry Playbook- that’s going to be the new laptop. You don’t need a desktop unless you’re doing hard-core video editing or something similar. Today’s laptops are just as powerful as 95% of the desktops out there and I think proper desktops, for the most part, will disappear within three years.

PS: I wrote this first on my iPhone using dictation software then did some minor editing on the iPad. No desktop or laptop at all!

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What needs to happen next in the wireless world

Article, tech

Soooooo… I think we can call the iPad a hit. Apple sold 3 million in the first 80 days after launch.

There were about 80 ‘tablets’ that appeared at the recent CES.

That’s a lot of data being tossed through the airwaves.

So, listen up AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Metro PCS and anyone else I’ve forgotten to mention. Here is your next BIG winner. First one to do this will win customers BIG time:

Data Buckets

Huh?  Well, let’s say you’re on a Family-type plan now. You pay for (lets say) 1000 minutes and have 3 phones. It’s not that each phone gets 333.33 minutes. It’s a bucket of 1000 minute with 3 straws. You can ‘drink’ as much or as little as you want.

Do it with data. Every carrier has already killed off the unlimited data plan anyway. Give us 2GB (or whatever) of data and let us tell you how many ‘straws’ we want. I don’t care if it’s my iPhone, my tablet, my notebook or whatever. They all ‘drink’ from the same bucket. And don’t charge me for each device. If you want to charge something like $5 more (TOTAL) fine, but don’t nickle & dime me for each device. $30 (or so) for 2GB for as many devices on my account is a killer idea.

Go do it – now – before I buy my iPad 2.0

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