The Superabundance of Data

There is a series of articles in the Economist that does a good job of explaining this important trend.

http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15557443

Notes on Apple's iPad

Yesterday Apple announced their iPad, a tablet sized computer with a 9.7 inch screen.

Is an iPad better than a netbook? - Yes. I have been using a netbook for over a year. I'd rather have an iPad. I think I'd actually rather have an iPad with a bigger screen. I'll have to wait and see how the screen size on the iPad works out.

Does it use industry standards? - There is no memory expansion, such as SD or micro SD, and no USB port. It does have WiFi and Bluetooth. You should be able to read and edit Microsoft Office files. The web browser looks like it should be able to read most web pages easily, except possibly Adobe Flash content.

What's it good for? - The same things that Netbooks are good for: a second computer at home, kids, low impact travel.

I think the iPad is a good evolutionary step for Apple. It is a follow up to the iPhone, using a lot of iPhone technology.

Google Search Does Not Work

When I search for information using Google, what I get are sites that trying to sell me a product. The sites are filled with ads for other products as well. It's very difficult to find sites that are actually providing information about things among all of the junky spam filled sales sites in the search results.

This has been going on for a long time when I search for technology products. Now it seems to have spread to just about anything that is for sale. That covers a lot of subjects that I am interested in.

What it comes down to is that Google has stopped being helpful to me. The search engine has become my nemesis, something I try to work around every day of my life.

I don't have any great insights about what is going on or why, I just make note of the fact that, as of today, Google is no longer good at searching the Internet for me. I don't think there is anything I can do to make Google Search better for me, so I will look around for other alternatives.

GlowCaps and The Internet of Things

GlowCaps are bottles that hold prescription drugs. These prescription bottles do many things. They can call your phone and remind you to take your medication. They keep a record of when you take your medication. They can send your medication record to a friend or to your Doctor.

http://www.rxvitality.com/glowcaps_howglowcapswork.html

They are expensive, $99.00 for a bottle. Some people can have their health care provider pay for them. If you have just had a very expensive operation which will not succeed unless you take your medication regularly, paying $99.00 more may not seem like a lot to a health care provider.

It's likely that the price on these things will come down. It's possible that the price could come way down in a few years, say to $9.99. This could be very beneficial to many people who need to take medication regularly. There are other applications as well. Imagine something like this on a kid's thermos bottle. Or try not to imagine this in a traveling coffee cup! :-)

This is an example of what is called the Internet of Things. The physical stuff around us that we handle every day will gradually start to become part of the Internet. It will talk back to us, warn us, gather information for us and about us. Another example is the Apple Nike + iPod running kit.

http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/

Your shoes talk to your iPod, which is then plugged into your computer and the data is uploaded to the Internet.

Expect to see a lot more of these kinds of gadgets over the next few years.

Technology Standards and the Environment

I have been thinking about Internet standards and other standards lately.

Some standards work exceptionally well. You can send email to anyone in the world with an email account. You can send a text message to anybody with a mobile phone. Trains run on tracks that are the same width all throughout North America (this wasn't always true). You can buy a laptop and use it on any WiFi network in the world.

Some standards don't work quite as well. You can't buy a cell phone and use it on any network in the USA, much less the world. Your Instant Messaging account only works for people on your IM network. Your computer's printer may work with lots of different computers all over the world, but it's power plug doesn't work all over the world.

This is usually a technology blog. But there is more to life than technology and the Internet. There is a worldwide problem with pollution of our environment.

People are not perfect. One job of governments is to protect individuals from the excesses of other people. In the case of global pollution, it would take cooperation from all governments in the world to protect us as individuals from our own collective excesses.

There are no functional worldwide standards for pollution control. The Climate Conference at Copenhagen that ended yesterday did not make meaningful progress in adopting pollution control standards. The Climate Conference made it clear that we will be living with no functional global standards in the area of pollution control for many years.

Netbooks Reconsidered

Most of last year's Netbooks had 10 inch screens, and keyboards that are roughly 10 inches wide. This is the size of the MSI Wind Netbook that I have been using for 12 months. I think this size is a bit too small for comfortable day to day use for most people.

Today there are slightly bigger models available that perform well but are still lightweight. Right now I really like the Acer Aspire 1410 model with an 11.3 inch screen and weighing 3.1 pounds. The price, weight, keyboard size, and screen size look like a very good combination.


The Acer Aspire 1410 sells for $400.00, it has 2 GB of RAM and contains a peppier processor than most Netbooks. There are three models, each in three different colors:

**update: this will likely be too slow at 1.3 GHz.** The basic model of the AS1410 has Windows 7 Home Premium and a 250 GB hard drive. This is available in many places for $400.00. It's a very good buy.

Another model has Windows Vista and a 250 GB hard drive. It's more expensive because the processor is a little bit faster. I'd say avoid this model because of Windows Vista.

**update: this is the model I recommend. It has a dual core 1.2 GHz processor, the equivalent of two processors.** The third model has Windows 7 Home Premium and a 160 GB hard drive. This model is hard to find. It's more expensive than the basic model because it has a special dual core processor. Most people don't need the extra processor performance. If you do, it may be worth spending extra effort and money to pick up this model.


If you want to save some money and go with a regular 10 inch size Netbook I would look for the following things:

Windows XP - definitely avoid Vista
At least 1.6 GHz processor speed
Decent keyboard
Good battery life - six cell battery, not three cell
price of $340 or less - if you pay more than that you might as well step up to the larger Acer 1410 above.

Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and Samsung all make Netbooks in the $250 to $350 price range that come with Windows XP. They all share many parts and they all perform very similarly. A website called laptopmag.com has reviews of most of these models. If you want to do more research laptopmag.com is the best site I have found for Netbook information.

http://www.laptopmag.com/

http://www.laptopmag.com/l/netbooks.aspx


My previous posts on Netbooks are here:

http://macviews.brucemcl.com/2009/02/netbooks-are-coming.html

http://macviews.brucemcl.com/2009/04/netbooks-are-coming-part-2.html

Google's Decade

Google has been working to create an operating system for computers. Last Thursday they revealed more details of their Chrome OS. In a year or so you will be able to buy a small laptop computer from companies like Acer, Dell, Samsung, and HP. Instead of running Windows it will be running Google's Chrome OS.

I could go on about features in Chrome OS, how it compares to Windows, etc, but what interests me right now is the big picture. Google wants to be part of:

Your phones (Google Android)
Your computers (Google Chrome OS)
Your email and domain name hosting (Gmail, Google Apps)
Your phone service (Gizmo5, recently acquired by Google)

About the only thing Google is not interested at the moment is providing your connection to the Internet. Although they are sponsoring free WiFi access at many airports this holiday season. And they have also invested in WiFi based Internet providers.

Whatever makes modern life seem modern for everyone, it seems like Google want to be part of it. This is not unprecedented.

1960's - IBM defined and dominated the use of computer technology.
1985-1995 - Microsoft defined and dominated the use of computer technology.

I think that Google's decade is beginning now.

The shift from IBM to Microsoft was a shift from big central computers to computers on the desktop. The Internet decade, 1995-2005, was a shift from individual, isolated computers to connected, networked computers. The current shift is to networked computers that are everywhere, not just on desktops. Netbooks and smart phones are a big part of this shift. It is interesting to watch this change taking place, and to watch Google's role in it.