How did I think of this? Made the stupid mistake myself, as you can probably tell from looking at my site right now. No backup = not going to have time to fix it until late September/early October :-(

The flood of work, projects, and other commitments has me reevaluating where I am spending my time. Which brings me to the point of this post: time for a vacation from Twitter. I’m going to try to spend the little bit of August that I have left to really to get things done. Twitter is a major distraction, and even though I find it incredibly useful, I’d like to see what happens if I take some time off from it. The time I spend online and on my computer will be focused on work.

While working full-time and not being on campus often, being able to read The Fulcrum online provides easy access and keeps me connected with what is going on at the school. During the latest SFUO election, the newspaper’s website provided invaluable access to information about the candidates, issues, and ongoing scandals.

However easier access is only one part of what makes having the paper online essential. The bigger thing that The Fulcrum’s website provides is an area for students to discuss, debate, and add to the stories that the paper publishes. University is all about critical thinking and reasoning, developing arguments and theories, and learning and sharing new information. A printed newspaper is a one way broadcast from the writers to students (though The Fulcrum does publish letters to the editor from students). The website allows for immediate discussion and debate of the issues, giving students an open forum to learn from (or attack..) each other.

A great example of this discussion is a story that was recently published in The Fulcrum’s summer issue, on the topic of the SFUO’s funding of a bus for students to travel to Toronto to take part in the G20 protests. This story is obviously a controversial topic, considering what ended up taking place in Toronto – the vandalism of my home town. The comments section on this article is on fire, with students taking to either side of the issue, debating back and forth. I read through the comments, and there are some great points from both sides, opening my eyes up to both sides of the debate.

I think delivering the news and providing this discussion forum to students is important, and I hope to be able to make a positive contribution to this when I start in August as the Webmaster of The Fulcrum.

The Globe’s app is actually very nice. You can easily view the headlines of all the latest news stories on the main page of the app.

The stories display in a narrow column on the right side, with sharing options and an ad on the left. The overall experience has a more newspaper-like feel than their website.

A nice feature I was pleasantly surprised by was the ability to swipe left and right when viewing an article, which takes to you the next/previous article in the section. Makes flicking through stories a breeze.

They also include a very cool photo gallery of the days top photos. Some great photos were there when I checked it out.

The app is free, supported by ads that do not get in the way or detract from the readability. Made by Spreed, same company that made the G&M’s iPhone and BlackBerry apps.

Grab it on the App Store here.

Not everyone has a lot of PDFs to read, but if your brother is a screenwriter like mine is, you tend to find a lot of scripts in your e-mail inbox. I have always let him down and often fail to read them, usually getting distracted or not having enough time. Now, I load them into Folio Case as soon as I get the e-mail, and I can read them anywhere I go.

Folio Case offers an easy way to store your PDFs, a great page-flip animation as you read, and a distraction free reading environment. Check out the short video I recorded to show how the app works.

If you are reading a lot of scripts and have an iPad, Folio Case has been great for storing and reading every script I get. You can pick it up from the App Store or check out the Folio Case website.

For the most part, the book is incredibly interesting. It details how Mark Zuckerberg came to founding Facebook, originally known as thefacebook, and the many people that he dealt with on this journey. Amazingly enough, Zuckerberg is not actually the main character of this story. The focus is more on Eduardo Saverin, Mark’s orignal cofounder of Facebook.

Before reading this book it is necessary to realize that this book is written by someone who was not there for any of these events, and his sources are no doubt quite biased against Mark Zuckerberg. With this is mind, it is hard to know which parts to believe and which to shrug off as fiction. But nonetheless, the book is an exciting story, and definitely worth reading. I wish that is had focused less on the controversy that surrounded the founding of Facebook, and more on the growth and evolution of Facebook after its founding. Maybe I’ll have to pick up David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect to get that part of the story?

For those who don’t care to read the book, Aaron Sorkin adapted it into a movie titled The Social Network. The trailer of the Social Network was recently released, have a look below:

This trailer is intriguing because it really screws with the timeline of the events, making the plot unfollowable unless you have read the book or know the story. The movie comes out October 1st, and it would be an understatement to say I am looking forward to it!

If you are an rabid fan of the show, keep in mind that this script is from last summer (2009), and the creators of the show made significant changes to the characters and tone of the show for this latest season.

You can read is below or, if you prefer a flash-free version, head over to Scribd and read their HTML version of it. If you liked it, hit the Facebook Like Button!

Parks and Recreation – Out of Her League

However, I have yet to find an app for the iPad that has the functionality that I would want in a note taking app. Many that I have looked at come close, and look great, but there is one feature I see as the most important, that none of them have.

Here is what I think is necessary for a university/college notes app:

• Text and Drawing
• Highlighting
• Insert Pictures into Notes
• Organization (date/time, course, text-search)
• Exporting (as PDF ideally)
• File Importing and Markup/Annotation (PPT, PDF, and DOC at least)

The combination of text, drawing, and highlighting give you the flexibility of handwriting your notes, with the added bonus of typing and an undo button.

Adding pictures into your notes is probably not required for when you are in class, but could be very helpful for enhancing your notes later on.

Having your notes tagged by day and time and accessible through search would ensure you can always find your notes from a particular lecture or on a particular term. When studying, and you come across a term that you remember learning at some point in the semester, being able to search for it and instantly find your note on it would be invaluable.

Exporting as PDF would be ideal. The worst thing you could do would be using an app to take all of your notes, then they are stuck in that app, unable to be printed or easily viewed. PDF would be an easy format for printing and sharing, though editable formats would be nice too.

My sixth point is what I believe is the most important feature, and one that no app on the iPad app store seems to provide. If any iPad note taking app nails this, I will snap it up in an instant. In my lectures, typically the professor will lecture, aided by a barebones PowerPoint file that contains the main points. What the professor actually says adds details, definitions, examples, explanations, and sub-points to the main points of the slides. The points on these slides are a great guide for your notes, because they organize your notes into a hierarchical structure that the professor has designed their lecture around. My favourite way to take notes in these sort of lectures is to print the slides, and make notes around each slide, including drawing pictures, arrows with explanations coming off points, adding sub points, and examples that the professor uses to explain the concepts. Printing these slide shows is a hassle, can become expensive due to the cost of ink, and is not the most efficient way to take notes. My ideal app would allow me to do all of this, by importing these slideshows as a PPT or PDF, and letting my add drawings/text to the slides, as well as notes below each slide. This way my notes would be directly tied to the professors slides, follow their structure for the lecture, and be clearly organized. I don’t expect to be able to edit these slides, I am not looking for this note taking app to be a PowerPoint equivalent – but being able to write and draw over the slides would be enough.

There are a lot of great note taking apps out there now, but I don’t see one that accomplishes this last point in a satisfactory manner. The best class notes iPad app that I have seen is called Course Notes. It is well designed, has a great organization structure based on time, breaks your notes down by course, has drawing/text/pictures, Wikipedia integration, and exporting. I suspect it would be perfect for me, if only it could accomplish point six, importing files for annotation.

Upon further searching of the App Store, I have actually found one iPad app that nails the annotation feature, called Noterize. It imports PDF and PPT files, allowing you to add text, drawings, and highlighting. Going even further, you can rearrange pages, add in note pages, import from Google Docs/Dropbox/Box.net/web pages, and export back to these, as well as Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail.

Course Notes has a much nicer icon and user interface design, but Noterize seems to deliver on my most wanted feature. If these two apps could fuse together I would be extremely happy, but for now, I am really looking forward to trying out Noterize when courses start in September!

Tumblr has some great features that make it easy to publish short posts, pictures, and videos. It seems like a great platform, but it just wasn’t for me. I found the platform limiting, and was not a fan of the Tumblr Dashboard or the “following” of blogs on Tumblr. Obviously there is a lot you can do with Tumblr, and I am sure it is very powerful if you take the time to learn it, but I found myself longing to be back on WordPress.

I had grown tired of this blog, and the inflexibility of the theme I had been using. Last week I decided to revive willw.net. What brought me back was the news of WordPress 3.0 arriving, and the new default theme that comes with it. I had been recently working on custom WordPress themes for some projects that I had going on, and saw this as a great opportunity to refresh my own blog. The new default theme is incredibly easy to customize, and with some great comments in the code to help you. I have done some significant edits to the theme, all from my iPad (more on that soon).

My experiment with Tumblr is over, so forget I ever dropped willw.net, and stay tuned for some more blog posts!

Read the blog post and make sure to enter Gazaro’s contest where, we are giving away a Black Flip Camcorder, the MinoHD (same model as compared to the iPhone 4 on the blog).

Delivering Happiness details the story of Tony Hsieh, starting with his childhood entrepreneurial aspirations, through to his first big acquisition – LinkExchange – and finally finishing with the struggle of Zappos and eventual acquisition by Amazon. The book was great as it detailed his launching and operating these interesting businesses. The story of Zappos, and the gambles he took on it in the company’s early days, are a great read.

The only place that book fell short for me was the large section focusing on company culture, and Zappos’ ideals around delivering happiness. I found myself bored by the section featured Zappos employees detailing their experiences and opinions on delivering happiness.

This book, with the exception of my small grievance noted above, is a great read. I ended up finishing the book in just two weeks, no small feat for me! (My grade 12 English teacher could testify to that) I really enjoyed his views on entrepreneurship and running companies. As a business book if provides some interesting ideas about management and leadership.

I’d definitely recommend this book, and am glad they did this neat promo so I had the chance to read it when I did.

See DeliveringHappinessBook.com for more information about the book and think about picking it up from Kobo Books – so that you can read it on your BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, and on the web.

There is a sentiment within our generation of being better than the bottom of the totem pole, of being owed more. I get it, but please, if you are trying to break into this industry don’t snub the idea of paying your dues.

Read his post here: Sweat Equity

This story from the Globe and Mail is probably the best summary of the challenges that RIM faces and the strategy they are using to approach them.

At Gazaro I am currently running a contest where the prize is an Acer Netbook Computer. To enter, you have to submit your prediction of what you think the price will be on May 10th. The contest closes at 8pm May 7th, so if you want to enter, do it now!

“The main obligation is to come back and stay a while. They prey on the deeply rooted human need to care for things so they grow, and to not let things die. Stuff grows quicker if you spend more time in the game, and If you don’t start up the game within a certain period of time, things die.”

I never tried FarmVille, but I did start playing We Rule on my iPhone. I thought it was a pretty fun game to begin with, and it certain did have an addictive quality. I would plant crops with varying lengths of time to grow, and have to make sure I got back into the game at the right time to harvest them. It sounds stupid, and it is, but it made so much sense when I was playing it!

Having kicked that habit I can easily see how these games manage to be so successful. They suck you in with a fun concept, I’ve always like castles, so why not build one in We Rule? But where the game wore thin was the limited depth. Once I had quickly gotten to an advanced level, there was very little for me to do, even if I paid money for gold in the game, it wouldn’t have really added much. These games have great potential to suck people in, but if they are going to be long term successes, they need to have more depth. Something like World of Warcraft or Diablo Two using this model might really take off on the iPhone platform, or as David said:

“Now all ngmoco have to do is make the games actually fun (they’ve got the addictive part nailed, but the gameplay is poor), and we’ll all be doomed.”

Here is an example of the movie I made with it, only took a minute or two! Using Facebook Connect it automatically found all my Facebook Photo albums, allowing my to select one to build a movie from. Once selected, I had to enter what cities my photos were from so that it can build the cool map graphics. Very easy to tag locations, rearrange photos, remove specific photos, edit captions (it grabbed the Facebook’s captions – nice!), select a theme (only two themes – they should develop more), and choose music (you can also upload your own music).

— Not sure why but controls on the embedded video aren’t clickable… better to view it on TripWow’s website —

This travel slideshow of Will Robertson’s trip to 4 cities including Washington DC, Toronto and Frederick was created by TripAdvisor on Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 8:15pm UTC. Will traveled 567 kilometers (352 miles) on this trip.

Check it out at www.TripWow.com

During the Apple event on Thursday to preview iPhone OS 4.0, Steve Jobs announced an interesting thing. Even though iPhone OS 4.0 is coming to the iPhone and iPod touch in the Summer:

“We’re bringing iPhone OS 4 to the iPad this fall. All these features on the iPad.” – Steve Jobs

When I first heard this I thought that is was strange the iPad was getting the update later than the iPhone, and wondered, could that mean a hardware update is coming to the iPad as early as the fall?

There is one glaring omission on the iPad, a camera. Adding a camera to an iPad would be a minor addition, but it would definitely add a lot of functionality, including video chat.

Today 9to5Mac posting an interesting story detailing their exploration into the iPhone OS 4.0 software, and their evidence of an iChat app and video chat capabilities, presumably to be revealed with the new iPhone released this summer with iPhone OS 4.0. At the end of the article they added this:

“Finally, we’ve heard separately that the iPad and likely the iPod touch will receive video camera updates in the Fall when the 4.x OS goes Universal. The timing would make sense for the normal iPod touch yearly updates. The iPad, until then won’t have access to these camera strings, so it won’t have much use for a camera. Apple’s secrecy in building the iPad likely kept the iChat group out of the loop. Without them, there was no need for a camera on the first iPad.” Mark Gurman for 9to5Mac

Releasing a new iPad in the fall would definitely anger the early adopters whose iPads will be outdated after only 4-8 months, but Apple has not been afraid of that in the past as witnessed by the original iPhone’s early price drop.

It will be interesting to see if an updated iPad is released this year. It definitely has me wondering whether I should wait it out until the Fall announcement before I grab an iPad.