The Water Cooler

In a previous post titled “Computing Among the Clouds”  I painted a picture of how personal computing might look like in the future.  I have also alluded to the tremendous opportunities that Apple was wasting by not delivering a tablet computer in another previous post. Well, so begins the days of the iPad. These devices are pretty close to what I was envisioning as a “window” to the cloud, with a few exceptions.

I’ve been test driving an iPad for teaching and educational uses and I must say that it is marvelously well designed device. It’s more mobile than any tablet computer I’ve seen thus far and as an iPhone owner, I found it incredibly easy to get going.  It works well as a reader and is a great device for consuming media. As applications are launched and the price of the iPad drops and competitors enter the market, a new revolution of computing will begin. But, this does not mark the end of the laptop computer.

The iPad is great, but I think it could be so much better. I have a Macbook, HP Tablet PC, a desktop PC and iPhone. The iPad wouldn’t really replace any of those devices. Yes, I have really enjoyed my iPad user experience and because of this I considered replacing my old Macbook with one, until I begin trying to generate content. The lack of web cam is certainly noticeable. Wouldn’t it be great if you could use Skype with an iPad or create a small home movie and instantly share it with friends and family? Also, the form factor is just a little too big for typing one handed and I can’t rest my hands on the virtual keyboard to touch type. While you can buy a keyboard for one, it constricts you to portrait mode. Even if you used a wireless keyboard, the iPad is still chained to iTunes and the computing experience is very closed down compared to my trusty Macbook or convertible Tablet.  This is quite frustrating and goes against the democratic openness ideology that the Internet and Web 2.0 has engendered. Web browsing is limited without flash and the applications I can install are dictated by Apple.  I like Apple and all the innovations and amazing user experiences it creates, but this has come with the cost of ownership control.  There is a reason why freeing an iPhone or iPad from these restrictions is known as “jailbreaking.”  One can only hope that a legitimate competitor will help push for a change in these policies.

The buzz around the HP slate and the possibilities of a Google tablet is proof that this form factor could become mainstream. However, for slate tablets to really reach its potential, I think they need to replace one or more of the devices we use every day.  How great would it be if I could just dock my iPad like device and have it replicate a laptop experience with all the freedom to use and install the applications I need to be productive, be entertained, and create content. All of this could be done on a minimized machine with the data in the cloud. This would help prevent data loss should the machine get stepped on. This is the vision I had in “Computing Among the Clouds” I think the iPad is one step closer as it is the best device I’ve seen yet for consuming content. Hopefully healthy market competition will help drive innovation closer to this realization.

With the world’s information at our fingertips begging for us to search for it, what could make this super-technological information age better?  How about information that finds you.  That’s what technologies created by Google and yahoo now do.  It’s now possible to use a web application that aggregates search results, filters and sorts RSS feeds, and allows the results to be displayed on your home page or any page you can edit.  Somehow this seems too good to be true.  No work research right?  Well not exactly, while these tools will save you time in the long run, perpare to spend some time up front setting all of this up.

To do this, here is a summary of what you have to do:

• 1. Subscribe to a web aggregator like Netvibes or iGoogle. You can use this tool to subscribe to regular RSS feeds and add fun applications such as Weather, email, twitter and even facebook.
• 2. Search Yahoo Pipes to see if someone has already made a pipe that gathers the information you are looking for. Keep in mind you can clone and tweak it if it’s not exactly what you are looking for.
• 3. If you can’t find a pipe, run a search for all of the blogs or news feeds on a particular topic. You might hit a gold mine and find that someone has created a list of all the blogs or news pages about a topic. Copy all the URLs onto a text page or spread sheet.
• 4. Create a Yahoo pipe that combines all the feeds into one. Paste the urls into a Fetch site feed module or a Fetch feed module. Be sure to add a filter that looks for the key terms you want and a sort module to put the newest posts first. You can also add a Yahoo or Google search feed into the mix. There may even be library databases that generate search feeds to add more scholarly articles to the mix.
• 5. Save and run your feed, then click on the “get as a badge” button, and click on the aggregator you use, if yours is not listed, click on the embed code. Copy the code and drop it into your favorite webpage or aggregator in an html box to create a badge that will always give you the latest information on the topic of your choice.
• 6. You’re done, obviously I have left out several complicated steps using Pipes, read the pipe documentation for tips on creating efficient pipes.

Now the filtered information comes to you.  No more sorting through hundreds of web pages looking for current news.  No more going to several sites each day to get your information.  Your information is delivered to your doorstep in the form of a fully customizable newspaper.  The best part is that no trees were sacrificed and no money was spent!