In the wake of North Charleston commendable effort to make things a bit “greener”, it is extremely tough to follow their lead as a business owner.  Can our business recoup the investment in alternative power sources?  And, what commitments are being sought once we commit? 

Adorning the roof of the North Charleston City Hall are five (5) wind power turbines installed with the intent of lowering the City’s $420,000 a year power bill.  At roughly 16½% of the City’s annual power expenditure, the investment risk appears to be appropriate.   However, the ROI starts to get somewhat shaky when I further read that the City’s plans of placing the turbines over the HVAC exhaust would generate $5,000 a year.   Assuming a total cost of $70,000 for the project (federal grant of $57K + $13K of the City’s own resources), it will take some 14 years to recoup the investment.  This does NOT include maintenance costs!

Annual power bills for small companies ranges in estimates from $2,400 to $12,000.  Based on North Charleston’s expenditure of $14K per wind turbine, small companies are unable to make such a financial commitment.  Sending more than my annual power costs on an investment that has a +14 year payback is asinine.  Apparently, the technology has not evolved to a level to allow a wider embrace.  Be that as it may, kudos North Charleston, for at least setting the stage to give us more information with which to evaluate these options.

This has been coming for a while now, but: the disposable battery is on its death bed thanks to the heavy use of non-user-serviceable, cheap, rechargeable, and durable batteries in modern devices. But is this necessarily a good thing? Let’s analyze this.

Cost
New devices use non-user-serviceable batteries, which rarely need replacement (inside of warranty). This can, in the long run, be cheaper than finicky disposable battery replacement.

However, you still pay the overhead for this convenience: manufacturers of products with internal batteries add the difference of what they pay to manufacture/install the internal battery and what they charge YOU for that feature to the overall profit of the device.

This doesn’t make that much of a difference compared to disposable batteries though. For years, manufacturers have been buying lower-quality disposable batteries directly from their manufacturers by means of an exclusive deal, packaging them into the product with a big “Batteries Included” stamp emphasized in manufacturing to make their product seem more appealing, whereas it would be more frugal for a consumer to buy just the product and pay for the regular retail disposable batteries separately.

So as far as initial cost goes, the two are pretty much on par with each other. But it doesn’t end there: batteries, internal or disposable, have to die at some point.

Recycling
A disposable battery dies in a device. You replace it. Being a Good American®, you take the battery to a certified battery recycling center (after finding one and, if you live in my city, making the gas-intensive hike to get there). But it doesn’t end there: you are then CHARGED to recycle the battery YOU don’t need anymore.

I don’t expect the government to pay for and subsidize the cost of the battery recycling firm to process and strip my old AA’s, because it’s got enough debt of its own. But it does seem awfully double-jeopardy to have to both pay for the disposables, AND throw them away (keeping in mind we already pay for trash services via taxes for every other piece of garbage we throw away).

And it gets better: once those disposable batteries are in the plant, their skin-irritable chemicals are safely disposed of, while the metal and other salvageable parts are sold to battery manufacturers for peanuts. Once the battery manufacturer gets your salvageable trash you essentially paid the shipping to them for, the process begins anew.

Combining that with the fact that disposables are usually involuntarily-bundled with devices at inferior quality to retail batteries (as explained above), it’s just not fair to consumers.

Internal batteries, on the other hand, don’t need to get disposed of as often. And when they do, they’re usually manufacturer-serviceable anyway – which means THEY get to deal with the cost and hassle of disposing of the batteries, not you and me. Plus, as a Big Corporation, they get in bed with the battery disposal plant and battery manufacturer to get a price cut on new internal batteries in exchange for helping the manufacturer recycle salvageable parts from old ones.

This isn’t always the case, e.g. for PSP batteries, but for most major manufacturers like Apple and tablet companies, this is relevant.

Emergencies
So far I’ve been knocking the disposable battery racket industry pretty hard, but there is still a need (albeit niche market) for them these days besides to power older devices (once you scrape the crusty battery acid caked on the conductors off, that is).

When disaster strikes, the power grid is pretty prone to going dark. Even in areas with underground power distribution lines, the power transmission lines feeding the local substation(s) are usually still aerial (at least at some point down the line, for cost) and are still at risk to get taken out for a while by the next hurricane, tornado, earthquake, tsunami etc.

So when the power grid feeding your house and its outlets goes dead, what happens when your internal-battery radio, lantern etc. drains completely? Oh that’s right, most of these devices use disposable batteries anyway – and for this reason.

Buy lantern batteries, radio batteries, etc. ahead of time when the signs of the next big disaster rear their ugly heads. Or just keep some around in preparation. It’s a good practice.

Compromise
So for the most part, disposable batteries suck. But here’s something I ran across while writing this article that kind of blew me away:

That’s right, it looks like a disposable, acts like a disposable battery, powers disposable battery-devices (old and new), but (re-)CHARGES like an internal battery.

This is nothing new, since every battery manufacturer makes a little charging station for their special line of batteries that support recharging (but only N number of times). What this little guy brings to the table, however, is something new that only internal batteries share with it: the USB port, commonly used to power/charge internal-battery devices.

So now the convenience of charging a battery (internal) from any USB-port-equipped device has been brought to the disposable battery market. I can die happy now. Even though one of these probably costs the amount of two or three retail AA batteries plus shipping and a fraction of the same charge as an internal battery, but still.

Conclusion

Disposable batteries are going, going, not gone. Because there’s still just as much of a need for them to be in large aisle-center cases in stores, despite the fact that most batteries are going internal and better (and manufactured by the same companies that make disposable batteries anyway).

We still need them for our older electronics, for emergency equipment, and more. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be smart about it (see above) or like it. Know your products, know your needs, and save your money.

Due to a change in the type of power plug that ships with smaller devices (i.e. the “magic little boxes” that us integrators install for clients) in the past several years, said devices and power supplies are more apt to be wiped out by lightning and power spikes than older supplies in exchange for a lower manufacturing cost. However, with a simple change in how you merely plug it in, you can alleviate this key disadvantage AND lower your electricity bill in one fell swoop.

The Simple Trick
Very simple: if the power plug for a device that inserts into a wall receptacle is very lightweight (e.g. too lightweight to contain a dense chunk of iron, explained further below), then don’t plug it into a wall outlet. Even a surge-protected power strip should be a very last resort in leu of other options.

Many smaller devices come with alternative power adapters, the most popular being USB adapters that optionally replace the pronged wall plug. If the device comes with one, use it. If not and one it available, there’s a 99% chance that purchasing it is cheaper than replacing the power supply and/or entire device (and the cost of reconfiguring it, etc.). And nobody in this world wants to spend money that could be saved right now.

Example
Here’s a typical scenario: You have a TV, and connected to this TV is a set-top box (TiVo/DVR), a Blu-Ray player, and/or an Inteset Media Server. Connecting to your TV and equipment via infrared is a Global Cache iTach to enable communication with the eController app we develop that allows an iPad to control it and your other devices from over the network, wirelessly.

The new global cache models, like many small-footprint “boxes,” all ship with these new, cheaper switched-mode power supplies that are more susceptible to lightning and power imbalances that are typical of domestic power distribution even in the most ideal areas.

As mentioned already, plugging it into the wall is signing a death contract with the device, especially here in Charleston where our power grid has horrendous stability. However – the Global Cache devices, like many, also ship with an alternate USB power supply that powers the box from any USB port (no software required, only a “live” USB port).

So swap out that wall adapter for the USB adapter and plug it into a USB port on the TV, Inteset, TiVo/DVR, Blu-Ray player or any other live USB port attached to a larger unit and the chances of the box and/or its power supply getting cooked independently of the other equipment fall dramatically.

Why Does This Work? (the nitty-gritty details)
Early I said this only applies to power supplies that a) plug into the wall (pronged 120v mains receptacle plugs), and b) feel too light to contain dense iron within them.

Compare the picture of the two transformers at the top of this article: they both transform 120v AC receptacle voltage to 12v DC voltage for a device. The smaller one is a cheap switched-mode supply, while the larger is an iron-core transformer.

This is because the older/traditional cords with device-external power supplies used iron-core transformers, whereas the new ones use switched-mode, solid-state chips to replace the heavy and expensive iron-cored beasts. While this saves on the cost of the power supply and device as a whole, it sacrifices a crucial aspect in power management: mains isolation.

You see, when one of those frequent power surges, level imbalances, frequency changes or other non-ideal power distribution behavior hits your home and affects the devices plugged into your outlets, iron core transformers absorb more of those changes without affecting the life of your device (and only slightly affecting the lifespan of the transformer itself) due to the electromagnetic isolation between the device’s internal components and the wall outlet’s power the transformer offers.

The cheap solid-state chips in the new supplies, however, does not do this and have a high tendency to die (and blindly permit the transfer unwanted levels to your equipment).

But by using an alternate supply and leeching the device’s power off of a larger device that 9 out of 10 times contains an internal iron-core transformer (since there’s room and the device is too expensive to cut this crucial corner), the device is isolating itself from the unstable mains voltage just like its parent device it’s leeching power from is.

Additional Savings
In addition to protecting your device by isolating it from unstable voltages and preventing the need to replace components unnecessarily due to lack of this simple trick, it can also save on your electricity bill: by leeching power from the USB port of a larger device, said device can regulate the voltage being delivered to the box and cut on energy costs while allowing the device to still fully function.

When plugging a device into a wall socket, the power supply components are always “live” and drawing power even if the device at the end of the cord is in “standby” mode, whereas if the device is leeching power from a USB port, it draws little to no current (the amount of which depends on how much the device needs in “standby” mode), which down the line cuts on the amount drawn from the wall by the parent/host device it is leeching power from, directly saving you money on your electric bill.

So while the majority of this article applies to what we do on our end, every consumer can benefit from this tip to save on both their electricity bill and save their devices from power imbalances. Everybody likes to save money!

Appalled by your electricity bill or just want to cut costs where you can in this horrendous economy? Well here are some energy management tips you can employ that cost little to nothing to implement, but save you loads on your electricity usage (which you can verify using our TED Energy Management products).

Most of these rules I myself use, and my power bill is $50.

Switch Off Everything at the Outlet Level
If you have a cell phone charger you leave plugged in even while you’re away from home, a TV you leave plugged in when not watching it, or any other device for that matter, then put about $50 in an envelope and mail it to your power company (SCE&G here where we are) – because in the average home, that’s the bare minimum all those devices cost for the power they consume while you’re not using them, and it all adds up fast.

The rule is this: if it has a big dense box either on the plug or somewhere along the cord (with the exception of large devices and hairdryers), then it has a transformer in its circuitry. Transformers draw power from outlets even when the device they separate from the outlet is turned off. As minute as these currents are with respect to what the device pulls when “on,” over time it adds up very quickly.

Plus, the longer you leave a transformer/power-changing device plugged into the wall, regardless of the device’s on or off state over time, you are slowly wearing out the transformer itself, leading to an investment in a new power supply down the road unless you take steps to prevent this. And power supplies aren’t cheap either.

Going around and unplugging every device in your home every day can be time consuming or just impossible, but there are ways to manage which devices are sucking precious power from your home’s energy-metered line.

Use Your Power Strips
The easiest to use and train all other inhabitants of your home to use is quite simple. Usually, two outlets per wall or wall segment just aren’t enough for most people, so we all use power strips. Ever take note of that little on/off button on your power strip? USE IT!

Clicking the power button on the power strip itself “off” severs the connection from the wall (and thus the home’s metered power bus every device connects to). This is different from the power switch on the device itself because it effectively kills the transformer’s link to the wall outlet, preventing it from drawing current and wearing itself out over time even while you’re away and your devices are off.

So centralize your devices onto your power strips, buy more if you see it necessary to isolate some less-often used devices, and start hitting the button on strips you need to be 100% dead when not in use.

I personally keep my desktop computer, its TV/monitor, and peripherals (printers, etc.) on a power strip I keep off when I’m not at my desk (or using my computer elsewhere in the house via remote access). Likewise, I keep my amplifiers and guitar equipment on another power strip, also off unless I’m jamming out. However, since someone is always home needing Internet access, I leave the modem and Wi-Fi router plugged into a battery-backup strip always since I can’t kill those easily.

And again, my power bill is $50 for 97¢ / KW.

Wall Switches
If you have a room where there’s a wall switch that turns an outlet on and off in the room somewhere, then you should consider yourself lucky – for into that outlet you can run power strips that control lights, phone chargers you only use when home, or anything else you need only when you’ve entered the door and hit the switch and cease needing when you’re on the way out.

Likewise, some high-power devices (notably window air conditioner units, some heaters, and many 240v appliances) include a GFCI set/reset switch on the plug itself that goes into the wall. Usually these devices should be on a circuit by themselves or require a special (240v/full-phase) outlet, but in place of a power strip isolating it from the wall you can kill it all the same via the test/set button on the GFCI plug.

These are normally used to safely test the GFCI circuit that prevents ground faults from shocking someone by energizing the case/chassis of such devices with unsafe high electric currents, but they can also be used to “hard” switch off the device so it draws no current. Use it to keep your extra room AC/radiator from running or drawing extra current during the day when you’re not there, and start spending the money you save on your bill on more fun things to plug in.

Added Benefits
It gets better – by separating your precious expensive electronics from the wall energy using hard switching via power strips, wall switches, GFCI plugs etc., you are also isolating them from lightning strikes, power grid fluctuations, stray radio interference and other “line hazards” as well.

These things may not always stop your electronics in their tracks the first time they occur, but they do incrementally harm the device over time until it eventually stops working entirely (or presents a safety hazard via short circuits or ground faults, possibly taking the whole breaker circuit’s devices along with it!)

Breaker Boxes
“Well if separating my devices from the mains line is what I need to do, then lets just go start killing breakers in the breaker box!”

WRONG. Don’t go digging in your breaker box – leave that to us. Breaker boxes are not something to go poking around in on a regular basis for a number of reasons.

First off, you can shock yourself. The main line for the whole house is coming straight in there from your power meter just on the other side of the wall – scarily close, actually (trust me: I’ve installed and serviced them numerous times). While 240 volts (standard mains/line/”house” voltage) itself isn’t considered “high voltage,” the electric currents carried on that voltage are enough to power your whole house – enough to easily stop the hearts of tens of touching people if a fault were to occur.

Plus, many homes are wired weird at the phase level in the breaker box to save costs or to prevent the unnecessary installation of a second breaker box for a single circuit. And often, this is bundled with poor labeling of breakers and combining several rooms and their outlets into one breaker along with ceiling lights and fans.

So switching entire breakers is dangerous, may switch off more than you wanted to, may not switch off what you intended to, accidentally switch off your alarm system/cameras, switch off only one phase of an active, oddly-wired AC/Heater plug, and is all around a Very Bad Idea®.

Other Tips
As usual, always use fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs for energy savings. And then maybe link your lower-energy lamps to power strips plugged into your switched outlet so hitting the switch by the door to your room not only turns them on, but activates your phone charger, speakers, space heater, monitor, or any other “at home” devices you may have.

If you like having devices on even when the power is off (e.g. your modem/router so you can still surf the web on your battery-operated iPad or notebook), consider investing in a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) for said devices and plug them in. This in and of itself doesn’t save any money, but unplugging the UPS periodically does by using its internal charged battery that charged from the wall ahead of time to power your digital devices.

This also “exercises” the UPS itself, as is good to do once every few months to help keep the battery able to store its rated charge over time. Remember to not plug power strips into the “battery backup” portion of the UPS’s built-in power strip, as this causes most power strips to trip their internal surge protectors due to the nature of most UPSs’ output power (harmonic distortion/square wave AC power).

Safety First!
As always remember your basic Fire Marshall rules: don’t daisy-chain a thousand power strips together with thin extension cords, or you won’t have to worry about your energy bill what with your house being charcoal on your plot of land and all. I get away with running an obscene amount of high-power devices on few circuits in my old house (where our outlets don’t even have a third prong, still!), but generally play it safe and don’t stress-test your home’s wiring.

And if your home is old and doesn’t have three-prong outlets (or you use three-to-two prong adapter “cheater plugs”) then call your electrician immediately to come ground your house – it’ll save you or a loved one’s life someday.

And don’t stand in a puddle of water during a lightning storm holding a long copper rod. This may seem obvious, but likewise so should drastically saving money on your electric bill by simply re-arranging a few existing items in your home.

So you have an iPhone/iPod/iPad, and you use it quite a bit. Every wonder just what data is sent to and from the device to remote servers over the Internet? Or are you worried after the whole Apple tracking scandal or the recent news that fraudulent malware apps are becoming increasingly discovered in the Android and Blackberry app stores?

I’ll show you exactly how you can view what data of yours is sent/received, with the technique here applicable to any other wireless mobile device – not just iPhones.

Sections:

• Why Be Concerned?
• How It’s Done
• Capturing iDevice Data
• Interpreting Wireshark’s iPhone Data
• Final Notes

Why Be Concerned?
It’s common knowledge that your iDevice (or any other wireless/mobile device) and its apps send and receive data to and from the Internet regularly. What’s less common knowledge is just what all is sent, and how such data could impact your privacy – recall the iPhone tracking scandal regarding users’ GPS coordinates (related to nearby WiFi hotspots) being stored and transmitted back to Apple.

Android users will also benefit from this with all the malware being discovered in the Android app store as well.

How It’s Done
If you ever want to know whether your device is sending more than you want to share, all you need is: A computer running Wireshark, your wireless/mobile device (here presumed to be an iDevice), a wireless Access Point you can configure, an Internet connection you can plug the WiFi access point into, and optionally/optimally an ethernet hub (NOT SWITCH – see below).

An ethernet router with a builtin WiFi access point will not work – you need a standalone access point. They are widely available and inexpensive.

First, disable 3G/any non-WiFi data link on your device and turn on WiFi if it’s off. This forces any data to be sent over WiFi and not a wireless provider’s network via the device’s (possible) internal antenna. It’s possible some apps that run in the background may send data over the mobile network even if WiFi is connected for load-balancing or to ensure link stability (e.g. Google Maps, iOS 5 widgets, location data etc.)

The next step optimally involves an old-style Ethernet hub, which are cheap and found for under $10 on eBay. You must use a hub and not it’s modern hardwired replacement, the switch. The reason is pretty technical, and has to do with how data received on one hub port is blindly broadcasted to every other port so it will eventually reach its destination, whereas switches “smartly” route data from endpoint to endpoint bypassing any unintentional receivers.

If you have a hub, plug it between your internet connection and your WiFi access point, and plug your computer into your hub via a regular Ethernet “patch” cable (Macbook Air users will be forced to use the alternative method). If you do not have a hub, then simply plug your Internet connection into the access point and connect to it with both your computer and device wirelessly.

At this point, your iDevice is connected to your access point, along with your computer if you do not have a hub – otherwise, the access point connects to the hub before being connected to the Internet link, with your computer also hardwired into the hub (so it receives all traffic coming from the access point that is intended to reach the Internet from your iDevice).

Capturing iDevice Data
Now you can fire up Wireshark on your computer and set it to listen on either the hub-connected Ethernet port or the WiFi-connected wireless card on your computer. It will print out all traffic your card receives, including traffic not send/received from your device, so keep this in mind and be mindful of how long you tell Wireshark to capture data so you will have less irrelevant junk to sift through later when analyzing the results.

Now you can use your iDevice as usual, focusing on apps you’re suspicious of sending more data then you want, and see exactly what that data is on your computer as it’s sent/received. You may need to look up your iDevice’s IP address within the WiFi settings to know which one to look for in the “Source” and “Destination” columns in the Wireshark data.

Interpreting Wireshark’s iPhone Data
By this point you should have a row/column list of data Wireshark captured. The data is listed in “packets,” the standard Ethernet transmission unit. Data may be split across several of said “packets,” but simply right-clicking any one within a larger stream of data gives the option to view the data as one continuous stream even if one segmented packet was interrupted by another.

As mentioned above, each packet has a “source” and “destination” IP address field you can sort to find what is sent and received from your iDevice, along with the packet type and a brief human-understandable description of what the packet on the far right column.

The actual data is sent in a variety of app-specific formats, but the typical ones are: XML data (recognizable by the encapsulating ‘<’ and ‘>’ characters around keywords, with a ‘

You’ll find that a lot of data, especially data that is sensitive (and potentially privacy-invasive) is encrypted using HTTPS/TLS transmissions. While such data is not easily decryptable or readable, you can however see where the data is going in the initial “handshake” packets (such as store-my-data.example.com) and use common deduction as to when the data was sent during an app’s usage.

For instance, if you’re in a Facebook app and click on some location-irrelevant icon and see data sent to maps.google.com shortly thereafter, then you know something’s fishy because there’s no need for such data to be exchanged outside of the “checkin” portion of the app or some other related element.

Final Notes
This method is extremely useful for viewing what data is being transmitted by your device, especially smartphones like the iPhone. The Blackberry and Android OS usually has icons that appear in the top status bar whenever data is being transceived, but most other (Apple) systems lack this except for the new Location icon that appears in iOS 5 whenever the GPS chip is being used, if enabled.

Vendors may get mad at me for posting this and blowing the whistle on their and their devices’ privacy invasions, but with the media coverage of Android app store malware and Apple location tracking, it’s no secret that people have a genuine reason to be concerned about what data is going where, and this is how you view that data or at least deduce what it is if it’s encrypted.

Likewise, the Wireshark program can offer the same service to your computer itself regarding its data if there’s an app on it that raises your suspicions. None of these techniques (combined) are new – Wireshark was used to teach students (including the highschool version of yours truly) about networking data and protocols, as well as professionals (including yours truly) to debug their/our own protocols. Hubs have been around and access points are common, I merely combined techniques to investigate a fairly new problem.

I encourage every conscious mobile device user to use this technique to investigate what data of theirs is being networked without their knowledge. Even use it when configuring a new device, you’ll be amazed about what Big Brother has its evil hands on.

Many years ago, I was faced with balancing the emergency plans of our family owned business with those of my family and our parents.  The attached document was compiled from a number of different sites (a collective wisdom if you will) that helped me coordinate the focus of everyone around.  As Hurricane Irene appears to have lessened her stronghold on our attention, I share this information in hopes that it may help you.  Also, please use the following web links to assist you with more information or should you want to follow the progress of the weather alters and our respective community responses.

• Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/
• NOAA: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ /  http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/southeast_loop.php / and others
• SC Emergency Management Division: http://www.scemd.org/links/index.htm
• SC Traffic Information Network: http://www.sctraffic.org/
• SC Department of Transportation: http://www.dot.state.sc.us/getting/evacuation.shtml
• South Carolina Emergency Management Division: http://www.scemd.org/
• FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency): http://www.fema.gov/
• Charleston County: http://www.charlestoncounty.org/
• City of Charleston: http://www.charleston-sc.gov/home/home.aspx

OK America – our government is spending $1½ trillion more than our tax revenues.  It is the equivalent of a household with a combined income of $50K spending $86K – funding the $36K shortfall from their credit cards!!  How do we fix this beast which is clearly out of control?  Let’s begin with a view of the playing field.  In summary, the numbers are as follows:

These values were faired similar to those of the Congressional Budget Office (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Frontmatter.shtml) in an effort to make this a non partisan discussion.

The solution is quite obvious, either we raise taxes or start cutting budgets to programs that no one dares discuss.  Let’s begin with a 50% cut in Social Security/Mediacre/Medicaid which brings in revenues of $806 billion, but dishes out almost $1½ trillion.   Next, is this “other mandatory expenditures” of $685 trillion.  Unless Congress is more specific with us taxpayers, this it gets cut altogether!  Savings thus far – $1,370 billion: just $226 billion to go.  We’re left with Defense spending and non-defense spending because interest (until the debt is paid off is mandatory).  Let’s address this fairly, $144 billion cut to defense, the remainder $82 billion to non-defense in these categories:

Lastly, we need to increase taxes because the $14 trillion debt needs to be paid off.  We thought the cuts were painful – this will be equally as tough.  Pick an amortization period of our debt and that’s how we back into the amount of our tax increase.

Sure is easy being a back seat driver to all of this!  BUT, we need to start making some tough choices America.  It is certainly not fair in shooting the messengers (our elected officials).  Let’s take a national vote on how you want to solve this problem.  Hating to admit this… it appears that both cuts and tax increases are needed.

The poverty index in Darlington is 81%. Wow! Darlington is performing significantly better than districts whose poverty index is 20 percentage points lower. Mind you this is not the exceptional performance of just one school with high poverty. This is the exceptional performance of an entire district of schools with high poverty.  Read more in John Warner’s Swampfox article: Darlington School District. 81% poverty. 12th best district in SC. Why? No excuses, and people over programs | Swamp Fox.

iPad

Ever since the iPad initially came out (and before it did, but that’s something I can’t discuss here), people have been in love with it – well, almost everyone.

From my little corner in the tech scene, I’ve been scoffing at it and its missing features for the longest time. And my criticism is not unfounded, as my credentials in the industry will show. My name is Anthony Cargile, I hate the iPad, and here is why.

Missing Features
I realize every device has its place in the world, but when a netbook of the same price can do what an iPad can’t, I have a problem with that. And here’s a list of those things the iPad should have:

• An integrated Blu-Ray player
• USB port(s)
• Thunderbolt/IO adapter
• Playbook-to-Blackberry-like iPhone integration
• A less-restrictive OS

None of the above are unreasonable additions to the feature set of the iPad that would deter from its design and functionality goals. Below, I’ll analyze each one.

An integrated Blu-Ray player
For some reason, Apple has not joined the rest of the world in the Blu-Ray train. Even many Macbooks lack the functionality and it’s just wrong.

Blu-Ray and its 3D successor is the de-facto HD storage medium for movies (and other data). Apple previously killed the floppy disk by removing the drive from its computers in the late 90′s/early 2000′s, and now it would appear that Apple is attempting to kill all optical storage media PERIOD with iTunes, digital (flash/HDD) storage and the Cloud. But they can’t truly kill optical storage, because the move from spinning disks to solid state drives and other storage nuances are making Blu-Ray and other optical storage mediums still necessary for media storage even today, though that’s another whole separate blog post.

When I buy an HD, DRM-restricted movie, I want to be able to watch it at my own discretion on my PS3, my computer, or any device I wish to when I want without it taking up valuable storage space when I’m not watching it. Apple doesn’t seem to grasp this, and I’m sure the majority of people would agree with this statement.

Therefore, I’m not giving up the concept of buying a movie as a Blu-Ray (and importing it into iTunes if need be), keeping it on Blu-Ray, and playing it whenever I please. The nice thing would be able to play it on an iPad if I actually wasted my money bought one anyway, and it’s not that hard/prohibitively expensive to integrate a player into the iPad, including CD/DVD functionality as well.

USB Port(s)
The main conspiracy behind this major exclusion falls moreso under the “OS Limitations” listed a few sections down from this, but iOS and its iPad hardware could still easily support one or two USB ports for things like flash drives, commonly-available addon peripherals and other nice USB-driven things (including display ports).

Apple is worried about pirates and jailbreakers taking advantage of such a port, circumventing the overall goal of iOS to restrict you from using what you pay for. Regardless, it could still be done right. Mounting a flash drive’s filesystem so I can pull a document off of it and import it into a document editor on the iPad for editing (and vice-versa) is actually already possible the way apps store documents within iOS anyway, the only thing needed is a small OS update, the added hardware, and maybe some handy API additions.

The iCloud seems to circumvent the need for a lot of these things, but it doesn’t replace the standard non-Apple way of the flash drive and USB addon functionality we’ve been using and will continue to use for decades. Plus, Apple could profit immensely from such a port by selling addon hardware to plug into it and including the iOS drivers in the system (or by allowing them to be installed through the same USB port via a special protocol, even though I despise such proprietary things).

Thunderbolt/IO adapters for external displays (other than the audio jack)
In the same vein as the USB jack thing, an I/O port such as Thunderbolt (an Apple technology) would be nice to have on the iPad for connecting display adapters or other peripherals.

Sure, the dock port and headphone jack both allow numerous A/V streaming capabilities and such, but still having a Thunderbolt adapter would allow many other possibilities: an Ethernet dongle for using restricted non-WiFi networks for accessing their content (allowing a broader audience for the iPad, e.g. government agencies etc. with private/ethernet-only networks), an alternate/faster HDMI dongle/adapter port, and other numerous possibilities only limited by Apple themselves.

Playbook-to-Blackberry-like iPhone integration
Ever seen the Blackberry Playbook commercial where the person is using the Playbook (showing off its “real” multitasking capability where apps actually run in the background instead of just remain open, frozen in state), when the Blackberry next to them rings with a phone call and the Playbook alerts them that their phone is ringing?

Well Apple could easily do the same thing, and in my opinion could have easily done it from the release of the iPad 1 instead of deferring such functionality to later (iPad 3?) versions as an extra reason to fork out more money for the latest one.

Migrating Facetime conversations from phone to pad without dropping the call, answering calls from your iPad using your iPhone’s data connection (with a bluetooth connection between the two for all of this), streaming (as opposed to copying) music/sound from iPhone to iPad or vice-versa without an Apple TV or connected network e.g. for family car rides where one device is plugged into the car’s speakers and someone else wants to play music, distributed playlists, using one’s camera from another, etc. are all features that could exist with this integration.

Most of the people I know with iPads also have iPhones as their phone, so it only makes sense to integrate the two tighter. And with the advent of wireless syncing, iCloud integration and such, there is no excuse that this isn’t an existing feature.

A less-restrictive OS
This is too much to ask for, I know. Apple’s restrictive iOS doesn’t permit certain things on purpose, to enforce DRM and reduce pirating. But still, some things could be done without violating such principles.

An OS-level restricted file browser/Finder for viewing files within apps, moving them, managing them, opening them etc. would be necessary for many added features that would draw me to their platform more. It would also allow one to view inserted Blu-Ray discs, flash drives and their files, which are two concerns addressed here.

Jailbreaking allows for this functionality, but I’m trying to stay away from that word in this post because, aside from the hardware upgrades, it allows nearly everything discussed here, at least theoretically but mostly in practice.

Summing it all up
Given the reasons above, I think the current iPad is crap. Sure it has its uses and is a decent tablet, but it could use a lot of work in its feature list. And for the money one pays for it, they’re crazy not to include every feature I’ve listed here, especially since they are mainly software changes and adding just a few inexpensive hardware peripherals.

Get with it, Apple.

A bunch of chicken-sh#! pencil pushers.  I clump the S&P numb nuts into the same MBA crowd that stopped calling our US laborers people and staff, but instead “head counts.”  After having read their release (highlights shared below), they have screwed with the wrong group of people, the United States citizens.  Yes, we have elected these lawmakers and although they may or may not have fumbled the ball, the responsibility falls on the electorate.  And just like a commercial I viewed a while back about the credit bureau poorly rating the head of a family working multiple jobs to pay off his debt simply because he was paying slowly… that fact was he was paying.

To irresponsibly downgrade country because we possess (and exercise) the freedom with which to debate how to accomplish our financial goals is close to treasonous and as un-American as you can possibly get.  So S&P, downgrade our rating because we choose to actively and aggressively debate on how we will manage our budget (similar to how a real family works on these very issues).  I will no longer seek your opinion for you attempt to destroy the very foundation of free speech and debate on which our country is built.

The following are highlights from the text of Standard & Poor’s release of its decision to downgrade the ratings outlook on the U.S. debt:

Our ratings on the U.S. rest on its high-income, highly diversified, and flexible economy. It is backed by a strong track record of prudent and credible monetary policy, evidenced to us by its ability to support growth while containing inflationary pressures. The ratings also reflect our view of the unique advantages stemming from the dollar’s preeminent place among world currencies.

“Although we believe these strengths currently outweigh what we consider to be the U.S.’s meaningful economic and fiscal risks and large external debtor position, we now believe that they might not fully offset the credit risks over the next two years at the ‘AAA’ level,” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Nikola G. Swann.

“More than two years after the beginning of the recent crisis, U.S. policymakers have still not agreed on how to reverse recent fiscal deterioration or address longer-term fiscal pressures,” Mr. Swann added.

But for any plan to be credible, we believe that it would need to secure support from a cross-section of leaders in both political parties. If U.S. policymakers do agree on a fiscal consolidation strategy, we believe the experience of other countries highlights that implementation could take time. It could also generate significant political controversy, not just within Congress or between Congress and the Administration, but throughout the country. We therefore think that, assuming an agreement between Congress and the President, there is a reasonable chance that it would still take a number of years before the government reaches a fiscal position that stabilizes its debt burden. In addition, even if such measures are eventually put in place, the initiating policymakers or subsequently elected ones could decide to at least partially reverse fiscal consolidation.

Some compromise that achieves agreement on a comprehensive budgetary consolidation program–containing deficit-reduction measures in amounts near those recently proposed, and combined with meaningful steps toward implementation by 2013–is our baseline assumption and could lead us to revise the outlook back to stable. Alternatively, the lack of such an agreement or a significant further fiscal deterioration for any reason could lead us to lower the rating.

All I can say is chicken-sh$! bunch of pencil pushers.