OK. No subversive writing about mothers in the workplace, war, or tax policy today. ;-) Just simple family and work related news...
Abby - Tuesday night Abby's class had a music recital. Michelle had been cooped up most of that day so I offered to stay home with the boys so that she and Claire could watch Abby's performance. Abby had fun and even had a bit of an accidental percussion solo because the other two boys from her class who were to perform with her didn't show up that evening. Back home the boys and I played with Megablocks and I got the twins to bed before Michelle returned. Mighty Timbo stays up a bit later since he still naps in the afternoon.
Claire - Yesterday Claire's class had Ellis Island Day. It was the highlight of their studies on immigration. Claire dressed like a Polish immigrant and brought in Kolacky cookies. Other kids brought in other ethnic treats as well. Claire said that she ended up eating more at snack time than at lunch. The kids reenacted the processing station that immigrants went through at Ellis Island, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, proving literacy, immunization, etc. Claire said she passed and wasn't deported back to her homeland. :-)
iPod - Apple made new announcements yesterday regarding the iPod lineup. Most of the announcement had to do with capacities, price points, and color. One minor thing went somewhat unnoticed. In another month or so you'll be able to buy a cable which allows the iPod to pull pictures directly from a most digital cameras. Ahah! I thought. They finally did it! They've finally indicated the iPod's hidden USB host mode capability.
Modern iPods have what is known as dual role or On The Go (OTG) USB controllers in them. It can be a USB device but it can also act as a USB host -- the PC side of the USB cable. Until now people always hooked iPods up to their PCs as simple USB devices. I wondered whether Apple would ever do anything with the host mode capability. For instance it could allow direct output to USB speakers. It could print pictures directly to USB color inkjet printers. You could hook up a portable USB keyboard to enable it to be more PDA-like. It could connect with a USB network adaptor to talk on a local area network, wired or wireless. It could allow direct iPod to iPod file transfers. Come to think of it, perhaps that's why they didn't do anything with it thus far. In any of these cases the hard part is just coming up with the drivers on the iPod.
Most modern digital cameras support what USB calls mass storage class or PTP class for picture file access. So evidently Apple will start their host mode dabbling with pulling the pictures directly from digital cameras. It's a nice fit, especially for the iPod photo line which they seem to be trying to emphasize lately. I own an iPod photo and it's been fun to be able to carry the family pictures as well as the music around with me. I'm not sure I would ever need to pull the pictures directly from a camera. I can imagine that if I were a professional photographer, this ability to unload my camera quickly onto the hard drive of an iPod would be a killer app in the field. Take thousands of pictures and be able to hold them and preview them right there with an iPod.
Congrats to Apple. Best wishes towards coming up with other cool uses of host mode. My wish: stream music directly to an Airport Express's speakers from the iPod via a USB wireless adapter. A wireless adaptor would also enable you to buy music directly from the iTunes Music Store without a PC or Mac in between. I imagine it might be a bit taxing on the iPod's battery as most adapters aren't power efficient, but who knows?
There was a lot of rumor mongering going around before this Wednesday announcement. Some had expected that there would be Bluetooth wireless abilities announced -- and were disappointed. But no one seemed to notice that Apple implicitly announced that their iPods have USB host capability. This is in some respects a bigger revelation. Any USB device you can buy in a store can technically hook up to an iPod. All it takes is for Apple to write the driver. The iPod is a lot more of a handheld computer than people knew.