What will remain of MobileMe

Posted on June 8, 2011 by admin

I guess I am glad the pay version of MobileMe is going away. We had two of these accounts and in this day of lots of resources available at no cost, $100 per account was pretty pricey.

Still, beyond what is known about the music, email, and calendars, what will happen to other MobileMe services. Here is a “best guess” from MacWorld.

I do wonder about iWeb and photo sharing – I liked how the web construction software worked, but the service through MobileMe seemed limited. I played with a small site, but pretty much moved everything elsewhere when I got a little more serious. If you ever attracted much interest to your site, you would likely exceed your base rate and have to pay for more capacity. I understand that the iWeb software could be used to build a site anywhere, but I never bothered after moving on to other services and software. Apple seemed only mildly interested in the participatory capabilities of the web. I do think the integrated nature (Mac) and ease of use of iWeb would be helpful to some wanting to maintain a basic web presence. Maybe the $25 for the music service allowing other than Apple store music will offer some of these other services as well.

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Reaction to Apple

Posted on June 7, 2011 by admin

The new Apple services end up duplicating or at least overlapping with other existing services. Apple’s advantage is not so much whether a given service is better, but whether the combination Apple services is so convenient individuals will cease to use the individual services provided by other vendors. I don’t feel bad when the best service is provided by a big player. I do feel it unfortunate when better services are ignored.

There has been a lot of attention paid to the music issue with big players Amazon and Google already being in the game. I think Amazon and Google also have advantages because of other services and size so I am not expected Apple to dominate the music market. I guess this will depend on individual tastes. I now purchase most of my music from Amazon, but I also have tastes less focused on the newest trends (I guess Amazon also offers inexpensive individual songs for the current popular artists).

I think the biggest challenge will be for smaller, one service providers. For example, the new features of Safari overlap with what I current use Instapaper and Readability to do do. Both Readability and Instapaper offered an immediate response offering their perspective.

P.S. – After generating this post, I found a post on TechNMarketing that lists multiple services the author argues will suffer because of the capabilities the new Mac OS (Lion) includes. I think the point is similar to mine – the existing service may have some unique and valuable features but these will be lost because of the advantage of an integrated approach.

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Poll the audience – Do not share information

Posted on June 6, 2011 by admin

The wisdom of the crowd requires polling the audience. In poll the audience (unless  you count talking to the guy next to you), there is little discussion and it turns out according to new research (post from Wired) that this is a good thing.

Actually, this is an old social psych thing, but the tech folks have just found out it works the same way.

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Copyright – again

Posted on June 4, 2011 by admin

This recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education addressed the copyright issue and I feel compelled to pass information of this type on. I keep reading such articles hoping to be told something more concrete and always come away disappointed. I thought this article offered something I did not know by using the phrase “principle of classroom use”. The author makes the point that there are uses other than fair use that apply to educators. I thought this might be a technical term in the way that fair use is a recognized term.

I think classroom use basically means you can show a complete film or listen to a complete musical work if that content is the focus of what you teach (see section 110). There must be a better phrase than “classroom use” – this to me implies something of a broader scope that is intended and may imply something unintended to those looking for greater freedom to use what they want.

When an online resource addresses the topic of copyright and allows comment, I often read the comments. The comments in reaction to this article are a good example. It is clear to me that some folks simply have convinced themselves that copyright is simple wrong and they offer a justification for this position. It seems pretty much “here is how I justify my behavior”. A popular justification for abuse is that content creators supposedly make more money as a result of their content being copied. I am sure this has been the case in some instances. Still, who gets to make this decision?

Consider that I might argue that a baker would sell more goods if he/she allowed customers to sample whatever they wanted before making purchases. Obviously, some do take this approach and offer a few samples. But, some do not. If I believe that samples increase sales AND know that some sellers believe so as well am I now free to sample anywhere and whatever I like?  I am guessing few would defend the general practice of the public sampling the goods in a grocery store even though some make the argument this would be good for the grocer. Why is it so many feel the right to take what they want when the product is information?

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LeafSpan – Take Your iPad 2 Into the Field

Posted on May 30, 2011 by admin

One of my undergrad majors was biology and I can still remember the expectations for one of the botany courses. For the final, we walked around campus and the prof would point at a tree or shrub and ask a question – mostly what is it. We would have to write down a response. I was pretty good at that kind of thing, but must confess the direction of my career since has not encouraged a lot of practice and I remember very little now.

We do own several plant identification books. Mostly, we seem to purchase these resources when we are on a trip and want identify what we find on hikes. Cindy has a great collection of wild flower photographs. I have a great collection of pictures of Cindy taking pictures of wild flowers.

The identification guide resources we use may soon change. I ran across this iPad app on LifeHacker and had to give it a try. LeafSnap is an electronic field guide developed by researchers from several prestigious universities that allows you to both collect and identify specimens. Here is how the systems works for trees. You take a leaf and put it on a white background and then upload the image. The system makes an attempt to identify the tree and offers options. I do think the system got my test specimen correct because the tree did have white bark was probably a birch (we were staying at the home of relatives in northeast Minnesota).

We also saw four bears walking across the road on our little road trip. I did not grab the ipad and chase them through the woods.

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Will Apple change the way we consume music (again)

Posted on May 27, 2011 by admin

I seem to be stuck on music posts lately.

With the new online music services from Google and Amazon now available, one wonders what the Apple service will look like. Bloomberg BusinessWeek offers some speculation and also describes what Google and Amazon offer.

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