Naturally, it is going to take some time before I can explore all the features of all the apps as well as the gadget itself, but so far I am very happily impressed with it.

In terms of reading ebooks (one of my principal applications for this thing), I really like the appearance and functionality of both iBooks and Kindle for iPad as well as other reader apps, I do have a few questions. For one, I haven’t figured out how to import my own .epub documents into an app that will display them. iBooks is supposed to be able to use the epub format, but so far as I know, only books purchased through the Apple bookstore can use that app. I have three or four other document apps, but none that I have tried so far can handle them. The iBook Store is also pretty confusing. I haven’t found a way to get past the featured items, none of which interest me, so I haven’t bought any books there.

But since there are many more things to do besides read, the lack of ability to add titles to my iPad isn’t a big concern at the moment. I can always convert epub titles to PDF format and use them that way, so it’s not like they are completely inaccessible.

I did go ahead and sign up for the AT&T unlimited 3G data plan, of course, but at the moment I am using the WiFi provided by the RV park where we are staying now. Both WiFi and 3G cellular are very snappy, at least at this location, so that is a good thing.

I will have more reactions later, of course, but right now I’m going back to playing with my new toy. If you’ll please excuse me….

[Edited on 2 May 2010 to correct the spelling of "epub", which the autocorrection on iPad changed to "pub"]

Instead of simply waiting patiently (or impatiently, as the case may be), I’ve been avidly reading every review I could find, and trying out iPad-optimized web pages, including the iPad site from National Public Radio. NPR says it is best to view their iPad site in Google’s Chrome browser, since it isn’t optimized for other browsers. Hmmm. I wonder why Chrome, and not Apple’s Safari? Maybe Chrome is more like the iPad version of Safari than Safari itself is?

As a member of the Apple Developers Program, I’ve also downloaded the beta version of the iPhone SDK (Software Developers Kit) that includes an iPad simulator, but must confess I haven’t yet found time to fire it up. It would be different if I actually had a real application I wanted to develop, but so far I’m still trying to learn the development how-to. Thanks to some comments on a technical article about iPad app development, I may have an easier time of that now that I’ve found Corona Simulator, an alternate SDK that seems to be much more straightforward to use than Apple’s Xcode alone.

So, even without a chance of getting our own iPad, we’re considering driving up to Austin tomorrow to see if maybe we can touch one anyway. Maybe that will get me excited enough to finish the Corona tutorials and start working on my own apps, who knows?

I opted to pick up our iPad at the Apple Store in Austin, since we’ll be in that general area when it’s released, and it might be fun to shop for accessories at the same time. We’ve shopped at this store before, and know the parking is exceptionally easy, which is why I picked that one. We may be staying in New Braunfels, which is closer to San Antonio, but what the heck? Either way we’d have to get in the car and drive for an hour, so the direction we head in doesn’t make much difference.

Apparently I was not the only person a little bit excited about getting my name on the list of early adopters. Mashable said there were an estimated 51,000 iPads sold in the first two hours, and 90,000 on the first day of preorders! Not too shabby for a device the pundits kept wondering why anyone would want one. I know why I want one, of course. I’ve got a Kindle DX, and I have been very disappointed with it. While we do use it, most of the time I prefer to fire up Windows 7 in a VirtualBox window and use Kindle for PC to read my Amazon ebooks. When my iPad arrives, I’ll just use Kindle for iPhone on that instead, unless Amazon has a native iPad app ready by then. Color and a backlit screen make the reading experience so much better for me than eInk’s grainy, low-contrast screen that requires a strong reading light. I really don’t understand at all those people who say it’s harder to read an LED computer display than an eInk device or paper. They seem to get their data from the bad old days of CRTs with flickering, unshielded UV-radiant screens. Silly.

As an ebook reader, I certainly expect the iPad to be the best of the breed, but that’s not the only reason I want one. It will be a superb portfolio display, too. And using Reunion for iPhone combined with a collection of family photos, it will be the star of any family gathering. Oh, the possibilities just keep growing….

One of my primary objectives for having this device, especially the 3G version, is to supplement our very pricey VerizonWireless Mobile Broadband account. While that has been a real lifesaver on the occasions, like this past week, when we are in a place without acceptable internet connectivity, only 5 gigabytes of throughput for a month just isn’t enough, not by a long shot. Figure that only two Netflix streaming video movies would use the whole month’s allowance and you’ll understand. We simply use the internet too intensively to be happy with that kind of parsimony. AT&T’s iPad unlimited data plan, which we can turn off when we’re happy with local WiFi, will be wonderful. Phil will be able to watch movies, I’ll be able to get all the video tutorials and podcasts I want, and all the rest, without paying Verizon twice their already excessive monthly fee for using 1/5th more bandwidth, like we have the past couple of months. After all, as many people around the world have said, internet access is a basic human right.

So, we expect to really, really, really enjoy this device when it finally arrives!

Now the wait. Naturally, I “need” the version with 3G, otherwise what’s the point of a mobile device? That won’t be available for around 90 days. But in the meantime, I am downloading the SDK with iPad emulator from the Apple Developer site, and who knows? Maybe I’ll even get around to developing something for it someday? In my copious spare time, of course.

I even tried pulling it up on my iPhone with the WiFi turned off, in case it was something that got into the router. Same symptoms. So I wrote back and the techs put a customer support rep on it. By this time, though, I had decided to start up one of the virtual machines I have on this computer, in this case WindowsXP running on Parallels. Being Windows, I keep an anti-virus program updated on that, even though it’s only a virtual machine, and being too cheap to actually pay for software to run on an Operating System I only boot up once in a blue moon, I use AVG Free. Good stuff, that. As soon as I tried to open the blog, up popped a window announcing that it had detected an infected file on the page.

I logged back into the webhost’s support page to close the ticket, and discovered their rep had also seen a javascript file that was the problem, but didn’t take the time to discover which of many I’d installed in that blog was the culprit. However, AVG Free had already told me the URI of the site that was doing bad things, and I was able to find the link with my blog theme editor. I deleted both lines of code that pointed to the offending site, restarted the blog, and there it was, as good as new.

I never thought I’d see the day when an application on Windows saved me from malware, instead of exposing me to it!

I haven’t been keeping up with what other users are seeing (on Twitter, of course) because I was doing school work like a good girl, but now I think it’s time to check it out. I have even followed @ATTNews, all to no avail. One article I read (but have since misplaced) said they got a message in iTunes saying activation could take as long as 48 hours, but I got no such message, probably because my account is already active. I’m sorely tempted to try switching the SIM cards, but might hold off a little longer.

In the meanwhile, I have been having fun playing with all the apps that don’t require the phone service. Since I have WiFi here, that’s just about everything except the actual phone. This puppy is fast! How fast, you ask? Have a look:

Connecting to iTunes and restoring from the backup I made from my old phone has gone well, but I’m still waiting for AT&T to activate the new phone. I haven’t seen any information about deactivating the old one yet, and it is still working, so I’m not sure what if anything I need to do to change over to the new one. Maybe that will be automatic, but I suspect I will need to switch sim cards between the two phones. I don’t want to mess with that without some instruction telling me to do it, though. If I don’t find some info on the Web about it, I may have to call customer service. Like, I really want to sit on hold for hours, with all the other half-million new iPhone owners also trying to activate their phones!

Although the new phone isn’t activated on AT&T yet, it is connected to my WiFi hotspot. All my apps are installed and updated over WiFi, so I assume next time I sync the old phone any purchased apps will be deleted from that one. I wonder how that will work. Perhaps I’ll have to rename the old phone to avoid confusing their libraries?

Ah, ha! I found the answer. Apple, bless their hearts, have a support page for people who are changing out an old iPhone for the new one. That answered my question. “In the US, iPhone 3G includes a SIM and your original iPhone’s SIM is not needed. Your original iPhone account information will be transferred to the SIM included with iPhone 3G when you purchased it. Keep your original iPhone SIM with your original iPhone.” Oh, and the compass works fine, thank you. So, I just need to wait for activation to happen when it happens. As usual, trying to activate a half-million phones in one day has the system a little bogged down, so I’ll just be patient.

Sparkle is a virtual worlds (VW) client for the iPhone that allows the user to login and communicate via instant messages with friends, and via proximity chat with avatars that are in the same location. Sorry, you probably need to try a VW like Second Life to understand what that’s about and why it is an exciting development. For now, please just accept that being able to connect to Second Life and interact live with others there even when you can’t log in normally is a big deal. For instance, I’ll be able to attend meetings from my iPhone and see what is being said in chat even if I don’t have my computer set up or if I’m in an internet café without my laptop.

Besides Second Life, Sparkle will connect to other grids as well, such as OSGrid or Second Life’s beta grid. Right now, those three are the only VWs available, but I’m sure others will be added as demand warrants. It’s possible to set up any number of accounts for various grids, limited only by the number of avatars you have. In fact, you can even sign up for a new account via Sparkle! Select the approprite service, fill in your account username and password, and there you go.

Choose the account you want to login with from the resulting list, click the “Go!” button, and your friends list appears on the next screen, with those online indicated with highlighted stars beside their names, while offline avatars are shown with dimmed stars. To send an IM to one, you select the name, then click the “IM” button on the next screen. A window with the virtual keyboard appears, and you proceed to communicate.

It seems pretty simple, and it is easy to use, but the implications are really awesome. The only real gripe I have about it is the requirement to use WiFi, but there is probably no way around that. Second Life in particular probably needs more bandwidth than the plain old cellular signal can provide. As it is, people who have very long friends lists (like me) have reported long waits to log in. Genkii’s tech support is working on it, and in fact I’ve had better luck logging in with my main account lately, after the first few attempts when it took several long minutes.

Sparkle IM gets a high rating from me. I’ve been waiting for someone to publish an iPhone app for connecting to Second Life, and this is a good one that works. Thanks, Genkii!

One of the things that frustrated me most about the 360MB/48 hours limitations imposed by NomadISP at Beaudry RV was that I couldn’t download software and updates, much less audio books or podcasts or Adobe Acrobat to work on some ebook projects, I had to order it on CD-ROM instead of getting it immediately via download.

I wanted to start figuring out how to use the new features in version 9, so it was frustrating to have to wait for phyical delivery. Besides, we weren’t even 100% certain we would stay at this resort long enough for it to arrive! I went ahead and ordered it anyway, but after getting here and discovering the WiFi is decent, and that they won’t throttle our bandwidth (or so they advertise), I decided to get the 30-day trial. Well, that is only available for Windows™, and while I do have Parallels Desktop for Mac OS, and it is on the same computer, to the ISP it looks like a second machine, with its own IP and MAC addresses. I was able to log in long enough to update my copy of WinXP Pro to SP2, thank goodness, but when I tried to download the Acrobat 9 trial version, I got an error message saying my username and password weren’t accepted. So, I sent a query to Tengo’s support, explaining my situation, and will wait to see what they say. Meanwhile, though, because Parallels allows me to access a “shared” folder from Windows, I downloaded the installer from the Mac side, and copied it over to the Windows desktop. That worked!

I will not be happy (nor will I do it) if I have to buy yet another “card” to use the local WiFi on each virtual machine. That could really run into money, at $29.95/month per VM! If I absolutely must use the ‘net from a VM, I’ll switch over to our Verizon AirCard, but it is limited, too, and I don’t want to overdo it in case we need that bandwidth later on.

If President Obama really wanted to stimulate American productivity and commerce, he’d consider upgrading the country’s internet infrastructure, perhaps using WiMax, to make sure everyone, everywhere can get online to do what they need to do. Think of all the thousands of ebook and independent music publishers out there who could supplement their faltering personal economies by selling their wares online, if only they could!

Update on Local WISP

4 March 2009 — After I posted this blog, I got a reply from TengoInternet. Apparently I do not have to buy another account to use with my virtual machines. Sometimes switching between them lags slightly, but the same account does work on both MacOS and WinXP (and presumably Linux) on the same hardware. So my rant was unnecessary, but it’s possible that just after informing tech support of what I was doing they flagged my account to allow the strange-looking behavior. I got a reply to my email to tech support, and although they didn’t say so explicitly, I haven’t had any problems with it since then.

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]]> http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/03/01/virtual-machine-real/feed/ 2 http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/12/the-rest-of-the-story/ http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/12/the-rest-of-the-story/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:31:27 +0000 Katherine W. Prawl http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/?p=160 When I left off in my last posting, I was going to chase down the last vestiges of malware still apparently lurking on Phil’s MacBook Pro from the DNS Changer trojan horse. Even though I’d eliminated the installer, what it installed was still creating some kind of traffic back to a couple of IP addresses belonging to an ISP in the Ukraine. I could tell this was going on by observing the “network monitor” that is part of the Little Snitch spyware detector. Watching mDNSResponder light up more than once a second with calls to one of two IPs made it very obvious why our bandwidth usage was totally out of sight. As for what it was transmitting, I shudder to think…. Best case (which is not good) would be that its controllers were using Phil’s machine as part of a spam network. Worst case is that they were stealing data from his computer. Needless to say, we will keep a close eye on our various financial reports for any suspicious activity, but so far nothing like that has shown up, thank goodness.

mDNSResponder, by the way, is a software server that enables Apple’s Bonjour network, among other things. It is part of the MacOS. However, I didn’t know that when I started trying to track down all the rogue processes. As I mentioned previously, I blocked mDNSResponder using a Little Snitch “rule”, but I wanted to eliminate what was launching it. To this end, I started up the MacOS utiliy, Activity Monitor, which in addition to showing all the processes running on the computer, allow the administrator to shut them down selectively.

Little Snitch network monitor

Well, to make a long story short, apparently I got carried away. The concept was sound, but since I didn’t take the time to learn enough to really know what I was doing (always a dangerous thing for someone poking around the underbelly of the OS), I must have killed too many instances of the process, or the wrong ones, or something. Every time I tried to open a web page in FireFox, I had to click away a warning dialog, which got very old, very quickly. But the Little Sntich network monitor still showed traffic trying to go out to the Ukraine, even after restarting the computer and reinstalling FireFox!

So, I made an appointment with the “genius bar” at the local Apple Store. The very helpful techs there hadn’t seen this particular problem before, but they were able to isolate whatever it was that was making that call, and shut it down. As it happened, it was a QuickTime™ process, which is not surprising given that Phil probably acquired the trojan by trying to view a video someone had sent him. To help avoid such problems in the future, the “genius” suggested installing a bit of freeware, Perian, a QuickTime component that opens just about any video codec on the Mac without having to go out and find a tool or possibly accept dangerous suggestions from potential malware. Not only that, but “genius bar” help is even free!

So, we’re back to responsible, malware-free telecommunications. Next month, when we try using our Verizon wireless internet gear without the added stress of unwanted transmissions, we’ll reevaluate our experience with that system.

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