Other than Apple’s blatant rip-off of my own iPad product from 2006, I (in agreement with most of the free world) was fairly underwhelmed by what Steve Jobs unveiled today.

Let’s face it, the iPad will probably won’t go down in the annals of history of computing as one of Apple’s more half-baked ideas, like the Apple Lisa, eWorld, the Macintosh Portable, the Puck Mouse and Apple TV. But it still could.

The inspiration for the Apple iPad’s keyboard.

Little known fact: Steve Jobs is a Atari 400 fanboy.

(You can still buy them on Amazon.com)

For the iPad it’s pretty clear that Steve and his designers were feeling overly arrogant and figured they could take a good idea, give it a twist (”I know, we’ll make it… BIGGER!”) and sell another 30 million units.

Even Steve pretty much admitted that he and his Apple geniuses simply took an iPhone, removed some features (like the phone, camera, portability, usefulness and fun) and made it large enough to look cool, but not large enough to, you know, play a wide screen movie or have comfortable keys for typing.

Here’s the simple problem with the iPad: it’s being treated as if it’s a tablet type of PC. That means that is has some of the properties of a phone, some of the properties of a notebook PC… but it has none of the really useful properties of either. You can’t easily make phone calls and you can’t easily do any sort of real computing tasks. Tablet PCs aren’t popular not because there aren’t a million things you can do with them. There are. But to do any of those million things you have to be inconvenienced.

Take the simple example of walking around with a tablet computer and being “productive” throughout your day. Here are the problems:

• A tablet computing device is bigger than a phone, so you can’t put it in your pocket. You have to dedicate one hand to holding it.
• A tablet computer is more expensive than a pad of paper, so you have to constantly be worried about smashing it, losing it, dropping it or doing any other sort of harm. The iPad manages to ramp up the nervousness by bypassing that silly plastic and metal housing on most tablet computers and going right for a breakable glass front.
• And data entry, and even retrieval, in a tablet computer (even in iPad) requires two hands - one to hold the device and the other to type. Serious typing on a glass keyboard for hours on end can’t be all that much fun and the moment you start talking about “add on” accessories like an external keyboard you’re right back to having the power of a notebook computer with none of the convenience (you now have to carry around an iPad and a keyboard and you have to find a flat surface to use it on).

All this being said, I think the iPad will still sell a bazillion units and allow Steve Jobs to buy at least two more pancreases. Why? Because while the Apple iPad is a lousy tablet PC it’s still a pretty good electronic book reader. It’s arguably better than the current ereader leader, the Kindle, and the iPad hasn’t even been released yet.

The iPad completes eliminates most of the complaints you read about the Kindle: clunky buttons (the iPad doesn’t use them), doesn’t work well with the internet (the iPad was built as an internet devices), lousy screen quality (iPad’s screen is full color, not gray) and Amazon (the iPad will obviously go through iTunes). This doesn’t mean there won’t be other problems, but so far it looks good.

Yes, the iPad is just a big iPhone, but since getting my iPhone I’ve found that reading books on it is really a pretty damn good experience. I don’t mind the small screen and I love the portability. I use Amazon’s Kindle software for the iPhone (not sure if that will still be around in a few months) and I use Lexcycle’s Stanza for the iPhone. Both programs work fairly well, though both could definitely improve.

The bottom line: In 2010 Apple is offering a $499 iPad that can do less than a $329 netbook from 2008 can do. But the 2010 Apple iPad is also about 100 times more useful than any electronic reader on the market. It’s an expensive ereader and ultimately the prices of online books and magazines for it may be the deciding factor in the marketplace.

If you want a webcam, need a USB port, want to use websites that use Flash or like using a real keyboard, then the iPad’s not for you. Of course, if you’re looking for a super eReader than do a bunch of other things (or you’re pining for that old Atari 400 membrane keyboard), then maybe the iPad is right up your alley.

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I have a lot of free time now that I’ve pretty much given writing anything for this blog, so I’ve been looking for new ways to spend my time and money while amusing myself. For the past six months I’ve been oddly fascinated with the idea of getting a Playstation 3. I’m not a big console gamer, but since the PS3’s recent price drop it’s now at least somewhat in the same spending category as a stand-alone Blu-ray DVD player.

The logical side of me keeps thinking, “But I can buy a blu-ray player for $150!” but the geek side of me always counters with, “And for an additional $150 you can get a kick-ass game system that plays blu-ray movies and has Netflix capabilities and has free network gaming and will probably soon be capable of curing cancer and making the perfect cup of coffee.”

With an argument like that it’s hard not to go out and buy a Playstation 3. Heck, it’s hard not to buy two of them.

But I’m also an American consumer, which means I’ve been taught to NEVER accept the retail price and to ALWAYS look around for the best sale or deal or rebate or gimmick on anything I buy, from a dozen eggs to $299 next generation gaming systems.

There are lots of Playstation 3 sales this Friday. Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and even Gamestop all have PS3 bundle deals where they are selling the Playstation 3 120gb version for $299 (that’s the regular price of the system alone) and they’re all throwing in some games. The problem, of course, is that you have to wait in line for hours or you have to deal with Wal-Mart employees. Both are fates worse than death.

So today, on Black Friday, I finally found the perfect Playstation 3 deal: You get the PS3, plus two great games plus a $10 gift card… And you don’t have to wait in line for hours or try to snipe the package when it’s available online for 30 seconds at 3 AM. Oh, and did I mention you get get this incredible PS3 deal with no sales tax and free shipping?

The merchant who wins the Playstation deal of 2009?

Yep, Amazon.com!

Why is it the best PS3 bundle deal? Here’s what you get, essentially for free:

• Infamous PS3 game ($53 value)
• Kilzone2 PS3 game ($50 value)
• $10 Amazon gift card ($10 value)
• No shipping charges ($9 value)
• No sales tax (approximately $18 value, depending on your residence)
• No dealing with Wal-Mart (priceless!)

Total savings on this PS3 package deal: $140!

Click on the graphic to check it out… I don’t know how much longer this PS3 sale will last… If it’s unavailable, just check back every so often. Amazon.com is famous for having large stock reserves which sometimes “sell out” only to later become available in the upcoming hours and even days.

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About every four or five months it seems that I’m faced with a Mozilla Firefox update that, inevitably, renders one of my favorite plugins, Adsense Notifier, completely useless. It’s a clever and wonderful little plug-in that simply checks your Adsense earnings every 20 minutes or so and displays the results in the status bar of your Firefox browser. It’s a heck of a lot easier than logging into your Adsense account every hour to see how you’re doing for the day, week or even month. I’m kind of surprised Google hasn’t released some of their own Adsense applications, widgets and apps for various smartphones. Logging into a website to check data seems so… old-fashioned

You can still visit the Adsense Notifier plugin home page for information and updates, but it would seem that the developer has found other things to do with his time. This plugin is really only useful if you have a blog that has Adsense advertisements and you want to know your revenue, click through rate, and traffic of your site at every moment of the day. So, in the grand scheme of things, its audience is fairly small.

Anyway, whenever Firefox updates the Adsense Notifier plugin stops working, claiming that it can’t be used with the current version of Firefox (3.5.2 as of writing this). The truth is: the Adsense Notifier plugin will work just fine with the latest version of Firefix, but some manual editing is required. You don’t need to know any programming or have much more than basic PC knowledge. I have found a couple different tutorials on how you fix the Adsense Notifier plugin to get it working again, but they were either designed for the Mac or missed some critical steps. I decided I’d put all the info together into one quick tutorial on how to get your Adsense Notifier working again.

1. Disable and Uninstall Adsense Notifier: I don’t even know if this is entirely necessary, but before I re-install a plugin I always disable it and completely remove it from my Firefox. I just don’t want to chance different file versions floating around. Don’t be afraid… you have nothing to lose, right? Adsense Notifier isn’t working for you, so just get rid of it. You can disable and uninstall it by going to the Tools menu of Firefox and choosing Add-ons. Find Adsense Notifier and uninstall it. Restart Firefox.

2. Download Adsense Notifier again: Now you need to download the latest version of it. Note that I said “download” not install. You can visit the developer’s site at http://code.mincus.com/ and find the link that reads “Adsense Notifier 0.9.8″. Right-click on the link and choose to save the file to your PC. It will save a file called adsense.xpi.

3. Rename Adsense.xpi: Here’s a little secret - .xpi files are really just .zip files with a few special components. Rename adsense.xpi to adsense.zip. If you can’t see your file extensions then you’ll have to go poke around in your folder options to turn them on. The steps are slightly different depending upon which version of Windows you’re using.

4. Open Adsense.zip: Now that you have a .zip file instead of an .xpi file you can just double-click on it and it should open like a regular folder, or at least into your default .zip application.

5. Edit Install.rdf: Inside this adsense.zip file are some folders and files. One of the files you’ll see is called install.rdf. You’ll want to open it with a text editor and take a quick look around. If you can’t open it from your zip program, try dragging the file out of you zip file and dumping it on your Windows desktop. Now you should more easily be able to edit it with a text editor.

That’s the file that gives Firefox some of the plugin install info and, for some reason, the “max” version of Firefox was set to 3.0b5 down at line 33 of the file. There’s probably a very good reason for that, but I’m not a plugin developer so I don’t care. Change it to 3.99 or 4 or even 8. Just make sure the number you change it to his higher than the version of Firefox you have. I set mine to 4. Save and close the file with your text editor. If you were working on the file on your desktop you’ll want to drag this new version back into the zip file, replacing the old version.

6. Edit nsAdsensenotifier.js: Just editing the install.rdf file will allow you to install Adsense notifier, but it has an annoying bug where it doesn’t seem to want to save the password all the time. Here’s how you get around that bug. While you’re still in the adsense.zip file, go into the components folder. See that file called nsAdsensenotifier.js? That’s the next file we’re going to edit with our text editor. Same deal goes here: if you can’t edit within your zip program, just yank it to the desktop and open it with a text file editor.

Now we’re going to make two quick edits on separate lines. At lines 103 and 109 you’ll see something like passwd = “” on both lines (yes, the variables and syntax are slightly different). Just type in your adsense password there. In the image I put in the term mypassword instead of my real password (duh). Yes, you’re basically hardcoding your password into the plugin. You can even hardcode your Adsense username into line 108. I did, but I’m not sure if it really makes any difference. Save and close the file. Again, if you’re editing it outside of the adsense.zip file then you’ll want to copy it back into the components folder, replacing the old version.

7. Rename Adsense.zip to Adsense.xpi: Close all your editor, close the zip file and just rename it back to Adsense.xpi. Now it’s a Firefox extension file again.

8. Double-click on Adsense.xpi: That’s it! Firefox should now try to install Adsense Notifier after a few seconds and once it’s up and running the extension should once again run as it used to!

Now sit back and watch the pennies come rolling in!

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