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.

If you’re interested in watching Apple reveal it’s latest creation at it’s event this morning, there are lots of places on the web to watch it unfold today at 10 AM PST (1 PM EST).

Bloggers love to Live blog these events and it’s almost live being there.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

• Live.GDGT.com
• Engadet Live
• TUAW

And if you are really obsessive, one of my favorite podcasters, Leo Leporte and his Twit network, plan on covering the event all day with follow-up after the announcements. You can watch them here:

• Live.Twit.TV

Will it be the mythical tablet?  Also rumored are iLife 2010, and iPhone 4.0 software.

I can’t wait.

I found this video from the Today show about teens having their technology taken away for ten days was interesting.  Do you have some students that are addicted to their technology?  I think this going to be more and more an issue for this generation, finding a balance of time with technology and time “unplugged”.  I’m sure the feelings of the mother that was interview would be echoed by many of the parents in your group.  I think as we work with families they will be looking to us to help tackle this issue.  I know it’s becoming an issue even for me, I find myself being drawn into spending time on my phone, laptop, or ipod.  I think the exercise of shutting everything for a segment of time everyday is important. Just like the student in the video, I’ve found it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.

What advice would you have for familes that may stuggling with this issue?

Gmail introduced its new Gmail for Mobile web app for Andriod, iPhone, and iPod touch. They have tweaked the interface to allow for easier searching and basic archive, delete, etc. functions, but the most interesting update is that the app allows for offline reading of recently read messages using Gears for Andriod and SQLite for iPhone (according to Engadget). It was an allover great experience for me when I tried it out, and as earned a home screen icon on my iPhone. Check out their video (and TUAW’s review)for a demo and more information:

I launched our very own Twitter account for YouthMinistryGeek.com today.  You can find us as YMGeek.  Follow us for updates from the blog as well as breaking news, and other helpful tidbits.  I plan I updating it with little software finds and other articles that I find interesting or helpful, but may not end up as a full blog post.

Here are a couple other tech news twitters that I find interesting are:

• TUAW: Great mac news and updates from the TUAW site
• CNETNews: News, Links, and Tips from CNET
• Mashable: Great news about blogging and Social Media
• Lifehacker: Updates from the Lifehacker site

We’d love it if you’d give us a follow: YMGeek

Earlier (much earlier) today Apple debuted version 3.0 of the iPhone software. As far as  can tell this has eliminated most all reasons for spending any change any other smart phone.  In 3.0 Apple is releasing the ban on turn-by turn GPS software, adding peer-to peer connection, real push support, landscape keyboard in e-mail and hinted that tethering could be in the future if providers would provision it.  And (drum roll please) COPY AND PASTE which I find absolutely ridiculous that they waited until 3.0 to implement! When will all of this glory be available to the average youth ministry geek? June.

If you are interested in getting all the details, ther are great articles on TUAW, Engaget, Macworld, Cnet, and all the others you want to add in the comments.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how GodTube was changing it’s name.   Today we found out what that name is: Tangle.com.

Here’s a video from their CEO explaining the new name and vision:

What do you think?  Will you use it?

Yesterday, several of the more “popular” people’s accounts on twitter were hacked including Barack Obama, Fox News, and Leo Laporte.  It appers to have been a problem with how they managed the admin privileges.  Leo Laporte has a great post about this as well as an interview with Twitter’s John Adams here.  The unedited video of that interview is here.