Apple’s Announcement

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Mark Urbin

Apple made a long anticipated product launch on 9/9/09. What was missing was more interesting than what was announced.

What was announced was interesting. An iPod touch with 64 Gig of memory, but no camera, and a Nano iPod with not just a camera, but a video camera and a FM radio. The Nano’s camera is VGA quality, not HD. The FM radio is a nice touch, but Microsoft is releasing a Zune with a HD FM radio soon.

The 64 Gig iPod touch is interesting, it takes a lot of video to fill up that much RAM. The strictly internal memory in the Apple devices is a solid money maker for Apple. What they charging for additional RAM is no where near what a SD card of the same size would cost. It would also provide a conduit for data in and out of their devices, which isn’t going to happen as long as Steve Jobs has anything to say about it.

What was missing was the Beatles catalog on iTunes and a tablet sized iTouch. The ‘iTablet’ would have made a big splash, and killed the Kindle. The resolution wouldn’t have matched the E-Ink display that the Kindle uses, but the increased functionality would have been the deciding factor. Apps would have to be rewritten to take advantage of the larger screen size, but I think the development community would step up to the challenge. I’m sure that Amazon would update their e-reader app for that platform, even if they understood that it would result in much reduced Kindle sales. Amazon would do so they wouldn’t lose a big chunk of the e-book market that they currently dominate.

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More colleges using google for student email systems.

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Mark Urbin

I reported just over a year ago, that Worcester State College replaced its Microsoft Exchange based email system for Google Apps for student email accounts.

According to the Google blog, they have a lot of company now. I see this sort of outsourcing of a basic IT function as a win for both the students and the colleges.  The students are probably already used to the interface, so less of a learning curve for them and reduced training and support costs for the campus IT staff.

It also frees up the IT staff to focus on providing new services. Then there is the plus of less people using Exchange and Outlook.  I’ve supported Exchange servers and Outlook lusers. Saving other IT people from that fate is a good thing IMNSHO.

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New toys

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Mark Urbin

I recently got my nerdy paws a pair of Asus Eee PC netbooks. (Thanks John!)  These are the ones running LINUX off solid state drives.

I’ve got one updating, but the 4 Gig system drive on the other is full, and I’m going to have to find a way to clean that up.

Filed under: Gadget, LINUX, netbook, Operating Systems | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Nifty nerd site of the day

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Mark Urbin

Convert PDF files to MW Word.

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