Google Announces Chrome OS

Google held a rather small event today to announce its new Chrome OS.  The OS isn’t even in beta yet, but they wanted to give developers and members of the open source community a very early chance to check it out.  Rather than type out a really long post about it, I’m just going to give a bulleted list of all the important information.  Much courtesy to Engadget for initially summing up the live event.  I will say, however, that the concept is interesting, if nothing else.  I’m still very wary of our society’s increasing reliance on the cloud.  GMAIL goes down often, for example.  Basing an entire OS off the cloud and storing absolutely nothing locally, quite frankly, scares the crap out of me.  Google said that the limited cloud downtime should equal or be far less in time than that of the average computer downtime due to viruses or other headaches.  Never, ever, have I been unable to access my files on my Mac because it was “down.”  I just wanted to mention that. Click through to get the bulleted list summarizing most of the announcement.

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Verizon’s Ad Campaign Against AT&T

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Verizon’s newly launched ad campaign against AT&T Wireless that targets the iPhone.  Verizon’s marketing team has a smart stategy here – they know that the iPhone is great, so they attack its one and only major weak point, the network.  AT&T’s 3G network, plainly put, is atrocious.  They’ve been making some substantial improvements, and I commend them for that, but their efforts have simply not been enough.  Most of the clamour over the ads come from pundits from both sides claiming they’re misleading, not true, put AT&T in a bad light, etc.  The ads have garnished so much attention, in fact, that AT&T, to no benefit of itself, has decided to sue Verizon over the ads.

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TRETC 2009

TRETC (Three Rivers Educational Technology Conference) 2009 was a huge success and most definitely a lot of fun.  Last year, I had the privilege of having the “Presenter” status on my tag.  I gave a presentation on creating a 21st century student technology leadership team in schools. (See this post).  This year, I had the “Exhibitor” status.
I got to demo two Web 2.0 products, Quizlet and Webnotes, in the Digital Playground.  The Digital Playground was new for this year, and I have to say, it was interesting idea.  Unfortunately, it was given a bad location and many folks didn’t really know what they were supposed to “do” there.  To many, it looked like just some more vendor tables.  That was the problem with it.  If the technology council can integrate some more students next year to show off some of their favorite tools, sort of like I did today, I think the Playground will be much more successful.

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Social Media’s Positive Business Impact

The final research paper for my COSK1221 (Argument and Research) class at Robert Morris University is worth 30% of my final grade.  I chose to argue that businesses that choose to accept and participate in this new form of interaction, social media has a positive impact in the areas of customer communication and connection, customer support, and monetization of brand evangelists.

I’d like to thank all of the companies that spoke with me, including Webnotes, Zeo, Comcast, Verizon, SurpassHosting, Discover, The PNC Financial Services Group, and Robert Morris Univeristy.  You can find all of the interviews here.  The Verizon and Zeo interviews have the most substance – they were hour long phone interviews.

You can download the final paper here.

Please leave a comment on this post letting me know your thoughts!  If you’d like permission to print the paper or copy anything out of it, please contact me using the contact page.

Jonathan Ive’s Segment In Objectified

It looks as though Gary Hustwit (the creator of the film Helvetica) has created yet another fantastic film.  The movie Objectified is all about industrial design in today’s modern culture.  I’ve pre-ordered the blu-ray version.  In the film, there’s a rare look inside Apple’s design studios and an even rarer interview with Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive.  Check out his segment:

Sorry iPhone, I Need Something New (Maybe You?)

I remember back in 2007 when iPhone was first launched.  I bought one the day after launch.  It was the “must-have” device that was unfortunately out of a lot of people’s price range.  This made it a luxury item.  For a few months, if you had an iPhone, you were the man.  Everyone wanted to see it, and everyone wanted to play with it.  ”Oooh, ahhh” they’d say as they swiped through photos.  Or “Whoa” as they felt the benefits of a multi-touch capacitive touch screen display.  Or “holy shi-” as they felt the industrial design of the phone.  An aluminium-like back, smooth curves, etc.  Now, it’s “Oh, you have an iPhone?  Me too!  Cool!  What’s your favorite app?” (more…)

Magic Mouse – A Little Too Low Profile?

Every day this past week on my way home from RMU, I made a call to the Apple Store.  ”Did you get any Magic Mice in yet?”  I was always getting the same response, “Nope, not yet.  Sorry sir!”  Well, on Friday, the Shadyside store finally got them in.  I went there on my way home and picked one up.  The packing was… interesting.  It reminded me of an iPod package, although it was slighty more “soap dish” shaped.  It was a pain in the butt to open, with tape everywhere, but once I got it opened I was immediately impressed with the industrial design of the Magic Mouse.  It was the sexiest mouse I’ve ever seen.  Such a low profile, the perfect blend of metal and plastic, etc.

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