RocketIdeas – Derek Seymour – Goldsboro, NC

My New iPad (3rd gen) just arrived from Fedex!

I was originally going to go with the 16Gb Wifi-only version, but since the New iPad with Verizon now enables a personal wifi hotspot along with month-to-month data usage without signing a contract (a killer feature), I decided to go with the 16Gb 3G/4G model.  For a web worker, this now has to be one of the cheapest (and fastest) ways to get both internet on the road and a backup option when cable/DSL goes out.

Below are some unboxing photos along with how well it fits into a Snugg iPad 2 case (available from Amazon):

The box shipped from Jonestown, PA and arrived unmarked; however, the Fedex lady knew what it was.

 

I have to admit, even after using both the original iPad and iPad 2 in the past, my heart rate still went up when I saw those letters.

 

 

Nice material on the inside lid to help protect the screen, although the entire unit is wrapped in some sort of cellophane or plastic.

 

 

Same basic essentials as previous models, including those cool Apple Logo stickers.

 

New iPad alongside the Snugg iPad 2 case.

 

The New iPad, even though it is slightly thicker, fit pretty well inside the Snugg case.  No complaints here.

 

 

Seems to fit nicely around the edges.

 

Bottom port seems to line up well.

 

No problems plugging in the New iPad through the Snugg case.

 

 

Powering on.  Oh yeah!

 

Propped up vertically using the Snugg case’s built-in flap and stand.

 

Reverse side of the case.

 

Holding the iPad with the Snugg case’s built-in handle feels very natural (except when I’m trying to take a picture with the other hand .

 

Overall, I’m very impressed with the fit of the New iPad in the Snugg iPad 2 case.  It feels very natural and secure, and all the buttons and camera line up and are functional.   HOWEVER, I can confirm the rumors that this case for some reason does not put the New iPad into sleep mode (like the Smart Cover does).  This is a real disappointment as that was one of the case’s features.  Not a deal-breaker for me personally, but it does prevent this from being the perfect case.

As for the New iPad itself, the new Retina display you have to see to believe… it is absolutely amazing!  Viewing a high-res photo looks like glossy photo-paper with a luminescent background.  Voice dictation is also accurate and very handy, and the upgraded graphics processor makes things smooth and snappy.  Apple has done it again, even without Steve Jobs at the helm.

Search Terms: New iPad 3, New iPad Snugg Case Review, iPad 4G, iPad 3 Unboxing, Fitting iPad 3 into Snugg Case, New iPad in iPad 2 Case, iPad 2 Case for iPad 3, iPad 3 Snugg Case Review

    Most organizations today employ several people and hundreds of computers for their internal technology needs. You rarely see any organization or business these days without some sort of computer sitting beside a secretary or mounted up on a wall for the blue-collar employee. No doubt, computers have become a necessity in the business world.
    There are multiple problems that have risen from this scenario, however. One is that IT staff are often not extremely knowledgeable in the technology they handle, and who can blame them? The way technology is accelerating these days, just about everyone in the field needs to spend at least a few hours a day just in training. Another problem is that the reliability of computers (and networks) is usually low in businesses. It would be interesting to see just how many hours a month organizations spend on installations, upgrades, and repairs.
    So, what would be the logical solution to these problems? One word: outsourcing. I believe that most, if not all, computers in the business of the future will be nothing more than thin-clients (or terminals), connected at high-speed to a local data center. Why not let the data center focus on keeping the technology running, upgraded, and available, and let the organization focus on it’s original purpose? This would not only cut costs significantly for the organization, but would also lower downtime and free up valuable office space (no more bulky desktops or rooms dedicated to servers).
    Granted, this may not work for every company out there, but I believe the majority of companies today could benefit from outsourcing their technology.

Well, I just found out that I will be playing drums at our big State Youth Convention in May. Please, remember me in your prayers! I know I will do fine, as long as I keep my focus on God and off of those around me.

By the way, I’m looking forward to the products introduced in this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and MacWorld Expo 2006. My favorite new items would have to be Apple’s new MacBook Pro (yeah, it’s powered by an Intel processor), Lego’s new NXT, and DS2′s chipsets. For full coverage, hop over to PC Mag.

    I want to share with you a small testimony of something the Lord did for me a few weeks ago.
    For about a month, I had been experiencing Blepharospasm, which is an involuntary twitching of the eyelid. Blepharospasm is known to come from stress and fatigue (which is usually the norm for me). For many weeks, I tried taking deep breaths, relaxing, and getting plenty of sleep. However, nothing seemed to help it.
    One day, on the way home from work, I started thinking about God, and how He has everything under control. As soon as I began to realize this, the Blepharospasm went away, and I mean instantly! And, to this day, it hasn’t been back! Praise the Lord!
    I had tried everything to fix this, including getting my mind off of the world and just relaxing, but the only thing that worked was when I put my life in perspective, and started trusting that God would take care of my situations.

It’s Friday… Yay! I hope and pray that everyone has a good weekend. I want to leave you with some scripture, maybe something you could read when you get a free moment during the next few days. Check out Matthew 5-7, where Jesus talks to us about Christian conduct.

And may God bless you!

    I heard a preacher on the radio today talking about all of the different religions that are out there, and something he said caught my attention. He said that, out of all the religious beliefs in the world, the one that non-Christian people always seem to be nervous about is Christianity. I agree with him. Non-Christians are quick to promote tolerance, but yet they don’t want us to say “Merry Christmas” because it may offend someone (which, by the way, makes no sense because by not saying “Merry Christmas”, it offends Christians).
    Many of these people seem to always be looking for ways to take out Christianity, which brings up a very interesting point. I believe the reason why non-Christians dislike Christianity so much is because, deep down, they know that it’s true.
    Revelation 3:20 says, “… I stand at the door and knock.” You see, every time non-Christians hear about Christianity, Jesus begins knocking at their door. Think about it… if someone kept knocking at your door, even after you decided not to open it, wouldn’t you begin to feel angry? I believe this is what is happening to non-Christians. They may be feeling angry, but what they don’t know is that Jesus sees how terrible the future is for them, and He wants to save them from it. If my house was burning up and I didn’t know it, wouldn’t you keep trying to get my attention? Jesus is doing the same thing to non-Christians today.
    So, if we ever begin to worry about people trying to take away Christianity, just remember why they are doing it in the first place: Jesus is knocking at their door. Pray for them that somehow they will decide to open that door before it’s too late.

    I’ve had this idea for a while and at one point in time was planning to implement it in the real world. However, due to time constraints, it never worked out.
    First, a little background information. A lot of web sites today use what has been coined CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart). The problem with this, however, is two-fold. First of all, most people are annoyed by having to enter the letters and numbers they see in a picture EVERY time they want to post a comment on a blog or a question on a message board. They’re even more annoyed when the characters are scrambled beyond recognition, thus forcing them to either refresh the page or use another means of verification. The other problem is that CAPTCHAs are not 100% effective (see “social engineering“).
    So, here’s my simple idea on how we could get around this. What if, instead of having to prove that they are humans to each individual website they visit, people could prove that they are humans only one time (or, maybe, once per day)?
    How could this be implemented? One way is if there were a website that would allow people to sign-in, take the CAPTCHA test once, and would keep them signed-in through out their internet session. Other sites could then determine if the user was signed-in, thus proving that they are human. This would take care of the annoyance problem, but what about the social engineering problem? This could be handled by requiring users of the website to pay a small monthly or annual fee, just enough to keep it anti-cost-effective for spammers. It seems that everyone would benefit from this, because the verification website could focus on new and improved ways of verifying humans, and the other sites could focus on their intended goals instead of having to worry about spammers. Privacy would be the only negative, although there are ways that this could be addressed.
    So, there you have it in a nutshell. If I get a lot of feedback on this, I may post more specifically on how this could be implemented; but for now, I just wanted to get the general idea out there so that someone might be inspired to put it to use.

    One bright, summer morning, Fred, an owner of a manufacturing company, held a meeting with three of his employees: John, Chris, and Mike. He informed them that he would be going on a business trip and had decided to leave each of them in charge of separate portions of his business. He told John that he would leave him in charge of manufacturing. He told Chris that he would leave him in charge of marketing. And finally, he told Mike that he would leave him in charge of maintenance. After their meeting was over, Fred left for his trip.

    The next day, the three employees began working under their new responsibilities. John quickly began researching the entire manufacturing process. He found ways to cut corners, refine processes, and reduce overhead. Chris also dove into research and found ways to increase market share and promotion. Mike, however, decided to leave maintenance as it was for fear that he would mess something up.

    After Fred returned from his trip, he went to each of them to find out how they had handled their new responsibilities. John reported that he had reduced manufacturing costs by fifty percent. Fred was overwhelmed with joy and promoted John to Vice President in charge of Manufacturing. Chris also reported wonderful news, saying that he had doubled their number of customers. Fred was exceedingly happy with this as well and promoted Chris to Vice President in charge of Marketing. However, when Mike reported that he had left everything alone so that nothing would go wrong, Fred was not pleased at all. He told Mike that he should have at least done a small amount of research, even if he didn’t implement his findings. Because Mike had done nothing with his new responsibilities, Fred fired him that same day and decided to give his salary to John.

    “To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who are unfaithful, even what little they have will be taken away.” – Matthew 25:29 NLT

Many of you will probably recognize a similar story in the Bible (Matthew 25:14-30). I tried to give the “Story of the Three Servants” a more modern setting. I am praying that this will touch base with someone out there and that through it all, God will be glorified.

I’ve always liked learning about other people’s favorite computing tools, so I thought I’d put up a few of my own favs (some of these will be pretty obvious). Here they are, divided into categories (I may go back and update this list from time to time)…

Web
Search Engine: Google
Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox
Web-based Email Client (webmail): Gmail
Weather site: Wunderground
Money Exchange: PayPal
Auctions: eBay
Books (and other stuff): Amazon
Comparison Shopping: Froogle, PriceGrabber, and PriceWatch
RSS Reader: Newsgator
Freeware Site: Snapfiles
Public Domain Images: PDFoto
Spellcheck: Google (no, really) and Dictionary.com
Encyclopedia: Wikipedia

Desktop
Operating System: MS-DOS, Windows XP, and Linux
Linux Compile Reference: DevSide.net
Paid Antivirus: Trend PC-cillin Internet Security
Free Antivirus: Avast Antivirus
Email Client: Mozilla Thunderbird
Picture Editor: Corel Paint Shop Pro
Color Picker: CPick
Icon Editor: AWIcons Pro
Sound Editor: Audacity
Drum Machine: Hammerhead Rhythym Station
Personal Finance: Microsoft Money
Office Suite: OpenOffice
PDF Creator: CutePDF
File Search: Agent Ransack
Zip Utility: IZArc
Text Editor: Crimson Editor
Clipboard Manager: Ditto
Paid Screen Capture Utility: SnagIt
Free Screen Capture Utility: Gadwin PrintScreen
System Utilities: SysInternals
System Monitoring: Advanced Host Monitor
Remote Access: UltraVNC

Programming
Scripting Language: PHP
Scripting Database: MySQL
MySQL Admin: PhpMyAdmin
PHP Editor: ActiveState Komodo
PHP Example Code: HotScripts
Standalone EXE Language: RapidQ and BCX
GUI Language: Visual Basic 6.0 and XUL
VB Example Code: FreeVBCode
XUL Reference: XULPlanet
RAD Language: Visual Foxpro
Game Language: Game Maker
Styling Language: CSS
CSS, XHTML, (and many others) Reference: W3Schools
Clinet-side Language: JavaScript
JavaScript Reference: DevGuru
Installation Creator: Inno Setup
File Comparison: WinMerge
FTP Client: SmartFTP
Telnet and SCP (now SFTP) client: PuTTY
Browser Information: BrowserSpy
WHOIS: Whois Source

Hardware
Used Laptops (and used desktops): Bob Johnson
Supplies: NewEgg, Tigerdirect, and iSellSurplus
Memory: Crucial
Hard Drives: Maxtor
Desktop and Laptop Brands: Dell and Compaq (HP)
Server Brands: Dell
Reviews: CNet and PCWorld

PDA / Mobile-ware
Operating System: Palm
Smartphone: Treo 650
Software Site: Handango
GPS: Garmin GPS 10
Mapping: Delorme Street Atlas, MapQuest, and Google Maps

Christianity
Bible Referencing: BibleGateway
Movie Reviews: Christian Spotlight
Music Store: MusicForce
Reading: Boundless and Christianity Today
Radio Station: Air1
Other Techies: Gerv, ChristianFreak, DevotedFreak, Matt Wade, Network Nerds, and LeaveItBehind