Yes, Virginia, There Is A CherryPal

For a while this fall I had the secret fear that the CherryPal, the little green computer that could, would turn out to be one of those mythical beasts like the unicorn or basilisk. Heckofa year to launch a startup. I consider it a miracle I'm typing this on my CherryPal at all.

But the CherryPal is here, it's real, and it works! Hallelujah!

As represented, it is tiny, about the size of a hefty paperback book. It comes with a power supply. You provide the keyboard and mouse and monitor. And the network hookup. It's a great way to get some more mileage out of peripherals you might have around the house. (If they aren't Mac System 9, as ours turned out to be, with the 9-pin plugs.)

It runs on Linux, which gives this longtime Mac-head the sensation of going back to Windows 2.0, but without the crashes. I followed the instructions for setup and with the exception of the monitor adventure chronicled below, and the system date, things worked out as they should.

I'm happy to be using Google at all. When I tried to log on earlier, the Linux system was using a 1970 date and Google could not be convinced this was trustworthy. No Gmail, no Blogger, no Reader -- no fun! I was able to change the system date once CherryPal support assured me it was OK. (The help prompts were rather foreboding.) I am all for retro but 1970 is not a year I'd pick to live again.

There are still some nits to iron out. The CherryPal people are working on more support and FAQs. Some of the instructions are not what one expects. When setting up, for example, the last thing you do is plug in the power because there is no power switch.

Before I can recommend this without reserve to a lot of folks who could benefit from a low-cost green computer -- and believe me, I have a list of friends and relatives who qualify -- there needs to be more user-friendly support in place.

But if you are an early adopter -- a Linux geek -- a green maven -- go for it! The company is very receptive to feedback from users, and working on even better things to come.

Next challenge, photos!

Tech Notes: I'm currently using a new cheap LogiTech keyboard, the Apple mouse borrowed from our system upstairs when the new cheap LogiTech mouse did not seem to work, and the Polaroid monitor that is actually the television.

My startup went splendidly except there was no visible way to interface with the computer. Turned out it was MY problem: the monitor needed to have one additional setting tweaked for "autofit". All the menus, as in Windows, are on a bottom bar, that my display had neatly cut off. I did not know what I was missing, so it took a few exchanges with tech support, who kept telling me to click on things I did not see, before we solved the comedy of errors.

Next up: we'll visit my son the software engineer -- one good thing to come out of 1971 -- and see what he has to say about the CherryPal. This time I promise to remember the power cord.

Cloud Computing: Graphic Editing Apps from Aviary

Love the internet? My hunch is we will all be doing more online and less on our hard drives as time goes on. So do the folks at Aviary.

This Long Island-based firm has developed a competitor to Adobe Creative Suite, composed of four different applications. The four apps are: Phoenix, the Web-based Image Editor,
Toucan creates color swatches and palettes, Peacock generates patterns and terrain, and Raven (the newest hatchling) is a vector editor similar to Illustrator.

I heard about Phoenix through Photojojo, a weekly resource of cool, fun things you can do with photography. More comment from Photojojo:

"Phoenix is an image editor that works just like Photoshop. It’s got magic wands, layers, masks, blend modes: the whole enchilada.
It’s web-based, so you don’t have to download any software or use up space on your hard drive. You can use photos already on the web, too: Flickr, Facebook and Picasa all work.
There are 40+ free tutorials that range from beginner to advanced, so you can learn how to use all them fancy tools.
There’s a very good free version, as well as a souped-up hotrod version that’s actually worth paying for."

Aviary was developed in response to artists who balked at the price of Adobe's Creative Suite. You can pay yearly, monthly, or use the service for free for your own enjoyment. Being web-based, we know in advance it will work with our CherryPals when they arrive.

More from CherryPal Founder Max Seybold

You can read much more online about the CherryPal, including a blog from Max Seybold, founder and CEO.

About the green personal computing revolution ...: The C114 is coming Election Day, November 4th

The values: Green, Open, and Fair distinguish CherryPal from the competition.

Improved CherryPals Shipping Nov. 4!

Good news! The CherryPals are shipping on Nov. 4.
Latest info from the revised website:

CherryPal™ replaced the C100 with the 8GB
SSD C114 - still the same price!!!

All open and future orders will get an automatic upgrade
to the C114 - same low price of $249.00 but with 8GB
(C100 4GM) local FLASH storage.

We will start shipping the C114 (read eleven, four) on US
Election Day, Tuesday November 4th, 2008. We all hope
this day will change the world for the better.

We are accepting orders again, shipment on
11/4 guaranteed!!!

Minimalist Computing

Some interesting points to ponder on today's Unclutterer Blog.

Alex Payne offers Rules for Computing Happiness: Software Simplicity that are relevant to CherryPal and the way users will "live in the cloud."

When it comes to software, in my opinion, there’s no better way to keep it simple than to use as little of it as possible. All software exists to offer some solution, but with software comes problems: a learning curve, bugs, upgrades, security issues, and so on. Clearly identify what you really want to accomplish and you might find that you don’t need a new piece of software, or that an application to meet your goal is already installed on your computer.

Once you’ve identified your goal, pick an application that helps you accomplish that goal and nothing more. Extra features mean more bugs and less focus. Microsoft Office is the perfect example of an over-featured application: it does so many things for so many different types of users that most of us are scared to dive into its seemingly unending menus and settings. If you just need to write, use a simple text editor like Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on the Mac. Good software gets out of your way.

Life without MS Office? It's possible. Once I lived in it, now I use Word only for formal projects. Payne has some comments about online software too.

Ever more applications are moving online, and this poses a new set of challenges when trying to keep your computing experience simple and enjoyable. Chances are good that if an application requires that you sync over the internet in order for it to work, it’s going to be a source of frustration. Syncing is a perennial spring of bugs and lost data, as there’s plenty that can go wrong during a sync. Instead, put data that needs to be available to multiple computers on web-based applications. For example, rather than trying to sync your documents across computers, put the ones you need to share on Google Docs. Just don’t get in the habit of using web applications for everything — not everything needs sharing, they’re no good when you need to get to your stuff while offline.

The last sentence points out one facet of the CherryPal that will be interesting to review. I will have my little data stick handy.

Blogging Well Takes Time: Who Knew?

Is everyone blogging now? When blogging shows up in the comics pages, it's become a pastime as universal and as variously regarded as, say, golf.

What started out as an personal pastime has now been taken up by businesses and nonprofits in an attempt to connect with constituents. Beth Kantor has an excellent graph and analysis of just how much time a nonprofit staffer could spend monitoring and promoting a nonprofit's social blog. If you are still unsure how various social media work together, do take a look!

Thanks to fellow CherryPal Brand Angel Maggie McGary and her Mizz Information blog for passing this information along. Maggie has a few choice additions of her own. I'm still on the learning curve and figure this blog is a place to share the good things I find.

Blogger: Beyond the Basics

As a "newbie" to the blogiverse, I need all the help I can get. So when I spotted a book entitled Blogger: Beyond the Basics" by Lee Jordan, I snapped it up. I'm still working through its 300-plus pages and have not yet put any actions into practice.

The book follows a hypothetical blogger, Georgia Peach, who wants to promote her fruit shipping business. Step by step, Georgia sets goals, learns to customize her Blogger template, add widgets, link to other sites like Facebook, and add advertising that is appropriate to her site. (You can block competitors: who knew!)

After walking through each step, a "What Just Happened" section sets the actions in context. Understanding context may come in handy if there are differences in details from computer platform, browser upgrades, and improvements in Blogger. At least if I know such a feature exists, I can probably figure out what the new way of evoking it is by using online help.

It's a big book, and I'm admittedly skimming through on the first pass. It looks like a good resource for those like me, who appreciate having many references in one place.

Joining Technorati

So what's up with Technorati?
I've heard a lot about them and decided to take the plunge and sign up.

After seeing many of my hubby's favorites and my own on their list of top 100 blogs, I thought, OK. The "hive mind" is not so different from our own.

There are two ways to sign up a blog: one from within Technorati, and the other by posting some code on my own blog, like this:

Technorati Profile

Since this blog is about blogging in general, as well as my adventures with the CherryPal when I get it, any resource is fair game.

Hmm, looks like I've created a link to yet another online profile that needs to be fleshed out.

So What's With This Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing has become a buzzword du jour among cyberjournalists. The term has been around for years, and, like Humpty Dumpty, has meant various things. At one point it referred to aggregated computers, working together on something vast like the SETI project, harnessing down time to probe outer space for extraterrestrial life. ("Distributed computing" is a more apt term for this.)

The CherryPal cloud is much simpler. (No ETs involved.) You plug in your CherryPal, which requires a mere 2 watts of electric power and a fast internet connection--and uses the old monitor and keyboard you have tucked away from an earlier computer. That's it. You pay for the electricity and the internet connection. Your CherryPal comes with access to "The Cloud." When it turns on, it automatically launches a FireFox browser, and you are poised to log in to "The Cloud."

This sounds a bit magical, and since I don't yet have my CherryPal, I'm relying on what I understood from the CherryPal engineers at a demo in July. The CherryPal Cloud is a very secure server, where there will be many free applications available for use. It's running on Linux, which is open source and free. (Also free of viruses.) The CherryPal has a large flash memory but no hard drive. You'll have unlimited storage in the cloud. You can also log into the cloud from other computers, and your desktop will look just the same.

Big question for me: can I live without software I pay for and gobs of disk space and CPU to store and run it? After thinking about it, I probably can.

The CherryPal is not going to replace the workhorse computers needed by graphic designers, architects, software engineers, web designers, and serious number crunchers. If you live in Adobe Creative Suite, it's not the computer for you.

But for most people, who use the web to send email, shop, get information, share photos, blog, and stay in touch, CherryPal is a good option.

In my current computer usage, I spend a lot of time in Google's "cloud," blogging on Blogger, following favorite RSS feeds in Google Reader, putting photos in Picassa, using Gmail. It wasn't a great stretch to imagine a more full-featured cloud for CherryPal. This made me content with buying a less powerful laptop than the one I'd coveted. I'm not a Photoshop junkie any more. Or a Dreamweaver web maven. I'm content to get what I have to say out there, using the tools someone else has created.

Is CherryPal the computer for you? Think about what you really do with your computer, and what you would need in the Cloud to do it. Leave a comment with any questions you have. More fuel for future bloggings!

Looking Back

How revolutionary is the CherryPal? It helps to look back ... waaay back.

We have a great resource in the Bay Area, the Computer History Museum, now in Mountain View, on what was formerly the campus for Silicon Graphics [SGI]. A lesson right there in How Things Change.

If you are anywhere within visiting distance, and have an interest in computers, or history, or life in general, do visit this fine institution while the Babbage Engine is on display. It's an amazing creation whose story encapsulates the quest that has driven computer development.

Back in 19th century England, with a young Victoria on the throne and people just getting used to those new-fangled steam driven trains and factories, Charles Babbage was frustrated with the errors he found in the published mathematical tables of the time. These tables were used for navigation, and errors had life or death consequences.

Babbage conceived a difference engine that would mechanically calculate these sums and print out the results, thus skipping any operator error in typesetting by hand. His story is fascinating; he dined out on his theories in the best circles of London and got funding for his project. The first difference engine was constructed; the second was never completed.

"History" had assumed inferior Victorian production techniques had doomed the project. The reconstruction on view today deliberately used 19th century technology that was available at the time, proving that Babbage was more the victim of poor project management than inferior machining. Visit the fine web site where much more accurate and detailed accounts are available!

I was amazed by the size, the precision, and the sheer mechanical beauty of this creation. It's bigger than a standard bedroom. It weighs five tons. And it is gorgeous in motion. The giant brass rods move like double helixes, meshing their cogs and grinding out data, which is then set in type and printed at the end of the machine.

After gaping at this wonder, hubby and I moved through the permanent exhibits. It's a trip down memory lane for us, since computers have been at the center of our lives for the last 25+ years. (We weren't around when the moth got in the UNIVAC, originating the term "bug" for a computer error, but recognized many others at a remove or two.) It made me think how computers and calculating engines have touched the lives of everyone through the years.

How did we get from computers the size of a room to a CherryPal no bigger than a book? Visit the Computer History Museum and discover for yourelf. Whether you grew up with party phone lines, transistor radios, faxing, texting, or Twitter, you'll find much to marvel at. And you'll have a fresh perspective on what a marvel a CherryPal can be.

Back just in time

Things are humming along in the CherryPal universe. Not the first startup to overshoot a stated shipping date. Better to get it right than simply get it out the door. This is fine by me, since I've been away on vacation for a few weeks. (More about travels on my Drive-by Birding blog.) Here's the latest news:

CherryPal pre-orders are on hold as of August 6, 2008. We were having problems with the PayPal page, and as it says on the website "Unfortunately, our first delivery of C100s has been delayed. We are working diligently to ensure that there are no bugs in the system and appreciate your patience while we fine-tune your CherryPal."

As a CherryPal Brand Angel -- a real job posted on CraigsList for which I applied -- I get one of the first units to use and report upon my experiences. Currently my main writing activity is blogging, so "Blogging with CherryPal" was a logical extension.

If someone decides to purchase a CherryPal after reading your CherryPal user experience, they can use your promo code to buy a CherryPal off the website and receive a discount... etc. and you will be compensated as well.

This is part of CherryPal's philosophy, which is green, open, and fair. (The fair part includes compensating people for what they do.) This position is aligned with my own convictions. I'd be talking about CherryPal no matter what, because it's green, and different in so many ways from what we've been seeing for the past quarter century. But that's another story. And a swell photo of the Babbage Difference Engine when I can find it on my hard drive.

CherryPal News

CherryPal is getting more attention: an article from EE Times, quoting much of what I understood from the CherryPal event earlier this month.

Much blather and misunderstanding on SlashDot after referencing the above EE article. If you enjoy rants from people who can't be bothered to either read the original article in full or who have immediate reactions to other posts, this is for you.

People who actually want answers can now go to the CherryPal website, where a good FAQ and succinct, non-geeky answers are posted. (I consider them intelligent and reasonable questions, since many of them were just what my husband the technical writer and my son the software engineer have been raising.)

The official CherryPal website is now open for business. Here's the front page news:

CherryPal™ is trying to change the world one computer at a time. We’ve created the most affordable, easiest to use and greenest desktop computer available.

The CherryPal desktop is a tiny PC designed with the user in mind. It does all the things you do every day: surf the web, keep in touch with your friends, listen to iTunes, watch videos, word processing, presentations and spreadsheets, all without the hassle of a traditional PC. It only uses 2 watts of power, lasts 10 years and has 80 percent fewer parts. There’s no software or upgrades to install, no risk of viruses, and no operating system to deal with and free 24/7 support – all for just $249. We’ve created the most affordable, easiest-to-use and greenest desktop computer available.

The price is now $249, rather than the $199 targeted earlier. Probably a prudent move since costs are so volatile currently. And still an amazing bargain.

How I Became a Brand Angel

It began, innocently enough, with CraigsList.
I was perusing the "etcetera" writer jobs, and saw a listing that intrigued me for a company I'd not heard of called CherryPal, so I googled them. No hype, just some swell concept ads. A green computer coming August 4th. The job: using social media online to tell others about this new computer. Compensation: free computer and small honorarium for each computer sold to someone using your promotion code.
Well, that's a different business model, I thought. Deal me in. So my application is in the mail, and I'm thinking ... where am I going to set it up?