TED TALKS: 12 year old App Developer...awesome!

The next generation is blowing my mind...literally.  I am continually impressed by the young adults I come into contact with, whether it is via school, family or friends.  Through their tenacity a level of innovation like no other has been born.  Take this fella for instance, he is a 12 year old app developer, not because he wants to make a fortune but for the simple pleasure of it. He enjoys programming, period.  

Thomas Suarez @ TED.com

He is quite a speaker and his message is simple.  How do you learn to program apps?  His solution is sound and his energy is contagious.  The fact that he gives credit to his mentor, his teachers and his school shows a level of respect that isn't always present in people of all generations.  Additionally, his future desire to continue sharing knowledge with other students in a collaborative environment gives him a leg up on the multitude of college age students I work with daily who have no clue how to work in a team-based environment.

Bravo, Thomas!

Mac OSX Lion - Can we get better battery life...yet?

The long awaited (at least for me) release of Apple's OSX Lion met with much ado earlier this week. And at $29.00, who could ever be upset? They've opted out of CD's and have a download only from iTunes which gave many a worry but fear not! Their download speed is incredible...it took only 7 minutes to download the upgrade on a home RoadRunner account.

Installation is only a wiff as well, about 14 minutes and I was upgraded. Easy-peesy people, something I've never experienced with Windows in nearly 20 years of using their products. Yes, I'm that old, but never mind that.

On to the pressing issues. The installation was interesting, there wasn't really any notification of where I was in the process. Only a little lion icon on my doc that didn't show any percent of installation information. So, I simply went and made myself a cup of tea and waited patiently.

The most important thing for me was battery life. I own a Macbook, nothing too fancy as it's about 4 years old and when I upgraded to Snow Leopard 2 years ago, I was sadly disappointed. I was reduced from around 8 hours of battery life to a poultry 1.5 hours! Devastated was more like it, I used it daily and was reduced to being tethered to an outlet in nearly every situation. Grrrrr. And with each update, nothing changed. I combed hours of blogs and forums looking for a solution only to find I wasn't the only one with this problem but no solution was in sight.

So when I found out about Lion, I held a small beacon of hope...would they fix this obvious bug?

Drumroll please.....YES! I am back up to nearly 8 hours of battery life(unless I'm playing with videos or watching a DVD, then it's down to about 3.5-4 hrs which is what it was before).

So YIPEE! Old reliable is back and we are happy campers once again.