I hope that Apple and Amazon are paying attention. Quad core Tegra with a 12 core GPU, Near Field Communication out of the box, and a 1280x800 screen. Those are the specs of a $500 tablet right now. Is it aimed at the Kindle or at the iPad Mini? Wow. The only real drawback is the 7" screen. I have found from having used a Kindle and an iPad for some time that more real estate, especially with such a high resolution screen, is important.
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406363,00.asp
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
More evidence that privacy settings are important in social media
I just finished reading an article on Mashable about a site that aggregates publicly shared messages from Facebook that contain specific keywords relating to hating one's boss, hangovers, and phone numbers. The author of the article equates this to eavesdropping on a private conversation. The plain truth however is that through a lack of understand of the privacy settings on Facebook, people are broadcasting potentially damaging messages that can be picked up by anyone who has access to the the Facebook API.
These posts are out there to be culled from the public messages through the use of a simple url, the structure of which can be seen, along with the public posts at http://weknowwhatyouredoing.com/.
All that you need to do in order to monitor specific terms in public messages via the url is to modify the query. For instance, to get public messages that contain the word Wyoming, all that is needed is to change the "q=" value to Wyoming, and making sure that the locale is "en_US" (obviously US English). Here is an example of what that query returns: https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=wyoming&type=post&locale=en_US .
Wow. That is powerful and potentially scary.
Have a look at the About This Tool page on the site for more on the rationale. I believe that this site serves the purpose of reminding us how easily our private posts in any social networking site can be monitored if we do not take steps to protect our privacy.
These posts are out there to be culled from the public messages through the use of a simple url, the structure of which can be seen, along with the public posts at http://weknowwhatyouredoing.com/.
All that you need to do in order to monitor specific terms in public messages via the url is to modify the query. For instance, to get public messages that contain the word Wyoming, all that is needed is to change the "q=" value to Wyoming, and making sure that the locale is "en_US" (obviously US English). Here is an example of what that query returns: https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=wyoming&type=post&locale=en_US .
Wow. That is powerful and potentially scary.
Have a look at the About This Tool page on the site for more on the rationale. I believe that this site serves the purpose of reminding us how easily our private posts in any social networking site can be monitored if we do not take steps to protect our privacy.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Microsoft Surface enters the tablet market
MS introduced the Surface tablet yesterday at an event in LA. From what I have gathered so far, this announcement, and the product has garnered a great deal of interest in the blogosphere. It suddenly puts MS into the tablet market producing their own hardware with an OS that they produce. This mirrors what Apple does with the iPad, and what Google is doing with the Chromebooks.
I suppose the important part of this is that now there is a real third choice. Rather than having an operating system housed on third party hardware, we now have the equivalent of the iPad from Microsoft. Given my experience in the past with both Windows Phone 7.5 and Android, this is a good position to be in. Having the hardware optimized to the operating system in the way we would expect it to be with a Windows tablet running a Windows, there should be fewer compromises made due to differences in hardware specifications. Hopefully this will result in a device that is both more stable and more functional than Windows running on third party hardware.
It also addresses a few of the deficiencies of other tablets. Currently tablets seem to have a problem with simply opening documents between apps, and even in some cases dealing with cut and paste. Surface will (according to the sources that I have read) handle documents and interoperability between applications better. It also will have an integrated keyboard/cover that will eliminate the need for a separate Bluetooth device.
It waits to been seen what Surface will mean for educators. If the price point is right, and the tablet is backwardly compatible with most of the educational software available for Windows, then this could be an excellent alternative to the iPad in education. Time will tell.
I suppose the important part of this is that now there is a real third choice. Rather than having an operating system housed on third party hardware, we now have the equivalent of the iPad from Microsoft. Given my experience in the past with both Windows Phone 7.5 and Android, this is a good position to be in. Having the hardware optimized to the operating system in the way we would expect it to be with a Windows tablet running a Windows, there should be fewer compromises made due to differences in hardware specifications. Hopefully this will result in a device that is both more stable and more functional than Windows running on third party hardware.
It also addresses a few of the deficiencies of other tablets. Currently tablets seem to have a problem with simply opening documents between apps, and even in some cases dealing with cut and paste. Surface will (according to the sources that I have read) handle documents and interoperability between applications better. It also will have an integrated keyboard/cover that will eliminate the need for a separate Bluetooth device.
It waits to been seen what Surface will mean for educators. If the price point is right, and the tablet is backwardly compatible with most of the educational software available for Windows, then this could be an excellent alternative to the iPad in education. Time will tell.
MS Surface tablet
There is no doubt that the event yesterday on the Surface tablet garnered a great deal of positive feedback from the media. It seems to address a number of of my pet peeves about other tablets, such as communication between applications, document handling, and easy file access. And then of course there is the integrated keyboard/cover that IMHO Apple should have had.
It will be interesting to see what MS does with this. Are they creating their own proprietary ecosystem similar to Apple? I doubt if Windows will go the way of the Apple OS when it was licensed to hardware makers back in the 90s, but it seems to me that MS is finally beginning to integrate all of their major OS products into a single integrated series of offerings. Will it ever have the same cache as Apple? I doubt it. But a best case scenario would be to create the same sort of desirability that the IBM Thinkpad did for business many years ago.
Will the Surface series be positioned as a premium set of products apart from what Lenovo and others are producing? MS seems to have created a great deal of interest prior to launch using a similar approach to an Apple announcement. I suppose price and subsequent demand will tell where it ends up residing relative to the other Windows 8 hardware offerings.
Interesting too that so many of the blogs that I was reading yesterday were halfway expecting something less than this major announcement. It couldn't hurt for MS to build more street cred and anticipation when announcing a new product.
It will be interesting to see what MS does with this. Are they creating their own proprietary ecosystem similar to Apple? I doubt if Windows will go the way of the Apple OS when it was licensed to hardware makers back in the 90s, but it seems to me that MS is finally beginning to integrate all of their major OS products into a single integrated series of offerings. Will it ever have the same cache as Apple? I doubt it. But a best case scenario would be to create the same sort of desirability that the IBM Thinkpad did for business many years ago.
Will the Surface series be positioned as a premium set of products apart from what Lenovo and others are producing? MS seems to have created a great deal of interest prior to launch using a similar approach to an Apple announcement. I suppose price and subsequent demand will tell where it ends up residing relative to the other Windows 8 hardware offerings.
Interesting too that so many of the blogs that I was reading yesterday were halfway expecting something less than this major announcement. It couldn't hurt for MS to build more street cred and anticipation when announcing a new product.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
iPad the future of education instead of the Macbook?
A very interesting blog post from Hacking Education today. Is the iPad soon to be the darling device for education and specifically for standardized testing? With the entry price of a thousand dollars for any portable device with a keyboard from Apple, this seems a good direction financially with the iPad coming in at $400. A couple of questions for thought: First, is an app a capable alternative to software with high functionality? Do we dumb down the computing experience that students have, or simplify it? What does that mean for computer literacy in schools? Apps don't interact normally, nor do they contain much depth (look at any iPad office suite and compare it to MS Office for instance).
Microsoft is adopting a very similar approach with its unified GUI in Windows 8 and RT. Ultimately I wonder if the app-based paradigm can teach our students to build highly functional creations, or if more depth is needed.
Microsoft is adopting a very similar approach with its unified GUI in Windows 8 and RT. Ultimately I wonder if the app-based paradigm can teach our students to build highly functional creations, or if more depth is needed.
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