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Apple’s iPad: What We Know, What We Don’t, and Whether to Buy, Wait, or Pine

Jeremy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:16:51 +0000

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:

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).
The screen is 1024 x 768 pixels which mean that HD movies are going to look pretty good on your lap.
It will have a full browser, email app, photo app, notes app, etc (think iphone standard apps).
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 [...] Continue Reading "Apple’s iPad: What We Know, What We Don’t, and Whether to Buy, Wait, or Pine"

Apple’s “latest creation” Event Today

Chris — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:01:37 +0000

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:

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.

Teens Without Tech

Chris — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:00:16 +0000

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?

New Gmail Mobile

Jeremy — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:00:45 +0000

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:

Follow Us on Twitter

Chris — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:14:30 +0000

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

iPhone 3.0 Debut

Jeremy — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:45:38 +0000

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.

GodTube now Tangle

Chris — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:31:12 +0000

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?

GodTube is Changing It’s Name

Twitter Hacked

Jeremy — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:42:02 +0000

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.