apple juice

My “magic” trackpad has been weird for the past week or so…

Portables and Magic Trackpad: Jumpy or erratic trackpad operation

“If you have sweaty hands or if moisture collects on the pad, this may also confuse the trackpad. Wiping off the trackpad with a cloth or tissue usually fixes this issue.”

Yep.. that seems to be the problem! This is my favorite pointing device ever, so I was a little bummed that it seemed to be losing its mind. I guess I just have greasy fingers or something.

This is pretty amazing. Can you imagine what everyone was thinking the first time this thing booted up? According to Wired, this is the oldest working digital computer in existence.

We need to use the Internet itself as social media. Then you won’t have to worry about Facebook putting their finger on the scale.: “Last night I was watching football on one of the big networks. It was a boring game so my mind drifted. I noticed that when they show the name of someone speaking on camera they also show their Twitter handle. I wondered if their lawyers had reviewed this decision. Had they read Twitter’s user agreement? Had they advised their client on how one-sided it is? That made me wonder if Twitter does special deals with big media conglomerates? I wonder what they look like? I follow Twitter pretty closely and I have no idea.”

(Via Scripting News.)

This is what I was talking about a few posts ago where I mentioned that having a personal blog is the only way to own your own words on the internet. You can take your data somewhere else. You’re in control.

You’re not in control of the experience you get on twitter or Facebook, and Dave Winer is exactly right in highlighting this. It is a little weird the twitter handle has become the de facto method of connecting with someone you see on TV.

I don’t know if app.net is going to be any better, (probably not — it’s not “free”) or if we simply need some sort of distributed system abstracted from an individuals’ blog or twitter-like feed that one can view from the web.

I finally had a chance to see Jeff Utecht at the ISACS conference recently. I’ve been a long-time reader of his blog but I still love to hear people present in person.

Really? It’s My Job To Teach Technology?

“We are not teaching technology, we are teaching skills that every student needs to have and technology happens to be a part of that. Create can be met with paper and pencil, with glue and scissors, with a hammer and nail, or with movie maker and it should be the job of every teacher to expose students to different ways of creating content that fits within their discipline.”

(Via The Thinking Stick.)

Absolutely. This has been the biggest shift in how we talk about technology at our school in the past 7 years. It is not “just a tool” and but rather a way of creating, analyzing, evaluating, applying, understanding. A way of thinking. Jeff’s whole post is worth reading, because I think it neatly sums up expectations for using technology.

We’ve chosen to use the NCTE’s 21st century literacies as our goals for our students. Previously, we had a mess of functions to master in specific software. If we are able to educate students to create, communicate, and collaborate using any software or technology (broadly defined) that is at their disposal, I think we’ll be doing well by those goals.

I want one of these little printers so bad, but after buying a nest and a pebble, I’m done with strange internet-connected gadgets for 2012.

Though, seriously, watch the video for the little printer. If you don’t think it is adorable, you’re not human.

This is super bad news. I would hate to see Hipstamatic disappear. This is the danger of the race to free in the app economy.

Hipstamatic Lays Off All but Core Employees, Including Designers and Engineers

Matthew Panzarino:

Toy camera app company Hipstamatic has fired all but 5 of its
core staff, including engineers and designers, The Next Web
has learned. The company had been staffed up and working on a
new release, but has only released one update in the last
several months.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

After selling our first-generation AppleTV a while back, I purchased the new 3rd gen 1080p version a couple months ago. We love it, and it is working great with the whole ecosystem.

There are holes, however, in the content. Obviously Apple has a TV, Movie and Music store that they do not want to cannabalize, but there is plenty of content available on the web that you can’t easily access on AppleTV.

If I were a betting man, I would place good money on Apple bringing the App Store concept (subscriptions and all) to the AppleTV in the coming months. The new grid of icons on the homescreen is just screaming for awesome 3rd-party apps.