Another step further into the cloud - expanding use of Google Voice

I received a letter in the mail earlier this week indicating that the AT&T mobile numbers and account numbers for all IBM employees (myself included) had been inadvertently published to the Internet. Lovely! One of AT&T's remedies was to offer a free phone # change to anyone affected.  I thought to myself, time to make some lemonade from their data breach lemons.

I took this as an opportunity to make my break to fully using Google voice. I already had GV forwarding to my mobile phone and have been using it as the voicemail service in lieu of AT&T voicemail, but lots of folks call or text me directly on my phone. The new mobile # is a clean start. I now give out just my Google voice number, which supports voice and text and selective forwarding (to my mobile, Vonage business line, or whatever). 

The google voice app works nicely on my iPhone and iPad and I'm trying out the free VoiceMac app on my Macbook pro. Loving that voice and text are now everywhere. 

Morning

I love this time, early in the morning before the rest of the household wakes. The morning air is crisp. It's light out, but the crickets are still chirping. As the aroma of brewing coffee spills out from the kitchen to the dining room, I plop down in a comfy chair and face the choice -- kindle reader for some escapist fiction or tech news and social networking. As the coffee finishes brewing with a gurgle and splatter, i grab my cup from the Keurig and settle down into the joy of quiet calm.

School Supplies

I went out yesterday to do the annual shopping for school supplies. Interestingly, this year's list seemed lest daunting than previous years.  What didn't change was the chaos of the school supply aisles at the local megamart. It was complete madness. Parents scrambling everywhere, employees restocking the quickly emptying shelves as quickly as they could. As usual, they couldn't keep up with certain key items -- most notably on my list, dry erase markers. I went to multiple stores and none of them had them in stock.

Then it struck me. Why the !@#$% am I buying dry erase markers? "Feck that!", I said to myself (or perhaps out loud, judging by the startled reactions of other parents in the school supply aisle). And hand sanitizer and kleenex and ziploc bags? And copy paper?!? Feck those, too!

This year, I'm sending my kids to school with the actual school supplies. After paying textbook fees, tech fees, bus fees, and even $50 for a bloody parking pass at the high school, I'm pretty well fed up. I believe we need to fund our schools appropriately and they need to operate within a reasonable budget. Foisting the cost of office supplies off on parents simply sweeps that problem under the rug instead of dealing with it. 

So I'm making my stand. It's stupid and petty, but this is my stand. I appreciate that the schools have a budget crisis, but they need to get their hands out of my wallet and deal with it!!

Kindle Cloud Reader

I'm a fan of eBooks. While I have a couple overflowing bookshelves, most of those tomes are older, as all of my book purchases have been electronic for several years now. The turning point was around March 2009, when Amazon released their Kindle app for iPhone. While not the most compelling form factor, the portability afforded by the iPhone app was irresistable. When the original iPad came out and Amazon published their Kindle app for it, I was completely sold. iBooks? Nook? Nah ... I'm all in with Amazon for my library.

My wife and I share an Amazon account. This has the interesting side effect of allowing us to not only share books, but share bookmarks as well (since they're attached to the book and synced across devices).

I find reading books on my iPad2 to be a compelling experience. The Kindle app just gets out of the way. No flashy animations, no UI elements ... just my book.

Amazon recently released their "Cloud Reader" (http://read.amazon.com). This is clearly a response (at least in part) to Apple's policies that disallow linking to the Kindle store to buy books (which I find to be a little bit of an inconvenience, but certainly not a deal-breaker). I say disallowing because Apple's requirement of a 30% cut isn't remotely feasible in the current eBook business model.

I decided to check out Amazon's cloud reader on the iPad and was surprised to find it to be quite comparable to the iPad app.

Here's the reading experience on the iPad app (left) versus the cloud reading app in a browser (right).

 If you could hide the browser toolbar, you'd swear you were in the local app. Gesture to swipe between pages (though not quite as smoothly as the app), change fonts, set bookmarks, and more.

Browsing your library is nice and clean, even enabling you to cache your books locally for offline reading. 

I wouldn't be surprised if we see the Kindle app go away on the iPad in favor of their cloud reader. An interesting link back to Apple's original vision of web apps on iOS.

I think Amazon has the right vision for consumption of their eBooks. I continue to be an Amazon eBook fan. 

Education for 50p

A lovely e-mail hit my inbox today confirming new school fees for this year. Let me just note that when education budgets get slashed, rather than cut costs, they now foist the burden onto parents. We have textbook fees, bus fees, tech fees, athletics fees, and absurd school supply lists that include paper towels, tissues, ziploc bags, dry erase markers and more. I even had a fellow parent tell me their required supplies list included "large bag of skittles" for each student.

Are our schools now being run by RyanAir?

There's no such feckin' thing as an education for 50p. 

Budget cuts result in textbook/material/supply fee for students
As a result of a $25.5 million budget shortfall for 2011-2012, the Adams 12 Five Star School District has instituted a Textbook/Material/Supply Fee that will be assessed to all students. 
The determination to assess a fee came after a comprehensive effort to collect feedback from our community last spring with regard to the budget reductions and challenges we faced as a district. After numerous surveys, and conversations with our community and staff, the board of education approved the fee assessment of $30 for all high school students and $45 for elementary and middle school students. 
State law, C.R.S. 22-32-109(1), -110(o), -117(2)(6), allows for such a fee. It states school districts can charge fees for textbooks and supplies. In addition, Colorado law requires the district to exempt this fee for students who receive free or reduced lunch benefits pursuant to C.R.S. 22-32-109(1)(u). 
This fee is non-refundable. Payment can be made at individual school sites for all school and district fees. Cash, check or credit cards are accepted, and if necessary, individuals may set up a payment plan with the school to avoid financial hardship.
If you would like to learn more about the budget cut process that took place last spring, please visit www.adams12.org/budget_cuts/plan. 
Thank you for your continued support of the students and staff of Adams 12 Five Star Schools.