How To Remove Unwanted U2 Downloads From iTunes

 

There, I fixed that for you.

So, there was this thing where Apple automatically downloaded an entire album onto your iTunes.

To be fair, during the Apple event they stated, “We’re giving every user a free album.”  However, what they didn’t say was that they were going to go ahead and just push it into your iTunes account.

The much longer, full event is here.

Yup, they did it.  They didn’t sugarcoat it.  They didn’t say, “Available for download.”  They just gave it to you whether you had the space or not.  They pushed it to you whether you were roaming or not.  (AT&T has a $19.95 per megabyte download charge if you’re roaming and download it.) 

Now, is it your fault?  Yes and no.  Did you have your settings set to allow this to happen?  Maybe.  But does that matter?  No.   

The problem we, as consumers, face is we buy something because we want it or think we need it, but do we really have control of it?  It doesn’t matter if we pray at that house of Jobs or go with the other devices, your account is a shared ownership.   You bought or acquired the device.  They provided you with the content.  Who owns what?   Most corporations will tell you that you only license the product, you don’t it, much like people found out from Sony when they wanted to keep Linux on a PS3.   You don’t own your games.  You don’t own your music.  These are the arguments that go on infinitely among nerds and anarchists.  Present company included. 

But, we buy into the hype.  We have to have the new thing.  And because we buy these things or get them or sell our souls to have them, we need to take ownership and really find out what it means to have them in our lives…. EVERY SINGLE FACET OF OUR LIVES.  I know I found that out when I couldn’t carry the games I purchased for $10 on my old LG EnV2  and the couldn’t be transferred over to my LG Cosmos thus rendering my phone into a handheld gaming device.  So, if you are concerned about the reach Google has into your browsing or Facebook has into your private lives or Apple has into your pictures on their cloud… do a little research before you just shut up and give them your money.

By the way, if you want to remove that album… here you go.

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Textually Active

Mongo don’t text.

OK, that was true about five years ago.  In fact, I held out on getting a cell phone for as long as I could.  I think the first one I ever had was an LG flip phone from 2004.     I was 29…   To that point, I waited until I was 27 to get a credit card.  I lost that battle when I became a homeowner.   I regret what my balance is today.  Evil little plastic thing!

Even with that giant leap in gadgetry I resisted texting.  For one, I have meat hooks.  Banana hands.  Flippers.  All the dexterity of an oven mitt.  For me to get my plump digits to correctly type out a message using nine numerical keys, waiting for the right letter to pop up or T9word  suggestions takes too long.  I could call you, have the conversation, talk about nothing for ten minutes, and be done before I hit send on the first text.  Secondly, why would I have an entire conversation  this way?  Emails can be long and contain multiple ideas.  Texts are basically you spamming a keyboard with  “OMG”, “K”, or “WTF?”

However, these days that has all changed.  I have become a little more adept at texting, though some days it’s like playing the Game of Thumbs, I win or I diet.  I miss words, it takes forever to spell something out, and I have only advanced to an LG Cosmos.  I’ve had it for probably four years, now.    Why do I not have a Smartphone?  Because my bill is only $92 a month and that covers three phones, texting between two people and enough minutes to never run out.   If I move up to a Smartphone, I will probably increase my charges 3x and the temptation of using a Smartphone like most people do will become a problem…  Remember my credit card issue?

Now, as far as texting goes, I do only get 250 a month.   In the past that wasn’t a problem.  In fact, I didn’t have a texting plan before 2012.   If someone sent me a text, I paid as I went.  Then, we opted to get 250 for an additional $5.00 a month.  Which, wasn’t too bad.   Of course, my wife decided that she needed to up hers to 1000 last year for an additional $5.00 a month.   That’s another story for another time.   Still, I maintained my 250 limit and was fine.

Until it was not fine.  In the past year, I’ve found myself going over my 250 threshold and it feels like I’m breaking the law.  Actually, I was getting treated like a common criminal for doing so, with no reason.   With no conTEXT, there was a lot of speculation.   Turns out, I have friends who text.  I work in IT and we text issues back and forth.   I am on the hook for being an application admin and when it breaks and I’m not around, I get pinged.   Sometimes people text me an entire thought, one word at a time.   Don't ask me why.  Still, even at its worst, I’ve only ever gone over my 250 limit by no more than 10 texts.

Now, how bad is that?  Why don’t I just up it to 1000 and pay the extra $5.00?   I could.  It would be no skin off my nose.   However, when I look at my average amount of texts per month, I’ve gone over maybe four times in a year.    Like I said, I’ve never gone over by more than 10 texts.   Beyond my limit, I pay as I go.  That whopping overage is $0.10 a text.

So,

four months at $1.00 per month = $4.00

OR

12 months at $5.00 per month = $60.00

Now who is smart?  Eventually, I will have to get with the program and get a new phone and new plan.   I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.   Not to mention, they want you to pay them $30 just for the privilege of paying for a new phone and staying on as a customer.   Mongo also doesn't double dip.  If you want me as a customer, show me the money.   Waive the fee, upgrade the phone, and let me pay like I should, for a phone and a plan, not for loyalty.

Yes, my phone sucks.  The reception sucks.  Half the buttons don’t work.  It’s not cool.  I look like that old guy in the commercial “Two cans and a piece of string!”   But, hey, I have $56.00 extra in my pocket a year to spend on worthwhile things.  Remember when we actually used phones to call people?  Those were the days.

Paved With Good Inventions

As we continue to hurl ourselves into Idiocracy territory, I thought about the last 20 years of my life.  After all, my 20^th reunion is this fall.  Good time to reflect.  Look back on my adult life.  Cry in the corner a bit.

What I discovered is that for all the technological innovation we’ve seen in the last two decades, we’ve become incredibly stupid and selfish.  If I could go back in time and change one thing, I might actually make the ultimate sacrifice.  I might try to prevent the invention of the Internet.

I know.

I KNOW.

What madness is this?  Why, on Earth would you un-invent the Internet?  Aren’t you writing a blog?  Aren’t you selling shirts, online?   Aren’t you trying, and failing, to produce YouTube videos?  Yeah, but that doesn’t change the truth.  And, before you start clutching your routers and barking madly, understand where I’m coming from on this.  It’s like Terminator 2.  No matter how hard they tried to keep Skynet from happening, it happened.  Granted, it happened in a bad way, a la Terminator 3, but it was inevitable.   Now, I don't want to keep the Internet from ever happening.   I only wish to delay the process until we are better equipped, mentally and emotionally, to handle it.

We were given fire by the Gods.  And we ended up torching the world.  We literally did not understand what we were given.    For awhile we just did silly things with the Internet.   Hell, we still do.  Cats playing keyboards, planking, Hadouken pics, Horse Head Mask videos.  But soon, it warped and became something different.   There was porn… so much porn.  Then there were cell phones and soon commercial WiFi.  iPods.  iPhones. 

Facebook, Instagram, Elvis Presley, Disneyland.

It spiraled out of control.   Slang (OMG, WTF,  ROTFLMAOBBQ)

We became addicted to technology.  Our lives revolved around little devices that did everything for us.   A phone replaced a pager, a camera, a gaming device, a laptop, watch, GPS, radio, Walkman, and tons of other devices.  It became the Swiss Army Lazy Man.   Texting gave way to sexting.   Polaroids gave way to selfies-in-a-bathroom-with-duck-face being Instagramed and put up on Facebook.  “Like, please!”  (read: I have no self esteem and need constant and instant approval to maintain my shell of an existence.)  Soon, there was cyber-bullying.   Hacking phones, emails, the need for 24/7 news that may or may not even be accurate spread like a wildfire.   We became unable to put the genie back into the bottle.

And, I don’t think we ever will.   Isn’t it odd that in the last 20 years we’ve invented things that bring us closer together, more so than ever before, yet put us farther apart in terms of actually connecting with people.  Used to be, if you wanted to reach someone, you had to catch them at home, by phone.   Now, you call their cell.  And, in a lot of cases, they want you to hang up and just text.    Also, isn’t it odd that in the last 20 years, so much technology has come about yet, what’s the last thing we cured?  Polio, I think.   We’ve created a generation of customers.

Our kids?  Our kids have become over-privileged and entitled. 

“Well, Johnny has an iPod and he’s seven.” 

“Well, Johnny is also a selfish brat that can’t wipe himself yet, but can send a text.  He probably still wets the bed.”

Nobody wants to work for anything.  And I don’t mean the 47% vs. the 1%.  I’m talking about EVERYONE.   Somewhere along the way, we lost our mission.   Our grandparents went to WWII.  They sacrificed a lot of things in order to keep the country running.   Now, we’re asked to give up something and suddenly,  since 9/11, our government is out to control or enslave us.  Take away our rights.  Funny.  Our grandparents sacrificed a lot in order to give their family a better life.   Our parents, well, at least mine, gave up a lot of stuff in order to make our lives better.   They scrimped and saved.  They went without new clothes or fancy appliances.  They made ends meet and did what they could to ensure that we never had to live like that, ever.   And somehow, we thought, “Oh, cool.  Great.  Thanks.”  And that was it.  We accepted their generous offer.  We watched as they worked hard and bled for us and we just took that better life and continued to not pay it forward, but instead we cheapened the thought.

We were given so much without having to ask for it and yet, when it came to our children, or the next generation born into the millennium, they didn’t understand what our parents did to provide, because we were the end result.  We didn’t continue the trend.   We didn’t have to work hard anymore.   Technology caught up and made it easier.   Hell, I am just as responsible.   I work in an office all day, but I also run a business where I don’t have to put a lot of effort into it and am rewarded, monetarily.   Granted, I wish I could work more on it.   I know the quality would benefit, but at the end of the day, I get emails saying , “Congrats on your sale” with no deserving of that praise.  The Internet has done the work for me.

We take to Facebook and instead of sharing our lives with each other, we share half assed researched and cited examples of hate against one group or another.   I can count on at least one hand how many friends I have on Facebook that never say a word, yet post CONTINUALLY their disdain for one group or another in this world.   And 9 times out of 10, they share from one subjective group that is not even factual all the time.  It’s just a funny picture, or what they claim to be funny, slamming another person/group/religion/etc.   They don’t say “Hi”, or “How are you” they say, “Here’s why you’re all wrong and I’m right” in graphic form.  And for all that friending and sharing that goes on, I believe we are more so divided than we ever were as a civilization.   Friends are not friends, they are an audience for our amusement and our agendas.  We don't connect, we try to redirect.

We do not deserve the Internet.    If aliens were to come here, looking for intelligent life, we’d be blown off the face of the galaxy like we were a plague. 

“For the love of Blurg!   Zyphos, we must eradicate this menace on Earth before it spreads and infects us.”  

“How do you know that, Lishu?” 

“I saw it on Reddit.   And Grimjor saw a post on Zarnbook that he shared from "I bet this Gorpcar can get more likes than Firtarp.”

100 Andelorians like this.  (Picture of a tentacle in a thumbs up position.)

So, yeah.  Let’s go back, blow the servers and tell the geeks of the 90s to keep working on it and we’ll work on being better humans, so that one day, we may be deserving of such an awesome power.    Should be ready, sometime before the next Mayan calendar runs out. 

We Used To Eat the Food

Five years ago, I did a four part series on “Good vs. Evil:The Internet”.

In my four post rant, I evaluated how the Internet has affected us as human beings, the movies we see, and our inherent nature as charitable vs. greedy people.  The overall assessment was that the Internet was evil but it was child that we ignored and did not discipline to the point it became evil.

In five years time, my thoughts have not changed.    But, in those five years, we have gotten worse.  We are the problem. 

The iPhone debuted in 2007, three years after Facebook came about on the Harvard campus.  However, the Smart Phone revolution has become one of the biggest proponents of stupidity since social media was first introduced.

We’ve passed laws to keep people from texting while driving.

We’ve seen video of people texting and walking into fountains and poles.

We’ve seen stories of celebrities having their phones hacked and personal pictures displayed on the Internet.

We’ve seen stories of celebrities and politicians sending inappropriate texts to other people, usually not their spouse.

And yet, people still do all these things.

Oh, and they take pictures of their food.

We used to eat the food.  We didn’t take a picture, put snazzy filters on it, and post it to social media sites.  And to that point.  We’ve come a long way since we had to take a roll of film to PhotoHut and wait two weeks for it to be developed.  We’ve come a long way from taking a picture that was instantly developed and had to shook vigorously back and forth, as if to accelerate or enhance the developing of said picture.

Now, we turn all of our fancy gadgetry into vintage displays.    WHY?  As if anyone believes it’s a vintage photo.   It’s pretentious.   Then, we Instagram our food.

WHY?

WHY DO WE TAKE PICTURES OF OUR FOOD?  WHY DO WE MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT CAME FROM THE 70S?  

Just eat the damn food.

And what better way to poke fun at such silliness than to parody it by parodying another fake grunge-like style… Nickelback.  It’s like someone Instagrammed Rock to make it look harder than it really is.

Here's What I Can Do For You - Smart Phones are Making us Dumb

I am one of the few remaining people in the civilized world that does not own a smart phone. I am as much of a gadget geek or tech head as anyone but for some reason I feel like smart phones are going to be the downfall of humanity. But, I’ll get to that diatribe in a bit.

As far as mobile phones go, I rock an LG Cosmos provided by Verizon. Prior to that it was the ENV2 which is now a piss poor Game Boy since I couldn’t transfer the games I paid for to my new phone. And, before the ENV2 it was a standard LG flip phone. I don’t even remember the name of it. I didn’t want that first phone. In fact, I lobbied against getting a cell phone. I didn’t need to have one. If I wasn’t home for someone to contact me, it was by design. I was at work, or out and if someone needed to get a hold of me, they would have to wait. It was my wife who made me get a phone. She was worried about me driving to and from work on the back roads of Deer Central, Southwestern PA.

So, I begrudgingly got one and I barely used it for anything but a few calls and mostly pictures. I have a generous plan with a lot of minutes and hardly scratch the surface of those limits. Then, I started texting here and there and eventually had to get a text plan which consists of 250 texts per month at $5.00 per month. I barely reach half of that on a regular basis.

Then, I got a call from Verizon Wireless looking to upgrade me. They wanted to upgrade me to a smart phone, offer data plans, and do all these wonderful things for me. They said all this after they examined my account and saw that I hardly used what I had.
“OK, I see you have an LG Cosmos which came with your plan at no extra charge.”

“Yep.”

“We can upgrade you to one of our whiz-bang-smarty pants-phone made with a space age polymer and smells of strawberries. You can take pictures, text, use the internet, make a cartoon cat repeat everything you say in a cute voice, scan bar codes and find information that you didn’t care about before, search Google, make light saber noises and you can have it for $499 with a rebate of using it for a two year contract which makes it $99.00. Does that interest you?”

“Um, I’ve paid nothing for my phones since I started getting them, so, no.”

“OK, well, I see you use roughly 90 of your 550 minutes plan each month.”

“Yes, that sounds about right.”

“OK, here’s what I can do for you… We can upgrade you to that whiz bang phone that costs $99 and you get 700 anytime minutes for $69.99 for two lines. Does that interest you?”

“Um, no. I hardly call people now.”

“OK, well, let’s take a look at your data usage. You have 250 texts a month for $5.00. Of that, you use roughly 60 a month.”

“Yep, that’s pretty accurate.”

“You also have pay as you go MB usage of which you haven’t even used the Internet from your phone.

“Yeah, I don’t go onto the Internet from my phone.”

“OK, here’s what I can do for you. We can upgrade you to that whiz bang strawberry smelling phone and offer you unlimited texts and 2GB data allowance for $54.99 a month. Does that interest you?”

“Um, no. Look, you can see what I do with my phone now. Pretty much nothing. So, why would I pay more when I don’t do any of those things?”

“OK, understood. Thank you.”

Look, I understand that they are TRYING to sell me something. But, when you look at my account, which they do before they call me and SEE I’m not doing anything worthy of upgrading, there’s really no point in calling me, now is there? But then again, there’s no point in calling people, who are consistently going over their limits and paying a higher rate for the overages, to offer them savings. Because it’s more money in Verizon’s pocket.

Outbound calls are all about attracting new services and businesses, but there needs to be a smarter analysis of your existing customer base or you run the risk of alienating them more when you bother them with services that they clearly don’t even use that much. If you want to get someone into a higher bracket, examine the ones that maybe go over once in a while or come close to that overage. These are people that probably would entertain the idea of upping their plan in order to pay a little more but save a lot in the end. Don’t go after the little fish in the big pond. Go after the fish that is almost too big for his small pond and offer him a bigger pond where he is now the little fish once more.

But, this is why I probably would never make it in big business. I’m too concerned with the customers’ needs and not the shareholders’.

OK, now my rant. I’ve actually go on about some of this before… but that was REALLY doom and gloom stuff. This is a little more sarcastic.

Smart Phones are making us dumber. There was a time when having a mobile phone meant your parents had a rotary phone in the kitchen with a 100 foot tangled mess of cord attached to the handset. You could literally go into the garage and still be on the phone. After the wireless phone came into play, young kids could freely run through the house without the fear of being strangled by the cord that was stretched across the living room doorway.

Then we had pagers which sent us an alert to find a stationary landline to call whoever paged us. Cell phones that freed us up completely to communicate with anyone, anywhere, and at anytime. Eventually, texting became available. Now, we could have conversations without having to speak directly with someone. Email… for your phone. Human interaction became sterilized and devoid of emotion save for the few emoticons that litter the textual landscape of messages. Not content with having to be in front of a computer to surf the web or play games, phones began offering the ability to completely disconnect from reality… sometimes while driving.

We can now exist completely online with no human interaction at all. We can shop, learn, play, and communicate all from a phone. Moreover, there’s no need to even remember anything because our phones have access to the Internet. Phone numbers? That’s in my contacts. Useless facts about movies, sports, and history? You can now unload that from your brain because you can access it at a moment’s notice via your phone. We could lose all sense of direction because you can install an app that functions as a compass. And now, with the introduction of the iPhone 4S, we don’t even have to do any the searching for those things. We simply ask Siri, “What’s the capital of Iowa?” To which Siri should say, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you mean. Iowa doesn’t have a capital.” That’s a veiled Family Ties reference if you’re older than dirt, like me. Go ahead, use your smart phone to look that one up. I dare you.

Not only are smart phones making us dumber, they are allowing us to do dumber things, like texting and driving. Smart phones have turned us into lethal weapons out on the road. Even though it’s illegal, I see people every day in their cars texting while driving. It’s supposed to be bad to even be on a cell phone without a hands free device like a Blue Tooth. But I’ve seen police on cell phones all the time. Hell, I’ve come to a red light and sent off a quick text to a friend about a traffic snafu they may encounter.

Auto Correct not only makes us look like idiots because it sometimes throws in an inappropriate word during a conversation with our parents, it also frees us from having to know how to spell most words.

If you think about how much of our daily lives are impacted by the use of smart phones, it should scare the poop out of you to think about them all going away due to a catastrophic event like a terrorist attack or EMP discharge.

I’m surprised shows like The Walking Dead haven’t made a reference to the fact that cell phones are no longer around. There’s only one child on the show and he’s not a teenager, but think about all of those surviving teens and young adults out there who can’t text their BFF, “OMG, my mom is totally a walker, FML :(“

Of course, I have digital voice for my landline so, if the Internet and cable providers go down, I won’t be able to call for help from my home phone, but at least I don’t have to rely on some whiz-bang-smarty pants phone to tell me what to do in an emergency. I can at least remember that instead of asking Siri what the number for 911 is.

Funny, makes me kind of miss that 100 foot mess of cord that I used to get tangled up in when I was a kid.

YouTube Ad Fail… or Win

Let’s face it. YouTube ads suck.  I spent last year catching up on Yogscast episodes of Minecraft only to have to suffer through that stupid Xfinity… sorry Comcrap song, “Fun for you…Fun for me…” I was reaching for a gun by about episode 15.

ARRGGHH! YOUTUBE ADS SUCK. THEY SUCK. THEY REALLY SUCK! They suck almost as much as Zynga ads during games. Honestly, I have five seconds to harvest these crops before they die and the effers put up a pop up ad telling me to spend real money to get fake money. WTFBBQSTD!!!


Now, I am glad that the newer ads have a five second skip feature, but still, Who cares about the 5AM warrior, or whatever it is?

But are the ads targeted?  Is the video content I'm about to watch paired with an ad that speaks directly to the subject matter? 

If so, count this as a fail... or win, depending on how you feel.
I watched the trailer for The Hunger Games and the ad before the trailer was for McDonald’s.
I watched a stupid video depicting how bad Siri fails at understanding questions on the iPhone 4S and the commercial before it was for Android. 

The iPhone 4S thing wasn't even a good video.  I was expecting to find some humorous instances where Siri didn't work as expected.  What I got was a couple of haters, with bad accents, that Siri couldn't understand when they pronounced certain words.  Hell, I couldn't understand them.

A Chicken In Every Pot And An iPad in Every Room

Back in January I laughed off Apple’s iPad by comparing it to those oversized button remote controls that you buy for Nana and Peepop.  Lord knows how many times I’ve had to fix the settings on my father-in-law’s television because he mistakenly pushed the SAP button on his remote, changing the sound settings to secondary audio program ones.   “Why is Law & Order in Spanish?!?!”  LOL.

But for all my chagrin and snark over the iPad I’ve had a change of heart.  Well, I’ve had a change of mind.  I still believe the iPad was a fundamentally flawed concept due to its limited capabilities.  A USB port would be nice.  The ability to run more than one App at one time would be, too.  "The iPad is meant to be an easy-to-use appliance, not an all-purpose computer. A USB port would mean installing  drivers for printers, scanners and anything else you might hook up."   Steve Jobs says in an article from Wired. (NOTE: Multi-tasking should be available this fall.)

Appliance?  Appliance for what?  It’s a digital device.  It’s THE digital device, the one we’ve supposedly been waiting for to revolutionize hand held mobile devices.  Could it be that Apple couldn’t get to do all  the nifty things we, as tech-geek consumers, wanted it to do but had to release something in order to stay ahead of the curve?   Maybe.  After all,  if we’ve learned anything in the computer and digital age, the early bird gets the worm.  If Apple can hook everyone on the concept of the iPad, they can go back and work out all the wrinkles in time for the second generation.  It worked for the iPod.  Other portable media devices have tried to knock the iPod off the top of the market share hill but with every iteration or next gen iPod more features continue to draw in customers, including ones who had bought the previous version.

However, the iPad makes a leap, in terms of technology, and in this case, Jobs better start listening to the masses and add some of those features quickly, because while the early bird gets the worm, the second mouse gets the cheese. If someone figures out a way to emulate what Apple has done with additional features that please the consumer, Apple may be stuck in the trap.

An appliance? That makes me laugh. I do not pretend to be the geekiest geek that ever geeked but from a user standpoint I can see so many more uses for a tablet PC than to just read a book or run goofy apps, one at a time. I think in terms of outside the box application. Finding ways to use technology in areas that it was never originally intended to be introduced to. The iPad or a tablet PC by any company gives freedom. Yes, you can do a lot of things with a mobile device like an iPhone or Blackberry, but the tablet gives you greater ease of interface and visual aesthetics. Some people, like me, have fatter fingers or aren’t as good at fine manipulation of objects. Those of us suffering from banana hand syndrome or have all the dexterity of an oven mitt need a larger area in which to work. Case in point, I don’t text. I use a laptop but would much rather have a standard keyboard to type on and a mouse in my hand instead of a pad on the laptop to run my finger around. In that instance, a tablet PC would give me more workable area to maneuver my flippers around.

Like I said, don’t get me wrong, mobile phones already have the ability to do what I would like them to do. My brother showed me live images from security cameras where he worked on his phone. He could run an office from his phone, if given the chance. But one would think that, with the introduction of a device that is built on the technology introduced in the iPhone, it would be able to do that much and more.


So, I invite you into my fantasy world. Not that one… The other one, the Mongo Sandbox, where I have a disposable income and a blank slate on which to build anything I want. And for this sand castle I am using the “Mongo” brand smart tablet to run everything.


Back in my June post about the iPad I mentioned that it would be nice if you could come home from work and prop your feet up in front of a small screen to catch up on the news or sports. I’m not talking about a 50” LCD HDTV. I’m talking about a sleek and stylish thin screen sitting on a small stand hooked, via USB cable to a digital tuner. Once you are done watching Sports Center, you decide you want to read a book. You stand up and walk over to the screen you’ve been watching, unhook the USB cable and take the device from its stand. You turn it 90 degrees and now you have an eBook reader. That was my original idea. But in the sandbox of my mind that was only the beginning.


What if you decide that the lights are too bright in the room for you to read the eBook. You simply minimize your reader and open the app HOME which runs your home. You can then navigate a path to something like Systems\Utilities\Lighting which shows a wireframe map of your home by floor. You choose the room and, with your finger, adjust a slider which controls the level of lighting in the room, much like volume control on your computer. You then close that app and restore your reader app and continue reading your ebook.


Let’s say you get a phone call. Simply minimize your reader again and use the Phone App to answer the phone. Either through a blue tooth handset attached to the tablet or even by using the speaker on the tablet you can chat with your friend who wants to go catch a movie. Without ending the call you can open up the Web Browser and look up show times and purchase tickets which can then be printed via WiFi to your printer. All while you are still talking. I know phones can already do this, but this is a bigger interface that is tied to more systems and works with several other devices.


Remember, in the sandbox, the possibilities are endless as well as the funds to make them happen. Now, you could say all this dependence on a tablet PC is bad, like Skynet bad or Wall-E bad. True, but what if you are elderly or confined to a wheel chair or have the inability maneuver around your space to achieve these tasks? This might make your quality of life a little better and, in an age where medical costs are rising or they are not being reimbursed as well as they used to, the ability to be more independent with this type of technology could be a welcome savings. So, that covers one application in a small capacity, but I’ve got bigger ideas and with multiple devices around the home, thanks to that sandbox income. The previous scenario covers perhaps a den setting. Let’s move this towards the whole house.


One of the greatest things about my car, which I miss, is the remote start feature. I went to change the battery in the key chain remote and one of the solders broke, severing the circuit. I’m just too lazy, and probably inept, to fix it, so I have to go out and not only start my car on a cold day, while inside it, I have to use the key to unlock it. Since the car only has one key hole, I have to use the driver’s side lock to unlock all of the doors and open the hatch. But what if GM had an app for that? Well, someone does.


So, now when it’s ten degrees out there and a foot of snow is on the ground, you can use the that same technology, along with a few others to get to work easier.   Now, the simple solution would be to park your car in the garage, but what if you forgot too or some other reason prevented you from doing that.   You’ve got to go outside and get in your car, which is cold, and there’s a foot of snow in the driveway.   You just don’t have time to shovel or get out the snow blower before work.   With the Mongo Smart Tablet, you don’t have to.  From any Smart Tablet in the house, you can call up your automobile app, and remote start your car.   But what about the snow?   Easy, when you first get up in the morning and notice the snow, you use your smart tablet to turn on the radiant heating system that is installed underneath your driveway.   While you shower, shave, and have your coffee, your driveway is clearing itself of all that snow.   You simply walk out onto the empty driveway and get into your already warm vehicle.   Warmquest is a company that can do that.  This same company can also install under shingle roof deicing equipment which would have been perfect this past year with all the reports of collapsed roofs due to snow from Snowmageddon.   Not to mention, icicles are dangerous and could be eliminated in this case.


Wasteful energy could be a thing of the past with your Mongo Smart Home because you could remember that you left the lights on upstairs or in another part of the house and the smart tablet could alert you and could be used to turn off the lighting in those empty rooms.    You could check out noises outside the house by accessing the CCTV system, like my brother showed me, activating or deactivating flood lights to get a clearer picture, and call authorities if needed.   CNN had an article about this, but it was only one of eight different money saving tips which was crudely advertised as an article devoted to running your home on an iPad. 


The applications are limitless in the sandbox of my mind. I could be in the kitchen, getting ready for guests and be using the smart tablet there to follow a recipe online while setting the light levels in the house, deicing the driveway and starting up the fireplace for ambiance. It sucks when you are trying to do 15 things at once while watching a pot of sauce or soup. In the event that you have to leave the kitchen and attend to something that requires some time, you can use the smart tablet in any room to call up kitchen functions and shut off the stove to keep things from boiling over. One of the coolest amenities we had in the beach house we rented this year was the sound system. From a main receiver/tuner in the living room we could supply the entire house with audio. There were individual volume control knobs in each room wired for sound, but the source of the audio came from the living room. We discovered this by accident after setting up my Nintendo Wii and letting my father in law play Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 while we were outside on the deck one night. It was all peaceful and serene on the deck, overlooking the sound, when all of the sudden gun shots ripped through the air. We thought we were under attack. Hell, the neighborhood probably thought they were being invaded, Red Dawn style. We just didn’t know that all the volume knobs were left on by the previous renters and the surround sound of my father in law blasting away Bambi echoed outside and across the street. So, yeah, it would be nice if your smart tablet could control something like that, without having to go into every room of the house and adjust the volume.


All of these innovations are reminiscent of a Merry Melodies cartoon, called "Design For Leaving", where Daffy Duck retrofits Elmer Fudd’s house with buttons of all sorts. And to that end, all sorts of things could go wrong. As much as I would be a champion of this style of design, I understand chaos theory and Murphy’s Law very well. The power can go out, Blue Screen of Death types of failures, firmware issues, updates, and viruses could render your Mongo Smart Home inoperable. I would never dream of turning control of your home solely over to a computer. Everything would still function as it would without the smart tablet interface, but the addition of the interface is like a dimmer installed in a light circuit. You use a switch to supply power to the light but dimmers installed in certain places can adjust the settings to the already powered lights. The same here, it’s an added feature not a control over the functionality of the appliances and utilities.


Okay, perhaps the sandbox ideas are a dream for those who have the income and technical savvy to pull it off in the real world. But that’s the fun of imagining what a device like the iPad can do. There are plenty of real world, business applications for a smart tablet. Schools are beginning to adopt the iPad in the classroom.  Teachers can conduct a lesson and students can interact with the lesson, adding notes and asking questions into a notepad style environment. Just think about huge lectures, with 400 students in them. If students had an iPhone app or smart tablet in the classroom, they could ask a question from the back row and the TA could capture all this for the professor to expound upon or address during the lecture, while it’s fresh. The student, at the back of the room does not have to shout or draw unwanted attention because the question could be anonymously asked, filtered by the TA, of course. The TA could even respond with an answer without having to disrupt the flow of the lecture.


As a Theatre Arts major in college, I have gone through tech rehearsal boot camp. You get up really early on a Sunday and come down to the space, ready to spend the next 12 hours doing mundane but very important work. You begin pulling together the important changes and cues that occur during a show with all of your tech heads like lighting, sound and such. With a smart tablet interface, you could run a sound board or light board remotely, while sitting next to the director or stage manager instead of up in the booth. The process could become more efficient without a lot of shouting back and forth or headset chatter.  The director could simply lean over and talk to the designer or tech. No yelling, “Give me channel 4 up 10%.”   Here is an article about the application.


Also, notes could be taken with a handwriting converter. I’ve done it and I’ve worked with directors who have stood there and tried to decipher scribbles into an important production note. Some of these innovations are already in place with iPhone apps but, again, broad spectrum, bigger interface and multiple applications running at once.


And let’s not forget the healthcare field. Doctors could see a patient, look at their charts, prescribe meds which could then be printed at the receptionist desk to be handed to the patient or even sent to the pharmacy, eliminating handwriting errors. Doctors could be linked into a database of information about symptoms and diseases. The CDC could help control an outbreak by recognizing these symptoms and posting to a board where providers could tag them and compare against diagnoses they have in their office, all during a patient’s appointment. Doctors could monitor patients’ vitals remotely and prioritize various patients from their tablet. Of course, there would have to be a huge amount of security attached because of HIPPA. Applications are endless.


Facilities management could be streamlined. Systems could be monitored for changes or failures. Lighting levels and schedules for automatic lighting could be adjusted on the fly. Sensors could pickup issues like security or climate controls. The ability to pinpoint a problem could correct it faster. And with that built in webcam, missing from the iPad, you could snap a picture and send it to the tech who will be correcting the issue in the case of building and grounds issues.


So, my mind isn’t too far into the clouds when it comes to technology. When I started writing this post, did the bare minimum of research to see if what I had thought of was already in use. Some things were there for the iPhone and some were there for the iPad but not everything as far as I can tell, although Smart Homes are a reality in regards to mobile devices.    For now, I have little interest in buying an iPad because of the missing features I feel would be important.   Also, as much as I tout being a geek, I don’t even have a data package for my phone.  I don’t text and I use my phone to um… make calls.   Whenever Apple or another company comes up with the smart tablet that I would want I’ll think about crossing that bridge.  Until then, there’s always room in the sandbox.  

Got any ideas on  how to use an iPad for something it wasn’t designed to do?