Hardly Harley

The iPad has landed, and I'm left wondering if there's a place for it in my arsenal of tech. First, what does it do? Got an iPhone or iPod Touch? Well, basically it's one of those devices super sized. That's both good and bad. The good is that all that money you spent on your apps can be used on this thing, in either the native size (small), or using pixel doubling it can get blown up full size, which has mixed results. iPad tuned apps (calendar, mail, etc) do look very nice and take full advantage of the nearly 10 inch screen, and devs are going to be given the tools to re-write their apps to take advantage of the extra real estate. The bad news is that there is still no multi-tasking, and no camera on either side of the device to either take pictures or to video chat. 

So tomorrow Apple will unleash on us the not so unsuspecting masses, a new product, which is generally believed to be a tablet like device that will do... My thinking is it will be larger iPhone/iPod Touch, which is kinda cool I guess. I'm more interested in an e-reader though, which, if rumors are to believed, this device will also handle. I wonder how good it will be for reading though, as I was under the impression that e-ink is the best for reading, and this tablet won't be e-ink.

A year ago the Palm Pre was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and I was hooked; a slick operating system with matching slick hardware. But what I liked most about it was that it was a cloud phone. There was no need to dock it to my computer to sync contacts between each other, or calendar events it all happened between The Cloud (my Google Accounts) and the phone. Which is what's so neat about The Cloud, my information centrally located and easily accessible by any internet enabled device. I love it.  But, media synchronization hasn't made the leap yet, really. We're still using iTunes, or Windows Media Player to store and play our music. And in the era of the iPhone we want our phone to do more than just call mom, we want it to play our favorite Ke$ha track, view that crazy YouTube video where the little kid out Jason Mrazs Jason Mraz, or just watch Bat Man while on the train. How to get the media off my computer and on to my phone. It's not…

Ok, this one is going to be a boring/geeky post. You've been warned. So what do I use daily for work and fun on my Mac?

Just finished reading Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi. If you were a tennis fan in the '90's, or a tennis player in general this is a MUST read. It was startlingly honest, funny, sad, and triumphant. I expected the book to be many things, but I didn't expect to laugh out loud at it (with it?) or cry. This was an excellent start to 2010: The Year of the Reading.

One of my resolutions for 2010 was to read more. And to kickstart it, for Christmas I asked, and received (thanks mom) my first read for 2010, Open - Andre Agassi. This is the autobiography of Andre that originally drew attention for his use of drugs during his career. I've not got to that point in the book yet, but that wasn't why I wanted to read it. Andre, and his nemesis Pete Sampras, were huge influences in my tennis development. Everyone I knew wanted Pete's serve, and Andre's return. Then there was the whole rivalry between the two of them. The supposedly outlandish "Image is everything" Agassi and the very private very quiet Sampras.