Daily Archives: March 20, 2010

Confessions of a Confused Apple iPad Fanboy

I pre-ordered my Apple iPad in that first-day flurry that allegedly sold 50,000 iPads in the first two hours. I knew I had to have the new iPad and I know the iPad will simply revolutionize everything.
But….
I have no idea what I will do with my iPad when I get it in a few weeks. I really don’t. I never saw much value in an iPod Touch – I am not crazy about music or movies – I have an iPhone and love it because it is a small device that includes data networking, E-Mail, Twitter, web browsing, Music and a Phone – all in a pocket-sized form factor. But my iPad has little of that and needs WiFi to communicate.
I sure hope I like iWork on it.
Here is something I would like – I would like it to be able to handle a bunch of PDF and HTML blobs – like all of the Python Documentation and all the JavaDoc for Sakai and my Python for Informatics Textbook and my Networks textbook by Jon Kleinberg. I don’t want to buy new books – Kindle-style – I want to read the ones I already have. And I want to browse HTML stored locally on the iPad – not over the web or via iTunes. I don’t want it so that the iPad is only useful with a network connection – I want it to be like a book that works without WiFi.
I have this deep and abiding fear that I won’t be able to just put files on my iPad – that somehow I will need to view all data through the iTunes lens or send them to myself in E-Mail as attachments. Or perhaps I need to write an iPad application called “File Folder Downloader/Reader” that is kind of like the Mac OS Finder or Windows Desktop.
I want to put my stuff on the iPad just like on my laptop. I just want to drag and drop it from one to the other and then be able to go “off the net” with my iPad and read it.
I have this big fear that while I have not jail broken any Apple product ever that I will have to Jailbreak my iPad immediately so it can store and open local files.
With all of this angst and concern inside of me, then why did I buy one within the first hour?
Uh – “Because” is all I can think of to say. Just had to have one – I will work out the details of why I want one later.

Weird Mood: Pledge of Allegiance to the Web

I don’t know why I am in a weird mood this morning – probably because I am writing the exam for SI502 – which of course includes a question about the request-response cycle.
I started thinking about how important the request-response cycle is to information, networks, and people these days and somehow I leapt to the idea that we needed something like the “Pledge of Allegiance” to say at the beginning of every SI502 class to reinforce this notion of the importance of request-response cycle.
Here is my first draft of the “Pledge of Allegiance to the Web”:
“I pledge allegiance to the web and the open standards upon which its built, and to the request-response cycle upon which it stands, one Internet for the greater good, indivisible, with liberty and equal access for all.”
Comments welcome.
Now back to writing that midterm exam for SI502.