After years of being spoiled with a TV in my office (a benefit when working with big media) I spent the last two years unable to keep up except for frequent scoreboard checks.

So it was nice to read that this year they will be streaming for free on iOS devices, of which I have several.  It looks like I will have an opportunity to run some realistic bandwidth tests on our internet connection.

CBS, Turner Will Stream March Madness to iPhone, iPad For Free | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD.

Here is the relevant selection from the Apple TOS:

(i) You may download and use an application from the Mac App Store (“Mac App Store Product”) for personal, non-commercial use on any Apple-branded products running Mac OS X (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control.

(ii) If you are a commercial enterprise or educational institution, you may download a Mac App Store Product for use either (a) by a single individual on each of the Mac Computer(s) that you own or control, or (b) by multiple individuals on a single shared Mac Computer that you own or control. For example, a single employee may use a Mac App Store Product on both the employee’s desktop Mac Computer and laptop Mac Computer, or multiple students may serially use the Product on a single Mac Computer located at a resource center or library.

(iii) Use may require sign-in with the Apple ID used to download the Mac App Store Product from the Mac App Store. Mac App Store Products can be updated through the Mac App Store only.

Apple requires you to have an iTunes account, which are personal, and their terms of service clearly state that a commercial property has to purchase a license when multiple individuals are using multiple devices.  Makes sense – I need a license for each iPad.  My problem is how to now manage those from a corporate perspective.  Each user has to purchase using their existing iTunes account in order to make it easy to manage (technically you can install an app under a different account, but then updates, etc. are complicated).  And this will get even more troublesome with the App Store.

Now the employees are purchasing the software and have the legal ownership rather than the company.  So we purchase iPad apps and Mac apps for an employee and they head home and can legally install on a home machine[s] – so far so good.  This adds value as now they can legally use the software on their home machines.

But what happens when someone leaves?  Now this company purchased software has left with the employee and there is no way to transfer to a new individual.  This isn’t a big deal with a few low price apps for an iPad, but what happens when you spend more for Apple software (and imagine if Adobe distributes via the App Store) or other third party software?  As a business I have no means to recover the licenses.

I really hope Apple is working on this – I would love to start using the new App Store to manage purchases and software, but I need a corporate account to centrally manage.  One that lets me purchase more than one copy of an app for each user or one umbrella account that can be linked to existing accounts and would track company purchases separately.

Let’s get to it Apple, make this work for businesses as well as you have for individuals.

When you attach some images to an email and send them there seems to be an issue with some and they won’t appear on the Apple iOS mail client. What was strange is that on the iPhone it would appear and of course on the iMac it was fine. So hopefully with the new version coming next month this will be fixed. The images were ordinary and GIF (not 89′s).

Another related issue is that when you attach a high quality image the act of rendering seems to reduce the quality and when you zoom in you can see the artifacts. You can see also by using Dropbox instead of attaching the file. On the iMac it looks great and on the iPad it doesn’t.

This can be frustrating when you want to review mockups while on the go.

Hoping that the new release fixes this so I can get a little more productivity out of the iPad.  I think what is most strange is that I can’t narrow it down to what causes the issues.  Some issues are fine, others are impacted.

Of course since this is just the WiFi iPad he wasn’t able to view the images.  While the email was downloaded, the attachments and inline images were not so they appeared as a broken image.  This is where it gets interesting.

Once back at home he connected to his home WiFi and started opening the email again to review the images.  They still appeared as broken images.  No amount of closing the Mail app or reloading the Inbox would seem to force the Mail client to reload the mail.  He gave up and just decided he would review them the next morning.

So as he recalled this behavior to me I did a few quick tests and could easily reproduce the behavior.  Once I had opened a message with inline images with no connection and then connected to WiFi I could not view them.  The only way I could find (and a trip to the local Genius bar confirmed) to have it reload was to restart the iPad.

This seems a bit aggressive to cache and not even check when a connection is activated and I am hoping that the upcoming iPad iOS 4 release will correct.  At least then we should be able to close out the Mail app and maybe force it to reload.

We’ll be testing GPS navigation gear and other cool gadgets to see how they work during a real road trip. But because it’s a road trip, we’ll also be camping and enjoying some of the most spectacular sites in the Southwest and Southeastern United States. And we’ll be asking CNN.com users to suggest destinations and to vote on where we travel.

Cody and Brian have both been here for years and it will be interesting to follow their journey across the country in Cody’s 1978 International Harvester Scout.

Can biofuels solve America’s oil crunch? – CNN.com

I don’t think I am heading out to upgrade just yet, but it is nice to see that you didn’t have to wait in line for 12 hours unless you just had to have it on Friday.

Most of the Atlanta stores still have them in stock, although some are sold out of specific models (the black 16GB typically).  As a side note it seems they take down the availability as the stores begin to open since now the link for the GA stores doesn’t include the info.

I was able to connect to my office via ActiveSync and use our Cisco VPN to connect to the internal servers.  Now I still don’t care for the touch keyboard but the new features make it worth trying again.  I like that the VPN connecting even works over the EDGE network.

I also downloaded a few apps to play with and think opening the platform up will be the key in them taking on RIM.  While I love my BB and its keyboard I have always wanted it to do a few more things easily.  Letting developers easily get an app on the device will attract a whole new group – possibly including myself if I can get used to touch typing.

I agree with Peter Ha, the touchscreen keyboard just doesn’t work for me.  Give me a Blackberry with a better screen and new OS and I will be a happy man.

CrunchGear: Blackberry Bold

Of course my wife, friends and colleagues all have expressed confusion on such a move and I must admit the first week was rocky.  A brand new Dell XPS 1530 arrived with Vista Ultimate and after installing just a few basic apps (Cisco VPN, Firefox, etc.) I was crashing pretty regularly.  Fortunately after a few days of installing all the updates and service packs everything has settled down and it seems stable now.

I still have all Macs at home and love the MBP (still sits on my desk in easy reach) but I felt in some ways that I just couldn’t come to love Entourage.  Early on I lamented on the older version and just held out waiting for Office 2008 but even that didn’t get close to Outlook 2007 (with Xobni).  Most of my day is spent in email and MS Office products and while the the Mac versions have come a long way they just don’t have the polish of the Windows counterparts.

In some ways I feel like I am thinking different (to borrow from the old Mac campaign) by switching back since conventional wisdom and recent trends clearly suggest that the best option is the MacBook Pro.  So I can live with the pokes on Vista and that Windows is inferior to Mac OS X.  Truth is that I am free to use what I want and for me Windows is a better fit for corporate life.  I prefer Mac’s and worked around the issues they bring (Parallels for Windows apps, etc.) but in the end it is those Windows apps I used the most and I thought I should just see if I could make that work again.

I have pretty quickly found a new set of [free] tools to help with blogs and pictures and haven’t stumbled on any app that was Mac only.  Since I have Macs at home I still rely on them for all my digital content management and now have both at home and at work with no need to launch a VM. 

The report isn’t free but here it is. Luckily Gizmodo got a copy:

“The iPhone will thus match up initially in several segments against its main smartphone competitors — BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60.”

Now maybe the corporate IT departments will at least consider signing up for the Enterprise Beta (hint, hint).