I just left a meeting, and in the post-meeting discussions, I was talking with a colleague about computer security. I wanted to write this down, as I’m getting more passionate about limited functionality, walled garden devices.

I wear the hat (among many others) of managing the UNCG information security office, and I’ve seen the challenges we’ve had coping with the deluge of new threats and system problems of the last couple of months. It’s not just here, but a part of a larger phenomenon. I am much less sanguine, day by day, that we can protect the “organizational” (corporate, university, etc.) general purpose computing device at scale. Sure, you can do a decent job protecting some, but it’s very labor intensive and takes a lot of user education. I talked with my colleague about thin-client solutions being our likely future, and I think that this is true. Now, on to some more radical thinking. I believe we’re seeing the beginning of the end of the general purpose device as the standard end-user tool. As I walked back to my office, I was reflecting on my recent iPad order, and I believe that such devices (the iPad won’t be perfect, but it’s a great example of the class of device I’m describing) are what we’ll be using. Reasonably extensible via easy-to-install applications, and applications vetted by a central entity. Reasonably flexible in what you can do, but very hard to shoot yourself in the metaphorical foot. I believe in net neutrality, and I believe in the need for general purpose devices, but not for everyone. They are complicated, a lot of work to maintain and patch, and far too easy to compromise.

The future is with thin client/tightly managed desktops in business, where it harkens back to my old mainframe terminal days, and for personal computing, cloud-based services accessed via a walled garden appliance. Think about it. It’s coming…

Today’s March 12th, the day to place iPad pre-orders. As you know, I’m a fan of the iPad concept, and am eagerly looking forward to its arrival. Jan is getting a WiFi-only model (baseline 16GB model) and I’m getting a 3G model with 32GB. That means she will get hers first, and I’ll really have a jones for mine in about 3 weeks.

I signed up for the current Google/Eye-Fi promo, pay $50 for 200GB for a year across Gmail, Picasa, and Docs, and receive an Eye-Fi card. Not a bad deal. Do I really need 200GB of Google storage? Likely not, and I will probably drop back to 5 or 10GB next year at either $5 or $10 annually (but still a customer, oh clever Google!). The card is a 4GB SD that supports both pictures and video; the card seems to be functionally equivalent to the Share Video model listed for $79.99 on the website, though the label looks slightly different. I had no trouble getting it to work in my Canon A590, looks exactly like the 4GB card I took out. Amazing that they can get the WiFi functionality in there, but I’m easily amused 😉 . So far, I’ve taken just a couple dozen pictures. They appear automagically on my Mac in iPhoto. I had the first batch go to Mobile.Me but I have it configured right now to send to Picasa. I figure I might as well use the storage I’m paying for. I’ve configured it for three networks so far, my home network, the network at the beach house, and the network config that’s in use at my sister’s house and my parent’s house. We’ll see how it works from another location. It’s supposed to actually dump the pictures back on my home Mac (assuming it’s turned on) when I upload from another location, as well as the web upload. So far, so good! I’ve always wanted to try this, and it looks like it’s going to be a success.

OK, I’ll confess up front that I am predisposed to like Apple products. We’re a Mac household (with a legacy PC holdover from Apple’s pre-OSX days in the wilderness). I’d have an iPhone, but my carrier is Verizon. I do have an iPod Touch that I love. However, I don’t think of myself so much as a fanboy but as one who appreciates the design, integration and operation of the Apple ecosystem.

I’ve reflected on the iPad and the more I think on it the more I believe that it has really hit a niche that it will very successfully exploit, though I think it’s going to be the Christmas season of 2010 before it really rockets. It will take a while for folks to realize what this is. Let’s talk about it, but first let’s talk about what it’s not.

1) it’s not a phone. It’s too big. You won’t carry it everywhere, but you will carry it with you wherever you’d carry a book, a newspaper, a magazine, etc., and at home, it will likely live on your coffee table or end table.

2) it’s not a laptop. Don’t try to make it one. You’ll access media, messages, and richly formated information. You won’t use for mondo spreadsheet modeling, for writing your thesis, or for doing your taxes.

It is, as Jobs said, the third device. You’ll carry a phone. However, with the iPad close by, you’ll need to use the tiny screen of the phone less often for serious email, browsing, etc. Demographics will help Apple here, so bear with me. No matter what you do, the size of the screen that you can put in your pocket is limited. Us “boomers” with eyes that don’t focus as quickly, as crisply, etc. as they used to will just not ever be as able to do a bunch of work on the screen real estate of a smartphone. I carry a Blackberry and use it for a number of things, but mostly for quick info fixes or quick notes. Anything extensive (like writing this post) and I want to have more space to see and input data. I love my iPod Touch, and think it’s really (with the 140,000 available apps) a true pocket computer. I think that these devices, and the new Android phones and others like them will be our constant companions. However, they have limitations, and you have to realize that. Heck, I had Newtons, Palm Pilots, etc., so I’ve been trying to figure out these pocket devices for a long time. Size is their strength. Size is their Achilles heel.

The next device you’ll have is your computer. It may be a desktop or laptop. That’s a matter of preference, but I’m tending to think that the iPad will continue to push me back to the desktop and away from my Macbook. I use an iMac as my “primary” home machine, with a Mini as a media center machine. The Macbook is a work computer but I am edging toward a desktop environment there as well. I spend a lot of time in meetings, and while I often take a laptop, I don’t do much more than updating google docs, quick web-based email, or adding to web-based task lists. Let me keep it in the cloud! All lightweight tasks for which I schlep 5 pounds of computer around, plus a power brick.

Here’s where the iPad comes in. One and a half pounds, the size of a notepad. Effective for taking notes to cloud-based services. Google docs, Evernote, etc., or to the iPad-native notes database (which can be synched with Mobile Me, I’m sure, as it can on the iPod/iPhone). Effective for web-based email. Effective for quickly browsing up a few facts during the meeting.

When you head home, it has your digital music for the drive (or podcasts of magazines in my case), or streaming via Pandora (or your favorite). When you get home, you put it by the sofa. After dinner, you’ll chill watching CSI 😉 and multitask by doing email or casual web surfing. Oh, you want to watch something else while your spouse is using the main TV? Do so right on the iPad with a nice sized screen (using only one of the ear phones so you can hear your spouse!). Want to read a book? It’ll be great on the iPad (and you can even read your Kindle books through the iPad Kindle app). This morning I looked at the 6″ of snow at the end of my driveway and the trackless cul-de-sac and my lack of a morning newspaper. Would have been nice to read it online on his and her iPads rather than the his and her Macbooks that we used. More room in the lap for the cat, too!

It’s the third device…not the phone, not the primary computer, but the cloud portal information appliance. Don’t try to make it your smartphone (but you can Skype). Don’t try to make your laptop (but you can use iWork and have VGA output). It’s a new category that neatly fills the gap. It will catch on. The key, and I think the reason that Apple configured it the way they did, is the existence of the 140,000 apps and a zillion developers extending functionality. Some apps are trivial but many are very useful; a whole ecosystem of apps. And, yeah, you give up configurability and it won’t run your laptop apps, but that’s missing the point. It’s not a Netbook, which is just a smaller underpowered laptop with all the complexity. The iPad is simple. Pull it out of the box and use it. Hard to mess up. A closed system so you don’t have to worry as much about malware. A new class of device. I can’t wait!

I’m following the developments in the iPhone/Android space with interest. I’ve got 11 months left on my Verizon contract, so it’s somewhat academic unless Verizon does offer a non-subsidized CDMA version of the Nexus One. We’ll see how that develops. Here’s a good article from the NYTimes on the iPhone v. Nexus One. In the mean time, I’ll muddle along with my Blackberry 8330. I do think, tho, that when I do get a new phone its likely to be either an iPhone (carrier switch) or Android based (on Verizon). Don’t think I’ll stay with the Blackberry. It works, but it’s just not elegant. Everything is kludgy and mostly works; there’s no sense of beauty and integration. I’m very interested to see what Apple releases at Macworld…the rumors about the putative tablet are interesting and voluminous. There’s so much interesting development in the mobile device space. If we think back only a few years, it’s fascinating how far we’ve come and how much functionality we already have. I’m quite interested in the eReader space. A key, I think, is that Amazon has the “iTunes” model for book delivery with the Kindle (and now devices running Kindle software [currently Windows, iPhone/iTouch, with Mac and Blackberry to come]). I’ve downloaded the Kindle software to a Parallels VM on my Mac and to my iPod Touch, and am half-way through my first book on the platform. I actually like the experience pretty well. The integrated bookstore model is where I think that Barnes & Nobles will be significant competition for the Kindle, more than some of the other readers. It’s partly the device, and partly the integration with the services. You have to have both for success. That’s a point in that first article I cited above on the iPhone v. Nexus One. Both devices are capable and interesting, and both have biases for their affiliated services.

How many devices will we carry, though? A smart phone? Is that enough? Do you need a media reader? Where’s my fullsize keyboard? In many respects, the best device is the one you have with you that’s connected to enough services to be useful. My pockets are full enough already 😉

Apple, bring on the “iSlate” announcement, and let’s see how that changes the playing field!

I’ve had Google Wave mojo for about a week on my account. First, I can understand why Google is slowly rolling it out…it does have some “rough edges” when things don’t quite behave like you think they should. However, I’ve got a handful of colleagues that have it now, and we actually used a Wave for some real work last week. I’m intrigued. It’s a phenomenal concept, and I think it will generate the mind-share to change the way folks look at electronic collaboration. For a really interesting video of how it can be used, see this link from SAP. SAP is showing their Extension that allows collaborative business process modeling, and it fits perfectly with the Wave vision. I think that the key for Google Wave will indeed be the value-add of Extensions. Wave itself provides a framework for persistent linking of messages, both synchronous and asynchronous. However, it’s what you do with that which creates the value. The SAP video shows a vision of how this collaboration can play out. The ability to play back a wave helps both to refresh participants in the evolution of the conversation and to let a new “surfer” catch up on what’s been happening on the Wave to be able to participate quickly. If I had the energy, I’d go teach myself how to write Extensions, as I think that there’s some money to be made there! I’m high on Google Wave, and am looking forward to its being widely available. It’s so limited now that this really makes the interactions seem a bit artificial, and its forte is natural, inclusive collaboration.

Being able to pick up and move your phone number to any place with an Internet connection is so cool. We’re at the beach house this weekend, and as this is the first time we’ve gone out of town to a place with broadband since we converted to Vonage, we thought we’d take the Vonage router with us. Plugged the Vonage router into an Ethernet port, plugged in a phone, and bingo, real “portability” for our main home number! If anyone had called us while the router was traveling, it would have gone to vmail, but you can even forward it, to your cell, if you wish, and not miss a call…lovin’ it!

I’ve tried three Twitter clients on my Blackberry 8330, and it looks to me like Ubertwitter is a real keeper. I started with Twitterberry, but was disappointed with its ability to post to Twitpic (only very small pictures). I tried Tweetcaster, and while it worked better with Twitpic, it was slow and somewhat kludgy. I picked up on a story about Ubertwitter beta-5 while surfing RSS feeds. This version of Ubertwitter was released on 9/15/09, and seems to be a great piece of code. I’m using the free version right now, but I’m thinking about sending them the $4.99 for the ad-free version. It uses Tweetphoto by default (other options are available) instead of Twitpic, but that’s less important to me than the fact that it seems to work reliably, and that TweetPhoto seems to be a very viable Twitter-focused photo site. They say that the TweetPhoto API is more flexible and robust. I’ve only put a couple of pictures up, but it seems to work great. The Blackberry client has lots of configuration options. It offers a picture preview in the tweet stream. A great job…check it out if you need a Blackberry Twitter client!

I am seriously impressed with Opera Mini 5. I just downloaded it yesterday for my Blackberry 8330, and it’s a phenomenally better browser experience than the standard RIM browser. For mobile optimized pages, the RIM browser is fine…it’s just that if you want to browse some ad hoc pages, you are quite likely to hose the browser and the TCP/IP stack as it attempts to deal with a big page with coding it doesn’t understand.

I didn’t use Opera 4 much, as I just didn’t think it added enough value to use in lieu of the native RIM browser, but Opera 5 is another thing altogether. It seems faster than Opera 4, it offers tabbed browsing, and is truly effective in quickly loading (through its compression of pages thru the Opera server farm) random pages. Opera is not a Blackberry optimized program. It doesn’t alway work the way other BBY apps do, but it works in a way that lets it be platform agnostic.

The only thing that I’ve encountered that I don’t understand (and I don’t know if it’s a beta bug or my not knowing how it works) is that I can’t figure out how to update a Speed Dial site once it’s been set. I believe that to a degree this will be mitigated when Opera 5 gets the synchronization code working (it’s not, to the best I can tell, synchronizing like Opera 4.x does with your Opera account).

Bottom line is that with a browser like this, I feel that I can open any web page I want and see the content quickly, and not worry about crashing the browser/hanging the TCP/IP stack…way to go, Opera!