Letters from Lilongwe

I see education at all levels changing drastically in the duration of my young adult life.  There are masses of money to be made as well as an opportunity to empower the masses in ways previously impossible.  Code.org and other online resources to help children learn to code are amazing because its getting tools into the hands of children early.   Take a look at this video as it steps through the importance of programming and computing skills to be competitive in the future of industry. Some personal thoughts on these new developments of blending technology into our schools is simply that its accelerating the distance between the rich and poor.  Mainly in the realm of education as poor schools continue to degrade while wealthy schools can add in these innovative measures that will place their students at much higher proficiency rates.  Poor schools can hardly teach their students basic mathematics therefore i...

Today I am sorting through my old drafts and this video showed up, so ya I really like this concept of innovation.  I have never heard of Parlee Bikes but this seems to be really cool, shifting gears with your thoughts.  It is going to be very interesting to watch this technology develop and the applications become apparent to the general public. Enjoy. Its all in Christ Paul Shackelford

Next step in the Chrome OS journey : I have been an avid fan of the Chromebook from concept to my CR-48 but now I have a sour taste in my mouth.  These devices were and are intended for a group of users who will incur minimal cost to have the ability to do your computing basics.  It was designed for my grandmother to be able to join the internet age and easily communicate via email and chat with her sisters on gChat.  The implementation of this design has been tailored to the general public at a much higher cost than anticipated.  I will not pay $400 for a computer that is under-powered, small, and has a partial operating system.  If I want a device that looks like a computer but lacks the ability to do what my old Desktop can accomplish then I will buy an overpriced Chromebook. Sorry for bashing ya Google but make your venders keep prices low or wait until hardware meets your very impressive operating system.  I loved the s...

5/5/12 11:50pm http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1346748 I just started searching the web again for another nook rooting option because I plan on using my nook as my primary computer this summer while on Summer Discipleship Project.  I want to make sure that its running the best possible root to suit my needs during this trip.  So long and farewell for tonight! 5/6/12 4:48pm http://nooktalk.net/discussion-forums/14-hacking-the-nook/3815-rooted-nook-touch-for-a-minimalist.html https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download I have found the newer version of the nook rooting solution that I used in the winter.  This should be a fun project, but I really don't want to waste any time working through this project. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1225196&page=2 Also I am trying to optimize the potential of this device as I have decided to make it my only communication to the outside world for the summer. 11:1...

While in Health class today I started cruising all around my computer and ran across the trends from my Google Reader.  The main thing that jumps out to me is my Monday, Wednesday, Friday reading levels are much lower than my Tuesday, Thursday.   I did not realize that I tended to read more on my Tuesday and Thursdays, both days I have a "lighter" class load but I just never thought about my reading pattern. This data should hopefully show me that I need to be reading more on M,W,F even though I have more classes. All is Great in the Lord Paul Shackelford

In 2009 I started using WolframAlpha after reading about it in Popular Science .  Stephen Wolfram created Mathematica which is a 25 year old program that collects and displays information.  Wolfram after earning a lot of money from Mathematica which is widely, compiled a group of 200 researches to hand agrigate data using Mathematica.  Now you can go to WolfamAlpha.com and ask the weather from 1992 in Atlanta GA and all of the data which use to be all over the internet in one clean presentation.  This is an amazing service that I use daily when doing large mathematical operations for physics.   A few days ago I came across this interesting feature that pulls data from  FAA: Aircraft Situation Display to Industry .  Now you can see any planes that are overhead your current location and any location in the states.  The power of the internet is in the hands of any internet enabled user. All is Great in the Lord Use the Right and...

Barnes and Noble came out with an update in the last few week for the Simple Touch Nook and it blocked the basic web browser.  Therefore I am going to root my nook and put Androis 2.1 on my Nook. 5:15pm 12/26/11 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1351719 8:04pm 12/26/11 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1343143 Well it turns out that when do you not have a micro sd card adapter you can not put the image on the micro sd.  This sounds really stupid but I was trying to use my nook as an adapter for the sd card.  I was following all of the instructions put forth but it just can not work the method I was trying.  Therefore I will have to find the adapter that is floating around our house, or pick one up in the morning.  Once I find it then the process should be smooth but if I can not get the ball rolling then it shall never roll. 11:22pm 12/26/11 Ok, somethings went wrong tonight with the rooting process and the...

About five years ago I first heard of One Laptop Per Child while reading an article in Popular Science.  I saw a product that was meeting third world students at an impressive place.  OLPC was building cheap durable computers to be used by students in developing countries.  They could be powered by a hand crank or a small solar panel.  This is one step towards equipping students to learn material that can only be reached by a personal computer. During my Highschool days OLPC was running a program called Give One Get One.  A tax deductible contribution of $400 sponsored one computer to be sent to a school in a developing country and one computer would be sent to you.  At the time I really wanted a personal computer so I did a lot of research to convince my parents with the fact that it would be contributing technology to a place of need and at the same time I could get my own computer. In the end it made little to no se...

A few weeks ago Google implemented more mathematical functions into its search bar.  Now you can type in complicated functions and it will present an interactive graph of the function.  Normally I confine my high level visual representation of mathermatical functions to WolframAlpha .  That is because it can give extensive explanation to derivatives, integrals, and other important basic topics that I can use to check answers quickly. Some people call me a Google Junkie but I am able to see the problems in the service and voice my complaints.  In this topic I still prefer WolframAlpha over the basic Google offering. All is Great in the Lord

I ran across this service a few weeks ago but didn't really look into it until today.  Its a photo sharing site with a focus on older pictures and the stories that they carry.  Check out this video demo its really cool how you can overlay old pictures onto new images and compare the difference.  The service also has a cool search feature so that you can search by year. All is Amazing in the Lord http://www.historypin.com/

I have been with Google+ from the start not because of the Circles, Hangouts, or a sexy interface.  Why I support Google+ is because of the unification of the Google world.  They are consolidating their web claims and slowly bringing them under the same branding .  In the past few weeks they have been updating the interfaces of all of their app products to reflect a new Google wide interface.  This change was made to reflect the new interface produced for Google+.  But Google+ is not a Facebook or twitter killer, it is a new beast.  In my opinion it will take lots of time before Google+ catches on for the 200 Million users on Facebook.  The only other way that Google to get a real knock at Facebook is if Facebook has another fiasco over Privacy or some other hot topic internet subject.  It is kinda sad that the competition has to wait until someone messes up to come in a sweep away the users.  But I do think that this m...

Watch the video because its amazing to see the purpose of the CR-48s at their full potential.  Chrome OS is build for situations where users have easy access to the web, and that is definently the case for school technology programs.  I was very lucky to be in a poor enough county that we got immense technology grants, therefore my senior year each student got a Apple G4.  The computers were very outdated, had massive battery and wireless issues but our district was still way ahead of the curve.  Once I left they got upgraded to the white macbooks and this year I think that upper classmen are getting macbook pros. Looking back on that time the Chromebooks would be a better computing experience for the basic user.  The systems have low maintenance, easy central management, limited user control, and they are cheap.  If you compare comercial prices of the cheapest apple computers its $999 compared to the chromebooks being only $350-500.  That is ...

I have been awaiting this functionality for a long time and it should be coming in the next few weeks.  There already have been some reports of people seeing the framework for offline support in  docs.  I personally really need this because of this CR-48, which is not that useful when you leave the wifi zone.  This computer is suppose to have 3G but since I got the first batch it doesn't work, and while out of the states, for the entire summer, then 3G wouldn't have worked anyway. What I need to make this computer truly effective is offline gmail, docs, calender, reader, and news.  The rumor mill is flying that we should be getting this functionality soon and that is gonna be a great day. At times I feel that I get overly involved in technology and I can  "waste" time with my ramblings, readings, ect, but its a hobbie that I enjoy. All is Great in the Lord

So while working through some news articles I ran across an extension I had installed a long time ago called Read Later Fast.  It enables users to save web pages for offline reading.  This is a big thing for both Chromebooks and regular computers because at times you are away from internet and would like to check out webpages you previously visited.  For a long time I have been searching for a program, extension, app or something that can download every single webpage I visit and save them to my computer.  This would allow me to find that random page I visited two weeks ago that I cannot remember the address.  I tried and failed to find a suitable program but Read Later Fast gets me closer by allowing the download of webpages that I select, then I can read them while offline on my CR-48, iPhone, Dell, and via Diigo.  I am excited about this but the problem is that I must select each page one by one and it takes some time for me to click through all of th...

Ok, so since I have been using Google+ I have automatically logged into the rich Gmail web client but that hogs a lot of my bandwidth.  While being on these travels I have had no internet and very slow internet connections.  Therefore I would love to be able to get back into the basic version of Gmail.  Its the clutter free version that just gives you the basics, you emails.  At times I have being really wanting to just send one email or just to check if something important came through.  But it takes 5 min to load the page because of all of the other features included.  Don't get me wrong I love how Google is integrating all of its products into Google+ and consolidating its branding.  But at the same time I have internally raised some objections about building Google+ into Gmail specifically. So for about one month every years college students around the country shut down their Facebook accounts in hopes that they can a...

So I tend to go through these technology swings about every four months.  Its a trend that I am trying to jump out of and here is the reason.  I am kinda a tech addict and that is not just a byproduct of going to Georgia Tech.  Since I realized that the internet had a bunch of cool things, I wanted them.  I think the first thing that ever caught my attention heavily was when I was looking for a mp3 player back in the day.   I was trying to buy a Sansa m230 and I payed something like $85 for a 512MB player back in 2006.  So when your throwing around that much money you don't want to buy the wrong product.  Therefore I started doing massive amounts of research before buying the player.  I cannot attribute my lusting after technology to come solely from this purchase but it was one of the starting points. In the past years I have done massive amounts of research before buying any product, in recent years I have don't so much research tha...

While reading this article I could not agree with many of his points. Mainly because I extremly dislike how apple does wall in its customers to use their products. Don't get me wrong they produce amazing products, that allow users a very slick and streamlined interface.  Like recently my father has been given an iPad 2 and is now playing around with it like a little kid.  He is not tech savvy but he can navigate and is starting to figure out the device.  Apple is a very smart company and if we were a communist globe it would work perfectly.  But people choose to by products outside the apple family and as apple unveils their latest and greatest contribution to the technology realm it is apparent that the iCloud will be used to tie people even closer to the apple family.  I could ramble about this problem all day long but people will continue to buy a product that works well for them and is reasonably priced.  At the mome...

Google+ As I have been coming back into the real world. I have been blown away the this summers advances in technology and web services. Google+ seems like a very interesting and possibly promising social networking tool for Google. I personally might fall under the label of a Google Finatic because I got a CR-48 and always dive into the newest and coolest Google Beta product. The main reasoning behind my connection with Google is just the fact that most of their services are free and very helpful. I am not solely invested in Google, I own an iPhone 4 - but who doesn't now-a-days. I use a dell M1530 as my main "desktop" computer and I prefer Windows 7 to anything that Apple will ever produce. Ok all that to be said - I want an invite to Google+ so that I can poke around and see if their is any promise to the service. Come on Google go ahead and hit me up soon with that email!! Can Google+ Survive the Hype? | Lance Ulanoff | PCMag.com All is Great in the Lord

I will be bringing my CR-48 to Bosnia with me on our trip to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  During the last five months I have been able to use this computer is many different settings.  Mainly on campus I was able to test out the web only operating system for all of my school needs and I still have some tools that I will need before I can transfer all school work over to this operating system.  It is exciting to be able to use this computer in another country to report back the experiences of this trip. Also in the coming months the Chromebooks will be coming to market and everyone will be able to give them a test run.  Check out some of the information or hit me up with any questions you might have about this operating system. http://www.google.com/chromebook/#features All is Great in Crown Plaza Paul Shackelford

I am part of the Chrome OS pilot program to test the new Chrome OS. This device is in my mind the future of internet based operating systems. This device is basically your normal Chrome browser on your Mac or PC with only a few add-ons to increase the productivity. I have been using it for all of my mobile computing in the past weeks and it has been a great experience. Now as school starts back up I am running into the problems with my plan to use my chrome-book exclusively during the semester. One being required software for certain classes that I can not run within the Chrome OS environment. The first set of programs being AutoCAD and Inventor which are windows based 3D graphics environments. These two programs I am not expected to use my CR-48 with because they are native non-web-based programs. I will either work on my Dell XPS m1530 or work on a Gatech computer for these activities. Zotero an extension used for managing web sources is a great tool that we will be using dur...