Eddie and the iPhone…

My friend and fellow technophile, Eddie, has a fantastic post over on his blog, Practically Efficient.

His feelings pretty much sum up my own. Apple has done some amazing things for mobile technology, but for me, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to jump full-on into the Apple ecosystem.

Check out this fantastic post in full.

TQT: Queue YouTube to a Specific Time…

Ever have a long YouTube video that you want to share with others, but the good part is at the end? Well here is a nice little fix for you.

Since I gave my iPad the boot last week, I thought it was only fitting to demonstrate this technique with a Blendtec video of an iPad getting bent in half, shoved in an industrial blender, and pulverized into a powder.

The link for the video usually looks like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko

If you click that link, you will end up watching entire 1 minute and 40 second clip. It’s very entertaining and you should definitely watch it.

If you want to get straight to the good stuff, you would want to start the video at the 55 second mark. You can easily have YouTube do that for you by adding the following to the end of the link:

#t=0m55s

You can modify the 0 and the 55 to whatever you want. The final link will then look like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko#t=0m55s

Bam! iPad demolished!

If you want to watch another cool video starring The Digitante In Action!, check out the video below. If it doesn’t show up, click here to watch it at the YouTube site.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/JC5Qyqy7Pyg&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

iPad: Here and Back…

About a week and a half ago, I stood in line for about an hour and a half waiting for an iPad at the local Apple Store. I brought it home and Mrs. Digitante was very excited, as was I.

Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out and I’m going to share with you why. First though, let me tell you that this is my opinion of why it didn’t work for ME. However, it may fit your needs great and I already know of a number of people who have an iPad and love it and are spending many hundreds of dollars buying apps and accessories for it.

The Pros:

• The screen is amazing. You really haven’t ever seen a screen that is this crisp and pleasant to look at.
• It is super fast. Granted it can only run one application at a time, but I never had to wait for anything other than webpages to load.
• Simplicity is the name of the game. One button on the device, little icons on the screen, and minimal options to change are all Apple hallmarks. There really isn’t much thinking or learning involved.

The Cons:

• Lack of Flash video. Honestly, I didn’t think this would be a huge deal, but the problem is that it ruined my flow of work. I enjoyed reading Twitter on the iPad, but during a reading session, I would come across at least one or two videos that I wanted to watch, but wasn’t allowed to. This means that I had to mark the tweet as a favorite, get on my laptop later, and then watch the video. It just wasn’t convenient.
• Basic staples such as a file system are missing. I purchased an eBook in pdf format on my laptop and put it in my Dropbox because I knew there was a Dropbox app for the iPad. I was sorely disappointed when I found that I couldn’t just save the pdf to my iPad and open it with the default pdf program. Instead, I had to purchase an app that would allow me to access the files in my Dropbox app and open it in the pdf reading app. I only knew this because I know other techies that have had to do this. Otherwise, I would have been stuck. For all the simplicity Apple loves, this simple task was really complicated.
• The iPad costs $500. Over the last week and a half, I’ve tried to come up with $500 worth of usage scenarios and I just can’t do it. If this thing was $300, I wouldn’t have even thought twice about buying it, but $500 really makes me hesitate.

So after a couple of days of both me and Mrs. Digitante playing with it, I asked her what she thought. We were on exactly opposite ends of the spectrum but came to the same conclusion: it was more than she needed and it was less than I wanted so we decided to eat the $50 restocking fee and return it.

When I say “it was more than she needed” she was looking for an eReader like the Kindle. Having all the apps and other features weren’t appealing to her and really over complicated it for her. When I say “it was less than I wanted” I wanted to be able to pick up a device and have it do everything I required. Type a reply to a  Wordpress forum post? Nope, no text boxes were editable. Watch video linked in Twitter? Nope, sorry, Flash doesn’t work. Install any number of applications that I wanted? Nope, only what Apple approves through the App Store using their clandestine and inconsistent rules.

Will I miss it? Most likely not. It’s been sitting in our bedroom, unused, for the last three days. Normally I get all giddy and can’t put gadgets down, but this thing turned old hat very quick.

Did you buy an iPad? What was your opinion? Let me know what you think of the iPad, even if you don’t have one.

More iPod Loading Without iTunes…

I realize that last night TQT was missing but it will be back next week as my Tuesday night schedule should be easing up a bit.

A couple of weeks ago, I highlighted how to load up an iPod Shuffle without using iTunes because of some major issues I’ve had with iTunes in the past (read here and also here). This post will fill in the blanks for those of you using iPod versions other than the Shuffle. Unfortunately, this method does NOT work with iPhones and also requires you to sync your iPod with iTunes and load at least one song on there. I, personally, would recommend you do this on your friend’s computer rather than loading that piece of garbage on your computer. Now, off to the races.

The program we are going to be using is called Floola. Floola is a free side project by a helpful chap, so I would highly recommend donating if you like the product.

Start by downloading Floola here and be sure to extract the zip file to your iPod’s base directory. If you go to My Computer, you should see the C: drive and a couple other drives. On of them (E: on my computer) is the iPod. Double click it and you will see a couple of folders named Contacts, Calendars, Notes, and an see-through folder called iPod_Control. This is where you want to unzip your Floola folder to. Head over to the folder you extracted the files to and double click on Floola.exe.

The first task you need to do is choose which model of iPod you have. If you aren’t sure, you can visit Apple’s model identification guide. Floola will also give you some suggestions. It suggested that my iPod Nano 2G was either a 1G or a 2G (where G stands for generation). It also gives you some warnings and instructions, so be sure to read them through.

Once you hit save, you are pretty much home-free. At this point you can add tracks, delete tracks, manage photos stored on the device, and do pretty much everything else iTunes did.

A huge added bonus is that Floola is now saved on and runs from your iPod itself. That means if you visit anyone’s computer, regardless of whether they have iTunes or not, you will be able to update your music, photos, and podcasts using only the information on your iPod.

Have you tried any other alternatives to iTunes that worked for you? Found any hidden gems on Floola that cemented the deal for you? Share in the comments!

Ignite Indianapolis 2010…

Just to recap from last night because I’m lazy:

I attended an event called Ignite Indianapolis. The premise is there is a docket of speakers who are equipped with a Powerpoint presentation and the subject can be whatever they want. The catch is, each slide shows for exactly 15 seconds and there are 20 slides, so the full presentation is 5 minutes (it is also referred to as Pecha Kucha). Timing and pace are everything: some presenters hit their next point exactly as the slide flipped, others rushed through their thought as slides kept turning despite their fumbling of words, and others had speeches with long pauses waiting for the next slide to appear. It’s amazing how long and short the same 15 seconds can feel. I will cover all the presentations with some critiques tomorrow.

Hey! What do you know? Here are the critiques and comments in order of appearance in the program:

1. Ken Christie, President, The 543 Group – He used to work for Disney as an “Imagineer.” What that means is he came up with all the cool rides and displays you see when you go to Disney World. Due to the format, I didn’t get to delve into what he invented and worked on which would have been pretty awesome, I would imagine. Imagineer? Anyway, he went through the process for being creative and it was pretty cool to see something as off-the-cuff as being creative has a structure to it.
2. Dustin Wortman, Student, Ivy Tech – Dustin was, mostly by self-admission, an Anime nerd. I’m not really into Anime, but he did a nice job of covering information on Anime, Manga, and Hentai. Fun fact: Hentai literally translates to ‘pervert.’ Alright then. If you don’t know why that significant, I would recommend NOT Googling it at work.
3. Ann Edwards, Design Strategist, Point Brake – Earlier today I read and commented on Ann’s blog. She certainly looked nervous but her statistics that she presented were pretty amazing. I can’t remember them off the top of my head, but they involved massive exposure gains by companies when they did simple redesigns of product packaging and other small changes with huge impact. Maybe Ann will swing by and post some stats or a link to her presentation.
4. Joe Wilkert, GM & Publisher, O’Reilly Media – I was disappointed by this one. The title was ‘iPad: Important or Irrelevant’ but I’m not sure why the term irrelevant was even included in the title. The entire presentation was a big, fat iPad love fest. I think it’s save to say Joe has an iPad on order with Apple.
5. Stacie Porter-Bilger, CEO, Hoosier Academy – I was extremely interested in this one because Hoosier Academy is a school where the students only go to the physical school grounds once a week. The rest of the time, they are completing homework online. It felt very relevant to me. Having a pair of 1-year olds who are growing up quickly will do that to a person.
6. Daniel Poynter, Founder, GNIC.org – Daniel is in the midst of an experiment (or art project, as he calls it) where he found a person and asked them, “Who is the awesomest person you know?” He then went to the person that was awesome and asked them the same question. Additionally, he is recording all the conversations he has along the way. There were some very interesting responses in there.
7. Jason Moriber, Principal, Wise Elephant – This was far and away the most entertaining of all the presentations. Jason was bounding around the stage, waving his hands, and generally being a complete lunatic. His slides were hand drawn on a whiteboard and very clearly described what he was talking about. The same speech given orally only would have been a snooze-fest, but the active, visual way Jason presented created a huge impact in my brain.
8. Kevin Makice, PhD Candidate, IU – The thing that I loved most about Kevin’s presentation was his cadence. He didn’t match what he was saying to each slide, but it didn’t matter because he was making points that were already impressed on your brain by prior slides. Example: He spend the first 5 slides talking about robots in general and in the meantime slides flashed up with phrases on them. On the sixth slide, he rehashed those five phrases. I felt prepared and I also felt like it was ingenious.
9. Bob Mattax, Developer, Developer Town – Alright, when a presentation is called ‘Why Houses?’ and the guy works for a company called Developer Town, I just assumed he is a real estate guy. Who cares? Wow, was I taken for a loop when I found that he actually builds little “sheds” for software developers. Here’s how it works: you have these little plug-in-able houses on wheels. They have a light on the outside that indicates the occupant is busy, customized paint and features, and windows so you can see in your coworkers house. These little houses are supposed to be placed in a warehouse which is far less costly than an office cube-farm. Outgrow your warehouse? Unplug, wheel them in a truck, take them to a larger warehouse, and plug them back in. Amazing concept.
10. Brian Shafer, Co-owner, Walnut Valley Bison – This presentation made me hungry – both for a nice bison burger and for a tour of the bison farm. The visuals in this presentation were stunning: piles of bison skulls 30 feet high and 2,200 lb beasts staring down the camera. Not to mention, I would have never expected a presentation at this sort of even geared toward bison.
11. Dan Miller, Owner, VCS Indy – This presentation probably was struggling the most for timing and content. Dan under-estimated the amount of time each slide was going to take, relative to his speech and was playing catch up the whole time, even skipping parts that he couldn’t get to in time. As for content, I find computer viruses to be a quasi-interesting subject, however, I’m not sure this was the crowd for it. I’m guessing half the crowd was against him because they were Apple fanboys to begin with. In the end, no solutions were offered – just information – which made the whole thing feel kind of pointless. Dan, if you point out a problem, you HAVE to offer a solution.
12. Doug Karr, CEO, DK New Media – While other presentations may have been more interesting, informative, or entertaining, Doug’s resonated with me the most. I’ve worked in corporate America for nearly 10 years and there is nothing I hate worse than meetings. They keeping you from doing what you need to do, you get more work while you are there, and the people running them have no idea what they are doing until they take your idea and use it as their own. Wow, so frustrating. Meet or die? I’d rather die.

If anyone has a link to all the presentations, I would love to see that in the comments. Additionally, if you were a presenter, let me know how you feel about my critiques! And don’t worry, I plan on presenting at the next Ignite Indianapolis so I may rue the day I ever laid into these guys…

Load an iPod Shuffle Without iTunes…

Before we get started, note that this tutorial is for the iPod Shuffle only. We’ll get to other iPods later, don’t worry.

It is fairly well documented around these parts that I’m not a huge fan of iTunes (read here and also here). It is easy to find a new music player and manager (I mostly use foobar2000), but it much more difficult if you own and iPod.

Apple loves making beautiful, functional products, but then they manage to lock you into everything Apple. In order to use your Apple iPod, you have to use Apple iTunes. Want to use the gorgeous and simple OSX? You can only use it on a Mac (well, almost ‘only’).

I bought a iPod Shuffle because I loved that it was super compact, had good battery life, had a durable aluminum shell, and was nice and inexpensive. When I first got it, I used a program on Linux called gtkpod since iTunes isn’t made for Linux. I no longer have my Linux PC around so I was searching for a way to load music on my iPod Shuffle without iTunes and I found an amazingly simple way: iShuffle.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make sure you’ve either uninstalled iTunes from your computer or be sure to uncheck the box that automatically launches iTunes when you plug in an iPod.
2. Go to the iShuffle site and download the ‘iShuffle-without-iTunes.zip’ file. Open it and move to Step 3. We’ll use this zip file for Step 4.
3. Plug in your iPod Shuffle. Now click on “My Computer” or “Computer” and you should see your iPod showing up. Go ahead and double click on the iPod to view it’s contents.
4. Go back to the zip file from Step 2 and open it. Extract the file labeled ‘iShuffle.exe’ on to your iPod Shuffle. It should go on the iPod directly (in the root), not in a folder. In the above example, it should go in E:\.
5. You will need to create folder named Music to put in that same location. After you create the folder, its location should be E:\Music in the example above.
6. You can now load any music you want in the Music folder. After loading the music, double click the iShuffle.exe file to build the playlist and finish up the process!

Note that if you make any changes to the music located in the Music folder, you have to re-run the iShuffle.exe file to re-build the playlist.

If you are lacking some decent music to listen to on your iTunes-free iPod Shuffle, be sure to head to Amazonmp3.com to download some new tunes.

We’ll discuss Floola soon for managing iPods other than the Shuffle soon, but do you have any other media managers that you use in place of iTunes? I’m looking for some new running music, so be sure to let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions!

Friday Night Links (1/1/2010)…

Anyone make a New Year’s resolution? I didn’t (or haven’t yet). If you did, let me know in the comments.

Please note that tomorrow is a palindrome day as the date in MMDDYYYY format will be 01022010. What a math nerd I am.

Now for the links:

• GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle (http://thedig.in/8v) – Update: Looks like this one is no longer working. Sorry! It’s exactly what it sounds like: you can do four simultaneous Google searches on one screen. Why would you ever need this? “Well, huh, might as, might as well ask why is a tree good? Why is the sunset good? Why are boobs good?” And now you can use one of your four Google searches to find out what movie that quote was from.
• Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone (http://thedig.in/8w) – Ever wonder what everyone was saying about the iPhone before they knew there was an iPhone? Some got it dead on by suggesting touchscreen, gaming, and GPS. Others looked like big goofballs by suggesting that Apple and BlackBerry were teaming up for a device called the AppleBerry. Stop it. In a couple of years I plan on running a similar post to this with a link to the Speculative Prehistory of the iSlate. Or whatever the heck it ends up being called.
• What to Wear: Runners’ Edition (http://thedig.in/8x) – Mrs. Digitante got a heartrate monitor for Christmas and plans on running a four mile run for St. Patty’s Day. It’s always tough to tell what to wear, especially if you are a novice runner. Runner’s World has a tool for figuring out the best attire for whatever conditions you might face. I generally over-dress for my winter runs and end up peeling off a couple of layers and have to carry the stuff with me. I’ve learned my lesson and have planned for about 10 degrees warmer than I initially feel. I’ll have to check out this guide an see how it does at dressing me.

Top Posts for 2009…

By far, the most popular feature on The Digitante was Friday Night Links. It’s probably my favorite post each week as well.

However, I want to give a run-down of the most popular individual posts at The Digitante. Without further ado, let’s get to the list.

1. Note Taking with Facebook – Getting picked up on Lifehacker certainly helped out on this post as it came in at around 600 visitors. It also stirred a bit of controversy as you can see from the comment section of the Lifehacker post. Mostly there were concerns with how Facebook handles privacy, but read on if you want to know how to deal with the privacy issue.
2. Sprint Store vs. Best Buy – When I initially wrote this post, it was a toss up as to who I would buy my next phone from. After continuing to consider the question and having some person experiences with both, I think I’ve landed firmly on the side of Best Buy. Sprint need to pull their head out of the sand and start offering an instant rebate. There is no way they can keep making people wait 8-10 weeks for their $100 check. People are just too price sensitive.
3. Meet The Digitante – Who would have known that everyone would be so interested in who I was and how I got to be where I am. I certainly would not have known it. I am glad I wrote this post because it gave me a chance to figure out who I am. Alright, inspirational speech time is over.
4. Build a Simple PC for $300 – If there was one thing I could do every day for the rest of my life, it would be to order parts and build computers all day long. The fact that I got to share that with everyone was really cool. I am currently designing a PC for a friend that will be used in a recording studio and another that will be used by me as a media center PC. I can’t wait to document that as well.
5. Empty a Water Bottle Quickly – Another hands-on, doing type of post. I am hoping to do some more instructional videos like this. I need to get a better camera for shooting video though.
6. Gifts for Your Techie – This isn’t necessarily one post, but all the gift guides were a hit. I’m hoping to do a little more on gift giving next year and hopefully start a bit earlier (Pre-Thanksgiving) so you have plenty of time to shop.
7. Facebook Privacy – If you use Facebook, this is a must-read post and I would highly recommend you spend 5-10 minutes and check out your privacy settings. I found some very disturbing things, especially regarding the amount of information that could be shared about me by others. I made sure to disable others’ ability to share vulnerable information of mine.
8. Mr. B Picks Up a Pre – This was actually the second in the In Action! series by The Digitante. Mr B was also kind enough to let you all know how The Digitante did. The first was Mr. G’s New TV, so be sure to read that one as well. If you have a tech need fulfilled and you want to be the next installment of In Action!, be sure to contact me and let me know.
9. A Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch – Apple rubbed me the wrong way for the last time. I’ve spent the last 3 months iTunes free and I’m loving it. I wrote about DoubleTwist which recently added the AmazonMP3 store to its interface. I wasn’t totally happy with DoubleTwist though. I’ve got foobar2000 installed currently and I’ve used it a little, but not enough to write about it. Also, Songbird recently added a slew of new features so I need to check that out as well.
10. Upgrade Your Wireless Router – This was a more technical article, but was perhaps the most doable for some setting up their first wireless router. I can’t recommend Tomato and the WRT54GL enough. If you are in the market for a new wireless router, this is the only way to go.

Let me know if you had any favorite posts from this year. What do you want to see more of in the next year? Toss it in the comments section!

Gifts for Your Techie: Sky's the Limit…

Alright, we’ve covered everything up to $1,000, so now its time to cover the things that most people just dream of. However, I’ll try to keep them somewhat practical (no, I’m not going to toss up a corporate jet or an island in the Pacific).

On to the big ticket items:

• Panasonic 65″ Plasma HDTV – So last night I linked to a nice plasma TV for about $650. For Sky’s the Limit night, there is no reason you wouldn’t just find the largest TV you can. Your immediate first thought is, ’65” is way to large for my livingroom’, but just let me tell you: it will seem much smaller once you get it in there. We have a 60″ HDTV (not plasma and not $4,000) and in retrospect, we should have opted for the 70″.

  

• Complete Home Theater System – Are you really going to watch that HD movie on those flimsy little speakers built into the side of your brand new 65″ plasma? I sure hope not. A Denon receiver with Definitive Technology speakers is the only way to go. With a setup like this, you can almost HEAR Happy Gilmore hitting the golf ball.

  

• Apple MacBook Pro 17-Inch Laptop – Giant screen? Check. Thin aluminum chassis? Check. Multitouch buttonless trackpad? Check. Backlit keys and LED screen? Check. Swollen sense of self-worth? Check. Bank account with lots of dollars in it? :cricket, cricket: This is a beautiful laptop and possibly one of the most desirable for most people. And really, how can you put a price tag on being awesome?

  

So there you have it, everything from sub-$100 to 5-digit home theater systems. If you want to check out all the posts in this series, just use the “gifts” tag.

If you have any other gift ideas with hefty price tags, be sure to leave a comment.

A Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch…

For the last four or five years, Mrs. Digitante and I have used iTunes to manage our music. We prefer to download the music at Amazon MP3, but after the download completes, it loads into iTunes. I am now thinking that my use of iTunes needs to change because Apple’s behavior over the past couple of years has irked me to the point that I’m ready to move on.

What happened?

For a long time, Apple had its own browser for Macs called Safari. They then decided to introduce a Windows version. Unfortunately, they were very underhanded about how they introduced it. They put it in the top section of the Apple Software Updater so it looked like they were upgrading a current program (“then” section), not installing a new program as it should have been (“now” section).

Basically, Apple was using their updater tool to fake people into downloading their browser. Although it is a good browser now, it was riddled with issues when it first came out. After a large outcry, they moved it to its current location as seen in the screenshot above.

All this over only one incident?

That was the first time I saw this but there is much more recent incident that occurred this week. On Monday evening, Apple provided an update to a program called iPhone Configurator Utility. Aside from the fact that configurator isn’t a word, this program was not actually an update, but a completely separate program that would be installed for the first time under guise of an update.

I don’t own an iPhone so I’m no sure why I was even a candidate to receive this program. As it turns out even most people who own an iPhone don’t need this utility since it more of a corporate tool to apply security policies to iPhones that belong to employees. That’s right, not only do you have to own an iPhone, but you also have to have received it from your employer.

Additionally there were some concerns about the fact that the program contained a web server which is a prime location for hackers to gain access to private information on your computer.

As you’ll notice from the screenshot above, Apple pulled the configurator software after a bunch of complaints. I’m really not sure how you don’t learn your lesson after the first time you try this stunt.

Seems a little sketchy

For a company that claims to cares about the user experience above all else, they certainly were taking advantage of their users in a pretty skeevy way.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to work on finding a new, better music player. I’ll be sure to let you know what I find. In the meantime, be sure to leave a comment with your favorite music application and I’ll be sure to check it out.