Cactus Juice

iPad: The Social Network, Part II of II

Today, instead of phones there is FaceTime and Skype.  Anyone who thought calling without warning wasn't fairly intrusive should get the message at this point: electronically showing up in my house, even worse.  FaceTime doesn't even have the choice to turn off the camera (you can turn the camera to the desk or navigate to another program, which leaves only the audio on), though Skype does.  Still, when everyone has a plan to spend some time together it is really truly fabulous.  When my 2-year-old niece was recently in the ICU, she Skyped with her 5-year-old brother to the great delight of both.  The beloved FaceTimes my cat every night, and sometimes they even talk to me.

So clearly video chat is for the very-inside-circle, but there's a lot of stuff for the wide circle as well.  LinkedIn, the professional social network.  There is not an iPad app and the iPhone app is eh-eh, so I've got a link to the website.  Then Meetup.com, the website for meeting in person with people you don't know over some subject.  There is an iPhone app which does a couple of things well, so I've got the app and a website link.  Finally, Yahoo!Groups, for not meeting people in person over some subject.

So that's what I've got.  Anyone else using a social network they couldn't live without?

Facebook Etiquette: 10 Good Ideas

10.Set up your security the way you want it.  Remember you can put your so-called friends into groups and set who has access to what.  You can block people and they dissappear entirely... it's the bestest!  Don't complain that your pictures end up on the open internet if *you* never secured them to start with.  Now use the groups.  Need to rant daily about the mayoral election?  Filter that down to people who live in the same town.

9.  Good God stop with the memes!  Yes, I am one of the 96% who don't care, and actually its 99.9%.  And, you know what, it isn't even really that week.  And, you look like an idiot.  Especially when slapping down "Harpy Friefihgters Week!!!!" without even thinking about correcting the typos.

8.If you get fooled into having some rediculous thing posted on your page, or a "friend" posts it for you, delete it.  This includes "Jani Bean answered a question about you!"  Delete it.  Don't leave it there for your actual friends to get mixed up with.  A comment "don't click on the above FOR REALZ IT IS A HACKER!!!!!!!" does not help.  Just delete it.

7.You don't know what sort of friends, co-workers and bosses I have on my Facebook.  Don't post a political, religious, or any other category of rant on my page unless I started it.  Comments about how much fun we had at the beach on our sick day are also out.

6.  Don't post things you shouldn't post.  You know, complaints about your job.  Protected company information.  Medical information that could affect your insurance^.  Private information about your marriage and complaints about your spouse.  And your parents.  And, generally, your kids.

5.Remember that posts are for us as much as they are for you.  Once a day is probably enough.  Posts that start a conversation = good.  Posts that start a conversation trying to figure out whether you are about to jump off a bridge (the height of "vaguebooking") = bad.

4.Like anything that is likeable.  And throw out a few mercy posts, why not.  You'll need all that karma back when you are stuck in an airport for 36 hours violating good idea #5.

3.Put some farking clothes on and wash your mouth out with soap!  And no we don't want to see your toddler's fecal art project.*  We want to see you.  Occasionally without a beer in front of your face.

2.Read the post.  If you still don't get it, click in the person's name.  It goes to their wall.  So if 100 people have posted how sorry they are to hear someones goldfish died, don't post "OMG WHAT HAPPENED?!!!!!!!!"  First, the goldfish died.  We know this.  Second, if you click on the name, you can usually scroll down and find out what happened.

Because of this problem, people in crisis often find that they need to appoint a "minister of information" as one cancer survivor called it.  This is a person who will answer those questions for you.  If it were me, I would also give that person my password and authority to delete the most annoying posts.

1.  Don't post private stuff about other people!  "Jacki, that's terrible!  Especially after that abortion you had two weeks ago!  XOXOXOXOXO!!!!"  These seems to happen most frequently when someone is in crisis, because that is of course the very best time to broadcast their private information (???).  If I have ever have a crisis, the first thing I'm going to do is lock down my page so no one can post comments...  Not kidding!

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Thanks to my Facebook friends who made suggestions for this list!

^Psssst: All that medical privacy stuff?  It only counts for your medical records.  Anything your insurance company finds, say on the internet, is fair game to use against you.
*I have my doubts about this needing to be mentioned as a good idea, but my friends insist that it does.  I will take their word for it and hope I never have to find out why.

iPad: The Social Network, Part I of II

I have developed a bad habit of not carrying around my phone.  I'm pretty sure this put a phoning and texting friend's undergarments in a bunch recently, and this weekend it caused me some anxiety when someone knocked on my door at 3:30AM and I didn't even know where my phone was.  But people don't call any more.  Maybe great-Aunt Ida will call me without warning, once a quarter.  And the pharmacy.  The darned pharmacy that re-fills my drugs on the wrong dates and calls to tell me about it.  Not enough to be glued to the phone.

I've got handy old AIM on the iPad and the phone (and the laptop, why not).  It can text AIM people and it can text people at their phone numbers if they insist on paying $20 a month to, um, not use AIM (why???).  Messages go to my iPad, and my phone, and my laptop if it is on, problem solved.  Of course, these are the very small number of people whom I am willing to text (as in, less than 5, don't feel bad if you aren't on the list).  We text, of course, because phone calls are rude.  As if random texts are any less intrusive and obnoxious.

So, for everyone else, there's email.  Yay.  I thought that I read my email on Blackberry, but I'm learning that I didn't.  It's so much easier to understand on a larger screen, truly.  I've got my email coming into my iPad as a copy (just as I did on the Blackberry).  It then deletes from the server when I download the batches into Outlook on my laptop to delete automatically after 90 days.  Why do I do that?  Because none of the email systems I use will do an automatic delete after 90 days.  In fact, most of the make it about impossible to delete any other way.  There are emails to save, of course.  Those get forwarded to Evernote.

And then there is Facebook.  People still in the "push" phase of socializing don't understand Facebook.  Here's how push works: take my call when I call you.  Text me when I text you.  Read what I think is interesting when I forward it to you on email.  If a business acted like this it would be obnoxious.  If a person acts like this maybe they are 92.*  Facebook is where you can put all of that stuff you think your friends might be interested in and when they want to come coddle you over your deep grief for your dead goldfish they can.

This isn't as cold as it at first seems: how many people would you have to call before you found someone who had the time and inclination to share your dead goldfish grief?  But if you post it on Facebook, that person finds you.  And you haven't annoyed your 10 other friends who would have preferred to feed your goldfish to their cat.  You might even miss out on an afternoon of tears when one of them tells you so.  See, Facebook: win, win, win.

Then for that friend who wants to recite his political outrage (how outraged can a person be every single day, sigh) or explain why you just must, must, must buy a tablet device (my life is fine, thaaank yooou!, or so I've heard) there are blogs.  I wrote last week about organizing blogs since sometimes they are news, but sometimes they are social.  For when Facebook just can't contain it all.  Though, you can make your blog feed into your Facebook and thereby make paying attention to your rants one stop shopping for your friends.

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*Which is not an excuse since there are 100-year-olds with blogs, but 92 is the generally accepted age around here to just make everyone else conform to however it is you do things.  Plenty of 65-year-olds act that way, but if I were to change the accepted age to 65 then the pre-elderly set would be insulted that I'm the one that said they can't change.  So, 92-year-olds off the hook, everyone else get with the program!

iPad: Typing on Glass

We're going to be typing on glass a lot more in the future.  Acer has just released a dual-screen laptop which, though it has a lot of shortcomings, is a sign of the possibilities.

What's so great about typing on on glass?  First, it removes the root of many computer failures.  If you've ever tried to limp along with a laptop that was fine except for that one stuck key, you know the problem.  It is silly that a several thousand dollar machine can be felled by a spring.  Next, it's hygienic.  Keyboards are gross.  Last, it is easily reconfigurable.  On the iPad you can load several different keyboards and easily switch between them.  Apple doesn't have to manufacture a differently keyboarded device for every culture.  They don't currently have a mathematical keyboard that you can bring up, but that's a possibility and some of the calculator apps use the app part of the screen plus the text keyboard to effect the same thing.  We haven't even begun to see where the glass keyboard can go.

The iPad glass keyboard works a little differently from a standard touch keyboard.  I've seen some complaints on app reviews that weren't about the app at all but rather about not knowing how to use the keyboard.  First, if you do use more that one typing method or are used to a keyboard from another culture, go ahead and load up that keyboard.  A world button will appear next to the space bar which makes it easy to switch between keyboards.  This is fantastic for language learners who can now learn on the proper keyboard for their language.

The keyboard guesses when you want to capitalize and there will be a little blue in the shift key.  If you don't want to capitalize, just touch it take that off.  If you want caplock, press the shift key twice.  The keyboard is a one key at a time device.  This is like your smartphone: you press shift, then you press the letter; you don't have to hold them together.  There are two other things hiding on the main keyboard: if you hold the comma key, you get a foot mark (commonly used for an apostrophe in quick typing such as notes or email).  If you hold the period key, you get an inch mark (commonly used for a quote mark in those situations).  For accent marks, hold the key and then slide your finger over the accented letter that pops up.  For example, if you hold the "e" key on the United States keyboard, you get eight accent choices.

Now click the key to go to the number and symbols board.  There are some things hidden here too: 

• Holding the n-dash key gets you some choices, including an m-dash.
• Hold zero to get a degree.
• Hold $ to get other currency symbols.
• Hold & to get the section sign.
• Hold the period to get ellipses.
• Hold the question mark or the exclamation mark to get the inverted symbols.
• The apostrophe and the quote mark get you several choices, including real apostrophe and quote marks.
• On this keyboard there is a symbol key to get you further symbols.

 The spell-check on the iPad does learn, but until it learns it is a bit dictatorial.  Clicking the tiny "x" to cancel a spelling correction does not always work for me.  Backspacing when a spelling correction appears generally cancels the correction.  Sometimes that doesn't work out and the last solution is that the third time you re-type a word it will not be corrected.  Spell-check can also be used to your advantage: if it's got the correct work, press space and move on.

Safari on iPad has it's limitations, and one of them is that typing windows don't lengthen as you type.  This is a problem in Facebook, for example.  The solution is to type what needs typing on the notepad, and then copy-and-paste it back into the webpage where you want it to stay.

Lastly, the iPad has a privacy problem.  Since you generally use it flat or at a slight angle, it is visible to everyone.  Since iPads are not adopted into our culture yet, a lot of people stare.  I keep my diary on my iPad, so this is an extra problem.  Awesome Note allows you to control the font size so that you can scale it down to where you can barely read it from your seat, and it would take some effort for someone to read it walking by.  Unfortunately, none of the other programs that I use for typing allow control of font size.

You can use a bluetooth keyboard with the iPad.  I bought one, but I just don't use it.  I guess if there was some sustained amount of typing I wanted to do I might use it, especially if I were in a situation where touch typing were more crucial, such as typing notes at a meeting or in-person lecture.  As it is, my spacial awareness is good enough to type on glass in all the situations that I currently encounter.  It took about four weeks to develop that spacial awareness in my fingers, and I was already a fairly solid touch-typer at 40+ wpm.

And that's everything I know about typing on glass.  If you've got some other tips, please post them!

iPad Series: Life Management with Awesome Note, Evernote and More

Awesome Note is a visually stimulating full-service action item and non-standardized calendar application which I use to manage my life.  If you snuck a peak at my iPad at any time of the day, this is what you would most likely see on the screen.

First, let's talk about what Awesome Note doesn't do.  It doesn't integrate with other calendar applications using the calDEV standard (things like Google Calendar, Outlook, etc.).  The reason I have not selected a calDEV application is because the only cloud sync calendar available for free* is Google Calendar, and Google Calendar is in beta.  It is not reliable.  Put in a repeating appointment on Tuesdays and have it show up on Wednesday or put in an item at 5PM and have it show up at 6PM; these are things which have happened to me.

In return for giving up calDAV (which was going to have problems no matter what), what I get is full integration with Evernote.  This allows me to be very close to the most important thing in electronic document management: having a Single Source of the Truth.  By searching in Evernote, I can find everything else I have saved into Evernote in addition to what is in Awesome Note.  If you have been meticulous about keeping everything in Evernote (and I have been!), this gives you one place to find every document and idea you have recorded about any subject.  This is Fortune 500 level information management, and it is now available to every individual with $5.00 a month to spend on Evernote.  Awesome Note just takes that information and makes it even more useful and way more awesome looking.  Here is how the Awesome Note data looks in Evernote (my chicken-scratch privacy marks make it look even uglier than the ugly that it is):

     

AwesomeNote isn't the only iPad app for action items that integrates with Evernote, but it is the one which meets my needs the best.  I was looking for something simple.  Because of how Awesome Note presents information, it is the easiest to use if you don't want to create an indivdual item for each and every action.  For most projects, I create just one note with the Next Action as the name of the note.  The rest of the project is listed in the note itself.  If I have a complex project that I would like to calendar out, I can make a folder for my project and divide up my actions into individual notes.  By creating contexts and tagging the note (e.g., @errands) and using the search function on Awesome Note, I have a fully functioning Getting Things Done system.**

As a calendar***, Awesome Note allows a created date, a due date, and an alarm.  The items shows up in calendar view on the created date if there is no due date (for example, meeting notes or a to do without a due date set) or if it is an action with a due date it shows up on the due date.  When you open the list for the folder and sort it by date, the dated items show up first, then the undated actions, and the completed actions at the end (a lot of actions I just delete rather than mark completed, others can be group-searched in Evernote and moved into an archive folder in Evernote periodically).  The date requires a time, which means that Awesome Note can be used as a fully functioning daily agenda calendar.  The downside to this is that you have to put in a time even if you don't know it.  If it is an event where the time was in question, I tend to write something about the time inside the note so that I know that I truly have the event time (or don't).  Also, only a start time is provided; if you want an end time you have to write it into the note.  Awesome Note does allow for repeating appointments, though you have to set them up in the form of a task and only the current iteration shows up on the calendar.  I have made it a practice to set the items as a calendar and just re-schedule my repeating appointments during my weekly review.

You can create and edit items in Evernote and sync the edits back to Awesome Note.  I add Evernote items (for example, scanned event fliers or saved emails that I want to turn into calendar items) to the Awesome Note "in box" to prompt me to format and organize them in Awesome Note the next time I sync.  This also means that if you sync regularly your Awesome Note information is available everywhere and on every device simply by looking in Evernote.

Awesome Note also makes a wonderful diary or even a scrapbook.  I use Olive Tree for my daily Bible reading, which has a verse selector allowing the reader to easily bring Bible verses over to my Awesome Note diary.  Another user reports using it to keep photo journals for her small children. You can include items such as web clipping and photographs in notes.  Check out the Awesome Note web site for some screen shots.  You can also lock individual folders for added privacy (downside: notes in locked folders will not show up in all notes).

In Awesome Note, you can set the color of each folder and how the notes look and how they are ordered.  Each folder retains its settings and looks the same the next time you open it.  You can also set a default template note for each folder, and a default view for the folder.  Above is how I have set up my standard All Notes view.  Most of the day, this is what I'm looking at on my iPad.  Below are a couple of other folder views.

   

I usually use the longways view because it maximizes the folder and item lists that can be seen.  Turn the iPad sideways and you can see indivdual notes next to the note list for a folder.  This is convenient for flipping through the notes quickly.

 

Or in the previous orientation the note just opens over the list.

 

Awesome Note doesn't have a PC or Mac package, but you can edit the notes in Evernote and sync them back into Awesome Note.  You can also create notes in Evernote inside the Awesome Note folders and they will show up in Awesome Note after you sync.

There are three other programs I use to round out my life management system:

• iThoughtsHD.  I never was a mindmapping person before, but the mindmap is a perfect fit with the iPad.  iThoughts exports in its format, into a standard mindmap format, into PDF, and into text outline.  It syncs with Box.net (free).  It is great for high-level "40,000 ft" life planning.  Or low level planning: I have my packing list on a mind map.
• BugMe!  I've used BugMe since the days of Palm Pilots.  It is great for short-term notes.  For example: You are writing an email and get a call which gives you an action item for immediately after the email.  You don't want to forget, so you make a quick BugMe note and maybe set a five minute reminder.
• Timer+.  Allows you to see multiple countdown timers.  Think Thanksgiving dinner prep.

And there you have it: the life of loafingcactus on the iPad! 

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*There are rumors that Apple's me.com may be free by the end of 2011. I have no information or opinion about the validity of those rumors.

**After I wrote this post Awesome Note added tags and progress status options.  The tags do not sync into Evernote tags.  I see this as a feature because I don't want these tags mucking up my Evernote tags, but other GTD users probably will not agree.  You can still search by tag in Evernote because the tag name is in the note.  They also added view selections such as "Today" inside a list without the calendar present on the screen.  This takes the GTD functionality to an entirely new level.

**The calendar builds when you open it.  So if you then change items under the calendar, you won't see the changes on the calendar until you close and re-open it (click the calendar button twice).

Updated: Going Paperless

This is going to be a nuts-and-bolts about how I've gone paperless in my house.  That's right, except for a couple of items that I'm required to keep for three years on paper for taxes per my employer (but not per the IRS as best as I understand the regulations; check with your tax specialist because the government is doing a lot to help everyone go paperless) I have not created a single file folder in my house since I went paperless.  I have two file cabinets, one that I am working on scanning back and emptying and the other that is full of genealogy originals that will be kept on paper forever and ever amen.

Going paperless has required three main tools.  The first is Evernote.  The paid version is what you need and it is only $5.00/month.  Evernote does something different from what a file back-up and sharing system like Box does or what a note organizing system like Microsoft OneNote does, although both programs are essential to managing my digital life, as is a photo organizing cloud system (I use Flickr).  At this point I'm almost entirely in the "cloud."  My laptop is a box; if it got run over by a truck I could grab another laptop and be ready to go.

Evernote has a "we're not responsible" tone (frequently those exact words) to their error/operating messages and I have experienced the same in my two interactions with their customer service (the email thread reads like a farce, I might have to post it someday), but they appear to have done a good job handling a server failure that occurred in the late summer of 2010 so I wouldn't write off their corporate culture just yet.  But don't trust that they will help you when you need help either.  Also they are still a baby-venture and there's nothing to guarantee their success.  However, their desktop program allows you to completely copy your data onto a local drive (while still having it available across other computers, a web login, your smart phone and your ipad) so there is no chance your data can go down with Evernote.  You'll be able to use it locally on Evernote forever or move it to another system at your leisure.

The second tool is the Canon P-150 "scan-tini" scanner (also available for Mac).  I did a lot of comparison shopping and I am very happy with my choice.  This scanner is powered entirely through your USB connection, with a second USB-to-power connecter or AC adabtor if you need extra power.  The extra power really speeds things up for 600 dpi double-sided, but since you shouldn't be scanning at that high of a resolution for routine document storage the one USB connector does what you need 99% of the time.  This is the ultra-portable answer; the only thing that would make it better would be if I could scan directly into an ipad.  If you have to save your paper to go back to a central location then you are not paperless; a portable solution is required!

I also had a Magic Wand stick scanner.  This has been replaced with a better smart phone camera and JotNot.  JotNot is more that able to turn full-size journal pages into readable PDFs.

The third essential a second screen.  Being paperless means more screens.  For example, you may go through your paper bills in a stack next to your computer screen with the financial management program of your choice up.  You can stack and arrange windows to make this work, or you can just have Evernote up on that second screen while you're in your financial management program on your first screen.  Ditto for writing a research paper (in that case, for me, it is OneNote up on that second screen too) or any other activity that used to involve a stack of paper next to the computer.  Depending on what programs you are using, the iPad may be effective as that second screen, either on it's own or using one of the applications which make it act as a screen extension on your computer.

Now you are ready to go paperless!  You'll be able to set up a scanning folder on your computer to be automatically emptied into Evernote.  You want to set up as few folders as needed and as few tags as needed.  Don't set up folders or tags for things you can search for!  You need to set up "an "Inbox" folder where all your scans land.  My folder is called "aaa" so it will always be at the top.  Aside from that I just have a folder "library" for publically available items that I feel comfortable sharing with close members of my family and folder "history" for everything else.  Eventually when my hard drive fills up "history" could be split, backed up, and removed from my harddrive (it would still be searchable on the web tool). I will probably have to put my local copy onto an external hard disk as it gets larger.  The web tool is almost to the point where one doesn't necessarily need to the local copy, except that the data is so important I don't think I would do without.  However, one could operate on the web tool primarily and just drag out the hard drive to update the back up periodically.

Let's sort your mail.  Your mail probably has:
-Fliers and newsletters.  Mark down any action items and scan and shred.  If you really want to keep your newsletter around to read, mark it "scanned" so you know you can throw it away after you scan it.
-Bills.  Scan and shred and tag "pay".  If relevant, also tag "taxes" (you don't have to tag the year because it saved the year you scanned it... at the turn of the year you can just adjust that to make it land in the right year).  Now you have a file you can go through when you do your electronic bill pay (you do electronic bill pay, right?).  Sometimes a few stubs and envelopes have to be saved for paper checks.  Since I have so little paper, I just mark them "scanned" and put them in a desk drawer.  When I pay the bills I change their tag to "paid."
-Catalogs.  They probably have a website?  Scan the page with your customer number and the website info and put in the recycling.
-Magazines and newspapers.  As I read them I either rip out the articles I want to scan or log-in to download the articles to Evernote (much smaller files).  For magazines that have a lot I might want to find again I just rip out the table-of-contents and scan that.  I can always find the article again in a library if I truly want it.

Remember that you do not need to tag this stuff!  If you want to find the article about the Grand Canyon again, you're just going to search for "Grand Canyon".

What about your own notes?  I used to take a lot of notes on paper while I'm reading and I'm a huge journal-keeper (though now more likely on the iPad than on paper).  I keep these notes for as long as they are immediately relevant, then scan and shred.  Slowly I'm going back through my history and catching up.  That 50 pound box of childhood journals I've been lugging around since I was 18?  Someday it will scanned and shredded.  Your printing will be searchable; your handwriting might be searchable.  I print keywords in the margins.

Their are a few other inputs into Evernote:
-You can type directly into Evernote on your computer, the website, or smartphone.
-You can drag and drop anything from your computer (although only supported items will be searchable, and almost everything is supported).
-You will get an email address that allows you to email into Evernote.  I used to read my email on my blackberry and then sort it _again_ on my desktop.  Now I read on my blackberry iPad and forward anything that requires more attention or needs to be saved to my history to my Evernote inbox.  You can also use email to save journal thoughts, action items, whatever you need.
-You can save from Microsoft Outlook directly into Evernote.
-You can forward or write tweets to Evernote.
-On a computer with the desktop client, you can left-click on any website and forward it to Evernote. (Go to the "print" version of the page if possible.)
-You can send pictures from your smartphone or iPad.  For example, you can take a picture of a flier and it will be searchable in Evernote.  I sometimes photograph small newspaper articles or at the bookstore I'll photograph books that interest me.
-You can send a voice-to-text message to Evernote.  I think it's 5 per month that are free; then you need a paid account.  This is one of the many vendor add-ins available in the Evernote "Trunk."

The Evernote upload limit has been enlarged can be a little restricting.  You can save literally thousands of websites and other text items, but I hit the scanning limit early in the month.  300pdi lets you save 10s or 100s more items than 600pdi will allow.  If one did happen to hit the limit, Evernote allows you to save your overage (or stuff you just don't want to put on the web) in a local-only folder, but it's not backed up.  I have scanned as much as possible working on backlog and have not been able to exceed the new limit.

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Originally posted 19 September 2010.
Updated 21 May 2011.

iPad Series: Electronic Readers

A variety of eReaders are now available.  Many classics are available for free or nearly free, some emerging authors offer their work for free or nearly free, and some established authors or series also offer select books for free in order to entice you into their lineup.  Some libraries, including the public library where I live, have ebooks available for borrowing.  Also, most popular books offer a chapter or so for free browsing.

(Ipad and just a few of the books and periodicals it has replaced.  These French language materials were donated to a school.)

If you want to see if you like how an eReader works, you don't have to buy one.  Instead, download something like Kindle for PC onto your desktop or laptop and take a free book for a test drive.  It's also great for book browsing at home.  If you have access to a reader, I encourage you to fill it up with free stuff and chapter samples!  And whatever you do, go set up a free Goodreads account and friend me.  In addition to being fun, Goodreads is good for keeping track of what you own when it could be on the shelf... or in this reader... or in that reader.

"They" say that once you read 22 books on your ereader, it has payed for itself environmentally.  I think there is a lot more to be said about the environmental benefits of ereaders and tablets and will be posting about this later.

The debates over reading comprehension on electronic reading versus paper are exploding.  One thing we do know is that the more practice a person has with electronic reading, the better their reading comprehension on electronic devices.  Children who read ebooks are getting that practice; adults who aren't don't.

I think that part of the reading comprehension is the skill set of focusing when the entire universe is a click away.  That is certainly a disciple that I have had to practice.  Researchers find that hyperlinks reduce reading comprehension because they interrupt the flow of knowledge acquisition with the requirement to make a decision whether or not to click the hyperlink.  Products such as Instapaper strip out the hyperlinks so that reading is easier.  However I think that skilled readers are also better able to read through and then come back and make hyperlink decisions.  Anyway, the point is that bells and whistles aren't necessarily the benefit they at first seem, and if you find reading difficult turn everything off (products such as Freedom even let you lock out the internet from your laptop) except the one thing you are trying to read.

Devices that only provide electronic books let that happen, so I think there is a place for basic reading devices even in a world of tablet computers.  The only reader device I have a lot of experience is with the iPad, and I can see adding a purpose-only reader at some point. The iPad is great, but it is true that there is glare. There is also email, games, Facebook... a lot of distractions.

You can download a variety of readers onto an Ipad for free.  The books available for each reader are not exactly the same, so you can look a few places to see if you can find what you want.  Even if they are the same, they may be priced differently.  You do have limitations on being able to move books from one reader to another (assume you can't unless you know you can, go here for more on that and, um, more), so say if you have a Kindle and then want to switch to a Nook you will have difficulties.  Also, Kindle newspapers are not available on the iPad.

The readers I have installed (just search for them in the App store) are iBooks from Apple, Kindle from Amazon, Nook from Barnes and Noble, Kobo (associated with Borders), and Google Books.  This is what I have experienced so far on the iPad device:

• I had a large gift card to Amazon, so the reader I have the most experience with is the Kindle, which I like very much.  One of the things I particularily like about the Kindle is that after you are finished reading you can go to the website and get a page showing the text of all your highlights and your notes.  Saving this page into Evernote allows you to have one place to find everything you have ever saved about that book (a clipper exists for Apple computers).  They also now have lending- you can lend a book to a friend with a Kindle for two weeks.  I think Kindle is also the only one with an in-app control for the screen brightness.
• I don't like the cartoonishness of iBooks, but it has features that people like that I haven't used yet.  A favorite feature is multiple colors of highlighters.
• I haven't really used the Nook.
• I haven't used Kobo at all, but I have found a couple of books there that I wasn't able to find other places.
• Google Books is by far the most beautiful, with several choices of type as well as choice of line spacing.  On at least some books you can click through to the original scanned page.  The location finders are also far superior, with a drop down table of contents and location within the chapter.  However, highlighting and notes are not supported.  Independent Booksellers can sell Google Books through their webpage (though my local bookstore has not yet chosen to do so).

A benefit of the reader is that you can change how the same book looks.  I find that in a quiet place where I can concentrate I like a small font that can give me big chunks of input with fewer page turns.  In a coffee shop I tend to use a very large font that just gives me a paragraph at a time.  A friend told me that her middle-aged eyes like a smaller font in the morning and move toward a larger font in the evening.  One trick:  on the Kindle at least, you cannot run a highlight across a page break.  Changing the font size and flipping back in forth on pages can eventually move the text block you want onto one page; it just takes some fiddling.

I'll close with a little bit about what how eReaders and other iPad applications are working out as book replacements for me.  One has to view free or nearly free editions of classics with suspicion.  They may not be the best translation or they may be formatted badly.  I think this market has some maturation in front of it; academics, students and others are going to need the same branded quality that is currently available in print.  If a respected print publisher were to load up classics with their trademark of quality and charge a little more, I would pay.  I've bought a few full price books and was very happy not to have to carry them around.  In fact, I have a little library of books which I now wish to read electronically and I sort of resent their papery presence in my library.  I'm finding that books of stories work well for when and where I want a little mental break.

Between readers and other applications, I've gotten rid of about seven feet of reference shelving.  I gained about 40% of my luggage space back from a typical business trip.  Before I list the applications, a comment about organizing the iPad: the device allows you to either place a symbol on the screen for websites, or have websites listed as favorites like on a PC.  I think the point of cloud computing is that information in the cloud or shared information is not demarkated in terms of useablity from information that is stored locally.  Consequently, I'm a fan of placing the symbol on the screen next to any local applications so that they can all be used together.  So, the list:

• the readers listed above
• iAnnotate(for PDFs, they can also be opened and marked in iBooks)
• Evernote (web "save for later" reading)
• Shakespeare- a reader just for Shakespeare, associated with playshakespeare.com
• Audible (audio books)
• Collins Pro (electronic French-English dictionary, no more decision making about which size dictionary to lug around, and so much more than even the largest print Collins)
• Conjugueur
• Dictionnaire (electronic TLFi)
• Dictionary (one came with the iPad, one seems to come with each reader)
• iBirds Pro
• iBCP (an electronic Book of Common prayer, very (very!) ugly and basic but gets the job done)
• The Daily Office ("just" a website, but a nice alternative for daily prayer if one isn't up to flipping around between the Bible and the Prayer Book)
• BibleReader from OliveTree (fabulous functionality and cloud backup of all your highlights and notes, with Evernote integration as well)
• Scriptures (the full set of scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in several languages, can view another language side-by-side with English)

This doesn't include periodicals- another post, another day!

I do miss a few things about paper books.  Mostly, how they are different sizes and shapes with different fonts.  I had my ereader set to a sepia background with brown font when I first got it and that was great while I was reading classic stories.  When I brought up a contemporary business book it was too incongruous.  I miss the way to put away one type of book and change mindsets and thingsto move to another type of book.  I hope that ereaders will develop to allow publishers to give books a little bit of individual style.

But having my book easily with me at all times and easily being able to search for any reference far outweighs those negatives.  Being able to download my highlights and notes from the Kindle into Evernote for forever searchability is fabulous.  My compliance with cycle of daily prayer has gone way up since I got the iPad.  No hunting up a prayer book and a Bible.  In fact, I don't even have to tie myself to one way of doing daily prayer: I have access to a couple of different versions and I do what suits my mood.  The environmental implications of avoiding creating, shipping and storing paper books also cannot be ignored.  When I moved across the country 16 years ago, 50% of the shipping weight was books.  Books have factored into decisions about housing size and arrangement ever since.  I've already mentioned how they factor into my luggage issues when I travel for business.  I will write more about this later, but this aspect of moving from resource management into resource abundance is one of the most exciting things about the maturation of information technology.

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A few blogs focused on ebooks:
All About eReading
TeleRead
Go To Hellman
No Shelf Required
Booksprung

 

iPad: 30 Day Review

I've had the iPad about 30 days, as per the usual iPad fangirl rant, it's changed my life blah-blah-blah.  Future posts will be about specific applications and uses by group; this post is going to try to stick to the device itself.

Let me start by saying that I was well prepared to take the most advantage of my iPad.  Before it arrived, I was almost entirely on cloud computing and paperless.  Mainly this was accomplished using Evernote (previous post).  It doesn't matter if it's my computer, my Blackberry, my iPad or some random computer down the street, I can get my stuff.  If any of these items are destroyed, I lose nothing.

After it arrived, I found that my laptop computer is now useful for exactly three things: large scale management of my cloud, large scale research (I use OneNote to organize research papers), and photo editing and management.  My bags were all too big (meant to drag along the laptop) or too small (meant to just have my Blackberry).  I take the iPad with me everywhere.

I've also gotten out my camera again.  I'm not a scrapbooker.  You load electronic photos into Flickr and then what?  You put them into Facebook and they disappear into Facebook history.  Now there is the beautiful way to have your photos with you, look at them, show them to other people.  I realized that despite being so happy over electronic photography, I haven't been looking at my pictures for about 10 years.  Pictures are fun again.

The iPad post last week was about not getting it, and the question about "isn't a netbook the same thing?" is about not getting it.  Have you ever seen someone point to their screen when they are talking about their computer?  I do that, and I can't get myself to stop.  The experiential input is the thing.  Well, on an iPad the thing is the thing; people have called it the invisible device.  You don't curl a netbook into your arms like a book.  It is a thing that is kept apart from you; a tablet is not.  I think we will find that this changes how people experience the information they are interacting with.

Clicking a mouse is very different from actually touching the thing you are interacting with directly.  Additionally, once you pop open a netbook you've created a wall between yourself and other people.  The more social and interactive you want a group to be, the more of a burden that is.  So if you are using your iPad as, for example, to replace a paper dictionary in secondary language conversation or to replace a paper book in a book group, it beats a netbook.  If you want to show anyone anything on the screen in a situation that isn't the office, it beats a netbook.  It is not a fancy netbook.

Okay, accessories.  The Griffin loop (pictured above) is bizarrely overpriced and also insanely perfect.  Tried a stylus and it wasn't useful.  For a cover, right now I'm using a smart cover and a Skinit (other brands have matching screen backgrounds).  Of course I put on a screen protector as well.  I don't carry the loop around, so the smartcover is useful in coffee shops, etc.  I generally leave the smartcover in my purse and the ipad goes around the house naked. I got a netbook cover (sort of like this) and drop the iPad inside of that when it's in a bigger computer bag.  I've learned my lesson about buying beatiful sleek things and then putting them in huge cases to protect the beautiful sleekness which can not be enjoyed.  There are a few book-style cases which I admire, but haven't actually put my hands on: BookBook, Octavio, DoDo(the DoDo has a few bad reviews floating around the internet regarding how it grips, or sometimes doesn't, the iPad).

I got the largest memory with the Verizon 3G.  After being burned in the laptop development surge, my mantra has been the most memory possible all the time, but the cloud has probably made that an outdated idea.  If I had had the smallest memory, I would have had to give up having my entire TV show collection with me at all times, but it would have been okay.

The 3G I wasn't sure I would need, and there were evaluations that the microphone quality on the 3G devices was not as good.  I use Facetime a lot, and I'm perfectly happy with the microphone quality.  The 3G turned out to be essential to making this an always-available cloud-based device.  I'm not watching movies or streaming music over the 3G, just accessing documents and the internet, so I don't get anywhere near then Verizon entry tier use limit at $20/month.  The iPad can interfere with the network connections of neighboring devices through a couple of routes and I've had a couple of these problems.  I won't get into the details, but if you have this problem try turning off your iPad internet connections for 15 minutes and move it away from your other devices and then seek more information on your particular issue.

The specific apps I have selected will be covered in subject groups over this series of posts, but the main thing I am looking for in an app is cloud support.  The idea is that if my iPad is run over by a truck, stolen, whatever, it should not matter to my data one bit.  Everything should be backed up wirelessly as I am working on it.  You don't need an iPad to be moving into that world: I certainly encourage everyone to be looking at how they can get their data off of their hardware and into cloud solutions.

I Got an Ipad and You Should Get One Before You're Ninety-two

Yes, this is going to be one of those obnoxious "I got an iPad" posts. Actually, it will be the first in a series.

I get that we adults see iPads as obnoxious public signs of personal decadence and also as a delicious toy. I only have two friends with iPads (realistically, there is no other tablet available right now), and they both call it a "toy."  In contrast to my world with my two tablet-owning friends, 25% of teens own tablets. Think about it: these are not cheap devices. A teen may be making a choice between a car and a tablet. They aren't doing that for something that is just a status symbol and a toy. This is an enormous disconnect between how technology is being used by those under 18 and how it is being used by those over 18. I'm 35, and as secure as I may be now, I have at least thirty years of work ahead of me and those teens are coming for my job.

My mother was an early adopter of the personal computer; without choice the rest of the family was as well. I remember my principal pulling me out of my fourth grade class to fix the computer in another classroom. A guy in our town had a fleet of Macintosh computers in his basement and taught an after-school class were we learned how to control the computer using Basic and how to take it apart and put it back together. I recognize that many children then, and many children today, don't have the opportunity to access cutting edge technology. However successful adults of today do have the ability to give themselves that advantage. What I'm saying is that failing to give yourself that advantage is a big mistake.

However, this isn't just about keeping your job, or about keeping up with technology. This is about the massive change in how we interact with information, that those interactions matter, and that my generation has almost completely checked out. I'll give you an example of why this disconnect matters in the real world: medical establishments are currently receiving Federal stimulus to move into Electronic Medical Records (EMR). Instead of racks of paper charts, everything is in computers.

If you talk to doctors and nurses, few are happy about this. I reviewed medical charts for a living for five years. Here is what you do when you read a medical chart: you read it in order, finding the relevant information as you go along.  I was specifically trained that searching just for the information I wanted was a no-no; How do you you know what is relevant? Sure, if you are a physician following a patient for kidney disease you're going to be specifically looking for test results that give you information about the kidney status. But you may not know that the patient crushed his ankle in a car accident (increases kidney workload) and has a lingering infection that can't properly be treated because it interacts with the drug he's taking for his heart disease, which is the only available drug because another heart drug interacts with his kidney medication. And you in your experience have seen four other patients on this particular combination of drugs deteriorate and die, and you think this patient might perk up if you could get all these drugs changed to a new combination. You don't know that if you don't read the chart.

Here's what the EMR does: it takes that heart information and puts it in a folder about the heart. And the ankle information in a folder about the accident. And unless you know what you are looking for and, more importantly, know that it matters to the kidney visit today, you won't see it. In at least one case the information was so disjointed that the nurses feared for patient safety and boycotted the system. One of my doctors asks me to tell her if I think there's anything she should know, since she doesn't have a chart to flip through any more. You've probably already experienced the other problem, which is talking to a health care worker's back as they interact with their computer instead of with you.

It doesn't have to be this way. The technology to give medical personnel electronic charts that have the look and feel of paper charts and have the advantages of electronic charts is already here. It isn't even cutting edge. But the people who put together the specs and standards for those charts don't know how to see things differently.  We have mature technology available, and mature individuals are failing to take advantage of it.

Edited 03May2011, 6:48AM

Stuff I didn't get to do because I didn't have the internet

I didn't go to church on my weekend without the internet.  St. Mary's, a wonderful Anglo-catholic church just down the hill from Grove Park Inn, has been having some construction and air conditioner problems and has been altering their meeting schedule. We didn't see anyone about when we drove by.  I could have paid to use one of the Inn computers, or I could have asked the concierge to look it up.

That was always the potential solution.  We could have asked the concierge what time the art shop opens on Monday and not sat in the street for half an hour.  We could have asked the concierge where the restaurants were.

We could have asked the concierge if he had a dictionary.  A couple of times I wanted to look up words in the books I was reading.  Instead I wrote them down and we looked them up after we drove home.  One dictionary, especially for an academic word, isn't very helpful.  (Words exist in a web of meaning, always look in at least two dictionaries kids.  Or, better yet, use the internet.)

For the most part we were able to find the shops we wanted to find because my sweetheart had thought ahead, searched up every kind of shop he thought I would want to find (including the local knitting shops!) and printed directions.  It is true that not having the internet means relying on other people and talking to other people.  I'm just not sure how big a benefit that is if I need to stand in line to ask someone to look up a word for me.

By the way, for whatever reason (!!!) my sweetheart didn't think I would make it a weekend without the internet.  He imagined me throwing a toddler-fit at 3AM and so he had an "in case of emergency" computer hidden in the back of the car.