The BlackBerry PlayBook is awesome. I’ve said this since it launched in 2011. It has the best user interface of all tablets I’ve tested, incorporating an ingenuous touch-sensitive bezel. It has a blazingly fast processor, good battery life and used to have the best screen on the market until Apple unveiled the new iPad with Retina Display. But despite the PlayBook being a rocking piece of hardware, it had major flaws that prevented me from recommending it to people.

Until recently, when asked what I thought of the PlayBook I would say, “It’s rad. But don’t buy one.”

It had no native email or calendar client. Its app store was like a ghost town. It might’ve had a bitching interface and hardware, but it sucked in every other regard.

That’s changed. A recent update and general improvement in logic at Research In Motion have stacked up to make the PlayBook one of the best tablets on the market. Here are five reasons why I think you should consider buying one.

1. PlayBook OS 2.0
   The PlayBook has always been awesome from a hardware perspective, but its original operating system left a lot to be desired. You  had to connect to a BlackBerry smartphone to do email that and other basic things like calendaring – unless you were happy with web interfaces. The new OS, however, mends all of these problems. It has a kick-ass email client, nice calendar app and no longer makes the PlayBook feel like a smartphone accessory. It also has one of the best user interfaces I’ve ever seen. Much better. Thanks RIM.
2. Price
   After a troubled launch, the PlayBook is now one of the cheapest tablets on the market. In my home country of South Africa you can pick it up for less than R3000 and in the USA prices go as low as $200. For that you get some of the beefiest hardware available on a really well-built tablet that has just had fresh life blown into it with OS 2.0. At prices these low it’s worth buying even if all you use it for is an espresso tray.
3. Accessibility
   File management on the PlayBook is near-perfect; you simply access shared folders on the device over your WiFi network. It makes it really quick and easy to drop a movie file, for example, onto the PlayBook for viewing on the go, without even having to take the tablet out of your bag. It also supports Adobe Flash better than any other tablet platform I’ve tried. While I still find tablets to be a very limited computing environment, and prefer just carrying around my laptop, the PlayBook is less limited than most. The form factor and light weight also make it easier to transport and less cumbersome to use than bigger tablets.
4. Charging
   This might not sound like a big deal, but bear with me. Remember, it’s the small things that matter with tablets. The PlayBook uses an industry-standard, micro-USB connection for charging. This means that not only can you use any other BlackBerry smartphone charger with it – but any other phone charger too, from Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, or whoever. One of the things that drives me crazy about other tablet brands is that they each have a proprietary charger than can’t be shared with my phone – except the iPad. And since Apple has its own connector for iOS devices, the PlayBook is the most universally compatible by far. For someone who travels weekly as I do, being able to carry a single charger is a killer feature.
5. Apps
   The single biggest problem with the PlayBook at launch was a lack of apps. There was no Evernote, Dropbox, Angry Birds or any of the apps that people had learned to love on iOS and Android. But that has changed. BlackBerry App World is now full of awesome apps for the PlayBook including an official Evernote client and, yes, Angry Birds. Twitter was also conspicuously missing from the original PlayBook OS, but it is now incorporated in the universal messaging platform of PlayBook OS 2.0. While the PlayBook still trails way behind Android and iOS and in the apps department it is now way, way better than it was and can actually be used for stuff now.

I own a small menagerie of tablets – an iPad, Motorola Xoom, several other Android tablets and the PlayBook. Out of all of them I find myself using the iPad most, but it has recently started taking a backseat to my PlayBook, especially when traveling. Watching movies on the PlayBook is second-to-none, and that’s mostly what I want to do with a tablet while flying.

If the iPhone was the Jesus phone then the PlayBook is the Lazarus tablet. It was dead and gone, but now lives again – kicking ass and scaring disciples.

Yesterday a new personal financial management service was launched in South Africa called 22seven. The service allows you to track your personal spending and savings with tools for financial planning. The interface is slick and the intention of the developers, who I have spent some time in conversation with, is to make people more aware of their habits surrounding money. It’s a great service in my experience, but has been met with some backlash from South Africans concerned about handing over their internet banking details. I don’t blame people for being concerned, but they really have nothing to worry about. Here’s why…

First off, let me state for the record that I have no affiliation to 22seven. I have met the founder, Christo Davel, and enjoyed many chats with him about behavioural economics and his plans for the business – but as my readers and listeners should know by now, I put emotions aside when it comes to giving people the best possible advice. Especially when it comes to their money.

Personal financial management (PFM) tools have been around for a long time. One of the leading examples of this kind of service is Mint that launched in the USA in 2006. Mint does some of the things that 22seven can, and was met with similar criticism in terms of security when it first launched. But Mint was, and is, very safe to use – and for the same reason that 22seven is.

22seven uses a third-party service provider, called Yodlee, that interfaces with banking systems to extract transactional data. Mint used to use Yodlee too, but has since switched to a system called Intuit.

22seven doesn’t actually log in to your bank account, Yodlee does. The necessary data is then extracted and passed on to 22seven’s servers.

22seven does not store your usernames and passwords either – in fact, 22seven’s systems can’t even see them. When you provide your banking details on the 22seven website, you are actually entering them directly into Yodlee’s secure servers over an encrypted connection.

The above has been confirmed to me by the Managing Director of Yodlee, Jason O’Shaughnessy, who I met last year, and Christo Davel.

So 22seven can’t see and doesn’t store your online banking credentials. But what about Yodlee?

Yodlee is an international company that has been doing this stuff for 11 years. It claims to have over 30 million users worldwide and has not had a security breach. Yodlee has a better track-record of protecting banking credentials than any South African bank.

Yodlee is also officially partnered with some of the world’s top banks. HSBC, for example, who I bank with for my offshore needs, is an official client, supplying data to Yodlee. The big international banks all play ball with the system in developing their own PFM tools and making sure that their customers are supported when using third-party systems.

Does that mean that Yodlee is 100% foolproof? Of course not. No system is perfect. We take some degree of risk every time we interface with financial systems. That’s life.

I was recently a victim of credit card fraud. Thousands of rands were stolen from my account by someone who had managed to capture my card details. The experience made me very wary of security surrounding my banking. But I’m not worried about 22seven. I take much more of a risk every time I let a waiter swipe my credit card in a restaurant.

I don’t blame South Africans for being concerned about handing over sensitive details. You should think twice about doing it and research the people who are asking for it. There is no way I would sign up for a service like 22seven without doing my homework.

What does surprise me is how South African banks – instead of partnering with Yodlee like their leading international counterparts have done – are advising customers not to use the system. It’s just another example of how backward our banks are in their thinking about personal finances, even if they are improving on the service front.

I signed up for 22seven and gave them my details. After chatting to Mr. O’Shaughnessy and researching the Yodlee system I am satisfied that my information is much safer with 22seven than it is with my own bank.

I challenge our South African banks to start thinking about personal finances and how they can empower their customers to make better decisions. It’s 2012. Ripping people off by keeping them in the dark about their own money isn’t cool. Why don’t they want to partner with Yodlee? Why are they warning you against using a system that helps you to make better financial decisions? Those are the real questions to be asking. And you won’t like the answers.

UPDATE: As has been pointed out elsewhere, one consideration with Yodlee is that your bank will not support you in fraud cases. So if Yodlee is compromised, your bank has no liability – unlike in the case of credit card fraud. It’s a good thing Yodlee has never been compromised then.

Ørsted was a Danish physicist and chemist who made numerous contributions to science. He is probably best known for discovering that electric currents can induce magnetic fields, paving the way for breakthroughs in electromagnetism – and, ultimately, leading to modern communications solutions such as cellular communications, and countless others.

He also had an impact on modern philosophy and was the first person to explicitly describe and name the ‘thought experiment’. One of the most commonly-known examples of a thought experiment is ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ that provides an hypothesis used in quantum mechanics.

As a critical thinker in the 18th century, imagine the friction Ørsted must have dealt with on a daily basis from a European public largely taken with religion and mysticism.

As always, Google picks up on worthy celebrations and uses its logo to pronounce them. Which is rad.

Satisfactorily explaining how probability works can be difficult when placed on the spot in an argument, however. But it is a key conversation to be had when dispelling myths such as clairvoyance. One of the best explanations of coincidence is in the following video I have found by a Youtube user named Doug who publishes under the moniker of ‘QualiaSoup’. It’s a great piece of content and something I should keep handy on my iPod for the next time I am caught in an argument on the subject…

The truth is that Amazon did not stop shipping to South Africa. While its US store temporarily stopped shipping to the region using standard delivery, you could still make use of expedited shipping. Amazon’s UK store always has shipped to South Africa using standard postal delivery.

The US store has now changed its policy again and will once again ship to South Africa using standard shipping, affirming what I said in the first place: there is nothing wrong with the South African postal system.

Funny how the media (especially internationally) were quick to jump on the story of Amazon stopping its shipping, but is yet to report on the fact that it has started again. And that, in fact, it never stopped. As a journalist I find it worrying that none of my counterparts seems to have applied due diligence on this one.

I was recently in a debate with a dear uncle of mine who loves a robust argument just as much as I do. Given that we were both somewhat intoxicated on fine scotch at the time the argument was fairly heated. The topic – homeopathy. My uncle buys into the pseudo-science. I do not.

I often have these arguments with family members given to the likes of homeopathy and whenever I do, inevitably botch up the act of staying cool and articulating my inherent scepticism. I try to explain that I apply critical thinking to anything and everything presented to me, whether it’s a question of religion, the perceived dangers of fast food or whether or not to cancel a business trip due to a swine flu “pandemic”.

My own critical thinking received a boost in high school, in part as a reaction to a poor presentation of Newtonian physics administered by a science teacher, and as a reaction to my English teacher who would passionately argue his case against theism whenever his class raised the topic in a ploy to escape the content of our currciculum.

I owe both these teachers a debt of gratitude. One for sucking at physics and the other for challenging my convictions of the time.

Whenever arguments on the topics of religion, pop phenomenon or pseudo-science enter the lunch or dinner tables I share with my family it becomes impossible for me to remain calm, present a composed argument and justify my reliance on critical thinking. This is because I passionately want the people I love to accept and adopt my way of thinking and their resistance to what I am saying causes me to mess up the explanation of why I say it. My articulation fails which turns me to expletives and… well… you get the idea.

I see critical thinking as the single most important thing which should be taught at schools. Next would be history, open to the scrutiny of critical thought which has been instilled as a fundamental.

Scepticism has unlocked the world for me. It is a more beautiful place because I see it for what it is. This may sound arrogant, but is simply my experience. Richard Dawkins often refers to ‘raising your consciousness’. I honestly think that is the best description of the change critical thinking can bring. The phenomenon can also be summed up in Douglas Adams’ famous quote, “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too.”

There are no fairies. Or ghosts. Homeopathy is a pseudo-science that does not stand up to the scrutiny of modern science which, unlike practices based on “ancient wisdom” has given us breakthroughs such as flu vaccines and television satellites as opposed to a belief in a flat-earth on the back of a giant turtle.

Your parents might have told you otherwise. You might feel scared or even guilty because your perception of the world is rooted in something that was taught to you as the only truth and that if you didn’t believe it you would be in some sort of trouble. In the extreme you may even believe that you have seen a ghost or that a homeopath has cured you – a common error where correlation is confused with causation or where you have succumb to a placebo effect. Or are just lying. I know – I’ve been there.

But you can set yourself free of all this nonsense if you are willing to explore the bigger picture. To think beyond what you have been taught. To arm yourself with critical thinking and apply it to anything and everything you hear, or thought you knew.

Brian Dunning is an activist for critical thinking. Through his website Skeptoid, his podcast by the same name, books and videos he is doing a great job of spreading critical thought and challenging people to question the things that they are presented with as fact. He actively combats myths that are progressed through pop culture and tours around speaking at schools and universities. All he he asks for in return is that people help him to spread the message. And so I am.

Instead of trying to further explain critical thinking and my take on it I would instead advocate watching Brian’s video Here Be Dragons as he does a much better job of it than I could. In fact you can consider this entire post as a justification for watching this video. It will cost you nothing and potentially change your life. Unlike some miracle cure or new fad in spirituality, critical thinking stands up to that claim.

Brian’s video is not advocating some weird movement or pyramid scheme. It will not use faulty logic or irresponsible argument to try and trick you into believing something. It merely presents critical thinking and how to apply it.

You can either watch the video here, on Youtube or on Brian Dunning’s Here Be Dragons website. The production quality isn’t great but the content is. It’s simple, informative and honest. From now on I will end arguments with family by directing them to it.