The iPad According to Geek Brief TV

I've been a fan of Geek Brief TV for months now. Cali Lewis, the show's "shiny, happy" host, delivers short, upbeat, balanced tech reviews. Here's her take on the iPad.

And when you're done with that, search recent episodes for loads of good stuff. iPhone users can go to iTunes and either stream or download podcasts of past episodes.

Follow Cali on Twitter at @calilewis.

Don't Judge the iPad - Till You See The Video

Most people either love or hate the idea of the iPad. This morning's decade-in-the-making announcement may have found you gushing about Apple's latest piece of magic or pronouncing it useless.

But there's also a chance you're firmly uncommitted. Without spilling a lot of verbiage here, I've got a quick challenge for you. Reserve judgment until you see this demo video.

Then watch the buzz over the next few days to see how much of this brilliant post on the Doghouse Diaries actually comes to pass.

Google Voice Tools for Your iPhone

Google Voice Search for the iPhone is so crazy good that once you try it, you'll count on it daily. I've been using this ever since I got my iPhone. It can save you an incredible amount of time. Watch the magic here.
 
Goog 411 is another can't-live-without tool. It's a free directory assistance service you can use from any cell phone or landline. Besides being incredibly handy, Goog 411 will save you the hefty fee your phone company charges you for regular 411.


Now, Goog 411 doesn't work with residential numbers, but certainly does with any business, hotel, restaurant, drug or department store, or commercial enterprise. Here's how to use it.

Pop the number 1-800-4664-411 into your cell phone or landline speed dial. When you call, give the business name you want first, then city and province or state. You’ll get connected to your number without a 411 service charge.

When you've tried this a few times, try saying “text message” after the service has found the number you want, but before it connects you. Goog 411 will kick you back a detailed text message with the business name, phone and address including postal code.

I’ve used Goog 411 for about two years. It's great when you're travelling and need to connect with the hotel at your destination--or if you're simply wondering when the local London Drugs is closing.

There you go. Two voice-powered wonders from the good folks at Google.

Enjoy.

Capture the Good Life with Memiary

Years ago, I listened to two custodians as I carried some display racks into a school gym for a pavillion at Folklorama, our city's festival of nations. I wasn't planning to eavesdrop, but I caught snippets of their conversation as I made trip after trip out to the truck.

First, they started complaining about their wives. That's bad form for any husband. But then they expanded their negativity, heaping scorn onto their children, employer and neighbours. The level of detail and discontent was astonishing. Nothing was sacred, everyone got the same disdainful treatment, and the whole effort was punctuated by profanity.

So, I started thinking about the quality of our conversations and the role of gratitude in our lives. Our words can have an important role in affirming and lifting people--including ourselves. The way we explain our lives to ourselves has a profound impact on our own happiness.

Recognizing what's right in our lives is not an exercise in self-delusion. It's not about giving real life a saccharin makeover. It's about dropping the charges against the people that surround you--especially those you love--and having the courage to count your blessings.

To that end, I'd like to recommend Memiary, a humble but highly practical program that allows you to capture five things you'd like to recall about your day.

The idea of summing up the good in your day in just five quick thoughts is freeing. There's no, I'm-to-tired-to-journal-that attitude, because it only takes a few minutes.

You don't have to use Memiary as a gratitude journal. It's not marketed as one. The idea is simply to answer the question, "What did you do today?" Why five and not, say, 15--who knows? But Memiary is a great tool for capturing what's good about your life, while you're on the run.

As programs go, Memiary is a simple little thing. But your notes are searchable. There's even an iPhone app (the best way to use it) and a presentation for teaching with it.

Still doubtful?

Ok, ask yourself, a month from now, will you remember five good things about today?

5 More Essential Tips for New iPhone Owners

New owners build strong attachments to their iPhones over the first few weeks. If you're one of them, you know a world of features and apps has just opened up and it's bigger than you imagined. You could get lost drilling through the podcast menus alone. While you're playing around and getting used to navigating and living with your new machine, you may appreciate these five tips:

1) More than just .com
You want to enter .edu, .net, or .org. But there's no button for that. No problem. Press and hold the .com key. See how the other options pop up? Slide to one of them, take your finger off the key and voila!

2) Sluggish surfing
If you're like me, you rarely power down your iPhone completely. Instead you pop it into sleep mode and that becomes your default. On occasion, though, you may notice surfing or refresh speeds dipping. Time to give your phone a quick break. Power it down completely by holding that top button. Once you turn it on a minute later, you should find more snap in your browsing.

3) Slow wi-fi?
Download speed in your hotel room seems sluggish? Your 3Gs feels more like a 3G? Test it by going to the App Store and downloading Speedtest.net. It's free and a quick download. Once it's installed, hit "Begin Test" and watch your download and upload speeds start to register. You won't surf any faster, but it may confirm it's the wi-fi holding things up--not your iPhone.

4) Scared of losing your iPhone?
Well, you should be. But rather than buying any fancy tracking services, go the poor-man's route and download If Found Plus. It only costs a buck, and it let's you tag your phone's wallpaper with your phone number and email address. If your phone ever goes AWOL, you'll give an honest stranger a fighting chance of finding you.

5) Try pocket streaming
You know your iPhone kicks out rich sound for listening to podcasts and internet radio. So, next time you're doing the dishes or other light chores, turn it upside down in your front pocket and keep working. The iPhone's bottom speaker placement makes it perfect for this kind of listening. You don't have to worry about the cords snagging and it beats having those earbuds fall out every few minutes.

Click here for Part One

Who are Those Strange People in our Living Room? A Photo Essay Idea Looking for a Home

We bought our current home from a sweet, old, German couple who entertained their extended family in it for many years. It occurred to me that their photo albums were likely replete with hundreds of pictures of people having a grand old time in OUR house. You know, friendly-looking strangers posing by our basement fireplace, in our dining room, perhaps on our front steps; strange kids playing in our backyard--get the idea?

I can imagine sticky photo album pages (you know the ones) with aunts and uncles, children and grandkids, nieces, nephews, and family friends; their faces often smiling, sometimes sad, stressed perhaps. All these folks we never knew, lived out their times in what is now our home. But the evidence of that resides in disparate photo albums spread all over who knows where.

I've often thought "why couldn't a person assemble a few pictures of every clan, every family of owners that has ever inhabited a given house?" What if the project documented two or three generations of people enjoying the same physical space, but in different eras.

Take the old home I grew up in downtown before what was to be my Grade 6 move across town. There could be shots of a war-time bride and groom cuddling in sitting room listening to the radio, a sixties family watching Ed Sullivan in what had now become living room, a young college student off to study in Europe, a single nurse or a widow sitting in an easy chair talking to the boarders she took in to help pay the mortgage.

That home could have had five or six sets of owners, I have no idea. But each would have chronicled their lives in rooms that were familiar to every one of us. A kitchen that would have seen thousands of meals and conversations, light and serious. A living room that gave respite from pressures and worries, and provided opportunities for kids to show off to visitors. Stairs that were skipped over by kids, and loomed like mountains to the infirm. Every room would have seen its share of sheer joy, setbacks, boredom.

Well, I´ve never got around to doing the detective, perhaps even geneological, work it would take to assemble that kind photo essay. But in a wired world, with so many ways to connect, and so many tools to gather, present, and preserve images online, it's possible that someone has already done a project like this.

Sure would like to see one.

The Power of Pocket Communities

One of the practical joys of 21st-Century learning is participating in pocket communities. I'm not talking about cozy suburban neighbourhoods with low taxes. Instead, it's my term for Twitter, Ning, Flickr, Wiki, and other online communities you take with you on your smartphone.

Unlike the first generation of web-enabled phones, smartphones actually make the net usable and pocket communities possible.

It's one thing to sit tethered to your desktop or laptop as you trade tips, links, and tweets with friends. It's quite another to follow a workshop, conference, #edchat, or local PD event while at the hockey rink or standing in line at the Safeway.

The ability to carry hundreds of online friends in your jeans, shirt, purse or backpack is really quite empowering. And your vicarious presence at their PD events by monitoring live blogs, streams, tweets, or Ning activity is a gift the community gives to you. After all, your pocket version of a conference tweetboard through Twitterfall is just as useful as the one they're looking at in the hotel lobby half a world away.

With the new Qik and Ustream apps available for the iPhone you can become a broadcaster in minutes and share great PD sessions with your followers and friends. And if you've never tried voice Skyping from the iPhone, you're clearly in for a surprise.

Relationships in online communities define us in a way. We can share with some of the smartest and most engaging people on the planet. We can mentor and be mentored by people we've never met.

The beauty is that now, we can take these friends with us wherever we go, and when we do meet in person, we're all the richer for it.

5 Essential Tips for New iPhone Owners

Ok, you've had your iPhone for a while and it's changed the way you interact with the 'Net. You feel more free, more able to do just about everything online. But there are still some simple things you wish you knew how to do. Like getting that pesky caps lock to actually stick for more than a character.

Well, here's how to do that and a few other things you might find useful.

1) Caps lock
Simply double tap the shift key. It turns blue. Away you go. Tap it again to deactivate. When Lainie Rowell showed this to a group of iPhone users at BLC '09, an audible gasp went up in the room. I mean who knew?

2) Go to top of screen
After you've been scrolling for a while through your emails or in a third-party Twitter app, simply tap once on the status bar (way up there) to get to the top of your inbox. Don't feel bad, I see many Blackberry owners who don't know they can simply press "t" to go top of the screen and "b" for bottom--instead of wearing out their trackball.

3) Zoom
Rather than spread or pinch with your thumb and forefinger, simply double tap on a column or picture to zoom in. Double tap again to zoom out. Same taps toggle from letterbox to regular view in Youtube.

4) Insert accents
Want to get this cool "ñ" or "é"? Simply tap the regular "n" or "e" and hold. Accent options pop up. Slide to the one you want and let go.

5) See previous search term (app store)
So, you plug in a search term, tap an app name to see details and reviews on it, but after you've hit the back button it's not obvious how to return to your original search term and list right? Wait, don't exit and enter the app store again. Just tap once in the search bar and you're back to the original term and list.

More essential tips you've discovered in your first weeks of iPhone ownership? Comment or share below.

Open Letter to the Tech-Shy

Many people are scared of technology or fear there's nothing in it for them. If that sounds like you, consider this.

Finding value in new technology is always a matter of trying it. Unless you have the curiosity—and courage—to start playing with it, the value won’t be obvious.

That’s certainly the case with social media and the digital devices that feed them. But with a little pluck and experimentation, you can turn “why would I ever want to do that?” into “you know, I could really use this.”

Three tech blasts from the past illustrate this beautifully. All are commonplace now, but they all came with concerns when they were launched. If you're old enough, perhaps you had the same fears I did.

Debit Cards
Before debit cards (or bank cards as some people call them) were rolled out, many folks, including me, were uncomfortable. "You mean to tell me, I'll swipe my card at the cashier and that money will be instantly ripped out of my account? What happens if I make a mistake and want a refund or exchange? I already have cash, cheques and credit cards. Why would I ever need a debit card?"

Well, I certainly got over my fears. And you've got a debit card in your pocket or purse right now. In fact, if you're a Canadian like me, you're among the highest per capita users of debit cards in the world.

Microwave Ovens
At the age of 14, I witnessed a miracle on a Grade 8 train trip to Ottawa. In the dining car, I ordered a small can of chicken a la king. The middle-aged cook behind the counter dumped the contents into a bowl and popped them into a new type of oven. A minute later he handed me a hot snack. Now, get this, after watching my job drop, he delivered the punch line, "that oven didn't even heat up."

Microwave ovens were only available commercially then. But before they made their way into homes, people were a bit uneasy. "Hold on, you’re going to pass microwaves through my food? Is that even healthy?"

Most of us got used to cooking our food by jostling the molecules with microwaves. Even the $45 machines are perfectly safe. We may not be thrilled with eating microwave fare, but the idea that we'd avoid cooking our food that way because of the process itself would seem silly.

Email
Do you remember when email was introduced? In many workplaces, people were intrigued by the possibilities. But many were nervous. "What if I send something confidential to the wrong person? What if I hit reply all instead of reply? They say copies of my email will reside on a bunch of servers before it even gets to its destination. What if they all read my stuff?"

Well, we no longer pore over articles like 12 Email Safety Tips and Test Your Email Intelligence. Yes, we've made our share of blunders along the way, but we've lived through those and all made our peace with email.

So, as much of a technophobe as you think you are, imagine yourself at a social event exchanging some witty repartee with someone over appetizers. Your new acquaintance says quite proudly, "I’ve never used a microwave oven (or email or a debit card) in my life and have no use for it."

You'd respond politely perhaps, but what would instantly run through your mind? It might be, "how quaint, but wildly out of touch" or maybe even, "goodness, how did you make it into the 21st Century?"

Embrace Value, Discard the Rest
It's obvious the benefits of those technologies far outweighed the initial concerns. Many people are finding the same holds true for social media. There are tremendous benefits they can bring to your professional and personal life. But only if you're willing to push past the fear and invest some time in them.

We limit ourselves as individuals if we don’t adopt those technologies that help us—even if we’re scared of them at first. I'm not suggesting you embrace any and every new technology, medium or tool for its own sake. Only that you select a few to start, discover which ones bring value, even joy, to your life, and discard the rest.

Ten years from now, do you really want to be the person at the party who says: "You know, I've never joined a social network for my profession, or uploaded my vacation pics to a photo sharing service, or shared my favourite sites on a social bookmarking service. I'm still too scared of all that high-tech stuff."

Make the effort. Get started in this new year. You'll find so many people willing to help. I promise you it will pay off both professionally and personally.

Raman Job

A Beatles Education

Help! My youngest son is becoming the world’s biggest Fab Four fan.

With the launch of Beatles Rockband in September, he’s joined many middle school teens who are discovering the mop-haired Liverpudlians for the first time. He spends his allowance on Beatles CDs, scours YouTube for videos of Beatles concerts and rare interviews–and spouts Beatles trivia with the best of them.

“Dad, did you know Ringo’s real name is Richard Starkey and he was left-handed, but had a right-handed drum kit?”

Needless to say the Let it Be, Help!, Revolver, The Beatles Past Masters albums are getting a lot of airplay in the car and at home. Not that I mind, because the stuff is absolutely brilliant and so catchy my brain is now fairly perforated with hooks.

Besides, who can resist even awkward German versions of I Want to Hold Your Hand (Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand) and She Loves You (Sie Liebt Dich)?

Now, I did have something to do with my younger son’s deep dive into the Liverpool quartet. After tiring of repeated remarks about John, Paul, George and Ringo being “stupid,” I launched a video of the Beatles live at Shea Stadium on my iPhone with the rejoinder, “Let me show you how popular these guys were.”

The kid was impressed.

So, that night we poked around a bit more and laid the foundation for an interest in the group. Next came a trip to Rogers to snag a copy of the Beatles Rockband for PlayStation 3. And before you know it, son and I were bashing away to Octopus’s Garden and Back in the USSR on plastic instruments.

Learning Workout
The game is brilliant because of the real education it imparts to anyone who engages with it. This is far from passive learning. Besides having a huge fun factor, the game’s biographical notes, superb graphics, and story mode–including concerts you play at the Cavern, on Ed Sullivan; and at Shea Stadium, Bokudan, Abbey Road and the famous Apple Corp. rooftop–all ensure an energetic mental and physical workout.

The game is an immersion course in Beatles 101. It not only appeals to the intellect, but weaves its rhythms into your fingers, hands and feet.

Since my son and I have crossed Abbey Road together, I’ve had a flood of memories of everything from the Saturday morning animated Beatles cartoons, to licorice Beatle records (seriously), to the glossy autographed pictures I sent away for when I was a kid.

Now, my son adds to my Beatles education every few days with gems like, “Did you know Rolling Stone named Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as the number one album of all time out of a list of 500, back in 2003?”

No, actually. I didn’t know that.

But it reminds me of another question that brought a smile to my face.

A teacher recently told me of how he was once approached by a breathless middle school girl who gasped, “Mr. so-and-so, Mr. so-and-so…Did you know that Paul McCartney was actually in another band before Wings?”

Indeed.