iPad

I'm typing this from my iPad this morning, the day after I received it via UPS. I wasn't sure it would make it to me, I was watching the shipment via the web, it got to me from China in less than 24 hours, when it got to my local facility, it appeared stuck in a warehouse, then at noon, just when I was about to give up, it showed up (according to the driver there was a miscommunication between apple and ups and the packages were all upgraded from Monday delivery to Saturday delivery at the last moment, requiring ups to bring on many extra drivers.).

So far I'm impressed with the device, some issues I'm not happy with, but it could be that I'm not familiar with the device. The first is email, the email client seems to always need to have an email open in it, I don't like this, I like to have my email open to a blank page or an email listing, but I guess I don't read email like Steve does, so I must be wrong. The other is the calendar, I have my calendar on Google, while my calendar connects to Google, it only seems to be downloading my default calendar, not all of my calendars on Google, not sure why, it works great on my iPhone.

iPhone apps work well on the iPad, but they work in a zoomed window, when you make the app larger, it appears a bit ugly (due to non-vectored images).

iPad apps are nice, the one from USA Today seems great, my mind goes wild after seeing this app. The NPR app is also very good. I've seen usability issues and crashes with all the apps I played with, I'm not sure if people really know how to exploit this type of a device given how they see people using it. Typing on the device has been tough, my fingernails are cut close! But the keep on tapping on the screen, some keys are odd, the shift key is in the wrong place and the comma must require a shift on a normal keyboard because I keep wanting to hit the shift key before hitting the comma. Netflix and ABC make this another good reason for the app, though both require wi-fi to work. I keep seeing apps crash, though after rebooting the iPad the crashes go away, I'm guessing there's a memory leak somewhere, I'm also guessing we'll see an OS update soon to fix this crashing.

Note Safari still doesn't handle web forms well on this device, sigh, this makes the iPad less of a cool tool for people who would like to blog online (to do my final editing of this blog I had to come back to my MacBook Pro).

There are VPN and RDP apps available, this could be useful for anyone in IT or anyone who has a computer controlled entertainment system, yeah that's right, the iPad could become a very cool remote control.

Should you get it? If you commute, I'd say yes, though you might want the 3G model. For business use I see a ton of applications, it could revolutionize business, especially research oriented applications, which is where I specialize. I'm dying to design and build out an app for it, hopefully I'll have that opportunity soon.

Late Breaking News on Twitter

This is more of an observation than anything else. I have been using Twitter for over a year now. Sometimes actively, sometimes not. I have both personal and business accounts on Twitter @pramsey and @qedmethods, I use the personal account to follow my cycling heroes and some people I think are interesting or funny. On the business side, I follow people who are more business oriented, either way I need to vet out who I'm following or who's following me.

Anyway back to the topic at hand. Lately I've seen Twitter used to keep track of the elections in Iran, bombings in India, power outages in Virginia or who won the latest version of the Bachelorette (just kidding, I don't watch the Bachelorette). What I feel is interesting is that for breaking news I'm going to Twitter now, I know that someone on Twitter knows about the issue, and can point me to information about it. An example is something that happened the other day. I was checking Twitter and discovered that one of my favorite cyclists, Taylor Phinney (@taylorphinney), was injured in a bike race (possible serious head injuries), I searched twitter and I found a message by his coach Axel Merckx (@axelmerckx) saying that Taylor was going to be fine (it was interesting because I found this out possibly before his father knew).

As I was checking out Twitter for news on Taylor, I was also searching Google for information, nothing had hit Google News concerning this issue, through Twitter I found out about the issue and the result along with video from the incident posted to YouTube, well before mainstream media and Google picked it up. I found it interesting how the "citizen" reporter got me information and a little research on my side quickly allowed me to find credible sources of information well before the news got it online. This should have Google a bit scared...

There are tools that will run automated searches on Twitter for you, they will allow you to search for topics that interest you. TweetDeck is a great example of this. I have a lot of interesting ideas, many think I'm foolish for being active on Twitter, but I'd rather be considered foolish by some, than left behind by the masses. Twitter is a place that you can spend a large amount of time doing something silly, but it's also a place where you can gain a large amount of information, if you properly apply the tools that are available. Businesses need to be more involved in reviewing what goes on in places like Twitter, and become active in their communities.

Low Tech!

I've found sometimes in order to appreciate what we have in this world of technology, that it's good to go low-tech from time to time. I'm very lucky to live in Northern Virginia, not because it's a fantastic place, but because it has a lot of history. I've made it a point to get out and visit several of the historic houses in the area, to see what people did, try to imagine sitting in these houses of luxury with no air conditioning, no electricity, no cellphones, and no internet (shudder).

I recently visited George Mason's house in Lorton Virginia. It isn't the best of the historic mansions (it is very nice though and in a beautiful area), but George Mason was an important part of US history (His Virginia Constitution was the basis of the US Constitution). In looking at his house it was interesting to realize the bricks were made locally (on site actually), the wood work was done by hand, work was done by master and apprentice (this is an interesting concept that is somewhat lost lately, well unless you get a good manager who can tutor you). In the case of Mason's house the woodwork was done by an indentured servant. It was great to see how the houses were built to allow ventilation, how extra bedrooms existed for surprise visitors (you could have a visitor for a dinner that gets stuck there due to weather or dark, these people didn't travel by car, it was either by horse, foot or boat).

I enjoy seeing these places, in the past year I've been to the Sully Plantation, Stratford Plantation, Kenmore Plantation, etc... All have been fantastic and show how people lived without technology. Even more interesting is what people of those days considered as high tech.

I also enjoy going to places where I don't need technology (or more importantly, CAN'T use technology). When I went to Boulder Utah it was fantastic, no cell service, no internet, nothing but outside, very nice. I was able to turn everything off (I haven't been for years, I hope they haven't "fixed" it). What's funny is the second I turned my phone on (because I could get coverage) it rang. I enjoyed going to Zambia, Africa for the same reason. I could get internet access in Zambia, but it wasn't consistent and sometimes it was more of a trouble to get things connected than it was to live in no technology bliss.

I suggest that while all this technology is fantastic, fun to play with, excellent to take apart, etc... That people take time to experience life without technology. It'll open your eyes, either show you how lucky you are, or possibly help you find a work around to an every day issue that you have been ignoring due to your technology crutch. If nothing else it will definitely help you change your perspective of what you have in your everyday world.

Google or Government and Privacy

Everyone is concerned about the Government, Credit Agencies, Spammers, Phishers, etc.. gaining too much information on their personal behavior, but very few seem to be too concerned about Google gaining too much information about them. Google is in a strange business of trading information for services for cash. How they do it is they give you fantastic free services, such as:

1) Gmail
2) Google Analytics
3) Google Voice
4) Blogger
5) Medical Records
6) Google Maps
7) WiFi Service
8) The list goes on and on

Now they are getting into Phones and recently I heard they want to outfit houses with meter readers. They must have been foaming at the mouth to get Twitter, but I understand Twitter has dumped them (now Apple is courting Twitter, I hope it doesn't go to Apple, they build great machines and OS, but seem to have lousy user applications).

Google monetizes this by selling the information for their advertising network, with more information they will become a warehouse for all info on everyone. I'm sure they obfuscate the information, so it's difficult to determine where it came from, but I'm also sure somewhere in the bowels of Google's empire is EVERY email that I've sent via GMail that has ALL my information in it.

There are a few concerns I have about all this information being centralized. The first is what sort of security measures are there around my information. This leads to, what does Google do with this information, they might not sell it now, but will they in the future. Google stores ALL of your information, including emails and websites visited. To me this is somewhat scary. Everyone looks at Microsoft as being evil, but Microsoft isn't into gathering all kinds of information on people, they want to dominate software and operating systems, I see Google as being the company to keep an eye on.

Now having said that, I do use plenty of Google properties for my online work. Why? Well because they are good, Google understands how to develop a good web application (or purchase established web applications). I'm getting careful about what I give Google, but as Google grows I'm not sure I'll be able to continue this.

SEO/Accessibility Convergence

A few months ago I was studying Accessibility (508 Compliance) for a series of websites, it was a real eye opener (no pun intended), many of the assumptions that I've made over the years regarding websites and their usage by people who are visually impaired were mostly incorrect, much of this was wiped out by watching one person use JAWS on a website. Many of the DIV elements and CSS that have been applied have been all for the visual gratification. I took a website and removed the styles, removed the images and JavaScript and was left with a site that was unusable. This is how a screen reader sees the site, without all the bells and whistles, to give the screen reader clues as to what is going on, you need to have Headings (h1, h2, h3, .....), yeah I know these elements have default styles associated with them, well remove the default styles with CSS, and apply new styles. More can be found about accessibilty on the W3C website.

Now you're asking, well that's cool, what does this have to do with SEO, well it seems that spiders, such as googlebot, are also blind, they can't determine hierarchy or importance from styles, they need hierarchy placed in the data to help determine what is going on in the data. If you code your sites for Accessibility, you'll most likely do very well in SEO scores. For SEO there are other items you'll want to add to your data, items such as meta tagging for description and keywords.

Be careful though not to try to use what are called "black hat" tactics with your website, this would be using keyword stuffing and link aggregation to help improve your scores, this will most likely cause your sites to be removed from the search index. Anything that you can read behind the scenes should also be visible one the page. If you have audio or video, then descriptions of the video and audio will help your score and your accessibility.

Overall both can be achieved with common sense, they aren't that difficult, they don't need experts, they do need planning and some marketing sense for your websites. Any developer can handle the technical pieces (it isn't that technical at all). If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Social Networking Virutal vs Reality

I got into playing with social networking as a way to educate myself. Being the observant person that I am I started to notice some trends. I've been talking about some of them with an online friend "C.W." who believes that treating an online Friend as you would a real friend is foolish, but after a while I think "C.W." is starting to have a different opinion of the matter. I've been toying with writing something about this in my mind, but then I saw the posting from The Bottled Leopard (who I don't know, but seems to be a very bright woman, you should check out her postings) and it kicked my ideas into the front of my head, well I guess to my fingers since I'm typing this.

I've been "playing" with the social networking site Twinkle for the past couple of months (actually for us old farts Twinkle is very much like CompuServe and Delphi back in the early 1990's, though no chat rooms in Twinkle). It's been interesting to see it grow from people just talking locally, to people talking all over the world. I've made "friends" and "enemies", I've had people attack me for no other reason than they are bored and I've had people try to seduce me for the same reason (not really into either virtually to be honest). For someone like me it's an interesting arena to play in because I'm a people person and I'm told I'm a natural flirt (I don't mean to do it honestly, it just happens, I think it's because I'm nice to people).

I've run into several kinds of people here, this isn't a complete list, but given my vast back ground in psychology, this is what I came up with (my vast background was a class in high school I think, but it was such a long time ago I consider myself an expert now, I can tell people that I've studied psychology for over 20 years, it's more than that, but I'm not telling my age without being asked nicely first):

Shock and Awe - These are people who will say something, anything to get a reaction from the crowd watching. It can be sexual, it can be mean, it can be a joke. I can do this very well myself, but I found over time it became boring. I prefer dealing with people vs shocking them. I've had a few people try to pick fights with me in shock and awe, they don't realize that it doesn't bother me and that I don't get flustered easy (it also helps that I'm relatively bright and much smarter than the people who do the stupid stuff).

People Persons - This is me, though with all the other people out there pretending to be someone else, it's tough to get people to believe that you actually want to be their friend, hold a conversation that doesn't involve body parts or foul language. In this role I've become counselor to several younger people (between 18 and 35), I've let others know that if they see something odd that I'm there to assist if needed. I've sat and listened to the kids tell me about their lives, most of them are good, but many are bad. When I see this I think it's a shame that the parents aren't more involved with their up bringing.

Hookups - I've had a couple of people start to proposition me online, but once they realize I'm there to be friends, they back off. My female friends online seem to be getting many offers, some have been shared with me and I find it a bit hilarious. I've had several friends have people want to meet them offline, for several reasons I see this as a bad idea. I'll get into it more below.

Casual Users - There are people who just post what their doing, they might respond to a question, most likely they will ignore you. They see this as an extension of Twitter and micro-blogging (which is it's intended use), not a chat room (which is what it's become).

Practical Jokesters - I like these the best, there is one guy on the site, who I've spoken with. He's a software developer, but he pretends to be someone who's very big in his business and very important. He posts one-sided conversations with himself, even making up names to respond to. It's interesting to see, not sure what his goal is other than making the extreme upper class look foolish, I'm not sure if he's doing that, but he's very entertaining.

Virtual vs Reality

I went into this swearing that I wouldn't break the line between the two, but as I've gotten to know people I see this line blurring some. Some of the people are great to meet on the phone or via email, other's I don't want to meet via either method, rather just have a virtual friend. I'm still not sure about meeting anyone in person, I think I would have to really get to know the person first or meet in a group. I try to leave all my PII (Personally Identifiable Information) out of any conversations, people email me at an address I've set up just for this kind of traffic (not that I have a lot, but as soon as people realize I know about computers, I start getting questions). I share what I do and my first name, but that's it. I have some "friends" who've shared too much information with me and with others, I really hope that doesn't come back and bite them.

I have developed virtual friendships that are very much like real friendships. We have fun together, chatting, but we also share our troubles, dreams and successes, we also have fights and make up. I would be as upset if anything bad happened to a virtual friend as I would if something happened to one in real life. The psychology behind this has got to be fascinating.

Everyone, myself included, is a little bit more attractive online, the reason behind this is that we don't drag a lot of our everyday baggage along with us. We can be who we think we are, instead of who we really are. No one has an accent (OK the people in the UK definitely have an accent when they type, not sure how they do that), and the few people I've spoken with on the phone all have accents, and they've all commented on my accent (I guess it's a little Southern, I know I should have told you before hand, so you could have read this with a Southern accent to start with, but I swear it isn't that pronounced).

Warnings

I see a lot of young people on here doing and saying very scary things. If I were a parent, actually I am a parent, I wouldn't let my child anywhere near these applications. These applications are not for the young, period, even if it was a site with other young children I would question letting my child use it without supervision. They also aren't for the easily embarrassed or upset. I see many people who loose their lid and start "flaming" everyone and everything, they would be better off with a beer watching TV. There are also people who go out and provoke fights, they'll call you names, etc... Best to ignore them, if you can't, then you should be elsewhere.

Also note if someones too perfect, too pretty, too willing to do what you want, too nice, they might not be what or who you think they are. Be very careful with perfection, people are flawed.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think these sites are interesting places to kill time, they can be extremely addictive. Be very careful about who you make friends with, people will try to make you believe something they aren't, including guys pretending to be women. Do not let your children on these sites and don't post anything that your mother or pastor would be upset in seeing. They are a good place to have fun, but realize that's all it is. The friends you need to vet carefully, but over time you 'll be able to tell friends from foe.

Browser Wars :)

It looks like with the new release of Chrome we have a new set of browser wars to contend with. These kind of excite me and scare me at the same time. It's great to see competition, nothing will push someone like Microsoft to do something more than to see their turf being walked on. I've heard people say Chrome is better than other browsers, I'm not sure about that, I'm sure it's better in some areas and worse in others. We also had a release of Firefox, the upgrade to Firefox was simple enough (I was impressed with how it kept my current session state when I upgraded), and now we have rumors of MSIE 8.0 coming out soon. Again it's great to see competition, but I'm wary of rocky times ahead.

Compatibility Issues

What's going to most likely happen is that each of the developers of major browsers

1. MSIE
2. Firefox
3. Safari
4. Chrome

will have interpreted the standards differently (either by accident or on purpose), this difference will cause fits for developers I'm sure. In the end the developers will need to code to the least common denominator within each browser and develop pages that need to be overly simplified. In the old days between Netscape and MSIE this posed huge issue, since Netscape wasn't as robust in it's language as MSIE. The two also had different interpretations of the HTML code itself, which required you to shove browser sniffing javascript to tell you what to show to the browser (major hack).

I guess the question that needs to be figured out is will any of the changes implemented actually be usable given the incompatibility questions. I think the answer is yes over time.

Chrome Privacy Mode

This is the mode that all cheating spouses and kids wanted. It allows you to go online and not collect any cookies or leave any digital finger prints behind as to what you are doing. Of course this is pushed as a privacy addition to keep third parties from tracking your path, but if that's the case why not just build that into the browser directly? With Chrome it pops up a new window with a sneaky little spy in the corner. This is cute, I just wonder how much it will preserve your privacy? I mean unless you start going through a proxy server then the server you hit will have your IP address and be able to gain some information about you from that (My iTouch can get pretty close to the location of my house via my IP address). Of course Google and others really want you to go through a proxy server, that way they have ALL your information for their own uses. People look at Microsoft as being big and evil, I'm looking at Google as being the scary person on the block, they are gathering tons of information about people, from searching, browsing and email, it's scary actually. The information has supposedly been scrubbed for PII (Personally Identifiable Information), but it's still out there.

Also keep in mind that any website you visit will still keep complete logs on you, if you login, then privacy mode is no longer valid, since they have all your information stored on their servers anyway.

Overall

I've strayed some from my path haven't I? Overall I think tools like Chrome are great, but I'm concerned about compatibility issues and if these battles will cause greater heartache on both the consumer and the developer. No doubt in my mind that Chrome will become the darling of many peoples eyes, if for no other reason than it's a tool developed by Google.