Thursday, October 06, 2011

Rigs, Balls And Death

It was fascinating to read the comments which followed my post of yesterday as two old sea-dogs argued as to whether the ship featured in the photograph was a schooner or a brig, square rigged or gaff rigged. There can be few better examples of the delights of this strange new digital world in which we inhabit : a world where you can throw out a question, sit back and wait for it to be taken up by people from throughout the world. The internet has a lot going for it : it is wonderfully comprehensive, enormously large, breathtakingly fast - but there have been big books and fast newspapers before : the true wonder of this internet of ours is its' interactivity.

And let us not forget its' creativity. And let us not be ashamed of the semi-virtual world we sometimes inhabit. Each year I always look forward to turning up at Tess Kincaid's matchless Willow Manor Ball. You may recall that last year my guest was the delightful Dorothy Parker, and on our way to the virtual gathering she gave me a short lecture on the historical precedents for virtual reality. Dorothy will not be my guest this year - she can be moody and she is in one of her moods at the moment. But I have invited this girl from across the valley. I popped over there yesterday and dropped a note through her letter-box, but I have yet to get an answer (I popped in for a pint at the Black Bull afterwards in the hope that I might see her brother there but he was indisposed unfortunately). Being a gentleman I will not reveal her name until I have confirmation that she will be joining me at the Ball, but you can join us and all the stars of the cyber world by following the instructions on the Willow Manor Blog.

I switched on my iPad this morning and immediately turned to my favourite app - Flipboard. Flipboard gathers chosen news and RSS feeds and turns them into a made-to-measure magazine. Each section of the magazine is previewed on the opening pages by a current image. My front page has feeds from The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, Twitter, Facebook and a variety of other sources. What I saw was image after image of Steve Jobs as each media source reported the news of his passing. Somehow it was strangely appropriate, but equally it was strangely appropriate that by the time I decided to incorporate a screen-clip into my blog, many of the images had changed. The world has this habit of moving on : Steve Jobs, I fancy, would have recognised this and rejoiced in it. The one front-page feed that didn't feature Steve Jobs was the News From Nowhere feed. Hopefully, when I next turn my iPad on, this omission will be rectified.

8 comments:

  1. Wow hearing about Flipboard makes me want to rush out and get an iPad. Actually I want one anyway. I am trying not to give in to my desire to buy all these gadgets. (Apart from the fact I can't really afford them, I mean)

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  2. Flipboard is one of the very best iPad applications - it is the future I am sure.

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  3. I left a comment on someone's blog earlier today, with regards Apple products. The fact is Alan, and I'm sure you'll agree, they just work straight out of the box. We recently purchased Apple TV, and now we have movies, music and our entire digital photo collection streaming to our TV via a little box of 'tricks'.

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  4. We're thinking about getting our triplets an iPad for their birthday. There are even apps just for people with autism. And that Flipboard is a very cool app for sure!

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  5. It is no good waiting for iPhone 5 and iPad 3. They will have invented something better in the next five minutes Watch out there's all that nanotechnology out there. We'll soon be having finger held devices, TVs coming in ear-rings. No more worries about spelling. Blogger will write all your blogs for you, you will just have to concentrate and look into the monitor. Just you wait and see! You won't even have to read any more. It will slip in to your brain wirelessly from the Cloud!

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  6. Haven't got an ipad, I think I prefer a laptop

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  7. I see time, rather than Flipboard, as being the future.

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  8. Your comment about 'news moving on' meshed with my own thoughts. I've noticed for years the current time preferences of Search - which have the unfortunate effect of doing away with the content I had wanted to find !
    I do find Deep Search on Diigo helps me find 'my way back again'...but have been rather compulsive about blogging and bookmarking in such a way that I could find my 'current news' by timeline.
    opitslinkfest.blogspot.com RSS SnapShot! posts are taken from the self selected feed readers at my.opera.com/oldephartte/links ; though I post from other sources as well.
    And while Flipboard sounds nice indeed, I actually have utilities like Cool Views, Newsforward, and Evernote that don't get used in the rush. Heck, even Google Reader is neglected - though feedly and Yoono are catching my attention...as is Twitter.

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