Zoinks…
Andrew Weissmann: FBI wants real-time Gmail, Dropbox spying power.: “Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games (‘the chat feature in Scrabble’) to Gmail and Google Voice. ‘Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,’ he said.”
Dark Sky is one of my favorite iOS apps and a recommendation I always make for people to check out when they ask what to put on their iPhone.
However, now that I’ve made the move over to Android, I’ve been missing the beauty and simplicity of the great weather app. So, I was excited to see that the makers of Dark Sky went to the web and developed Forecast.
It’s pretty stunning and best of all it works on the web. Which means it works fine on my Nexus 4, my Nexus 7, my Chromebook or my Macbook.
Between that and sites like Feedbin for RSS reading (currently testing out), I’m excited to see developers moving back to platform-agnostic development of great platforms on the web.
Sounds like someone likes their RSS reader. Based on his RSS subscriptions, it looks like Limbaugh and I are at least reading a number of the same Apple-related feeds.
Never thought I’d have more in common with Rush than Google.
El Rushbo’s Favorite Apple Tech Blogs – The Rush Limbaugh Show: “Rosie in Lake Havasu, I went to my RSS reader and this is really tough because I’ve never mentioned any of these before. I can’t mention them all, but since you said Apple, that helps narrow it down. In no particular order, here they are: iMore.com. That’s run by a guy named Rene Ritchie. I think he’s out of Canada, but this site, in addition to keeping you up-to-speed on everything happening with Apple, will offer you excellent tips on using Apple products, both the mobile and desktop. MacDailyNews.com is also fabulous. AppleInsider.com is great. World of Apple is okay. There are a couple of others that are not specifically Apple, but they are Apple centric. They cover a lot more than that. One of them is called loopinsight.com and the other’s daringfireball.com. We’ll link to all of these at RushLimbaugh.com on our website. Rosie, if you weren’t able to write them all down, they will be on our website. You’ll be able to find them all. But there are tons of them. I mean, they’re all over the place out there. One of them, cultofmac.com, they’ve got people on that one, very snarky who rip Apple to shreds at the same time. So if you’re interested in that, if you want people who do that too, then that’s a site that you might want to check out now and then.”
Spoken like a true web geek.
In early June I’ll wish my 7th graders godspeed and wrap up my time at Carolina Day School. It will be a bittersweet day (and next few months) but I’m excited about the remaining time I have with my students and colleagues to learn and grow in the halls (and on the many stairs) of Stephens.
I have so much love for my two years of students there. Both my current 7th graders and the now 8th grade group have taught me more than they’ll ever know about life and I’ll be eternally thankful to have spent a couple of rotations around our closest star learning about the universe with them.
Similarly, my colleagues are amazing people and teachers. I love our Middle School team and am so thankful to have been in their presence the last two years (smelly “workhole” and all). Our 7th grade team is the best group of folks I’ve ever worked with and their daily inspiration and talent is beyond words. It’s hard to think of leaving at this point because we’re firing on all cylinders and really hitting harmonies and resonant frequencies as a team. I’ll never forget the real excitement that they make me feel for teaching and especially learning.
However, it is the time for me to move on professionally. As I told Peggy Daniels, our Middle School Head, today, “I’m really good at working with people but not so good at working for people”.
My views and philosophy on education necessitate that I follow a different path. I’m not exactly sure what that looks like (“the woods are lovely dark and deep”). Yet I know that drive will take me and my career down a road that is still covered in snow because I have miles to go before I sleep (beg pardon of Robert Frost there).
So what’s next? I have a couple of interviews at exciting local schools but I also have the nagging persistence of StudiesLab.
It’s a business plan and educational model I’ve had written for years in my head (and on paper) of decentralized, cooperative and authentic education based not on 19th century content delivery for Victorian factory workers but on current research aimed at producing world changers. A place for round pegs in a world of square holes. A prayer for hope and humility and learning.
Or something like that.
Regardless, it’s time to plant sequoias.
This is the main impetus of Google’s recent moves with Android and Chrome… it’s not about user experience or trying to slim down.
It’s about control. Google has lost control of Android to Samsung, Amazon etc and knows its future is with ChromeOS (especially given that Windows 8 is a flop and Apple is stumbling in the cloud region):
Is Android Vs. Chrome A Metaphor For Apps Vs. Mobile Web?: “If Wilcox is right, and Chrome is a stand-in for the browser and Internet, while Android represents an app-centric mobile experience, then it makes sense Google would favor and promote Chrome over Android in the longer term. That’s their bias.”
Sounds like something I would write…
Change platforms: “Windows Phone 8 is my personal favourite smartphone operating system, as it fits my usage patterns and visual preferences perfectly. Yet, I will still move to an entirely new, unproven, and untested platform later this year (if Sailfish is out by then). The reason is simple: always try to broaden your horizon. Never get stuck in one place. Never become lazy. Never settle. Never let the same set of neurons fire. Never come to rely on any one company.”
Better yet, I try to be platform agnostic and focus as much as I can on using web-based utilities that work on any platform. It’s not always easy or pretty but it works.
Really fascinating…
Flush With Oil, Abu Dhabi Opens World’s Largest Solar Plant : NPR: “Abu Dhabi, the most oil-rich of the United Arab Emirates, is now home to the world’s single-largest concentrated solar power plant.”
Now that Google has officially killed Google Reader, I’ve decided to make sure my feed here doesn’t get borked in a similar fashion when Google decides to kill Feedburner.
So, my RSS feed is back home at http://samharrelson.com/feed. I’ve got about 800 people who are subscribed to the RSS feed, so if you’re seeing that through the old link, you’ll need to resubscribe to get updates. Sorry. Pull the band-aid and all.
It’s only a matter of time before Google kills Feedburner now that it has officially divorced RSS.
Some folks on Twitter have asked what RSS reader I’m going to be switching to now that Reader is dead (dying quickly) and if I’m using Feedly.
I’m not using Feedly although it looks pretty nice. I’ve actually switched back to Fever. I’ve been an on-again-off-again user of the service for years since it launched and have it installed on this service. It’s fantastic and all but definitely not something for everyone (or most). For one, it’s a server side install and for two it’s not something that looks anything like Google Reader or a snappy web app in 2013 and for three it’s not being heavily developed.
That being said, it’s located on my server, does a great job and delivers an awesome experience whether I’m on my Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Chromebook or Macbook. So, for those things and more, it’s perfect for me. If you’re geeky, go try it out.
All that to say, RSS is insanely important to me. Google Reader has been the hub of my web experience over the past six or so years since I decided to invest myself in it as my main feed-reading platform over the likes of Bloglines or NetNewsWire or Netvibes. I’m sad to see it go and I fear the worst for the once-beloved and under-developed Feedburner platform as well.
I need a solid and reliable RSS reader to navigate the 256 sites I currently subscribe to and try to religiously read through each day. It’s something I do that is evidently old fashioned and antiquated now, but oh so incredibly valuable nonetheless.
I have to solidly disagree with this:
RSS still matters a great deal.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ (even Tumblr)…these social gardens with their nice walls are fantastic but social “curation” isn’t the right path ahead for establishing a real presence on the web because you’re always serving a master that could go away.
There’s nothing like having a namespace that identifies and/or reflects you.
It’s something I try to get through to students, clients, friends and family.
That’s why I like the idea of dogfooding the open web and encouraging others to do so. Eventually after the social web bubble pops, we’ll get back to the realization that having yourname.com or some iteration thereof is insanely powerful and needed.
Now that Google Reader is dead, I’m switching back to Fever for my RSS reading. I literally live in my RSS reader and it’s a beyond-valuable piece of technology that drives everything from my business to my research to my studies to my obsessions to my love of history etc. Having a reliable, synced and powerful RSS reader capable of handling the 500 or so feeds I (try to) read on a daily basis is important.
Yes, Fever is a pesky self-installed piece of software that is definitely not for everyone. I’d suggest something like Feedly or Pulse or Flipboard for 99% of people.
However, for those of us who were there when blogging was The Social Network and RSS feed reading was the Newsfeed back in 2004, something like Flipboard just doesn’t cut it.
Fever is fantastic for my needs. Again, it’s a self-install and has minimal amounts of developer involvement, but it’s a fantastic program. The fact that it is self-hosted on my server that I pay for and have to keep up makes me like it even more for some Google-Reader-backlash-lizard-brain reason.
Since I’m mostly on my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 these days when I’m not using my Chromebook or this Macbook Pro Retina, I’ve been testing out Meltdown app as my mobile interface for Fever. It seems to be doing the job just fine at the moment and is a great Android experience for Fever. It’s a no-frills and minimalistic take on feed reading, but that’s exactly what I was looking for.
Maybe Marco is right and it is excellent news for the RSS reader industry (and RSS in general) that Google Reader is shutting down.
For once, I’m glad that I wasn’t at a major tech product release and could watch the debacle unfold via a YouTube livestream from the comfort of home:
Robert Scoble – Google+ – Samsung really screwed up with its Galaxy S4 presentation.…
My five year old daughter saw my Galaxy S3 on the kitchen table this afternoon and asked:
“Daddy, what is that?”
“It’s a mobile, why?”
“It’s not an iPhone?”
“Nope, here’s my iPhone.”
“Oh, I thought all phones were iPhones.”
I keep forgetting that she was born in the same year the first iPhone was announced and then released.
Great piece from a mainstream publication about an open web hero:
Why We Should Remember Aaron Swartz – Businessweek: “Swartz wasn’t an anarchist. He came to believe that copyright law had been abused, and was being used to close off what, by law, should be open. It is hard to find fault with his logic, and there is much to admire in a man who, rather than become a small god of the valley, was willing to court punishment to prove a point. The world will have no trouble remembering Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, and this is as it should be. But it should remember, too, people like Aaron Swartz, the ones who make those empires possible.”
Such grand thoughts by a passionate person who has been taken from us…
Look at yourself objectively (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought): “In moments of great emotional stress, we revert to our worst habits: we dig in and fight harder. The real trick is not to get better at fighting — it’s to get better at stopping ourselves: at taking a deep breath, calming down, and letting our better natures take over from our worst instincts.”
Vint Cerf writes a great post about how the modern-day internet (no, not Facebook and Twitter and TMZ.com) came to be during a tumultuous switchover in 1983:
Marking the birth of the modern-day Internet | Official Google Blog: “In an attempt to solve this, Robert Kahn and I developed a new computer communication protocol designed specifically to support connection among different packet-switched networks. We called it TCP, short for ‘Transmission Control Protocol,’ and in 1974 we published a paper about it in IEEE Transactions on Communications: ‘A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication.’ Later, to better handle the transmission of real-time data, including voice, we split TCP into two parts, one of which we called ‘Internet Protocol,’ or IP for short. The two protocols combined were nicknamed TCP/IP.”
Despite my frustrations over a lack of a TweetBot style app for Android, my current experiment with Android via a Galaxy S3 has been going pretty well.
I’ve had an iPhone since 2007 and constantly turned my nose up at Android all the while hoping that the platform could mature into an iOS rival that would fulfill my wishes for a more “open” and dare-I-say geeky user experience with a portable computer (or phone). That same wish makes me keep a copy of Debian installed along side my 15″ Retina Macbook Pro in hopes that one day Linux will find the right balance for me.
Apps like SwiftKey (and their insanely amazing new Flow app) make me realize why I started loving computers in the first place. The ability to tinker and get my hands dirty in (sometimes useless but nevertheless enjoyable) settings toggles.
Android isn’t for everyone. iOS is a cleaner and more user friendly operating environment. Things are prettier in Apple’s garden of eden, for sure. However, I like to tinker. I like to break things and have to figure out where I went wrong. To put it in middle school teacher language, I like to have the ability to tinker without voiding a warranty.
AirDroid is yet another example of why I’m liking Android these days:
AirDroid: The free app every Android owner should install in 2013 — Mobile Technology News: “Once connected, the computer browser shows a desktop-like interface to the Android smartphone or tablet. There are numerous icons for different activities and data: Files opens up a file manager for the phone, for example. Music, Videos, Messages and Call Logs all show their respective Android data as well. Or, if your device is rooted, you can click the Screenshot icon to snap an image of the Android device remotely.”
Imagine doing something like that with an iPhone. True, most people wouldn’t want to, and there’s no real reason to given iTunes, iCloud etc. However, rather than my data traveling over wires to Maiden, NC where iCloud lives, I feel like I have the permission to DIY if I want to try.
I’m really impressed with Android in 2012. I’m hoping 2013 brings even more enjoyment.
As Cory Doctorow wrote in his 2011 piece “Android and iOS both fail, but Android fails better”:
I prefer Android because it’s relative openness means more people can and do inspect its workings to ensure it is doing what Google claims it is doing. I prefer Android because when Google decides to leave out a feature that users might want – such as tethering – the people making alternative OSes for the platform stick that feature in, and shame Google into adding it in subsequent versions.
My mobile phone can track where I go. It can record my voice and image, and the voices and images of those around me. It can leak email, voicemail, texts, and passwords. In the time since I’ve gotten a mobile phone, each passing year has meant that I rely on my phone for more things, and I don’t expect that will change.
Android and iOS will both fail their users in the years to come. Not a lot, but often enough, and dramatically enough, that it’s worth ensuring that those failures are as minimal as possible.
That’s exactly how I’m feeling lately. I still love and use my iPhone 5. It is a much better experience than my Galaxy S3 when I want a stock, smooth, out-of-the-box experience.
Trouble is (as I’ve figured out after 34 go-rounds the sun), I normally don’t want that type of an experience in the long run.
Sounds like Chris and I went on a similar journey of finding better apps to do what we do:
Goodbye ubiquitous digital service | Chris Webb: “Over the past months I’ve been transitioning away from a number of the digital services and apps I use. Honestly I didn’t set out to do it, rather it has become a snowball effect that started with one service I hated using and has led to an almost meditative evaluation of my digital workspaces and the way I interact with the technologies that are intertwined with my existence.”
Like him, I’m now using apps like:
All of those are apps I’ve paid for (except ThinkUp which is open source) and all (except Pinboard) are hosted on my own server (mail is downloaded via POP). Of course, I have to rely on the internet provider I use etc but I know where my data resides and I feel better knowing who has access, how it’s being used etc.
I don’t think the “bring it all back home” movement is going to ever catch up to the “throw it all into Facebook’s garden” mindset, but it’s great to read about others making similar choices with their attention and data.
Khan Academy | What software program / equipment is use…:
“Sal uses a PC with:
- Camtasia Recorder ($200*)
- SmoothDraw3(Free)
- Wacom Bamboo Tablet ($80)
My students and I have been using Khan Academy videos to help us in our studies of pre-Algebra over the past fall. While there have been some kinks and bumps, the experience has been amazing from a teacher and learner point of view.
Mostly, the pause button is the most revolutionary thing to happen in education in a long while. The ability to have classroom discussions, collaborative problem solving and real in-class learning combined with independent and self-paced skills work have changed how I teach (and learn).
Over the holiday break, I’ve been making a few “Khan” style videos to go along with presentations (lectures) I’m giving on a few more complicated subjects (such as some Astronomy and celestial mechanics topics) for my 7th grade students at Carolina Day School this spring.
Someone asked about my setup, so here’s what I’m using:
($65 on Amazon)I’ll post up a few when I’m done with a series but have been impressed with the Bamboo tablet and experience so far. Pretty painless and enjoyable!
What fiscal cliff? Now we’ve got Netflix frictionless social sharing thanks to Congress!
Your Netflix rental data: coming to a Facebook timeline near you soon | Media | guardian.co.uk: “We are pleased that the Senate moved so quickly after the House,’ a Netflix spokesperson told Talking Points Memo on Wednesday. ‘We plan to introduce social features for our US members in 2013, after the president signs it.”
Interesting history of the 1988 law being amended to allow for sharing our Netflix viewings on Facebook, btw.
Robert Bork died this past week. Coincidence? Maybe. Full-circle and all that.
Yet another sign that we’re slouching towards [privacy] Gomorrah.
Kevin Marks has a great post connecting the notion of necessary complexity with the state of the web and our willingness to throw all of our content (pics, music, text etc) into the hands of silos and walled garden social media networks:
Epeus’ epigone: The Antifragility of the Web: “If you’ve read Nasim Taleb’s Antifragile, you know what comes next. By shielding people from the complexities of the web, by removing the fragility of links, we’re actually making things worse. We’re creating a fragility debt. Suddenly, something changes – money runs out, a pivot is declared, an aquihire happens, and the pent-up fragility is resolved in a Black Swan moment.”
The latest Instagram debacle over who owns user generated pictures points to a rising tide of web users who want more than just partial ownership of what they create simply for the sake of sharing. We’ve had another system in place for over a decade now with blogs and feeds.
Of course, it’s much easier to slap a filter on a photo and upload it to Instagram or Facebook and reap the benefits of the likes and comments received rather than uploading an image to a hosted blog and going through the necessary hoops of making sure your friends are subscribed etc.
However, this complexity begets savvy users and people who understand the fragility of the web and its main currency (the link) and why a web that is open and not centralized around one corporation is worth protecting
It’s one reason that, as a teacher, I’m big on portfolios (blogs) written and curated by each student and interlinking with other student blogs. In some small way, I hope this learning process helps young people who are setting the stage for the next iteration of the social web to appreciate what it means to have an individual name space and participate in the democracy of the commons rather than just the fiefdom of Facebook.
I’m picking up Taleb’s Antifragile tomorrow (I’m back to reading dead tree editions of books for philosophical reasons but that’s for another post).