Wacom BambooPen and TouchTabletThe first computer mouse was

prototyped in 1963—almost

half a century ago. Using but-

tons, switches, and wheels, it

places a layer of technology

between you and your work.

But now smart phones, e-book

readers, and the new tablets are

moving us all back to a more

natural set of gestures like

pointing, touch and moving,

and tapping. The Wacom Bam-

boo Pen and Touch tablets add

one more dimension to the

gestures—handwriting and

drawing. The pen is battery-free,

cordless, and pressure sensitive,

so handwriting has pen strokes

like those made by a fountain

pen and brush strokes like bris-

tles. At the other end of the pen

is a digital eraser that works

exactly like its synthetic rubber

counterpart. The working sur-

face of the tablet is about 3 1/2

x 6 inches, much larger than the

touchpad on notebooks, and it’s

a comfortable area in which to

make drawings or edit or anno-

tate copy. There are four pro-

grammable buttons that you

can use for click selecting or

shutting functions on or off. The

tablet is multitouch, which

means you can use several

inputs (fingers) to control

scrolling and gestures, such as

pinching to zoom in or out and

twisting to adjust the angle of

images or objects on the screen.

Nicely finished and extremely

thin and light, the Bamboo

touch tablet takes up about the

same space as a mousepad on

your desk. www.wacom.com

GelaSkinsGelaSkins of Toronto has a wide

selection of beautifully executed

prints and photos for customiz-

ing all your portable computer

gear from laptop to smart

phone. Printed on 3M adhesive

sheets, the images range from

classic art to National Geo-

graphic photography to distinc-

tive illustrations—more than

100 artists are in the gallery.

And you can customize your

own covers with company logos,

product images, shots of the

headquarters, and even quotes

from the latest testimonials.

Why have your sales force pro-

mote Dell or Sony every time

they lift the lid of their laptop to

begin a presentation? Creation

of your own covers involves a

simple three-step process, and

the price is the same as for the

images from the GelaSkin cata-

log. The 3M skins provide a

durable, anti-scratch, anti-UV

covering for your devices. If you

have had a difficult time apply-

ing other covers or materials like

screen protectors, what GelaSk-

ins says about their covers isn’t

an exaggeration. They really are

easy-on and easy-off so that if

your first try is a little crooked, it

will lift off, and you can set it

again. Once on, the edges stay

down, even with repeated lifts

in and out of laptop cases or

phone holders. Sizes of the cov-

ers are customized for different

makes and models.

www.gelaskins.com

WaterField iPadSleevesWaterField Designs of San

Francisco has produced a number

of new bags designed specifically

for the Apple iPad ranging from

simple slip cases—one water-

proof, the other suede—to the

more protective Ultimate iPad

Sleeve Protection. These are cus-

tom fitted for the tablet and are

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cushioned with high-grade neo-

prene inside and an outer shell

of ballistic nylon. There are two

shapes—horizontal and

vertical—so you can use the case

as a stand-alone or slip it into

another gear bag or saddle bag.

Both are TSA “checkpoint friend-

ly,” so there’s no need to take

your iPad out of its cover when

going through airport security.

With the impact-resistant, screen-

protecting insert and its scratch-

free, screen-cleaning Ultrasuede®

lining, these are all you need to

carry around your iPad without

adding a lot of bulk. If you have

an Apple cover for your iPad, the

black siliconized folder many buy

with the unit, the Exo Ultimate

sleeve case has the extra room to

accommodate it.

www.sfbags.com

USB BlockUSB Block from NewSoftwares.net

was formerly known as Device

Block because it prevents copy-

ing of data from your computer

to all USB drives, CDs, DVDs,

floppy discs, and other remov-

able storage devices that aren’t

your own. If an unauthorized

storage device tries to access

your data, USB Block prompts

for a password and locks out

the intruder if the correct pass-

word isn’t given. It also will pre-

vent the importing of viruses or

other malware onto your com-

puter by devices that lack the

proper authorization. USB Block

records what devices tried to

gain access, by whom and

when, and it keeps a record of

illegal program deletion

attempts, unauthorized uninstall

attempts, as well as entry of

incorrect passwords. It works on

all 32-bit and 64-bit versions of

Windows 7, Vista, Windows

2008 Server, Windows XP, 2000,

and Windows 2003 Server.

www.newsoftwares.net

More than the sum of its parts, Apple’s iPad defies the

usual expectation that things technological are defined by

what they do. A toaster, because it’s just that (what it

does), is different from, say, a television. Television can

and has changed the course of wars (Vietnam), even the

direction taken by cultures, because it’s one of those rare

transformative technologies. The computer tablet looks

like it might also influence us as television has.

The Apple version of this type of device, the iPad,

already has displayed a kind of wide inertial swing that’s

pushing the Wintel galaxy even further from the center of

our computing universe.

Since its debut on April 15, 2010, Apple sold three

million iPads in the first 80 days—about 37,500 per day.

Why the deluge? Well, a simple review of the specs and fea-

tures won’t answer the question. You have to pick up one

these things and spend some time with it before it dawns

on you that it isn’t just a computer—it’s something else.

NO WIRES

The first thing you notice is that there are no wires, no

stylus, no card slots, and only one barely visible button

on the front that takes you back to the home page—a

scenic view through a window decorated with icons that

look like beveled Murano glass beads.

Apple designer Jonathan Ive told Time magazine, “In

many ways, it’s the things that are not there that we are

the most proud of. For us, it is all about refining and

refining until it seems like there’s nothing between the

user and the content they are interacting with.” The end

result is that “I don’t have to change myself to fit the

product—it fits me.”

There’s no file system, so there isn’t the usual obliga-

tion for every user to become his or her own file clerk,

sorting, importing, and searching for that (expletive) file

Converting theLuddites—Apple’s iPad

By Michael Castelluccio, Editor

continued on next page

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you’re sure is on the hard drive, some-

where. You can search the entire iPad for

words or content just by pushing the

home page button when you’re on the

home page—if you want to. And you can

import files through e-mail or the iTunes

connection. But most of the clerical

aggravation is gone. You’re on the Inter-

net and see a picture you like—press and

hold your finger on it and a menu will

pop up so you can save a copy in the

photo app that sits on the table at the

bottom of your home page. Highlight

some text with a sweep of your finger, and tap to copy and

paste elsewhere. But if you’d like to rummage for a while

through multitiered stacks of folders with an “explore” func-

tion, forget it.

With the iPad, it’s easy to forget how powerful the com-

puting is beneath your fingers. The device is not only

incredibly fast, but it can handle processing-intensive tasks

such as speech recognition. The free Dragon Dictate app

from Nuance works beautifully with no more than the

microphone at the top of the device and a red Record but-

ton in the middle of the page.

THE ONE AND THE MANY

There’s a kind of digital attention deficit disorder that nor-

mal computing and browsing encourage. Open 10 files and

applications on your desktop, or multiple tabs for many

sites when you’re browsing, and you can’t help but fracture

whatever sustained focus you might have had if there were

only one app or one site contending for your attention.

Some think computers and the ’Net are conditioning whole

generations of nimble but shallow thinkers.

With the iPad, on the other hand, you can only open and

run one app at a time. If you want to read—read. Want to

listen to music so that it’s more than just wallpaper—open

Pandora or an MP3 app. But if you want to try to process

multiple stimuli and streams, better go open your laptop or

grab the remote from the channel surfer on the couch and

open some channel-in-channel sporting events.

Some see this inability to multitask as a weakness that

should be corrected in the next version. But consider how

much attention is paid to managing the technology when

you multitask on a computer. How much of the conversa-

tion gets lost when you’re swatting flies at the same time?

There is a paradoxical other side to this simplicity and

focus. Apple once was avoided by computer users who com-

plained there just wasn’t enough software written for the

platform. Since the iPhone, there has been a seismic reversal

of this situation. Apple’s App Store was launched in July

2008. Opening day, there were 500 applications available for

download on the iPhone and iTouch. One year later, there

were 55,000. In June of this year, the number was a stagger-

ing 225,000+, many of them free. Apple says 150,000 of

these iPhone apps run on the iPad, and, by launch day,

1,000 of the apps had already been rewritten for the larger

screen of the iPad.

The same device that grabs you by the nose and forces

you to pay attention to one thing at a time is, ironically, at

one and the same time a book, magazine, newspaper, game

platform, NetFlix movie viewer, MP3 player, radio, dictation

machine, word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, organizer,

Web browser, podcast library and player, RSS reader, Skype

telephone, photo album, e-mail device, Web page publisher,

and so on and on. About a quarter million apps, with Apple

keeping count on its website anticipating one billion down-

loads relatively soon.

The iPad is the ultimate portable computer that has done

all that it can to make the chips, the wires, and the network

complications disappear. Perhaps it’s the digital masterwork

that finally even a luddite can love. SF

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With the iPad, you can only openand run one app at a time...But ifyou want to try to process multiplestimuli and streams, better go openyour laptop.