One year on, time to ramble
Today marked the end of an era, well not quite but I shipped my iPhone 3G off to its new owner so as of now I am a phoneless man. I haven’t been without a phone for over 10 years but prior to the iPhone I don’t think that not having a phone would have bothered me too much.
The iPhone is my go to device for everything and probably gets used far more than any other phone I’ve had.
Need to find somewhere, don’t ask someone, just use google maps
Need to find the nearest store, don’t ask someone, just use yelp
Want to catch up with your friends, don’t call them, use facebook
Casual browsing, chess games, keeping track of my runs, sharing it with everyone (regardless if the content is missed among the Digital cacophony), random app purchases.
The list goes on and on and on and on
I think I share too much, perhaps that’s due in part to my work from home job, which by its very nature implies a removal from normal day to day social interaction. By putting so much of myself online I am reestablishing a connection with textual representations of people, even if the connection is tenuous at best. I’m not complaining, I am grateful for twitter and facebook as it keeps me sane to a small degree but I am interested to see how these next two weeks go by (24th is iPhone 4 launch date), I suspect not much will change as I’m not expected to be away from home for any great length of time.
I am supposed to get the iPhone 4, its the logical choice but I can safely say that no phone out at the moment has that WOW factor, that instant kill, instant sell factor. Perhaps I won’t get it, perhaps I could simply not replace it or get a simple phone. Learn to communicate and search out things without telling anyone remove the digital crutch and find out whether technology is the great empowerer that I believe it is.
I do believe it, I do .
But this is an unusual situation I’ve always had the next phone lined up, like a junkie, ready prepared. Do I really need twitter and Facebook? Probably not, in fact definitely not are they distraction masquerading as aids? Possibly.
Perhaps I’m just going through the 7 stages of grief. Why? Because the iPhone was my first smart phone and because I’m one of many sad people that ascribe far too much to a digital device.
Screw it, I’m going to find a phone box, can some one text me the……..
Research
Where do you get yours?
I got into a discussion with my girlfriend about BSF (That’s Building Schools for the Future), although with the Tories now in power it looks to be in doubt so the point may be moot.
Like all good discussions it should be based on facts and evidence, but I didn’t have any to hand and I can’t recall many if any papers on the impact of BSF on learner attainment and achievement. So I’m going to be looking into it in more detail to see what’s what and any interesting links will be collated in here or on twitter 🙂
Hack Different?
I’ve been messing around with my netbook (an Advent 4211 – Think an uglier MSI Wind). Some of you may know my usual success when it comes to fiddling with things, but this time round I had a reason.
My netbook used to run Windows XP, that was until the harddrive died in spectacular fashion (second time its happened this year, both times the hard drives ended up as coasters). This happened the day I bought a shiny new 6 Cell battery, as my previous 3 cell was only giving me 20 minutes worth of power.
So I had a netbook that could only BSOD, but at least it could BSOD for four hours!
Typical.
However, way back last year I installed OSX on external hard drive when the hackintosh thing first bursted on to the netbook scene. I hadn’t made the full jump as running an OS over USB is cludgy, bulky and I didn’t use the netbook due to the aforementioned battery issue. So I went back to XP and left the hard drive to one side.
Until two days ago, when the XP drive died and I was left without means to re install XP (I’d left my external Dvd drive at a friends), so I installed the OSX drive and was back up and running fairly quickly.
And it was good and for a time things were fine. I made baby steps into OS X, found out what Expose was its shortcuts and how easy it was to install applications, the usual Mac transition joy.
I should have stopped there….. I didn’t
I had the good sense to check out software update and on seeing on their being an update to 10.5.8, had the really smart idea of click the break button (in this case named install updates).
The update installed and I restarted, the result was someone similar to this:
well truth be told I had a kernel panic (that’s right my Mac had taken a turn for the Emo), as I was greeted by this lovely image when I restarted:
And I hadn't got a dvd drive to sort it out
Let’s review:
- I had a shiny new battery and a working netbook
- I then had a shiny new battery and a broken netbook
- I then had a shiny new battery and a shiny new operating system
- I then had a shiny new battery and an apparent out of date operating system
- I then had a shiny new battery and a updated shiny new operating system, that hadn’t been restarted
- I then had a shiny new battery and a coaster
Now doesn’t that sound like progress!
So I admitted defeat and went to bed, cursing my fiddling until it breaks nature.
The next day I popped round my friends house and regained my external dvd drive and set to sorting out my hackintosh. I was decided that I would try out OS X even though I could now reinstall Windows XP, as during the 30 minutes I had a working copy of OS X I saw enough to convince me that it was worth the time.
So I was all set to reinstall and then I saw that this:
It's a Snow Leopard
So why go with a proven hackintosh capable OS, when you can try something that could be buggy and untested?!
So I did, luckily I found a ISO that was set up for the Wind and apart from the com.Apple.Boot.plist pointing the boot loader to the wrong partition and breaking, necessitating alot of this:
Want to hack da mac, get used to using this....
But plists aside it was a pretty seamless process and most things work (trackpad, wifi, camera, sound etc), the only thing that is currently broken is the built microphone, but that’s a small price to pay imo. Even updating to 10.6.3 didn’t prove to be too onerous.
So after three days I’ve got a working netbook with Snow Leopard 10.6.3, and a shiny new battery:
The Finish (non broken) Article
None of this would have been possible without the tireless work of those intrepid members of http://insanelywind.com/forum, truly have I stood on the shoulders of geeks.
So, what have you been up to?
Like a bee but not suffering from CCD, like all blogs this has fallen by the wayside, in favour of twitter for quick and dirty postings.
But I’m back at home for a couple of days, so what have I been up to?
Driving and Flying mostly, I’ve spent more time in a plane in the last two months than in the previous five years! From visiting LEA’s in Blackburn to catching up with collegues in Hemel Hempstead, to spending a week at our main office in Belfast, its certainly been hectic!
By the numbers I’ve had 4 flights and driven 838 miles in the last 4 weeks alone.
Combine that with a lack of internet connection on the go, you can understand why blogging has somewhat fallen by the wayside….
So what’s been happening, we’ve had LOTS of new mobile devices like the HTC Desire, EVO 4G and Palm Pre Plus, the iPad has launched and an election has been called.
For the rest of the week, I’ve got to assess the required functionality for the VLE we’re putting into Blackburn and hopefully get more than 4 hours sleep a night….
May we live in interesting times!
New Job
I started my new job this week, after nearly three years at South Essex College. I had been looking at new roles for some time, but the recession had hit recruitment quite hard, making the market even more competitive.
But I did eventually find a new role, after alot of false starts, I am one of two E-Learning Consultants for Northgate Managed Services. It’s quite different from any of my previous roles, I’ve dropped web development completely, which is a massive change for me as most of my previous roles have featured development in some manner. This role will entail me providing advice and guidance to allow Northgate to offer a better product, tailored to suit partners needs.
It’s also a home based role, apart from when I’m visiting the office (Belfast) or clients, it will be interesting to see how this change in location will effect me, I’ll be using this blog to document it alongside everything else.
Windows phone series seven
Bad name, hell even the acronym sucks (wpss), but still yesterdays unveiling of the all new windows mobile operating system has sent shockwaves through the internet.
Like Palm, Microsoft has started from scratch, said goodbye to legacy apps and designed a mobile operating system for the future.
The cynic in me just sees that they’ve taken the Zune HD interface and whacked a phone onto it, but even if that’s the case its still one sexy looking device:
Credit Engadget
Compare that to the iPhone and Cupertino’s wonder phone looks, well….old.
Time will tell if that minimalism will help or hinder but it demonstrates the break that Microsoft has made with the past.
Ultimate tools for Lecturers
I’ve showed this to my colleagues:
Just imagine giving every Lecturer one of these
It’s a briefcase containing the following:
- MacBook Pro
- Video Camera
- iPhone
- Digital camera
- iPhone Dock
It also has:
Integrated charger!
A one socket charging solution that means with one cable you can charge all of the devices inside! Very impressive kit!
So we got to thinking what would we change? This is what we came up with:
- Laptop
- Pico Projector & projection screen
- Video Camera
- Digital camera
- Digital recorder
What would you put in your E-Learning Briefcase?
Designing the perfect device for education
Come dear reader to a wonderful world, free of the cuts of the impending recession, where optimism and hope are abundant!!!
That’s right kids, its time to purchase a one way ticket to imagineering land!
And guess what, this isn’t another gosh, gee whizz isn’t the iPad amazing!!! type post (I think three is enough for now), this topic is about creating the best device for education, the device needs to be able to handle the following:
- Suitable for multiple users of all ages and abilities (inc users with a visual/physical impairment)
- Wireless connection
- Ability to connect to remote storage
- Ruggedised
- 5 hr + battery life
- Reasonable horsepower
Apart from that, the world is your oyster, comment or tweet me
Edit sketched out some thing on my notepad:
It's the right way up....
Too many layers
Continuing on from my previous post about the iPad (and its shortfalls), I’ve been thinking about it from another perspective i.e. an educational one (suprising eh?).
The latest buzz in education for the last couple of years has been netbooks moreso than mobile phones , which in the majority of cases are still too clunky and lack sufficient screen estate to make them useful for lessons. However if we look to institutions like ACU (who’s connected program was the first to give students iPhones and iPod touches for educational benefit both in and out of class), we can see that that a device such as an iPhone lends itself well to aiding teaching and learning.
Why does the iPhone succeed where other mobile learning projects have failed? Because its intuitive This is so often overlooked when it comes to e-learning tools, first impressions count, if users (and I’m containing teachers and students within this term) can’t make something work, they’ll drop it and move on.
I’ve tested this myself, give the iPhone to someone who hasn’t used it before and they will know how to use it, as the majority of the controls make sense.
So why has education been so interested in netbooks? They’re certainly attractive:
- Small form factor
- cheap
- sufficient performance for web and document writing tasks
I am a netbook owner ( for just under two years now), its far better than the Toshiba Satellite A50 it replaced. That is not to say its not without flaws. It’s battery doesn’t last long enough and the screen resolution is annoying, seriously who thought 1024 x 600 would be a good idea? I wouldn’t even classify myself as a power user, all I do on mine is surf the net and download stuff and yet it’s grunt is rarely sufficient for even that, if you are surfing a website/forum with many images or embedded videos you soon start to experience slow down.
But you can see the benefits, a £200 netbook that can act as an resource locator for lessons is far better than investing £400 in a laptop to do the same thing.
So if we agree that netbooks are great in concept, but flawed in execution why are we giving them to our students? Surely we want to give our students the devices that will enable them to excel?
Because there wasn’t anything better at the time
But I don’t think that this is the case, I now spend probably equal amounts of time at home surfing the net on my iPhone as I do my netbook (that in itself is a major milestone that a mobile device can even compete) and for pure passive information gathering, something like an iPhone is hard to beat.
The main reason I feel the netbooks suffer is that the os (be it Linux or Windows) offers too much functionality. For a device sold and marketed on the principle of giving you quick and easy access to the internet on the go, netbooks don’t really achieve that with any great level of success. A Windows XP install will probably take 1-2gb at a minimum and I would happily say that you could probably do without a lot of it. All that functionality bogs the machine down and makes it harder to achieve its core goal surfing the internet. So it stands to reason that the iPad will probably overtake my netbook as my surfing device of choice because it will do exactly what I need of it, with no bloat, no fuss and no mess.
That’s not to say its perfect (far from it), for students the lack of flash (and thus removing access to the range of e-learning tools & services based on it) and the ability to easily create and store documents (unless file structures etc.. are revealed later on) are thorny issues but I can see that young students will be able to interface better with an interface with a touch screen than a mouse (point and click vs touch).
Regardless of your thoughts on the iPad I think it’s perfect for education as its cheap (relatively), secure, quick to boot and has a decent battery life. It’s ease of use (going on the iPhone interface) means that teachers will spend less time training students on how to use the device and more time using it to support and enhance learning and that’s got to be a good thing right?
iPads and web apps
It would appear that the world has ended, Apple’s iPad has failed to live up to expectations.
But has it?
I’m not much of a multitasker, the only things I really multitask are surfing the net, listening to music and using twitter.
All of which can still be done.
How? Through the browser, safari offers a decent browsing experience (I prefer chrome myself) and we can assume that like the iphone version the iPad Safari will also support tabbed browsing. So we can have multiple tabs open at once, which also means we can have multiple web apps running at the same time. It’s been done before with palms WebOs, as the majority of apps are based on html, css and javascript which can be viewed in browser.
Granted it may not be the most elegant or efficient way of doing it, but I can happily emulate alot of what I would need from a multitasking os with browser based web apps.
Has Apple inadvertently started the second web app age?
If not now, then when? 