Category Archives: technology

April 20, 2010 · 9:23 pm

Education and Technology – Indulge me please

140 characters conference update.

I have quite a few observations about today that I want to share but I am spent so I will post them tomorrow. Tonight I want to focus on just a couple of things.

Some of the smartest, most passionate people in the industry were in this auditorium.

I was humbled, awestruck and inspired.

And retweeted often (the highest form of twitter praise). I even made it onto bigapplechannel.com‘s trending topic top tweets. I am (almost) famous(ish) in a not so famous but it was flattering sort of way. And this was one my more sincere tweets so that’s nice.

But what I want to talk about here  was one man who rocked the room. He got a standing O! (not that O, you filthy minds, ovation but now that you mention it…)

Chris Lehmann. Click that link and you can view an extended version of the passionate speech he gave today. He is the Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philly. He simply blew the room right out of the water. The crowd was awestruck by his energy. It was so exciting to hear an educator this committed to embracing the technology that drives our kids. Here are but a few of the pearls that dropped out of his mouth today:

Tell a better story in school. Technology must be like oxygen: ubiquitous, invisible and everywhere.

Kids are using devices & technology in not great ways because the adults that are supposed to teach and monitor it are afraid of it.

Let’s never forget how important teachers are. its about the community. with technology we can blow out the doors.

We need to bottle @chrislehmann and distribute him to every HS in America. Kids need to learn how to think and he gets how to help them. He loves his job. He loves kids. He loves education and he was one of the most inspiring speakers I have heard in a long time.

Yeh, today was amazing!

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April 19, 2010 · 9:38 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – No tears today #140conf!

Ok, kiddies, I know you all love a good tear-jerker from me on Tuesdays but this week I would not dream of it. How could I possibly think of shedding a tear when I am off to a geek girls heaven sort of a day.

Yes, my friends, out of the basement and off to the Twitter conference better known as  the 140 characters conference, or as we tweetgeeks call it: #140conf.

For those who are not twitter savvy but are afraid to ask, 140 refers to the amount of characters a tweet is limited to, hence the name.

By the time most of you read this post I will be way gone and sitting my geeky (not so) little ass in a seat at the 92nd Street Y listening to the rock stars of twitter spout the many uses for the platform. (does this tweet make my ass look fat?)

For all you early adopters, this is so very yesterday. You are out there with all your location based apps like Foursquare rolling your eyes at how twitter is so over. (um, doubt that) But for most of my readers, you are finally believing me that twitter IS a big deal and I am NOT nuts. Well I am nuts, but not about this.

Nonetheless, a day out of the basement is a rare treat for this chick so I will thank you very much for indulging me a tearless tuesday.

If you follow me on twitter I will be live tweeting with the #140conf hashtag and will try my best to give those of you who could not make (@lizscherer and @wendyscherer, I am crying a little that you will not be joining) a better first-hand look at what is happening than trying to follow the unreliable stop start video on ustream.

This all makes being there at 8AM less ungodly. If you are at the conference stop by and say hello.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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April 7, 2010 · 8:42 pm

Paul Giamatti and the broken trackball

Today was a lemons to lemonade day. I woke all cranky about the broken trackball on my blackberry that would go sideways and up but would not go down (please, hold the jewish girl references here). If you are a blackberry user you know that down is key. Without down you can’t read your emails, you can’t turn on your bluetooth and you can’t change your settings to vibrate so your phone bings all night long with emails. Ok, so I could have shut it off for the night but let’s not forget I have a daughter overseas and without the blackberry we have severed-comm (yes, I have been watching too much 24 – copy that).

So, on this unseasonably beautiful April day I was not all that sorry to take the convertible out to the Verizon store to get it fixed. Happily it was only a $20 replacement part. And while I was there I had a nice lively debate on the worth of the iPad with my favorite guy there.

But, the biggest treat of all was that today a film was shooting at our town’s train station. And who was there, but Paul Giamatti (who I called Giamotta on Facebook today and am still a little embarrassed that I have a photo album there with that name in the title).

Poor Paul. There he was in a wool cap and this heavy jacket and it was near 90 degrees at high noon. I am guessing this was not exactly lemonade for him.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 26, 2010 · 10:34 pm

Why My Mom is Like an iPad

Florida Day 2

My Brother: So, are you going to get the iPad?

Me: Nope, not the first generation. It doesn’t have a camera, doesn’t support Flash and has no memory.

My Mom: Jeez, that sounds like me.

Can’t make this stuff up.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 14, 2010 · 12:02 am

Problem/Solution

Problem: Husband pining for a flat screen for the bedroom.

Solution: Best Buy cards for his birthday present.

Problem: They don’t have the one he wants.

Solution: Buy it at PC Richards. (retaining the Best Buy cards for more toys – good present becomes excellent present).

Problem: He (of course by nature of having a penis) wants a bigger one than can fit in the allotted space.

Solution: Move the armoire over 6 inches.

Seriously?! You want to move that thing. That thing with all that crap in it that will have to be folded and sorted through since we have to empty it to move it?

OK, nothing better to do on a rainy day.

Problem: Two old farts who don’t want to throw out their backs.

Solution: 3 17-year-old Baco boys in the house.

Thanks boys!

Have a problem… bring it on!

Of course we now need an installer to hang the tv, a carpet cleaner to get the marks from the armoire out of the rug, the room could use a painting and come to think of it we could use new window treaments. Or I could just go out for martinis and dim the lights.

Hey, if you give a house a cookie...

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 2, 2010 · 11:21 pm

Orange you cranky?

Ok, shoot me. I just had a long day and as a matter of fact I am damn cranky.

And this had to be the funniest instant message solicitation I have gotten in a long time.

Maybe I should have accepted it.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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February 1, 2010 · 10:58 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – It truly is a small world

We often take for granted how small the world has become. Our kids consider the technology that enables constant communication to be a given. Ichat, videochat, skype, texting, IM, bbm, facebook, twitter; these all make email seem like snail mail to them. They lose their ability to disappear but I think the trade-off seems worth it to them.

Access. All the time. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

This post is about the good. Ok, so if you read me regularly you are not surprised that I would focus on the positive aspect of technology. But as a parent in the year 2010, with a daughter situated quite comfortably in Spain, technology is the greatest friggin’ thing on this earth.

Last night we had our first video chat with Jana since she left almost 2 weeks ago. You might imagine that this would have been about really important stuff. Well it was, sort of. For instance, we got to see the way her bathroom light turns on ‘all freaky’. And then she whispered ‘the boy’ into the computer screen as her spanish roommate came by and asked her a question. We got to wave hello to her other roommates and get a tour of her apartment. We talked about everything and nothing with her. Better than IM or texting, this was my kid with all her subtleties and nuances; her humor and expressions. The essence of who she is.

On the laptop screen.

On the dining room table.

As if she was there.

Now I know this is no big revelation. For the past few years this has become commonplace. But damn! I am a mom with a kid on the other side(ish) of the world and I can sit in the dining room and bullshit with her as if she were right here.

And it’s free!

C’mon, how cool is that?

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog.For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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January 27, 2010 · 5:27 pm

iPad. Can I have one even if I had an ihysterectomy?

I am sorry, did that title make you feel uncomfortable? No worries, I had that surgery quite a few years ago and left my ovaries which would explain my raging insane menopausal behavior. My title is not as funny as my friend Jessica Gottlieb‘s but then again, she is a rock star and I am not. (and in all fairness, to my knowledge she still has a uterus).

But this post will NOT be about my girlie parts. This will be about the abnormal obsession that I, and hundreds of thousands of other Apple geeks have for all things Mac.

I have been a MacUser since before many of my readers were out of iDiapers, I am sure. I used to be in the minority but now I am just a semi-cool mom who gets all hot and bothered when that technostud in the black turtleneck, Steve Jobs, comes out on stage to unveil a new Apple product.

Today was no different. With 4 windows open on my extra large cinema display I watched a lousy ustream attempt at live streaming and followed the tech specs for the new tablet today as they were unveiled on engaget.com and twitter. After much speculation about the name it was announced to be the iPad. The photo at the top came across my twitterstream during the presentation. (thanks to Katmanalac). Photoshop users are not only funny, they are fast. You can see what the real one looks like here, and watch the dazzling video about all its features.

So here is the story in a nutshell. This is an iPhone on steriods. For those of us who like realtime email and blackberry messenger and hate AT&T we will not have to keep longing for the iPhone anymore. We can keep the blackberry and add this to the arsenol. Personally, I don’t care if I have one device that does it all and these 50-year-old eyes would way prefer to read off a 9.7″ screen than an iPhone any day. The typing looks easier and the ability to read books, listen to music, read newspapers and magazines, view pictures and videos, and surf the web all on one device that I don’t have to squint at is rather appealing. The Keyboard dock got a lot of wows from the audience as it was foreshadowing into what this baby will grow up to be. The fact that is missing a camera is a big negative.

If you are not excited by this, you will be by the third generation of this product. You can go bury your Kindle out back with your VCR because this baby blows that dinosaur away! The Apple cool factor is intoxicating as always.

I have a strict policy of never buying the first generation of anything tech item because there is always a level of disappointment by the next holiday season when they release the bigger, better, less buggy version of whatever it is. But at the $499 entry level it is hard to not want this toy. Do I think that there is anything revolutionary about this product? Not really as is, but I think that it will be very soon. Although the iBook store, Apples book version of iTunes, will surely blow Barnes and Noble/Amazon and the Kindle right out of the water. And the potential for developers is endless.

For those geeks hungry for tech specs, you have probably heard them already but here they are:

1/2″ thin, 1.5 lbs, 9.7 ips display, full multi-touch, 1Ghz apple A4 chip 16, 22 or 64GB flash storage, wifi 801.11n, 10 hr battery, iphone apps work out of the box, keyboard doc and a price point ranging from 16GB with no 3G at $499 to 64GB with 3G for $829 with the big news that although it is still on the dreaded AT&T network  there is NO contract. $14.99/month for 250mg data and $29.99 for unlimited.

To my parents and inlaws, sorry for this post, I am sure I lost you on ihysterectomy!

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog.For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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January 23, 2010 · 7:09 pm

ID Theft

Odd choice of license plates. Had to add this to my photo collection. A big thanks to Sue who took this since my camera battery died. Anyone in PW know whose this care belongs to?

Anyone have suggestions on what this person does for a living? How about a little poll?

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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January 7, 2010 · 8:55 pm

When Twitter is Down

So it happened tonight. To the dismay of those of us who use it as drug of choice/best time suck of all time the world’s most sophisticated social media types, twitter was so down that we were not even getting that cute little fail whale graphic. How did I find out? On Facebook, of course. The other place where online junkies get their fix favorite network of choice.

My guess was that since the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is going on right now all the geekiest of geeks most sophisticated technology types were jamming twitter and causing it to sporadically fail.

I did a quick Google search to find out what was up and came across my new favorite site. It is called whentwitterisdown.com and every time you refresh the screen you get a new message. It is kind of like web 2.0s version of the magic 8 ball with an attitude.

Here are some of my faves:

I love the last one. And for the record, I don’t have a cat!

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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