Ideas from Mark Stout

This week's Family Tech column is about the many choices we now have for affordable, even free, streaming music to our many devices.

Busy day yesterday, so just now getting around to mention two great updates to the Evernote clients for Mac and for IOS (iPad/iPhone). The Mac 3.0 version now supports the new Lion Operating System. Features include a full screen mode, and a Favorite Bar.  Follow the link above to their blog post about the upgrade. The upgrade is available in the Mac App Store  or from Evernote directly . And, the newest version for the iPhone and iPad now has Rich Text Editing, the ability to view shared notebooks, search within a note, and more.  The link takes you to their blog describing it more. The upgrade is in the App Store .

I have to admit, as someone who lived in California for 20 years and had a front row seat to the 7.2 Loma Prieta Quake in 1989, I didn't take yesterdays 5.8 here in Virginia too seriously. However, turns out that quakes here travel a lot further because the Earth's crust here is older, and much harder. There is also more damage here with a 5.8 then there would be with a quake of that size in San  Francisco. There is a lot of masonry construction here, something unheard of in California. Schools are mostly make of concrete bricks. Schools in the epicenter community of Mineral VA had already opened for the year but now will be closed until after Labor Day. And worrisome news, inspectors in a helicopter saw cracks in the upper reaches of the Washington Monument. On another note, yesterday's Northern Virginia quake was the fourth strongest I'd experienced. While one scared the crap out of me, the others were just interesting. And one was amusing; the 6.2 on April 24...

As kids head back to school, some are at a major disadvantage before they even enter the classroom.  Kids on the far side of the digital divide live in homes unable to afford $45 a month for broadband. Now, Comcast is offering $10 a month internet to children eligible for the National Free Lunch program. That, and other free tools to help bridge the Digital Divide is the topic of this week's Family Tech column .

I never really thought the HP Touchpad had much of a chance.  Too little, too late.  With any kind of platform, it is all about apps.  Developers can handle developing for at most two platforms. In fact, I suspect most want to develop for two.  Having all your apps on just one platform is putting all your eggs in one basket.  As Amazon found with Apple, a platform can pull the rug out from under a developer pretty quick by suddenly demanding, as Apple did, a 30% cut of the action that they had not previously.  Amazon recovered nicely with their HTML5 app that bypasses Apple's AppStore.  The mere existence of Android as competition should keep some of Apple's avarice at bay, at least to some degree. Back to the Touchpad.  A third platform needs apps, and thus developers to make them.  Getting the hardware out there was part of the battle,  Courting the developers takes time.  Which is why HP's impatience with the platform seemed...

As an Android devotee, I was a bit worried about Android's exposure to patent law suits.  Today, Google went a long way to solving that problem by buying Motorola Mobility. As the photo shows, Motorola has been around the mobile communication business a while.  Their patent trove should give pause to anyone wanting to challenge Google. Google pledges to run Motorola as a separate business.  They are trying to balance their need to own a company like Motorola without ticking off the other manufacturers that support Android. Hopefully, they will use Motorola though to come out with some awesome phones and tablets to serve as reference designs for other manufacturers, sort of what they have done with the Nexus phones produced to their specs by various manufacturers.

When the iPhone was released, Steve Jobs was asked if outside developers were going to be able to produce apps for it.  He replied that there was no need, that developers could produce HTML5 web apps and not need to access the phone. Primarily as I recall, he attributed it to the cell phone networks worrying about their networks security if outside apps could interact with their networks. Was he speaking the truth, or vamping until they could finish the developer tools and open the App Store?  He has a history of saying Apple had no intention of entering a market because it was not good for the customer, only to do so later. Now, the Apple App store and development tools are good money earners for Apple.  And they want to sweeten the deal for themselves by demanding apps can only have in-app-store purchasing where Apple then lays claim to 30% of the revenue. Not a big deal for game makers selling virtual weapons, but for Amazon and others sell...

The next version of Chrome will be able to execute C++ and other code directly inside of the browser. If I understand this correctly, this basically makes the browser real close to an operating system, and makes web only devices like the Chromebook even more functional. One criticism of the the all-web-apps approach taken by the Chromebook is there are certain apps that do lend themselves to being a web app.  Video editing is one, it takes way too much processing power, and you can not have the editing on a server, and then the display downstream via the web.  Latency would be an issue; the video would be slow and jumpy. By being able to execute code inside the browser, a browser only PC can do serious apps, like video editing. This is going to lead to a new generation of web apps. This article by TechCrunch says this is a long time coming, and refers to a talk in 2010 when Google first mentioned this. In reality, this is what Microsoft feared ...

My favorite tool, Evernote, offered up a new version of their Windows client today.  The new version offers the ability to do audio notes. Personally, I do not see much use for that, but one thing I've learned about Evernote is that no two people use it exactly the same way.  Audio notes might just be what some users desperately need. Also, Evernote added the ability to customize the layout of the toolbar. To get the upgrade, in your Windows Evernote client, go to the Help menu, Check for updates.

I've written before about a Google Labs jewel called App Inventor.  It allows non-programmers, or hobbyist programmers like myself, to create programs for Android phones and tablets. Now news that as part of Google's elimination of many of their Labs ( their source of not fully realized products and add-ons), App Inventor will be discontinued . Per Google : With the winding down of Google Labs, Google will discontinue App Inventor as a Google product and will open source the code. Additionally, because of App Inventor’s success in the education space, we are exploring opportunities to support the educational use of App Inventor on an open source platform. As a result of these changes App Inventor will be available through the end of the year but users should expect the current  App Inventor URL , to change sometime in the next 90 days. Please subscribe to the  App Inventor Announcement forum  for future updates. And then, almost cruelly, the post goes on to...

There seems to be more and more every day that can only be done online.  Finding out what your kid is doing at school, emailing your boss, emailing your kids teacher, finding a better job, finding work at all, and so much more. Thankfully libraries offer free internet access to those that do not have access to the net otherwise.  However, that time is limited and for someone in a bad place in life, finding the time maybe while working two jobs to take a bus or two to the library to get online for an hour is daunting. In exchange for approval of the acquisition of NBC by Comcast, Comcast agreed to make broadband available for $10 a month to low income families. Comcast has a website now explaining the program .  If a family has even one child in the free lunch program, they are entitled to inexpensive internet. Some are saying those of us all ready overpaying for broadband are subsidizing this program.  True.  But, our costs wouldn't go down if ...

A year ago in a Family Tech column I concluded the iPad was not yet ready to be a student's sole machine at college.  I revisited that topic in this week's Family Tech column .

I am going to try to avoid the words that will let non-readers find out about this through a web search, so if the wording seems odd, that is why. If you would like to join a certain huge web search companies new social site, you know, the product that starts with a G and has the opposite of a minus sign as part of the name, then click this link .  I have 150 of the opportunities available. If you do join and you add me to a circle, email me and let me know you have so I can put you in a circle back.

Alas, it will be another 17 months before my contract expires and I get to setup a new Android phone, but if you are facing the task, Lifehacker.com just published an excellent guide for those new to Android.  Besides today's " How to Setup your New Android Phone ", don't forget Keven Purdy's excellent ebook " The Complete Guide to Android ".

I finally got around and ordered the four port USB charging device I mentioned a couple posts back.  My first impression is good.  It is small, about the size of my cell phone.  It worked fine for my phone and an iPod touch at the same time. It's only rated at 500mah, and the packaging does not say it works for the iPad.  When I hooked up my iPad when it was at 10% if could not keep up with my using the iPad.  I went down to about 4% while I worked. I then left it hooked up while not using it, but with the iPad on with screen off, and it went up to 16% in an hour. I then hooked the iPad up to its normal charger it and it gained about 30% in the first hour it was hooked up.  I haven't solely charged the iPad on the device yet overnight, but I think as long as it is hooked up for nine hours or so it will charge.  Test yourself to be sure. Overall for just shy of $7 US, its a pretty handy device.  It definitely goes into my travel pack. Th...

College is project management. It is full of tasks, deadlines, etc. just like project management. I found a few smart phone apps that help students track all their tasks, deadlines, exams, professions and schedules. This is the topic of this week's Family Tech column .