Cage Match: Apple iPad versus Samsung Galaxy Tab

In this space we'll take a look at the breakdown between the world's first significant tablet PC competition. In the first corner we'll start with the iPad, since it came out first and currently rules the market sphere for tablet PC. In the second corner, we'll take a look at what the Samsung Galaxy Tab brings to the table.

LLLLLet's get ready to rumble!

Apple iPad Strengths and Specs

• Large 9.7” screen diagonal
  
• 40,000+ apps in a moderated app marketplace
  
• 10+ hrs battery life
  
• seventh-month headstart on market share and customer feedback
  
• cheapest model is $100 cheaper
  
• rumored to multitask as of iOS 4.2 releasing apprx. 11/16/10
  
• bigger screen makes viable eBook reader

Samsung Galaxy Tab Challenges and Turn-Offs

• Even Google despaired at the Tab using its Android—it was designed for a cell phone, not a tablet
  
• much less battery life
  
• no USB charging (ex. via laptop)
  
• smaller screen has less than half of the area than iPad

Samsung Galaxy Tab Strengths and Specs

• 7” screen diagonal viewed by some as refreshingly large compared to cell phone
  
• runs popular Google Android 2.2 interface
  
• cameras in front (video conference) and back (taking photos)
  
• 6+ hrs battery life
  
• like iPad did, Tab may spark renaissance of specific-to-device app development
  
• can see Flash web pages
  
• multitasks
  
• easier to hold in one hand
  
• Fits in more places, such as purses or jacket pockets

Apple iPad Challenges and Turn-Offs

• Although small and thin, does not pack as easily as the smaller Galaxy Tab
  
• significantly heavier than the Tab
  
• less mobile carrier options for 3G model
• no cameras... period

Conclusion
Choosing which competitor you favor will depend on your needs from the machine. For business purposes including video conferencing and ultra portability, you may like the Galaxy Tab. For personal purposes including a huge variety of fun and useful apps, the iPad may be for you.


Seeing the possibilities of the Samsung Galaxy Tab is somewhat of a changed attitude from my initial reaction, which you can read here: Dead on Arrival: Don't Need Tablet's Limited Size and Software for $600

Brief Illustrated History of Google

Based on a True Story

(Click on a picture to view larger version)

Larry Page and Sergey Brin conceive the idea.

They hire Craig Silverstein and name the
company after the number 10 to the power of 100.

Starting with a gift of $100k from the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, they try to
sell the company for as little as $750k. They are turned down, but they subsequently
receive about $25 million from other companies to keep going.

Google expands rapidly by buying lots of other good ideas, including a
3D Earth software and internet upstart-turned-sensation YouTube.

Google begins hopscotching around several different
industries and services until it just about offers everything.

Justin Bieber vs. Level 19 Fire Troll

Now you can choose on Google's free in-flight WiFi

Need to play World of Warcraft in the sky between JFK and LAX? Or review the YouTube library of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga music videos before the peanut cart arrives on the aisle? Let the fight between two of your favorite WiFi options begin--maybe even before the seatbelt sign turns off!

For most of the year, you can pay just $11 for 24-hour access to Google's WiFi internet at certain airports and on certain planes. However, recent news reports let us know that Google is once again offering free WiFi at certain airports and on certain planes during the holiday season.

Free?!?!

Wait a second, you're saying. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and certainly there's no such thing as free WiFi.

How does a big ticket company like Google get its millions if it spends its days offering free, high-quality, and useful items? I feel like Microsoft charges for nearly every little thing it can offer, so to me they're not on board here. What's the business strategy in offering free stuff?

To me it seems like Google has long held a mantra of offering choices and, when possible, free choices. Their original search engine was famously simple to look at, not riddled with flashy banners and ads, and yet today Google is considered today to be a powerhouse in advertising.

Google acquired YouTube and kept the free service free: because free is a great word for building an audience. Today Google offers free WiFi all year round for a number of nearby Californian residents. From Google we get a free internet browser, a free desktop gadget utility, free lightweight yet powerfully adaptable email, and even an entire operating system (although this last one is admittedly not free; it does come preloaded on gadgets to be announced in the future).

The company's unofficial slogan at its inception was, “Don't be evil.” My thought is that the company seems to have spent its history making useful products that are either free (Google Earth is free, but its former competition wasn't), pleasant in their efficient utility (Chrome, Google search engine), or just a straight up challenge to the existing market competition (Buzz, Android).

To see evidence that Google is growing and succeeding, just take a look at the history of their investments, including stocks and acquisitions. I don't think that just because a company is enormous means that they are evil. So far Google has been pretty good to me.

Next time:

A Brief History of Google: An Illustrated Companion

Ug Goes Out: Self Publishing

Download the first half of the book here!

With this link you can view the first half of the book on Google Docs or even download it directly from there for your eBook reader.

Ug Goes Out is a children's book I published earlier this year. Here's the description on the back of the book: “When a caveman quits his job at the coffee shop, he takes a break to discover who he truly is.”

Nearly a year ago I leapt into the foray of self publishing, hoping against hope to draft a Newberry Award winning children's book on the first try.

Previously, for a college course, I had already mapped out a certain narrative about a caveman living trying to navigate life in a suburban neighborhood, a life in which he experiences everything from pet ownership to courtship and a career switch.

I spent the next several months drawing the pictures, whipped it up into a PDF, and uploaded it onto Lulu.com. This shouldn't sound so simple: I was able to complete this book mostly by using weekends and precious vacation days from work. It felt like a monumental task.

I marketed my book through word of mouth, using a blog, Facebook, and by passing out pretty fine-looking bookmarks (if I do say so myself) with my design of the book cover and where one could get a copy if one so chose.

Ordering about a few test copies, listing my book on Amazon and eBay, and ordering the bookmarks to pass out at work took a reasonable step of faith on my wallet's part ($138.98). Fortunately, my wallet's blind faith was satisfied for a net proft of $4.17, enough for a small sip of coffee at your local multinational coffee chain. After reading the dangers of self publishing, I considered this no small feat and patted myself on the back for a job well done.

When the process was completed, I wanted to do it again.

I had seen all kinds of potential for Ug and the world from whence he came, including the characters I've made but haven't used yet. A ninja learning patience. A pirate learning communication skills. A Western outlaw learning temperance. A knight learning bravery.

My work with students who have special needs showed me that Ug could be a great metaphor for their cause: a unique individual puts his talents into a real-world skill set while at the same time learning to connect with, for the first time, another human being.

Although Ug doesn't have a particular disability, I began thinking about how I could extend the metaphor while at the same time making it more particular. Could the pirate have Tourette's syndrome? Could the ninja have ADD? YES! A heart-warming series of children's books in which lovable mythical characters live in a suburban world and have to deal with issues that make them different and special—some of the same issues that many kids today have to deal with.

Raise your hand if this is a good idea. All I need now is to take a paid year sabbatical to work on these books.

If you would like to download the first half of Ug Goes Out in PDF to read on your eBook device, please follow this link.

If you would like to download the entire PDF for $3.99, please follow this link.

If you would like a paperback version of the book for $19.99, please follow this link.

If you would like a SIGNED paperback version of the book: let me know with an email to glowsandbeeps@gmail.com, and we can work it out.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Hamlet's Blackberry

Did you know Hamlet had a Blackberry?


The Bard's greatest non-actor tackled an issue that confronts our society today: connectedness or nonconnectedness. Whereas he wrestled with whether to follow up on his ghost-father's plea for vengeance (connectedness) or go ahead and wash his hands of all that rotten mess in Denmark (nonconnectedness), author William Powers addresses our society's ability to use our new powers of constant digital connection to create real connections between people--or does this constant connection drive us further away?


You can read/listen to Powers' interview on NPR, where he talks about taking each weekend off from digital connectedness. A sort of "Internet Sabbath," the article says.

In his 2007 essay,  "Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal," Powers explains that when Hamlet is overloaded with new and shocking information, he does the same thing we do in that situation: pulls out his smart phone and processes. For all we know, he may have been adding the ghost as a contact.



In fact, Powers describes a little tablet popularly carried around by people of the 16th century, and later by the likes of even Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. Hamlet pulls out his tablet, which he calls a "table," and begins making notes. He can erase the notes with a sponge at any time to make room for new notes, which he says he will do upon hearing the ghost's chilling news.


Hamlet's tablet, like the modern Blackberry, came before the iPhone.

HDTV on a Teacher's Budget (part 3)

On part 1 of this series we talked about screen size and contrast ratio and how important or not important they should be to the HDTV customer on a teacher's budget.

On part 2 of this series we discussed what those numbers and letters mean in 480p and 720i.

Now we wrap it up with how to get the most out of your HDTV... high-def media and great SOUND.

Your High-Def TV Wants High-Def Media

Right off the bat let me just say that my wife and I mostly just wanted a bigger screen after spending a year with our laptops. We knew that ever since HDTVs made their hostile takeover of the television market, we could virtually do no wrong at achieving just a bigger screen. With that in mind, we do want a nice picture to look at, but we don't care if we have trouble counting the sweat glands in our favorite quarterback's flushed cheeks after a near sack and QB sneak for the touchdown conversion in overtime.

For many people the answer to getting high-def media is easy: (1) cable TV often comes with an assortment of HD channels, and (2) if you don't have Blu-Ray, you can still get a decent quality out of a decent DVD player that has component cables. (“Component” video cables are red, green, and blue, and are only responsible for carrying video information. They do not carry any sound information. This makes their quality better than their counterpart, “composite” video, which is just the dinky little yellow one that comes out of your Super Nintendo.)

Ready for a money-saving solution when your goals are a little lower? At home we don't have cable TV, and we don't feel like upgrading to a better DVD player. The answer to how we get our HD TV: our computers. Plugging in a VGA cable (the same one that goes to your desktop computer monitor) directly from my laptop to my HDTV achieves a video quality of about 480p, which is high def enough for sitting 8ft. away from my TV. My laptop screen displayed on my TV looks better than it did on my laptop! Hallelujah! DVDs look amazing, and any internet content is only limited by our internet connection.

We watch our favorite movies and shows instantly from Hulu and Netflix, so we have more media content than we can handle.

Worry Bout It Meter: Flat Tire (pull over and fix it, but you won't die). Regular, non-HD cable programs look far worse on an HDTV than they do on the boob tube. I will say that non-HD hardware, such as the Nintendo Gamecube, looks fine on my TV. On the other hand, my cheap DVD player makes everything look red and a little blurry. On the third hand, my laptop produces a great picture on the TV with just a regular old VGA monitor cable.

It Sounds So Easy

Here's a trick many people don't realize. After both of us spending years as film majors in college (including analyzing movies and creating them from scratch!), my brother and I both agree on this one truth: good sound quality is often more important than video quality. If you can get a half-decent set of speakers to turn up the volume and make you believe that your favorite drama is happening, your brain will jump through all kinds of hoops to make you believe that the tiny, grainy video you're watching on YouTube is both convincing and satisfying. The same is true for your relationship with your TV.

Most of our media plugs into our TV directly from our laptop, so getting the sound is easy: speakers designed for computer are plugged directly into my laptop. There are two speakers spaced evenly around the living room and a subwoofer that kicks out the bass “floor” of the sound field.

Worry Bout It Meter: Def-Con 1 (if you're not worried about this, you could foul up the whole operation). In my opinion, the speakers built in to a TV are never good enough. Turning up the volume produces a sound that seems flat and metallic, and it gets worse when it's loud. The best way to get decent sound cheaply is to buy a set of computer speakers (a good indicator of quality is if it has a subwoofer for bass and requires its own power supply). If you're not going to plug this into your laptop to simply blast your laptop's sounds (i.e. if you're streaming off of Netflix, like me), you should investigate what sound system/speaker setups you can get that receive sound directly from your device (ex. Cable box, blu-ray player).

Conclusion

My advice: even if you're going to order online, visit a store to see if your favorite size and model produces the picture quality that you're after.

What new technology don't you need?

You should fill out the survey below, and we can figure out if there's any where technology doesn't really need to take us.