iPad - page 300

When Jobs announced the iPad, declared the netbook to be dead and claimed that the iPad was a decent productivity machine, I was cynical. Lustful for an iPad I was, but as a blogger, the ability to type in one window while referencing a source in another is invaluable. Simply put, my netbook allowed me to do that, but the iPad didn’t… and until it did, there was little chance I’d ever do serious work on it.

I should have taken account the ingenuity of app developers though. Desktop for the iPad essentially allows you to split screen your iPad. You can specify what functionality you want each split screen panel to have, but for my purposes, I could browse a page in Safari on one side of the screen while using the “Email Composer” on the right side to type in text.

What a perfectly elegant little solution, especially for just $0.99.

$0.69 for an iPad stand? Bah, we say. Ian Collins shows us all how to make up to four free iPad stands out of its own packaging materials. Ghetto? Perhaps. We prefer to call it recycling.

[via Laughing Squid

Oooooh, take a look at this. Above you see a screenshot of MidiPad, a software controller for software sequencer Ableton that’s “coming soon” for iPad.

Twenty doctors are using iPads to keep track of patients in a trial program at a California hospital district.

At Kaweah Delta Health Care District in Visalia, doctors and staff already use smart phones, including the iPhone, to access the hospital’s network.  Over the weekend, the small group of doctors in a trial run were given iPads to keep abreast of patients, whether they are off site or in another wing of the hospital.

Technology director Nick Volosin has already ordered another 100 iPads to equip hospital employees including home health and hospice care workers, nurses, dietitians and pharmacists.

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid snapped this spiffy wooden stand cradling an iPad cash register at soon-to-be opened San Francisco coffee house Sightglass.

The iPad will ring up those double-ristretti with Square, an app with a peripheral credit card swiper (see the built-in one on the bottom of this wooden stand) that turns the iPhone and iPad into cash registers, accepting cash or credit card payments. Square can calculate sales tax, accept touchscreen finger signatures and then generate email or SMS receipts.

No word on who crafted the fab stand, yet, though.

Via Laughing Squid

Even HP’s aware that they’ve got a tough fight on their hands convincing consumers that they want to give them their $500 bucks for an HP Slate tablet as opposed to the iPad… but the PC manufacturer may still be be too optimistic.

If an early review of the device is anything to go by, it’s not going to be a fight… it’s going to be a slaughter.

Landing Pad is a lovely piece of work; a blog that celebrates the beauty of the best-looking iPad apps around, in all their full screen glory.

No scrappy little thumbnails here; at Landing Pad, each app is shown full-size, as Steve Jobs intended it to be seen.

In all seriousness, for those of us outside the US who still haven’t even seen an iPad yet, this is the next best way of getting a good idea of what it looks like after watching Apple’s official (and somewhat too clean) videos.

Landing Pad is the work of the tech consultants at Thoughtbot. Writing on their blog, Chad Mazzola provides some background:

“The iPad and iPhone provide a platform that makes excellent design the standard, not the exception. The elegance and power of multi-touch technology and the iPhone OS, matched to restraints on factors such as screen size and browser, have allowed the creation of applications that fit perfectly in the environment they inhabit. More and more, websites and applications built specifically for iPhone OS are overtaking their desktop companions in ease of use and sheer beauty.”

Or, to put it another way, (i)apps are a threat to websites as we know them. Maybe.

ePub Bud is a new site that simply describes itself as “YouTube for children’s books”. And it’s just right for iPad.

Channeling the fashion vibe of Flava Flav,  a music producer in Atlanta sports an iPad on a chain that’s, well, off the chain.

According to Paul who snapped the pic, it was playing a music video at the time.

At 1.5 pounds, the iPad necklace is a definitely heavy look.

Bill Jordan went to Denver’s Cherry Creek Apple store to buy an iPad for a co-worker as a perk for getting a promotion.

In what may be the most violent iPad theft to date, police say surveillance video shows the 59-year-old Jordan shadowed by two young men who assaulted him before he reached the parking garage.

Think you can do a better job running a 3G network than AT&T. Here’s your chance to prove it: Telecom Tycoon HD is a mobile broadband network sim for the iPad that allows you to roll-out a 2G, 3G and LTE network across a virtual city.

We were pretty confident that the iPad-like, unibody-looking iPhone 4G leaked in grainy pictures last week was utterly bogus. Heck, we still think it was probably bogus, but bogus or not… maybe the renderer of those images was on the right track.

You probably remember the picture above. It was leaked to Engadget a day before Steve Jobs announced the iPad, and it was our first look at Apple’s much-rumored tablet. At the time, no one really paid much attention to the iPhone-like devices to the right of the iPad and captured in the iPad’s reflection: what people really cared about was the tablet itself.

Now, though? Those two pointing arrows seem to provide strong indication that Apple will extend the iPad’s design to the iPad 4G, with further confirmation provided by these MacRumor shots of alleged iPhone 4G components.

At this point, we seem to know what the iPhone 4G will look like and what it’s specs will be. What will Apple surprise us with when it’s officially unveiled in June?

Congratulations, yankees! Apple has just updated its online store, listing the shipping date for the iPad 3G.

When will you be able to hold one in your greedy little hands? If you ordered an iPad 3G, prepare for it to be delivered on May 7th… hopefully hand-delivered by UPS as opposed to being smashed through your mail slot.

For Europeans like me, this is something of a bitter pill: it means you damn cowboys will be browsing the mobile web on the iPad a full three days before Apple even announces the European pricing and release dates. The only solace? This hopefully indicates that the WiFi and 3G models will be available simultaneously in Europe.

Update: Apple is assuring existing pre-order customers that their existing iPad 3G orders are still coming in late April. The May 7th date only applies to new orders.

Thank you for your recent order of the magical and revolutionary iPad 3G.

We would like to confirm that your order will be shipped in late April as communicated at the time you placed your order. You will receive a confirmation notice when your order has shipped.

[via Engadget]

From Too Big To Fale.

A clever Craigslist capitalist is selling these cool iPad stands for $10. Says the ad:

This is a nice elegant portable durable plastic iPad stand to use either when using a Bluetooth keyboard or when watching a video or photo slideshow in vertical or horizontal position. The stand can easily be packed to take with you, unlike cumbersome wire stands or docks. It puts the iPad at a great angle for viewing and has a nice contoured shape which will not scratch your iPad. The beautiful black color blends in with the iPad the best out of any stand we have seen for a sleek professional look.

Made in the USA!

$10. cash. and I have a few of them available.

But here’s where to get them for just $0.69:

Although a few small, private colleges have rushed to adopt the iPad — pledging them to incoming students before they were even in stores — several big universities have delayed adopting them for at least a few semesters.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Princeton, Cornell and George Washington universities have deferred admission of the iPad for students.

Princeton and George Washington decided to wait over security issues; Cornell is concerned over connectivity and bandwidth.

We like our Steve Jobs slightly grumpy, so after his humorous prosaic experiment with Californian surfer lingo yesterday, it’s nice to see him get back to keeping it real: namely, by calling a potential customers nuts.

It’s part of the Congressional record: the head of the NSA says the iPad is “wonderful.”

During hearings to determine whether he will take charge of U.S. Cyber Command, the head of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, said:

“I am a technologist. I love computers. I have a new iPad,” Alexander told the committee of Senators. A few minutes later, Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado couldn’t help but bring it up again. From the Congressional Quarterly transcript:

Udall: I’m tempted to get a critical review of the iPad, but perhaps we can do that–

Alexander: Wonderful.

Udall: Wonderful. I will put that on — for the record.

Via Forbes’ The Firewall.

The iPad in Germany will have data plans from at least three carriers on launch, Cult of Mac has learned.

In a surprise move, Apple isn’t partnering with T-Mobile, the official iPhone carrier, but E-Plus, the country’s third largest mobile operator.

However, not to be left out, T-Mobile is also preparing to offer a low-cost data plan for the iPad.

T-Mobile’s move as well as recent announcements by other European providers illustrates the likelihood that multiple carriers in several countries around the world will offer competing data plans for the iPad, which should drive down monthly data costs and also result in heavily subsidized iPads offered by multiple networks to anyone who is willing to sign a traditional contract.

It may also indicate that month-by-month 3G off-contract will widely be available both in Europe and abroad through Apple’s exclusive iPad 3G partners.

Well folks, this settles it: cats are Mac, and dogs are PC. Take a look at the little Corgi alarm going off in the video from Tested.com above for the incontrovertible truth.

I suppose this rules out an iPad at Buckingham Palace.

[via TUAW, Tested.com]

While the iPad can’t print out-of-the-box, there’s a veritable plethora (and I swear to never use that word again) of iPad printing options up at your local App Store, and what follows is an in-exhaustive sampling. We haven’t tried any of these yet, but we’re hoping at least one of them will allow us to print a simple shopping list so we don’t have to whip out the iPad at Safeway.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9NP-AeKX40&feature=player_embedded

If you can bear to watch a cat dragging its claws across an iPad’s screen, here’s some video of a pussy playing piano and with some virtual “yarn.” Sure to be the start of a blockbuster pussy-‘n’-iPads meme.

Rally Up, the newish location based social networking app, released an update for iPad Thursday that immediately puts the upstart application ahead of the game for people who want to keep track of and interact with their friends on the iPad.

Taking full advantage of the iPad’s increased real estate, Rally Up’s unique map-based canvas gives the app a level of functionality and makes it interesting in ways that market leaders Foursquare and Gowalla have yet to achieve. By designing the app to take advantage of iPad’s support for popping info out and overlaying things on the same screen, Rally Up manages to let its users interact with the app in fewer taps and screen changes, allowing for more time to browse and interact with the content being constantly generated by users’ friends.

Because iPad usage patterns are likely to skew towards more time spent lingering over applications than the quick, get-in-and-get-out experience many desire from the iPhone, Rally Up’s focus on content — and the way it presents all of a user’s friends and their feeds in a single, map-based global view — makes using it a decidedly more immersive experience than other social networking apps can so far provide.

“The iPad really changes the experience of a [location based social app],” said Rally Up founder Sol Lipman. “It becomes less of a push app and more of a pull app, in my opinion. You want to sit and explore, not just wait until your friend tells you what they’re up to.”

A lot of bytes and ink have been spent on whether the iPad is good for anything but games or gently ushering your computer-phobic granny into the digital age.

Proof the device is good enough for real business, Norway’s prime minister Jens Stoltenberg reportedly ran his country from an iPad while stuck at the airport in New York yesterday.

While Stoltenberg was grounded due to volcanic eruptions in Iceland, his staff thought it best to let citizens know he was still busy with state affairs, sans tie and what looks to be a fairly regular airport lounge, by updating the state Flickr account with a photo titled “The Prime Minister is Working At the Airport.”

Even though everyday Norwegians won’t be able to buy an iPad in stores for at least another month, it’s nice to see the PM is an early adopter.

Via Flickr

The 3G version of the iPad will be released internationally in May, according to emails purported to come from Steve Jobs, CEO of the Cupertino, Calif. company.

In response to one developer’s email about whether both U.S. and International 3G iPads would be delayed until the end of April, Jobs succinctly answered “yes.” In another email, Jobs actually apologized to an international user about the delay for shipping both the WiFi and 3G versions of the tablet device.: “Both models will be released at the end of May. Sorry for the delay,” Jobs reportedly replied.