Ideas from Mark Stout

My appreciation of wireless access is this week's Family Tech .

Since the iPad is not meant to do all the things we do with computers, I find myself now, when I encounter a task I cannot do on my iPad, wondering how I can make the iPad do it. A good example :   once a week I receive an e-mail with a document attached.  I'd like that document to be in the GoodReader application on my iPad so it is available always, even if I am somewhere I do not have internet connectivity. GoodReader brings in documents from Dropbox , so I wondered if Dropbox supported a way of e-mailing in a document.  After all, Evernote allows you to e-mail it content so it is a reasonable feature to expect. Alas, Dropbox does not have that feature. In my course of my research, I came across a little PC application, MailDrop from Michael Warren. MailDrop watches your Gmail account and watches any e-mails belonging to a Gmail Label "Dropbox".  MailDrop then saves any attachments to your Dropbox account. MailDrop is an app that runs on your PC. ...

Facebook rolled out some new "features" recently and a lot of people thought they were making a huge power grab for control of the internet, assume the right to define our online identities and traffic in the personal data 500 million of us entrusted to them. Facebook did a horrible job of explaining the advantages, disadvantages and over all ramifications of their moves.  This lead tech pundits to question their motives and their competence to keep our data and identities  safe. In my Family Tech column appearing tomorrow , published Sunday May 23, I attempt to alert readers to the changes, the turmoil they created, their need to assess the impact for themselves, and steps users can take if they feel they need to protect themselves.  That was a lot to put into 600 words, so with this blog post, I want to curate some of the many blog posts and articles that have appeared casting  The Changes Facebook's announcement of the changes What...

We may not like how the RIAA enforces copyrights of its members, but the reality is that families are having to pay out large sums in some cases for what their children are doing.   This week's Family Tech column introduces the realities and periods of P2P to families.  Many kids cavalier attitude towards copyright could devastate a family financially.

John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States has  two grandson's alive today. When I was ten, there was a grandmother living in our neighborhood who had memories of her family moving to Arizona when she was five, on a covered wagon.  I talked to her about that some, but now wish I'd talked more and taken notes! I recently learned that my grandmother, long ago passed away, as a young woman worked in a small town post office where the post master had been a prisoner at Andersonville.  Seems odd I knew someone who knew someone in the civil war.

We've had no, or spotty Internet coverage since Friday.  Long story, all to familiar to many. Suffice it to say, my son was groggy one morning not from being up late from on the web.  He stayed up to read a book.  Maybe I should join my provider in knocking down our net for a day or two at a time.  Just thinking. So I'm catching up a bit this morning. Not surprised to see official word (sort of) that Google and Verizon are working together on a tablet .  I just hope there is a wi-fi only version of it too. An Apple/AT&T vs. Google/Verizon grudge match can only help us consumers.  Should be a fun contest.  Apple is stronger than Google on design, but then Google is better than Apple on openness. Verizon network vs. AT&T's network is no match. And Apple has hinted the iPad's wi-fi issues will be fixed in an upcoming software fix.  My improved signal strength coming into the house has improved my iPad reception when in the far re...

This week's Family Tech column reminds readers of ways you can find legal videos via the net.  There are increasingly good options for TV viewing and with more and more gadgets like the iPad, better ways to view TV.

Last night got busy, so I spent only a bit of time with the new iPad Dropbox. It seems competently done. And it is free. The beauty of Dropbox is its simplicity. What more can I say? It works. The one advantage the 99 cent GoodReader still has though is GoodReader can access more than one Dropbox account without having to log out and back in. My wife and I share the iPad for now and we both have separate Dropbox accounts.  With GoodReader I can pull in files from both.

I just looked at the app store for first time today. Dropbox updated to an iPad version. I just started playing.

One million in 28 days indicates not only success for Apple, but for the tablet form factor as a whole.  Expect now even more energy to getting other products in this form factor out the door.  I think Christmas 2010 is going to be an interesting gadget holiday. I keep thinking how this was inevitable.  The original Palm Pilot was really the first mass market tablet.  Sure it was small, and needed a stylus but those of us that had it, loved it.  It could even surf the net in its own way.  You could capture web pages on your PC and using the Avantgo application, download the pages into your Palm Pilot for reading while out and about. The Palm Pilot begat stylus based phones like Palms own Treo and HP's iPaq and then touch panel phones like the iPhone and most recently Android based phones. I was there when the Apple Mac came out in 1984 and spelled the deathnell for the command line user interface.  Touch is a similar quake in the tech ecosystem....

My Family Tech column this week is about the online resources offered by the local library.  However, your own library may have similar or better resources.