I sat down tonight to do a quick, 5 minute update of the firmware on my Airport Extreme router to the latest revision, 7.5.2. I should have known better; never update a system that’s working perfectly well! I did the update of the Airport Extreme and the network-extending Airport Express, and both seemed to go well. However, I noticed that I had very sluggish connectivity. I have the Airport Extreme plugged in behind my ATT U-verse 2Wire router in DMZ configuration, so I tried a wired connection to the 2Wire to check on possible ATT problems. Working like a champ. Smokin’, in fact. Hmmmm….I googled on problems with this firmware update and came up with a number of hits and found a forum entry on the Apple site to be spot on. I hooked up a laptop with wireless active and a wired link to the 2Wire gateway, and downgraded the firmware back to 7.4.2. Worked like a champ. My speculation is that my Airport Extreme is an old first generation Extreme, and that’s the difficulty. I do know that I won’t be updating the firmware on this again, unless it specifically addresses this issue.

The FCC issued a new ruling today, affirming network neutrality. It was was not as complete a decision as preferred by proponents of neutrality, but it seems that it will be a very important ruling. It allows differentiation in wireless networks, stating that these are different entities that require different rules. Some on the panel think that this did not go far enough, that an Internet connection is an Internet connection (and I agree on that), but I agree that it is better to affirm neutrality on wired networks than to not resolve the issue for another two years, as Commissioner Michael Copps stated. The rules state that carriers cannot block legal traffic, and they cannot “unreasonably discriminate” against types of traffic. Those “weasel words” leave enough ambiguity to cause some problems, I’m sure, and will keep the lawyers busy, but the principle is important to codify.

Carriers and their supporters claim these rules will not allow for return on investment and will stifle innovation. I think though, that consumers should be able to pay for the bandwidth to their local networks based on the traffic needs, and not suffer discrimination based on what bits they send or receive. I would be more sympathetic to the carriers if I didn’t think that they were trying to protect a dying business model for delivery of subscription TV. The success of Netflix has the cable providers in particular looking for ways to sustain their historic revenue models. However, locking consumers into a limited set of choices is not it. If we each had many ISP’s that we could contract with for broadband access, I’d be more sympathetic to the statements of the free market advocates who state that the marketplace will take care of abuses. The problem is that most people only have one choice for wireline broadband, and that’s their cable company. In urban and suburban areas, you may have two or three, but that’s not broadly the case. I’m fortunate that I have access to both cable (Time Warner) and telco (U-verse). Eighteen months ago I moved from Time Warner to U-verse for higher bandwidth and have not looked back. Now, what I want is symmetric bandwidth, with higher upload speeds, though I am much happier with U-verse speed 18Mb down/1.5Mb up than the offerings from Time Warner.

The bottom line? Today is a big day, and I think that the Internet innovation machine will continue to churn and create new and exciting options, thanks to today’s FCC ruling.

I’d not given AirPlay (the capability in iOS 4.x to stream media to cooperating devices) too much thought, as I don’t have an Apple TV (yet). However, a conversation with my sister over the Thanksgiving weekend got me curious about the relationship of AirPlay and AirTunes and whether an iOS device could use an Airport Express to stream music. I use an Airport Express as a network extender in my house, but had never hooked up speakers to it. I checked my iTunes and it could see the AE and stream music – on to the iPad! But, no, the media redirect button was not there 🙁 . A bit of googling showed that it seemed to work for some folks and not others. A common theme though was a soft reset of the iPad. I was skeptical (some said that didn’t work) but it was easy to try. Bingo. Worked like a champ. Checked my wife’s iPad – was not showing Airplay, reset and there it was. Streamed iPod, YouTube, and Pandora. I’m thinking that this feature is going to grow in mindshare as folks play with it. I’m looking forward to that Apple TV that’s on my Christmas list 😉 So, the story seems to be that Airplay is an evolution of AirTunes, that it works in the legacy AirTunes environment and the emerging AirPlay ecosystem.

This is how printing on the iPad is supposed to work! I was disappointed with the way that AirPrint was rolled out in iOS 4.2.1 since it only supported a very limited set of printers. The word on the street is that technical problems were behind it, but still it’s not very as usable as-is. A friend mentioned that Printopia might be a solution to check out. I’d read up on PrintCentral, a $10 iOS app that handles printing but does it from the context of its own app, through the “send to” interface, its own browser, and other applets. Not exactly the way I wanted to see it work. Enter Ecamm’s Printopia. I was already a user of their iGlasses software, which provides extensive functionality for enhancing video to compensate for low light and many other effects.

Printopia is a $10 app for Mac OSX (no Windows version) that simply takes any printer accessible to your Mac and enables access to that printer thru AirPrint for any iPad on your network. I installed Printopia on my Mac (it installs into the system preferences) and immediately the “print” dialog on all AirPrint-enabled apps could see the two printers visible, plus a “print to PDF” option which stores a PDF image of the page on disk on the Mac. This worked on my iPad and my wife’s, and fits with the AirPrint model (much more elegant than a separate printing app). Speed was excellent, just as quick as native printing on the Mac, and image quality (to the Xerox Phaser) was also outstanding. Bottom line is that this is highly recommended!

I’m using an external keyboard with my iPad to write this.  I had an Apple bluetooth keyboard (the newer aluminum one) with a laptop at the office.  I consolidated computer setups a couple weeks ago, and found that I didn’t need the keyboard for my Mac, so I decided to try it on the iPad.  I was skeptical, in that it sort of takes away from the portability of the iPad.  However, after a few days of using it last week, I’m changing my tune.  First, as with other bluetooth devices, you can walk in and out of range and reacquire the connection automatically when close enough.  That means that I can have the keyboard on my desk, paired to the iPad, and when I leave for a meeting and leave the keyboard behind, the connection breaks; when I come back, it’s there again.  Not novel, but sort of a “dock” if you want to think about it that way.  Things that are handy are to use the keyboard to wake the iPad from sleep and enter my passcode, to start/stop iPod functions (such as podcast playback), change the volume, etc.  Screen brightness can be controlled as well, which is handy, if I’ve been outside and had the brightness turned up, and want to turn it down when I get back to my desk.  It really does make entry of text considerably easier, especially if you are a reasonable touch-typist, as I am.  It’s also easy to turn the keyboard on and off easily.  As you turn off the keyboard, the bluetooth icon dims on the iPad, and you can then use the onscreen keyboard normally.  Of course, you can use the “eject” button on the keyboard to open and close the virtual keyboard.  I have wondered about battery impact, but in my (so far) limited use, it doesn’t seem to have any observable effect.

All in all, a very useful addition to the iPad, and one that you can take with you or leave behind. That makes it a very flexible solution! 

I’m at Educause 2010 now. I’m currently unwinding from a long day of meetings and sitting on the balcony of my hotel, watching the cool Pacific breeze sway the palms, and watching the moon traverse the southwestern sky. As I intend this to be a technology post, I should probably switch gears 🙂 . This is my first business trip since I got my iPad, and I left the laptop at the office in its dock and only brought the iPad. Have I missed the laptop? Not one minute! On the plane out, I graded papers while listening to tunes on the iPad, and then watched a movie. When I got to my hotel, I found that it offered AT&T wifi, and the iPad automagically connected, switching from 3G. Email and a bit of Facebook before bed, and I was ready for the first day.

I spent the first day here at Google’s Irvine office at the EduCAB meeting. Took extensive notes using Penultimate, and emailed the notes back home to colleagues that couldn’t make the trip. Of course Google offered visitor wifi, and I could stay in touch with email or IM. Of the 20 folks attending EduCAB, five were exclusively using iPads rather than laptops. Not bad for a device that’s only been on the market 5 months.

Today I attended the main conference. As I wandered the corridors of the Anaheim Convention Center from session to session, I noticed two trends…there were lots of iPads – not the 25% at EduCAB, but probably 5-10%; also, I noted the laptop users clustered around charging stations and sitting on the floor near the few wall outlets. That was me last year, but no more. I’m convinced that one of the “killer apps” of the iPad is battery life. If competitive tablets don’t offer the same longevity, they will be at a severe disadvantage.

Late this afternoon I sat in a great session on the impact of the Internet, based around two 2010 pop culture books – Carr’s Shallows, and Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus. I’d read Carr’s book but not Shirky’s. A few taps and the Kindle copy was ensconced on my iPad. I’ll read a chapter before bed tonight. I joked with the presenters as the end of the session that they’d cost me $12.99 plus tax for attending.

Have I missed the laptop? No…the iPad can be used for content creation as well as consumption. Can you stay in touch, look at docs & spreadsheets? Sure. I plan to work on a presentation for an upcoming conference on the flight back. The iPad is a computer, a book, a stereo, a TV…its an overused term, but it truly is a paradigm shift.

There are many great app updates coming out right now for devices in the iOS ecosystem. I think that the app developers are out of the stage of “O my gosh, I better get something out there” to a regime where they are working their punch lists and feature request lists. I’m happily using a number of these on my iPad. Apple put in features to their office suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) that dramatically improve usability. You can now copy files to and from iDisk and WebDAV servers. This, and the ability to import and export as pages, PDF and doc formats makes these tools even more useful. I am able to now use my iPad and edit files from UNCG file servers, or do a quick view through apps like Goodreader (which can also manage WebDAV storage). Goodreader itself has a great update, now allowing annotation of PDF files, stored as PDF. Penultimate, an app I use extensively for note taking, as several improvements in areas such as note management and VGA out (useful for virtual whiteboarding). The Mobile Me gallery app now supports the iPad. Maybe we are getting out of the “fart app” stage and really focusing on usability! Looking forward to iOS 4.2 in November!

I’m going to create a blog posting today using the Dragon dictation program for the iPad. I’m really taking a look at two different technologies here. One obviously I’m looking at the Dragon program on the iPad. I downloaded this a while ago but I actually have not had a chance to do much productive with it. I’ve tried a few trivial examples but nothing substantial. The other thing that I’m looking at is the Google priority inbox. I spent a while earlier this week looking at Google priority inbox and trying to see if it makes sense for me to use it. Our office uses Google apps for education and that gives me a great platform with a broad set of e-mail to use. Priority inbox actually does seem to make a lot of sense. Priority inbox doesn’t replace the inbox in just, just adding an additional inbox view, and it was actually one of the things I was wondering about initially. I was concerned that it was going to change and replace the inbox view. One of the things that makes priority inbox more useful it is to set up several filters so that important messages , such as e-mail from your boss or others that you wish to respond to in a timely fashion is tagged as important. 

I have tried to go back and do some editing using Dragon. It’s actually not that hard to do. However, I’m switching back and forth between keyboard mode and dictation mode as I try to change precisely what I want to affect. 

Dragon actually seems to do a better job of taking dictation that I do of generating the words that it’s trying to interpret. I think that it’s very significant learning curve for the user. 

Overall I’m very pleased with the program and for the price, free, it’s hard to beat. 

Apple really tries to make things simple, and it should have been a 10 minute job but it ended up taking an hour. I wanted to extend my home wireless network, as the coverage on the patio and porch has been weaker than I’d like to have. The porch in particular was weak. I use an Apple Airport Extreme (in the DMZ of my 2Wire Uverse router) and the Apple access points have network extension settings built into the setup dialog. I picked up an Airport Express from the Apple store. Power up the new Airport and set to extend the network. ‘cept it didn’t work! The Express connected to the Extreme, but it gave an error extending the network. Looked in the log, and the Express updated its time via NTP thru the Extreme but no extension of the network. Moved the Express to the same room as the Extreme, so there was not a range problem. No good. Checked and re-checked and retyped the helpfully copied SSID and password. No good. Then, as I poked around the Extreme configuration looking for clues, there it was…a checkbox that said “allow this network to be extended.” Clicked that, and suddenly all was happy, and my network is extended 🙂