According to appleoutsider.de Apple Mac computers retain the same anemic 4-5% market share they have always had.  They remain too expensive, too exclusive, too restrictive, and too limited compared to their competition to become widely popular.  If you factor in iPad sales, however, Apple becomes the market leader, even exceeding current PC market leader HP. So is this a comparison of apples to apples (excuse please) when facotring in the iPad?  Or is it Apple’s apples and oranges vs. everyone else’s apples that are really being compared.  Tablet sales for other vendors are pretty...

The iPad app of Al Gore’s Our Choice was updated last Thursday (April 26, 2012) and I read it over the weekend to see what Push Pop Press had done with Gore’s 2009 book.  It is not ‘the way books are going to be’ as several reviews gush, at least I hope not for the technical reasons I give below, but it is an outstanding work with many compelling reasons to purchase it (price being high on the list, at $4.99) rather than the hard copy. The Content First, the content.  Our Choice may some day, after the homogenizing brush of history blends the strident climate crisis messages,...

Occasionally when the techs here are speaking with faculty, particularly in the free-form discussions that come up at our Wednesday morning “Blackboard with Cream & Sugar” sessions, the techs will mention tools we use that faculty are unaware of. Sometimes those tools can be adapted to use in the classroom, so I’m highlighting some such tools on the blog under the “Tech Toolbox” name. Today’s addition to the Tech Toolbox is an educational content creation and distribution tool: Educreations. From the website: “Teach what you know. Learn what you...

You know what a coffee table book is:  big, glossy, great pictures accompanied by undemanding text, a thing of beauty meant more for browsing than sustained study.  That exactly describes the iPad app I am reviewing this week called “Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe,” by Prof. Brian Cox, rock star physicist of LHC (Large Hadron Collider) fame, and Andrew Cohen, head of BBC Science.  The work was “created” by Collins, as in Harper Collins Publishers, with the outstanding work of adapting it to the iPad screen credited to a group called theOTHERmedia.  The app sells at a...

Quick: Explain to a 12 year old (or just about any 52 year old, for that matter) why the moon has phases.  Ok, why does the earth have seasons?  Still too hard?  Why do ocean tides behave the way they do?  What is the significance of the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn (and I don’t mean those Henry Miller novels)?  OK, name the zodiacal constellations.  All too hard for you?  You sort of know, but not real sure about all the details?  Then get Solar Walk for the iPad now.  It’s only $2.99, and this is just a little of what it will teach you (and more to the point, enable you to...