I’ve been using it for a few days now, and I am happy to report that it is far less frustrating than the first model. All the major niggles have been fixed and it’s much easier to use. As a bonus – It’s also a lot more attractive! The device is now a lovely matt black on the front with a sparkly silver back, rather than having the slightly dodgy looking brushed aluminium plastic front and white plastic back of the first model.

Happily, it only takes one button push to get up and going, and there is a little light on the power button to show whether it is on or not – much easier! I found the three buttons of the first model really fiddly to use, and the symbols on the screen were so confusing I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to start the thing up properly.

The major change with this new model, is that the screen is much more informative – you can now see the connection info (including the number of wifi devices connected), the signal strength, a better battery indicator, and it also displays the session time & data usage. This is especially useful if you are low on data allowance and don’t want to use it all up by accident!

Also, you can now access the dashboard with any computer - instead of being via a windows program, the configuration for the gadget is a webpage located at http://3.home – which is really easy to remember. The dashboard lets you manage the device, view data usage and send & receive SMS messages. So as long as you have a browser, you’re good to go! This is great news because it means that you can manage the settings using an iPad or similar, and it even has an iPhone webapp version too.

Overall, the version 2 device is a big improvement on the first – my mind is now definitely made up about buying one, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to other people. I’m also really impressed with Three and Huawei – they have really listened to their customer’s complaints and made massive steps to rectify the issues people had with the first model. This kind of behavior from a big company is kinda unexpected nowadays, so it’s refreshing to see!

I’m off to Cornwall for a week on Friday evening, to celebrate my birthday, meet up with an old friend, and generally relax and enjoy a few day trips. I’m taking the MiFi with me, so I will be able to blog and stay in touch while we’re on the road & when we’re out and about.. it will be interesting to see how the network is down there. I’m really looking forward to having a great break!

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TV Guide for iPad - Free!

Released by tvguide.co.uk, this app is great for checking whats on the box, and the iPhone app by the same people even lets you use Sky Remote Record and also links to shows on iPlayer. I’m hoping that the iPad version will get these updates at some point… at the moment you can view the schedule, manage your channels and view show information.

Website ~ iTunes

Soulver – £3.49

I really love the mac app Soulver, and I have both the iPhone and iPad apps as well – it’s a calculator app with a whole different approach to the problem. Instead of resembling a physical calculator like most calculator apps, Soulver looks more like a notes app. You type in your problems on the left side and the results are shown on the right.

Website ~ iTunes

Terminology - £1.19

A beautiful dictionary and thesaurus app, Terminology has some really useful features; for each word there are links to several popular web sources including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wolfram|Alpha and Google, allows you to star your favourite words & keeps a history of your searches.

Website ~ iTunes

Movies (Flixster) - Free!

I love this app – James and I really enjoy going to the cinema and this app lets us check up on what’s coming out (both at the cinema and on DVD), watch trailers, check the showtimes and see cinema details. It also shows ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster users and film critics.

Website ~ iTunes

iTeleport - £14.99

This app is great for managing our hackintosh server from my iPad (and our iPhones – it’s universal). iTeleport is pricey for an iPad app but it is really worth the cost, as it’s so speedy! I’ve never used a VNC client that is so responsive, with the exception of the Screen Sharing that’s built into OS X. The app has a great ‘function key’ keyboard which is very useful, so you can use keyboard shortcuts, etc. It’s also good for people with limited technical know-how, because you can just install their PC/Mac client and, using your google account, your iPhone/iPad will be able to automatically connect with no technical setup.

Website ~ iTunes

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To summarise my impressions; it was great to have with me to be able to get connected when I needed, I found it to be a handy size, there were a few things that I found annoying but it’s all been fixed for the new model, and I found three’s network to be good.

After using it some more, I still stand by my conviction that the MiFi unit is a better choice for me than the 3G iPad as we were able to connect several devices to it at a time and this turned out to be really useful. On the train to London on Saturday, the O2 service on our iPhones was terrible, so both iPhones & my iPad were hooked up to the wifi and kept connected for almost the entire journey.

The device is smaller (albeit slightly thicker) than my iPhone, and is nice and light – you can easily slip it into your pocket while you’re out, and it doesn’t bother you at all. It gets slightly warm after being on a while, but nothing that would be uncomfortable in your pocket. I kept it in the bag I made to go with my iPad case, along with my camera connection kit and memory card reader.

One of my favourite uses for the MiFi was at work. If I stay at my desk for lunch instead of popping home, it is nice to have my iPad with me to read a book or work on a blog post draft, etc. The MiFi unit let me hook it up to the net and I was able to stream HD video from YouTube or decent quality video from my AirVideo server at home, download apps, update my blog, and so on – it felt very liberating! I found the speed at work to be quite quick, which is great in comparison to my O2 iPhone, which either has an edge connection, or a very low & intermittent 3G one. Not very impressive considering there is an O2 mast just around the corner!

I did have a few niggling problems with the device, though it’s important to note that every single one of these issues has been resolved with the new model that has been released this month! The problems I encountered were as follows:

• After the screen turns off, there is no way to tell at a glance if the unit was on or off. The new model has a little indicator light to solve this problem.
• The symbols that indicated what network & wifi settings were activated were a little confusing – I had to carry around one of the (admittedly conveniently credit card sized) information cards with the breakdown of what everything meant. Version 2 has a new screen with more helpful information so I won’t be as clueless in future!
• You had to press (and hold down) three separate buttons to get the device up & running – one to turn it on, one to turn the wifi network on, and another to turn the 3G network on. This was particularly annoying and seemed unnecessarily complex, as I had difficulty occasionally actually getting them to work properly (the buttons were too small to hold down easily which didn’t help!), and I couldn’t understand why it had been done this way – I think it’s pretty obvious that if you want it turned on you want the networks up & running straight away! With V2, one button does all three things automagically, so that is a big improvement.
• Lastly, I found it irritating that you couldn’t charge the device and use the functionality at the same time. What if I’m out & need to get it working but it’s low on power? I would have to wait for it to charge before being able to use it, not good. However, this has again been resolved with the new model, and you can charge it & use it at the same time.

It’s great to see a company responding to user feedback in this way – Three & Huawei have really taken the trouble to listen to what bugged users and taken steps to improve their product.

MiFi Version 2 (E585)

For the price, I think this is a great device to have – particularly now the new one is out. It’s very handy and I found the three network coverage to be outstanding. I live in South Birmingham so it’s not surprising that it was good where I live; but I also tested it on a long car journey, the Birmingham Moor St to London Marylebone train journey & at my mother in laws house – all three of these situations had limited O2 connectivity on my iPhone so tethering would be out of the question.

You can purchase a MiFi unit from three for £39.99 with a one month contract, free with an 18 month contract, for £49.99 on pay as you go, or £69.99 on pay as you go+ which includes a data allowance for you to get started.

James & I will definitely be ordering one in a few months when we have some spare pennies!

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• I didn’t want the additional ongoing expenditure, just for 3G internet speeds.
• I have my iPhone for googling and twittering on the go.
• It’s, um, a bit ugly. I’m a bit shallow sometimes.
• The availability of free wi-fi hotspots means if I really need the net while I’m out I can usually find it.
• I could always just tether it to my iPhone or get a MiFi unit in future (we were already considering this option anyway).
• I wanted to have an additional 32GB of storage more than an expensive 3G antenna.

Since using the MiFi I’ve been feeling a bit spoiled, however. The ability to just be able to connect up to the net (almost) anywhere I go is great, and I think I’m going to end up buying the v2 model when it comes out in a few weeks time. Although I’ve been glad to be able to get online out & about with my iPad, I’m still pleased with my decision that I didn’t opt for the 3G model. The MiFi unit & iPad setup has a couple of advantages over the 3G model iPad on its lonesome. To me, a couple of these advantages are high priority, although I understand that some of these might not be as important to other people. They are:

• The MiFi unit is faster – it connects to the HSDPA (3.5G) network in addition to the 3G network. Where I live in South Birmingham the HSDPA coverage is excellent, so I can take it to the park or to work and have great speeds.
• You can connect up to 5 devices to a MiFi network – this is a big one for us as we have two laptops, two iPhones, and one iPad (with a possible second iPad in the future). You can’t use an iPad to tether a laptop, or a second iPad.
• Available on Pay as You Go on Three – no faffing with a rolling contract (I am the kind of person who would just leave it going, even if I wasn’t using it). Just top up when you need data, and leave it alone when you don’t.
• It is cheaper (up front) than the price difference between the wi-fi only & 3G models of iPad.

I’ll let you know my thoughts on the unit itself next week after I’ve played with it some more!

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I will do separate posts for ‘creativity’ and ‘entertainment’ apps, as the list for this post is big enough already, and I haven’t even got started on apps for working on graphics, design apps or games! The ipad is a really great games device and brilliant for drawing etc, so i want to give those app categories the full attention they deserve, rather than lumping them in with these apps, which are mainly content consumption and personal utilities. So, without any further ado, here are my current top 10 iPad apps:

1. iBooks

I’ve been reading ebooks on my iPhone for about a year using Stanza, and iBooks on this massive, beautiful, display really blows that experience out of the water. It is really easy to get lost in a book the way I do with a physical one; I have read 5 or 6 books now and each one has been really enjoyable to read. I haven’t experienced any eye strain at all, and prefer it to reading a physical book sometimes – especially in bed when James doesn’t like me having me bedside light on!

The bookshelf is really nice, though you can also display a list of books & sort by title or author to find the book you’re after more quickly. One of my favourite touches is that when you are reading a book the controls can be hidden away to leave a much more distraction free experience. You only have to tap the screen to bring up brightness, font & search controls, along with links to the table of contents and the bookshelf, and information about your progress overall and the pages left in the current chapter (a really nice touch!).

Reading books on the iPad is easily a nicer experience than reading:

• any book by torchlight.
• a heavy hardback in bed.
• a cheap quality paperback.

2. Simplenote

I’ve extolled the virtues of Simplenote before, so I won’t go on about it too much. The iPad app is easily as well designed as it’s iPhone counterpart. The wireless syncing works marvellously, you can create and edit notes offline, and I’m very happy with the overall experience. The beauty of Simplenote is in the name: it’s simple. There are no frills here, but instead you just have an incredibly easy to use notes app, with no Marker Felt in sight!

3. Dropbox

Pretty much everyone has heard of Dropbox, but just in case you are one of the few who haven’t, it is an absolutely fantastic online storage service that allows you to sync files across several devices & access them online as well. You simply save a file in your dropbox and it is uploaded to their servers, and the accessible via the web or the iPhone/iPad app, or any other computers who use the same dropbox.

This app is great because I can upload or drop a file into my dropbox from my MacBook or the iMac, and I know I will be able to access that file from my iPhone and iPad whenever I need it. The iPad app works really well & has a good user interface. It enables you to open your files in your other apps to edit them, which is a really nice touch – I can have a spreadsheet sitting in my dropbox and edit it using the Numbers app on my iPad.

4. Articles

Articles is a fantastic wikipedia app that I really like using. I have had the iPhone app since it came out, and the iPad version was one of my first downloads. It presents the wealth of information available on wikipedia beautifully, with nice understated controls & search.

You can look at nearby articles, have several pages open at once, bookmark articles, and so on. The nicest thing about articles is it is fairly feature rich (considering it is, as all wiki apps are, just a skin for the online database) for a wikipedia app, whilst still appearing fairly clean and tidy. It’s a really pleasant reading experience too.

5. Sorted

Sorted is a really pretty and intuitive todo app, which is something I’ve been after for a while. The developer has promised to add wireless syncing to the app, which will be the killer feature for me, especially if I can access my list via the web & therefore on my iPhone and any other computer hooked up to the net.

The app allows you to have several lists, and doesn’t insist on every task having a priority or due date, which I like. I want to use the app for all sorts of lists, not just todo ones. Adding new items is just as simple as typing a list in notepad; once you’ve added your first item just hit return to start typing in a new item. You can then rearrange the list items to suit you by tapping & dragging the item’s ‘move icon’.

You can add a priority, due date and notes to each item if you need to, via a popover that comes up when you tap on the arrow to the left of the item. You can view the list in its original order, by priority or by due date. Once you’ve added a note to something, a subtle icon is added to the list to let you know to check the notes for more info. Priorities are displayed via pretty colours, and due dates are displayed when you are in the ‘sort by date’ screen. Items are marked as complete (or deleted if blank) by swiping them. You can view a list of completed items for each list, and delete items entirely from this screen – always useful.

Overall, it’s a well designed and easy to use list app, and I eagerly anticipate the promised updates!

6. BeejiveIM

Beejive is a multi protocol instant messaging app; basically this means that you can use this app to chat to people on different networks at once. I have friends who use msn, some that use gtalk/jabber, others that only use Facebook, and so on. Beejive allows me to be logged in to all these networks at once.

I’ve been using the iPhone version of Beejive since it first appeared on the AppStore, and have always been pleased with the app. It’s supports push notifications so you can set it to leave you logged in after you quit the app, and it will let you know if anyone talks to you. I have always found the iPhone app to be feature rich and stable, and the iPad version is no different.

The iPad screen is perfect for this app; it allows you to see you buddy list, ongoing conversation and list of current conversations all in one screen, as opposed to the iPhone app where you have to switch between these three display options.

All in all, a nice chat app, and perfect for talking to my family & friends while I’m on my iPad!

7. Instapaper

Instapaper is one of those really simple, but really fantastic ideas. The basic concept is that you use a bookmarklet to send something to Instapaper, to be read later. You can access your Instapaper account on the web, or via the apps that are available for iPhone & iPad. A lot of apps now have Instapaper support built in, allowing you to send links and articles that you want to read at another time to Instapaper, from within their app. This is great for those moments when you see an interesting looking link in Twitter but don’t have time to check it out right then.

The iPad app is a joy to use, and I love having the ability to just send an article or webpage to Instapaper, and then being able to open up the app and have it all right there in a beautiful & very readable display. If I’m on my way out somewhere or about to go on a long journey, I can send a load of interesting reading to Instapaper, then sync it all onto my iPad to read while I’m on the Internet.

Instapaper is a really great tool, and I’m really pleased it has such a fantastic iPad app available from the word Go.

8. CaptainsBlog

CaptainsBlog is a very silly app really, but is ideal for Star Trek fans such as myself, as it makes your iPad look just like a PADD from Star Trek! You can keep a log, and then send your log posts to twitter, Facebook, or via email. It’s silly but fun, and it actually quite good for shooting off a quick tweet when you don’t want to wait for your twitter app to load up.

9. The Early Edition

This app is great for all those websites that you like to visit but don’t want clogging up your rss reader. You add rss feeds to different categories, and then each of those categories or feeds is displayed in newspaper format. The app scrapes the title, photos and content of each feed and arranges them on the page so that it looks like as close to a proper newspaper as you are ever going to get on an iPad.

You can you view feed items just from the current day, since your last fetch, or alternatively all the items available. Once you see an article you want to read, you just tap it and a page like display of it replaces the newspaper ‘cover’ so that you can read the full content. A built-in web browser allows you to view the original item at its website, and you can mail links to people, and of course send them to Instapaper.

I think I will find myself making less visits to my favourite news sites, and will favour getting an overview of the news via the Early Edition instead. Rather than visit each site in turn, I can flip through pages of content from all the sites at once. This is a rss app with a difference for me – it’s not one for hooking up to my Google Reader account (although you can) and then going through my favourite feeds, making sure I don’t miss anything, but one for amalgamating content from all over the web in an enjoyable format, without necessarily reading every post in every feed.

10. AirVideo

Again, this is another app I have blogged about previously, and I am happy to say that the iPad version is just as good, and in fact even better, than the iPhone app that I love to use. The quality of the video is outstanding, especially when you consider that the server application is converting the original video on the fly. The navigation is great, the controls are great, and the ease of use is great. This one is definitely a winner.

Honourable Mentions

For managing our TV connected hackintosh/server: iSSH (for VNC), FileBrowser¹ & Rowmote.
For recipes: Epicurious, Big Oven & Betty Crocker’s Cookbook.
iWork: I’ve installed Numbers & Pages, and enjoy using them both. Haven’t bothered with Keynote yet because I don’t use presentations very much.

Also, all of the ‘default’ apps that ship with it are great – Mail is a delight to use, Safari is really nice and nippy, the Maps app is very well done & the Contacts & Calendar apps are delightful.

However…

There are still some gaps in the AppStore as far as my needs are concerned. The two main things I am missing is a decent Google Reader application, and a Twitter app that suits me.

As far as Google Reader goes, I hope I won’t be waiting for long; Reeder for iPad is currently held up in the Apple app approval process, but nobody is sure why. The screenshots and reviews of it look great, and I haven’t found a better app for Google Reader on the iPhone since I started using the iPhone app. I’m chomping at the bit for the iPad version! The selection of apps for this currently available are disappointing – my priorities are speed, sharing capability & Instapaper support – three things which Reeder does brilliantly. I have very high hopes for the iPad app, but I think it will live up to its little brother’s reputation.

Where Twitter is concerned, however, it’s a different story. I’m currently using Twitterrific which is ok, but not great. A lot of the other apps that have come out have UIs which I just don’t like, so I don’t want to spend my pennies on apps that I won’t end up using. Twitterlator looks interesting, and I might look at some reviews of it & consider buying it to try out… But not until the guilt from my latest AppStore shopping spree has worn off! With luck, Loren² and the rest of the Twitter development team are busy creating an iPad app to match their amazing iPhone one.

1. This is fairly ugly, but great for fetching files from the server and saving them, or opening them in apps on my iPad
2. formerly of atebits, which developed Tweetie for Mac & iPhone – which has now been bought by Twitter and renamed Twitter for iPhone

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• It’s an absolute joy to use – the device is brilliantly made, and feels sturdy in your hand; closer to a MacBook air than an iPhone, yet really thin and light.
• When you’re using it, it’s all about the screen. The minimalistic design is just a frame for the gorgeous display, which changes completely from app to app. It can become a blogging tool¹, an absorbing article or magazine, the complete distraction that is the Internet, a fun game, a notebook, and so on. Videos look just amazing on this thing, and the speaker is surprisingly great – much better than my 13″ MacBook speakers.
• I’m getting used to the keyboard quicker than I expected. Typing is already quite speedy, it’s just getting used to the placement of the non-alphabet keys that is taking a few days.
• The iBooks app is really, really nice. I have read an entire book on it so far² and it was a very enjoyable experience. I didn’t want to put the book down last night when I was going to sleep! I’m a voracious reader and was already using my iPhone to read ebooks in bed, so the iBooks app was one of the main draws for me. It’s great that you can load your own epub files onto it as well – I already have quite a collection in calibre & I think it will continue to grow now I have such a fantastic ebook reader!
• Taking it out in public is going to be like accompanying a mildly famous person to the shops, for a while at least; I’ve had it out in McDonalds³ and at a service station cafeteria so far, and had people ask me “is that the iPad?!?” with starstruck looks on their faces at both places. It’s kinda embarrassing. But I know perfectly well that if I didn’t have such a wonderful husband I would be staring lustily at every iPad I saw out in the wild too.
• I love the ‘lock screen orientation’ clicker on the side⁴ and I’m already finding myself using it automatically when I’m lying in bed, or using the device flat on my lap. I hope that iPhone OS 4.0 includes an easy way to lock the screen orientation on the iPhone, because I’m getting spoilt with this thing. One of my pet peeves on my phone is the lack of a global setting to lock it, and the inevitable situations where I would be lying in bed holding my phone at a bizarre angle to avoid it flipping into landscape mode.
• I find it annoying when apps and games that should work well in both portrait and landscape mode only work in one of them, causing me to change how I’m holding the iPad. Some games are landscape only for good reasons, but others like Words with Friends, which is stuck in portrait, could probably work out a nice landscape layout – that one in particular is annoying me!
• The battery life is brilliant – I used it for more than 10 hours straight on Saturday before it ran down, and it wasn’t just light use; I was downloading apps and books, playing games, playing music, reading and sending emails, and so on. If you put it down with 30% remaining and pick it up hours later it seems as if it hasn’t gone down at all – even if you have it fetching data from your email account every 15 minutes.
• I already love this device, and in a way that I could never love a netbook. The beautiful design combined with the easy to use OS just makes using it a real joy. Netbooks feel physically cheap and tacky to me, with an operating system that’s designed for notebook & desktop p.c. displays crammed into a screen half the size. This doesn’t try to be a small computer, but it’s something else entirely, and I love it. Also, no crummy plastic in sight! I have a feeling I will only pick my MacBook up once or twice a week now, as opposed to every day – the iPad is a perfect ‘sofa device’ for me.

1. Yes, I am writing this entire blog entry on my iPad
2. Airhead, by Meg Cabot – I love a bit of escapism chick lit!
3. Hello, free wifi!
4. It’s positioned where the mute button is on an iPhone. To mute the iPad you just hold down the volume down clicker for a beat longer than normal.

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On this particular occasion I had finished my book, but didn’t want to start another one. I found myself wishing that I had a video to watch quietly on my iPhone until I remembered that “there’s an app for that”². I did a search on the net & found Air Video (iTunes link) – it is reasonably priced at £1.79 and I read a few good reviews before going ahead and downloading it onto my iPhone. I used the VNC capability of the brilliant iSSH app (iTunes link) to install the accompanying server app onto our hackintosh media server, added some folders & I was off!

Air Video is an iPhone/iPad app that allows you to watch video files that are on other computers in your wifi network. It works with both PC & Macs, and you can have more than one server set up to choose from. The iPhone app is very easy to use, with intuitive menu structures and a decent design. The best feature for me is live conversion of your files, so you don’t need to worry about what format the original video is in – we have quite a lot of DVD rips in avi format on our shuttle, so now they are only a few taps away on my iPhone when I’m at home³… I only have 16GB of storage on my 3GS, but the hackintosh has 1.5TB so it’s much more convenient to keep my video files there instead!

Performance wise, I haven’t had any issues with the app at all; the on the fly video conversion works extremely well, even jumping to another point in the file only takes a second or two to start playing again. The quality is brilliant, and from the looks of the iPad screenshots the videos look great on the bigger screen as well.

And of course, it is a universal app, meaning you get two apps for your money – one for iPhone/iPod Touch and one for the iPad. I do have a birthday coming up…

1. my headaches & painkillers make me very nauseous and dizzy, I have trouble staying upright/keeping my breakfast down – not fun!
2. sorry, couldn’t resist!
3. there is experimental over the internet access as well, but I haven’t tried that yet.

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These are a few of my favourite Mac utilities, that are almost always running when I’m on my laptop. They fall into a few categories; some are for social networking & email, a few for entertainment, and a there are a bunch of useful tools for a variety of things. So, from left to right, they are:

1. last.fm

Although I actually prefer using the iScrobbler plugin, since upgrading to Snow Leopard I’ve just had way too many problems with it & have had to fall back to using the official last.fm plugin, which is a little bulky for my liking. I love ‘scrobbling‘ my music to last.fm though – it helps me realise what music in my library I’m not listening to as much as anything, when I feel like I need a change. If anyone has any recommendations for a lightweight last.fm app that syncs iPhone play counts as well as iTunes, please let me know!

2. ByteController

Another app that runs whenever iTunes does, Byte Controller is a super lightweight way to control your iTunes music from the status bar. A number of different skins are available in the prefs, and it is great for pausing or skipping tracks quickly. It only takes up space whenever iTunes is open, which I love – last.fm doesn’t go away when I quit iTunes and I wish it did!

3. Adium

Adium is the instant messaging app for the mac. There is just no real competition, I’ve found. It is lightweight and can connect up to pretty much any chat network there is. I use it for gtalk¹, facebook chat², yahoo, aim & windows live. This is what happens when you have different friends and family using different networks! Although it does tend to mean that people assume that I am on facebook.com just because I am logged into their chat system. Adium is wonderfully customisable – you can change every aspect of the visuals, and there are some beautiful themes, icons & so on out there for it. I’m currently using a menubar icon from Vibealicious.

4. Skitch

This app is brilliant for super quick image capture, annotation & sharing. You can ‘snap’ images from your screen, or from your iSight. It includes a fairly standard set of basic annotation/editing options, including resizing, various shapes, arrows, text, freehand pencil & fill. With a built-in history feature & great sharing options, it’s a fast and easy way to get your images edited and up on the net asap. A nifty feature I use a lot is the ‘drag me’ button which makes it a piece of cake to drop an image into a new tweet, email, or just onto the desktop.

5. JustNotes

I love this notes app, because it is simple, unobtrusive and fast. I raved about Simplenote a few weeks ago, and this is the menubar app I use to view & edit my notes on my mac. The syncing to the Simplenote (powered by Google) service is flawless, and the style is beautiful. There are a few customisation options, so I am happily using Helvetica! I love having my notes available to me wherever I am, whether it’s on my laptop, my iPhone, or at any internet enabled computer!

6. Notify

After trying several different options for accessing & managing my gmail account, I settled with using the web interface in Chrome, which is now my default browser of choice. However, this doesn’t help if you want to keep a track of your unread emails! I use Notify Pro, which includes the capability to ‘quick look’ and reply to emails right from the app, and also to mark them as read or delete them. This speeds up the process of dealing with my email quite a bit! It supports gmail, google apps email, mobile me & any IMAP enabled account. And it’s very pretty!

7. Pastebot Sync

This is a companion app to its iPhone conterpart, Pastebot. These two apps combined allow you to transfer information from your clipboard on your iPhone to your mac, and visa versa – very very useful! The iPhone app also allows you to save items so you can retrieve them again later, organise them & even edit them (including some basic image editing with more on its way).

8. ShoveBox

This app is exactly what it sounds like – a place to shove all the debris and random information you pick up around the internet and seem to accumulate while you are using your computer. I use it for storing random images, files, snippets of text & links I want to remember. I hate to have a cluttered desktop so a place to hide all this randomness is great! What’s great about this one is that there is now a matching iPhone app so that you can sync your random collection of information over wifi to your iPhone and carry it about with you. I also find this a great way to keep useful files on my iPhone, rather than having to email them to myself all the time.

9. Tweetie

My all time favourite twitter app for both iPhone and Mac is Tweetie, without a doubt. Unfortunately this is getting a little out of date now, so I am eagerly awaiting the release of Tweetie 2! This app is intuitive, fast and has a brilliant multiple accounts setup. The fact it’s not an Adobe Air app wins it big points too! Again, I’m currently using a menubar icon & custom app icon from Vibealicious.

10. Facebook Notifications

Facebook Notifications does exactly what it says on the tin.. it notifies you.. about stuff that happens on facebook. It is actually surprisingly useful, with a list of your recent facebook notifications and another of your recent messages. There are also quick links to the news feed, your profile, to compose a new message, as well as a built in status update function (the latest update includes link & photo updates too). It plugs into growl to display new notifications³, which is always a nice touch. This app has definitely reduced my wasted time on the facebook homepage!

And a bonus! 11. Eject Applet

The eject applet is actually built into Mac OS X – you just have to know where to look. I find this incredibly useful, especially since I spilt water on my keyboard and my physical eject button no longer works! It’s also great if a disc is playing up and refusing to eject – quite often this method works when nothing else does, short of a reboot.

Also, if you’re interested, the wallpaper I am using is Bokeh by Sparcy86, and the desktop icons are ColorStroked Freehand Icons by mfayaz. I love them!

1. jabber
2. also now jabber
3. last.fm, ByteController, Notify, Shovebox, Adium & Tweetie are also all growl enabled

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Post tags: geekiness, mac

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I use Simplenote for all manner of things – draft blog posts, lists, random titbits of information I need to remember, which songs I want from the SingStore, etc.

I have tried a lot of notes apps from the app store, but this is easily my favourite from all of the ones I have tried. A lot of the other apps that I tried were overcomplicated, difficult to use & had annoying methods of syncing/backing up your notes. Simplenote syncs with their own servers which means you can access your notes in various different ways.

In their own words…

Why Simplenote?
Simplenote is a free replacement for the Notes app on your iPhone or iPod touch. It has a great interface, awesome web syncing, and it works with a growing number of desktop apps.

Everything you need, nothing you don’t
Don’t let unnecessary features get between you and your notes. Simplenote’s interface is designed specifically for text notes. It gives you fast, clean, synchronized access to your thoughts, dreams, musings, and masterpieces.

Syncing without thinking
The Simplenote app works together with our free web app and a variety of third-party apps to keep your notes in perpetual sync. No cables, no hassles, no fiddling. Automatic, over-the-air, and fast.

As well as being a super easy app to use, there are some really great extras for you to download. My particular favourite is JustNotes which allows you to read, add & edit notes from your OS X taskbar.

There is also a fantasic webapp to allow to access your notes from your browser – this is great if you just need to check something while at work, or if you don’t have your iPhone with you while you are at a friend’s house, etc.

If you are like me, and get frustrated with the looks & inconvinient syncing of the built in notes app, then this is the perfect app for you.

ITunes Link

1. Yay, helvetica! No more Marker Felt

© Zoe for Zoe Corkhill, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: geekiness, iphone

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At the moment, James & I share a MacBook (which is primarily mine) and an iMac. We use the iMac for development & design work because of the larger screen, and my MacBook is the ‘sofa device’. I basically use it just to catch up with news feeds, check & edit my numbers documents, chat to people on IM & browse the net. Yes, my laptop is capable of much more than this, and occasionally I use Photoshop or coda to do some design work, but when it comes down to it I really just use it for web browsing and so on. I don’t play games on it because the graphics chip isn’t the best, and the puzzle games on my iPhone are more fun to play.

A lot of geeks are complaining about the iPad. I just want to point out that the iPad is not really for geeks… or at least it’s not aimed as a work device for geeks. It is not a power user device, or a content provider device; it’s a device for people who want to check their emails quickly while they relax on the sofa or in bed – content consumers. A laptop is unwieldy to use when you are curled up, and so the iPad is perfect for browsing the web to check something quickly, or reading an ebook.

The main issues that geeks are complaining about seem to be:

• It doesn’t have flash - um, flash games are crappy¹ & YouTube has a dedicated app. I don’t use flash for anything else. Oh no, I won’t see flash adverts. I’ll live.
• No multitasking, which basically means you can’t stream music and read email at the same time - I buy all the music I love, which means it’s in my iTunes library – I don’t bother with streaming services because I don’t like ads. That means I can listen to as much music as I like while I browse the web, or write a quick blog post. And thanks, but I love the way apple have used push notifications on my iPhone as a workaround to preserve battery life. I’m fine with that trade off. I really don’t see the big deal about this – push notifications will let me know if someone talks to be on IM, or if I get mentioned on twitter.
• The 3G model is too expensive – I don’t want 3G. I have an iPhone to keep tabs on my email on the move & free wi-fi is prolific these days anyway. I don’t see myself walking down the street and pulling it out to read emails, it’s just not that sort of thing. If I’m going anywhere I’ll prefer to use that over my iPhone for a quick google search on the move. I just want a new sofa/bed device.
• It’s got a big bezel – how did you expect to hold it? You need to be able to hold it in portrait and landscape. This means a thumb sized bezel all the way around.
• It’s not 16:9 - neither are books. Widescreen is too awkward to look at for portrait view, which is obviously what Apple are expecting to be the primary orientation of this thing. I can live with a black bar top and bottom of a video, if it means getting the best reading experience possible. The only thing that is best in widescreen are videos; almost everything else will look great on that screen.
• No camera on the back – I use my iPhone to take spur-of-the-moment, whip-it-out-of-my-pocket photos, and so do a hell of a lot of people. For an event or trip where I know I’m going to want a camera, I take my Sony cybershot. Can you really see yourself holding up a tablet device to take a photo?
• No front facing camera – this is not primarily a business device²; video conferencing is just not that important. As for non businesses, how many people do you know who have webcams on their laptops that actually use them for more than taking silly photos of themselves? Everyone I know who has a skype account never logs into it, or if they do they use text or audio chat more than video chat. My sister and I IM when we both have the capability to video chat, and so do a lot of my friends. It’s just a pain in the arse – it’s a fun gimmick but no one I know actually bothers with it. Especially if they have the tv or music on. Who would I talk to even if I did have a front facing camera? I don’t talk to anyone with my laptop, and that has one.

As you can see, these ‘major flaws’ just aren’t issues for me. I understand that they might be for other people, but I don’t think those people are who Apple are aiming this at.

I want an ebook reader that has a bigger screen than my iPhone, which is what I read on a lot of the time. I’d say that I my reading time is now split about 50% paper, 50% iPhone screen. I want something I can pick up to check and update my budgeting numbers doc on without having to faff around. To all you uber-geeks complaining that it’s not just a touch screen MacBook pro³ – it’s not for you, and it’s got great specs for the low price.

How many people with an iPhone have got into the habit of checking their email or reading news feeds in bed?! Just think how much more pleasurable an experience that will be with a larger screen. Using a laptop in bed is doable, but uncomfortable. The iPad seems to me to be the perfect compromise between the power of a laptop and the convenience of an iPhone. Have you seen the reviews written by people who have actually handled this thing? It’s fast, and it’s intuitive. It’s easy. ‘Normal’ internet users are going to go mad over this thing, just like they did with the iPhone and iPod Touch. If people don’t do a lot of computer work, but instead just need something to check emails & browse the web, why do these people even need a laptop anymore? This is apple’s answer, and it’s at a hell of a competitive price. Other companies have released netbooks… which are really just cheap, small, slower laptops.

Of course, I won’t be able to afford one for yonks and yonks. But before this week, I was planning to save for a small 13″ or 15″ MacBook Pro to replace my aging MacBook – something I could use on the sofa still, and play some games on. Now, I just want an iPad instead… it does everything I want, and it’s a beautiful device to boot. I’ll take one please, and I suspect James will too.

1. A lot of the games available for the iPhone OS are awesome so who needs flash games anyway! I can’t wait to see what they come up with for the iPad with that lovely big screen.
2. that’s not to say businesses won’t use them – it could be used as a great keynote display device, hooked up to a projector… or to refer to things quickly, or for travelling, but no one would use an iPad as their primary computer in a business environment.
3. On a side note: I can’t believe that there are so many people complaining that it doesn’t live up to the hype… I understand this complaint when it comes to devices that have prototypes shown off at computing expos and such, that don’t live up to the manufacturer’s promises, but apple has never hyped this product once. It’s all made up by the rumour mill – so how can it possibly let people down when it didn’t promise anything?

© Zoe for Zoe Corkhill, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: geekiness, iPad

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What you have to understand about Twitter is that it’s not really just a series of meaningless updates. The thing I hear most often is “why would I care what so-and-so had for breakfast anyway?” – the funny thing is about this is you then get the very same people having conversations about diets, recipes, all time favourite breakfast cereals.. when they are talking about breakfast in person. The fact that my coworkers spend at least 5 minutes a day discussing what they had for dinner the night before proves that you do care about what your friends are eating! Twitter is a conversation too, you just have to join in.

If your friend has coco pops for breakfast then give them props for admitting to love a childish breakfast cereal, and admit you love it to! If they send a tweet saying that they’re having muesli then give them your opinion on the foul stuff, and commend them for being healthy. And that’s just breakfast! Conversations I’ve had on Twitter in the last few weeks include: my favourite mac/iPhone software, pets, cross stitch, Counting Crows (I actually had a mini convo with the lead singer of my fav band!), my wedding, men’s flaws, and my favourite tv shows!

Twitter is a place where you can ask for help, and you’ll get half a dozen answers; sometimes even from complete strangers just looking at the public timeline. You can help out your friends with their questions – I even helped Mat Horne with an iTunes question, go me! You can share funny links, interesting links, helpful links… you get the picture – it’s a great way to find fantastic gems on the web!

And all this is before you even add in the hundreds of twitter apps that are out there. There is just so much you can do with twitter, and so many applications that work with twitter.. You can share great photos, capturing brilliant moments & sharing them with your friends instantly. You can be a DJ, update your friends when you post a blog entry, send greetings cards, organise events..  and of course you can use it as a notebook – that’s my personal favourite, along with TwitPic ;-).

The point I’m trying to make is that Twitter is so much more than what you had for breakfast. It’s hard to explain why you should come and join in; only that you should. Twitter is a community, a place to discover new friends, a place to find out what’s new & hot on the web scene – and just an all round great place to be. If after you’ve read all this[2. Seriously, well done if you have read all this!] you’re still a bit sceptical, watch this video from Common Craft:

Coming next, my #followfriday suggestions, in a blog post.

© Zoe for Zoe Corkhill, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: geekiness, iphone, recommendations, twitnote, twitter

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Every user has a public page¹ with an RSS feed built in – you can choose which notes you want making public, and you can control whether you want all the notes you send to us to be public by default. To use Twitnote, all you have to do to send us a note is to mention or direct message @twnote. You can add a new note right from Twitnote interface as well.

Another neat feature of Twitnote is that we have built in a SMS feature – just text a UK mobile number with the text “twnote blah blah blah” and that’s another note added :-). Useful for when you don’t want to boot up a twitter app to send a note to yourself.

Anyway, please check out Twitnote & see for yourself whether it’s any good or not – please let me know what you think!

1. Like Twitter, this can be found at http://twitnote.co.uk/username. My public page is here.

© Zoe for Zoe Corkhill, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: geekiness, twitnote, twitter

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After a leisurely morning lunch, we popped over to Ruth’s house to let out the dogs (though I must admit I spent more time playing with the puppy!), then headed to the photographers (Studio Cru) to pick our wedding photos. It took two hours and my eyes were a touch fuzzy by the time we’d looked at about 600 photos! We managed to narrow it down to the ~55 we’re having in the album though. It was a lot easier than I expected actually. Now we just wait for the PDF file to be sent to us for approval, and a month or so after that for the album to arrive.

James took me to dinner at my favourite Chinese restaurant, Lychee Garden, which is on the Hagley Road. We usually eat from their buffet menu but they had a special set valentines menu on tonight. I really enjoyed it because there were a few dishes I wouldn’t order normally – it was nice having a chance to try new flavours! I also liked not having to make any decisions – other than whether to finish off with banana fritter or ice cream! It was a lovely meal :-).

After dinner we slumped in the living room and proceeded to be very geeky – I managed to get my MacBook triple booting OS X, Windows 7 and Ubuntu, and James spent the evening setting up his server! What a romantic conclusion to valentines day!

© Zoe for Zoe Corkhill, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: food, geekiness, james

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