Last week I spoke to 70 members of local women’s group about how they could potentially use iPhone’s and iPad’s in useful ways in their lives as retirees. As I made a list of apps and use cases for my presentation I thought about how much I’d miss my iPhone if I were forced to give it up, and remembered a story that my father used to tell about a Yankee Clock Peddler. The story goes like this…
The Yankee Clock Peddler and his travelling companion start out on a sales tip in a rural area, and they stop for the night at a farmer’s house. In the morning before leaving to make sales call in neighbouring communities, the clock peddler asks the farmer if he’d store a clock for him for a couple of weeks, and that he’ll pick the clock up on his way back home. The farmer agreed to this, so the Peddler wound up the clock and placed it on the farmer’s wall before leaving (the farmer does not yet own a clock). When out of ear shot, the traveling companion asks the clock peddler why he left the clock at the house. Didn’t he want to sell the clock on the trip? To this the Yankee Clock Peddler replied, “don’t worry, by the time I come back in a couple of weeks, the clock will be sold… the farmer will happily buy it from me.”
The moral of the story is: “We can do without any article of luxury we have never had, but when once obtained, it is not in human nature to surrender it voluntarily.”
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Tags: Apple, ebooks, entertainment, Google, gtd, iPad, iPhone, mobile, research, Smart Phones, software
I’m often asked by people who have just purchased a new iPhone or iPad what apps they should get for their new device. Right now this is what I’m recommending:
- Kindle & iBooks – The Kindle and iBooks readers are the only apps you’ll probably need for reading books, and PDF files that people email to you. Both Do are excellent eBook readers, but books typically cost less in the Kindle store. On the other hand, I’ve found it much easier to get PDF files into the iBooks reader, so you’ll want to have both installed on your device. Don’t waste your time on the Kobo reader.
- Zite & Flipboard - Zite is a free personalized magazine for your iPad that automatically learns what you like and gets smarter every time you use it. Flipboard on the other hand had a little bit slicker interface than Zite, but it does not learn your likes and dislikes as you read over time, but stick with the sites and categories you’ve chosen to read. I’d try both out to see which you like better.
- Facebook & Path - Almost everyone is on Facebook now, and if you are, you should install the Facebook app. The user experience using the app is much more responsive and polished than the mobile web browser interface. You might also want to try out Path. Path allows you to post through to Facebook if you choose, or limit your posts to other Path users. If you try it, I suspect you’ll like it.
- Evernote - An excellent tool for capturing, syncing data between your desktop and cell phone. I love the ability it gives me to take a picture of a white board, and then later do a key word search on the text that Evernote has OCR’ed for me. I like to call it my “external brain”.
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Tags: Apple, ebooks, entertainment, evernote, Google, gtd, iPad, iPhone, languages, Sailing, Smart Phones, travel
I have been an advocate for eBooks for a couple of years now, but in spite of the the flexibility and features that eBooks provide, my relationship with them is not always as loving is it could be. Let me start by listing all the things I love about eBooks:
- Portability: Being able to take a dozen books with me when I go on trips is wonderful (and taking them without breaking my back). Being able to have my book with me whenever I have my iPhone with me is great, especially when I’m stuck in a doctor’s office, or on a bus.
- Ease of Purchase: No need to travel across town to go to the book store. I can buy books on my iPhone or computer, and then have instant delivery to all my devices.
- Instant Dictionary Access: With some books in particular, being able to simply click on a word and instantly get a dictionary definition has made a high difference in my reading comprehension and enjoyment. Last summer I read the 20 book Master and Commander series, and found the dictionary feature to be invaluable as I was introduced into all sorts of archaic English and old nautical terms.
- Ability to see where other’s have highlighted parts of the book (in the Kindle app): This is a great flag to let me know when I should slow down and really pay attention when I’m reading. This would be particularly helpful when reading text books.
- Syncing bookmarks between devices. As a person with multiple reading devices (and iPad and iPhone) being able to switch back and forth between the two, and have them both keep track of where I am in the book is an extremely handy feature.
- Lastly as a person who’s eyes are starting to grow older, I can envision a day when I will appreciate the ability to increase the font size of the books I’m reading, without have to purchase a large text book.
In summary, eBooks have a lot of great things going for them. What is there not to like? Unfortunately a few things… Now for my list of complaints that turn my relationship with eBooks rocky from time to time:
- DRM is Evil! Most of my complaints below would go away if Digital Rights Management (DRM) software was not used when publishing eBooks.
- Cannot copy and past a paragraph into an email or to Facebook.
- I cannot choose the eBook reader I want to read my eBooks in. If I buy an eBook from Amazon, I have to read it in the Kindle reader. If I buy a eBook from Apple, I can only read it in the Apple iBook reader. I should be able to choose which app I want to read my books in no matter what store I’ve purchased it in.
- I can’t put my eBooks on my bookshelf at home to show off to visitors what books I’ve read, and what some of my interests are for (I guess that is what GoodReads.com is for).
- Apocalypse protection: If I’m away from civilization for some reason, and cannot charge me electronic devices, my beautiful eBook readers turn into pretty paper weights.
- For some people the color screens on tablets are hard on their eyes. For them, color eBook readers are a no go.
So yes, I do love my eBooks, but as in most relationships there is definitely room for growth and improvement. While I’m waiting for eBook vendors to improve I’ll enjoy reading books on my iPad and iPhone and try to ignore the shortcomings.
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Tags: ebooks, education, iPad, research, Work
Introduction to the Survey Results
In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the past nine years, we decided for the second year in a row to ask some extra questions about the mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with. This survey was completed by 139 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90% plus response rate.
Executive Summary:
- 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
- 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
- 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
- 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
- The average laptop price stayed basically the same as last year at $1,186, which is down from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
- The students’ average typing speed was was 60 wpm.
- 72% of all students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
- 55% of students use Gmail as their primary email account (up from 49% last year), 9% use UVic email and 22% Hotmail.
- 60% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing (down from 67%). 30% favor Google Docs (up from 27%) and 2% OpenOffice.
- 58% of students report backing up their primary computer on a regular basis. 60% of those backing up do so to an external hard drive and 25% to a cloud storage solution.
- 97% of students use Facebook (up from 91%) and 92% (up from 80%) would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar. 25% use Twitter, 21% use linked in, and 16% use Google+.
Smart Phone / Cell Phone Ownership
84% of students own “Smart Phones” or phones with built in web browsers that allow them to surf the internet on their cell phones. That is up dramatically from 50% of smart phone owners last year.On the other end of the spectrum, 2% of students do not own a cell phone at all. This is significantly lower than the 11% of our sample of all law students who reported no cell phone in the spring of 2010. Just as laptop owner ship has been close to 100% since 2007, cell phone is now almost 100% as well.I suspect that over the next two or three years close to 100% of students will either own a smart phone, an iPod Touch, an iPad or Android tablet device.From the library’s perspective this is an important area to watch, as there are a number of interesting new technologies (like QR Codes) that could potentially enhance the library’s services that depend on library patrons having access to the internet on their cell phones along with a camera.
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Tags: Apple, backup, collaboration, ebooks, education, iPad, iPhone, mobile, Smart Phones
No matter what you think of Al Gore’s politics, his latest book, “Our Choice” points toward the direction that authors and publishers should be heading. Text combined with images, video and interactive graphics, make this e-Book a much more compelling product than a the equivalent physical book. I personally enjoy reading on my iPad, but all of the books I read in my Kindle reader are identical to the print copy (except that I can change the font size, and have a built in dictionary). The price is also right: $5 for the e-Book compared to $17 for the a physical copy.
My first reaction to the Our Choice app (for iPad and iPhone only at the moment) was that it reminded me a lot of CD Rom products from the 1990′s. Call me crazy, but I loved the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia because it not only included text and pictures, but added videos and interactive charts. I enjoyed the media rich CD Rom products that came of of the mid 1990 confluence of CD Roms, color monitors and speakers all shipping standard with PC’s.
So what is different this time around? For starters the form factor of the iPad make for a much more pleasant reading experience than sitting in front of a computer screen. In addition, the navigation interface that the iPad’s touch screen makes possible is intuitive and natural. Push Pop Press is the company that wrote the software for the book, and from what they’ve said, they hope to make their tools available so that others can publish media rich tools. Watch the video below to see how the “book” works
It was a wonderful experience reading Our Choice. Not all books, especially novels, need videos and interactive charts, but for some books (like school text books in particular) these bells and whistles make a huge positive difference. I hope to see more book in a similar format in the near future.
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Tags: Apple, ebooks, education, entertainment, iPad, iPhone, libraries, mobile, publishing, Work
I recently returned from a Law School Technology conference, and while there I learned how easy it is to create ebooks from documents in Microsoft Word or HTML formats. Elmer Masters lead a session called, Creating eBook Version of Your School’s Law Reviews Using Open Source and Free Tools (see the video here).
The ebook creation process was so easy that during the session I download, installed the tools, and created an ebook of my conference notes before Elmer had finished his talk. For anyone interest here is the process:
- Download Sigil, the free and open source ebook editor for your operating system.
- Install Sigil on your computer.
- Open the word document that you’d like to turn into an Ebook.
- Save the document as an html file by going to “File” -> “Save As” and then selecting “Web Page (htm)” in the drop down box. Then press the “Save” button.
- Launch Sigil, and right mouse click on “Text” folder in the left hand column, and select “Add Existing Items…” Add the html file you just “Saved As” from word.
- Now press the “Save” button on the Sigil tool bar, and you are done!
You might want to go to the Sigil “Tool” -> “Meta Data” menu to add a title and author to the book to make it look a little more professional looking, but other than that, you’ve created your first Ebook! Congratulations! If your document is long enough, you can insert chapter breaks to make it easier to navigate.
You might be wondering how you get this ebook on to your iPad or iPhone. All you need to do is either email the ebook to your self and then open it on your mobile device, or if you use Dropbox, move the ebook into Dropbox and then open it from Dropbox on your iPad or iPhone. If you’re a kindle user, you should have an email address than you can send file to in order to add them to your Kindle device.
For your reading pleasure, here are my CALI 2011 Conference Notes in ePub, PDF and Google Doc formats. Happy reading!
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Tags: ebooks, education, iPad, iPhone, libraries, OpenSource, publishing, Smart Phones, Work
I’ve been hearing lots about Gary Taubes’ “Why We Get Fat” book. In it he argues that the calories-in/calories-out model is wrong, and that a low carb, moderate fat diet is good. Here’s an insightful critique of the main assertions of Mr. Taubes’ book at Science Based Medicine: http://j.mp/gCBhDz
The bottom line from Science Based Medicine:
“Rather than jumping on the low-carb bandwagon before his ideas are properly tested, the precautionary principle suggests that it might be more reasonable to follow a moderate diet like the Mediterranean diet (or to follow Michael Pollan‘s stunningly simple advice to ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’), to limit ‘empty calories’from simple carbohydrates like sugar, to eat a variety of vegetables and fruits, to choose low calorie density foods that are more filling, to limit meat intake, to limit salt, and to keep looking for behavioral and environmental ways to change our calories-in/calories-out balance.”
Good advice that I’m going to try to follow… although some of those empty calories (especially in chocolate form) are so difficult not to give into every now and again!
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Tags: ebooks, health, research
Can iPhones and iPod Touches be more than just a distraction for students, but actually help you with your home work and research? Below are some apps that can help turn your mobile device into a tool for better grades. I’ll start off with some serious apps, and move to a handful of less serious tools that show the potential of mobile apps in the future.
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Tags: collaboration, ebooks, education, entertainment, evernote, Google, gtd, hardware, iPhone, QR Codes, research, Smart Phones, software
I was asked to talk to a class of Grade 10 students at Belmont Secondary School on how to effectively use mobile technology (smart phones & iPod Touches for example) for their home work and research. Here’s the handout I gave the students. In preparation for the class the teacher offered to conduct a short survey for me (and emailed me a summary of the results) so I could get a feel for the following:
- What mobile technologies they own.
- What technologies they currently use for homework and research.
- How frequently they use school or public libraries for homework and research.
The survey was conducted in December 2010 by 6 classes at Belmont Secondary School, consisting of 143 students in grades 10, 11 and 12. This sample represents about 10% of the student population. Some students owned multiple devices (here is a summary of the survey data).
For a technologist working in a university library, the results were very interesting. Let’s start with the devices the students own.
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Tags: ebooks, education, hardware, iPad, iPhone, libraries, mobile, survey, Work
Last week I spoke to 70 members of local women’s group about how they could potentially use iPhone’s and iPad’s in useful ways in their lives as retirees. As I made a list of apps and use cases for my presentation I thought about how much I’d miss my iPhone if I were forced to give it up, and remembered a story that my father used to tell about a Yankee Clock Peddler. The story goes like this…
