radiopeter

5. I want to develop for the iPad. I really do. I have four product ideas I’d love to see materialize and I’m working my way gently into the iPhone SDK at the moment. Aside from graphic sizing, I can’t see how the iPad is any different than the iPhone.

4. The same reason I bought a first gen iPhone. The iPad is a first gen device. Many folks will avoid it for that reason, but first gen tech has always fascinated me. Like the iPhone, the iPad will kick off a slew of imitators. I’d rather get one now and upgrade later. I’ve never been sorry for spending the $1000+ or so I’ve spent on iPhones. They’ve all been marvelously useful and I’d spend twice that on them in the future. Plus, my family loves tech hand-me-downs, so a first gen iPad might just have a future home.

3. I want a new laptop but I don’t want a new laptop. In the sub $1000 space I wouldn’t buy an Apple laptop, nor would I consider purchasing a Linux or Windows machine. This gizmo will do what I need in a travel laptop, which for me ain’t much. I don’t think I’ll get the 3G option because I seldom stay at hotels without WiFi and there are hotspots galore in every part of Chicago that I frequent, including many of the places I will potentially work. Plus, my iPhone isn’t going anywhere, and for directions or a quick text it’s far more useful.

2. The Star Trek The Next Generation-ness of the device. If I have to explain what that means, we most likely aren’t close friends, nor are you a regular reader of this blog, but welcome to the world of radiopeter.com! Toss me in your Google Reader, or better yet, follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/petermavrik. When my iPad lands, I’ll be blogging about it, photographing it, and possibly establishing a similar unhealthy relationship with it along the lines of my iPhone.

1. Bragging rights. For realz. It’s part of being an Apple fanboy and I’ll admit that anytime. Will you?

I hate foursquare. Not because of what the app can do, but because of what the app DOES do.

It shits in Twitter timelines. With every checkin. Possibly the most annoying thing ever.

The magic, for me, of Twitter is how eloquently the people I follow on Twitter are. They “get” the saying “brevity is the soul of wit.” Short, descriptive clips of something interesting. And often, the folks I follow are bloggers who post interesting URL’s when they blog.

foursquare now decides to shit a useless URL into Twitter streams far and wide every time someone checks in. Honestly, I care not. If I wanted to know where someone was, I’d ask.

But here’s the kicker. 90% of the folks I follow on Twitter:

a) I’ve never met
b) Live far away from me
c) Do interesting things in life and have interesting things to say
d) Provide what I’ve often called Smart Content

Smart Content isn’t telling the world where you are. It’s meaningful information. Behind a Twitter URL can be a blog post, and interesting site, a cool picture, and generally something meaningful. foursquare provides a link to a site that tells me how many folks visited a certain corner/bus stop/business etc. I just don’t care AND it’s ruining the way I use Twitter.

Tech is what any of us make of it.

So today I unfollowed everyone who uses foursquare. Logging into Twitter to see pages of URLs that lead me to useless information is not only a waste of time, it’s a waste of my bandwidth.

Nothing personal. I really don’t have any ill feelings towards any of the users. But until the app removes the clutter from what should be a simple and eloquent way of communicating, i.e. Twitter, I ain’t gonna follow you if you use foursquare.