I originally titled this post “On the Death of my Precious”. But I changed that title as I think that would have caused a few people to panic.

Anyway, back the the post at hand.

After my one hour of cardio at the gym after work tonight, I decided a sandwich from Subway would be a nice light dinner. So, I get to Subway. Upon entering, I decided I needed to urinate. Because I get those instant “I gotta go now” urges.

So I did. And as I leaned forward to flush the toilet, my trusty communications device leaped out my sweatshirt pocket in what I can only deduce was an effort to kill itself–apparently it had just had too much of me texting and tweeting and facebooking and blogging and viewing pr0n. It promptly pulled a Greg Louganis and dove into the actively flushing toilet. I was aghast!

And then my “inner tech” took over. I swiftly reached into the flushing toilet, plucked out my ever so trusty communications device, yanked the SwitchEasy case off, and held the power button down to shut it off (as there is no user-removable battery. Curse you Apple!). I promptly shoved the phone into my sweatshirt pocket to help dry it.

I then mentally realized I had just punch-fisted a strange public toilet and promptly washed my hands about 4 times.

I ordered my sub and drove home as rapidly as I could. Once I got home, I poured some instant rice into a bowl, and buried my iPhone in it.

It’s still buried as I write this. On the desktop computer.

I’m honestly not counting on it working in the morning, but there’s always hope, right?

I really don’t want to buy a replacement iPhone at the moment, as I was holding out on upgrading my now-potentially-dead iPhone 3GS with the supposed release of the iPhone 5 in June. This event really cramped those plans.

I’ve had a smartphone by my side for years now. This sudden lack of the ability to communicate on-the-go is a really scary concept to me.

I’m not happy about this event.

So, I updated my iPhone to iOS 4.0.1 tonight. The capture on the left is the Husbear’s iPhone (running iOS 4.0), and the one on the right is mine (running iOS 4.0.1). Sitting NEXT to each other.

The first thing I noticed was two things: One, I have less bars now. But, two, I have taller bars.

Not really sure what that means.

Not really sure why I shared that, but I found it interesting. Must be the tech geek still living inside my brain.

After playing with someone’s iPad, I don’t like the way the keyboard takes up so much room in landscape mode. Plus it’s hard to use when you’re standing. Short of using only one hand on it.

Then I ran across this concept image:

That’s EXACTLY the way I use the device.

Steven Paul Jobs, if you’re reading this, how about making this an available keyboard option?

From Scott Robbin.

I bet if “iRubright” were the name of an app, it would not be approved for sounding too much like some sort of sex app. That, or Apple might sue me for some patent they filed a million years ago for an upcoming self-pleasuring model of telephone.

This post is a little techno heavy. Not techno as in the *Uhn Tis Uhn Tis Uhn Tis* kind. Techno as in the technology kind. But don’t let that scare you. You should read it.

Anyway.

I was trying to figure out just how this whole iPad thing could fit into my life. Not because I need one. Yet. But because I’m curious as to why any person would *actually* need one, short of being an Apple Fan Boy.

But I had an epiphany of sorts concerning this. Not about what the iPad means now, but what it’s future could be.

I realized the potential of the iPad and other tablet/handheld/slate/PADD-style devices to myself, thanks to something that occurred while re-watching a ST:TNG episode called “The Price”.

Counselor Troi entered her quarters and the following happened:

Troi: Computer, dispatches…

COMPUTER: A research inquiry from the Manitoba Journal of Interplanetary Psychology and three communiques from your mother…

Troi: Transfer my mother’s letters to my viewer…

… and computer, I’d like a… a real chocolate sundae.

That’s when it hit me, just like an elderly driver crashing into a crowd of people. There is a tool that I am missing: I need a tool that has the ability to interact seamlessly with other technology objects I have around me. I need an “appliance” that has the ability to pull or push stuff from one device to another and move about and do what I need.

Simply. Efficiently. Effectively. And humanly.

Think of the rigmarole you have to go through, even now, to move stuffs from one technology object to another. And that’s even if you have the same OS on said devices in question! Just throw different OSes in the mix and it gets even worse.

I know the “cloud” is making it easier to do some of this transferability, but not everything I do is cloud-centric. Sure, things like documents and spreadsheets I can work on and store in the cloud, and even work on them through web-based interfaces without having software pre-installed on my device. But say I want to work “offline”? While I see working offline becoming less and less an option as everything moves towards a wireless/cellular infrastructure (and I’m personally okay with that), not everyone is. Some people want their bits in their possession at all times. And sometimes you’re trapped in a Faraday cage.

Example. I’m working on a tattoo rendering on my computer at the studio. I get tired of sitting in front of my computer and just want to transfer it to my PADD so I can go doodle on it. Somewhere else. Like at home. Or outside if it’s a nice day? I don’t want to have to save the file, move it to a storage location from the computer, pull the file over to the PADD from the storage location, etc., ad nauseam. I would like to just be able to slide whatever it is I’m working on over to the PADD to continue working.

Technology should be that simple.

I spent a decade-and-a-half in a technology field where I would routinely see end-users who didn’t know how to complete what should have been a simple task (either from lack of training, or… PEBCAK). Technology shouldn’t be like that. Technology should “just work”. As humans do, and as humans think.

And yet technology still doesn’t. Still. After all these decades. Not even with Apple. Or Microsoft. Or anyone else here on Earth.

Why is this? I understand we’ve come a long way from the command-line of old (which I still use frequently), but we still have a long way to go before technology becomes “invisible” to the end-user. Where we don’t have to think about “how” to do something, we just do it.

When the iPad, or *any* device that comes to market, can do that, I’ll be first in line for it.

Oh, and the ability to order a sundae would just be an added bonus.

Well, the Twitter cloud and about every Tech blog I read is flooded with news on the iPhone OS 4.0. One would think the world has come to a stand-still. I guess for certain fan boys it has. All this excitement for an operating system upgrade. Makes one wonder. At least it makes me wonder.

It’s nice to see people so “juiced” over technology.

My question is, why isn’t there an app that just does this yet?

Oh wait, there is…. The phone itself has become that.

Someone asked me:

I notice that when some people comment on your blog (and other blogs) there is a picture icon of them, instead of some generic little icon. How do I get a picture icon of myself when I comment?

Easy!

That picture icon is called a “gravatar”: a Globally Recognized Avatar. If you go to gravatar.com, you can register yourself, upload a picture, and associate it with your email address(es) that you use.

Then when you comment on a site that supports gravatars (which seems to be most these days), it will automatically load that picture of you when you comment.

This is my current gravatar: