Especially the demos by Chris Crummey showed a lot about the great mobile offerings being available especially for Connections … and yes, one more time to realize that Connections is a central part of the IBM social business strategy. Like it or not - it’s a fact!
Being a huge fan of Zite I absolutely loved the magazine style dashboard Chris showed in the last part of this session!
Sorry for all my poker fans … still nothing to write about poker at the moment. But if you are interested in Apple products you might like that blog entry too.
People around the world eagerly awaited the Apple keynote and were hoping for the iPhone 5. Many followed the livestreams from Mashable and other sources … but most of them had been disappointed. No iPhone 5 :-(
But was there really a reason for disappointment? Or were there just wrong expectations?
To be true nobody at Apple ever mentioned the iPhone 5. It was all created by the press and myriads of rumors running thru the internet. The public is disappointed and the Apple stock is down … and I can’t understand it!
In my opinion the only reason they didn’t call it “5” is that it’s still the same design as the “4” (and I like this design). But inside everything is new with great processor, graphics, camera and so on. Not to forget the increased data speed and the worldphone-feature (GSM and CDMA). If they called it iPhone 5 everybody would have been hyped about that great new phone. As it is “only” the 4S everybody is now disappointed.
In addition they announced the availability of iOS5 on Oct. 12th, Siri for the new iPhone and some more stuff. So if you really think about it and forget the hype created by sources outside of Apple then … then you might think that keynote wasn’t that bad at all.
Oh yes, I forgot … I am disappointed. Because another media hyped rumor didn’t come true: No Facebook App for the iPad. But that’s a total different story!
I was using an iPhone since January 2011 and I am owning a netbook. But since the iPad was available I was thinking about buying one several times. But I was torn between the question if it really would be useful or just a big iPhone. Finally – during our recent trip to the USA – I decided to find out.
It’s a cool gadget … no question but I am surprised how much it influenced the way I use my computer now. Or better don’t use it anymore! While I did a lot of stuff on my netbook before I now use it only when I have to do something that can’t be done with the iPad. Interestingly 90% of my stuff can be done with the iPad. And no – it’s not just a big iPhone. Same iOS but different use cases. The iPad is definately more a netbook than a smartphone!
During my last trip (which was only a two day trip during the weekend) I traveled only with the iPad and left the netbook at home. I will do the same at my upcoming 5-day trip to Coventry. Of course there is a difference between a weekend and almost one week. So this will be an interesting experiment. Beside several apps (including dropbox for file access) there is one im my portfolio that particularily sticks out … that one is “Zite”.
To quote the website “Zite is a free, personalized iPad magazine that understands what you like and gets smarter every time you use it”. And “getting smarter” ist the key point here. I just started with my Twitter account and form there Zite had built a nice collection of stuff that could be of interest for me. You can start from scratch if youl like (or don’t have Twitter) but this way I got a great starting point. But it doesn’t stop here. Everytime you read an article you can select or de-select keywords if you like as well as rate the article itself. Those information is the learning experience for Zite and helps to deliver stuff even more accurate the next time. Belive it or not: My one-hour long train ride each morning starts to get to short to read all the interesting stuff I get presented. Of course there are many articles I could easily find on my own but there’s also a surprising number of articles that I most probably woudl have missed. So in short – Zite is my own personalized Newspaper.
Without a doubt those two (iPad and Zite) especially in conjunction made a big change in the way I live and work. And for me it was definately a change for the better: Less stuff to travel with, faster access to needed informations and more accurate informations to name the most just the most important points. So getting back to the beginning of this post: Beyond being cool the iPad is one of the most useful gadgets I ever got … you just have to use it for the right things in the right way!
