So, we are really looking forward to being able to watch streaming video on the road again, which we have had to forego while using Verizon’s lame 5GB mobile broadband. Even while trying to avoid overusing it, we’ve had to pay extra for exceeding the cap for the past two months, which is very stupid. If AT&T can do unlimited data bandwidth, Verizon and Sprint could do it, too. They just don’t want to. Maybe the competition will make things change eventually, but we need it now. As it is, my Digital Media class online will starting our video project next week, and we have already used all except 1 GB of this month’s allowance on Verizon after just 2 weeks from the rollover date (the 20th of the month in our case). Thank goodness, by the time we are ready to do peer reviews we will be in Dallas (Princeton, TX, actually, but the greater Dallas area) where we will be staying in an RV park with good WiFi. We can supplement it with our Verizon modem if necessary, but I think we’ll be ok there.

But video isn’t the only attraction, of course. By getting the 3G version we will have assisted GPS on the iPad, and larger maps than on the iPhone. I have been using the Google map app with GPS on our iPhone to navigate this year, and it is really wonderful. It will be even better on the larger screen. Naturally, we will enjoy what I anticipate will be a superior ebook reading experience and photo sharing, too.

I’m considering getting some of the accessories Apple has mentioned, like the keyboard dock and camera/SD card connection kit. With the latter and with all the SD cards I’ve bought for my netbook as well as tons of computer hard disk storage, both built-in to the computers and external Firewire and USB drives, I don’t see a lot of reason to spend the extra money to buy the 64GB iPad. We will probably get the 32GB version, just because 16GB seems awfully small these days. We have 32GB on the iPhones, and even with bajillions of apps, ebooks, Audible.com audio books and data files on mine I am only using about 20% of the available storage, so I rather imagine we can get by with 32Gig on the iPad, too.

Now our only decision is where to get it? We will be in central Texas in mid-April, and Phil has agreed to stay there until the 3G iPad is available, so we will have a choice of Apple stores in Austin and San Antonio. I want to go ahead and preorder it for pickup rather than take a chance of them being sold out.

The excitement builds!

While I’d been waiting for the new version, I’d looked at the new Apps Store in iTunes, and had a handful of applications picked out to try once the update completed. Sure enough, I filled up over a page on the home screen with icons for freebies, and even paid small fees for a couple of apps that looked particularly useful. One, called iTimeZone, may just finally be the solution to my habitual confusion over time zone differences for meetings in Second Life, which are based on Pacific Time but which are attended by people from about 5 or 6 other time zones. This widget lets me enter a target time, and shows what time that is in whatever other time zones I choose. So there are no calculations to get confused. It remains to be seen whether I actually use it, but for US$1.99, even if I forget about it it’s no great loss.

So, roughly 24 hours after getting into the iTunes update, everything is working as advertised with my upgrade. I hope others have had similarly positive outcomes.

I wasn’t actually able to attend the presentations because the sim was full. In fact, while I was lurking on the border of the next sim, hoping to break in at some point, I ran into Larry Pixel of NMC, who also was locked out by the avatar cap, and as he told me, he was a presenter! Finally I did make it into the sim, said hello to Claudia Linden and then promptly crashed. By the time I got back, the presentations were over, but dozens of avatars were still standing around trying to figure out how to get to the Education Grid. There were IMs flying around, some of them in the hosted group’s chat window, with instructions as they were developing, and between those and the websites that we were referred to, and later messages posted to the group’s mailing list, I eventually managed to get my avatar authorized to access the grid, downloaded the necessary software, and finally logged in.

Part of my problem was that I had an out of date installation of the Java SDK on my Mac, so I had to update that, but then it still didn’t seem to work, probably because I’m using MacOS X 10.5 “Leopard” which Sun isn’t supporting yet. So, I tried running Wonderland in WindowsXP/Home in a Parallels virtual machine. Finally, it worked! I was able to move around in a few rooms in the now-familiar Wonderland server. Sadly, at that point my Mac crashed with a kernel panic, and I had to do a cold boot (probably because I was running so much stuff I ran out of RAM). But it was great while it lasted, and I’ll try it again soon.

While I was updating software, I also downloaded Sun’s OpenSolaris (open source operating system) and xVM VirtualBox (open source virtual machine software). I’ll install and report on those later.

The last problem I had to surmount was the result of my rustiness on the Linux platform, not a problem with the Wonderland software. I had to rewrite the $PATH variable in my .bashrc file to make the system look for Java first in /use/local/bin instead of /use/bin, since this Linux distro (OpenSUSE) has a Gnu version of Java installed in /usr/bin (gij).

So as soon as I can get online I ought to be able to connect to Stephen’s server. All this latest troubleshooting happened as we were driving from Carlsbad, New Mexico to Big Spring, Texas where we will spend the night. The RV park there advertises WiFi, so we are only hours away from finally fulfilling this goal. Woo hoo!!