TECHNOLOGY TOOLS TRADE of the - Strategic Finance · TECHNOLOGY 58 STRATEGIC FINANCEI September...
Transcript of TECHNOLOGY TOOLS TRADE of the - Strategic Finance · TECHNOLOGY 58 STRATEGIC FINANCEI September...
Wacom BambooPen and TouchTabletThe first computer mouse was
prototyped in 1963—almost
half a century ago. Using but-
tons, switches, and wheels, it
places a layer of technology
between you and your work.
But now smart phones, e-book
readers, and the new tablets are
moving us all back to a more
natural set of gestures like
pointing, touch and moving,
and tapping. The Wacom Bam-
boo Pen and Touch tablets add
one more dimension to the
gestures—handwriting and
drawing. The pen is battery-free,
cordless, and pressure sensitive,
so handwriting has pen strokes
like those made by a fountain
pen and brush strokes like bris-
tles. At the other end of the pen
is a digital eraser that works
exactly like its synthetic rubber
counterpart. The working sur-
face of the tablet is about 3 1/2
x 6 inches, much larger than the
touchpad on notebooks, and it’s
a comfortable area in which to
make drawings or edit or anno-
tate copy. There are four pro-
grammable buttons that you
can use for click selecting or
shutting functions on or off. The
tablet is multitouch, which
means you can use several
inputs (fingers) to control
scrolling and gestures, such as
pinching to zoom in or out and
twisting to adjust the angle of
images or objects on the screen.
Nicely finished and extremely
thin and light, the Bamboo
touch tablet takes up about the
same space as a mousepad on
your desk. www.wacom.com
GelaSkinsGelaSkins of Toronto has a wide
selection of beautifully executed
prints and photos for customiz-
ing all your portable computer
gear from laptop to smart
phone. Printed on 3M adhesive
sheets, the images range from
classic art to National Geo-
graphic photography to distinc-
tive illustrations—more than
100 artists are in the gallery.
And you can customize your
own covers with company logos,
product images, shots of the
headquarters, and even quotes
from the latest testimonials.
Why have your sales force pro-
mote Dell or Sony every time
they lift the lid of their laptop to
begin a presentation? Creation
of your own covers involves a
simple three-step process, and
the price is the same as for the
images from the GelaSkin cata-
log. The 3M skins provide a
durable, anti-scratch, anti-UV
covering for your devices. If you
have had a difficult time apply-
ing other covers or materials like
screen protectors, what GelaSk-
ins says about their covers isn’t
an exaggeration. They really are
easy-on and easy-off so that if
your first try is a little crooked, it
will lift off, and you can set it
again. Once on, the edges stay
down, even with repeated lifts
in and out of laptop cases or
phone holders. Sizes of the cov-
ers are customized for different
makes and models.
www.gelaskins.com
WaterField iPadSleevesWaterField Designs of San
Francisco has produced a number
of new bags designed specifically
for the Apple iPad ranging from
simple slip cases—one water-
proof, the other suede—to the
more protective Ultimate iPad
Sleeve Protection. These are cus-
tom fitted for the tablet and are
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cushioned with high-grade neo-
prene inside and an outer shell
of ballistic nylon. There are two
shapes—horizontal and
vertical—so you can use the case
as a stand-alone or slip it into
another gear bag or saddle bag.
Both are TSA “checkpoint friend-
ly,” so there’s no need to take
your iPad out of its cover when
going through airport security.
With the impact-resistant, screen-
protecting insert and its scratch-
free, screen-cleaning Ultrasuede®
lining, these are all you need to
carry around your iPad without
adding a lot of bulk. If you have
an Apple cover for your iPad, the
black siliconized folder many buy
with the unit, the Exo Ultimate
sleeve case has the extra room to
accommodate it.
www.sfbags.com
USB BlockUSB Block from NewSoftwares.net
was formerly known as Device
Block because it prevents copy-
ing of data from your computer
to all USB drives, CDs, DVDs,
floppy discs, and other remov-
able storage devices that aren’t
your own. If an unauthorized
storage device tries to access
your data, USB Block prompts
for a password and locks out
the intruder if the correct pass-
word isn’t given. It also will pre-
vent the importing of viruses or
other malware onto your com-
puter by devices that lack the
proper authorization. USB Block
records what devices tried to
gain access, by whom and
when, and it keeps a record of
illegal program deletion
attempts, unauthorized uninstall
attempts, as well as entry of
incorrect passwords. It works on
all 32-bit and 64-bit versions of
Windows 7, Vista, Windows
2008 Server, Windows XP, 2000,
and Windows 2003 Server.
www.newsoftwares.net
More than the sum of its parts, Apple’s iPad defies the
usual expectation that things technological are defined by
what they do. A toaster, because it’s just that (what it
does), is different from, say, a television. Television can
and has changed the course of wars (Vietnam), even the
direction taken by cultures, because it’s one of those rare
transformative technologies. The computer tablet looks
like it might also influence us as television has.
The Apple version of this type of device, the iPad,
already has displayed a kind of wide inertial swing that’s
pushing the Wintel galaxy even further from the center of
our computing universe.
Since its debut on April 15, 2010, Apple sold three
million iPads in the first 80 days—about 37,500 per day.
Why the deluge? Well, a simple review of the specs and fea-
tures won’t answer the question. You have to pick up one
these things and spend some time with it before it dawns
on you that it isn’t just a computer—it’s something else.
NO WIRES
The first thing you notice is that there are no wires, no
stylus, no card slots, and only one barely visible button
on the front that takes you back to the home page—a
scenic view through a window decorated with icons that
look like beveled Murano glass beads.
Apple designer Jonathan Ive told Time magazine, “In
many ways, it’s the things that are not there that we are
the most proud of. For us, it is all about refining and
refining until it seems like there’s nothing between the
user and the content they are interacting with.” The end
result is that “I don’t have to change myself to fit the
product—it fits me.”
There’s no file system, so there isn’t the usual obliga-
tion for every user to become his or her own file clerk,
sorting, importing, and searching for that (expletive) file
Converting theLuddites—Apple’s iPad
By Michael Castelluccio, Editor
continued on next page
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you’re sure is on the hard drive, some-
where. You can search the entire iPad for
words or content just by pushing the
home page button when you’re on the
home page—if you want to. And you can
import files through e-mail or the iTunes
connection. But most of the clerical
aggravation is gone. You’re on the Inter-
net and see a picture you like—press and
hold your finger on it and a menu will
pop up so you can save a copy in the
photo app that sits on the table at the
bottom of your home page. Highlight
some text with a sweep of your finger, and tap to copy and
paste elsewhere. But if you’d like to rummage for a while
through multitiered stacks of folders with an “explore” func-
tion, forget it.
With the iPad, it’s easy to forget how powerful the com-
puting is beneath your fingers. The device is not only
incredibly fast, but it can handle processing-intensive tasks
such as speech recognition. The free Dragon Dictate app
from Nuance works beautifully with no more than the
microphone at the top of the device and a red Record but-
ton in the middle of the page.
THE ONE AND THE MANY
There’s a kind of digital attention deficit disorder that nor-
mal computing and browsing encourage. Open 10 files and
applications on your desktop, or multiple tabs for many
sites when you’re browsing, and you can’t help but fracture
whatever sustained focus you might have had if there were
only one app or one site contending for your attention.
Some think computers and the ’Net are conditioning whole
generations of nimble but shallow thinkers.
With the iPad, on the other hand, you can only open and
run one app at a time. If you want to read—read. Want to
listen to music so that it’s more than just wallpaper—open
Pandora or an MP3 app. But if you want to try to process
multiple stimuli and streams, better go open your laptop or
grab the remote from the channel surfer on the couch and
open some channel-in-channel sporting events.
Some see this inability to multitask as a weakness that
should be corrected in the next version. But consider how
much attention is paid to managing the technology when
you multitask on a computer. How much of the conversa-
tion gets lost when you’re swatting flies at the same time?
There is a paradoxical other side to this simplicity and
focus. Apple once was avoided by computer users who com-
plained there just wasn’t enough software written for the
platform. Since the iPhone, there has been a seismic reversal
of this situation. Apple’s App Store was launched in July
2008. Opening day, there were 500 applications available for
download on the iPhone and iTouch. One year later, there
were 55,000. In June of this year, the number was a stagger-
ing 225,000+, many of them free. Apple says 150,000 of
these iPhone apps run on the iPad, and, by launch day,
1,000 of the apps had already been rewritten for the larger
screen of the iPad.
The same device that grabs you by the nose and forces
you to pay attention to one thing at a time is, ironically, at
one and the same time a book, magazine, newspaper, game
platform, NetFlix movie viewer, MP3 player, radio, dictation
machine, word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, organizer,
Web browser, podcast library and player, RSS reader, Skype
telephone, photo album, e-mail device, Web page publisher,
and so on and on. About a quarter million apps, with Apple
keeping count on its website anticipating one billion down-
loads relatively soon.
The iPad is the ultimate portable computer that has done
all that it can to make the chips, the wires, and the network
complications disappear. Perhaps it’s the digital masterwork
that finally even a luddite can love. SF
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With the iPad, you can only openand run one app at a time...But ifyou want to try to process multiplestimuli and streams, better go openyour laptop.