Technology I Like: Presenting the jPad

yeah great. until someone finds all your private moments of vulnerabilty and reads them out to you amongst a group of friends whilst your face invents new shades of scarlet and magenta.

no thank you.

can you encrypt your paper journal so the U.S. DoD can’t read it?

can you re-edit your typos?

can you go back and remove hurtful things you said about someone when you find you were wrong because some other fact comes to light?

can you be assured that the garbage collector or someone at the dump or recycling centre won’t have a joyous giggle at your misfortunes and suicide contemplation either from the death of a loved one or your ‘third eye zit’ before the school formal?

can you solar charge your jPad and wipe and re-use it or store the equivalent of a brazilian rainforest on it?

can you use garageband on it and compose a song on it as well?

no.

and to a variety of other questions i could list. … no.

i’m a musician wtih lots of songs and a bad memory.
currently i have four books with 50 songs per book.

if i want to find the lyrics i have to flick through each book, the index at the front of each book, then locate the song.

unless i want to make a set list where i have to either remove the pages or print new set book list for 3 sets with all those songs included.

i also have a bad memory

i am also a musician

i hasten to point out a very important point.. that i have a bad memory.

i recently tried an iPerv and a spydroid tablet.
they are very useful.
i can put all my songs on a device with some weight (and with a protective rubber surround) use it when i am busking; strapped to my music stand the touch of a finger gives me a new song or i can just type in the title and up it comes, backlit and all on the one page (landscape for 2 or fingerscroll).

fingerscroll for the next song.

i can set up 3 sets in a matter of minutes and use no paper where it would take me an hour the old way and try busking in a breeze. bulldog clips, clothesline pegs or your capo to keep casper the friendly gust from turning the page for you halfway through a song.

on stage you don’t need to hope you have fresh batteries in the booklight. the words are universally and clearly illuminated in a bold font like arial that’s easy to read (unlike my handwriting which resembles a manic depressive orb spider on mescaline). that matters to ancient flatuloids like me who can’t see a foot in front of their faces on a dimly lit stage (especially, if like me you like to use lighting fx)

less of a disorganised mess on stage. less time mucking about trying to organise a paper avalanche on and off set (seen that with other acts and myself.

also less chance of copyrighted material being pinched as you can encrypt entry into your device (i’m not even mildly famous yet it’s happened to me and i can use the file’s time stamp on the device for proving copyright ownership in court. it’s one thing to SAY you wrote the song on such and such a date and copyright being yours but it’s another to actually prove it in a court of law .. you need evidence)

it has its down side though.

iPad – if i remember correctly apple were caught with spyware on the iPhone they didn’t tell anyone about until it was found out by someone ESE .. WHY??

even if apple didn’t, google DID in the safari browser (recently copped a huge fine). google does this stuff all the time

android – speak of the devil (literally) google are notorious for spying, tracking, hyiding spy apps and voraciously grabbing your personal data. WHY?

facebook – apparently do the same thing but i can’t comment for sure as i haven’t looked deeply enough into it but i can say that i’ve heard mark z say that personal privacy doesn’t matter any more (okay mark, where do you live? what’s your home phone number? when are you home counting money? what security devices and alarms do you have on your house? what’re all the cheat codes for getting into facebook’s servers then? .. get the picture?)

privacy matters for a variety of reasons. it’s funny how these people who say privacy doesn’t matter are more private than anyone.
they give a COMPANY address etc where calls can be screened but do they give PERSONAL info 100% of the time? NO! so that’s pure hypocrisy on their part.

apple doesn’t allow bluetooth in both directions on the devices i tested (so i was told by staff on the particular models) and there’s no USB mini input so basically you use the apps apple sell you or nothng (unless you email them to yourselves from the source)

you get garageband but you can’t record sound into it with your own microphone (ask any musician how important proper microphones are, isolated from any computer’s motherboard) so it’s a toy.

i suppose you could just NOT connect to the internet. but why? you buy a device partly for that reason. and who says the spy apps don’t automatically connect? even with the phone or pad off? from what i’ve read the only way to be sure is to take out the battery (assuming there isn’t enough power in the EPROM battery on board to tansmit anyway. try removing THAT battery).

if you’re a woman escaping from an abusive husband who has some IT skills
if you’re on the witness protection programme and about to testify and the mafia is looking for you with an army of tech savvy pals (or outsourcing to the russian mafia)
if you’re on the run from the chinese government and they actively seek you (if you think i’m howard hughes try ‘duckduckgo.com’ for their article don’ttr( )ack.us (lose the brackets) and see documented cases of where this has happened and is continuing to happen. the chinese grab people and threaten them on foreign soil all the time as they are a law unto themselves. google, adobe and others have been secretly hacked for ages before it was discovered; a sophisticated and almost invisible hack on about six layers.

anyway.

i’m waiting for the following :

the microsoft competitor to iPad (with handy keyboard / cover ’cause i hate that onscreen kb you can’t feel).
for it to be out for a while so the reports come in on whether they include spyapps as well.
also the functionality. the only reason i’d get a pad over a laptop is that the laptop (as a rule, there were some hybrids made where you could remove the screen from the keyboard and it had a touchscreen WAY before the iPad (we’re talking 1990’s here when i used to go to tech auctions and see them)) is more clumsy to use on stage, heavy, more expensive if you dropped one and harder to store and use on a music stand to display your songs. apple currently has better purpose built apps for what i’m talking about.

in conclusion:
paper media:
pros — local, no spyware, single purpose, no battery required

cons — costs us trees, degrades over time, unencrypted, requires external apps (iTorch, iLight, iCandle in the dark, iPencil, iBiro, iCrayon, iThumbnaildippedinhumanblood), broken blunt spent pens (more greenhouse) and pencils (what’s the enviro cost of graphite? and wood for the case) .
privacy (ever picked your sister’s diary lock? tales about 14 seconds)
more junk to carry around.
uneditable
yada yada yada

Pad:
pros — editable, backlit, encryptable (feel safe storing your heartfelt loves and aspirations as a spotty 14yo … ever READ your sister’s diary? “OMG justin beaver OMG OMG <3<3<3 his hair … oooh ooh OMG" ad nauseum. when you find where she hid her secret stash of cigarettes and the blackmail err research shots of her 'secret love' (not for long) she wishes would invite her to the prom (little brothers.. bringing people together lol) you know you earned it after that tsunami of shite)

try getting her encryption passkey if she has the future of MI5 for a little bro lol. i'd err i mean the person would require the help of alan turing who is currently incapacitated due to the rigor of his substantially reduced mortis.

trees can breathe easy, so can us asthmatics with highter oxygen density in the atmosphere (20%, the rest is nitrogen and nasties). notice there's more asthma today? wonder why! the electricity for charging pads is now able to be sourced from the sun (if you have the slightest clue about electronics) or your car battery (if you have a radioshack catalogue) so there goes the coal argument.

you can change stuff.
you can check your email.
you can use other stuff that's intradasting.
you can browse the web and grab things from cloud storage.

cons — if apple, google et al keep their shenanigans going and microsoft does likewise look forward to the entire world being your little brother with a hairclip and a motive and big brother joining in too.

crapple will make you pay top dollar for the device then treat you as if they own it and you don't. ever been to their tech shops? pretentious doesn't begin to describe it. try getting parts. not allowed on any of their lines since 1984.
they get on some quality / uniqueness high horse yet use the same labour and componentry from the same sweat shops in china. apple treat you with condescending contempt.

unless you buy a kensington style lock to your music stand a thief can grab your device as you're at the bar between sets and do a runner (you can track the unit though and password them out, fat lot of good if it's onsold overseas to a geek) with the lock they'd have to take the whole music stand and cop a decent beating on the attempt to bolt and an arrest.

congratulations: this comment is now, i think, longer than the actual blog

cheerio

Now THAT’S what I’m talkin about.