I took a technological sabbatical. After way too many years of being mired in the quicksand of tech innovation, I pulled myself out and mentally sat on the beach drinking Mojitos. 

It’snot that I got off the grid completely, it’s just being digital became something I wanted to do, not because I had to.

I monitored Facebook but rarely updated my status. As far as I was concerned, Twitter flew south for the winter. I got a new laptop, not because I was enamored with the latest and the greatest but because my old one died. Being retired, I couldn’t just go to my company IT guy and order a new one. I’m my company IT guy and he was under orders the brass to cut costs. Since I’m also the brass, there was no appeal.

I hear that there are a lot of new phones on the market with competing operating systems, competing App stores and seriously competing lawsuits. (Look up the Lotus look and feel lawsuit.) I did get an iPhone 3GS because my beloved Palm died both literally and as a separate company. The iPhone has been a real pain. No joke. My death grip on it for nearly two years has caused carpal tunnel syndrome. I do have a very cool wrist splint.

However, I’m stuck with the iPhone or its progeny because I’m grandfathered into AT&T’s unlimited data plan. My accountant –me—says don’t messed with fixed costs.

Tablets and other small screen devices aren’t ideal for those of us with less than ideal eyesight. I did lust after the iPad when it was first launched  . Though it amuses me when I hear tech pundits rant about a device being an ounce or two to heavy. My first portable computer, ,  weighed 26 lbs and battery life was non-existent because it needed to be plugged in at all times.

I used to be a gamer but no matter how stunning the graphics are, I just can’t see the bad guys soon enough and I don’t solve puzzles as well as I used to. My bad knee is a good excuse for not using a Wii or my small living room for the Kinect.

I’m not becoming a Luddite but maybe a tech curmudgeon. I love all things digital but I’ve been here long enough to know that everything old is new again. Ah, how beautiful the Unix makeover looks on Macs.

I have no facility for languages other than knowing the word for beer in 42 dialects. This is a handicap for someone who travels frequently to countries where English or even American is not widely spoken. Usually there is a translator handy so no real problem for me. Of course, there is the issue of a 45 minute presentation taking twice as long because of the translation.

Cheriff Moumina SY

My friend Cheriff Moumina SY is a journalist from Bukna Faso. He speaks English but he’s fluent in French. I speak no French except Je voudrais une bière, s’il vous plaît. We see each other at conferences and not a lot needs to be said post-confab because he always knows where to hear live music and my making a circular motion is “another round” in any language.

Email and social networking communications are another problem. I write this blog in English but I’d like it read in other languages without the hassle or expense of hiring translators in dozens of languages. This is where Mojofiti comes in. I met Dennis Wakabayashi, by happenstance at a Meetup. He has had a number of jobs where the language barrier became an issue. “Exact machine translation may be accurate, but it loses certain colloquialisms.”  While Mojofiti is using the Google translation engine the company has added

Dennis Wakabayashi

crowd sourcing to improve cross cultural idioms by having users edit the nuances.

The feature that will be most useful for many of us is that there is an iPhone app that lets you have your text and SMS messages to be translated into the receiver’s language and vice versa. The service currently supports 28 languages. When asked directly if the service will work on other mobile phones, including a no-frills model used in much of the developing world, Wakabayashi only would say, “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone does something like that.”

CORRECTION: The features of SMS, email and wire translations are in the mojofiti.com environment. The iphone App, translates text and pictures using human translation.

What makes Mojofi ti useful, in my view, is the ability to click on a language icon and have the current page translated into that language. While Mojofiti allows anyone to create a blog on its site and it is working on arrangements to import existing blogs into the service.

Mojofiti is among the growing number of companies that believe in Open Source Software. A lot of what runs Mojofiti is the WordPress framework. And in the spirit of the Open Source movement, will, at some point, make its translation code available as a plug-in for WordPress websites.

In the interest of full disclosure, this site runs on WordPress

Ok, I got sucked down the Apple worm-hole today.  I had resisted the siren call of the Mac or years. It wasn’t that I didn’t see the appeal. I did. After all, I had one of the first Mac Classics.   Until Windows 3.0 came out and Microsoft followed Apple’s lead in enforcing software standards, Macs were clearly the better platform for design and graphics. But I was lashed to the Microsoft Mast because it was the only way to stay in the mainstream.

Then the iPod came out and I wanted one. The problem was that it took a year for Apple to come out with a Windows version and let the rest of the world into its sandbox.  I spent that year writing about every other portable music player that did support Windows.  iTunes is my, and just about everyone else’s, choice for listening to podcasts. I was impressed that Apple never tried to pull the Kleenex® defense of trademark infringement and let radio on websites promote the branding of iPod.

Apple then switched to Intel chips so that an iMac could run Mac OS and Windows on the same machine. A lot of investigative reporting depends on manipulating relational databases. Like it or not, Microsoft Access rules the roost and it is not part of the Mac version of Microsoft Office. It was no longer an issue.

The iPhone was the next Apple touchdown. I don’t have one but I recognized that it was a transformative device. The App Store, like iTunes, was a game changer. My contract is up with my carrier and I am seriously considering moving to the iPhone.

I watched the live feed of today’s iPad announcement. I kept looking for the chinks in the armor. Every time I thought that I had spotted a missing element, the next demo had me going “hmm, that’ll work”. And the starting price  of $499 was announced and I ran  out of objections and accepted that I had come around to Apple’s way of thinking.

But as I reflected on the changes I just cataloged, I realized that I hadn’t changed, Apple had. It had stopped being a cult and was now a mainstream religion.   Pass me the collection plate; I want to make a donation.

iPad demo (it’s long)