May 2010 Blog Posts
WIRED magazine came out with a new digital magazine on iPad last week with much fanfare. I purchased the app myself and thoroughly enjoyed it, but there were some who criticized the inclusion of advertisements. Economics aside, advertisements can have a lot of intrinsic historical value as well. Quite by accident I discovered this will perusing the archives of Popular Science, hosted by Google.
There's a good chuckle to be had in this Canon PalmPrinter, from a 1980 issue:
It's interesting to note that the emphasis of the ad is on its size. As a single function device,...
Print media is in trouble. I see it in the eyes of solicitors trying to get me to subscribe to the paper. Their selling point completely rests on coupons you can get in the Sunday paper. Never mind the great stories, sleuthing, or anything else related to the content. It’s all about the coupons. I get nearly all my news online (even local news) for free, so I need to get a newspaper subscription for the coupons? I can get those online, too. So when WIRED released a promo video showing off what they had in mind for a tablet...
When I was young my grandparents owned a VCR (this was back in the day when the common person either rented a VCR or had to go to the theater to watch a movie) and a copy of Star Wars. My absolute favorite thing to do was watch that over and over again. At that age, The Empire Strikes Back and (I think) Return of the Jedi had already been out, but my love affair was with the first movie.
On that video tape, however, was a short documentary-like show that also showed some clips from the other movies. This fascinated...
After two weeks of an iPad, the honeymoon of sorts is starting to wear off, but I can still say that the device is very much worth it. One of the biggest uses I get out of it, reading, has not been largely delivered by Apple. It's not that I don't read on my iPad, because I do, but iBooks has largely left me unfulfilled when it comes to purchasing books.
For me, books are forever. You buy one, read it, and then stick it on your shelf. It stays there until the moment strikes your fancy to read it again....
If you've been following my Twitter account it should be very obvious that I purchased an iPad yesterday. The buying experience was pretty smooth despite the huge crowds that had turned out. I got there only about an hour and fifteen minutes before the 5pm release time and there weren't more than a dozen or so people waiting. There were quite a few people that had arrived after me, however. Many people walked by and asked me what we were in line for. One person asked if the new iPhone had come out, but I...