Blog for January 2010

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Thoughts on Apple's iPad

Apple’s iPad. Will it change computing?

In case you have been living in a cave, here is the quick recap. Apple has announced their latest device, the iPad.

If you follow our blog here at Visual Lizard at all, you know that we are a little on the geeky side of things. We have been waiting to see what Apple would roll out for months. We all had different hopes of what the device might be.

It would be safe to say that since the announcement, we have had a few discussions about the iPad and what it means. Rather than keep all of these conversation to ourselves, we are going to make this post into a public discussion. We are going to post our thoughts in the comments. We encourage you to add your thoughts as well.

â–¾ Read the comments for our thoughts â–¾

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Search On

Google has just launched a new ad campaign called "search stories" and I have to say this is one of the best ad campaigns I have seen recently.

After watching the above clip, the brilliance in this campaign can’t be understated. Google is telling a complete story through the search box. From start to finish. That it is a love story is just icing on the cake.

Another brilliant point within the ads is that they are 100% true to their interface. All they are showing is how Google works. Find the big search box. Type in some words. Autocomplete fills in some suggestions as you type. Hit search. Autocorrect helps your spelling. Get results.

These ads hit all the right human parts. Whenever I watch any of these ads, my brain lights up with possibilities. The National spot is also amazing.

Simple. Brilliant. Search on indeed.

The one thing that struck me as odd about these is the fact that Google is actually advertising. I guess the slight up-tick in Bing usage has them worried. Oh, and to keep up my geek cred, here’s the real reason I love these ads. Don’t try this at home.

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OSX at work, Win7 at home?

Last week, Apple finally released updated Windows 7 drivers, allowing me to get my Windows 7 Boot Camp partition working smoothly on my 17” Macbook Pro. I haven’t really been missing Windows 7, I barely used it at work since installing it a month or two ago, but being able to boot up my laptop into either Mac OS X or Windows 7 was a big selling feature for me. For all the internet flame-wars about which operating system is better, I have always found reasons to like them both, enough to enjoy having both installed on my machines.

One of the main reasons I like having Windows 7 installed is that it is not the operating system I am using at work. As a web developer who spends eight to ten hours a day working on a computer, I find it often hard to come home and sit in front of the same machine for more hours, even though I kind of want to; video gaming, blogging, surfing the internet, my own web-based side-projects… all things I enjoy doing, but have a hard time doing so after basically spending all day already doing that.

Having OS X for work is great, as there are a multitude of great apps to work in and with. Many of my respected colleagues in the same field as I work on Macs, which means there are programs, systems, applications, widgets, tweaks, and more geared directly for them (and me). It certainly makes my job easier and more enjoyable.

Having Windows 7 for home is a refreshing change of pace. Microsoft’s latest operating system is polished and works smoothly; I haven’t noticed any of the headaches or frustrations many people were experiencing with Windows Vista. More importantly, it works different, responds different, feels different, and I’ve set it up different. I have a Twitter gadget always open at one side. I have a Steam account with all my video games at the ready. I have Google Chrome installed, as well as Windows Live Writer (which I am using to write this, my first attempt at using this program). I don’t have an HTML editor installed, I don’t have an FTP program installed, I don’t have an SVN client installed.

If I need to do work, either at the office or at home, I can boot up in Mac OS X, and have an environment dedicated to that. If I don’t want to work, I can boot up in Windows 7, and have an environment purposely separated from where and how I work.

It’s something that feels comfortable so far. I’ll see how it works out.

Daily Links

Daily Links

Daily Links