Internet on the Road

Usually I don’t get into speculating about what Apple might be adding to its latest products or hardware, but there has been a feature that I’ve been thinking would be a great addition.

I tend to work from a number of locations and, most of the time, there is wireless available at all the locations. However, I recently ran into a situation last week where the wireless access at my favorite coffee shop was down. This caused a bit of a problem since we had decided to record a podcast episode there and were planning on streaming the show. Luckily, I had remembered an aircard that I had access to and we were able to do the show without too much technical trouble.

This all got me thinking about wireless access through cell phone signals. Right now, I’m led to believe that at some point before the apocalypse AT&T will be enabling tethering on my iPhone. At that point, I will be able to connect my iPhone to my laptop and use it for my connection. While this will all be nice and fun, I’ve been wondering why we need to have the extra hardware just to get an Internet connection. Currently, laptops come with built in wireless and bluetooth, both of which used to be add-on products to computers.

So, why not build in some hardware that allows me to access the Internet using a cell signal straight from my computer? I think that this would be a great selling point for the machine.

Of course, I think that it goes deeper than just hardware: we need to have cell providers who offer more reasonable prices for Internet connections. Currently, the price per megabyte of sending data over a cell signal is exorbitantly expensive. What I would like to see would be cell providers who allow for this connection feature to be tacked on to an existing phone line that will allow a user to only pay $20 or $30 max for an unlimited connection. At the very least, the price should not be any higher than the price of a Cable or DSL connection to the house.

So, what do you think will be the future of wireless Internet access in the US? Would you find this a useful feature on your laptop? Let me know in the comments!

Facebook Fasting

Here is a meditation that I will be giving on our next show of In Between Sundays. It started as a blog post but it ended up sounding great for a broadcast:

Recently, I wrote a few blog posts about my intention to limit my exposure to social media. I wondered, out loud and on Facebook, what would happen if I cut my friends list to 100 and really spent the time socializing with those 100 people online.

I haven’t taken any action to limit my friends on Facebook. In fact, what I thought would be a fairly outspoken response was, in fact, more of a murmur among about five friends online. I have, however, realized that at the time, I was pretty much on overload with my use of Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Ping.fm and a whole host of other services.

In fact, I think that the proliferation of services is making social websites into a commodity. It’s almost a daunting task to try to find a Twitter client these days or a decent facebook application. What was once really fun and exclusive has turned into a commodity. Unfortunately, when things like this happen, people start getting lost in the noise, much like I did. There is so much information rushing at us that it’s really hard for us to process one site, let alone a number of them. (more…)

Little Red Riding Hood

I was alerted to this video today by Jeff Geerling, who runs the LOLSaints website. The video below is a visual re-interpretation of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. It’s a bit geeky, of course, but that’s why I like it.

What I’m interested in is how the visuals were produced. They are high-quality animated vectors and they look really great.

Our Digital World

I was checking out some sites this evening when I came across the Youtube video below. It’s a video about all the technological advances that are happening in our world and then poses the question “What does it all mean?”

For me, it all means that we can take a step back and rejoice that, as humans, we were able to create such powerful and amazing machines. In fact, I think it’s a miracle and it’s something that should remind us to take the time to thank God for the gifts that He has given us. As this Sunday comes to a close, I challenge you to ask yourself, “What have I thanked God for this past week?” and then ask what you look forward to thanking God for this week.

Siftables at TED

Just watched this video at the TED website. It’s a talk by David Merrill, a grad student at MIT, who is designing a new interface, called siftables. It’s much easier to say play the video than it is to explain it. Take a look below!

Digital TV Transition

Don’t forget that the digital transition will be happening soon. This clip below still cracks me up!