This MS Surface Tablet thingy looks interesting.

Enough that I may look into it when it becomes time to replace my iPad 2.  I am not planning to pick up an iPad 3; the advances aren’t enough to justify dropping that kind of cash, and neither is the swank factor.  But if the Surface is really this good at content creation… well, there’s a limit to how much fun I can glean from trying to make the iPad act like a computer.

Charlie Stross fills me with dread.

From his review of the iPad 2:

The front and rear video cameras on the iPad 2 (which appear to match those on the iPhone 4) are supported by FaceTime, Photo Booth, and the on-iPad port of iMovie. (Yes, it’s a lightweight 720p video shooting and editing platform — all in one.) There’s an HDMI-out dongle, so you can mirror the iPad’s screen on an HD television — potentially very useful for presentations and guerilla media production. You probably wouldn’t want to film and edit a serious video using the iPad’s built-in camera, but the SD-card reader should let you work with an HD camcorder. If iMovie on iPad is as good as iMovie on OSX, this is going to revolutionize video blogging.

Dammit, I’ve managed to go quite a long amount of time without really needing to join the Cult of Jobs.  But if I can shave off as much time between filming and publishing as this article implies… dag.  Guerrilla media production, indeed; this could be very handy for Miami next year…

#rsrh Being cheerfully mercenary in the e-book wars.

This article by Megan McArdle on the escalating war between the Kindle and the iPad over who gets to replace my print library (and thus, give me my basement back) is very interesting; unfortunately – and this isn’t Megan’s fault – I still haven’t decided which one I prefer, and thus can recommend.  Clearly what needs to happen is that each company should send me one to, ah, ‘analyze.’  Obviously, if one sends me one and the other doesn’t, that will make the results pretty much a foregone conclusion, yes?  I’ve even updated the Wish List on the Filthy Lucre page accordingly for said company representatives (and company representatives only*).

Oh, yes: do the same thing for Little Miss Attila.  After all, she brought this issue to my attention.

Moe Lane

PS: Seriously, why Amazon didn’t hand out more Kindles to New Media folks…

*My current readers already got me a new audio rig for phone interviews.  Which hopefully they feel that they’re getting their money’s worth on; I’m trying to get at least a couple in every week.

iPad, meet baseball bat. Baseball Bat, iPad.

Via @thebcast, there are a lot of horrified/angry/both comments here asking what was the point of this:

The answer, of course, is to “spawn a large number of horrified/angry/both comments in response.” You don’t think that there isn’t one person in the continental USA willing to spend five hundred bucks just to freak out Apple acolytes? – And, clearly, all you need is one.

#rsrh I just don’t know about this iPad business.

Apple should send me one, so I could test it out and tell everyone what I think about the product.

Moe Lane

PS: Hey, somebody sent me a Wii, didn’t they? And then there was the new audio interview computer rig (I’m reaching out to various campaigns to try to do some phone interviews, and would like to hear from more).