Dan's New Blog

Tired of reading about high school students suspended because they had aspirin in their bookbag? Or nail clippers? Or even — God forbid — for unauthorized hugging? Then this NY Times story is for you. School administrators in Vail, AZ have turned one of their school buses into a mobile wifi hotspot. The result? Peace and quiet:

“It’s made a big difference,” said J. J. Johnson, the bus’s driver. “Boys aren’t hitting each other, girls are busy, and there’s not so much jumping around.”

This isn’t a case of wifi acting as electronic ritalin:

“… district officials have been delighted to see the amount of homework getting done, morning and evening, as Mr. Johnson picks up and drops off students along the highway that climbs from Vail through the Santa Rita mountains to Sonoita. The drive takes about 70 minutes each way.”

Cost for a safe and quiet school bus ride: $200 for the router and $60/month for access. Cheap at any price.

Just in case you’re one of the 13 people on the planet who didn’t notice, yesterday Apple introduced a tablet computer called the iPad. It wasn’t exactly a secret beforehand, and as you may imagine it generated quite a lot of buzz in the media. I could link to a bunch of articles, but I’ll limit myself to one — imho the best and most concise — the NY Times’ live-blogging post. That was a surprise to me, because I thought Engadget’s would have been much better. (Oops, I lied. That’s 2 links.)

My takeaways:

• My first thought was, how many of them will get stolen?

• I don’t think the iPad will eliminate netbooks. If I want a cheap, small computer, I’d rather pay under $300 for a netbook — yes, I know it’s running Windows XP — than $500-$700 for an iPad. Brad Stone, in the Times live-blog, says that the iPad is “the perfect breakfast table companion.” I agree, but I’ll stick with my Acer for now.

• I *do* think the Kindle might be in trouble, especially if Amazon cannot compete with Apple on the price of eBooks. And if I was gonna spend bucks on an eReader, I’d go with the iPad. The Times’ Stone says “Apple and Amazon are on a collision course.” I’d like to take that further: Microsoft is on a collision course with Google, who is colliding with Apple, who is bearing down on Amazon. Four of the biggest tech firms have to invade each other’s backyards in order to grow their businesses.

• Will the iPad be the savior of print media like the NY Times? That remains to be seen. I’m not optimistic.

• 3G through AT&T — boy, Apple sure is tight with AT&T. Verizon is verboten. And while we’re speaking German, here’s the obligatory Hitler iPad parody. (He hates AT&T, too.)

• Is it *that* difficult for Apple to get Flash to run on their devices? Apparently so. Geeze.