Technology Archives - Kevin Whitman's Blog

Category: Technology

It would be cool if the iPad or iPhone was a Mac also

I was thinking, it would be cool to carry around an iPad or iPhone that was dual featured as a Mac. For example, you open your iPad out of the box, turn it on and do everything you do with one today. But we also love Mac’s! I was thinking about how cool it would be if OS X and iOS merged, and not merged as in iOS on the desktop. I mean as in one OS but has a “mode”. “tablet/phone” and “desktop”. The iPad could be plugged in to a monitor or wirelessly beamed to a TV. you grab your Bluetooth Apple keyboard and mouse and put your iPad in “desktop” mode. A OS X styled desktop comes up. You’ve been busy working on some project on the train coming home in some app. The same app is for Mac. It has a shared folder within the sandbox with your data. No syncing or duplicate data. You edit it, save it. Go to sleep. Wake up, put your iPad in “tablet” mode and later review the data with your coworker.

So the same device running OS X and iOS, but switching between OSes instantly and shared data between them. I doubt this will happen anytime soon, but it was a little idea that popped in to my head. I guess the first steps towards this would be porting OS X to arm. I’m not even sure if a iPhone or iPad could run the full OS X, even if it ran on ARM, maybe in the future. Do you think this would be a cool thing if it happened? Have your iPhone be your phone and power your desktop in the same device?

Spotify and Skype are like twins separated at birth

March 16, 2012 / Kevin / 0 Comments

Spotify and Skype are the two hottest european startups it seems. Skype does internet phone service and Spotify is an all you can eat social music service. I use both of these products everyday. They also seem to have a lot in common:

European
P2P technology
They both start with an S.
Microsoft is in both of their friend networks. Skype is owned by MS. Spotify is friends with Facebook who has Microsoft as a friend.
Popular among us geeks
Integrated with Facebook.
Social

Gets you thinking, right? Just some random information. They seem so similar but different businesses. http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats-and-how-spotify-works/ is a really great write-up on Spotify P2P tech. Spotify is like an “Modern Napster” but this time the music industry is happy with it. Skype and Spotify are using peer to peer for awesome, legal and legit uses. I think they both are great examples of legit P2P use.

I recommend using both of these products if you aren’t already. Hope you enjoyed this random post.

My thoughts on Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP

November 17, 2011 / Kevin / 0 Comments

As a young entrepreneur I think legislation like this is very horrible. I don’t normally go in to politics but i want to speak out on this. But basically from the understanding the RIAA, MPAA or other similar mafia groups will have some government website where they can go to and add a website to a blacklist which then is blocked in the US by the DNS. No trial or due process. What ever happened to the constitution? Has any of the corrupt lawyers and politicians writing this legislation read the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution?

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Well copyright infringement is mostly a civil issue but this seems to make it more of a criminal issue. Lets travel back to January 19, 2007 where Justin Bieber sings So Sick by Ne-yo and posted it to YouTube. If he was living in the united states and this was law that cute kid everyone loves would end up in JAIL or maybe I would also for linking to it. Very bad idea.

Watch the video by Fight for the Future below to watch an entertaining video about it. Better than me trying to explain it.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo. Continue reading

A look at Lion

July 20, 2011 / Kevin / 4 Comments

After waiting every day for the last month checking Apple.com to see if Lion is available, it’s finally here! Lion is available as a download from the Mac App Store for 29 bucks! That kind of scared me at first due to being a large 3.74 GB download. Downloading and installing an operating system from the internet is not so mainstream. You can get Ubuntu my favorite Linux distribution but it’s under a gigabyte and you have to burn it to a disk.

With Lion, you buy it in the Mac App Store on Snow Leopard, and it downloads an “Install Mac OS X Lion.app”, which self destructs after Lion is installed. So if you don’t want to redownload it, make sure you back it up before installing Lion. I copied it over the network to my other Mac mini(Mid 2007), to install later on without another big 1-2 hour download. It took about 10 minutes to copy it, but this is good for people who has more than 1 Mac, and might have a bandwidth cap or impatient(like myself). Lion installs it self, without the need to burn a disk. Most full operating system downloads requires you to burn a disk.

The Install Mac OS X Lion guides you through a small wizard to prepare your Mac to install Lion.

Then it requires you to agree to the EULA that no one ever reads(I hope I didn’t agree to give up my first born or be a Human CentiPad), and then select the disk you want to install Lion to.

Dead and Dying Formats

July 12, 2011 / Kevin / 0 Comments

The Apple iMac was one of the first computers to not include a floppy drive, and it used a CD drive. Current Macs you buy today has a CD/DVD SuperDrive, except the Air. No Macs has Blu-Ray. I think CD, DVD and Blu-ray are dead as the internet will replace them.

A iPad can’t watch a Blu-ray, nor can it run Flash or Java in the browser. So I think it shows both formats are dead. A iPad can’t have a disk drive, due to space limits. It can’t have Flash or Java due to poor performance and not being open. Most people will agree Flash isn’t open, but your like “Isn’t Java open”? I thought it was also, till I read this. People, Companies and the media don’t really care that the iPad can’t play disks, but they do seem to care about the Flash issue. You have lots of ways to get good content on to your iPad, buy them on iTunes. Watch lots of free and high quality content on YouTube like Smosh or DamonFizzy. Subscribe to a free Podcast on iTunes like Hak5 or Diggnation.

Flash isn’t open because i have to buy expensive authoring tools from Adobe, for example Flash Professional is 699 bucks! With HTML5, I can write my code in Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac, which is free with your operating system. I can download or buy authoring tools. I can get Notepad++, a really nice code editor which supports several programming languages I use, and its free! I can even buy HTML5 tools from Adobe if I wanted to, they sell Dreamweaver. Other tools exist to help me write HTML5 apps. Like jQuery, CSSEdit or others. Continue reading

How I got into programming

July 6, 2011 / Kevin / 0 Comments

It started back in the sixth grade. I really wanted to get into programming and creating websites. I would find free web hosts. I had a site up, a few days later my site disappeared. All It had been embedded games. So I went to the main hosting site and it was gone also! Then I found another free host which had a nice web based editor. I made the site I had on the other host, again from scratch. I didn’t know about backing up back then. So once I had the site created again, the next day at school I told some classmates about it. It was a sub domain. I told them the web address. Some of them mistyped the address. It took them to an adult site, I didn’t even know about it. So I never really liked free hosting, and I don’t think I will. Sub domains are really ugly and not full control over my site is also not a good thing.

I wanted to learn more about coding, the free website builders seemed like it lacked features. So I thought maybe if I learn how to code, I could do more, and it was true. Html seemed very basic and a good starting point. I went to the library and got a few html books. I flipped around and got to the forms section then I wanted to create a version of Office for the web. I was going to use a text area, I didn’t know about rich text JavaScript editors for the document area. Also this was before I seen web based office programs. Continue reading

Thoughts on ChromeBooks and the Cloud in genreal

May 18, 2011 / Kevin / 0 Comments

I have a CR-48. I like it, but then again i don’t like it. I think something like this is too early. I currently use both Web Apps and Legacy apps. Like some 3D Virtual worlds like Second Life, won’t run on it. Also another issue i have with it, is what ever data you put on it, other parties have it also. Like me as being a programmer, not sure if I would want to trust some free cloud integrated development environment (IDE) company with my code I never even heard of till i found them in a Google search. Maybe my code isn’t worth a lot to others, maybe it is. I don’t want to risk it getting stolen. Back when the iPhone first came out, people laughed at it and was thinking wow, what a dumb device. Now everyone knows the iPhone is awesome. So maybe I’m wrong, but i think something like this is early.

I do think this is a great start for the idea of web apps, and we(as in Developers, Businesses and society.) have to start somewhere. More improvements will come, over time. I like the idea of a computer that updates, without much work or wait on my part. My CR-48 updates faster than my Laptop with Windows 7. The CR-48 has a weak processor in my opinion. My Laptop with Windows 7 is a Intel Centrino, Dual Core. CR-48 has 2GB of ram, my laptop with Win7 has 4. The CR-48 downloads your update in the background, then you reboot and login. Updates are seamless. My PC with Windows 7 is set up to ask me, so once i download the update. Then once i saved all my data, closed my apps. I can reboot to install the updates. Then Windows 7 makes me wait to config the update. Wait a few minutes or longer. Then login, wait for apps to start up and then do what i want. So i agree the CR-48 updates and boots up quicker than my PC running Windows 7 or Even my Mac and it does all that with limited hardware specs, that just amazes me. If you want a PC to boot up and update that fast, i think you will pay more than the price of a ChromeBook. Plus web apps are updated, done automatically on the server. Also new versions are free, no upgrade costs. Web apps have a subscription model, free or freemium, not buying them right out. So yes, the CR-48 is more end user friendly. Continue reading

Are Search Engines just as bad as the Gnutella network that LimeWire used?

October 30, 2010 / Kevin / 0 Comments

Well recently you may have seen in the news that the Limewire pear to pear operations has been shut down and if you visit the Limewire website you will see a notice stating why.

LimeWire Legal Notice

So LimeWire p2p got shutdown because they allowed people to download illegal content. Not all content on the network was illegal but most people abused it. Some people will make a version of Linux or do podcasts and use the Network to send them out without having to host it using bandwidth transfer and disk space on their own web server/hosting plan. This is the same with torrents. So the Torrent and LimeWire technology can be used for good but it sadly abused. LimeWire is a client that connects to the Gnutella network. There are still clients out there that can connect to the Gnutella network not made by LimeWire. The way P2p file sending works is someone will add a file to the network and with their client open, the file is accessible. Each client acts as a node on the network. Clients can search Gnutella index or the torrent trackers index. A client will then start downloading from all the nodes with that file on the network. So basically Gnutella or Torrent Tracker stores information that contains where the file is located. The file itself isn’t on the trackers server. LimeWire use the Gnutella network by default or you could give it a torrent file from some other tracker/network. This is my understanding on this technology and please correct me if I am wrong.

So lets put this in context. Your web browser of choice is a client. Google is the network Index. Some other server hosts the file. Continue reading

Kevin Whitman's Blog

Category: Technology

It would be cool if the iPad or iPhone was a Mac also

Spotify and Skype are like twins separated at birth

My thoughts on Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP

A look at Lion

Dead and Dying Formats

How I got into programming

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