No skin on your iPads, please

Apple's battle with people's dirty minds.

Hands-on with the Entourage Edge

Hands-on with the Entourage Edge, article/video.
Clearly made not the least for the education market, and clearly an interesting device.

My issue is, though, once you have the color touch screen, what do you need the e-ink screen for? Are you gonna drag around double the weight just for the occasional day you need to read in sunshine? Many people are very attached to E-ink, and I really don't get it, for me it's just... gray.
The lack of backlight might be nice on the eyes in the long run, but I won't know until I see it in color, or at least least with a decent contrast instead of near-black on middle-grey. (Black on light grey is ideal for me on screen. Perhaps black on white on paper, for then you can normally adjust the lighting so you're not blinded.)

Barnes & Noble Intros $139 6”Nook

Barnes & Noble Intros $139 6”Nook, article.
It has only one button, and a touch-screen. If done well, that should work better than the Kindle's multiple buttons.

I like that they have shaped the back for a better grip. About time somebody thought of that.

The E-Ink  screen is still grey though, and the E-Ink company has sadly said that we shouldn't expect any steps forward there, this year. :(

iPads as... product labels?

iPads as... product labels? Article.  Talk about high tech!
The kiosk-style iPads use an interactive interface for showing product details, and also include an option for requesting a store employee for assistance.

I wonder how the 'pads are powered, I don't see anything plugged in.

Great idea, when you start thinking about it: they are instantly changeable centrally, and the content is infinitely variable and expandable... tutorial videos, promo videos, etc.

What the Amazon Kindle Tablet Might Be Like

What the Amazon Kindle Tablet Might Be Like, article.
Speculation, but sound stuff and based on a lot of data most people don't know.
And I agree: it's very unlikely that an Amazon tablet would compete in the iPad market, that would be stupid. Instead it's likely to be more limited, more focused on reading, but much more powerful (color touch screen and Android apps) than the Kindle 3, and hopefully less than $250 in price. That might be hard to achieve, but maybe the current Kindle3-with-ads thing is an experiment to see how many would accept limited advertising in order to subsidize a reduced price for an Amazon tablet. And from what I hear, that's quite many people, for the K3 at least.

An iPhone App for the Post-Rapture Barter Economy

An iPhone App for the Post-Rapture Barter Economy, post/video.
"The post-apocalypse recession is bound to be a doozy. If you don't have the stomach for looting (why aren't you in heaven, pussy?), or don't have a gold stockpile, you'll probably have to barter for basic survival needs."

O2 madness (updated)

Phone companies' payment schemes are now so complex that even the staff are completely out of their depth.
When it became possible to use the iPhone 4 for wireless tethering (make the phone a mobile hotspot for a laptop or tablet), I went to their shop to get that done. We got it done for a small fee, and I was told to wait until the Hotspot option turned up in the menu.

I waited and waited, but it never did. So I called them. I was told I'd been given the wrong "bolt-on" as they call it. So I got another one. And I was told to wait until the option appeared on my phone... And I waited and waited, never appeared.

So I mailed them, and now I'm told that the tethering is not compatible with pay-as-you-go. I'd suspected this from the start (this would be too simple to be "good business" wouldn't it?), but all had said it was no problem.

But typically I have not been told how to remedy this problem. So I've spent half an hour on their extensive web site, trying to figure out how to change to a monthly plan so I can use tethering. And it just seems like I can't. It seems I have to get a new SIM card and a new phone number in order to get this to work. Good friggin' grief already. [Turns out I could change the phone number back to my old one later, in a separate procedure.]

Update: the whole thing is mind-bogglingly complex. Just one example: to send them *any* question by their site I have to log in, password and all. And then, again just to ask a question, I have to fill out a couple of letters from a *different* password which is used for support. And clearly this is not enough, for I *also* have to give them the exact amount I have on my account. ... Aaaaaaaand, get this: I *also* have to tell them two phone numbers I call frequently! This is complete insanity.

Another example, there are apparently two types, with many variations, of monthly contracts: "simplicity 30-day tariff" and "O2 Pay Monthly". There is no way that I've seen of telling the difference.  I've just signed up for the Simplicity thing since it was the only thing I saw presented, but seeing the other thing now, I wonder if maybe tethering does not work on the Simplicity thing either. Probably not, it would be too simple.

Update: Not to flog a dead horse, but it's just getting too funny how looong this saga is becoming. I can't even remember all of the newest meanderings, but here are some of them:

So I got the new SIM card for monthly payments. (I don't know why you'd need to get a new card for that, doesn't make a lot of sense.) So, it was the wrong size. It should be micro-SIM for iPhone 4. So I mailed it back, and some days later I got a correct one.

I signed up for a monthly bill. It turns out I need a special tariff for iPhone, so it has to be changed. So I do that. Later over the phone, it turns out there are even newer tariffs, where there is *not* special pricing for the iPhone, and I need that instead. OK.

So I need a "bolt-on" to get data over the phone. The good news is that at least they are not charging extra for using the phone as hot-spot, like some companies do. And the pricing is much more reasonable than it was a couple years ago, or than it is in the US. Less than 25 Sterling for like 300 minutes, unlimited texts, and 500MB of data. The minutes in particular are much more than I need, which was why I had Pay-as-you-go from the start.

So now it should work. So once again, for maybe the 30th time in five weeks, I try to set up the Hotspot on the iPhone. Still doesn't work, I just get a link to a web page... sometimes when I load this page, it gives general data which don't help me, and sometimes I get a 404 page.

So I just called up, and the tech says: "you've been given the wrong bolt-on. The one you need is the same price and the same data, but it's specific to the iPhone." So he changed it for me, and it should work from tomorrow.

Holy cow.

Robot Library

Robot Library. Fully automated paperbook storage and retrieval system.
Very cool. But about ten years too late, ne'st pas? In five years, students will hardly remember what a paperbook looks like.

iPads were everywhere at Musikmesse 2011

iPads were everywhere at Musikmesse 2011, article.
...almost every developer of audio software and manufacturer of keyboards and mixers was demonstrating some way of using an iPad to perform or produce music.

I say it again: incredible. Surely the iPad must be the fastest-adopted product in the history of... well, anything.

Grove "Birdland" iPhone case

So I finally got my Grove "Birdland" iPhone case. It's as beautiful IRL.

Inside, on the back side, it has some rubberized material, and it fit very snuggly on the phone indeed. In fact, it won't even fit if the phone has a screen protector! But I'm sure it won't fall off. 

PadPivot

The PadPivot, for almost any tablet or reader, seems highly interesting.
Here is their FAQ page.

(The video has loud music.)

Another iPad videocast

Imagine my joy when I found a new iPad-based video blogcast I had not seen. And it was called by the most central name possible: The iPad Show! So it had to be great.
Sadly not. These two guys have the figures and the stage presence of slugs. They have the zing and the zap and the stage discipline and the drive of... well, slugs.

So instead I recommend iPad Today and... well, sadly that's so far the only iPad-specific show I've found I really like.

Help me out if you know other good ones. Other platforms welcome too, shows about ereaders and tablets. Video or audio.

GoFlex Satellite

GoFlex Satellite seems to be an interesting new iPad accessory. Seagate sez:
Take your media library with you. Stream it to your iPad®.
Take more than 300 HD movies on-the-go1
Stream media over Wi-Fi to 3 iPads at the same time
Automatically sync media and documents from your PC or Mac® computer


Might be a handy way of bringing a large video library without having to set up and run a computer. I wonder what software it uses, and how flexible it is with video formats etc.
And how reliable it is. I use AirVideo, and it's good, but there's always connection issues, it's a pain.

In fact I'm gonna come right out and say it: with handheld devices connection speed and reliability is still a big birthing problem. My desktop Mac download big files rock solid and at over ten times the speed I get with my tablet of various kinds. Some blame it on the slow writing speed of Solid State Disks. I dunno, I just know it's irritating. You're just all set in to enjoy some video, and it runs for ten seconds, and then it the buffer is empty. And it's filling out at snails page. And very often, going away for a while doesn't even help, it's hardly moved, which is even more weird. They really need to solve this.

So I still use iTunes a lot. Subscribe to many video podcasts on my speedy desktop connection, and sync up to my iPad, and blammo, we're off. But it shouldn't be necessary.

Samsung Announces 10-Inch "Retina" Display for Tablets

Samsung Announces 10-Inch "Retina" Display for Tablets, article.

Way cool. Now we know it can be done at least. Samsung is presenting a ten-inch display at 300 PPI (Apple's Resina display has 336 I think, but that's well beyond the call of duty). And the Samsung screen uses an interesting four-pixel technology, "Pentile", where the fourth pixel, of all things, is white! There's a lot of white being used on web sites, and with a normal display you need all three sub-pixels (red, blue, green) turned on to show white, whereas with this one you may only need one, saving a lot of power. Didn't see that one coming.

Whether this will be used on iPad 3 or not, it seems it's coming soon, which pleases me. Some poeple ask: but it's way beyond even HD video, who needs it? Well, the issue is not video, which when playing looks a lot sharper than it is (try and freeze any video and see), the issue is text. My Dell Streak has a five-inch display, but my iPhone 4 is actually at least as good an e-reader despite the smaller 3.5 display, because of the high-resolution display. Text is very demanding of resolution, and for reading of any kind, this will made a difference. And for text incorporating crisp graphics, wow.

New iMac Gains Thunderbolt

New iMac Gains Thunderbolt... article.

A tricked-out top iMac is now $3700! Holy cow, so much for the "entry level machine" the iMac was once!

It seems Apple has gone back to their habit of really over-charging for pre-installing memory or disks. For example they charge $600 for installing 16GB of RAM, about four times the going price of such memory. That's a big shame and a blot on their reputation, there's no reason for such profiteering, it's not like they are not earning money. It is simply taking advantage of the ignorance or laziness of your customers, and I think there's no good excuse for it. Buy via a good reseller, for example Jigsaw24 here in the UK, they have better service and much more reasonable prices.