I will be honest.  Today I took a longer than normal lunch so that I could watch live coverage of the Apple event on TWiT.  As a self-proclaimed fanboi, I was excited and intrigued by the latest thing I didn’t know I needed until Steve Jobs told me I did.

All joking aside, this is an interesting device.  Apple is positioning it as a media player, content creator, book reader, and TV.  It’s a lot to fit into something .5″ thick, but they seem to have done a pretty good job.  You can go to Apple’s iPad site for all the gory details and places like Engadget and TUAW for even more.  But here’s a brief overview:

1. It has a pretty 9.5 x 7.5″ LCD screen with an iPhone-style capacitive touch interface (there is a pretty wide bezel, but the people who have played with it say that it makes sense because you have to have some place to hold it without touching the multi-touch screen).
2. The screen is 1024 x 768 pixels which mean that HD movies are going to look pretty good on your lap.
3. It will have a full browser, email app, photo app, notes app, etc (think iphone standard apps).
4. They have totally revamped iWork’s UI to make it intuitive on a touch screen. Even keynote’s graphics-intensive elements seem to work without a strain.
5. It will have a new app called iBooks that is a book reader as well as an iBook Store.  They have already secured major US publishers and are adding more.
6. It has built in speakers (and 3.5mm headphone jack), mic and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR but no camera (there is no way this will be absent from the 2.0 release)
7. It will output VGA and standard A/V cable.
8. There will be models with 16, 32 and 64 GB of storage available.
9. It will have wifi built in and an optional 3G modem.
10. There will be a dock, keyboard dock, and case (with stand) available.
11. Though they released an updated SDK today, almost all iPhone apps will work on the device and can be used in their native size or at 2x to come closer to filling the screen..
12. Apple says it has 10 Hours of battery life (doesn’t seem like this is possible, but no one has them to test as of yet).
13. It will ship in 60 days starting at an un-Apple price point: $499

What it doesn’t have:

1. Multi-tasking
2. Support for flash
3. Across the board true GPS (only available in 3g model which is $130 more)
4. USB ports
5. Did I mention camera!??!

Now, that is a lot, but there are several things that are unclear:

1. Will it have the ability for external storage?  There are adapters that allow you to connect  USB and SD to the 30-pin iPod connector, but Apple says they are for importing pictures.
2. Will it sync with Mobile Me?  They say it will sync with a computer, but did not mention their “cloud” service.
3. Will there be magazines?  It seems logical, but was not announced.
4. The hands on experience.  This one is big, until people get to really sit down with it, we won’t know exactly how reality stacks up with apple’s claims

Overall, I am interested in the product, but I will probably not buy one for one simple reason: Apple’s second generation is usually far better than the first.  I did the same thing with the iPhone, and I got the 3G, and am not disappointed.

Apple generally sacrifices features for stability and user experience on the 1.0.  After they work out all the bugs, they release a product that seems complete.  The iPhone 3g added GPS, third party apps, streaming audio over 3g, push e-mail, and other niceties.  I fully expect the iPad 2.0 to have a camera, (maybe even two) some form of external storage (if that is not part of this version), higher quality screen (OLED?), and a couple more pieces of glory that I can’t forsee right now.

Bottom line: should you seriously consider buying it?

• If you were considering a netbook because of it’s size: yes.
• If you wanted a netbook because of its price and storage capacity: no.
• If you were considering a new laptop and do not need video editing or large amounts of storage (in other words you primarily use it for email and word processing): yes.
• If you have a church administrator who loves Apple and will let you play with $500: yes
• If you use keynote for your talks and cant afford a macbook but want something more portable than a mac mini: yes.
• If you need to run any traditional apps like Photoshop, Final Cut, etc.: no.
• If you were considering an ebook reader but couldn’t justify almost $300 on something for that single purpose: yes.
• If you are secretly in love with Steve Jobs and want to show him your undying devotion: yes.

There you have it.  Let us know what you think!  Although I said I was not buying one for myself, you are more than welcome to send me one in the mail, I would not even come close to turning it down… I am a fanboi after all.

Well 2009 is officially over, and I was thinking about some of the tech that made it’s way into my world during the year. Here’s some of my favorites:

Software:
Mozy – I committed to online backup this year having deciding that my time machine wasn’t enough.  Mostly because if something happened at my house the chances of losing both were pretty high.  I went with Mozy, and after having a harddrive crash while on a trip and I was still able to access my data, I’m sold.  It’s definitely worth the $5 a month it costs.

Dropbox – This has become a tool I use daily.  Great for online storage and sharing.  And it’s FREE!

Teleport – This little bit of software allows you to share one keyboard and mouse between 2 macs without any extra hardware.  It’s really cleaned up my desk and I love the way it works.  Price: FREE

Hardware:
iPhone 3gs – This is so much more than a phone to me. It allows me to be away from the office but still take care of quite a bit of my daily tasks.  I love it.

MacBook Pro Uni-body – My old Macbook Pro was great for almost 3 years, but my recent upgrade to one of the new Uni-body models has been a great one.  The power is awesome.  To compare, my old machine took 90 minutes to export the SYM podcast that I produce each week, and the new laptop does the same video in 35.  I love it.  Although if you are thinking about upgrading, I would wait to see if there are any upgrades early in the year.

Flip MinoHD Camcorder – This is such a great little camera.  So easy to use and a great picture for what it costs.  You aren’t going to produce a major motion picture with this, but to capture camp memory, quick event highlights, and fun family moments, I love it.  Read my full review here: review-flip-minohd.

Kindle 2 -I upgraded my ebook reader to the Kindle this year.  I really enjoy reading on it.  A few things that make it great:

1. Battery life
2. Amazon Store – so many titles, and great prices.
3. Always connected – I can download books where ever I am, and it doesn’t cost any extra

Web:
Gdgt.com: Great new gadget site.  I do a lot of my gadget research here.  I also really enjoy their podcast.

LIVE Curriculum: I think most of you know, I am the web manager for Simply Youth Ministry, and one of the big projects I worked on this year was this online curriculum. I am really proud of what we put together, and when I think of 2009 it was a huge part of it.

Now on to 2010.

Here’s an update to the post about the iPhone Band.  Josh posted an update listing out the apps used (all links open iTunes):

Guitars: (Electric and Bass)
Pocket Guitar ($.99)

Piano #1:
Virtuoso Piano Lite (Free)

or
Virtuoso Piano

Piano #2:
Pianist ($3.99)

Drums:
DigiDrummer Lite (Free)

or
Digidrummer ($1.99)

A few other things to keep in mind:

1. If your students are using an iPhone have them put it on Airplane mode, so they can still get to apps without having to receive phone calls.
2. Also turn off all notifications in the settings app on itouches.
3. If you do the bit with the phone call, make sure the one person getting the phone call has their phone set to receive calls. Also, the person calling has to be in another room because the sound system will echo through the phone and the main house.

This should give you everything you need to do your iPhone band.

My main computer that I use for all my day to day work is pushing 3 years old, and it’s really starting to show it’s age. I realize that 3 years doesn’t sound like that long, but it’s the longest I’ve used a computer since the 386 I built my freshmen year of college. But in these economic times I’m sure most of us aren’t able to replace our computers as often as we would like. I find myself in a constant battle in keeping mine from crashing and losing hours of work. I’m sure I’m not the only one, but is there anything we can do that can help prolong the life of our aging machines? Here are a few things that I have found that has helped:

1. Hardware Upgrades: Sometimes over time we can develop some hardware problems that are easy to tackle ourselves.  Two upgrades we can do that make a huge difference are RAM and Harddrive.  If you find your aging computer slowing down, make sure you have the maximum amount of RAM your computer can handle.  If you don’t know the maximum amount for your machine head over to Crucial.com, and run their memory scanner and they will tell you how much your computer can take.  You can also buy the upgrade from them, and their prices are some of the best around.  Another upgrade that can make a big difference is upgrading your hard drive.  Chances are your computer came with a small, slow drive that upgrading can make a huge difference.  If you drive is too full it can slow you down, also upgrading to a faster drive can make a big difference in performance.

2. Clean up the hard drive. You may not feel comfortable swapping out your harddrive, and if you have a laptop it may not be easy.  But that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck.  You can defrag your drive to help speed it up.  I would also clean off unneeded programs and files to free up space.

3. Clean install. This is much more drastic, but often times using the system restore disks your computer came with reinstalling everything often helps fix problems that can be difficult to find and fix another way.  Now if you feel you need to take this step make sure you have a good backup and all the install files for your software because this will result in erasing your hard drive back to the way it came from the factory.  If you are planning to upgrade your computer to the latest operating system (Windows 7 or Snow Leopard) this can be a great time to do this.

4. Find a New Use For It.  You may find that your old computer is just not worth upgrading or fixing so you do take the step to get a new one.  That doesn’t mean the old computer is now completely useless.  You may be able to turn it into a home server to keep your photos or music on so you can share them with other computers in your house.  Or maybe that old laptop will be perfect to your spouse, parent, or child.  I find often times other people in my life don’t have the same requirements that I have, and while my old computer may not be great for editing video anymore, it may be perfect to check facebook or playing webkinz.

What do you do with your old computers?  How old is too old?

Have you ever asked your self that question?  I know I have.  In fact I keep asking myself about it every time I see a netbook.  Here’s a little flow chart to help with the decision:

(Click to see full size.)

Source: Scordit.com

I love my TomTom GPS unit.  I’ve had it for 3 or 4 years now and it’s been great, the software is easy to use and the directions easy to follow.  For someone who seems to have trouble navigating from point A to point B this has been a lifesaver.  One problem.  We only have one TomTom and my wife and I often want to use it when we are off to different places.  That’s why I was so excited to hear that TomTom was working on an iPhone App during the WWDC keynote this year, and tonight it hit the streets.

The TomTom App is now available in the app store.  One thing you must know is, it’s a little more spendy than most Apps, at $99 it’s the most expensive app that I’ve ever contemplated, but when you think of the cost of an entire GPS unit, $99 is a steal.  Considering that AT & T is trying to sell you a service at $10 a month, a 1 time $99 charge doesn’t sound that bad.  It also looks like it’s the software is just as easy to use as my TomTom 1, plus I can pull addresses from my contact list and have TomTom direct me there.

If you’ve never had a GPS and own an iPhone this is one app that you will use everyday.  Even when I’m going places I know how to get there it gives me estimated arrival times which makes answering the question “Are we there yet?” so much easier.  This is the perfect companion for a youth ministry road trip to find restaurants, gas stations, rest stops and other points of interest along the way.  Never get lost in that church shuttle again.

So I finally did it, I got a Kindle.  A used one mind you, but that doesn’t bother me.  I’ve only had it a few hours now, so I’m sure that I will still learn lots of little things about it.  But the first big hurdle I came to was getting documents I already have on to it.  Sure it’s super easy to download new books, or even try out sample chapters.  I’ve even collected a few free ones that I’ve found in the links to over the last few months that I’ve been reading on the iPhone app, but what about other documents I have that I would like to take with me.

I’ve been a ebook fan for a long time going back to the small library I have from my Microsoft Reader days on my old iPaq. Now I would love to be able to read some of these again on the Kindle.  I know I could email them to my Kindle, but don’t really want to pay amazon for the conversion, and I was happy to find there’s a really easy way.

There’s a free piece of software called Stanza (both Windows and Mac versions available), and it will open almost any text document you have (including the old .lit files from my iPaq) and convert them to a number of different ebook formats, including Kindle.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Plug in your Kindle to your computer via USB and let the computer mount it as a drive
2. Open stanza and select the file you wish to convert for your Kindle
3. From the file menu select export as and choose Kindle as the output.  Choose the document folder on the kindle as the save location
4. Disconnect the Kindle and now the document shows up as a library item.

You may be thinking this is a great way to get ebooks and other documents on your iPhone into the Kindle App as well, but you can’t access the kindle library the same way on the iPhone.  Never fear, Stanza has a free iPhone App as well that you can share books between your computer and phone or ipod.  It’s a great way to transfer documents to your phone for reference, or maybe even your teaching notes for Youth Group. This app is so great, it really deserves it’s own post, but I’ve got some reading to do.

I don’t know about you, but I love gadgets.  And a great new site launched this week just for all of us who share that love of shiny, electronic toys.  It’s from Peter Rojas and Ryan Block, two of the masterminds behind engadget and gizmodo, so they know something about gadgets.  It’s called Gdgt.com (it’s pronounced g-d-g-t), and it’s setup as community site for people to share about their gadgets or research about new ones.

Here’s a video they put together to help explain the site:

So, what is gdgt? from gdgt on Vimeo.

This may not be a place to read about news (although they had a pretty good news feed) , but it’s a great place to read about what others experiences have been.  And if you really want the news, they have a great podcast also that I really enjoy.  It’s worth checking out (click the iTunes link to visit):  .

Well, I’ve been using the new iPhone 3.0 software for almost 12 hours now.  Here are some of my initial thoughts:

• Search:  I think the way they implemented this by having it be to the left of the main screen is interesting.  Although I found myself swiping into it accidentally often.  I hope I get used to it being there.  It’s is a great program launcher though.  I have about 7 screens of apps, and it can be difficult to find certain ones.  Now with the search and few letters into the spotlight search, and up it comes.  It was also great finding things in email.  I really like how they used icons next to the results, it makes it easy to identify what each result is.
• iPod Features:  I wasn’t ready for the first time i opened my music library and it needed to update.  I had to cruise down the road for a few miles before I was able to fire up my tunes.  So you may want to open up your library right away just so it can update.  I listen to alot of podcasts, and there are a few new settings.  Now under to time bar there are 3 new buttons.  One allows you to send a link to the podcast to a friend.  Nice for those of us who create podcasts.  Two allows you to jump the podcast back 30 seconds incase you missed something.  And three allows you to change the speed of playback.
• Cut and Paste: This one is so big.  I can’t believe it took so long to get this.  The implementation works well, exactly how I would expect it.  And it works in so many places.  It was supper easy to move text from a web page to an email, or a web address into a note.  I love it.  This makes the whole device so much more useable.
• General Impressions: My iPhone 3G feels a little snappier.  The transitions from screen to screen definitely seems smoother.  Overall not huge impact on performance, but it just seems a little tighter. 

Here’s some thoughts from one of my favorite Tech Pundits: 10 nifty things about iPhone OS 3.0.   

How was your first day with it?  What’s your favorite new feature?

I often have people ask me how to make good sounding recordings of their youth bands, sermons, or voice overs for videos without spending a fortune on gear. Before I found out about the Shure X2u, I’d recommend a cool mic like the blue snoflake or snowball.  The Shure X2u is called a signal adapter, but it is far more.  It’s powered totally off a standard USB port, and allows you to plug a mic cord into one end while outputting the audio to your computer through the usb.

What is most interesting about the X2u are all its additional features.  It has an integrated mic preamp which will make the audio sound much better and more full.  It will power microphones that require what’s called “phantom power” or +48v.  It has a headphone jack that you can use to monitor the input as well as three dials that control mic gain, volume, and monitor volume.

This little piece of equipment allows you to use the mics you already have, either run through a mixer into the X2u or plugged up directly into the unit, instead of having to go out and purchase a usb mic that will probably not sound nearly as good as the mics you already have, and not give you the option of plugging in a mixer and using multiple mics.

You can get the Shure X2u at Amazon by itself for $120, or bundled with tried and true SM-58 microphone for $199 (a $220 value).