Becoming Browser-Centric

With the direction that personal computing is going these days, with cloud based storage and internet based everything, I've really been making an effort to become more browser-centric and do more things on line.  I use everything Google (docs, maps, calendars, gmail, voice, and so on), I use Dropbox, I use SkyDrive, I use all sorts of on-line things.  It's the way the world is going I feel quite sure.

But I came by the nickname "Old School" honestly, and it's a rougher transition for me that I think it should be.  I recently made a concentrated effort to do everything I do from a browser.   I've even tried a number of different browsers, but the transition is just, one I can't quite make yet, and I think that's for one of a couple of reasons.

The first is my paranoia.  Not that all my information is going to be stolen or anything like that.  But I'm afraid that one of these days, Google is going to say "ok folks, we've offered these services for free long enough, now we're going to charge $9.95 a month for them" and I'm going to get stuck with another monthly subscription fee that I don't want or need.  I have no real basis for that paranoia by the way, I'm just always suspicious of a free lunch.

I think the second reason is probably the more likely though, and that is, I'm just so enraptured by my MacBook.

As I was trying to get contacts and calendars and things like that I was reminded over and over again of all the reasons I like my Mac so much.  The user interface and the integrated apps are just so nice, and they work so well.

I still think the world is going the direction of the cloud, and I think that's probably a good direction for it to go in, but for the time being, I'm a pretty happy Mac fanatic.

POP vs. IMAP

Recently at work, the topic of POP vs. IMAP has come up, and I've got opinion on the subject, I'm encouraging people to use IMAP these days for a number of reasons, but I'm curious about the opinions of others, particularly my more "systems" oriented friends, (don't make me point you out, you know who you are...) :-)

Facebook

Here is another blog post that's long over due. I've been wanting to write for some time about the new facebook layout that's caused such lively discussion recently. I wanted to wait until I'd had the chance to check it over very extensively before I commented, and after having several weeks now, I've come to the conclusion that the only thing I really don't care for is the fact that it separates "Top Stories" from "Recent Events". I really can't figure out the criteria on which it bases it's decisions, and I'd really rather just see a list of "news posts" or whatever they'd like to call it, in chronological order. There may be a setting in there somewhere... But that's my only beef. I kind of like the ticker where it shows you real time who's commenting on what. More than a couple of times I've jumped into conversations I wouldn't have been part of if I didn't see them scrolling across that screen. I'm not as bothered with the privacy concerns that are shared (often legitimately) by some people. Yes, I'm aware of them, yes, they bother me, but I don't do anything on line that I'd be embarrassed if someone found out, that's all. If there are things in my life (and there are) that I don't want people to know about it, I promise, you're not going to see it in one of my on line posts...

Updates

I've had a couple of little projects going on here recently, that are tech related but not especially note worthy. I moved computers around in my home so I have a "lab" area, and an almost normal looking living room!

Besides that, I came across an old salvage rig late last week. It's an iBook G4, 800 mhz PPC processor with 800.change or RAM. It's original OS was 10.3.9.

I told a friend I'd help him out, the drive needed to be wiped, but I didn't have original CDs and wasn't able to locate one that I could download an ISO for, so, for some strange reason, I turned to Ubuntu. Turns out, they have a PPC release of 10.10! So I downloaded it, burned it onto a DVD (it's over 800 mb) and booted the old G4.

I was greeted with "old school" installation screens, and it guided me through the setup as easily as it always has.

I hope for a few more days (through the weekend) to have to play with this before I return it.

Considerations

For the past few days I've been looking into (with rising curiosity I might add) the possibility of going "sans cell" and living digitally with only WiFi connectivity. In my case, the mobile device would be my 64 gig iPod Touch. I'm considering a combination of TextPlus, Skype, and a product I'm staring to like more and more called Line2. I've been reading up on this, and wonder if it's not worth giving serious consideration to? There would be some cost involved in order to have a phone number that people could dial from a traditional phone, and I'm gathering that begins around $10 a month depending on options.

There are advantages to each of the apps I've started using. TextPlus for example is very easy to setup and use, although I still wish "convos" could be displayed with text only and not the avatars, but that's not unique to TextPlus. Skype offers free Skype to Skype calls, so that's worth having around for those half a dozen friends who use Skype, but I've been playing a little more this evening with Line2, which is kind of a whole package. It texts, and phones, and everything else, but finding out about pricing was difficult. Each time I tried to find the price of a particular feature, I was taken through a web store and had to go through and place an order to find out the price for example of a "premium number". That's kind of interesting. I still didn't find out the prices of many of the features because it wanted me to commit to purchasing them first, which I wasn't willing to do. Still, Line2 seems at least in the 7 day trial version) to have it all together in one package. I know I'd be interested in putting Skype and TextPlus on the "fourth screen" (The attic for unused apps) for a little while and focusing on a single platform. That might be nice...

Mobility Sans Cell

I'm thinking of doing a little experiment, and considering the possibility of a mobile life, sans cell phone, using only a device like my iPod Touch, using services like Skype, and TextPlus, and Line2.

I wonder if anyone I know has used those on an iPod, and if anybody has any other thoughts. An article over at lifehacker spawned the idea.

http://lifehacker.com/#!378511/turn-your-ipod-touch-into-an-iphone

Tweeting

So I've started tweeting again. The first time I tried Twitter a year or two back, I was so astonished by the amount of smut and unsolicited followers that I only lasted about a week. But recently there have been a couple of occasions where there were things I wish I'd been able to follow on Twitter (facebook, and OpenDNS) and wasn't able to, so I thought I'd try it out again.

This time, I restricted who can follow. I don't really have much of anything worthwhile to say, but if you happen to read this post and you'd like to follow me for some reason, I'll be happy to allow it.

I guess in some ways, I think of it like TV. There are some good reasons to have TV, and there's a lot of news and information you can get out of it, but there's a lot of stuff that not worth while too. I guess it takes a little discernment is all.