Don’t forget to tell me what you want to know about copying or moving files on or off the iPad.
Comments or questions are welcome.
Monthly Archives: May 2011
I just did a Wordle all over the page
Posted in iPad News.
Getting an iPad Software Update Soon – iOS Five?
It seems the rumour mills start the day after an ipad software update, the last one being 4.3.3 about what is going to be there for us in the next new ipad software update. Now that we are coming up to the WWDC – Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference the rumour mill has cranked up to fever pitch once again with iOS 5 rumors and also rumours about the iPhone 5, which might be named iPhone 4S.
New iPad Software Update
In the rumours some people are predicting turn by turn direction which might come from a different maps provider, although another rumour site thinks that Google will be the maps provider for at least another year. Do you think that the mapping features could be improved in a software update for ipad?
Voice Control For iOS Devices
How about voice control for iOS devices, it could be another feature added to keep a couple of steps ahead of the Google Android devices. I would be great to be able to talk in a message for Twitter or email and have the voice control built in. I have already tested this with the Dragon Dictate software on the iPad and having in the operating system could be possible with the other rumours that are going around that Apple might buy Nuance, who owns Dragon Dictate.
Seems to me that this competition between Android and the iOS operating systems is healthy and good for us users. In the same way the SLR camera users keep benefiting from the leap frogging that Canon and Nikon keep doing to be the provider of the best latest camera.
What ever is coming with the Apple iPad update software we can be assured that the rumour sites will be going crazy during WWDC and if the new version of the operating system is announced there we will be mad to get out hands on it as soon as we possibly can.
What would you like to see in a future release of an iPad software update?
Comments or questions are welcome.
Posted in iPad News.
The BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus
Boxwave iPad Stylus Review
Whatever Steve has against the use of a stylus with the iPad and the fact that having one is fraught with the possibility of losing it pretty quickly, there are times when a BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus will be just the thing you need to get the best out of a particular application. Mainly I would be talking about the drawing applications when having a pointy stylus is most certainly going to give better results than using the finger.
Some artists may relish the thought of using ArtStudio or one of the other drawing and painting applications to create the art work with the fingers. The notion of going back to the childhood innocence of drawing with the fingers. It kind of depends on the sort of art you like to create. Some drawings will need something more accurate and that will be the Boxwave capacitive iPad stylus. I have heard that it is more durable that the pogo sketch styli.
You can get the BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus 
Whatever the size of your hands you should find no problem with using the BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus as it is a good size to suit a vide variety of people. It will work well when you have a protective covering on your iPad to save your screen from scratches. You can use with applications like Penultimate and Noterize for note taking as well as with apps like PS Express and Idea Sketch. The price is OK and well worth a look – Box Wave or the Targus stylus is worth a look, then go and do some drawing.
So is this the best stylus for iPad? Are you going to be an iPad 2 stylus user? Looks like there will be some users of the iPad that will be hunting for stylus pens do to that stylus iPad thing.
How to Copy Files to an iPad
This is the question that I get asked the most. How to copy file to iPad or how to move file to iPad and myself I don’t have problems with doing it. For the most part I use either iTunes or DropBox. The other most popular way is with email. Seeing as so many people are asking this question I will write an eBook this week and cover the nitty gritty of doing this.
I need your help with this.
I plan to write this in as practical way as possible. I will look at in terms of the applications more than the different technologies you can use. What I would like is if you could send me specific questions regarding moving or copying files to iPad.
I want you to tell me what application you want to move files on the iPad in to. Tell me where you want to move the files from. Are you using a Windows box or are you using a Mac. The more specifics you can give me the more detailed I can give as an answer.
Technology making things easier
To a certain extent we have to mould our behaviour to the technology, but also the technologies are expanding to make things easier for us. Lets find out what we need to do to have a fool proof way of moving files to iPad. What about using folders? How can we make files easier to find once on the iPad. Do we have to learn about WebDAV or can we just use DropBox and GoodReader.
Send me an email now so I can help you move and copy files to the iPad
Comments or questions are welcome.
Posted in iPad Tips and Tricks.
it is an F.C. Barcelona Day Today
No time for the iPad today due to work and then when I got home it was time to finish up the day by celebrating the win by Football Club Barcelona in the Champions League. We beat Manchester United 3 – 1.
When I was a kid I was a Birmingham City supporter, seeing as they got relegated from the Premiership this season I am pleased that I am a Barcelona supporter since I moved to Catalonia.
There is a football application for iOS called iFooty. Mainly it gives information about whats happening in the football leagues. I can get in there and see the news from the games on that day. There is also transfer information. A good little application. I must have a look to see if there are others I can check out.
It is possible to be a supporter of a football team and be a geek at the same time? Is it permitted? Is it legal?
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.The Life of an iPad User – Playing Games or iPad Productivity
I just got caught, by my self playing games on the iPad when I should have been working writing posts and articles. Well I could say it was research, which it was, so that I would have something to write about in this post which is day 27 of the 2011 Blogathon. The idea is to write a blog post every day for the whole month. For the most part is has been pretty easy in terms of what to write about as there are always topics coming up. I have a couple of ideas for the next couple of days. What I should do though is to write a couple in advance and be ready. I can sent the date of posting in WordPress to the next day or whichever day I like. In fact I did do that in the first week when I was always a day ahead of myself.
What happens though is that other areas of life get in the way a little. Today was the research which was about playing a game which is an iPhone game so I had to run in 2X mode on the iPad, but is better for me on the bigger screen, The graphics on the game are good enough for it anyway. Shame that MacHeist didn’t make the game a universal iOS application, as it would then have looked spectacular on the iPad and not just great.
MacHeist is a thing that happens usually each year where a talented group put together a set of games puzzles and quizzes that eventually lead to applications for the Mac given away for free and then on to a Mac Bundle of applications that is hugely reduced in price. I have had some very good applications for my Macs this way. Apps that I use daily and would be lost without. Most people enjoy the whole process but some complain about the method of getting people to send out tweets to advertise the MacHeist in order to unlock a next level or something. Personally I think it is well done and not spammy.
So there I was investigating and I got totally sucked into the game which is the starting point this year. You have to buy the app and it cost me 79 €cents. I have enjoyed the game so far and seem to have got my moneys worth. When I get to the end of the game there is some sort of giveaway. let you know when I crack it. For me I do like these puzzle types of game. I played Duke Nukem 2D for ages when that was the rage, some years ago.
What is your favourite game for the iPad?
I like Sudoku, Words HD (Scrabble type game), this Mac Heist game has been fun, Angry birds is another I have tried. FlightControl is fun and World of Good is brilliant. My mom got hooked into Bejeweled2 on her last visit. One I still have to try that many have raved over is Plants vs Zombies.
Best Video Monkey Settings For Ipad – Video Conversion for iPad
How to use VideoMonkey iPad settings
I just downloaded the latest version of Video Monkey which is 0.10 and there is not a specific setting to use for Video Monkey iPad. You would think that after this amount of time that the iPad has been available that there would be a button for one click settings to use.
Best Video Monkey Settings For Ipad
But all is not lost for getting the correct settings for Video Monkey iPad, you just have to know where to look. The first thing to do is to drag and drop a video file into Video Monkey. Then you want to choose the 1st Generation Apple TV in the Convert To drop down list. Assuming that you have dropped in a video that has larger proportions already it will bring it down in size to 1024 by 720 which is the video size for iPad. In the main window where the file is though, you get some details of the file size and frame size and even with the 1024 by 720 set in the format limits it still says the frame size is 1280 by 720. In fact I tested it and that is what it came out as – So that setting in VideoMonkey did not work.
If you put in a file that is for example 960 by 544 and is smaller than the iPad video size, Video Monkey will upscale it and there is probably not much point in doing that. All that you get is a larger file and it is better to let it get upscaled by the iPad itself. So what you should do here is to tick the checkbox Limit output params to input which is under the drop down for Encoding speed.
There are not many settings you can fiddle with in Video Monkey to help you get the right video resolution for iPad. There is a quality setting which will give you a larger file size when you move it from the Standard through High to Go Nuts. You can use the Fastest encoding speed which is default or you can go for Fast, Normal or Best which gives it a two pass so that the quality is higher still with the video conversion for iPad.
History of Video Monkey
There was the Visual Hub application which the developer decided to give up on and what he did was to make the code open source and I believe that Video Monkey was one of the applications that picked up the ball to run with it. I still have VisualHub and it still will convert video for iPad for me. Many of these applications are a Visual front end for FFMPEG, so what you are getting is FFMPEG video for iPad conversion.
Is Video Monkey any good for converting video for iPad resolution?
VideoMonkey does not get my vote at the moment as the right solution for video conversion for iPad. There are not enough settings to work with and some that are there do not work, such as the Format Limits button. Due to the way Video Monkey is now it will be hard to get the best video monkey settings for ipad. I would recommend something else for getting the video resolution iPad optimal.
What else is there for Video Conversion for iPad?
We can get Handbrake to convert to the correct iPad video size. There is FFMPEGX which I will give a try next. I haveMPEG StreamClip which is an application I like and I know works well. There are others too and when I find the best application to do video conversion for iPad I will post the details in here.
Posted in iPad Tips and Tricks, iPad Video.
Flipboard is one of those Essential Apps for the iPad
I have been using Flipboard for a while now on the iPad and it certainly is one of those essential apps for the iPad. What is Flipboard? It is a way to take the stuff you are interested in like the feeds in from Twitter and FaceBook and turn it in to a Magazine to look at on your iPad. It look a lot nicer than looking a the view you get of these things off the single social network clients for the iPad. When you first open it you get som e default things to look at and some networdks that you need to sign in to. There is Twitter and FaceBook of course, Flickr Interesting, Tech, Lifestyle, News and Oprah.
Tapping on news too me to a news page that looks like a news paper. In the top middle of the screen there isa button to tap that says News and when I tap on it, I get a choice of the default connections. So I just clicked on Tech and I see there is a news item that Twitter has acquired Tweetdeck. If I swipe from right to left it flips the page for me to the next in the magazine style format that makes Flipboard an essential app for the iPad. After clicking on Lifestyle I get a page that has a (Landscape) story on the left side and three shorter stories on the right. The look of Flipboard is the best thing about the application but is also is fast and easy to read this way.
Using Twitter and FaceBook in Flipboard
So I go back to the contents page and tap the FaceBook button in Flipboard. I get a pop up and now I am logged in. Again it looks lovely in Flipboard.Same as in any other sections of your own personalised magazine you swipe right to left to move on a page and the other way to go back. You can also move your finger along the bottom and scroll to see what is on other pages. When you look at any story and want to read more you tap on it and it opens full screen. I just did that with a story about the iRig Microphone for the iPad. There is also a sound on there that lets me tap to play.
it is not just for consumption of news and twitterings you can also use Flipboard to interact with the stories in this, one of the essential apps for the iPad.I just listened to sounds from a connected FaceBook application called SoundCloud and I signed up for that too.
I am going to have a look at what else I can get into Flipboard which has to be high on the list of iPad essential applications.
Using Bento the Database Application on the iPad
Bento iPad
Bento database on OSX is pretty good, while not a relational database it is better than using a spreadsheet to manipulate data. I write articles for money and I need to keep track of what I write and where I have posted the articles and the number of words I write and Bento is spot on for that. There is a version for the iPad and like on OSX it links in to your data that you have already in the Address Book and also in Calendar. Bento is an excellent choice for iPad business uses. Use Bento iPad with Mac Bento paired up to get the best experience with a database iPad.
Bento for iPad
So you open up Bento on the iPad for the first time and there is some sample data in there. You can if you want just start creating a new database but more than likely you have Bento on the desktop and you will want to sync the data from that. In the top right corner of the Bento App you hit the setting button, and it give you an option to sync with a new computer. When you tap on the button you are presented with a 4 digit number that you use when you go to Bento on the desktop and in the file menu click on Set up Sync With Device.
Pair up with the Mac
After that pairing sequence is done you can then click on Sync Now which you get to from the gear icon in the top right corner again. Hey Presto all you data is brought into the database for iPad. Next thing to do is to get it looking the way you want it to look. So I opened up the database by going to Libraries and choosing ‘Articles’.
The next thing was to chose the primary and secondary field to display in the list of records that you see on the left when the iPad is in Landscape orientation. It wasn’t showing what I wanted so I changed the Primary Field to Article Name and the Secondary Field to Date Created. I could choose a media or checkbox too which would give me an image to look at if I have a image field in the records or a checkbox field. I chose not to display that one. Sort By – Lets you choose how the list is displayed. I could go for by date created or Article name or by any of the other field in the database.
Diving into Bento iPad
When you tap the pencil icon on the top you can configure your main view. You may add a new field or choose a field you already have to show in the view. Easy to delete items off there too. From this view you can also change the theme. There are themes that look like inside a notebook, inside a ring bound folder, black backgrounds and other fancy views. Some have smaller text which is good if you want more to show on the screen. So choose and tap on Done.
Using Bento for iPad
When you have in portrait mode, you don’t get the list of record down the left side but you can use the arrows to scroll through the records or hit the icon in between to get the list and a search option. At any time you can tap on Libraries to change to a different database on Bento iPad. There is an icon for Collections where you can add a record to 1 or more collections, the icon is to the left of the delete button. A collection is a group in which you store similar records. That way you can have a subset of the main library. When you have the list of Libraries you will see an icon showing how many collections there are within that library, tap that button and work with that subset only if you want to. I am really impressed with Bento, it has to be one of the top iPad business apps.
Bento vs Air Forms vs HanDbase
From the home screen you can get a guided tour and learn about Bento for the Mac. The guided tour is a one page help guide. Very simple, but all you really need. Bento costs €3.99 and is a bargain. There is a trial version of Bento for the database for Mac and you don’t need a trial for the iPad at that price. You could try out the free Air Forms or the App HandDbase for iPad which is €7.99. It is pretty easy to learn how to use a database like Bento and the Bento database Mac.
Posted in iPad Apps.
Rumpy Pumpy on the iPad – Read all about it – Playboy App comes on the iPad
It had to happen at some point in time the porn, or relatively soft porn industry in this case, had to arrive on the iPad. You now have an iPad optimised web application from the iconic Playboy magazine. Going the route of the web app was the only avenue available to them seeing as boobies are not going to get on the iPad via the prudish App Store.
The Aside Magazine showed what can be done with HTML 5 and I suspected that this used HTML5 also. Right at the beginning of the iPad Steve Jobs was praising the Web App as a great route to getting on the iOS. I don’t expect he was thinking about how it might be used by the rumpy pumpy industry.
Show me the Money
Another benefit to Playboy magazine is that they don’t have to share any of the revenue that will come in from the subscriptions with the company from Cupertino. I expect that you will have to be at least 18 to be able to get the subscription for the magazine, unless you borrow your dad’s credit card. Beware if you do that, it could leave you with a lot of explaining to do. Your dad might have to cross his heart and hope to die, explaining to your mom that it wasn’t him that paid up for a subscription to a porn magazine.
The Playboy application is reported to have the look of a native app, but as we saw with the Aside Magazine you don’t get any offline access. There is an occasional shake when changing rotation and it has nothing to do with getting a better look at the centrefold model with no clothes on. To get around the offline access problem the only thing you can do there is to learn how to do a screen shot of your iPad screen, to be able to keep on reading on the iPad.
Poor Quality and Shoddy
The resolution of the magazine is like a scanned photograph and can look a little fuzzy in places, perhaps with hard to read text and artefacts getting in the way. So maybe they are not using the HTML5 as per the example of the Aside Magazine which I did download and thought the quality was stunning. I would have expected better from an institution like the Playboy Magazine with the resources they surely must have available. They will have to get some cash together to pay for a good HTML5, CSS, javascript programmer to improve on this poor first offering. it is all about the iPad and the quality of all iPad apps that will keep the iPad as the best way for reading and consuming content in a mobile tablet way. For a html5 iPad magazine, Playboy could do a whole lot better. All about the iPad – Quality and well presented content and that is not what happened here.
Posted in Magazines.
