Two things I’m very passionate about are NASCAR and iPads. Being passionate about those necessarily means that I frequently encounter people who roll their eyes at NASCAR as a serious form of scientific/engineering enjoyment (rednecks turning left in 100 degree heat for 4 hours) and iPads being used for more than playing Jetpack Joyride.

However, I’m seeing more and more crew chiefs, car engineers and now race reporters turning to iPads during races…

How an iPad Speeds Reporting from NASCAR’s Pit Row – Mac Rumors: “When the iPad was released in 2010, Burns instantly saw the potential. He could digitize his notepads, drop the pen and paper, and carry all his reference material with him to every race. After addressing concerns about size; durability; using it outside in the bright summer sun; and, perhaps most importantly, which apps to use; Burns arrived at his perfect setup:”

Steve Burns is a quality pit reporter and has always impressed me with his ability to summarize something as complicated as a 14 second pit stop where tire pressures are adjusted, a certain amount of fuel is added, an adjustment to the suspension is made and the chassis is tweaked in just a few words on air in almost real time.

I’m also glad to see him using the awesome Note Taker HD to help process all that information.

NASCAR is more than just a silly group of grown men drinking beer and playing mario kart and iPads are not just for content consumption.

Awesome…

Tomorrow’s Google Doodle to honor music pioneer & adopted Ashevillean Bob Moog on.mash.to/K8hlzH #celebratebob

— BlogAsheville (@BlogAsheville) May 22, 2012

Gotta love Google for recognizing people like Bob Moog.

Fascinating.

I’ve been working on something similar with PayPerTrends.

How Gawker wants to monetize comments | Felix Salmon: “Still, I do like the fact that Denton’s constantly trying new things, constantly trying to reinvent what an online media company can and should be. Really ambitious brands, indeed, won’t need Wert’s help at all: they’ll have the ability to dive straight into existing non-sponsored editorial posts and respond to commenters directly, much as they’re already responding to people who talk about them on Twitter.”

More soon over there (yes, it will be on Tumblr).

My 7th grade students and I have been watching the video this morning and commenting on our shared experiences around cultural events:

It’s interesting to me that although we don’t have a Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw evening news experience shared throughout all facets of our “mainstream” (and outside the mainstream) North American culture, we have something like YouTube to still generate memetics, cultural phrases and shared experiences.

Beautiful presentation from NOVA on how artists in the medieval period produced such incredible works of dedication and science…

NOVA | Medieval Stained Glass Science: “How did craftsmen of the Middle Ages make stained glass windows using little more than sand, wood, and fire?”

We too frequently presume our own superiority because of the seeming advancement of technology. However, time is the least suitable indicator of progress.

I’ll go with yes…

Connecting via Social Media | Merianna Neely: “Or do we take a different route and talk about the personal benefits that we have found reading blogs that recount other people’s journeys toward self-awareness and fulfilled lives?”

Come join us. It’s going to be magical.

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I’ll be speaking this Saturday from 9 A.M. to Noon at First Baptist Greenville, SC on the topic of social media, Twitter, Facebook and WordPress, and how those things impact everything you do (no matter what you do) with Merianna Neely.

We’ll be covering the basics of these services and the social web with a primary focus for interested parents and professionals.

You should come if you can.

It’s going to be magical.

$25 fee includes lunch.

Email if you’d like to learn more.

Beautiful book…

MacSparky – Blog – My New Book: The MacSparky Paperless Field Guide: “The book is a deep dive on paperless workflows for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. It takes full advantage of iBooks Author and includes picture galleries, interactive images, movies, 32 screencasts, and nearly 27,000 words. There is over an hour and a half of video. Not only does this book tell you how to go paperless, it also shows you.”

David Sparks has really set the bar for how the evolution of instructional books should go with this important piece.

Even if you’re a serious geek and have a complete workflow (or not), go pay the $5 for his book and learn a few things about Automator, Hazel, TextExpander and workflows that might be new to you.

From iOS to OSX, this piece has you covered.

Highly recommended.

April May is the cruelest month…

GM Says Facebook Ads Don’t Pay Off – WSJ.com: “General Motors Co. GM -0.97% plans to stop advertising with Facebook Inc. after deciding that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers’ car purchases, according to a GM official.”

First of many as the FB Empire fades into the quickening dawn.

Just spent the last hour trying to resolve this error on my iPhone and iPad after changing my password (something you should frequently do, of course) before finding this fix:

Fix: Cannot Connect to iTunes Store: “I called Apple support, and they told me to ‘Reset Network Settings.’

Got to Settings – General – Reset – Reset Network Settings.

Basically it resent the Wi-Fi settings and problem solved!

Make sure you to get your router psswd to re-connect to Wi-Fi.”

This is more of a “future” note for me, but hope it helps if you get this annoying message on your iOS device

Wendell Berry was right on with the “be like the fox and leave more tracks than necessary” thinking when managing your online (or offline) experience.

How to Muddy Your Tracks on the Internet – NYTimes.com: “‘I have nothing to hide, but I’m uncomfortable with what we give away.’”

To see what I’m talking about specifically, click on the link in the footer below…

Since 2008, I’ve done a yearly post on my attempts to “Bring it All Back Home” with regard to my digital existence. It’s been a journey of exploration and trial-and-error.

Here is last year’s verse:

» Bringing it All Back Home Verse 3 Sam Harrelson

I’m happy to report that for the first time in this little series of posts, things are pretty much the same as they were last year. The one exception would be my use of SpiderOak (and a little Dropbox) as well as Apple’s iCloud syncing of calendars.

Otherwise, I’m floating pretty much on my own server with my own data.

The first question to ask yourself is whether or not you think Google is creepy.

If you want to own your own existence (“Program or Be Programmed” as Douglas Rushkoff warned, or “be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary” as Berry implored), it’s easier than ever to break free. Of course, there are hard decisions to be made and the tradeoffs aren’t always the easiest to stomach at first… but nothing worth gaining is ever really easy.

First, go to google.com/dashboard.

Now, ponder Berry’s words again…

Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

After pondering, head over to Google’s Data Liberation Front and consider your options.

If you’re of the enterprising sort and have a Mac, go get the CloudPull app ($24 on the Mac App Store but well worth the price).

Go find yourself a good domain host for a place to have your own email, site and data store. I suggest MediaTemple because I use and love them, but there are lots of options like Hover and LivingDot.

As I’ve written, my setup for this year is pretty similar to last year’s so there’s not much to improve on there. Here’s the recap:

- First I was on LivingDot then a short stint on BlueHost then I wised up and moved over to MediaTemple. I’ve had absolutely no problem with the service or hosting and it’s a reasonable amount to pay (more expensive than the others but worth it in my book) per month for solid service and availability.

- My sam@samharrelson.com email now flows through that MediaTemple account and I access it via POP on my Macbook Pro’s Mail.app and keep a copy backed up via a Time Capsule as well as offsite storage on Amazon’s S3 service. I also use the amazing MailSteward for a MySQL database of searching through all that mail as well as MSGFiler for quick labeling of incoming messages to keep my inbox clean. I love the setup.

Update for 2012: I do my own mail hosting now with OSX Lion Server but still use the MediaTemple account for backups etc. I’d recommend folks just get a hosted domain account ($5 – $20 a month for basic service) and start there.

- My documents are treated the same as I’ve been treating them since last year (backed up Pages and Keynote on this server and 3rd party storage) but with the iCloud transition coming to Mac OSX, I’m incredibly excited to move away from solutions like Dropbox (which I’ve recently canceled anyway). So, iCloud is a game changer for me.

Update for 2012: Still the same with a little Dropbox and SpiderOak thrown in there.

- My web calendar is an installed version of WebCalendar that isn’t the prettiest thing in the world but I do enjoy using because it is here and not privy to an advertising company. I use iCal on my Macs and iOS devices to sync.

Update for 2012: I’ve tried to soldier through WebCalendar, but find myself using Apple’s iCloud service for calendaring. I want to make WebCalendar work. Still fiddling with that.

- The all important ToDo list is handled still by OmniFocus. The iPhone app and iPad app make this the killer feature of the iOS experience for me.

Update for 2012: Still the same! I absolutely love Omnifocus.

- I’m using Yojimbo more and more for bookmarks and archiving links/notes, but I do wish there were something of an iPhone app to compliment the iPad app since I don’t have a 3G iPad and there are instances every now and then when I need a quick access point to a note or bookmark stored in Yojimbo. Otherwise, it’s all backed up, encrypted and safe.

Update for 2012: I still use Yojimbo but have frequently resorted to Evernote for this sort of archiving. I need to access things from my iPad, iPhone, laptops or wherever that I’ve archived and you just can’t beat Evernote at that. I’m also using the awesome Pinboard.in service more this year.

- Notes wise, I’m still using a combo of SimpleNote and the native Notes app on iOS (since that’s where most of my note taking takes place) that syncs up with my Macs. However, I’ve been using old fashioned Moleskine and pen a great deal lately. Still working on that one…

Update for 2012: Still use and love my Moleskines and still using Simplenote on the iPhone and iPad and its built in Notational Velocity integration on my Macbook.

- Music wise, I’m a crazy combination of my own iTunes library and Rdio (love) with a little Pandora thrown in every now and then. However, iCloud has re-done how I thought of iTunes and now I’m excited about having music available across the board through that service rather than something like Rdio (even though that will be hard to give up).

Update for 2012: I’m still using iTunes for the main bulk of all of my music, especially now with “Music in the Cloud” feature. However, I do dabble with Spotify for music and the awesome InstaCast for podcasts given that podcast listening on iOS is still a relative pain.

- I’m still using Fever for my RSS reader. RSS is very much alive for me and Fever is a great self-install way to make sure that I’m staying on top of things. the iPhone and iPad web apps are killer and do the trick. I haven’t thought of going back to Google Reader since installing Fever almost two years ago.

Update for 2012: I absolutely love Fever. It’s probably my most used app. I’ve also adopted its self-hosted cousin Mint from the same developer (Shaun Inman) as my main analytics package here and on StudiesLab.

- Textmate, MarsEdit, Skype, and CloudApp make up the rest of my daily flow.

Update for 2012: Mostly the same, with the intro of Byword as a text editor (so beautiful on iOS and on the Mac desktop, plus it syncs with iCloud).

So, that’s how I’ve walked away from Google for my personal data store. We use and love Google Apps for collaboration at school, but the tradeoff for personal data causes me too much hand-wringing in terms of privacy implications and the realization that I am not a digital product for an advertising company to sell.

Verse 5 coming in 2013.

I stumbled upon this post earlier after reading a link which Devin T suggested about the topic of creativity:

The One Thing | John Cleese – “A Lecture on Creativity”

Of course I wanted to watch the embedded (and amazing) speech by Python member John Cleese on creativity from the post.

I hit play then paused.

My brain said “Wait! This could be better. Hold on… I’m thinking about this.”

I’m sitting in my den with a large LCD HDTV and stereo system across the room staring at the play button on a YouTube video on a blog post in silence.

My brain clicks for about a second then commands me to go to the post on the iPad perching itself on the couch beside me so that I can click that all important AirPlay button.

Presto… John Cleese on the big screen talking about creativity while I type this. Thanks, brain.

As more of my middle and high school students become familiar with iOS and begin to invest themselves more and more into Apple’s iCloud infrastructure and discover the joys of the AppleTV (it’s surprising how many families in our school have them), AirPlay will grow exponentially.

It’s almost magical to see a video instantly go to your TV with little-to-no-loss in resolution. It’s amazing to ponder that YouTube really is the cable tv of the current tween and teen generation (it is). Put those two amazing realities together and AirPlay becomes something much more than just a fancy button in iOS. It becomes a subtle game-changer.

AirPlay has changed how I consume video on the web when I’m in wifi distance of my AppleTV.

BTW, imagine a classroom full of iPads with an AppleTV as the hub.

Here’s to the creativity of Steve Jobs… let us all be open to the kind of creativity Cleese talks about here.

Reminds me of the amazing song from Ze Frank’s last Show.

Glad to have A Show back, btw. Go watch.

He does blink!

A Show

Glad to have him back. I’ll be watching.

It’s a brand new day.

O.M.G…

I’m excited to… | Facebook: “I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.”

…We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.”

Hmm… not convinced if that’ll always be the case.

Always thought it would be Apple.

April is the cruelest month…

Google Maps 8-bit for NES – YouTube

Wonder if PayPal would approve this?

sam.com

One day, Smithers…

Thought provoking presentation…

The End of Teaching As We Know It. | Edudemic: “What is the future of teaching? What about education in general? Many schools and universities around the world are playing a risky game right now that could make them irrelevant in the future. They’re simply holding onto past practices and not adapting to the changing world.”

Time to be different.

Amen.

Brown Alumni Magazine – Friending Your Child: “At a time when many of us feel overwhelmed by the onslaught of information and terrified by what our children might encounter on the Internet, she has emerged as a source of calming wisdom and insight, a guru for our tech-crazed times, a prophet of the Internet age. And here is what she wants to tell parents: relax. The Internet is not nearly the revolutionary technology we believe it to be.”

Go read.