Monthly Archives: April 2010

Mac20Q Podcast 93 – I confess Im a Geek – David

29/04/2010 by David Allen · Leave a comment

I Confess I_m a Geek!.pngMossad have to buy their own iPads now that they are not confiscating them any more. They will also have to buy their own iPad dock connector european

David the Mac Geek in Maidenhead near London UK has an iPad and used Bundlebox to get himself an iPad. Bundle box were swamped in the first few days but he managed to get one using his own credit card. Only took a few days to get the iPad in his hands. £128 for shipping, insurance and duty. There was a bit of sales tax that bumped it up a little. I don’t like the way they don’t advertise the prices with out taxes over in the US.

David got a 32Gb model and is very happy with the tablet computer from Apple so far. Very excited to do the unboxing and left work just a little early to get using it. He has a silicone case that he had ready for it as soon as it arrived. he tells me that it is an incredibly useful tool and carries it nearly everywhere.

David has a MiFi to use with the iPad and is paying £5 a month for up to 500MB a month. I was pleased that he gave me the information about how to get a MiFi from Three in the UK and unlock it with some software called DC Unlocker. He says it will cost me €15 to unlock the MiFi. I have already asked my mom to bring one to me in SPain when she visits next month.

The weight and size of the iPad seems just right in use and has been putting on applications. He did have to have a US iTunes account to be able to activate the device. Activating the device is pain really which tells us that you are best to have another computer to be able to use it with. You also have to have an iTunes account in the US to be able to download some of the applications until the iPad is released internationally.

iPhone applications on the iPad is not nice and look horrible. Much better to get a proper iPad application. Some applications though do come as universal apps which is one package that know which it is going onto and sets up right for the bigger screen when it needs to.

David says that reading books on the iPad is a pleasant experience and has read a whole book using the iPad already and prefers the book reading on the iPad compared to the Sony E Reader he also has.

A very useful tool would be the dock connector to hdmi so that you could connect the iPad to a TV

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Mac20Q Podcast 92 Dennis Freitas

24/04/2010 by David Allen · Leave a comment

YouTube - YourMacCast_s Channel.pngDennis is a firefighter he has 2 iPads one for himself and one for his wife, an iMac and has a MacBookPro that he has recently bought. and likes the Wacom Tablet instead of always using the mouse., She is a bit stubborn and has not switched yet but maybe in time. Listens to the MacGeek Gab podcast, loves Don MacAllister. Also appreciates what a good podcast Adam Christianson makes and has got into podcasting himself. Like to pass on tips to make users and likes to use ScreenFlow same as I do. He gets his wife to drive everywhere so he can sit in the passenger seat reading on the iPad.

Dennis makes the podcast YourMacShow, a wealth of information for Mac users

He gets questions he doesn’t know the answers to but is not afraid to ask questions, he uses Skitch to grab screens and work with Screensteps the app that Allison Sheridan loves to use. Denis likes to use Things on the iPad and Circus ponies NoteBook

Notational Velocity and Simple note as per Merlin Mann and his ideas about how to take notes. I think a good idea is to spread tasks to certain applications so that you pigeon hole the task on the computer and help avoid information overload. Dennis is a big fan of PathFInder and will be talking about organising files and folders.

Continue reading →

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Mac20Q Podcast 91 Steve Garfield

16/04/2010 by David Allen · Leave a comment

Steve Garfield is the author of the book – Get Seen: Online Video Secrets he has been doing video online since 2004, which would make him one of the first video bloggers out there. This was before YouTube came into existence so it was really cutting edge stuff. Obviously he was in an area with reasonable internet speeds.
Steve is the founder of the Boston Media Makers and has his own web site too, of course.

Only natural that with having so much experience with putting video online that he would be asked to write a book about it and that is how Get Seen: Online Video Secrets came about.

Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series)

In the book Steve talks about what cameras to get depending on what you plan to do. He agrees with me that audio is very important for video but at the same time believes that you should use what ever you have to hand. he loves the iPhone for that where he can take some video and have it online via QIK straightaway.

Despite having some expensive mics and cameras he will often be getting in there and getting the immediate results with much cheaper equipment like the Flip cameras

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Creating eBooks for the iPad

11/04/2010 by David Allen · Leave a comment

Seeing as the iPad is out I thought it would be a good time to check out some methods of creating Epub ebooks. Firstly because it could be another way to get the Mac20Q Web & podcast out to the fans. Lots of different folks out there so lots of different preferred ways of getting the digital content on the digital door step.

I am still pondering on the usefulness of the e book, Could see a case for it on a device like the iPad or other ebook reader. The schools market is going to get a big shake up thats for sure. Would not see a use on a desktop or a laptop – We open up web pages if we want to get information that way

Or theres the PDF – except that the PDF format from Adobe is not always that safe to use – so some people would decline to open such a file. That is those people that don’t want to leave themselves open to what Bart Buschotts would call Arbitrary code execution on the computer

The ebook readers & creators I have looked at on the OSX platform so far leave me totally cold as far as the reading experience is concerned. I tried out Stanza, Calibre & Sigil & had a look at Indesign also. Some apps are more readers & organisers of e books than creation tools.

Looking in Calibre it seems that it should be able to send an e book to the iPhone but I have not managed to make it do so yet. I thought it Could be that I would have to have the iPhone USB tethered where I am expecting it to work like Stanza, In which you click on share & then you get to opportunity to download the ebook in the iPhone app via wifi.

I was able to download the UK Guardian News paper into Calibre & then I open it in Stanza to push to the mobile device. Not a good reading experience for the Guardian ebook on the iPhone though, There is a poor quality image of the front page & then pages which have a header with a link & a short part of the story below that.

When you get it in the iPhone in Stanza – you can’t click on any link because the whole screen is taken over by controls of the book, Left side to go back, Right to go forward & the centre is for getting to the interface of the app. So none of the links will take you anywhere – When reading it in the Calibre reader the links do work, & take you to the Guardian web site. This example helps to make the case I think for Newspapers & Magazines to have an app rather than ebook distribution for E readers

There is quite a variety in terms of quality interface & feature sets in the ebook apps I looked at. Stanza is a reader & convertor which also has an app to sync with on the mobile device it isn’t at all a creator of epub books & it recommends using Calibre for creation of the e books.


Calibre is more full featured but confusing at first look because of having such an ugly interface
Obviously started life as an open source or Windows program, It fell out of top of the ugly tree & hit every branch on the way down.

Sigil is more of the creation tool & is pretty enough. Still needs work in terms of ease of use but does the job of creating the epub format e books. All you need to do is to drop in some text & images & the job is nearly done

 

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Ipad Apps – At it like rabbits

05/04/2010 by David Allen · Leave a comment

The iPad apps are multiplying, if the apps are not at it like rabbits then the developers are. Last time I looked there were over 3300 apps and the average price is $4.99. That is probably higher than the iPhone apps price average. 75% of the apps are paid for applications and if you were to put all of these apps on your iPad, you would have to shell out $12,000.

Obviously there is a bit of a gold rush going on here and the makers of the software realise that there is a premium to be had by being the first iPad apps in the App Store.

All of this is a mute point for the thousands of Apple fans world wide that have been let down by Apple. I did see one person say that Steve Jobs lied to us about the date of availability of the iPad. Seems that it took more than the 60 days. Whether it was a lie depends on the intent at the time of saying what he did.

Apple has forced many fans to go to buy an iPad from Ebay at inflated prices and have to pay the postage and probably the import duty also. I suppose it is all down to how many units they could get made in the time available. Would it have been better to have a date when they could get the iPad out to everyone worldwide? Seems that Apple have got used to the idea of the drip feed method, starting off with the announcement followed by availability  and  distribution to the first class citizens of the Apple World then moving on to the next layers down.

Well it won’t make much difference in the long run Apple will still sell tons of these devices anyway. My plan still remains the same, I could buy one for my wife because she deserves the love. Seeing as I have the iMac and MacBook and Mac Mini and iPhone, I don’t need one but I want one. I would be content to stroke the iPad belonging to my nearest and dearest. Although I would be tempted to sell a few items to gather some cash together. I could even sell my iPhone as I hardly ever make phone calls and I am finding the 3G model I have, to be slow to do things lately. On top of that I am sort of saving for a Video camera and that will get priority, spending on other things will only slow me down in aquisition of the camera hardware that I need and will earn me some money.

What about you ??

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