Restructure

This was my first blog last year, during the Victorian bushfires.  Well, actually first of my social media-phase blogs.  I did attempt blogging years ago when social media was in its infancy and before services like Twitter helped in getting them read.

Initially it recorded my thoughts on the bushfire period.  It’s interesting to go over those early posts and see the things that cropped up during those imensely tough six weeks, when all the State of Victoria was focused on our worst natural disaster.

More recently this blog has collated from my posterous, keeping it chugging along.  However, while cross-posting is good for posting links to my various social media accounts, it dents the uniqueness of any blog it posts to.

This particular blog hasn’t had much original content for a while.  It’s time to change that.

It’s been a big week, anyway.  Just over a week ago, I launched two domain names, www.geehall1.com and georgehallonline.com.  Both these have individual, original content.  Currently they’re linked to Posterous accounts, though there are plans to have one of them fully hosted by year-end or earlier.

The two new domains post daily, except for Saturdays.  I’m proud of the fact the dot.com experience has led to a self-disciplined six regular posts each in the first week.  For these sites, one a day is a good, sensible average, not too many, not too little.

My Blogger/Blogspot site has contained more original content than here, but needed a bit more regularity.  So today I made it a weekly blog, filling in Saturdays.

That leaves geehall1.wordpress.com.

The first thing I did here this week was disconnect the cross-post link between Posterous and here.

Today marks the first original post in months.

The good part about this blog is that it’s not a specifically defined blog.  It’s not exclusively social media, it’s not exclusively gadget or tech-oriented.

Its original purpose has been superceded by geehall1.blogspot.com and www.geehall1.com in regards to bushfire issues and personal projects.

So what’s the niche purpose for this blog now?

I guess it’s always good to do an end-of-week review and overview of things, so starting next Saturday, geehall1.wordpress.com will begin reviewing what’s been happening on all my other blogs.  Not a direct copy, not a cross-post. An end-of-week review in original-content form.  It also allows for a brief discussion of each week’s topics and trends.

Last year was an apprenticeship in social media for me.  This year marks a step up from that and more advanced usage of the medium.

So it’s good to restructure.

See ya next week.

Out Comes The iPad

And Moses proceeded to come down from the mountain with the tablet in hand…

Or in this case, Steve Jobs did.

I watched the video of the announcement and contrasted it to Steve Balmer's announcement of a slate computer a few weeks back.  I have to save I'm more impressed with Steve Jobs.

Of course, the expectations for the iPad are various.  Some are happy with it, some have been expecting something different. There are also some jokes starting, like calling the iPhone an iPad Nano…

Let's remember this is the first iteration.  The next one will obviously add more features once Steve Jobs and Apple see the reaction to it.  Let's also remember it competes more directly against the Kindle.

When it comes to that, it's already a winner.

Of course, what sets it apart in my mind is that it will have a new iWork suite of apps ready for it.  Imagine REAL word-processing, spreadsheets and presentation software, as opposed to limited rtf variants.  Add that to the iPad and you've got a great portable tool.

The medical field will see an immediate benefit to it, since references will be more easily-readable on the iPad than on the iPhone.

I'm looking at it from an artistic perspective.  I've tried drawing apps on the iPhone and that's not the iPhone's strong suit.  You can't move your finger off a line on the iPhone, else you lose exact placing.

No, an iPad makes drawing with your finger a heck of a lot easier and more precise.

While I did favor WinMobile devices for their ease of drawing with a stylus, I hated having to draw in zoom so much on the small screen space.

So the iPad is already on my shopping list.

Will I be an early adopter?  Or will I wait till version 2?

That's already decided by my family.  One partner, also one nine-year-old have already decided the issue.

Early adoption by a mile.

And besides, you need someone to play with that first iteration and tell you how it's going.

End of story.

Posted via email from George Hall Online

Welcome To At Geehall One

Last night the sister  domain to this site went live at www.georgehallonline.com.

This afternoon (Melbourne Australia time) www.geehall1.com became a reality.

Of course, a Saturday in Melbourne or a Friday night in the U.S. is the usual time you see those wonderful little gremlins come into play, so I still have to wait a small amount of time to connect the domain with the actual posting page.

That aside, after a year of developing in social media through Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, identi.ca and a couple of others, it was time to take the dotcom plunge.  They say nobody really takes you seriously until you get the dotcom address.

Then again, 2009 on Twitter was an effective apprenticeship, as was blogging on wordpress.com and blogger.  It was important to spend some time honing craft and doing some experiential learning.

This year, 2010, it’s time to take the next step and build from that first year’s base.  Domain, greater regularity in posts, and further exploring of where things can go.

Above all else, I’m here to stay in the online world.  My method is step-at-a-time, starting with last year’s foundations in the various social media services I use.  For those who’ve been following the geehall1 stable on those services, you already know my work, either with emergency information relay during last year’s bushfires, or through my video interviews with the Tweetupmellers/Twums functions.

There’s still more to explore and do.  While it’s worn thanks to reality TV shows, the word “journey” still applies here.

It’s a journey of exploration and discovery.

Feel free to join me in that voyage.

Posted via web from At Geehall One

Before the iPad Commentary…

After my first year in social media, it was finally time to go with a dotcom.

Hence, www.georgehallonline.com was finally born.

I like building my stages.  My best success in any part of life has always been through step-by-step.  So there’s obviously a step after this one and even a few beyond that, simply because I intend to be a fixture of the online world.  I’m stubborn that way.

Anyway, a vote of thanks to friend and fellow #twums attendee Kirsty Wilson for showing the way.

Since this is now a dot.com, I guess I have committed to more regular posts and you can expect one either later today or early tomorrow, Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time.  There’s a little creature called an iPad I want to add my two cents worth on…and even own.

My second year in social media has begun.  Get used to it.

Posted via web from George Hall Online

Birthdays and Android Phones…

Today is my birthday. 

I've finally reached the half-century mark, though I still consider myself 50 years YOUNG, not 50 years old.  Considering I keep up on my tech enough to show youngsters how to use an iPhone, perhaps that's a good way of describing it.

So what did I get for my birthday?

A HTC Dream, otherwise known as a Google G1.

I've been an iPhone man the past year, but I feel good also having an Android OS phone to compare it with.  There's nothing like hands-on experience.

Of course, the day before my birthday, Google announced their Nexus One phone, so you might say I have a little Nexus One envy right now.  Looking at the Nexus One specs and UI, I can imagine somewhere down the line I'll get one.  Just not right now.

Meantime, I'm paying way more attention to Android-related news now and noted an article this morning about an Android-powered phone that will have a digital TV chip in it.

Now there's a 2010 trend I'd really like.  Free-to-air digital TV on your mobile/cell phone.  Heck, as long as reception was great, I'd actually budget for an Android phone capable of that.

In the meantime, I'm still praying that Vodafone Australia bring out an update to the HTC Dream to bring it up to Android 2.0 and/or the Sense interface.

Oh well.  Back to the birthday boy playing with his new toy…

Posted via email from @Geehall1:

Sometimes You Need Microsoft…

I’m not a big fan of Windows or Microsoft.

I’ve done more than my fair share of swearing at a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

Heck, I’ve long since preferred Apple OS X and various forms of Linux.

However when my nine-year-old god-son/step-son is doing IT classes at school, he’s using Microsoft products. For him to come home and do a presentation on a different office suite is not condusive to him being able to do things simply and quickly.

In the end I want him to be able to move between operating systems with ease, use Office AND OpenOffice and not be stuck limited to Windows.

Still, part of that includes him playing with Windows. Therefore I must have a Windows-capable computer somewhere in the house and preferably with an up-to-date Windows version equivalent to his school computer. In our particular case, though, he is actually now one generation ahead of his school. They use Vista, he uses Windows 7.

Our most recent school report shows he needs a bit more practice using Powerpoint, so I need to be less pedantic about him using the OpenOffice presentation software and more practical about keeping him in line with his schoolwork.

So I went down to the local OfficeWorks store today and purchased the home and student version of Office 2007.

I’m sure now people are going to question my orthodoxy in doing that.

I would too.

I’ve sat in the middle of fanboy arguments all my life…city versus country, GMH versus Ford, etc., etc. In the end I find these arguments kind of dumb, because limiting oneself to one side of any of these arguments means having only one skill or skillset at the expense of the other side. It’s sometimes more practical to be equally at home on both sides. I’m competent at both country AND city driving, for eample and I still can work on each of the three main computer systems. That’s a much broader skill base.

So even though I hate things Windowsy…if I’m going to teach the nine-year-old to be a highly-skilled person, I have to let him at Windows. He’ll make his own discovery of the Blue Screen of Death and other Windows glitches in his own time. But at least he’ll still have Linux and OS X where and when it counts.

Now back to swearing at the latest glitch…

FireReady In November…

Mid-November 2009. Tomorrow the temperature is expected to be 36 degrees Celsius or above in Victoria. Over in South Australia, the fire level is already raised to Catastrophic under the new fire danger system. New South Wales is also expecting high temperatures too.

Those of us who were the Twitter volunteers in February and early March are already keeping our eyes on the information flow and building new resources to do a better job.

This time, the job is to prevent a recurrence of Black Saturday.

There has already been one period a week or so ago of high temperatures, so far kept under wraps by the efforts of the CFA and DSE. The alerts, prior to tomorrow, have been relatively free of anything to worry about.

Thanks to Twitter’s new Lists feature, we can group those we follow and look up a whole List for a specific type of resource, be it news, CFA alerts of various types or the people we know who will do a good job. By contrast, the beta Retweet function on Twitter’s web page is less useful at the moment. It doesn’t RT out to third-party clients. So, it’s still the standard type of retweet that will be of value in an emergency.

On the App Store for iPhone, there is now the app shown here, Fire Alerts Victoria. It is essentially a dedicated RSS reader covering all CFA information and district alerts. One drawback is that you can’t retweet from it, but if you’ve got it on your iPhone, you’ll at least have a rough idea from the CFA of areas of concern.

FireReady, now called Living With Fire, is about preparing, acting and surviving.

Preparation is crucial to avoiding a repeat of February’s Black Saturday. The more you prepare, the more resources available for deciding, the better you act in a crunch. And the better you and your community survive.

That’s something we all have to remember.

Hitting The New Retweet Button

This morning I found I was in the latest round of Twitter beta testing, for the new retweet functionality within the twitter.com page.

I like experimenting, so I spent a few minutes trying it out and seeing how it worked.  Inside the web page version of Twitter, it works fantastically, now sitting next to the reply link.  However, it's when you look at things from a third-party client that you notice its functionality is still limited.

None of the new retweets works on Tweetdeck For iPhone or mobile Tweetie 2.  You don't get anything.  Full stop (Australia)/period (US).

I had been expecting at least SOMETHING to make it out to the third-party clients, even if it wasn't identical to that on the web page.  I'm told, though, that the retweet API hasn't been set up for outside the page.  Third-party client developers will have to upgrade their apps to use this new retweet API.

For the meantime, I can only recommend using this new retweet link/button for non-essential information.  If your followers don't use the web page, they won't see anything you send through this mechanism yet, a huge drawback if using retweets for emergencies.

On the other hand, if you're using the web version of Twitter, you will see the new symbol to signify this new item, the name of the person being retweeted and their message in its full entirety.  Underneath this you'll see the name of the person retweeting, or the numbers of people passing the original message on.  If you're posting to someone whose web version isn't part of the beta, instead of the new symbol they'll see 'RT.'

This new system does not do away with our normal retweeting method.  It's still very functional and still quite an option.

Having both methods allows great choice of method, though, until the beta moves a bit further along and developers access the retweet API, the original method is still better for urgent/important/emergency retweets.

While I like this new way, I'm more looking forward to when I can see a retweet from my web version making it to my Tweetie 2.  Then it's going to be a heck of a lot more useful.

Posted via email from @Geehall1:

It Wouldn’t Be Windows Without A Silly Glitch

While Windows 7 is quite an improved little beast, it's the annoying glitches that dent the experience.

I put Windows 7 Home Premium on my Macbook the day Win7 was released, via Parallels 4/5.  

For the most part it's been a reasonable OS, though it hasn't exactly made me think it's better than OS X or Linux.  The one thing that has made me grumpy is that the boot screen no longer shows the new Windows animation coming towards me.  Instead, I'm seeing Vista's green progress bar.  That's, what, merely a few weeks of use?

Some quick searching via Google shows I am not alone.  This seems to be a common experience for users of Windows 7.  The causes seem be something to do with the locales and there is a fix  for it.  If you use an elevated command prompt with Administrator rights, you simply use bcdedit or bcdboot.

I tried that and got my favored boot screen back for just one time.

Admittedly, this is a really small thing that hasn't greatly impacted on my use of Windows 7.  It's just plain irritating as I never used Vista and can't see the sense in this happening.  It just makes me wonder if, a few months down the line, something else will revert unexpectedly.

While it was good having a WIndows here on the Macbook, it really needs to stand out.  The competition is now nipping at Microsoft's heels and in some cases surpassing it, so stupid things such as this bootup glitch are going to have a greater impact.  Less users will tolerate things that detract from their productivity and computing enjoyment.  After all, who wants to spend an hour or two searching the net for an answer that only works for one restart.  If we want to do that, Linux gives us greater control and satisfaction for the same amount of work.

At Geehall 1 Episode 16: Tweetupmellers/Twums 7.5

via youtube.com

The name Tweetupmellers indicates a Melbourne-based tweetup…but we’re open even to our tweeps from South Australia and New South Wales. Some of our interstaters make it to the main monthly Twums…but others’ schedules don’t allow for that. So we have a MINI-Twums.

Last night (November 12, 2009), we held a mini-Twums to welcome @AndrewBlanda. We also introduced him to a uniquely-Tweeupmellers custom…the Twums Interviews.