Territorial Bloggings

The long promised, eons in alpha, seemingly never to arrive native Mac version of Logos is just about here!

While in several ways I kind of prefer Accordance, Logos will win out in the end because it has superior Lutheran resources at its disposal (read: CPH only makes its stuff available in Logos/Libronix format, and sees no business reason/case to hammer out agreements with the folks at Accordance…). So, for anyone who wants a wide range of the latest in good Lutheran materials available in a native Mac Bible software application, this is great news. (I just hope that Logos follows it up with a quick push to make all the remaining Lutheran resources available on the iPad & iPhone!)

-ghp

Logos Bible Software is giving away thousands of dollars of prizes to celebrate the launch of Logos Bible Software 4 Mac on October 1. Prizes include an iMac, a MacBook Pro, an iPad, an iPod Touch, and more than 100 other prizes!

They’re also having a special limited-time sale on their Mac and PC base packages and upgrades. Check it out!

Well, it’s just about that time. I’m basically packed & ready to go.

Everything’s ready & in order to head out in the morning.

Drive to Highland in time to catch the 7:20 bus to Midway.

Get to Midway within the recommended 2hr window.

Wheels up at 10:45

Wheels down in Houston by 1:20

Buckle up & strap it down.

On the technology front, I’ve decided to take a slightly different route this time. I’m leaving my mainstay 17″ Macbook Pro at home, and I’m going to rely on my iPad & iPhone for connectivity & productivity while down in Houston. Augmenting the wifi iPad, I’ll have a keyboard dock for use while on the convention floor & in my hotel room. I’m banking on my experience to date that the iPad will give me the 80+% functionality that I need, while having ultra portability & convenience, compared to lugging the laptop around. And that’s a significant factor, given that I’m once again billeted at the hotel that’s 10 blocks away from the convention center.

Time & frustration levels will tell if this was the right choice.

You’ll no doubt find out in dribs & drabs over the course of the next 10 days, and certainly shortly after I get back from the festivities.

-ghp

So, I’ve had the new 17″ MacBook Pro for a couple of days now, using it enough to form more than just the cursory first impressions ( pretty, big, fast, cool, etc… ). Here’s a quick rundown on what’s struck me as the most significant & impressive elements of this beast so far.

The Screen: It’s not just that it’s big (which it is), it’s also that it’s so clear & bright. Frankly, the reason I pushed to make the jump from the 15″ to the 17″ was in the hopes that the extra workspace on 17′s 1900×1200 display (as compared to the the 15′s 1440×900) would be more than worth the extra 1.1 lbs. It is. It would be worth another pound. The extra screen real estate is useful, empowering, and gorgeous. WIN

The Body: I’ve watched the videos on the new MBP unibody design. I’ve even handled my mom & dad’s 13″ & 15″ MBP’s a few times. I knew they were solid. But I didn’t know just how solid, and now (and I use this word advisedly) sensual, the unibody design was until I got the chance to live with this 17″ MBP. It’s solid, supple, and just plain nice to touch. It feels good, and that translates into a computer that’s nicer & easier to use. The tolerances to which it is engineered are simply amazing. Everything fits. Everything works. My old 15″ MBP was solid, but this one makes it look/feel creaky & flimsy by comparison. WIN

The Keyboard: I’ve long been a fan of the new style (sleek, low-profile) Mac keyboards. I use one on my PC at work, and have one as the external keyboard for when I have the MBP “docked” & connected to a second monitor at my desk. The 17″ MBP has one of these keyboards (the old 15″ MBP didn’t), and in combination with the unibody engineering, typing on this is simply a joy. No stress, no strain, & great tactile feedback. Granted, it’s no IBM Model M – but what has ever matched that? No, pair the MBP keyboard with the fabulous multi-touch trackpad, and you’ve got a big WIN

The Battery: This MBP has one of the new Apple-designed, lithium-polymer, long-life batteries that is hardwired into the laptop. I.e., you can’t swap it out on the fly. I don’t care, as it doesn’t really impact me. I never had that come up with the old MBP, as I’m not a road-warrior type user. This new battery is rated for 1000 full discharge/recharge cycles, and up to 8 hrs of (theoretical) life per charge. Thus far, out of curiosity, I’ve done two cycles just to see what I could get using as I normally would if I had it plugged into the power. And I’ve gotten right at 4 hours each time. WIN

The other stuff is expected, really, in that it’s not surprising that a C2D 3.06 is fast, that 4GB of RAM is roomy & fast, that a 500GB 7200RPM HD is big & fast, and that the whole package is perfectly integrated with Snow Leopard.

All in all, I’m pleased as punch, and about as happy as a Mac fanboy can be…

-ghp

This is way, way cool! (yes, I’m a tech geek, and I’m ok with it…)

The sounds of those old drives and components is just, well, comforting. And to hear it used for the good of one of Queen’s greatest hits? Well, that’s just a sublime experience, now isn’t it?

-ghp

Now it’s time for the second in my three part series of posts on my entry into the iPhone world. Part one dealt with general musings on iPhone usability, and part three will deal with my favorite iPhone apps. In this second part, however, I’m going to write about what I’ve cobbled together in order to integrate the iPhone into my overall online productivity environment.

As a preface, and jumping off on something that I wrote in the first post, something that’s important to me is that I have clear separation between work and personal, particularly in terms of email & calendar. I made the decision long ago not to commingle those any more than necessary, even though I’ve never worked for an employer where that’s been an issue — better safe than sorry. So, I want to be able to control how/where the separate data streams (calendar in particular) get synchronized/combined.

That all being said, after a bit of experimentation, I have pretty much settled on a workable solution, whereby I have things nicely integrated & synchronizing without too much effort. [HT to Sem. Gillespie for the general format & inspiration for this section...]

Hosting: Eleven2 – a good, solid, semi-budget type host, but with great service, and not such a huge user base that they’re so big that they engage in overselling. Plus, they support WordPress fully, in that all the new functionality like push-button upgrades work. And, the owners are iPhone users, so there’s a possibility that they’ll start supporting iPhone push email.

Email: Right now it’s Gmail, in the form of Google Apps for Your Domain, for personal mail, and Groupwise for work mail, both set up on the iPhone as IMAP. Both work without any problem, and I have no complaints at all, wrt email.

Calendaring: Groupwise for work, and Google Calendar for personal & to synchronize. This is where it gets a little trickier, because GW doesn’t play nice with other systems, in terms of interoperability. Back when I had the Blackberry, I found a 3rd party app that kept GW in sync with Gcal (before I found a way to have the Blackberry serve as the hub for that purpose), so now that app (CompanionLink for Google) serves as the conduit by which my central Gcal & GW keep in sync. Then, I can easily keep the iPhone in sync with Gcal using the newly available hooks that Google has put in place. It’s clunky, but it all works surprisingly well.

Contacts: Traditionally, I used GW as the hub for my contact management. No more. Now, I’m using Google Contacts, and taking advantage of the hooks that are now available to integrate directly into the iPhone’s Contacts/Address Book. So, I have access to my contacts in Gmail/on the web and on my iPhone (and on my Mac since I’m using Spanning Sync to facilitate syncing my calendars & contacts down into iCal & the Address Book), although they’re not kept in sync in GW. Which, frankly, isn’t that big a deal to me…

Photos: I generally don’t do a whole lot with putting my photos online; however, when I do need to work with photos online, I’ve found Flickr to be the best option. Good organization, good sharing, good integration with other apps (WordPress, Facebook, iPhoto, etc…).

Task Management: I’m on an ever-present quest to organize my life through task managment. I’ve tried GTD (Getting Things Done) without much success, either in paper, or in various online forms. I tried using the Blackberry as a way to implement a bit of order into the chaos. I never had much success. Thus far with the iPhone, however, I’ve had a bit of success with the following combo – Tasks as the task manager app on the iPhone, Jott as the way to easily get tasks input into the system via voice/dictation, and Toodledo as the web hub by which the tasks are integrated & managed overall. I’ve actually been using this system, it’s been helpful, and it’s been working.

Social: Facebook has emerged, surprisingly enough, as my social space of choice. I also have a presence on Twitter, but I really don’t keep it up. Blogging, of course, is a given. The iPhone apps for all three of these social spaces are quite strong, with the apps for Facebook and WordPress being particularly strong.

Backups: While this isn’t specifically related to the iPhone, it is something that’s important nonetheless – there’s nothing worse than the feeling you get when you mis-click, or when a drive dies, and you lose data. That’s when you’ll want to have all the backups you can get your hands on! I have two external hard drives (320GB, Firewire400) that I use to back up my MacBookPro. One is dedicated to TimeMachine (the backup software built into OSX) backups, so that if I need to go back and get a version of a file from any time pretty much within the past year, I can go and pull it out. The second drive is dedicated to use by SuperDuper!, a great backup app that allows me to have a daily updated, bootable copy of my MBP’s hard drive, just in case something were to happen to it. With the combo of those two backup methods, I’m totally protected, and it’s all automatic!

Online Storage: This is one that I go back and forth on, as to whether or not I really need it. Because I really don’t use all that much online storage, although I do need some, other than what I use as part of my web hosting, in order to transfer files back & forth (to work & home & the web host). I’ve tried JungleDisk, which is a good front end for Amazon’s S3 storage service. It works pretty well, and Amazon’s pricing is pretty reasonable. At the moment, I’m focused more on using the storage that I have available as part of my hosting at Eleven2. The trick with that approach is (for me, at least) to then integrate it into the OS (Mac at home, Windows at work) as a drive, so as to make it simpler & easier to use. WebDrive for Windows is a pretty good app for that, and ForkLift and/or ExpanDrive for the Mac are good solutions.

Conspicuous in its absence thus far has been Apple’s own MobileMe offering. I’ve tried it. I’ve found it wanting. What it does, it does well enough. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do enough to justify the cost, even in light of the wonderfully tight integration with the iPhone. Even for the core functionality of email, calendaring, & contacts management, MobileMe is not flexible enough to trump the solution that I’ve been able to cobble together.

And that’s actually kinda cool…

Coming in Part 3: Musings on iPhone Apps

-ghp

So, I’ve had my iPhone for just over a month now, and I must say that it’s still just about the niftiest device that I’ve ever used. Seriously, it’s right up there with my MacBook Pro & the DirecTV DVR, which were heretofore the best and/or biggest game-changing pieces of technology that I’ve ever owned.

The Blackberry Curve that was replaced by the iPhone was certainly quite good, from a utilitarian standpoint. It was/is a great smartphone. But, I would state that it (and the Blackberry as a platform), IMO, is primarily a phone/communications device that has had some other things bolted onto it in order to become a more fully functional tool. And, make no mistake about it, it does these things very well. Even setting market share arguments aside, RIM has good technology, and they make it available to folks in attractive form factors that enable those folks to do lots of useful & necessary things. But deep in their heart/soul, Blackberries are still those two-way pagers — that’s their DNA.

The iPhone, on the other hand, feels to me like a computer — a Macintosh — that has a phone that’s been smartly grafted into it. Largely, IMO, that’s because of the fact that Safari works just like it does on any “regular” Mac, and that Mail on an iPhone handles attachments/content just like a regular mail client does. I’ve been able to read/view Word/Excel/PDF/photo files, and any other mail attachments without any problem on the iPhone — something that wasn’t nearly the case on my Blackberry (it was always a struggle). And, to put it simply & bluntly, the Blackberry browser is flat out inferior to Safari.

Quite frankly, and this was a surprise to me, the overall experience with the iPhone is good enough that, if I were presented with a situation where I was without a computer for an extended period of time (say a few days to a week or so), it would only be a minor inconvenience (with the Blackberry, it’d have been a major setback). I could do most everything I do on a daily basis, with very little change in how I do it. The biggest inconvenience/oddity is that there’s no cut & paste functionality, which impacts more than you might think.

As an iPod, it’s as stellar as you would imagine. So, the only thing I’ll mention in that regard is more a commentary on integrated car audio/phone functionality — if you can get it, do so! I can control the iPod using the stereo touchpad controls, via the USB link in my Honda Civic, and it’s very nifty. It’s fully integrated and it keeps the iPhone charged, which is an advantage over the regular audio-in jack option (which is still better than FM or cassette options). For phone use, I’ve got the integrated Bluetooth Hands-Free control, that allows full use of the phone, and is much easier (and, I hope, safer) than even the Bluetooth headset that I had been using. These aren’t unique to the iPhone, I know, but I do like how this functionality works with the iPhone, compared to what I had with my Blackberry & regular iPod.

As a side note, switching from Verizon to AT&T wasn’t a problem for me, either in terms of the mechanical process of switching (the conversion of the corporate account’s ownership to me & porting the number from Verizon to AT&T was painless), or in terms of Verizon vs. AT&T. I’ve actually found AT&T to be pleasant enough to work with after so many years of dealing with Verizon (their web interface is much better, IMO), the pricing & service plans are comparable enough to be a wash, and the coverage hasn’t been an issue where I spend my time (even when I’ve traveled far afield to West Lafayette & Akron). The next step will be getting Deb moved over to AT&T when her Verizon contract runs out in May, and then we’ll get a family plan set up (and probably have to deal with the inevitable of getting Melissa set up with her first phone…).

About the only thing that was easier with my Blackberry was integrating & synchronizing my work & personal calendars; however, that’s actually more a function of the fact that at work we use Novell’s GroupWise email/calendaring software, and have the requisite BES infrastructure up & running to fully accommodate the necessary integrations of Blackberries & GroupWise. GroupWise is rather notorious for not playing nicely or easily with a huge number of 3rd party apps, and their interoperability with the iPhone leaves much to be desired.

I’m now realizing that there are really three posts that I want to write on this subject. I’m now wrapping up the first one – general iPhone usability impressions. In the next post, I’ll delve a little deeper into the specific mechanisms that I’ve setup to make the iPhone work in an integrated and synchronized fashion, in terms of productivity (personal and otherwise). In the third & final post, I’ll talk about some of the iPhone apps that have become my favorites.

That realization made, I’ll close this first out by noting that my being a general Apple fanboy is only a small part of my infatuation with the iPhone (and my Apple fanboy-dom is actually, I would contend, more appropriately an “It-Just-Works-Elegantly” fanboy-dom…). Rather, my infatuation with the iPhone is based on what the device is able to do, how it is able to do it, and how those two factors map themselves to my way of getting things done. In light of how I do things, then, the iPhone really is that good.

As this has turned into a (very) long post, I’ll stop now. If there are any questions, or if I’ve missed anything that you might want to know about, just ask & I’ll be glad to answer…

-ghp

This bad boy turned 25 years old this past week!

I almost got one of the original 128k Macs, in August of 1984, but ended up with an Apple IIc instead, much to my everlasting chagrin. I had to wait 3.5 years until I got my first Mac, but that’s not the anecdote I want to pass along here.

No, what I do recall from that original Mac intro/release was that I lusted after it. I had all the marketing slicks & promo materials. There was just something about that Mac OS, and the whole ethos that shrouded and enveloped the Mac — above and beyond that which distinguished Apple itself and the Apple II line — that I bought into, identified with, and wanted. I’d like to say that I knew that it was the future of computing; and maybe I did, on some way, way, way subconscious level that was so buried that it didn’t really count (my dad and I had many arguments because I wanted to use the computer as a means to do things, and thus wanted to buy software to facilitate that, and he viewed the computer as the tool by which you built the software to do things — I said he was cheap, he said I was lazy ). Anyway, I was bit by the bug.

Something that solidified it was that a classmate, Laura Behling, did get one. And for our Honors English class (with Mr. Stelmachowicz) we had a project to create a couple of satirical newspapers. Which is what we did. The Pansophical Pasquinade. And Laura “published” it on her Mac, at least the original copy, after which Mr. Stel ran off copies on the mimeograph machine.

I’ll pause here to remember the intoxicating smell of fresh mimeo copies……….

Ahhhhh, that’s nice. Who didn’t like to sit at the front of the row & get the stack of fresh, damp, purple-inked copies to hand back? C’mon now? Fess up…

Anyway, the newspaper, such as it was (and the copies of it that I still have in my greedy little hands!), is a fine example of using every font that the original Mac had available at the time (Chicago, New York, Geneva, London, San Francisco, Toronto, & Venice), in almost every style combo possible (bold, outline, underline).

Ah, memories…

-ghp

I know that The Wittenberg Trail is reasonably en vogue as the social networking site of choice in the online Lutheran world. I must confess, however, that it’s always been a bit too much for me. At first, it was largely because I just didn’t like the idea/concept of the whole social networking thing – it was a bit too chummy for my taste & comfort. And I didn’t need the discussion areas & pseudo-blogging spaces that these types of sites give, because I get discussions & blogs at, wait for it… discussion forums and blogs.

Every so often, I would revisit WT to see if it would grab me, or if I would somehow get it now that some time had passed. I never did. If anything, the growth in WT put me off to it even more. I knew that good stuff was going on there, because I knew lots of good folks who were active there (I interacted with them at other sites…).

In the past few weeks, though, one thing has changed – I’m not as dead set against the social networking model anymore. I’ve gotten more involved in Facebook. At first, as is my wont, I was going to segment it off to have FB be just for my “non-lutheran stuff” – i.e., college friends. Then I started getting in contact with some high school friends (something I never thought would happen, but I’m glad it did…). Then I started seeing that many/most of the folks that I have contact with in the Lutheran blogosphere also have a FB presence. So, not only did that knock down my compartmentalization, it also way knocked down any need/desire I might have for getting back on WT.

It comes down to this, I guess — I now see the utility of the social networking site concept. FB delivers that utility to me in a far greater and richer way than does WT, despite WT’s narrower niche strengths. I don’t need those particular niches met in a social networking site because I get them elsewhere (discussion forums & the blogosphere). Since FB can give me the superset of the WT folks I know and the non-WT folks I want to link up with, it’s the better choice.

Thus, I’m going to kill off my WT account because, 1) I don’t want to leave a loose end hanging out there, and 2) I don’t have the time or the inclination to keep up with WT, for all the reasons listed above.

-ghp

One of the bad things about what I do for a living is that I have to carry a cell phone. One of the good things about that bad thing is that, for various & sundry reasons, it gets to be a Blackberry “smartphone” device. That’s good because, if I’m going to have to carry the electronic tether around with me, at least it gets to be one that is a cool toy & has lots of nifty, geeky stuff that I can do with it.

As a side note, it seems that the friendly IRS has decided that companies providing cell phones to their employees is an untaxed benefit, as those employees have been using those phones for some non-work-related purposes. Imagine that! And we can’t have a non-taxed benefit out there, now can we?

This is causing many employers, mine included, to examine their current policies, and craft new ones that close this loophole. The most common way of doing so will be to provide a stipend (taxable, natch…) which the employee can then use to purchase the necessary/required cell phone service/package. My current employer hasn’t done this yet, but the writing is on the wall, and it’s going to happen sometime in the next few months. So, I was able to get a new device request pushed through, so that one last new Blackberry got bought for me without having to go through the hassle of a stipend purchase and/or reimbursement.

So, I was able to snag the nifty-keen Blackberry Curve 8330 from Verizon. And it’s pretty darned cool. I’ve even gone over to the dark (dork?) side and gotten a Bluetooth headset (a Jabra 8040, which I highly recommend, as it’s been very good) to pair with it. As I’ve gotten over a bit of self-consciousness re: using the headset, I’ve found it to be immensely useful & convenient, particularly when I take/make a phone call in the car.

If you already have a Blackberry and you want to learn more about it and/or want to trick it out a bit, a great place to start on that quest is CrackBerry.com – a great clearinghouse of reviews, information, downloads, shopping, and generally all things Blackberry related.

Newer Blackberries also afford you the luxury of customizing the visual interface via theming. After a while, the stock themes get a bit boring, and the free offerings out there are a bit thin & uneven. There are, however, some good, high quality, and reasonably priced themes available. And some of the theme designers will even customize their offerings for you, if you ask nicely enough! ;^) Once such top-notch designer is Corey Visto, creator of the amazingly good Visto Premium BlackBerry Themes. Corey’s Chrono & BB OSX themes are particularly amazing, and he even did a custom job for me that combined elements of those two themes into a theme that was just what I was looking for in a theme. Corey’s a top-notch designer, a pleasure to do business with, and gets my highest recommendation!

In a perfect world, I would’ve liked to have held out for an iPhone, but that just wasn’t in the cards — boo! The 8330 Curve is a pretty darned good consolation prize, especially given how well it integrates with the Google Apps that I use for my domain (gmail, gdocs, gcal), its integration with Remember The Milk for keeping on task & organized, and a bunch of other stuff like web browsing & the like.

-ghp

Go read this article. Really. Click the link & go read it.

I’ve read Cringely for a long time, before and after he left Infoworld, where he assumed the mantle of their industry gossip column, and took it to great heights. His book Accidental Empires is a wonderful read about the growth & emergence of the pre-dotcom Silicon Valley culture & power brokers (Gates, Jobs, McNealy, etc…).

Anyway, he’s written a gem of an interesting column this week. I work in higher-ed, and I have two elementary-ed aged kids. My parents were public school teachers. I’ve grown up immersed in the ethos that learning, both in the vocational and liberal arts senses, was a good thing. I’ve also spent my entire working life in computer technology (and most of that in higher-ed). This is why I find Cringely’s column this week to be so interesting.

I don’t know if he’s exactly right in all of the particulars, but I do think he’s right in the big-picture sense. We’re on the cusp of a huge change in what education means & how it is delivered. It may even change how I go about making a living. It depends on just how fast some of these changes take effect.

As an example, back in my first attempt at grad school (UNC-CH’s School of Information & Library Science) in 1989-90, database construction & searching was very different than searching has become. Full-text was not a viable option & was rarely available. Entire graduate-level courses were dedicated to understanding database design, query design, & how to best go about doing research for folks, because online, searchable database access ran anywhere from $10-$300+ per hour. You had to know how all the different databases were constructed & indexed, so that you could write queries that got all the necessary, relevant, & useful results without spending too much time, and thus, money. IOW, “normal folks” didn’t have access to the data repositories.

I remember thinking & wondering how much better full-text indexing & searching would be, and wondering why it didn’t seem to be more of a priority. Well, I guess it was, because now we’ve got Google & all of these huge data repositories that are full-text, cheap (if not free), and easily accessible by even the “normal folks”. Getting data is no longer the problem/bottleneck – knowing which of that data is actually information is the challenge. Not to mention how to use it.

So, if you’ve gotten down to this point, and you didn’t go and read the article/column yet, here’s a second chance – hopefully you’re intrigued enough to go read it now…

Let me know what you think.

-ghp