The best gadget for 2010......

Folks, I know the iPad has had the reputation of being the best device for 2010.  It's on the wish list of many, but here's a story that may make you go Mmmgh?

I had the opportunity to purchase an iPad earlier this year.  It was a gift actually that was to be given to me some time in August.  I passed on the gift immediately.  I was told about how many wonderful apps that were available for it and how the simple act of buying an app once meant that it could be utilized on an iPhone and an iPad.  I was shown the simplicity of reading books and the running of gadgets from remote controlled apps.   I thought that this was wonderful.

However, I declined the iPad!   Yes, folks, I declined the hottest gadget of the year.  The gadget that is simply the best in its class - that of Tablet Computing.  So I know that you are asking the very question that many of my other friends have asked:  WHY?  And more importantly, what is the best gadget, in your opinion, for 2010?

For me, the gadget of the year is quite simply Amazon's KINDLE.

What I did not tell you in the first paragraph above was that I have a very large library of books.  Books that I never get to carry around with me.  They range from novels to sonnets to medical literature.  I have well over 1,000 journals, which I rarely get the chance to read and therefore am subjected to buying a subscription to a Journal Reviewer, reading in depth the articles that are germaine to me.  I rarely get the opportunity to read novels and when I do, I usually don't have the book with me.   What I needed was an electronic book device.  Something that just did electronic books.  I did not want something with email, twitter, You Tube or any such distractions.  I wanted a serious e-book reader.  No tweeting, beeping, ringing interruptions.  Just words on a page.  I wasn't interested in color or pictures.  Just WORDS.

The Kindle or more importantly, The Kindle 3 is perhaps the best e-book reader ever invented.  As of 2010 of course.  The iPad simply does not compare when it comes to reading a novel on the device for over an hour.  I tried to read on an iPad that was loaned to me and I immediately became fatigued trying to read at night.   Additionally, the iPad, excellent as it may be as a mobile utility device, is much too heavy to be considered a dedicated e-book reader or book replacement. It is too distracting, with its apps, alerts etc., to be considered a serious e-book reader.  Now, I am not putting the iPad down, but simply stating that if you are looking to read books and only books, then the Kindle is the better choice.

So, are there weaknesses to the Kindle?  You bet.  First, you really do need to have the same brightness that you would have to read a regular book available to you.  Otherwise, you will need to buy a cover which has a built in light source or buy another light source.  There is no back light, as seen with the iPad.
Second, if you are into color pictures, the iPad is for you.  The Kindle shows only gray scale images.  Again, it is for reading.  Thus I would not recommend it for Magazine reading.  Nor would I recommend it for PDF books.  The manipulation that needs to go on with trying to read a PDF is just not feasible for long articles.
Third, after playing with the iPhone, any Smart phone or an iPad or iPod Touch, you have this feeling that everything that has a small screen needs to be touched to make the words and images move.  Thus page turns, character enlargement etc., are intuitively managed by Touch Screen -- On An iPad.  But not on a Kindle.  There are still ancient Touch buttons on the side and a relatively antiquated hard key keyboard.

But what beauty there is lies in the Software that Amazon has chosen to use.  Let me first say that Linux is always loved and the OS appears to be a version of this.   You can add books to the Kindle in many different ways.  You can use Amazon's WhisperSync which does over-the-air downloads via 3G or Wifi.  And did I mention that the 3G is free, without registering?   Yes, it's relatively slow if you want to surf the web, but for obtaining books, it's wonderful.  You can also Archive by just erasing a book off your KINDLE.  You can save an entire folder, which contains all of your books from the KINDLE to your PC.  This is great if you want to upgrade a Kindle.  You just download the folder and store it on your hard drive.  This also allows you to save files on the Kindle and use its 4 gig memory as a hard drive.  You can upload Audiobooks via this route also or MP3 files.

One amazing feature that I loved was during an hour of reading a classic.  I couldn't move, but I had to go to the bathroom.  Well, you can let the Kindle read to you.  It will ( in its really nice phonetic voice, which I might add is quite human-like) continue reading where ever you have left off.  Really great for bathroom breaks :).

The Kindle is small enough to keep in your bag or jacket.  It can download updates if you like, in the background.  Additionally, you can turn off the Wifi and save the battery.  I have used it for 22 days straight on a single charge once.  Normally, I will charge it on weekends though.  What is good however is the ability to read anywhere, anytime.  And if I forget the device, well, I can continue the reading on my phone if I wish.

One important feature about the Kindle is the lack of a back light.  I point this out because it is very important.  I can read a Kindle for at least an hour straight, without stopping because I do not have a large back light shining into my eyes.  That back light is okay if you are reading at 7pm.  But at 10pm, this is a strain.  I have tried reading my iPhone at night and I hate it.  It's too bright.

Of note, the 1000 journals will not be archived.  For that I am actually going to use an iPad.  The PDF restriction is an issue there.  Also, for technical reading, I really would not recommend the Kindle, at least for medical technical reading.  If you have to jump back and forth, several times, then an iPad is better.  But luckily, I have found a wonderful niche for my Kindle.  It is now the proud provider of all of my classic novels and since they are free, the list is now well over 100 in size.  I look forward to reading Moby Dick and Brave New World many years later and from a different perspective than I had before.  The non reflective nature of the Kindle makes it a winner anywhere.  And the fact that I will not be distracted by the web when I am reading is just icing on the cake.

This is why I am calling the KINDLE 3 with WIFI & 3G the best Device for 2010.

3rd Party and Safari Video Support Coming to Airplay according to MacRumors...

I was a very disappointed individual last week following the update of the iPhone to iOS 4.2.  Airplay, the major "selling point" of the upgrade lacked the major punch that I was expecting - streaming many different forms of data to the Apple TV.  I was particularly interested in not having to recompile all of my .AVI or .XVID files to .MV4 or .MP4 so that the Apple TV could read them.  Granted I have 65% of my video library encoded in the latter two formats, I have found that converting to .AVI, particularly in Windows is a lot quicker.  The files have decreased in size lately, but are still quite usable.  Many are videos from 10 years ago that I have wanted to store on a large media server for posterity to play whenever I needed.

Today, if the reports are true, and they invariably run the course of believable to crazy, there is a report that Steve Jobs - the CEO of Apple - may indeed allow 3rd party applications -ie. AirVideo, VLC, OPlayer - to share in streaming to the Apple TV.  Currently these apps will only send sound to the device but without video.  The report is in the form of a letter presumably emailed from Mr. Jobs to the sender.

The letter is enclosed, but for a full review, please go to Macrumors.com, particularly the link MacRumors Link to Letter presumed to be from Mr. Steve Jobs

(Letter originally shown at MacRumors.com).

My thoughts on iOS 4.2 thus far......

I had hoped to not be sucked into the Reality Distortion Field,  but it happened.  The Steve Jobs presentation of an iPhone shooting video directly to the AppleTV was too much for me.  With the blogosphere going crazy last week when 4.2 was not released, I grew excited.  But this morning I have begun to have buyers' remorse.  Yes, I know it was a free update, but I have remorse none the less.   It seems that my favorite company is guilty of doing something that Dell has begun doing recently:  Overpromising and Underdelivering.  It is unusual, but it has happened.  As I pressed the buttons of my iPhone in excitement, I soon began to realize that my happiness should never revolve around a gadget.  With that, here are my views on a few of the salient updates:

1.  Codec limitations on streaming.

     This was supposed to be the most insane thing available.  The thing that would make Apple exceed Google in the cool factor arena.  The thing that would just drive sales of this device out the window.  The ability to use 3rd party apps that support codecs outside of .mp4, .mv, .mov finally being allowed to coexist with their Quicktime partners and streamed to the Apple TV.   The easing was found on the iPad first, then on the iPhone and iPodTouch devices over the past 8 weeks.  For a brief moment I thought that hell had frozen over and the chain had finally been broken.  But alas NO!  Using VLC or OVideo, both of which play Xvid and AVI as well as MP4, MV and MOV to stream to the AppleTV will only give you sound but no video.  I don't think that this is an engineering issue since VLC and OVideo were able to do it without a glitch on the phone.  But it gets worse!   Even Apple's own iMovie found on the iPhone will not stream to the AppleTV, nor will any movies stored in the Photo Library.   Now that makes no sense at all !!   And again, I am left feeling completely frustrated by what could have been a major leap in innovation for this company.

2.  SMS Ringtones.

      I know many in healthcare have been clamoring for this.  This is the Pager - Breaker.  Place a good Ringtone on an incoming message from the hospital switchboard or the floor and you're set.  But alas, this was not "the cat's meow."  The ringtones are a set of Hollywood tones that have no meaning to me at all.  There is no ability to draft a beeper sound or any custom tones.

3.  AirPrint.

     Airprint is also a major disappointment.  I was so excited that Apple went this route and opened up printing to almost all printers, but then I read the fine print.  Only available to wireless printers and only a handful.  I have a network printer which an app called e-Print finds very easily, but Apple's Airprint doesn't even recognize it. 

The printing feature is so major that I wonder how many people will remain quiet about it.   Even with the use of an Airport Base Station, Airprint still does not recognize the printer. 

4.  Proximity Sensor Issue.

     Can you believe that this has not been fixed yet?  I was so disappointed by this earlier tonight as I spoke to a Radiologist about a test result.  Not knowing that it had not been fixed, I struggled trying to press the Speaker Phone button, resorting to my "Keep the Home Button Pressed" technique that I wrote about earlier.   This is clearly begining to feel like a Hardware issue,  perhaps from an IC that can or cannot be re programmed.  Is it some logical statement written in the software or a hardware switch issue?  Right now, it's annoying to have spent this much money on a device and have to put up with this.


5.  Notes with new fonts.

     I have no complaints about this one.  I think that this is a great idea.  Although I have found myself using Notemaster a lot more, the simple Notes app still serves its purpose.  Perhaps we could see folders next for this little puppy?

6.   ICS Calendar Invitations.

     Finally more cohesiveness with Microsoft and the ability to import ICS calendars, something that should have been done a long time ago.  But I am happy for this one.

7.   Close all Apps button.

      No, you won't find it anywhere it doesn't exist,  it was just something that I thought would be nice to have.  I don't need to have all of the apps that I opened in a rested state of meiosis all of the time.  It eats up memory.

8.    Facetime from different modes. 
   
      Facetime from an SMS message is nice.

9.     Find My iPhone.

      I have not installed this yet, but I probably will this weekend.  Seems logical particularly if you have important data on your machine.   However, there is a little voice inside my head that asks, "will this be abused?"  Giving a hacker carte-blanche details of my whereabouts seems a little eery, but if you're at a party or a bar (wink :)), this program is a God send.


These are my initial thoughts on iOS 4.2 thus far.  Slightly disappointed that Apple did not hit the ball out of the ballpark with this one.  DLNA is right around the corner with a much more open Codec selection and already winning the hearts and minds of the living room.    If the new AppleTV is to become anything more than a Netflix conduit, of which there are many to choose from, I think that Apple will need to step up to the plate removing the past restrictions that they have previously imposed.  This codec issue being the most irritating of all.   And there is ample evidence that other companies are listening, if Apple is not.  Take a look at the LG BD590 Blue-ray player     with codec support that includes the following:  DivX®/DivX HD, MPEG2 TS/PS, MPEG1 SS, XVID, MKV, AVI, WMA, MP3, AC3, AAC, JPEG, PNG.   Not to mention a 250gb hard drive and ripping of DVD's to the hard drive; 2.0 usb connectivity, Netflix®, Vudu™, YouTube™, Roxio® CinemaNow, Pandora®, Picasa™, AccuWeather®.  Support for Netcast and DLNA. 

It is time for Apple to shed this crazy QT limitation and let the customers decide what format they want to watch.  As you can tell, this is my biggest pet peeve for iOS 4.2.  I know that an App store is just around the corner for the ATV and that is very exciting, but I would like to have some of the basics taken care of first.


LDD.

Proximity Sensor Temporary Solution.....

One of the biggest complaints about the iPhone 4 has been the proximity sensor issue, in which the phone goes visually berserk during a phone call as if it cannot decide whether your face is next to the phone or not.  It is a royal pain when you want to hang up the phone or switch to speaker mode or select the menu for the numbers screen.  It has been 5 months since the release of the iPhone and this has not been corrected.  Personally, I think that this should have been sent as an update.

I have found a way to make the screen stay on.  I am using this method now until iOS 4.2 shows up some time in the future as promised.  The solution is this:  Keep your thumb pressed on the HOME button during the phone call when you want to press any of the following buttons - Speaker, Keypad, Mute, FaceTime, Contacts or Add Call.  It seems that whatever software short circuit that exists is corrected with this maneuver.   Until Apple comes out with the updated iOS, this is as good as it gets for now.



UPDATE:

THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN RESOLVED.   SURPRISE!  IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH APPLE, AT LEAST NOT IN MY CASE GO TO MY UPDATED POSTING ON THIS ISSUE:

http://theiphonedoc.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-iphone-sensor-issue-solved.html

One solution for Facetime Problems.

For most of us the iPhone 4 is an upgrade from either the iPhone 3G or 3GS.  Unfortunately, this little upgrade appears to be causing a small problem with Facetime.  It turns out that there are about 5 port ranges that need to remain open during a Facetime conversation.  Additionally, a small amount of Port Forwarding takes place in the Router (required for current Facetime usage on wifi).

It seems that if you set up your router to include the 5 port ranges, leaving the ports open, you will not necessarily solve the problem.   Additional Port Forwarding on a manual basis does not help either.  I used a Linksys router for the past few years and I thought that I had to update the software.   I eventually got Facetime to work on my Linksys router, by first of all not changing any of the 5 port ranges recommended by Apple or invoking Port Forwarding.

So what is the solution that I found?  Well, I actually didn't find it.  It was a simple suggestion that was suggested to me by one of the Apple Geniuses at the Genius Bar.  I applied the recommendation on the two phones and voila, Facetime worked like a charm.  If you are going to do this, you will need to know the following information:

1.  The following actions will reset the Wifi connections on your phone, but will leave all telephony and app data alone.
2.  It will not erase your phone, if done correctly.
3.  You will have to put in ALL network passwords to get on Access points or Routers again.
4.  It will not affect Exchange Server data.
5.  It will NOT erase your phone.


What I did was this and in this order:

1.  Go to Settings.
2.  Go to General.
3.  Go to Reset.
4.  Select "Reset Network Settings."

Once you confirm that this is what you want to do, do a soft reset of the phone.   The AT&T logo will take a little longer to come up and your bars should come up also.  You will have to set up your wifi connection on your phone again.  But before doing this, ensure that you turn off your Router and leave it off for about 15 seconds before turning it back on.  You can then turn the router back on and sign in to your network.

The only issue with this is that you will not be able to tell if Facetime will work if both phones are in the same household using the same router.  That will usually always work.  The proof will be when the other person is at a Wifi hotspot and calls in or if you call them on Facetime.  That is the test.

The first inkling that I had of this problem was the fact that I was able to do Wifi Facetime to someone outside of my home only if I was at an Access point outside of the home.  I could only communicate via Facetime with my wife who also has an iPhone while we were both on the same router.  We could not communicate outside of the house.  With the Reset, I am now able to do so. 

My theory is that the mechanism to do Facetime, including getting around ports on the router without having to reset the router were not available until now. The 3G setup is probalby deficient somewhere in making iPhone work.  The settings on the 4G are different, hence the need to fully erase the 3G settings and leave only the 4G settings being sent to the Router.  Since the change was made, we have no dropouts and Facetime is wonderful, even 30-50 miles away at times, which is as far as I've travelled to use it.

Let me know what you think about Facetime and if you have any other solutions to give others.

NAMECHANGER

So you have a camera that you bought a few years ago and you run into the biggest problem plaguing everyone who owns a digital camera.  And if you think that you don't have this problem, well let's just say that it is something that you are going to find out about very soon.

You see there is a little problem that just about every camera manufacturer forgets to tell you about.  And it is a problem located on ALL digital cameras.  It is similar to the 1999  Y2K problem.  Without backing up your photo collection this problem will wipe out a lot of fond memories. 

Sony F717 

The problem is this.  When you take a photo, your camera starts a counter.  The first picture is labelled 0001.  If you have a Sony camera it is proceeded by the letters DSC ie. DSC0001.JPG, with the suffix .jpg added to let the computer know that it is a jpeg file.  Other cameras will do the same, ie. MSC0001.JPG, Cannon uses IMG, ie IMG0001.JPG. The first thing that  you will notice is that there are only 4 digits.  That is where the problem arises!

When you get to picture #10,000 the camera rolls back to 0001.  If you are using iPhoto and you do not relabel your photos this is akin to wiping out the original 0001.jpg photo that you have in your catalog.  In my case, those were the pictures of the birth of my son.  I was saved only in knowing that I had a back up of those precious early photos.  Additionally, I did not realize the problem until I took picture # 10,110 !  That's right 110 of my original photos taken 8 years ago with my Sony DSC-F717 were completely gone from my iPhoto catalog.   Again, I was saved only by the knowledge that a backup existed for these.

The next problem that has arisen is what happens when your spouse or child decides to get a camera?  In the old days you would buy a simple point-and-shoot and take it to the store to be developed.  You would then scan the photo into iPhoto.  But today, just about everything is digital.  And if you buy a camera that is made by the same company as your original camera then you are in trouble!  Major trouble if you are using iPhoto.  In this case, I had the opportunity to pick up a used Cannon SLR, which is now 8 years old, but takes the most wonderful pictures.  It is digital.  And it cost me pennies to purchase because it was used and the owner just wanted to get rid of it.  It was also an inevitable purchase after my Sony F717 broke down.  This was a God send because I was able to integrate it painlessly with iPhoto because it had a different prefix - IMG.  So my first pictures were IMG0475.JPG and this did not interfere with the original Sony DSC0475.JPG.  Dandy, until I get to 9999 in which the original problem that I discussed will inevitably arise.  But then my wife's birthday came up and you guessed it, she wanted a simple point and shoot camera for her big day.  Nothing expensive, but something that was not as clunky as my Canon ( a huge beast by today's standards) - just a simple point and shoot.  I had a 100% chance of running into a problem.  If I chose a Sony or Canon camera then the number problem would again be an issue.  I found out also that Nikon uses the DSC prefix as well.  She chose the Canon camera and this is where things got interesting. 

iPhoto has become very long in the tooth and although there are dramatic changes being made to the program, including face recognition, mapping etc., the basics are being left behind.  This numbering system for instance should be a thing of the past.  Almost everything is digital.  Just about every photo is digital, so why not keep up with the times on this one? 

Simple Batch Processing

For now, I can no longer just plug in the camera and hope that everything will fall into iPhoto and be arranged.  We are well over the 10k range and due to the fact that we have more cameras on tap, the overriding of DSC and IMG numbers is something that will always happen.  In speaking to a few friends of mine, they have told me that Lightroom and Aperture are better at handling this sort of thing.  But they cost a lot of money.  And from what I understand, once you go Lightroom, you're there forever; same holds true for Aperture.  I have also been told that Aperture is better at cataloging, while Lightroom is better at editing.  I cannot vouch for either, having not used either one of them.

So what do I do?  Well, if you own a Mac there is always someone out there with a solution that has been peer reviewed and investigated.  The program that I found and which is literally saving my bacon these days is called simply NAMECHANGER.  It is a public domain FREE program written by Mickey Roberson at http://www.mrrsoftware.com/ Mickey has done a great job with this and makes several different versions depending upon which flavor of OSX you have.  Donating a dollar or two for his efforts would be a good thing to spur him along to continue doing what he is doing. 

More Complex Batch Processing

With NameChanger, you get a simple no frills interface and you can drag and drop your files  and preface them in any way that you desire.  So, if you put in a batch of files with the numbers IMG0050.JPG THRU IMG0100.JPG and you took them at the same venue or during the same shoot, then you can do the following:  Change sequence starting from IMG0050.JPG TO IMG0100.JPG and batch change (that is change all of the files so that they begin with whatever it is you want, instead of IMG) to BirthdayParty001.jpg to BirthdayParty050.jpg and you will have a listing that is not readily duplicated.  You can get more specific and do something akin to Nigels5thBirthday001.jpg.

That is pretty difficult to duplicate by accident.  Once the batch change is done, then you can dump it into iPhoto.

What Apple needs to do is this.  Since it has the ability to separate the photos into EVENTS, it should automatically change the FILE to represent this change if that is what the user wants.  Just having it notice events is not good enough now that everyone and their uncle has a camera.  By the way, did I forget to mention the iPhone and the iPod Touch photos as well?  Yes I did didn't I.  Well you get the point by now.  The overlapping of photos is something that will happen to just about everyone at some point.  For now, NameChanger may be the best solution for those of us not willing to part with $300 to buy either Lightroom or Aperture just for this feature.

Simply The Best Youtube iPhone Video for 2010: Daddy and Son's iPhone goes to space.