When is a Surface not a Surface? When it's an ...

The biggest news, in every sense of the word, at the Apple Event yesterday was the announcement of the iPad Pro. This device is a natural evolution of the iPad, and a logical direction for tablets - and sadly it seems it is also Apple's attempt to simply catch up to Microsoft instead of wildly leaping ahead. However, now people who want a powerful "refrigerator-toaster" running on Apple's iOS rather than Windows 10 have a beautiful piece of hardware to get excited about.

But.... you have to notice that the starting price point of the iPad Pro matches the starting price of a Surface Pro 3 at $799. And at that price point you get 64GB of internal storage on the Surface Pro 3 rather than 32GB (!!) on the iPad Pro!  (Microsoft 1, Apple 0)

I haven't seen specs on the Apple processor (yet?), but the $799 Surface also comes with a last year's 4th Generation Intel i3 (i5 and i7 versions available, both still  with 4th generation chips, though) rather than the A9x from Apple. I'll call this one a tie, since the A9x is a newer chip (ok, newer does not always equal better, I know. But it's my post so I get to decide the score).

The resolution of the Apple screen is significantly higher than that of the Surface Pro 3, at 2,732 x 2,048 pixels vs 2160 x 1440p.  This one goes to Apple.

The Surface Pro 3 is starts at 4GB of RAM but is available with up to 8GB. While I'm sure Apple is not talking about it, it looks like Adobe posted (and since removed) that there is 4GB of RAM on the iPad Pro model (quickly ending speculation of there only being 2GB of RAM like on the iPad Air). Presuming that RAM is a fixed amount regardless of model version of the iPad Pro, I guess more RAM is good, so this one goes to Microsoft.

So with my extremely simple scoring technique, it is a tie (2 each)! Probably as it should be. If you want a Windows device, just go get a Surface Pro 3. If you want an elegant, powerful, user friendly Apple device, pick up an iPad Pro. There. That was easy.

If only the iPad Pro ran MacOS instead of iOS, I might be in line waiting for it to hit the retail shelves. As it is, I'll stand on the sidelines and see how it does for a while, still waiving my Apple flag and wearing my Apple t-shirt. "Go Apple". I hope.

Image found at https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/new-apple-ipad.jpg

Apple buys Microsoft's former technology provider for Kinect

This is certainly different than how it has worked in the past.

Apple is usually the innovator, and Microsoft generally scurries along months or so later with a similar product.

But this time was different.

Microsoft rolled out the Kinect motion sensing technology for Xbox 360 for the holidays in 2010. The first Kinect was built using technology from PrimeSense.

Over the weekend Apple - acting in a manner that is very reminiscent of the Redmond company, has confirmed its' acquisition of  PrimeSense.  In addition to gaming, it is entirely possible that Apple may be thinking about utilizing motion sensing technology with the rumored Apple television.

Microsoft has since developed its' own sensing technology and, it has been reported, is no longer associated with PrimeSense.

Apple has been leading the pack with touch technology for mobile, and adding motion sensing technology will further differentiate the Apple brand from rivals. And, with this coming from Apple, it is almost certain we will see implementation of that technology in interesting ways.

Now, can I please just tap, swipe and pinch my iMac! ? !

Or maybe just wave my hand in front of the sensor?


read the Reuters article

Our latest Cloud crush is PogoPlug.

Never, ever run out of storage on your phone or tablet or desktop again.

Start out with 5GB of cloud storage for free.

Upgrade anytime to UNLIMITED storage for just $49.95 per year.

And, if you try the free for a bit first, you may get a 40% discount "welcome" email from them - making their unlimited cloud storage, with unlimited upload file size, just $29 for the first year.

The web interface is a bit too Windows-ish for me (wish it was more Mac-ish), but it works. 

They have a free iOS or Android mobile app and a free Mac or Win desktop app for backing your computer up.

http://www.pogoplug.com/

New Amazon Cloud Player App for the iPhone arrives today

New Amazon Cloud Player App for the iPhone arrives today

Amazon.com today released a new iPhone App that will allow you access your Amazon Cloud Player on your phone. You can download or stream your music. It will also play music already on your device. While the app has been available on Android devices for a while, and is available at the Apple Store today.

The app is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad. It requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Amazon offers free 5GB cloud storage, with upgrades available for about $1 per GB. For a limited time, with any upgrade music users will also receive unlimited storage space for MP3 and AAC files. And it seems that this is regardless of place of purchase.

“Customers tell us that they want access to all of their music, wherever they are, and on all of the devices they use,” said Steve Boom, Vice President of Digital Music for Amazon. “By bringing Cloud Player to iPhone and iPod touch, we now have the most widely compatible cloud playback solution available, giving our customers the ability to buy once and enjoy their music everywhere.”

• Category: Music
• Released: Jun 12, 2012
• Version: 1.0.0
• Size: 3.6 MB
• Language: English
• Seller: AMZN Mobile LLC

Related links:
Apple iTunes
Amazon News Release

Unboxing our new Google Drive!

My Google Drive arrived today and, while it technically did require an unboxing,  after I spent a couple of hours playing around with it I decided to share my initial impressions.  So I wrote this short piece -  on my new Google Drive - which I am sharing.

But it's not here.

It's at my Google Drive.

Which means another click for you:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/116G0QOmnl6kyEltYhmwsHuTMZGvs88w30oRojuvpJ0I/edit

For those who can't wait, my summary is: Wow! It works and seems to work really well. And, as my need for cloud storage increases, the upgrade options for Google Drive seem to be the best anywhere.


So go take a quick look:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/116G0QOmnl6kyEltYhmwsHuTMZGvs88w30oRojuvpJ0I/edit

Zumo Drive is closing down: The dark side of the cloud.

Zumo Drive will soon be gone. What is next?

We have been using Cloud Storage since long before it was referred to as "the cloud". It is, and has been, convenient to have our data stored and available from any computer connected to the internet.

But Zumo Drive is the third "cloud" company we have used that has shut down. And it seems to me that this is the danger that exists for individuals and companies who grow to rely on a cloud based service. All things pass. And getting the data off the dying service onto a new service can be a bit of a chore.

Our first online storage experience was with MediaMax, which at the time we joined was owned by AOL. They were around about a year after we signed up.

Next came my all-time favorite of the cloud-type storage services, Bingodisk by Joyent. We heavily integrated images and other content stored on Bingodisk onto all of our web sites and even some client sites. When they shut down we spent weeks moving data and cleaning up links.  Bingodisk was a painful loss, but we rebounded somewhat with Box.net (now box.com).  Great service and they have grown significantly, but without the ability to directly link to content it was not an exact replacement for Bingodisk. They are still around and going strong (announcing Box OneCloud just yesterday, in fact).

Now Zumo Drive.  I am not sure we ever fully utilized all of the features on Zumo, but I really liked having a disk drive icon on my desktop into which I could drag items, and which worked a lot like a locally mounted drive. For my use, this is the type of offsite data service I prefer. And their Ninja logo, and the whole Ninja theme of their service, was great!

So what next?

We still use several cloud services and will continue to. It is too convenient not to use. My short list of consumer cloud providers contains nothing earth shattering. You may already be familiar with these services, but their mention here is absolutely an endorsement:

Dropbox - 2GB free, $99 per year for 50GB.  Data is stored in a folder on your machine, so if disk drive space is an issue this won't solve that problem, but it is great for keeping things synced between computers and mobile devices (and/or backups).

Box.com - very cool, lots of available SaaS functionality ... but just a bit pricy and a bit more focused on business than the individual. Business plan is $15 per user per month for 1000GB. Individual paid plans are $9.99 per month for 25GB or $19.99 per month for 50 GB.  I still use the free 5GB plan. If you have an LG mobile device, you can get a free 50GB lifetime account if you sign in or up from that device before December.

SugarSync - only recently signed up for this service, but with the 5GB free account I was able to securely back up an entire project folder for one of our clients and still had space (backup took several hours but was done efficiently in the background without impact to my work). They are offering 1/2 off their prepaid yearly plan (normally starting at $50 per year for 30GB of storage, up to $399.99 for 500GB), and I am seriously considering jumping to a paid plan. Automatic backup as well as a place for archived files that you don't want on your computer any longer. My biggest concern is that I will become too dependent this service and that they will go away before we are ready for them to.

Amazon Cloud - you may be using this already if you are an Amazon MP3 or video user. I am a rabid Apple fan, but I think Amazon is doing the cloud right. Store it and stream it. Keep it off my device(s) until/unless I need it.  And, like Apple's iCloud, they don't count purchased content against your storage limit.

Speaking of Apple, what about iCloud?  Well. it's Apple and it's integrated into all of their iOS devices and it's free - so it's worth it if you have Apple products. But for generally cloud storage, I am not sure that is what Apple has in mind with the service.

So what do you think? Do you have a cloud service you are using that is not mentioned? Post a comment

Does Google scare you? Here's an option!

Google recently announced changes to their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Should you be concerned? Maybe. The change will allow Google to know what you are doing across all of their services. Does that bother you?

We stumbled across a new search engine that you might want to consider. The service does not include blogging, docs in the cloud, photo storage, email, or any of the other Google services. So it is not a replacement for Google. But you might want to start doing your searches here.

Startpage (www.startpage.com) combines the powerful search results of Google with the strong privacy features of Ixquick, the world's most private search engine. The result is great search results - with total privacy protection!


No IP addresses are stored, no personal data is gathered or passed on to third parties, and no identifying cookies are placed on your browser. Startpage also offers secure SSL encryption, a proxy option that allows anonymous web surfing, full third-party certification, and numerous other privacy features.

By the way, the easy and quick fix to any privacy concerns you have about the new Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use is to stay logged out of your Google account during use. They won't track who you are if you aren't logged in (but they may track you by IP address, so still be careful out there).

Steve Jobs

It's been a week. I thought I might share with the world these very self-focused thoughts I posted on my Facebook wall late in the day on October 5th.

Every song I have ever written was written using a Mac.
Every recording I have ever released was recorded on a Mac.
Every word I have ever had published was originally written on a Mac.
Every web site I have ever built was done so with a Mac.
Every graphic design I have ever created was created on a Mac.
Nearly every dollar I have earned over the last 22 years was earned with a Mac.
Thank you, Steve Jobs.
(This post was written on a Mac.)

Steve Jobs day is October 14th

Why I think I hate Fatcow. And you should, too.

Below is a slightly edited reprint of my email to Gary R. Engel, Sr. Vice President, Sales and Customer Support, The Endurance International Group, Inc.:

- - - - - - -
I spent almost 40 minutes on the phone this morning with Fatcow support, first with Brian in billing support and then with the billing supervisor, whose name was, I believe, Rachael.

Rachael expedited my refund (my thanks to her), but suggested I contact you with my operational experience.

As a favor to a friend, I decided that I would pay the domain renewal charge for the domain, which was registered through Fatcow when we signed up for hosting services.

I clicked a link in the email we had received from Fatcow regarding the renewal, logged in to the account, and went to the page to renew the domain registration.

I am a web developer and try to watch very closely for any "gotcha"s associated with online renewals. So I read the instructions and notes carefully, and checked the ONE TIME PAYMENT box.

The payment process seemed to complete, and I later received an email acknowledgement of the domain renewal ((your domain)has been renewed", October 7, 2011).

What I did not know was that, as a function of my making this one time payment, the account was updated with my credit card information and my email address.

What I also did not know what that, as a result of that process, my credit card was then charged nearly $150 more for payment of hosting fees.

My issues, and my frustration and concerns, come from this:

1. There was absolutely no indication on the original domain registration renewal payment screens that the payment information for the account would be updated with my credit card. Had there been, I would have stopped. It was never the intent to do anything other than make a domain renewal payment for a friend.

2. There was no email notification of activity on the account. I cannot imagine making a change of this magnitude on any other service and not getting an email indicating that both the email address AND credit card information for the account had been changed. This is an horrific oversight.

3. There was no acknowledgement email regarding the annual hosting fee charge to my account, or an email confirming that the hosting services had been paid. Nothing. I did not discover the charge until I responded to an email from my bank and saw the charge in my online statement.

It may be a perceptual error on my part, but in my two years or so as a Fatcow customer I had thought of your company as being on a slightly higher ground than GoDaddy and those "other guys".

This experience falls completely outside of any definition of a quality customer experience.

The transaction taking the annual hosting fee payment from my account seems, at the very least, to have been fraudulent, and perhaps even criminal. I did not authorize that payment in any way. I was not made aware that my payment information for that simple domain renewal transaction would replace the payment information for the account and change email addresses associated with the account. Then, on top of that, there was not notification from Fatcow that the transactions had even occurred. Not for the change in the account. Not for the hosting payment.

This is a serious flaw in your system. You need a better model. While short term this sort of misdirection may prove beneficial to your bottom line, I cannot help but believe that people will eventually grow tired of being mistreated and will vote with their wallets.

HP TouchPad Not Selling? Here's Why ....

All Things D posted a piece today about some trouble HP might be experiencing with moving TouchPad units at Best Buy stores: "OuchPad: Best Buy Sitting on a Pile of Unsold HP Tablets".

From that article:
"According to one source who has seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory."

We recently had the opportunity to spend a couple of days with a 32 GB TouchPad, and thought it might be a good time to offer our reaction to the device.

Disclaimer: we are Mac Addicts.

Overall we felt that HP shoots well with their WebOS, but misses the bullseye fairly often. The features are different enough from the iOS that they will probably never see a patent infringement lawsuit from Apple, and this is good news and less than good news.

- Just Type: We believe the marketing of this totally missed it. HP put the search function on the home screen, which is fine, and then promotes this feature heavily as if it were some innovation. Apple has offered a Spotlight search feature since the original iPhone. Nothing new with the WebOS version. Functionality: Ok. But still a MISS for the marketing.

- Muliti-tasking: Ok, the card concept is sort of cool, and the stacks seems like a good idea, but we believe that most people (us included) just won't "get it". We cannot see a benefit to stacking minimized open application icons (or cards) to group them together. But the multitasking is sort of cool. We listened to Pandora while playing a game. Hmm. NEAR MISS.

- HP Synergy and Touch To Share: Sorry. Not sure that we would want everything we know about every one of our Facebook friends on our tablet. And Apple already allows you to access your various email accounts - with your contacts stored in the Cloud. And, with apologies to HP, who would want a Pre3 when you can have an iPhone? Still, Touch To Share is a sort of cool feature ... NEAR MISS

- The WebOS is rocky. The device we used locked up (froze) many times while we were using it, and late in our time with the tablet we started getting the dreaded, and very intrusive, Database Full error message. Looking that up online we found that the solution seemed to be to re-initialize the drive and all data, apps, etc. Not good. Even at $100 off, we want the thing to work. Since this seems to be an ongoing issue for some TouchPad owners ... BIG HUGE MISS.

- Weight and Size: about the same as the iPad 1. Hmm. Apple made the new iPad slimmer and lighter because they could, but that development was done for a reason. Slimmer and lighter are better. NEAR MISS.

- Camera: 1.3 megapixel, front facing only. Your call on how important this is to you.

- APPS: this is perhaps the biggest problem we saw with the Touchpad. Nobody at HP could tell us how many apps were available, and the unit we were working with did not have an HP Store account associated with it, so we could not see how many apps were available. But after looking it up online we found a statement from HP saying that there were about 300 apps on the day of release, with more expected. Are you developing for WebOS? Probably not. BIG, HUGE, DEADLY MISS.

- FLASH: This seems a good thing and certainly gives the TouchPad an advantage over iOS devices for many users. Hulu worked fine, as did most of the Flash we looked at. But there was an unacceptable, horrendous lag in loading some of the Facebook games (one never did finish loading). Still, we would give them a HIT for including the ability to play Flash video.

- BOX.NET: This is a HUGE win for HP. With your purchase of a TouchPad you get a 50GB Box.net account, for free. Your 16GB device becomes, essentially, a 66GB device and your 32GB TouchPad becomes an 82GB device. We are big Box.net fans and think this is a great deal for TouchPad owners. A HUGE HIT.

Do you have a thought about the TouchPad? Leave a comment!



[UPDATE AUGUST 18, 2011]

The WallStreet Journal is reporting that HP will exit the TABLET and SMARTPHONE business, and may SPIN OFF their PC business. In part the WSJ article stated: "HP said its board is evaluating strategic options for its PC business, which could include a "full or partial separation." It also will abandon efforts to sell tablets and smartphones that challenged Apple Inc.'s iPad and iPhone." Read more

Ghostery: Detect. Learn. Control.

• Price: Free (Forever, according to the Ghostery website.)
• Developer: Ghostery is a service of Evidon, Inc.
• Browsers supported: Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer
• Web site: http://www.ghostery.com/
• Our rating: 5/5 (Woo-hoo!)

What an absolutely frightening application this turned out to be. And in all of the best ways possible. After a few days of use we are huge fans - and wonder why we thought it was safe to browse without this remarkable, tiny little browser add-on.

Each and every page you browse to, this one included, has some technological hook that snares information about you. Some of these are pretty safe, like the Facebook Social Plugins or the Statcounter project code, or a Twitter badge.

Many of the others are safe as well, but collect information about you that can be passed along to advertisers or, worse yet, follow you as you move from page to page across the web.

Say "No More!" loudly and enthusiastically. Enter GHOSTERY.

Easily installed, this little browser add-on will tell you what "bugs" you are encountering on each and every page you visit. Ghostery alerts you to ... and can block ... any of more than 500 of these annoyances.

DETECT: "Ghostery sees the invisible web - tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons"

LEARN: "After showing you who's tracking you, Ghostery also gives you a chance to learn more about each company it identifies."

CONTROL: "Ghostery allows you to block scripts from companies that you don't trust, delete local shared objects, and even block images and iframes."

I cannot tell you how empowering it feels to see the line-throughs on "bugs" that Ghostery kept from loading. Use this everywhere you go.

Be safe out there!