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Posts Tagged ‘Tech News’

Show Notes – Make It Work Radio – 7/17/10

Written by Garvan Kuskey 0 Comments

Consumer Reports Stings Apple
The nation’s most trusted magazine on consumer products caused Apple a huge headache this week. This past Monday, Consumer Reports publicly recommended consumers AGAINST buying the iPhone 4 due to the widespread antenna problem. This hurt Apple’s reputation, and their stock took a dive by $10/share and also brought class-action lawsuits to recover damages. To reconcile this, Apple offers a 30-day money back policy, but people love lawsuits. In response, Apple deleted posts talking about Consumer Reports in their own forums and publicly stated that the iPhone 4 has the best reception of any iPhone to date. Despite this bold statement, they also publicly announced that you should buy a bumper.

This also helps Google significantly and with Android phone sales rising, more quality apps being developed.

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Full HDMI Support Comes To The Updated MacBook

Written by Make It Work Media Team 0 Comments

On Tuesday Apple quietly updated the Polycarbonite MacBook. This is the white plastic Macbook. To give us the 411 on what was updated, Wayne Dixon wrote a piece Tuesday on the MacBooks upgraded hardware entitled, “White MacBooks: New Innards, Same Look”. What was not known to him or anyone else is that Apple also updated the Mini DisplayPort to support audio and video with the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

Eric Slivka of MacRumors.com writes that Apple has posted a Support Document that illustrates the HDMI functionality.

“Mini DisplayPort (video out): Connect to an external display, projection device, or TV that uses a DVI, HDMI (audio and video) or VGA connector with a separate adapter.

According to a footnote regarding the HDMI compatibility, users should be sure to use a VESA-compliant adapter to enable the full capabilities.”

Basically, now you can use the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter to pass both audio and video through a single cable. In the previous MacBook you could only pass video through the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable. The only option for passing audio was to use the audio out port on the MacBook. This is self-defeating since HDMI is fully capable of passing both audio and video.

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Can Apple’s iPad Replace My Computer? | iPad vs Netbook

Written by Chris Foley 7 Comments

By Chris Foley

The first question out of people’s mouths when they see me hanging out in a café, working with my iPad, after we get past the “Wow that’s heavier/lighter than I expected” and of course, the “Wow, that is just COOL..” has been, almost unanimously “Can I replace my computer or my netbook with one of these iPads?”

Well, I didn’t really think much of it at first, but by the 3rd or 4th time I was asked this question, I started to realize that there was really something here.

Can the iPad seriously replace a laptop computer or a Netbook?

Well can it?
Most of my consulting clients are creative professionals; Filmmakers, Designers, Photographers, Music Producers, etc, and the simple truth is no, the iPad will not replace a professional-level workstation any time soon. However, as I think more and more about our normal customers, who represent the majority of all computers sold, whose technology needs are far simpler than these creative professionals, I realize that the story is somewhat different.

What IS the iPad?
Q: Is it just a big iPhone, or a big iPod Touch?
A: Yes. And much more.

Q: Is it just an underpowered laptop computer running a mobile phone operating system?
A: Yes. And much more.

Q: Is this thing the future of computing?
A: Yes. And much more.

The iPad will easily (and elegantly) handle the basic needs of many computer users. Let’s take a look at what we can do.

Web
Email and Web browsing are handled with the Mac Mail email application, and Safari, respectively. If you currently access your email via a web browser, than you can continue to do so on the iPad. The device connects to your Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail or MSN, AOL, etc.

The Safari web browser on the iPad is NOT a crippled mobile version of a web browser, as you’ll find on many mobile devices INCLUDING the iPhone.  Some sites do recognize iPad’s Safari as a mobile browser, and will deliver a mobile version of the site, but these sites very frequently have a control at the bottom of the page while allows you to switch from mobile view to normal page page view.  Twitter.com is a good example of this.  I’ve not run into any issues with this yet.

NOTE: I’m not a very big fan of safari on the iPhone, though I do recognize that before the iPhone came out, we were all trying to access the internet on mobile web browsers which really shouldn’t have been called “web browsers” at all.

Safari for iPad is a full-sized web browser which interacts well with every website that I’ve visited — with the obvious exception of all pages containing Flash content, which the iPad does not support.

Click HERE to view a showcase of Top-Level websites that function beautifully on iPad.

Social Networking
There are many Twitter and other social networking applications available for the iPad, similar to the assortment currently available for the iPhone/iPod. Also, the iPad will run all of your iPhone applications as well, though they don’t look very good on the iPad. There are thousands of apps already available for the iPad, with more coming every week.

Workflow
iPad does not support Microsoft Office products, such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. There are several Office-compatible applications available, however, such as Apple’s own Pages (a replacement for Microsoft Word), Apple’s Keynote (a PowerPoint replacement) and Numbers (an Excel replacement.) Now, I’ve already replaced my own need for Microsoft Office products by moving my workflow into Google Docs, which I can access from any computer no matter where I am in the world. There are already a handful of superb applications for the iPad which enable you to access and edit your suite of Google documents from the iPad.
Bottom line, you can work with word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, make flyers, etc.

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Green Tech Funding | China, South Korea take the lead

Written by Make It Work Media Team 0 Comments

Here’s a subject we could all be paying more attention to:  Green Technology, and Green Tech funding.  This article comes from CNET, and makes some promising points about China’s role in managing their own environmental impact in the technology sector. 

China may arguably be the world’s biggest polluter, but it seems the country is also the most serious investor in green tech.

A third of its economic recovery package was spent on green technology investment in the form of high-speed rail trains and infrastructure, wind energy, solar energy, and energy-efficient lighting. It equates to about 3 percent of China’s GDP (gross domestic product), according to a new United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) book released Wednesday.

The UNEP book, “A Global Green New Deal: Rethinking the Economic Recovery,” was published by the UNEP and Cambridge University Press (CUP). It was authored by Edward Barbier, the John S. Bugas professor of Economics at the University of Wyoming and a consultant to the UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative.

“Last year UNEP and its advisors recommended that countries which invest one percent of their GDP in environmental sectors could begin realizing this low carbon, resource efficient, green economy path,” UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said in a statement.

“Professor Barbier’s book underlines that while some economies have seized this opportunity, others have not: with the exception of several Asian economies, there remains a gap between ambition and action,” Steiner said.

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Netflix Streaming, beyond the computer

Written by Chris Foley 1 Comment

My wife and I are big Netflix fans. We don’t have cable TV, or Dish, or Direct, or any of the other ways of bringing broadcast television into the house. As an advocate for moving everything over to digital media, I do purchase the occasional movie or TV season from the iTunes store, but not with any consistency.

We’ve been Netflix users for about 3 years now, and have used the service to fully replace our Blockbuster membership. It seems a lifetime ago that I actually went into a store to rent a movie or video game.  Now we watch streaming movies online.

We’ve even considered paying for 2 memberships, because God forbid I should dare to interrupt her 6 season-long Northern Exposure streak with a South Park episode… I digress.

Arguing over the movie queue aside, Netflix’s Instant Queue product is one of the coolest innovations to come around in a long time. (If you’re not yet hip to streaming movies on your computer, click here to find out more about this). Headlines were made in 2008 when Roku released their set-top boxes, which connect to your WiFi network to bring Netflix streaming movies to your television. I was never very impressed with the image quality delivered through a Roku box, thus purchasing one for myself wasn’t of much interest.

Just last week Netflix announced to its customers that they were now able to deliver their Instant Queue product to customers who own a Nintendo Wii. Naturally, we ordered the free Instant Streaming Wii CD right away. It arrived in 24 hours (of course, those little red packages are the most reliable thing the US Postal Service has ever seen) and setup took all of 3 minutes.

The process was simple:
1. Insert Instant Streaming Wii cd into the Wii disk drive
2. Click on the Netflix item in the menu.
3. Providing your Wii is already connected to your home’s network, it dials into Netflix and gets an authorization code for you
4. Visit http://netflix.com/wii and enter your authorization code.
5. Wait about 18 seconds.

That’s it. Now you can access all of the movies available for Instant Viewing.

I queued up Beetlejuice, as a quality test. Well, I was pleasantly surprised when the movie started playing within 10 seconds of my having selected it. Also, I was blown away to discover the video quality was a crisp and clear as a DVD would be. I was not expecting that quality level at all.

As a final test, I went into the movie controller, and advanced the movie up past the 1 hour mark, and was utterly shocked when the wait time was just under 6 seconds! You can’t even advance or rewind that quickly with a DVD!

I for one, am completely convinced that Netflix Instant Streaming is the way to go, and I’m stoked to have it in my living room now, instead of just on my computer.

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On another note, Netflix has what must be the coolest app available for the iPad. I  set my iPad up on the kitchen counter, and watch streaming movies or TV episodes while I prepare dinner.

For those who are still asking out loud what on Earth is an iPad good for, here’s reason #47: Portable TV/Entertainment center. Duh.

Thanks for reading!
~ Chris

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