So here, in all its glory – but without any cool infographics – is the conclusion. Enjoy!

To summarize what I’ve discussed over the past couple weeks I’ve put together the table below. Remember that on line portfolios are offered by portal sites, news outlet‘s web sites, financial web sites, and your broker‘s web site. There are different styles of portfolios: Full portfolios let you track holdings and even transactions; whereas Watchlists only let you list a stock. Most of these sites contain ads, but some are less intrusive and others are more.

The rating scale is out of 10 and is highly subjective and compounded by the fact it entirely my opinion, not anyone else’s or an average of several people’s. Data is an evaluation of the completeness of the data; Use is an evaluation of the ease of use; UI is a first impression of the look & feel of the web site; and Total is the sum of the previous parts, out of 30.

You can also see this table in all it’s Google DocsDrive glory!

What’s clear from the table is that Google Finance, the Financial Times, and Market Watch have the best on-line portfolio managers. So if you’re going to spend the time to set one up and maintain it, then one of those three would be your best bet.

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Calculating Returns and The Portals
Part 3 – News Outlets
Part 4 – Financial Services and Brokerages
Part 5 – Comparison Table and Conclusion

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Disclaimer The material in this article does not constitute advice and you should not rely on any material in this article to make any decision or take any action.

Related posts:

1. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 3 of 5
2. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 2 of 5
3. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 4 of 5

So far I’m pretty impressed, Flipboard certainly looks beautiful and makes viewing media laden tweets a joy – although tweets who’s media host is not integrated are still relegated to second place. And those tweets that link to an article an get a very fancy look with media from the article.

Flipboard home screen with G&M and Make

My two main sources of reading though are Google Reader and Twitter. For both of those Flipboard is a mixed result. Flipboard works best when there’s media to display, it makes the article look so much cooler. I’ve added The Globe and Mail, The Economist, and Make Magazine, which are quite nice to flip through – but I have to admit I had trouble navigating around the app to find stuff.

If you want to give Flipboard a try on your Android phone, either buy yourself a Samsung Galaxy S III or head-on over to XDA Developers to download the APK and sideload it yourself.

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Related posts:

1. Three Weeks With An Android – Part DEUX
2. Instagram for Android is here
3. Path vs. Instagram on Android

The first one to have really adopted the platform is our very own friend of the DadCast: André Nantel who was recently vacationing in the Caribbean paradise of St-Marten when he ran into some problems with a leaky kayak on a casual afternoon paddle. Luckily nothing terrible happened, but his accounts of the event where posted on Google Plus and are actually very interesting to read. The most interesting thing is that André did not choose to post about it on his on site Digital Apoptosis, his photo blog, or even through series of long-winded tweets. In fact over the past year, André has even been posting his photography on Google Plus forsaking both Flickr and his own site (except for the real awesome stuff). Among all of my Google Circles, he has been the most prolific, even beating out our very own Burg. Not only does he post regularly but he also posts some really good stuff.

The other person is TWiT regular, Mike Elgan, a technology writer (PC World, Mac World, Cult of Mac…) has pretty much given up Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and a whole bunch of other stuff in order to concentrate solely on posting to Google Plus. He actually has a very interesting workflow on how he pulls it all together which is explained on G+ Goto Gal.

So what Ben, André and Mike have all done is quite interesting in many regards. André is in over 12,000 circles and Mike’s reach exceeds 1.1 million, they both benefit from some serious eyeballs on their content and without the hassle of having to load analytics tools or making sure they have adequate server caching or plug-ins installed to meet that demand. Their site admin tasks are practically non-existent, reduce merely to viewing all the +1 that they receive. So when you look at it that way, why not?

However the downside is also pretty big. It all depends on how much you trust Google with all of your stuff and how much you trust them with your privacy. What are the chances that your private family circle items get reshared as public or spread like wildfire throughout your extended circles. Sure you can practice the old “if it’s that private, why is it even online” but if you subscribe to that train of thought you don’t really trust Google either so that debate is moot.

Some will argue the point of content lock-in or the ability to get your stuff out if you have a sudden change of heart or Google decides to pull the plug on yet another one of its social experiments. Anyone remember Buzz or even Wave? And then there is the army of us who believe that all of our content should always be stored safely in text format in at least 9 various locations: home, work, USB, dropbox, webserver, iCloud, Slydrive, Google Drive, Carbonite. And this is where it gets pretty complicated, Google’s track record for keeping your stuff backed up has actually been pretty good and let’s not forget about their whole Data Liberation project which actually makes it pretty easy to take your ball and go home. It won’t erase the echoes of your content, but it will allow you to keep what is rightfully yours and set up shop elsewhere.

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

So the biggest issue that most folks have had is just how much they are willing to hold Google to the whole “Do No Evil” thing. Personally, I can live with some Google stuff and will even accept ads on those channels too but when it comes to my writing on technology, my photography, my podcasting, and even the other stuff I put on JohnnyLeCanuck.com, I take great pride in my ability to run my own server and host my own site on my own domain. It’s part of my Geek Cred and more important to me is that it’s still fun to do. So as much as I admire these three crazy ones, 2FatDads isn’t going anywhere and we will probably continue to be in only 6 folks circles. BTW you can always +1 us over here.

Oops I almost forgot about the title: So what does this mean for Blogger? I guess I’ll have to let our very own @Schultzter answer this one.

Related posts:

1. Google Adds Six New Fonts To Google Docs: No HELVETICA
2. Google Drive & Your Junk
3. Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Message Continuity, powered by Postini

via Johnny LeCanuck

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What’s most interesting though is in other news about Google there’s plenty of stuff besides the lawsuit. But the Oracle news is all lawsuit all the time!

So whether they won or lost I don’t think Google really cares, they’ve already moved on! Oracle on the otherhand, doesn’t seem to have anything else to talk about.

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Related posts:

1. Google Adds Six New Fonts To Google Docs: No HELVETICA
2. Google Contacts Finally Addresses Dupes Bloat Issue
3. Google Goggles To Iphone By Year’s End (via Boy Genius Report)

Some key updates to these terms include:

[..]
*Clarification of the information we collect from you and how we use it
*Your rights to access, modify or have your data removed from our servers
*Confirmation of your rights to the content you create and submit to the service

I got an email from Path informing me of the changes to the Privacy Policy. I admit that after the heat they took in the past over the contact retention issues, I am glad to see they are taking the right steps to appease their users. And more impressive is that they are going it at a time where there is still a small but very loud amount of angry Instagram users looking for a new home.

I really like Path, it has a nice timeline flow to it and it’s simply beautiful. I also went into path with the intent of only connecting with real friends. Whether they be online or MeatSpace, I am only connecting to peeps I trust. So if you’re getting a little tired of the FarceBook or are really looking for another community to join post in the InstaBillion-Era, give it a try and tell us how you like it.

Get the Path for Apple iPhone or Android

Related posts:

1. Path vs. Instagram on Android
2. Joy of Tech on Facebook Updates
3. What Is The Last Thing You Do Before You Launch A Website? – Smashing Magazine

May the Fourth Be With You

T-Shirt of the Week: Sci Fi Reference @SplitReason

We’d like to thank our DadCast and site sponsors SplitReason once again for their continued support. Check out this page or their site by clicking above for more awesome Tees, hats, caps and mugs.

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Financial Services

These are companies that are actually in the money business, they provide a portfolio manager as a courtesy or add-on to their primary business.

Barchart

Like the name implies this company specializes in charting the underlying financial information; and there’s a lot of impressive stuff you can do with their charts! And there’s even more technical information for those who invest by the numbers. There’s not much fundamental information though, like dividends and yields are missing. The site also has a very 1990′s feel to it – except for the charts, although beautiful they don’t quite fit into the surrounding site.

Morningstar

Quote on Morningstar

This is another name everyone who’s ever looked for the slightest financial information has run across, they are everywhere. And they’ve very generously made a lot of their information available on their web site with very nice quotes, charts, and other detailed financial and historical information. For the amateur the amount of information can be overwhelming, but you get a sense of what the professionals deal with.

And since Morningstar makes their money selling subscriptions to the pros the advertising on the site is minimal and most of the space is given to data and charts.

Quote on TMX Money

TMX Money

Let me get this off my chest: Why does the Toronto Stock Exchange – the primary source – ship us off to another company when we want to lookup TSE stock quotes?! Admittedly they’ve outsourced to Quotemedia, who turn numbers in works of art, but it still bothers me. The actual functionality is basic but the data is all there, amidst a fair bit of advertising though.

Brokerages

This is where the transactions really happen, so they’re listed here as a point of comparison since we’ve already established that you wouldn’t leave your banking homepage open on your computer all day long. A big difference with these portfolios is that you’re a paying customer, so there’s no advertising (apart from the occasional self-promotion) and you often get some premium features you’d have to pay for elsewhere.

Bank of Montreal Investorline

The BMO Investorline site provides clear but basic asset tracking information and has recently added some nice graphing features to track trends and mark dividend payments. The site is easy to use and the recent GUI upgrades provide a brighter look and feel . That said, some of the tabs still have almost a beta look to them and one can only hope they are not quite finished with their current overhaul.

In the gallery, if you look closely at the chart screen shots of BMO Investorline and the Financial Times we can see the look almost identical, so either they’re using the same provider or same underlying tools to generate the charts. Either way, Investorline has not make their portfolios as nice as the Financial Times has.

Qtrade

They’ve received numerous, well-deserved, accolades for customer service and innovation. The web site works very well and the portfolio has a comprehensive set of views. The quotes and charts are standard fare but since you’re a paying customer you do get more information than aforementioned free portfolios.

Quote on RBC Royal Bank Direct Investing

RBC Royal Bank Direct Investing

RBC’s on-line portfolio is probably one of the oldest in existence – or at least it feels that way. The on-line banking web site is making great strides towards the 21st century but the brokerage still seems stuck in the 90′s. Once you’re there though, and you’ve forgiven them for not looking like an Apple or Google web site, you’ll find plenty of information from Thomson Reuters that is well laid-out and accessible.

So what we’ve seen here is the portfolio managers from the brokers and from the companies supplying the financial data are not much better (or worse for that matter) than any one else’s. There’s no real advantage to using your broker’s portfolio and there’s the big disadvantage of leaving the site open and exposed for an extended period of time.

In the final installment I’ll summarize all my reviews in a categorized table and leave you with my final conclusions.

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Calculating Returns and The Portals
Part 3 – News Outlets
Part 4 – Financial Services and Brokerages
Part 5 – Comparison Table and Conclusion

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Disclaimer The material in this article does not constitute advice and you should not rely on any material in this article to make any decision or take any action.

Related posts:

1. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 1 of 5
2. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 3 of 5
3. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 2 of 5

When the district sales managers of a luxury retailer logged into their corporate email accounts on shiny, new iPads for the first time, at the same time, cheers went up.

But something else went down: the Lotus Notes server.

Imagine all those iPads simultaneously downloading the full dump of Lotus Notes. Don’t point the finger at IT for this technical gridlock, not this time. The IT department didn’t even know about the iPad rollout until it was too late, and still had to deal with the fallout.

They hooked up to Lotus Notes & the IT Department didn’t even know it was being rolled out. REALLY?

If your IT department doesn’t even know that some rogue consultants had manage to either set up the Notes Traveler on their infrastructure or hook up a mobile device management(MDM) service like Good Technologies to their Domino servers then the whole team should be fired. You can’t blame Apple or iPad for creating a device that folks actually want to use, but you can put the blame on very bad decision-making and an IT department that appears to have its head in the sand rather than acknowledge that it’s customer aren’t very happy with the status quo.

The rest of this article is actually pretty good at explaining how Apple works with Big IT CO’s to help them prepare and plan for seamless integration. Apple alone has led the consumer market in provide BlackBerry-like integration and administration of their devices through MDM partners like AirWatch and Mobile Iron. And how there are actually plenty of good resources out there like Gartner and Forrester to help you figure out what the best practices are. The truth is that everyone from Dell to MacAffee have been throwing their hat into the MDM ring to try to get a piece on the iPad action.

I guess what really bugged me about this piece was that the author managed to find the most back water company running Notes and who’s IT department is so completely incompetent that they don’t realize everyone is walking around with iPads and that maybe some of them have found a way to get their email on it. Either that or the author has fabricated the entire scenario where Lotus Notes has a magical MS Exchange like service that users can turn on without any kind of infrastructure changes or firewall mods by at least ONE PERSON in IT.

via iPad in the enterprise: IT must stay ahead of the curve.

Related posts:

1. So You Want To Use That New iPad at Work
2. Gruber on MS Office and the iPad
3. Harry McCracken on the iPad Rivals of 2010

All of the Dads are back in the studios this week to talk about their recent movie night outing to see Wrath or the Titans, revisit the state of the student protests in Montreal due to proposed increase of the tuition fees. They also review the State of the BlackBerry as sent in by listener @FabHoule, Steph brings up the FlashBack Mac Trojan while Francois tackles the Instagram buyout by Facebook, Ben them jumps in and finally gives his two cents on Social Media before the while discussion tumbles down rathole full of comic book movies, b-class superheroes and Montreal Expos baseball nostalgia.

Once again we’d like to thank our sponsors Splitreason for their awesome t-shirts and ByteBuyers. Use Promo Code 2FatDads when visiting ByteBuyers.com and get an extra 5% on your next transaction.

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The trouble is that the Pages file was stripped of its password. What?

So being wired the way I am, I proceed to run some scenarios to figure out what is broken and where.

Scenario 1: Create a new password protected file, wait for Carbonite to back it up and attempt to open it via the iPhone app.

Result: Fail – File opens, password stripped out

Scenario 2: Take the same password protected file and upload it to iCloud.

Option A: make a copy in Pages for iOS.

Result A: Pass – File opens, password intact

Option B: open the orignal file as Pages for iOS.

Result B: Pass - File opens, password intact

Scenario 3: Open file on PC/Mac and access via Carbonite web site via web browser.

Result: Fail – File opens without prompting for password

This begs the question, why is the password stripped out? Am I the only one to find this troubling? Maybe there’s a gap between my expectations and what I bought.

Expectation 1: I can recover all my stuff in the event that a tornado picks up my house and sends it to Oz. This is obviously not met, as my file content is the same, but now I somehow have to remember what I protected, and how.

Expectation #2: Any sensitive document I have is still encrypted even if it is accessible to someone who hacked my carbonite account. What good is all that “upload it encrypted”, if the payload is no longer encrypted at the file level. I would have expected to have access to a mirror image of my filesystem, that can be recovered “as-is”, so that I only have to worry about buying a new Mac, not trying to figure out what was encrypted, and whatever other property the file had pre-upload.

In case there is any confusion, I’m less than thrilled.

UPDATE: May 1, 2012

OK so now I’m thrilled again.

I decided to contact Carbonite today to get some answers (it was nagging at me, as I pick my vendors carefully). Their Customer Support acted promptly and got me chatting with their support team. I shared my desktop with them, I went on to demonstrate the steps that I blogged about above. The password was prompted every time. I went on to reproduce the test steps again (and again), new folder, new files, new passwords. Now I can’t get it to not prompt for the password.

So to be clear, I can now download from the web (to my Mac and PC) and from my iDevices and always get the password challenge. So my faith is restored in my backup strategy.

I kind of feel like that guy who goes to the to the garage, and the car doesn’t make the noise anymore. Kudos to Carbonite for being so responsive.

… I still want to know what the deal was April 30th,

Related posts:

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2. The Lion, The iPhone and the Cloud
3. The iPhone Goes Where No Mac Has Gone Before

News papers and syndicates that deliver the news; in particular the outlets that have a business focus we expect to have a robust portfolio. We all typically have a news outlet we go to first for our news, and we might even log-in so we can leave comments. Most likely the newspaper offers an on-line portfolio.

Some of these news outlets offer premium features to paying subscribes, or even have entirely separate offerings for professionals. This review however is focused only on what’s available to the general public as a free service. For the average individual, who just wants to keep tabs more frequently than monthly or quarterly statements, the fees to access the premium services are not justified.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg is an American news outlet with a business focus. Their portfolio, quotes and charts are clean and efficient. I especially like the use of charts directly in the portfolio. Overall though the portfolio is fairly basic and not very innovative.

It should be noted that Bloomberg is one of the primary providers of news and data for professional advisors and portfolio managers. But what I’m looking at here is what is available to the general public, without a subscription.

Canadian Business

This is more of a business magazine than a daily newspaper outlet and the appearance of the web sites reflects it. They’ve outsourced their portfolio, quotes, and charts to Barchart and unfortunately it shows – everything related to stocks seems to happen in its own little box. There’s some nice little fly-overs in their portfolio but you don’t get as much information as other sites.

Financial Post

They have a very impressive Watchlist feature that scrolls a ticker across top of the web site, and you can click on a symbol to get more information or go to a full blown quote & chart page. Although in the actual portfolio manager, the quotes, and charts are bare-bones and visually un-appealing. This a web site that makes me think of the early days of the web when Flash ads were all over the page!

Financial Times

This site has everything – including a pink background. And does it really well. My initial impression of the web site was not very good; but in terms of data and functionality this gets an A+. With the added bonus that it really is international – not just North American. There’s a lot of information provided on the first page for each stock, and charts open over the page (very web 2.0 – even though they preserve the Netscape-look of the site while doing it).

Globe and Mail Investor

The quintessential Canadian business news web site. Their stock and fund filters are the foundation used by many other organizations. They recently revamped their on-line portfolio and it looks much slicker, but it no longer has all the detailed functionality of the old one. You can’t track your exact position but, for stocks at least, you can track how many shares you own. The quotes and charts pages are split up along traditional lines, and their functionality is limited but at least all the Canadian data is there.

There are premium features available to Globe Plus and Globe Investor GOLD subscribers but these were not reviewed here.

Market Watch (Dow Jones)

Here is a very innovative portfolio manager, from the way it is laid-out to the way it works (it’s the only one that allows you to tag a stock and filter your stocks by tag). You can’t track all your transactions, but you can track your positions. The quotes for Canadian stocks are complete, and the charts are from Big Charts (another Dow Jones company so it’s not really out-sourced) so they’re very well done.

Note that Dow Jones is another important service relied upon by many professional investors and portfolio managers.

Of all the news outlets the best of the bunch are definitely the Financial Times and Market Watch. Unfortunately the Canadian ones in the bunch aren’t stepping up.

In the next installment I’ll look at what financial services companies offer the public and what customers of brokerages get.

<

p>Part 1 – Introduction<br/>
Part 2 – Calculating Returns and The Portals<br/>
Part 3 – News Outlets<br/>
Part 4 – Financial Services and Brokerages<br/>
Part 5 – Comparison Table and Conclusion</p>

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Disclaimer The material in this article does not constitute advice and you should not rely on any material in this article to make any decision or take any action.

Related posts:

1. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 5 of 5
2. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 1 of 5
3. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 4 of 5

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Calculating Your Returns

There’s a lot of ways to calculate your returns, but unfortunately all these web sites use the simplest of methods: Total Return. Basically, they compare the ratio of your gains (or losses) to your costs without taking time into account. This is fine if you bought all your investments in one shot (at least on the same day) and now you’re going to sit back and watch them.

Pass the popcorn!

In reality you want to know your annualized return. Which is a fancy way to say you want to your average annual return. Except it’s not as easy as dividing the Total Return by the number of years you’re invested (that would be the simple or arithmetic average – and it’s the wrong way to annualize your returns). A better way would be to calculate your geometric average or compound return.

But there are even better ways: Money-Weighted or Internal Rate of Return, Time-Weighted or Linked Internal Rate of Return, Modified Dietz Rate of Return, or the Daily Valuation Method. The best would be the Daily Valuation Method, but unless you have a super-computer you won’t be calculating this one.

Of all these probably the best compromise between efficiency and accuracy is the Modified Dietz Method (also known as Approximate Time-Weighted Rate of Return). Once you’ve calculated that for each period (monthly, quarterly, or annually) you can link it together geometrically to see your annualized return over the years.

Once you know your annualized rate of return you can properly compare your investments and see which ones really are doing well, and which ones just sound good.

For more details on the calculations, PWL Capital has a great white paper on on How to Calculate your Portfolio’s Rate of Return.

Now hopefully one of these web sites, at least the ones that track dividends, take all that information to calculate a proper annualized rate of return.

The Portals

These are the big internet sites where a lot of us start our day. They bring a lot together, like news and weather, functionality like web searches, e-mail and calendars, and more. Adding a portfolio to that isn’t a stretch but since it’s not their focus we might not expect anything exciting from them, but we hope that with everything else going there’s going to be some interesting integration – like easy searches, e-mail alerts, and social sharing.

Google

They nailed the user experience with a clean and simple design that puts more data onto one page than any other site, and there’s even a gadget for my iGoogle home page and functions for my Google DocsDrive Spreadsheets. The charts are perfection: I could configure my own default settings and with one click I could expand the chart to the full width of my screen. But they blew it on data since dividend information for Canadian stocks (ETF’s in particular) is sometimes missing, in-complete, or just plain wrong!

MSN

They have one of the nicest portfolios – it’s actually a Silverlight app so it better be slick! But the rest is held together with duct tape and bubble gum. And basic information for Canadian stocks – even blue chip stocks – is frequently missing. The initially beautiful web site falls apart just below surface.

Yahoo

This is what you’d expect from a web-base portfolio. It looks nice, but the functionality is pretty basic and regrettably dividend information is often missing for Canadian stocks and the news is U.S. focused. Since Yahoo has fallen on hard times they’re probably not putting a lot of effort into something you can get everywhere else, so unfortunately I have to recommend you go somewhere else!

In the next installment I’ll take a look at what the news outlets have to offer. While some are astounding there are a few stinkers in the bunch!

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Calculating Returns and The Portals
Part 3 – News Outlets
Part 4 – Financial Services and Brokerages
Part 5 – Comparison Table and Conclusion

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Disclaimer The material in this article does not constitute advice and you should not rely on any material in this article to make any decision or take any action.

Related posts:

1. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 1 of 5
2. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 3 of 5
3. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 4 of 5

Google reserves the right to “use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute” content uploaded to their services.

I am no longer comfortable with this arrangement.

DO NO EVIL MY A$$!

via Ars Technica.

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1. Writing with Google: Blogger vs Plus
2. Life with Google Buzz: Week Two
3. Google moves towards evil?! Part 2

But who invented the spork? There’s no entry at the Culinary Hall of Fame. And what about all those other kitchen utensils that make great meals possible? The spatula and the spaghetti serving spoon, their inventors long forgotten. Who differentiated the butter knife from the bread knife?

We need a Kitchen and Culinary Utensil Hall of Fame! And the 2 Fat Dads are the calling the world out on this one, to get behind the movement remember those who make our movements memorable!

No related posts.

10 Hours is a Long Time

The biggest thing is that most folks that are ditching the notebook for the iPad have also been able to switch the way they tackle their everyday computing use. Andy Ihnatko and Shawn Blanc are both writers. As a Mobility Specialist in IT, I spend most of my time in and out of documentation, analysis and meetings that the iPad with a 10 hour battery life makes more sense than a heavy laptop with a painstakingly long boot ups sequence or a tendency to hang on sleep or hibernation. Apart from a few tasks that must be completed every month on a corporate computer (sounds like tree blood), I just don’t need to carry the laptop with me.

There’s An App For That

In fact, many of the modern Corporate IT departments have been quite responsive to their employee’s request for better remote access solutions. It’s not uncommon to hear about IT giving their users remote desktop or VDI access to corporate tools rather than handing out more laptops with tokens. I am even starting to see more and more companies producing web apps rather deploying full systems, now if Netweaver and Websphere could pick up their game and embrace Web Standards and HTML5 rather than plodding down the proprietary line any further. Even the big CMS systems and ERP systems are not ony making their product more browser friendly but many of them are even adopting HTML and web standards for their staple IE only tools. Even Microsoft is making a big play with Sharepoint by making the MySite available to iPad Users as a corporate DropBox alternative, not to mention that 2010 is meant to be mobile-ready, its not exactly Safari ready yet but it is getting better and better all the time. There are even a slew of SysAdmins and IT Professionals that have made the iPad as much a part of their uniform as the pocket protector, taped horn rims and solar-powered calculator watch.

The Legacy of Flash

The biggest issue of course is what do all these big companies do with the all of the Flash and Silverlight content they invested so heavily into a few year back. In many of the cases I have seen, all of this rich content dates itself really quickly or was poorly and hastily coded in the first place. What was good for the mouse like rollovers and pop ups simply do not translate to touch interfaces. In so many cases, even my old stuff, a rollover was used to explain something that could not be perceived or interpreted by the user interface. Producing high quality and succesful applications, whether they be native or web-based has become more and more complex usually involving designers, UI experts, integrators and developers. Where you could get away with a very simple design and let the developers hack and slice it up the way they wanted, in today’s world of retina display and touch interface, you really need to make your navigation simple and make sure that all interactions are intuitive. Unfortunately, this is where all traditional corporate dashboards and reporting tools fail. Rather than standardise and common words, symbols, actions, there is always a tendency to inject the corporate buzz speak, use variation of the logo or mascot to depict actions and then assume that everyone who uses the app will understand the business logic as intimately as the development team who put the app together. There is not much you can do about the business logic since most users will pick up on this with experience, but I still hold true to my old web dev mantra:

If you need an instruction manual to use a web site, the development team >has failed.

You Just Need to Work on That Flare

Once I got my workflows in order and manage to settle into the apps that I felt truly made me more productive, there was still one thing that held me back from using the iPad to it’s fullest. As great and powerful and beautiful as the iPad is it simply is not that easy to carry around sans-étui, naked. That 10 inch slab of gorrila glass might be strong, but it also attracts a lot on unwanted attention from keys, pens and whatever else you might throw into your courier bag, of course that is nothing compared to the damage an slate tile can do it from a 4 four foot fall. When I bought the first gen iPad, I think I spent more time debating the case than I did on whether I should get the 32GB or 64GB model (16 was never an option, too many photos and music). In the end I settled on the original Apple case because it was so simple and practical in function, although I really liked the DodoCase, the shipping fees to the Great White North where a little to steep.

When we started testing the iPad 2, we were handed a couple of demo units without cases or even smart covers and to be quite honest this made testing very difficult, instead of merely grabbing the tablet and going, we were consistently looking around for a safe way of carrying it around. We finally got a hold of some original Zagg Folio cases with keyboard for a pilot and suddenly the use cases and business scenarios starting multiplying themselves. I started to see the iPad as a very powerful V12 engine that in itself is very cool, but if you pop it into a Corvette or Suburban XL you will have truly different experiences, and it’s very subjective to say which is the best one. If you stuff an iPad into a Otterbox, you suddenly have a very robust field computer with many sensors, a camara, sound recorder and various input methods. However placing the iPad on an inCase Origami workstation along with the Apple Bluetooth keyboard provides a writer with a mobile and lightweight place to threw down his thoughts. The number of various cases, sleeves, stands, docks and holders are almost as great as the number of devices you can either plug into the 30 pin port or the headphone jack. From Square credit readers, photo card adapters to microphones, amp jacks and remote control devices, the iPad is quickly becoming the beige box PC that we you would see stuffed under desks or in studios, restaurants, lofts and garages in the early to mid nineties. The base computing platform is the same but the application use is what makes these tablets so flexible and adaptable. The comparison has been made so many times, and probably much better than this:

The iPad is very much a slate, a sheet of paper and canvas and what you do >with it is simply up to your creativity.

We just happen to be very lucky to live in a time where sharing one’s creativity does not require unlimited resources or the invention of devices like the Gutenberg press and broadcast radio and television networks. Producing quality enjoyable content can easily be done by the likes of you and me on relatively inexpensive devices like iPads.

So Do You?

Getting back to the original point of this post: Should we all be ditching our laptops and joining the tablet revolution? Absolutely not, just in the same way you should not be throwing out your drill-driver simply because you also own a series of Phillips, Robertson and flat-head screwdrivers that fit in your pockets. You need to equip yourself with the best set of tools, if that means a serious laptop that never really leaves your desk to which you add an iPad for your more mobile and single focussed task, then that is the tool set you require. A colleague recently mentioned that when you go to the garage, you don’t ask the guy to use a torque wrench, you ask him to change your oil. You need to start thinking of your computing needs in the same way. What do I need to do today: Produce and presentation and finish up my documentation. I am pretty sure that you never think:

I need to use this piece of clip art and the letter Q more often…

So think about the tasks you need to perform to do your job and think about whether the tools you have aid or impede your ability to complete those tasks. If you find yourself making all kinds of excuses not to lug around your laptop, then maybe you need to think about whether the iPad magically or sensibly makes those tasks easier to strike off your list. It’s taken almost a year, but I know what my answer is and I don’t know if it’s the same answer I will be giving 2 years from now, but at the price of the iPad, I am willing to give it a shot. Are you?

No related posts.

Introduction

Probably one of the best reasons to have your investments in a web-based portfolio manager is to avoid having to login – and stay logged in – to your brokerage whenever you want to see how things are going. And if your brokerage is also your bank and credit card issuer then it’s really not something you want to leave open on your computer all day!

Besides, most of us automatically log in in to a portal (Google, MSN, or Yahoo) or news site (Globe & Mail, National Post, etc.) anyways so we may as well take advantage of their portfolio managers at the same time.

One thing is certain, there’s a lot of differences amongst all the portfolio managers out there on the web! Not only do they look different, but they offer different functionality – some focus on quotes, some on charts, and some on analysis – and varying amounts of information (and completeness of the information).

The Players

I’ve compared portfolio managers from the portal sites: Google, MSN, and Yahoo; the news sites: Bloomberg, Canadian Business, Financial Post, Financial Times, Globe and Mail Investor, and MarketWatch; financial services: Barchart, Morningstar, and TMX Money; brokerages: Bank of Montreal Investorline, Qtrade, and Royal Bank of Canada Direct Investing.

You can see screen shots of a sample portfolio, quote, and chart from each one in the gallery.

My Methodology

I’ve tabulated a lot of the characteristics of each web site. But of course there’s more to it then you can get from reading down a column and across a few rows. There were three things I really focused on

1. the user experience: if I felt like I was back in 1995 and using Netscape Navigator rather than a modern browser on a modern web site then the portfolio manager got a thumbs down!
2. completeness of the data, especially dividends: investing for dividends is one of my primary methods and the more a web site tells me about the dividends the happier I am!
3. charts: I like my charts to cover 3 to 5 years, show Bollinger Bands, and dividend payments – AND I want all that in as few clicks as possible!

Everyone looks for something different, of course news, analyst opinions, financials tables, and more are all available to varying degrees.

I would also like to see a portfolio manager that goes beyond the generic performance calculations and puts something together not only for my portfolio but that also takes the dividends my investments generate into account. It’s easy to calculate total return and other metrics based on your cost and the current market value. It’s harder to take cash flows and time into account but I’d really like to see a web site that did that.

One thing I don’t like to see is a lot of advertising. I realise it’s inevitable these days but some web sites do a better job of integrating the ads and on others it is far to distracting to make the web site usable.

There’s a few I specifically didn’t compare:

• Vuru.co since they couldn’t provide analysis for bank stocks (good for dividends) or stocks younger than five years (conversions from Income Trusts);
• Quotestreamer since it’s a paid subscription and way beyond a simple portfolio manager;
• Globe Investor GOLD since it’s another expensive subscription service;
• Mint because they only work with linked accounts (I thought I could create a manual account but apparently no longer); or
• Yodlee since their portfolio manager is barely ready for alpha let a lone general use!

And I’m sure there others out there too that I missed, and I’d be happy to hear about them in the comments.

In the next installment I’ll look at the what the portals have to offer.

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Calculating Returns and The Portals
Part 3 – News Outlets
Part 4 – Financial Services and Brokerages
Part 5 – Comparison Table and Conclusion

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Disclaimer The material in this article does not constitute advice and you should not rely on any material in this article to make any decision or take any action.

Related posts:

1. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 3 of 5
2. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 2 of 5
3. What’s the Best On-Line Portfolio Manager to Track my Investments, part 4 of 5

Now that Path has added that feature to Android, and because quite a few friends switched to Path after abandoning Instagram, I have given it another look.

The coolest feature of their lenses is they are applied while you are taking the picture! Not afterwards, so you can see live how the shot will look. You can always change the lens afterwards too.

Unfortunately Path doesn’t have all the editing features I’ve gotten used to now in Aviary – things like cropping the photo, rebalancing the colours, adding some mark-up, and more. And their lenses do not include the funky borders or other embellishments that Aviary (and Instagram) added to accentuate the effect.

So the question is, do I use Path as a Twitter client? Do I abandon Twitter (and it’s ecosystem) and live entirely on Path? Or is Path just not happening for me?

I don’t really have any compelling reason to be on Twitter over any other social network – I’m following a couple dozen people and the ones I interact most with I also see in-person or are on Path too. But my current workflow (snap a photo, edit & embellish with Aviary, and post to Twitter with hosting on TwitPic) works really well. Photos posted to Path and shared on Twitter are only visible if the viewer clicks through the tweet to Path (photos shared on Tumblr show-up on Tumblr but you have click through to Path to see the comment) – TwitPic photos show-up in the tweet.

For now at least, stay tuned to Twitter rather than Path.

Source: Path’s blog

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Related posts:

1. Instagram for Android is here
2. Path Updates ToC: Doing the Right Thing
3. Instagram vs. Lightbox vs. PicPlz vs. Aviary and More…

Rule #1: Work with gravity – not against it!

It might seem like a good idea to start in the basement, where you can make a mess without worrying about cleaning-up right away, but it’s much easier to line-up your holes when letting a five-foot drill extension hang downwards than when trying to hold it upright above your head!

Tools and materials

Rigid 2 1/2 inch hole saw

You’re going to need some tools of course, here’s what’s essential:

• Drill, good and powerful, with a 1/2-inch chuck if possible
• 4-foot drill extension, especially if there are fire-breaks in your walls
• 2 1/2-inch hole saw, a solid one – not one of those multi-size ones
• Drill bits, for what ever material you’re going to hang the motor unit on
• Hack saw
• Workbench
• Mitre box
• Quick clamp
• Screw driver(s), depending on what kind of screws you’re using
• Tape measure
• Drywall saw
• Wire cutters
• Wire strippers
• Spirit level
• Flash light
• Permanent marker

Central Vacuum Parts

Every installation is different, but every kit is the same, so make sure you also have the following material:

• Straight tubes
• A variety of tube fittings (we’ll figure out exactly which ones later, but wider curves are better than narrow bends)
• Plastic pipe straps
• Metal strapping
• Outlets
• Sweep inlet (optional)
• Glue
• 18-2 wire, enough to go from the furthest outlet to the unit
• Marrettes, in case you need to splice any of the 18-2 wire together
• Screws and plugs, according to the material where the unit will be installed

Planning

The less bends and splits the better. If you’re house has two levels try to keep it vertical; if it’s a bungalow keep the outlets in a straight line.

Figure out where your outlets are going to go. This depends a lot on how long the hose is that you have. Make sure you can comfortably reach all around your house, under the beds, around furniture, and up to the tops of bookcases and armoires (with the duster attachment).

If your walls aren’t aligned and you would have to make an odd bend in the tubes see if you can up or through a closet instead, where no one will see your “short-cut” and you’ll avoid unnecessary work.

Mounting

The main unit needs to be solidly mounted but remain accessible so you can empty the canister regularly. Make sure there is enough clearance above and below the unit.

It should also be near an outside wall so you can exhaust to the outside (if you decide to, but doing so means the small particles that pass through the filter end up outside). There’s a muffler too you can put along the exhaust to keep the noise level down.

There also needs to be a power outlet nearby to plug the unit into.

Installation

Dry fit all your connections before gluing them together – you’ve only got one chance and if you get it wrong you’re headed back to the hardware store for more pieces! Note that the tubes should have a dashed line down the side and the fittings should have eight notches around the edge. Line up the dashed line with one of the notches and mark them both with the marker.

When cutting the tube use the mitre box and hack saw to make nice, straight cuts. Then de-burr the edge so it’s nice and clean.

Once everything is fitted you can start gluing. Make sure you can still move the pieces around enough to glue the next piece on, not so the system is so rigid. It may be better to work towards the middle rather than towards one end. Don’t forget to pull the 18-2 control wire along with the pipe and attach it to the outlets as you go.

And once it’s all glued together, or even as you’re gluing if necessary, don’t forget to put in some straps to hold the tubes in place. Either the pipe straps when the tubes are up against a solid surface or with a length of metal strapping when the tubes are hanging (make sure you wrap around the tube for a solid hold rather than just passing underneath the tube).

If you’re installing a sweep inlet be aware they’re not easy to do. Not only because they’re typically in awkward places but because the fitting snaps onto the back without glue you have to make sure you don’t dislodge it when you connect to the rest of the tubes.

Along the way you might want to use some duct tape on a few key joints in case you need to make any changes later. Or if you can’t finish the whole job in one go but still need to use the system.

Enjoyment

Now that the system is installed you can kick back, crack open a cold one, and compare your work to my installation.

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

No related posts.

T-Shirt of the week: Keep Calm  @ SplitReason.com
We’d like to thank our DadCast and site sponsors SplitReason once again for their continued support. Check out this page or their site by clicking above for more awesome Tees, hats, caps and mugs.

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Now the sell-out may not be the end of the world as we know it, but we expect in a very short time that Instagram will change their terms of service to read All yur pics iz mine! and we’ll be forced to share on Facebook primarily. That may not happen. Facebook might simply embed Instagram as the built-in camera on their smartphone apps and leave the rest of us who don’t Facebook to use a stand-alone Instagram like we do now. But is that really why they invested a billion dollars to acquire Instagram!?

Some of the alternatives that have been mentioned include: Aviary, Flickr, Hipster, Lightbox, Magic Hour, MOLOME, PicPlz, Pixlr-o-matic, Poctos, and StreamZoo.

A search on the Google Play store for “photo filters” or even just the Photography category reveals more than 1,000 results! Granted they aren’t all Instagram-like apps, but reading through the first few pages reveals that there are a lot of choices. More than we can possible review here, sorry.

So for your consideration, here are some alternatives to Instagram. Not an exhaustive list, but the list I am considering. They aren’t all drop-in replacements for Instagram, but the ultimate result is the same: sharing fun, quirky photos.

Lightbox

This was the first Instagram-on-Android app that I tried. It worked really well, and pretty much works like Instagram. The most interesting twist for Lightbox is the camera is interchangeable, so if you prefer another camera app you drop that in, or you can use Lightbox’s camera independently of Lightbox.

PicPlz

This is what I first switched to after the sell-out announcement. It too works pretty much like Instagram, in fact pre-dating Instagram in it’s creation. The interface is not as intuitive though – it sounds simple enough: one touch effects. But you end up with a long list of combinations when in fact having a few separate toggles and lists would probably be faster. The coolest thing about PicPlz is that it integrates the Aviary tools so you can go beyond effects and actually edit your photos on your phone.

Hipster

This one actually sounds cooler than Instagram and represents something I’ve done on family vacations: I use my phone to send personalized, custom e-mail post-cards. The Hipster app takes this simple idea, builds-in a camera, filters & effects, and makes an entire community out of it. You can flip your post cards over and see more information about the photo.

Flickr

Perhaps not one you’d expected to see in this list, the Flickr app actually works perfectly as an Instagram replacement – it even has a built-in camera to go with the filters & effects and sharing. And it has the added benefit of the power of Flickr once you’re back at your computer. So everything you share ends-up in your Flickr account, the same place you share the photos you take with that hefty DSLR – no integrating multiple sites into your workflow or directing your followers all over the intertubes.

Aviary

This is another odd member in the list. Aviary revolutionized online media editing (not just photos) and has a suite of tools anyone can integrate into their apps (either mobile or web based). But this isn’t an app, in fact this is a sharing plug-in that allows you to add filters & effects (and a whole lot more) to your photos before the final step of sharing them via your favourite service (ex.: TwitPic for Twitter). Even though Aviary is free, there are add-ons (filters, lenses, stickers, etc.) available for purchase.

Pixlr-o-matic

This is the big-daddy of filters and effects. There are so many it would overwhelming, but they’ve thoughtfully included an effects manager so you can decide which ones show up as your initial choices. Obviously the coolest thing about Pixlr how much you can do with your photos (84 effects, 287 overlays, and 193 borders), and their interface is solid and well thought-out so it doesn’t have be overwhelming. This is app will have you playing with the same photo for hours if you’re perfectionist.

What’s missing? Something Native!

Especially from Google, that has PicasaWeb, I would have expected something like the Flickr app. Between Google+, PicasaWeb, Google Docs, Blogger, and the upcoming GDrive they offer at least four ways to store and share your photos. But the mobile experience is horrid (PicasaWeb synchronization is either all or nothing, Google+ auto-uploading is unreliable, third-parties filling the gap aren’t really an integrated solution).

And Apple too, known for their outstanding media software, should be leading the way rather than leaving the way for others to build a billion-dollar enterprise!

In conclusion

After trying all the aforementioned apps on my phone, a few more in an emulator, and visiting a few web sites (but the apps didn’t make the cut) I can say one thing for sure: there are a lot of choices!

My current, likely final, solution is using my built-in camera and embellishing the shots I want to share on Twitter (via TwitPic) using Aviary. The Aviary tools are very powerful, though typically I’ll just crop and add a filter, if I need to there’s a lot more I can do. And I’m really tempted to buy the Viewfinder effects.

The other thing I’m adding to my workflow, that I discovered while researching this article is QuickPic. This replaces the default gallery and makes working with the photos (and videos) on my photo much easier, including opening them in Aviary and sharing them.

Happy snapping!

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Related posts:

1. Path vs. Instagram on Android
2. Instagram for Android is here
3. Instagram: Version 2.1

What I ended up with was a set of conversations that were fractured into three parts. I had Instagram likes, Facebook likes and Twitter favorites. Comments made by friends on Facebook were not visible to people on Instagram. Facebook friends could see the comments on Instagram, but they couldn’t respond on the Web.

I strongly disagree with this argument on so many levels and aside from the obvious atrocity that in FaceBook Commenting on your own site, the basis of this post is that everyone shares the same content on every platform at once. I have always called these guys social spammers and sadly they may be squeezing out a few extra page views, but they are also annoying the few folks that have openly chosen to follow/like/read their stuff on all platforms. If you’re social strategy is to hit every network with all of your stuff all the  time, good luck to you, but I think you’ll find that your audience will actually fracture itself without any of your help.

Your Aunt Sue really doesn’t care what your programming buddies think of the artwork on the latest Republic of Peach cover. My personal belief is that the very few folks that are very good at reaching other people and connecting with them are NOT social media gurus with python scripts that can hit 15 networks at once. The folks that are very good at reaching other people are selectively choosing what they put out and who they put it out too.

Instagram was an awesome tool for this because you could select who you share your food pics with and whether or not the extreme seafood platter or the vintage 1997 bottle of wine was actually Twitter worthy. Personally I was fine with sharing Instagram pics to Twitter and my JohnnyleCanuck.com blog, but I know very well that the Facebook and Google+ crowd probably don’t need to see every single post. But should they get a liking of for my pics from the occasional share, then they are more than welcome to visit the site and subscribe via RSS. No one needs me to ram this stuff down their throats, if they need want to comment than it’s up to them to do it where they like. I’m sure that each fractured conversation will be more interesting in their respective silos than having them all crammed into FaceBook mosh pit that will end up to be just as interesting and valuable as YouTube and Reddit comments.

via Chill Out: Facebook Won’t Ruin Instagram – RWW.

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1. InstaGone! Why I’m Quitting Instagram
2. Instagram: Version 2.1
3. Instagram vs. Lightbox vs. PicPlz vs. Aviary and More…

What made Instagram so awesome in the first place was the fact that it is its own social network that works just fine on its own. You take little square pictures on your phone and upload them to Instagram where you can share with friends, photogs and other Instragram users if you like. However the real kicker is in the fact that Instagram was so open to letting you export and share your photos with other social networks and services such as Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, email and yes even the FarceBook. And that’s the point right there, YOU decide what YOU want to do. You open your account with Instagram, there is no need to use FaceBook Connect ever. You can even keep all your stuff private and never ever share with anyone but the few folks you allow to see your account: your close circle of iPhone and Android owners.

So what sucks so much about this buyout, is that Instagram was already a pretty strong community of photo-sharers who were also FaceBook haters. Well actually there is no way for me to know this, I am making a huge assumption based on the fact that I am not on FaceBook to know if they are there or not. So getting back to what sucks, a strong community of picture takers are most likely going to be forced to start using FaceBook Connect, continuously badgered to link up their accounts, or even worse flooding theirs friends’ news-feeds with pics of food, small animals and quirky finds of the meatspace.

Being very wary of Facebook to begin with for all its past privacy blunders and the lack of NetSmarts of the average FaceBooker, it really bugs me that a service that was so well-developed would just take the easy and lazy buyout option as soon as they realised that they had no idea how to make money. The obvious tactic would have been to create Pro accounts but since the API was already pretty open, this would have only alienated and pissed off too many of its users. So instead they choose to piss off their ENTIRE user base for a small chance of trying to hook in your Aunt-Sue and that really annoying girl in High-School who already shares far too much.

284 293 == BUH BYE on your dial pad!

As these social networks mature and the Post-PC era looms closer and closer I am looking around at who can respectfully hold on to my data and earn my trust and the list keeps getting shorter and shorter:

• Facebook
• Microsoft
• Google is on a very short leash
• My own web servers running WordPress.org
• Twitter – but it’s backed up somewhere else too
• Apple

And with Apple it’s only because I pay dearly for it and have copies on machines in my house. If ever I were to leave the Apple eco-system, I know all too well that I would be in very big trouble.

So I’m stuck trying to figure out a new workflow to get tagged, titled & filtered square photos onto Twitter or Path (for now) as well and JohnnyLeCanuck.com, my faux-Tumblr site that is now a self hosted WordPress site ever since I saw how fragile Tumblr was when it could scale. I might be able to cobble something together with Flickr and ifttt.com but it will mean holding on to that Flickr Pro account for another year despite the fact they are themselves only one more CEO away from extinction. I’m not even worried about losing the pics on Instagram since they were always backed up onto the devices and then in a special Aperture library at home.

 The thing that annoys me the most is the ever-growing trend of building up your business on my content, then selling out and shutting down. Of course I understand that this is part of the game of being an early adopter and dealing with startups, but it doesn’t make it any easier to switch services and pull content. I suspect more people will be like me and start trying to roll their own, we already do this for our Webservices, RSS, Podcast Media, and Shortlinks. Don’t expect us to start building Holga and Polaroid filters for WordPress, but expect more of the same critical eye when evaluating new services and apps.

I wasn’t the only one to bail on Instagram’s Fail, Steve & Ben both deleted their apps today.

Related posts:

1. Instagram and Fractured Social Comments
2. Instagram for Android is here
3. Path vs. Instagram on Android

So far my only annoyance is not being able to set a default or favourite effect as a starting point.

In fact, Instagram has worked really well. It definitely appears they’ve taken the Android platform to heart. There haven even been a number of fixes and improvements in the first week, which is very impressive.

It’s been a week, I took a few pictures and published some of them. I definitely won’t take the awesome camera on my Xperia (is it a phone with a built-in camera or a camera with a built-in phone?) and make the pictures look like I was still using my Xenon all the time. But for the stuff I typically share on Twitter this will probably be my go-to app, replacing TwitPic (though TwitPic’s web interface has some value – it would be nice if we could see our history of Instagrams via a web interface, or if they were automagically tagged on Twitter).

Source: Instagram

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

Related posts:

1. Path vs. Instagram on Android
2. Instagram vs. Lightbox vs. PicPlz vs. Aviary and More…
3. Instagram: Version 2.1

But if even that’s too long a wait for you, try calling 8-1-1, consulting your pharmacist, or going to a CLSC.

Just don’t whine about lack of government funding and then whine about all the taxes we pay! Where do you think the government funding comes from!

Source: Montreal Gazette

Via: Mobile Syrup

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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Media coverage and sales of Papermill have already far exceeded my expectations and I can’t envision either increasing. With this in mind, it’s easy to conclude that the the application, with its current price and need for a subscription, will never generate a profit, especially when costs like fonts still need to be incurred. If I were to create a ‘freemium’ or ad-based version, the app’s profitability would almost certainly increase but I believe that this would decrease the quality of experience that the app offers and that is rare on the Android market.

It’s a real shame that a gorgeous app like Papermill will never see the kind of success on Android Play that it would if it were in the Apple App Store. Sadly this is all down to the fact that Android phones are still primarily used by people who are used to Google Free and Ad Based platforms or who simply don’t believe in paying for anything. This is the same reason why there is no Reeder for Android, the concept of paying extra for a RSS reader that basically ends up being a better front end for Google Reader. Let me put it this, people are actually paying for an app in order to view their Google Reader stuff in a nicer way. The entire concept of better UI & form over function is lost on the Android community. We’ve said this more than a few times on this site and on the DadCast: In general, Google products are over engineered and under designed. They all have the same non-organic feel to them that leaves a very large part of us stone cold.

Not to mention that you will rarely find an Android user who is truly invested into the platform and committed to continue buying the devices contract after contract the way Apple iPhone users are. By default, this creates community that will hold off investing into any one app for fear that they are throwing more money into their cell phone.

Source Papermill.

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2. Three Weeks With An Android – Part DEUX
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I mean, apart from the big pink box that says Ads, how far do we have to go? There are plenty of Dummies books available for people who want to learn more; and those who don’t aren’t going to no matter what we do.

Source: Reuters

Via: BGR

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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Yellow Media, the publisher of those books – the Yellow Pages as they were known, has run into some trouble lately. Much like RIM, who’s market roared past them while they were busy gloating about how great they were, Yellow Media has also suffered from ignoring their market and assuming the old model was the only model. Not to say they haven’t tried, sites like AutoTrader.ca was quite successful (which is why they were able to sell it when they needed cash) and RedFlagDeals.com is my go to site when comparison shopping.

But these web sites just don’t provide the revenue to keep their print business afloat – I doubt any web site could ever produce the financial results that a traditional publishing business had. It’s just too easy to publish on the Internet – any idiot can set up a Content Management System (CMS) and populate with stuff – business listings, forums, news, etc.. If they’re serious they can get their own domain. And if they’re really serious they can even host the service themselves!

The leaders and directors of Yellow Media missed this simple fact. They thought no one could assail they’re lofty position as sole provider of phone numbers to North Americans. They missed the obvious fact the people’s web browser home pages most point to Google or Bing with a convenient search bar at the top, where they can type in the name of a company; iPhone users can just ask Siri! Android users can just ask Google! (I’m sure Windows Phone users can do something similar too).

So what happens to you when the world rushes past your astute leadership and whacks you in the ass as it laps you? Well, if you’re a director of Yellow Media you give yourself a raise – a 26% raise! Because all the patting yourself on the back is hard work and deserves some recognition! And in case anyone (like my, in this blog, in this post) points out the obvious, well, you back yourself up by spending another $300,000 to produce a report that says “look, all these other companies gave their directors big raises!” Of course you ignore that fact that your shortlist of companies are among the most successful in their industries!

I don’t agree with the Occupy movement in any way, shape or form. But it’s hard to not have sympathy when you see stuff like this!

BTW, don’t use your iPad as a booster – even the new iPad with it’s added thickness won’t be sufficient!

Source: The Globe and Mail

Cross-posted on Schulzter’s Blog

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I will make no excuses for our past criticism and scrutiny of the Waterloo based Research In Motion. Over the past year they have seen their share price drop $50, from $75+ to a mere $13 recently (two-thirds of the total value). RIM missed crucial deadlines with the PlayBook and then under delivered on its functionality, to the point that they were selling the devices as a big screen companion to one of their aging messaging devices. The Playbook fiasco was so bad that RIM had to release their BlackBerry 6.1 OS release as a full new release in a buggy 7.0 riddled with battery issues and OS lock-ups. They showed their cards far too early with their next generation QNX OS for quad-core BlackBerry and killed off  their own sales of the  next-gen Bold and Torch devices. Each new iteration of the OS only brought a few key features, features that other Smartphone OS’s have had for years, such as App Stores, WiFi, WiFi HotSpot, the WebKit browser and of course the apps themselves. RIM has always been slow at releasing popular apps Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook took far too long to make in the platform and then other apps like Evernote, Foursquare and AngryBirds where buggy and feature stripped by the time they got there.

Yes we have been harsh on RIM and their product line-up, their failed execution and their incompetent leadership. In our defense, we are Canadian and by definition we are going to hold any other Canadian company up to a very high standard. When Canucks make stuff, we only settle for the best quality and performance possible. Let me explain with a few of our other exports: Hockey, Beer, Maple Syrup, Hydro Electricity, Lumber, Comedians, Space Arms (Canadarm), Skaters, Skiers and Snowboarders and let’s not forget Beavers. We do have some of the best beavers in the world, world-class tree cutting and damn building beavers with beautiful pelts (Read into this any way you like, also see comedians).

Now you may understand why we are all so annoyed that the company that pretty much invented two-way paging and mobile messaging is doing so badly and is in fact unable to do anything to get them out of this infernal pit of abysmal performance. In fact, the only thing that RIM have done properly is allow themselves to be positioned for a foreign hostile take-over without any objection from the Canadian Government which is usually incredibly uptight about letting any homegrown gem go. I suspect that the sour taste of Jim’s failed attempts at bringing another NHL Hockey team back to The Great White North is probably a good enough reason to let the over-ripe Berry go to an Asian consortium. Asia is just about the only place where the BlackBerry still holds a decent market share.

So when the news about the latest Quarterly Reports broke and then the swift dismissal of Jim Balsille from the board, Schultzter asked me why I didn’t pounce on the opportunity to take another dig at Canada’s very own Waterloo. After collecting some info and reading some of the other blogger and analyst pontificate on the State of Blackebery, I decided that I might actually be done with the idea of flog the dead horse one more time. I have come to the same conclusion as our fine Houses of Parliament, it’s time to expatriate RIM. If a Canuck can successfully take over the head of a Finnish landmark and resuscitate the Nokia brand as well as give some street cred to Microsoft and if a bunch of hippies from California can turn an MP3 player in the best-selling and most talked about Smartphone on the market, then I’m ok with letting The Waterloo gang slip out the back door and head on over to Korea.

The opinions expressed above are those of the average Johnny Canuck and do not necessarily reflect those of other Fat Dads and overpaid analysts.

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It makes a lot of sense too. Lots of little players aren’t going to to have the resources to execute a national strategy – neither to build-out and operate a network across all geographical markets, nor to deal with the regulatory and market issues across our country, nor negotiate with suppliers to offer a wide selection of reasonably priced devices.

And of course a couple behemoth’s dividing the market and capturing enough money to satisfy their shareholders aren’t going to go out on any limbs for their customers; or make any particularly risky business moves either. Just coast their way from annual report to annual report.

So who’s our fourth national carrier going to be? Can Wind Mobile’s Anthony Lacavera bring Moblicity and Public together under one name (without Public he won’t have any spectrum in Quebec). Or perhaps Videotron can leverage their resources and pick-up spectrum outside of Quebec and become our newest national carrier?

Source: Effect of Regulatory Reform on the Efficiency of Mobile Telcommunications (PDF)

Via: The Globe and Mail

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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I know the computer science world doesn’t really need another programming language. We’ve already got so many to choose from it’s hard to find two programmers with overlapping skills. The only language that has really stood the test of time is C/C++. Granted Go didn’t make it into the top-50 on Tiobe’s March 2012 Index (neither did Google’s other language, Dart) but considering these languages were already on the chart while in beta is important (Tiobe’s index tracks languages that are actually used, they have to be more than a figment of someone’s imagination).

The other thing to consider is that Go is a server-side language, there’s no UI elements (no native at least, nor official). So now that Go is at version 1 and out of beta; and as the world of the cloud heats up where micro-clients on mobile phones and tablets hand the processing, data storage, and sharing to web services we’ll probably see more and more demand for a language like Go. Currently any Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, or OS X system can run Go; as for PaaS support there’s Google App Engine of course but we should see more PaaS support now.

So good luck to Google, and their Go language. Happy 1st birthday!!!

Source: The Go Programming Language Blog

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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Still, I like the idea of Google offering a cloud storage service. Of course it will integrate Google’s other services, like photos from Picasa Web, music, documents, books, and others. We’ll probably even be able to send files directly from our GMail account; and of course share them via Google+ (if you’re into that kind of thing).

And let’s not forget the Android integration! Of course Google needs that to put something on the plate to compete with Microsoft’s Sky Drive (on their Windows phones and tablets) and Apple’s iCloud.

So let’s line-up our files and get our internet connections ready, the uploading is about to begin!

Source: Boy Genius Report

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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“Our checks indicate that current demand is poor: BlackBerry 7 devices are now close to six months old, and our checks suggest that the initial enthusiasm post launch has tailed off,” the analyst wrote. “We model 11 million unit volumes in FYQ4, at the low end of the guidance range. Management’s aggressive marketing campaign, targeted for the U.S., appears not to have been as effective as hoped. BlackBerry 7 devices remain expensive comparatively and the once popular 8520 is going end of life.”

I keep hearing how RIM have plenty of money and aren’t going anywhere. The problem is that they are LITERALLY GOING NOWHERE. They have gone down as far as they can without being the victim of a Hostile/Pitty Take-Over and they are certainly not going up either… Worse yet is that the projected roadmap is a sure sign you can expect more of the same inertia for the rest of the year.

(Although, I really do hope that I will be proven wrong)

via ‘BGR on RIM: ‘Grim and getting grimmer’.

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But the latest addition to the franchise is a bit hard on the eyes on my little (um, well, 4.3 inch) screen. It definitely looks like it was made with tablets in mind. There’s so much going on the screen, and there’s a lot more movement in this game. It’s no longer just up and down, the birds are zipping around planets and swinging back in the same direction they came from.

Angry Birds Original vs Space

I don’t know if Rovio has admitted this one was made for tablets, but it definitely feels like that’s where it would be best played.

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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For companies, blogs, etc. there’s RSS feeds in Google Reader.

It’s nice to have that separation. I know I can flush my backlog in Reader without missing something a friend says. And I know my Twitter is a quick catch-up on my friends without any corporate-ad-crap interlaced.

If I could do that with Facebook – and they had had a bit more respect for my privacy – I would still be active there. But I can’t. So I’m not.

Source: Young & Thrifty

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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It’s the sorry and admittedly one-sided tale of Galaxy Nexus-owner Sahas Katta, who claims he beat a “Get Smoked” Windows Phone challenge at a Microsoft store yesterday, but was denied his prize. 

A Microsoft insider has since tweeted that he’ll “make it right” for Sahas, but will it be the kind of right that includes a $1,000 laptop?

This story just reeks of (BS) MS Corporate marketing gone wrong.  The minute that this contest got started, you had to know that it was gonna be a little one sided and somewhat constrained in the rules of qualification. The test in case was for a cold boot and displaying the weather in two cities. On the Windows Phone you can configure the widget to display on the lock or immediately on the post lock screen. Regardless of the loops the security settings this guy had to go through to beat this already rigged test, Microsoft should simply have ponied up the lappie and made sure that test was never performed again.

When you run such a high profile test, you really should be giving the the tester the ability to bit the bullet, give the guy  his prize and get him out of the store as quickly as possible. Or else this kind of crap happens.

via  Engadget.

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This week the dads review the NEW iPad while Steve tries to make it home on one of Montreal’s older Go trains. As you can imagine the sound quality is not great at times but we think you still enjoy our first look at the new iPad and some of the applications that have been released along with it. Also discussed: a brief review on Windows 8 Consumer Preview, the Apple TV and some of the new features in iOS 5.1.

[Update] Since recoding this show, Bell proceeded to quietly light up Montreal with LTE coverage.

Once again we’d like to thank our sponsors Splitreason for their awesome t-shirts and ByteBuyers. Use Promo Code 2FatDads when visiting ByteBuyres.com and get an extra 5% on your next transaction.

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Source: New York Times

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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Apple surpassed RIM as the top mobile phone manufacturer in Canada said Bloomberg on Thursday. Data from IDC and Bloomberg suggests Apple shipped 2.85 million handsets in 2011, while RIM shipped 2.08 million. This is down from 2008 when RIM out shipped Apple almost five to one.

We all saw this coming months ago, but it’s still something else to see it actually happen…

via  TUAW.

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I have to admit I’m surprised Sony hasn’t flexed some of it’s retail muscle more than the other manufacturers. Perhaps now that Ericsson is out of the picture they will be able to. After all, Sony is the only one other than Apple that has such an extensive and well developed retail network. They really don’t need to rely on the carriers to promote or distribute their products, so why should they worry about what the carriers want – they should just sell their phones like they sell all their other electronics, through their retail channels.

Source: Sony

Via: Mobile Syrup

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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The problem is the requirement to test every version of every device! And the FAA expects airlines and device manufacturers to cooperate; and those that don’t will be on the no-fly list! But do you really think they’re going to issue stewardesses with a field guide to identify tested and un-tested devices?! What if an Asus Transformer is certified, but a Transformer Prime isn’t?! Or the original and iPad 2 are certified but the new iPad isn’t?! Good luck with that?! And the manufacturers know that, so they’re not going to pay for all their devices certified – just enough that their brand is recognized as certified and hope that’ll carry the rest of the models through. Unless the FAA plans on issuing certification stamps that have to be clearly visible on the back of the device (like child car seats are certified for airplane use).

Source: The New York Times

Via: Boy Genius Report

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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Source: No Jitter

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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Another political comprise wrapped in campaign speech, the latest telecom decisions serve only to ensure Canadians continue to suffer the worst mobile service in the modern world! At first glance – and that’s all Harper wants you to do – it looks good: lifting foreign ownership restrictions on providers with less than 10% of the market and reserving 25% of the 700 Mhz bandwidth for new entrants. But as they say, watch I do and not what I say: consider that MTS and Sasktel can’t benefit from foreign capital but at the same they’ll be bidding on the spectrum reserved for new entrants. Effectively the government has said “we don’t want a fourth national carrier – we want the new entrants to sell-out or die trying!”

Source: Industry Canada

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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Source: Michael Geist

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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Source: Cloud Ave

Image courtesy of Blame it on the Voices.

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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T-Shirt of the week: Stormtroopa @ SplitReason.com
We’d like to thank our DadCast and site sponsors SplitReason once again for their continued support. Check out this page or their site by clicking above for more awesome Tees, hats, caps and mugs.

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This weekend I had the opportunity to play with a Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 with LTE. It’s a great Android Honeycomb tablet with connectivity every where you go thanks to the LTE radio.

I only had the tablet for the weekend, and quite a busy weekend, but I managed to try a few things out. Of course my wife and I checked our e-mail (Hotmail and GMail) and browsed the web (including some Flash), of course we played some a lot of Solitaire, did some navigation, and to see how well LTE was working ran Speed Test on a regular basis.

Screen size

The 8.9 inch screen size is a bit smaller than most Android tablets, that typically have a 10.1 inch screens (except the Sony Tablet S with its 9.4 inch screen size). The iPad has a 9.7 inch screen. The screen is big enough for all the things I wanted to do, and there’s about a one-inch bezel around the screen that makes it easy to hold.

In a few instances though I found that holding the screen in portrait mode was preferable because it meant no up-and-down scrolling, but then the size of the text and images was almost too small to be comfortable. Given the choice I think I would prefer a 10.1 inch tablet for that reason.

Flash

There’s a few web sites I use regularly that depend on Flash for their RIA. In general Flash works very well, and every Flash test site I tried said the Flash plug-in I had was 100% compatible. But in reality the few sites where I absolutely require Flash the experience was not impressive. It probably wasn’t Adobe’s fault, more likely the widgets the web sites choose don’t support a touch interface too well (too small a target area, or too many too close together).

Web services need to move beyond Flash and develop either native apps or build better HTML5 mobile web sites.

Phone vs. Tablet apps

Two of the apps I installed were designed for phones with a smaller screen rather than a tablet with a higher resolution. One simply centered itself in the middle of the screen, which was fine but a bit disappointing that the extra real estate wasn’t used to provide more information. The other app stretched itself out to fill the whole screen, but ended up looking pixelated.

In the end I guess each developer decides how they handle different screen sizes. Apple went through the same growing pains when they introduced the iPad. Hopefully Google their developers over this hump quickly.

LTE

Long Term Evolution or LTE is the next standard that mobile operators are moving towards. Most of the networks are still on HSPA or HSPA+. The promise of these standards is high speed internet access anywhere, from 21 Mpbs up to 75 Mbps for LTE. The reality is about one tenth of that!

I ran SpeedTest.net’s app on a few occasions to see what kind of though put I was getting. I check if I was using LTE or HSPA, but the results are still useful to see how prevalent LTE really is.

Note: Download and Upload speeds in Mbps, Latency in milliseconds

As you can see I never achieved the 75 Mbps promise of LTE that the device an theoretically handle. I never achieved the maximum speed promised by any of the standards, but I was happy to beat the HSPA expected average of 3.5 Mbps.

Navigation

Just for the heck of it, I pulled up the Navigation app on the tablet on our way to Sugaring Off. I also had the TomTom VIA 1435 going as well as the Navigation app on my Android Gingerbread phone. In terms of directions all three were spot-on and pretty much in sync – although the three-way spoken directions got annoying pretty fast.

The coolest thing about the navigation app on the tablet is how much more on either side of the route you can see. This is especially great when navigating around town and making frequent turns, you can see much more of the upcoming route and prepare yourself for the next few turns.

The biggest problem I had with navigating with the Tab is the glossy screen makes it very reflective. And on a sunny day it can make it almost impossible to see what’s on the screen. The other problem is the interface isn’t designed for the rapid jabbing a driver usually subjects his GPS to with one hand while driving 120 km/h with one hand on the wheel!

Conclusion

The tablet is a great size, much more useful than a 7-inch tablet but not quite as unwieldy as a 10-inch tablet. The rubberized back makes holding it comfortable and secure. The wireless network access means you make full use of it where ever your are, but the promise of LTE speeds falls back on your provider but the tablet is ready as soon as your network is.

See my complete Weekend with a Samsung Tab 8.9 LTE tablet photo gallery.

Cross-posted on Schultzter’s Blog

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This week the Dads managed to lure Steph out of the dungeons just long enough record a show before he heads off on his whirlwind tour of the Carribean searching for Blackbeards treasure which just happens be to Bluetooth’s headset. The also take some time to remember Gary “The Kid” Carter and the Expos, while commending The Habs on their tribute despite of the abysmal performance of our Glorious Ste-Flanel. A very Montreal show indeed.

Thanks again to our sponsors SplitReason and ByteBuyers for their support of the DadCast.

Show Notes:

Diablo III
Sunday Ski
Pirates of the Caribbean Cruise
Hitting 40
Le Colisée de Quebec
Gary “The Kid” Carter
Sonic Screwdrivers
Splitreason Goodies
Dutch GPS Fiasco

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