I know there have been millions of articles about the iPad. But you haven’t heard my perspective. So, here goes… As soon as I saw the iPad announcement I was of two minds. On the one hand I thought “Why would I want to pay $500 for a glowing screen version of the Kindle?” On the other hand, it was hard to deny a big touch screen device that gives you immediate access to all your content wherever you are is pretty interesting.

Lucky for me, the release of the iPad was relatively close to my birthday. I circled the wagons and let everyone who might be thinking about giving me a gift to give me some money to go towards an iPad. It worked so well that I don’t think that I received any other gifts besides this iPad.

In the first few days of owning any gadget, it is hard not to love it simply due to the novelty. The real test to any gadget is if you still use it on a daily basis a month or two months or a year later. So far, the iPad seems to have staying power. It is a great toy, but it is much more. It is now a part of my work day as well.

iPad as Toy

Here is the thing. We are officially in the future. Think about this. Go back just ten years. Thin TVs existed, but they were pretty expensive. Most people still had those big tube-type TVs. TiVos were around but not very prevalent. If someone handed you a thin screen that you could hold in your hand that connected to the Internet, played movies, played TV shows, played music, let you purchase and read books, you would have lost your mind. This thing is a game changer.

Now that I am using an iPad on a daily basis, it has completely changed how and why I use my laptop. My MacBook has now been relegated to content creation only. All the content consumption has been off loaded to the iPad for me. It is great. When I want to relax, I get out my iPad and browse around all the different types of content at my finger tips until I find something that seems interesting whether it is a movie, podcast, website, book, or whatever.

iPad as Tool

I don’t go to a meeting without my iPad. I have downloaded a killer app that is simply called Todo. All it does is help you create a todo list. But man, the way it does that simple job is worth the $4.99 I paid for it. I can track all my projects. I can see all the tasks that are relevant to where I am at the time. And, the user interface is beautiful. When was the last time you were passionate about a todo application?

The iPad also gives you a quick and elegant interface to manage you email and calendar. It makes the management of your life clean and simple, which for me is a good thing. It makes me a better manager of my life because it is just more fun now.

The iPad is too big to take everywhere, but because nearly everything syncs back to the cloud, I have access to all my data on my iPhone. When it is inappropriate to carry the iPad, I have the iPhone in my pocket. I hate to sound like such a fanboy, but I love it.

The Negatives

The iPad isn’t the panacea for all problems. It is not a great content creation device. I am typing this blog entry on the iPad right now and nearly all the muscles in the upper half of body are starting to hurt as I lean forward trying to type on this thing. It is not a replacement for your main computer which means it is an expensive accessory. In a world where people go to bed hungry or thirsty, there are probably better places to spend your money.

Final Thoughts

I figured that I was going to like the iPad as a toy but I am continually surprised by how useful this thing is in other areas. If you are wondering whether or not to get an iPad because it seems expensive for a toy, rest assured it is much more…

So, WordPress has a brand-new iPhone app to update your WordPress blog. Actually, to be more to the point, they have a new version. I have just downloaded it and I couldn’t wait to try it out.

I like it for the same reason I like the email app on the iPhone. I wouldn’t use it as the only way I blog, but it gives me a way to triage my comments and do some quick management of the blog while I am out and about.

If you want to give it a try, there are two versions in the app store, or at least there was. You want WordPress version 2. I will be playing with it more in the coming days. Maybe it will inspire me to blog more. Maybe.

Here is some video hot off the presses from Andy Ihnatko from the brand new iPhone 3Gs. It looks better than I expected it would…

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and yes you can run Ubuntu on a mac on a virtual machine for free with Sun’s VirtualBox. In fact, you can run just about any operating system you want to all within a window inside OSX.

Running a virtual machine is nothing new on Macs. Ever since Apple moved to Intel processors, virtualization came along for the ride. Virtualization means that you can run computer operating systems that are designed for Windows PC hardware on Macintosh.

There are two main players for creating virtual machines on Macs, Parallels and VMware Fusion. Both of those products are great, but they cost $70 each. If you are like me, and you have no real reason to run alternate operating systems, $70 is a lot to pay just to play around.

Last week, while I was listening to Twit.tv’s MacBreak Weekly, Leo Laporte talked about a program from Sun that allows you to create virtual machines for free. Sun’s VirtualBox is a full-featured machine virtualization solution. Creating a Linux virtual machine was extremely easy.

I downloaded VirtualBox and installed it on my computer. I downloaded the latest ISO file of Ubuntu and saved it on my desktop.

I opened VirtualBox and simply followed the instructions on the wizard that started when I first opened VirtualBox. I created a new virtual machine and then installed Ubuntu.

I was a little nervous doing it for the first time, but it didn’t take too much geekiness to get it all working. If you are somewhat good with computers, this should be no problem.

Right now, I am writing this blog post inside Linux on a virtual machine on my MacBook. It works.

I don’t really know what I will do with this other than simply play, but I was afraid that once I moved over to Apple computers full time, I would lose my chance to play with Linux. Now, that is no longer true.

The only problem I am having is I can’t make the screen any bigger than 800 x 600. That is a little confining, but I bet if I up my video RAM, that will be fixed.

Anyway, it is fun to geek it up every once in a while.

There is a brand new site called Champ’EM. The long and the short of it is that it is Digg for people. Here is how it works. It is pretty simple. Step 1, nominate people who are your champions and give a brief explanation of who they are. Now your champion appears on the site. If they were nominated before, then they will have a number of votes. If they are brand new, then they will have one vote, yours.

After that users of the site can vote up or vote down your champions. It is simple as that. You need to check it out and nominate and vote up your champions.

This site was developed by the company I work for in preparation for the Q3 release of the book The Organizational Champion by Mike Thompson.

This news came out earlier this month, but I needed to blog it so that I would be able to remember how long the Motorola RAZR was the top selling cell phone in the United States. According to The NPD Group, the RAZR was the top-dog in sales for 12 quarters. That is THREE years to you and me. That is no small feat.

On the one hand, Motorola had a winner for that long, but apparently they knew it. Because, on the other hand they seemed to either have rested on their laurels or accidentally backed into its success in the first place. They have not been able to design the next revolution in mobile phones.

To be fair, the entire mobile phone market had lulled itself into doldrums by shifting from an industry driven by innovation to one that was on the defense… defending its market share until Apple seized an opportunity to turn the entire mobile phone industry on its ear. Running out the clock and playing the prevent defense doesn’t work in sports, and Motorola has proven that it doesn’t work in business either.

To be successful, you must ask the hard questions. You must be willing to look past your current golden child product to what will take its place. Sitting back and guarding your stack of money is a sure way to lose it, and thank you Motorola for proving it once again. Cash out when you get out of the game, until then the only safe thing to do in business is invest in what’s next.

I know these blog entries are exceedingly boring to you, but these are always a chance for me to test out the new software from WordPress to see if there are any noticeable changes.  So far I don’t see any changes.

There is one change I hope they have made.  I hope they have fixed the bug with the softare that doesn’t allow you to insert an image into the blog post and have the text wrap around the image.  You can move it to the left or the right, but the text insists on lining up at the bottom of the image.  Now, before you cry NOOB, I have been doing web stuff since 1998.  I have wrapped plenty of text in my time, and I am sure without much searching you can see that I have successfully wrapped some text in previous posts from the past.

I only complain because it would be so much simpler on me if I could just insert the image, have the text automatically wrap, and not have to monkey with the code.

It is patently obvious to you that there is an image at the beginning of this blog post.  As I am writing this entry, I haven’t actually added the image, but since you are in the future, and I am stuck here in the past, I can’t see its outcome.  If the text is wrapped, then my problems have been addressed. If however, the text begins at the bottom of the image, then well, my woes continue.

The problem may exist in how my template handles images.  I haven’t checked that, and honestly, I don’t know if I will be able to muster the energy to do that.  I may just change the look and feel.  I will have to check and see how long I have had this template up.  Is it getting tired?

So apparently Apple must not take a shine to Amazon stealing its customers because ever since I downloaded the latest version of iTunes, the Amazon MP3 Downloader program doesn’t automatically put downloaded MP3s in my iTunes library. Of course, it is trivial to get them in there, but it is still a little lame. Boo Apple!

Hey, if you are an iPhone user then do I ever have some life-changing news. I have added an iPhone theme so that when you look at this site on your iPhone it will be formatted to look right on the smaller interface.

I know, I know… You’re WELCOME!