Flour Power

On the 27th of January the whole tech world had it's eyes on what Apple was about to release. It had been hyped ad nauseum, and everyone expected something as revolutionary as the iPhone. It would single-handedly kill the netbook and the Kindle (and other e-readers, for that matter), and be the next step in how we interact with computers.

As soon as Steve Jobs gave birth to the iPad, the Internet went crazy with all the reviews/opinions about this new device. Everyone was in awe because of its slickness and beautiful design. And the ease of use of the multitouch, and the lightness and thinness of it. It looked perfect.

While more details kept being revealed, the first doubts started to appear, and by the end of the keynote the fight started. On one side the die-hard fans of Apple defended it as something magical. On the other the Apple-haters that automatically discard every Apple product without even looking at it. And somewhere in between the ones that looked at it with a critical eye, trying to make sense of this new thing.

I've avoided commenting on it earlier because I wanted to know what I'm talking about before giving my opinion. Now that I've read way too many stuff about the iPad (the only thing missing is the experience of holding one), I'm ready to share my opinion about it.

And to put it short and simple: the iPad is a useless device. Allow me to elaborate:

It's not the best way to browse the web

One of the things I heard more than once during the iPad promotional video was "the iPad is the best web surfing experience". Well I'll have to disagree with that. It can be argued that it's the best way to browse the web in a mobile device, but then again, calling the iPad a mobile device is debatable (it's small, but not small enough for my pocket, unless I get the iPants...).

The big problem: no support for Flash! Which means that you won't be able to use that gorgeous screen on all those video sites on the web. Not to mention all the games and other apps.

While there are some arguments for Apple's choice to not enable it, how can a device be considered "the best way to browse the web" if one of the most ubiquitous web technologies is not present? Start getting used to the blue legos...

No multitasking or file management system

Because it uses some variant of the iPhone OS, there's no multitasking in the iPad. This means you can't listen to Spotify and browse the web at the same time. No working in Pages while making a VoIP call. And the list goes on...

And because of the closed nature of all things Apple, there's no simple way to transfer files to and from the iPad. Why is this relevant? Well, it means all the media files will have to be synced through iTunes, which always involves conversions to the mad Apple formats. There's no way to just drag and drop them over WiFi or using a USB Mass Storage Device.

Not to mention all the documents produced with iWork (which even deserved to be ported to the iPad). Where will those go? And while we're in this department, how can a device coined as a "great productivity tool" lack the support for non-Apple office software (Microsoft and Openoffice).

It's not the best way to watch movies

Again, the iPad video... (that thing is so over the top... it's ridiculous). Full HD is not supported, 720p will be the maximum. Also, the display is not widescreen. So any widescreen movie will be framed inside yet more black space (in addition to the bevel, which is not that small).

These are not huge problems, but the "best movie watching experience" should take care of them.

It's not as affordable as it might look

The base price for the iPad is $499 (and apparently will be €499 in Europe, because Apple fails to acknowledge that 1€ > $1). For that you'll get 16GB of storage and WiFi. Want 3G? Prepare to spend $130 more. Want more storage? That'll be $100 extra for the 32GB version, and another $100 for the 64GB. You might be able to use an external disk for storage (again, not sure about the syncing), but for that you need to buy some kind of adapter since the iPad doesn't have a USB port. Same for SD cards, so go on and buy the adapter to be able to transfer photos from your camera to the iPad.

How much does it cost now?

It's useless

One may think that the most obvious buyers are the Apple clients. But I think that even those won't find a use for it. They already have an iPhone and a MacBook. The iPad can't make calls or take pics like the iPhone. And it's also way bigger and not that portable. It can't be used for video conferencing like the MacBook, and the lack of multitasking make it useless for any kind of serious work.

It makes even less sense for the non-Apple crowd. With half the money you can buy a pretty decent netbook that will do everything the iPad does and more. It will be a bit heavier and it won't have touchscreen, but at least it will have more functionality than a digital coffee table book.

Stan Schroeder, of Mashable, makes a good point by asking when do you plan to use the iPad:

It’s going to be very hard to find enough time to use the iPad. When you’re at home or at work, you’re going to use your computer. When you’re on the go, you have your smartphone. If you’re on a train or a plane and need to do some work, you can use a laptop. When you’re doing something else, such as running, well, then your attention is focused on that. When, exactly, are you going to use the iPad?

Waiting for the next version

Now, with all that said I'm still waiting to see if this will end up becoming the next big thing. If I remember correctly, the iPod also faced some resistance when it was first announced, and even the first version of the iPhone was quite poor compared to the current one.

We might as well be looking at the New World of computing and not even know it. All the negative reactions to the iPad could be just "Future Shock". Only time will tell.

But as it is now, the iPad is virtually useless.

In the last few weeks the Internet has been flooded by hundreds of news articles and blog posts with rumours of the extremely over-hyped Apple Tablet. Well, it will all end in very soon, when the iPadSlateTablet^© is finally revealed by God Steve Jobs. In the meanwhile, check out the list of 20 things we already know about Apple's marvellous device (courtesy of The Doghouse Diaries):

It was the happiest day of my Facebook-life when the possibility to hide applications from the news stream was added.

Since then I've been able to get rid of all the crap app/quiz/game that kept showing up on the screen. And a lot of it was from a single game - FarmVille. If only I had been shown this video, I might have been convinced to play it...

And while you're at it, check out the parody commercial for MafiaWars. This one I do play, but only due to my OCD ("obsessive completion disorder"), because I'm sick of the damn thing. The enjoyment is as big as the video shows...

The geek in me just gave a few good laughs at these screen shots of what Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, Chewie, C-3PO and other Star Wars characters would write on their Facebook walls.

And if you haven't seen it before, here's another Facebook parody - The Facebook of Genesis.

I've been wanting to write about this tool, but for the sake of credibility, I didn't want to write a review before actually using it. And today I did.

Ninite calls itself an "easy PC setup and multiple app installer. And that's exactly what it is. It couldn't be any simpler, I guess. The website is just a list of the best Windows applications divided in several categories. You just select the ones you want, download a customized installer and run it. The selection is very good, and all the essentials are there, like Firefox and Chrome, uTorrent, VLC, ImgBurn, 7-Zip, Notepad++, etc.

The installer doesn't ask you any annoying installer questions. It just downloads the stuff you requested and installs it. Simple.

To make things even faster, it fires up several downloads at once, so that when when program finishes installing, it is very likely that the next one on the list has already been downloaded and ready to go.

But not everything is good. In my test the installer froze while installing Dropbox. I'm guessing that was because Dropbox requires, in the end of the install process, a login to the service, and the automated wizard couldn't deal with that. It would be nice to have a way to skip the current app and install the remaining ones (I had to cancel the whole thing and go to the site again for the ones that didn't install in the first run). Also, it's not possible to specify an installation folder other than the default (typically C:/Windows/Program Files), although this might be a necessary evil to make the whole thing as simple as possible.

In short, it's a great little tool that makes the task of setting up a new computer much, much easier.

Just like they did on Samuel Morse's birthday and Louis Braille's birthday, today, on the 57th birthday of the Barcode, Google presented its logo as vertical black bars on a white background.

Now if, for some bizarre reason, you want to generate a similar Barcode for your name, just head over to morovia.com, and select "Code 128" as the Barcode Format. This is how my name looks like:

And what good would an encoder be without a decoder? Use ZXing.org to uncover the hidden messages in barcodes.

I've always been a big fan of Monopoly. It was probably the board game I played the most as a kid, before the video games arrived in force. A couple of years ago I even tried a computer version of it, but it was just boring playing versus the computer (I don't think the multiplayer capabilities were very good). It was like the board version, minus the pleasure of holding all that fake money and laughing on my friends' face when I won.

So you can imagine my excitement when, earlier today, I found out that Hasbro would release a version of the game using Google Maps as the playing board and therefore create a worldwide Monopoly game - Monopoly City Streets. WOW!

The details were very sketchy, but Hasbro has since posted on the official blog some information on how the game was created, to answer some of the speculation around it:

So, did Google build it? From the reports you would think so but the application was built by Hasbro's UK digital agency Tribal DDB.

Have Google helped us? Of course, they've been great and have really gotten behind the project with all the support we needed.

Who else has helped us? The project was made possible by using the street data from OpenStreetMap, combined with Google Maps, API tastic!

They have also released a FAQ, to satisfy the more impatient while the game doesn't start.

Other sites report some more details:

Players start the free game with three million Monopoly dollars and can buy Downing Street for $231,000, while Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, where the White House stands, costs $2 million.

Rent is paid automatically each day, from $50,000 for a house to $100 million for a skyscraper.

The game will start on the 9th of September 2009 and will go on until the 31st of January 2010.

This sounds like a brilliant idea, and I can't wait to rush in and buy the streets from the Portuguese boardgame version.

Not happy with implementing the "3 strikes" method of getting rid of customers alleged pirates announced earlier this year, Eircom has decided to bend over a bit more and go along with the music industry's demands to block access to The Pirate Bay.

Starting today, September 1st 2009, Eircom customers can no longer access The Pirate Bay and instead, are presented with this message (body in plain text for clarity):

On the 24 July 2009, an Order was made by the High Court requiring eircom to block or otherwise disable access by its subscribers to the website ThePirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs. The Court was satisfied that on the basis of the evidence presented by the record companies that the PirateBay website is a website that facilitates the exchange of copyrighted sound recordings without the consent of the copyright owners.

eircom recognises the legitimate rights of the owners of copyrighted material and believes that individuals who share or download copyrighted material without the authorisation or the permission of the copyright owner are acting illegally.

The Order further provides that should the PirateBay website content be legitimatised in the future then eircom has liberty to apply to the Court to have the Order vacated and access to the PirateBay website enabled.

eircom in compliance with the Order has agreed that access to the website the PirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs from the eircom network will be blocked indefinitely from the 1st September 2009.

eircom would like to reassure customers that:

* eircom will not monitor customer’s activities at any stage, nor will it place any monitoring equipment or software on its network in order to facilitate this block.
* eircom will not provide personal details or any information relating to customers to any third party, including the record companies.

So if you're in Ireland and your ISP is Eircom, you won't be getting in The Pirate Bay easily (you can always use a proxy). And because I don't like to see people being denied their share of downloadable stuff, check out this nice post with 25 Great Pirate Bay Alternatives. Although I really doubt that anyone that is tech-savvy enough to know about and use The Pirate Bay will have a hard time finding alternatives...

The rest of you need not worry, at least for now, because the other Irish ISPs ignored the threats.

(via TorrentFreak)

Here's a warning to those who think that just because they have a Mac there's no way a virus will get into their operating system. One of the newest tricks that malware-distributing websites are using is to detect which operating system you are running and then serve you a version of the virus specific for that OS.

One such example was demonstrated by Symantec a few days ago, where blogs offering free streaming online copies of movies that were just released in the theaters try to lure users into installing a fake video plug-in, which is in fact a Trojan:

Interestingly enough, the malicious site to which users are being redirected is serving malware for Windows as well as for Mac OS. This is based on the user-agent string of the browser. For a Windows browser agent it delivers a Trojan intended for the Windows operating system, and for a Mac OS browser agent it delivers a Trojan for the Mac operating system. The following image shows the same URL delivering a Win32 Executable for IE8, as well as a .dmg file for Safari4 when the user agent for the Mac OS is used.

So watch out, Mac-heads! You might need to start learning on how to avoid these traps like us PC users have been doing for a while, because your godly operating systems might not be enough...

(via The Inquisitr)

And please do not jump directly to the “Ask someone for help or give up.” part…

(source: xkcd)