When babies are born, in case you are not aware,  they need to be swaddled, rocked and given something to slobber upon… As I see it, the result is that technology tends to focus on rocking and/or white noise. That’s about it. Sigh… I write this as I sit up waiting to do our late night / early morning feed and wish that there were magic bullets I could use from my bat belt. No dice.

Instead of telling you about our Fisher Price Cradle Swing (god send that it is), I’ll focus on the tech that I’ve found useful, rather than helpful, for life with a baby.

Camera(s) – iPhone and DSLR

She’s cute and everyone wants to see her, thus we’ve snapped away with both our iPhones and the big DSLR. Although in the beginning we went a bit overboard, expect to take tons of pictures. Having the DSLR, with its incredible resolution, reassures the compulsive in me who worries that we’ll miss the perfect shot. The iPhones have pretty decent cameras too, for all those times when you don’t want to lug around a baby, six pieces of matching baby luggage AND and camera bag…

Ways to share pictures – Picasa and Dropbox

Picasa lets us share our photos with the family, but Dropbox is where we consolidate. With two Macs, two iPhones and a SLR, there are lots of places where pictures end up. We combine our photos into a shared folder in Dropbox and then I upload them to Picasa. Easy peasy.

The white noise app on my phone

Hm… This one was almost a magic bullet… We were told that white noise would soothe her on our way out of the hospital room and by the time the elevator arrived in the lobby, I had a white noise app for the car ride home. The great part? It actually works (provided that she isn’t hungry, sleepy, wet, dry, too hot, too cold…)

If you want extra geeky points, go grab yourself a pillow speaker (very cheaply online) and use an old iPod to make your white noise machine. It’ll free up your iPhone for dropping calls.

Amusements – all hail the iPad

You will spend a lot of time doing nearly nothing (other than rocking your child) and your brain doesn’t have capacity for the russian novels you were planning to read. My iPad holds my books, my RSS feeds, Netflix, Hulu and my email. With a bit of balancing, I can use it one-handed. Late in the evening, ’round about 1-2am, this will become very important.

That’s it. Like I mentioned above, no true magic bullets, but there are plenty of ways to add techie flair to staying up late with your newborn. Best of luck – duty calls…

~ab

After all that, I was utterly stupefied to learn that I had missed the biggest, humdinger of an argument for the upgrade.  I went on Gazelle.com to try to sell my old Blackberry and iPod and discovered that  Blackberry + iPod really does equal an iPhone.  I had known this would be true functionally (phone + music player = iPhone), but I had never really thought that selling my old hardware would cover the cost of my new stuff!  As a thank you to Gazelle, I thought I’d give them a bit of a shout out.  You will get more money if you try to sell your stuff with Craigslist, but the added convenience of this service is worth checking out.

Using the site is very easy, head over to Gazelle.com and enter your product in the search field.  In the example below, you can see when you start typing, the products that match appear.  Make sure you select the right “generation” or model of your phone or gadget because the price given will be based on this information.

Once you’ve found your gadget, choose Search and you’ll see some questions that will help Gazelle refine their offer.  Obviously, a gadget with the original cables and one in good condition are going to better than those which are broken and missing accessories.

If you like the price, click on Add to Basket and the site will ask you for your address so that they can send you a prepaid box!  They’ll also allow you to select how you want to get paid.  If you choose Amazon gift card, you get an extra 5% back…

The trick to making this site work for you (as I see it) is to clean house.  Do all of your electronics in a big batch and you might be surprised by how much cash you get back.  It beats the heck out of random meetings at Starbucks so that you can sell someone your iPod from college :)

Good luck selling your gadgets.  Know of a better place to sell your stuff?  Shout it out in the comments.

~ab

It has barely been a week and the hubbub online about the hardware, software, features, design, upgrades, and potential yadda yadda is (almost) enough to make me revert to paper news.  The use of the phrase paradigm shift has hit an all time high… (sigh)

However, a friend asked me when I was going to write about the iPressrelease and casually added “isn’t it about exactly what you preach to your readers?  The ultimate goal isn’t the technology?”

Damn.  Touché.

Moreover, it hurts to admit that there is another layer to the shame – this is just the beginning.  Just an asterisk will probably become a thing of the past.  Sure the new iPad may not be perfect at first.  Heck, the entire line of iPads may not amount to anything (unlikely).  However, what really matters here is that someone has finally admitted that the computer, as we now know and love (hate), may not be for everyone.   In fact, in a statistical sense, it may be for no one.  I mean, how many geeks are there really?  I bet if we took the percentage of geeks in the general population, we’d end up with 0.0.  Why has the computer industry marketed to us for so long???

Think of it in terms of the car.  My father once told me that everyone should rebuild a car engine.  Why didn’t I ever need to learn this?  Maybe it was crap (sorry dad), cooked up by the automotive industry to sell cars, in an age before soccer moms and mini-vans.  I bet you can’t tell me the horsepower of a minivan… The car industry figured it out first – the majority of buyers don’t care.  They just want it simple, reliable and efficient.  Are you going to race in the Indy 500? Drive across the Sahara? Go off-roading in the mountains?

Preeeeeetty unlikely…

Are you going to become a programmer?  Render Pixar’s next movie?  Create computational models?

Again, probably not.

Apple has figured you out and my blog will one day go the way of the dodo…

Awesome.

~ab

That doesn’t mean that we have chosen the best ways to go about it.  What is pretty comical about the QWERTY keyboard that we use today is this – when the typewriter was invented just after the US civil war the design was changed.

“The type-bar system and the universal keyboard were the machine’s novelty, but the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today’s standard “QWERTY” keyboard.” – Wiki article

I guess for all you who can’t type (or can’t type well) this is a relief.  You were never meant to!

Unfortunately, considering all of the different keyboards we see each day, I can think of three good reasons to type faster:

1. You will get done quicker.  It may seem idiotic to say out loud, but do you really want to spend that much time writing out your thoughts?  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to input data accurately and quickly, leaving time for the rest of your life (as a reminder, this is the entire point of this blog)
2. Your colleagues won’t leave you behind.  As someone who has done the entry-level job a few times, I’m convinced that entering data, creating documents, spreadsheets and powerpoints are all mandatory rights of passage in most office jobs.  You can’t be an ideas person from day one and you don’t want your colleagues to realize this before you do.  You’ll have to get these tasks done quickly before the others…
3. Speech to text stinks.  I’ve been blown away by several new technologies in this area over the past few years, but in reality, we are still a few years away from a speech recognition revolution.  In the meantime, are you going to just hunt and peck at 1 word per minute?
4. It is absolutely faster than writing.  The average person writes around 22 words per minute when copying and only 31 when the text is memorized (wiki article).  I promise that with minimal typing practice, you could pound out 40 wpm.

Ok so if we’re going to try to improve your typing speed, maybe we should present a goal.  Books on tape are recommended to be read at 150-160 wpm.  My totally unscientific suggestion would be this – aim to capture every 3rd word.  This translates to around 50wpm.  I know you can do it.  Here are some tools to help.

Getting started

Before you can improve, you should figure out where you stand.  What is your current typing speed?  I tried a couple before writing this post and have chosen two.

The typing speed game

This site provides a great typing test of variable length.  I liked it because when I made a mistake, it didn’t break.  For example, if I misspell speed as speeed, this typing test still goes to the next word, rather than getting stuck on the last d and forcing me to type that before I can continue.  I think this emulates reality, as we rarely fix all spelling errors before continuing to the next word… Here are what the results look like:

Your score: 343 keys per minute ~ 68 words per minute
Language/mode: en
Ranking: That was fast – you can still improve, though.
Comparison: 23% of 34247 registered TyperA users using this language have typed a better result; 77% have a lower or equal result.

Powertyping

This site is annoying because of the error I described above, but it does give you an error rate (an embarrassing value for me).  I found out that out of the 75 words I typed, I made 11 mistakes.  This was a good reminder that although my speed might be fine, my error rate slows me down and should be my area of focus.

Training

Now that you know where you are, it’s time to start the heavy lifting. Try the tutors in this section and don’t forget to spend time playing the games in the next.  This shouldn’t be a chore – a few minutes here and there will provide immediate improvements.  Also, don’t forget to keep your lessons in mind when doing your work. Continuous practice, not fancy games, is what will make you a guru.

Beginner – http://www.typingweb.com/typingtutor/

Intermediate- http://www.keybr.com/

Fun

I like this game word shoot that I found through the lifehacker page:  Word Shoot

Also, although annoyingly covered in ads, there is a great selection of games at freetypinggame.net

Good luck!  It might not be immediate, but I know you can improve your typing.  You can do it!

~ab

Many of us lack fancy iPhones, Blackberrys and other portable media devices.  Without these, we find ourselves without certain things at our fingertips: etch-e-sketch applications, chatting tools, and perhaps most crippling our calendars.  In my calendar during my blackberry days, I would store business event details, trip directions, grocery lists, flight confirmation numbers in my calendar entries; they would be accessible at the touch of a button – wherever I happened to be.

For those of use who lack these devices, many of us have an alternative to gleam these benefits of a mobile world – the iPod.  Most iPods have within their capabilities an often forgotten calendar and contacts functions that can easily be synced with your Outlook or Apple iCal calendars (NB – its under the “Extras” header).

For those who are Mac and iCal users the process is fairly simple through iTunes (version 7 or higher).  After your iPod is plugged in, go to your contacts tab in iTunes, check the box for sync iCal calendar appropriately, click the “apply” button and voila! Now every time you sync your iPod your calendar within your iPod will be updated as well.

For Windows Outlook users, there are a few more steps but they are still not overly complicated.  As with before, the first step is to connect your iPod.   For the next step, go to the Preferences section on the edit menu and once there go to the iPod Tab and then the Calendars tab under the iPod tab.  Once there now the fun part, select “Synchronize calendars from Microsoft Outlook”, click “OK” and a message will appear asking if you would like iTunes to access your iTunes data.  Here select allow access and choose a time limit for how long that access will be permitted.  Click “Yes” on this pop up and then click “OK,” closing your iTune preferences. As a Mac user, I have not done this myself.  But I am told that you will need to give iTunes access to your Outlook calendar through the dialog every time you sync your Outlook calendar with your iPod.

For advanced steps for Google Calendar users, there are a few methods to sync your Google Calendar with this feature. Which I will discuss next time …

Ned Young is a friend of the animals and is the founder and contributor to aroundthecouch.com – a blog of musings on sports, pop culture, politics and the like.