Considering the iPad as a Kindle Replacement

January 31, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in iPhone Apps, Paper & Ink, Moving Images, Social Media

You've seen the new toy. You've seen the experts debate: Will the Apple iPad "save" newspapers, journalism, book publishing? Will it kill the Amazon Kindle? Is this the death of the laptop, and the PC as we know it? Has Apple just signaled the death of the ultraportable MacBook Air? Will it replace smartphones like the iPhone or Nexus One? Has Apple just pwned another media marketplace -- sorry Amazon, Google, Microsoft? Goodbye, netbooks? Farewell, computers? Blah, blah, blah. Nobody knows the future, so such pronouncements are justifiably viewed as so much hype. I'm not a tech or media critic, though I work for a newspaper (and yes, full disclosure, that paper does seem to have a working relationship with the iPad developers, but I had no role in that or the news coverage of the tablet).

Third-Party iPhone Apps I Actually Still Use

September 09, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in New York, iPhone Apps, Blogging, Moving Images, Social Media

More often than I care to recall, I have impulsively downloaded a fancy new iPhone application, only to have it languish on my phone. That was the inspiration for the first "list of iPhone apps I actually use" last year, after the iTunes store started selling third-party applications. Since then, the number of new applications has grown rapidly. Now there's a cottage industry of lists, blogs and podcasts devoted to reviewing applications.

A Nerd Planet, Gobsmacked by the Reticulum

January 07, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Moving Images, Paper & Ink

I'm happy to report that I finally finished the 900+ page "Anathem" by Neal Stephenson, just four months (!) after starting it. I have to admit that I took breaks to read a few other things. I previously posted about the difficult, otherworldly vocabulary that Stephenson made up for this book. (For example, the "Reticulum" is similar to what we call the Web or the Internet, though you have to figure that out based on the description of a narrator who is basically a cloistered monk who never uses technology. "Jeejahs" are smart phones or mobile devices of some sort. Videos are "speelies" recorded with "speelycaptors." Those are some of the neologisms that feel apt. Not all of them do.)

Jeff Jarvis Asks, What Would Google Do?

November 20, 2008 by Patrick LaForge in Paper & Ink, Social Media

I recently skimmed a galley proof of "What Would Google Do?" by Jeff Jarvis. The book, available from HarperCollins in January, is structured as a series of rules or aphorisms about how Google does business, with some anecdotes from Jarvis about things he has observed in his groundbreaking work as a blogger and media consultant.

Third-Party iPhone Apps I Actually Use

October 13, 2008 by Patrick LaForge in iPhone Apps

I am surprised by how well this list held up. The updated NYTimes application is a great improvement over the first version, which I had stopped using, because it was slow and crashed so frequently. I have also added the Amazon Kindle for iPhone application. I still use these apps with some frequency