iPad 2 – a quick review and list of favorite apps

So I got an iPad 2 and honestly, I do have to say, I love it.  This is my first hands on iOS experience (big Android guy) and this is my review of the device, OS and some of the apps that really make the purchase worthy.

The Device.

• iPad 2′s size is amazing.  The engineering behind the size is really something Apple should be proud of.
• The screen is great, it’s vibrant and looks great with games and video.
• Battery life is long, much longer than must devices I’ve had in the past, its great knowing I can actively use the iPad 2 throughout the day without a low battery.

Some Accessories.

• Smart Cover. I really like the fact that this cover is not just a screen cover.  Acting as 2 different level stands and the ability to sleep and wakeup the iPad is great.  My only drawback is that it doesn’t cover the entire device, which somewhat worries me that I might scratch the iPad itself.
• Apple VGA Adapter. One of the reasons for the iPad 2 was for its video out capabilities.  This is the cable that makes it happen.  This makes the iPad 2 a great device for presentations without having to lug around an entire laptop.
• A Stylus. Another purpose of the iPad 2 was to act as a device I can take to meetings and use a stylus to jot down my notes and drawings.   Per Apple’s recommendation I bought the Pogo Sketch.  I immediately had troubles using it.  It seemed flakey and the tip is cheap.  I’m a bit disappointed and plan on returning it.  After reading further reviews, I ordered the Boxwave which I’m excited to get.

Apps I Love.

• Air Display ($9.99) - This app is great for using your iPad as a 2nd (or in my case a 3rd) monitor.  Works with PC and Mac.
• AppShopper (FREE) - I love this app for finding recently discount apps.
• AppStart for iPad (FREE) - If you’re new to iPad, I highly recommend this app.  Shows you the many cool tricks of the device as well as an extensive list of recommeded iPad apps.
• Evernote (FREE) – Having this app on my Android phone, laptop, home PC and now my iPad, its great having all my notes organized and shared between devices.
• Google Search (FREE) – The name of this app is really understated.  It should be call Google.  This is a great portal of many popular Google services such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and more.  I particularly love this app because it allows me to add additional accounts, including those that are Google App hosted.
• Kindle (FREE) – I have an actual Kindle device, which I still do most of my reading on, but having this app on the iPad makes it much more enjoyable browsing and purchasing from the Amazon Kindle store.
• Netflix (FREE) – Very few words need to explain this.  Thousands of streaming movies at your fingertips (literally!)
• The Photo Cookbook ($4.99) – This app is an excellent example of the many uses of the iPad.  Perfect photos walk you through the recipe making it near impossible to screw up.
• Square (FREE) - If you haven’t heard about Square yet, check it out.  What I particularly like about the iPad rendition of this app is the ability to create pre-configured items and just select those when completing a sale.  Can you say mobile point-of-sale?
• Teavana (FREE) – Fun app to discovering new teas flavors and blends.
• WordPress (FREE) – Its great being able to moderate comments to many of my WordPress hosted blogs with this app.
• Flipboard (FREE) – This truly one amazing app.  I’ve been using this app to read my daily Facebook and Twitter streams.  I love how it “CURLs” (its geeky term, I know, but essentially reads the contents of many links posted by my friends) the links.
• Garageband ($4.99) – What a fun and creative outlet for making music.  I love the many “smart” instruments making it easier for me to creating tracks.
• Keynote ($9.99) - Now I can create presentations on my iPad and use it with my VGA adapter when actually presenting, awesome.
• Notes Plus ($5.99) – I was looking for a really good app for drawing and handwriting ideas and notes.  I first bought Penultimate, but there was nothing that stood out, honestly a wasted app.  What makes Notes Plus really above the rest is its gesture and shape drawing technology.  I can now draw shapes with my finger (or stylus) and then move them around on the canvas.  Further more I can circle items on the canvas and move them around, or swipe back and forth across a drawing to erase it.  The app has many more great features, but definitely worth its price.
• Prezi Viewer (FREE) – A perfect companion app to my Prezi account making it easy for me to show my Prezi’s when I do presentations.
• Pulse News Reader (FREE) – This app makes reading RSS feeds fun and enjoyable.  As much as I love the Flipboard App, Pulse Reader allows me to scan the many headlines from my RSS feeds and read the ones that interest me the most.
• Amazon Windowshop (FREE) – A fun way of viewing new products on Amazon using a huge scrolling (horizontally and vertically) canvas of product images)

Game I Love.

• Fruit Ninja HD ($2.99) – An addicting, simple game slicing and dicing fruits tossed in the air.  I really love the multiplayer capabilities allowing me to challenge my friends in a Fruit Ninja session.
• Hockey Nations 2010 HD ($3.99) – A really cool hockey game that has awesome multiplayer capabilities, excellent use of the multitouch technology.
• Monopoly for iPad HD ($9.99) – What a great rendition of this boardgame classic.  The multiplayer tabletop mode is awesome.  Just set the iPad in the middle of the table and the controls rotate around the device for each player.  Really fun!
• The Price is Right HD ($1.99) – A fun game of the classic TV show, has many of the favorite minigames you remember from the show.
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 HD ($9.99) – I love the touch controls of this game.
• Wheel of Fortune HD ($6.99) – Another great classic TV show app.  The multiplayer is fun.
• Words with Friends HD ($2.99) - Its really fun playing this game on a bigger screen.  For those of you who haven’t heard of this game, its a multiplayer version of Scrabble.

Lacking/Missing iPad Apps.

• Facebook - I’ve tried a few of the native Facebook apps (Facely and MyPad) but I really wish there was an official Facebook app for the iPad
• Last.fm – I’m currently using the iPhone version of this app, but would like it if there was an iPad version utilizing the bigger screen to show more things such as artist information.
• Meetup - Again, using the iPhone version.  I’m actually using two different apps for  Meetup, the official Meetup app and Snapup app (both iPhone).  I’d really like to see both of these combined together into an iPad friendly app.
• Tweetdeck - Maybe its just me, but the Tweetdeck for iPad app seems to crash a lot, would love to have this fixed, definitely would use it more.
• Google Docs – I know I mentioned the Google Search app above having many other Google services, but most of them just point the browser based iPad friendly site.  This is a lesser of request, but I’ve noticed the Google Docs to somewhat be flaky on my iPad.  Maybe a native app might fix these concerns, minor, but enough for me to make a fuss about it.
• Skype - Where’s Skype?  I want to make some calls, chat, video chat (with the iPad 2′s new front facing camera)
• Mailchimp - Would love to manage my Mailchimp account with my iPad.
• Mint - I use Mint to help manage my finances, having a native app would be great.

Summary

All in all my iPad 2 purchase and experience has been nothing less than amazing and has really been an enjoyable experience so far.  I’m really see myself using this more and more each day.  Do you have an iPad?  What are you using your iPad for?  Any apps worth trying?  Any apps to avoid?

WordCamp Chicago 2010 Followup

This past weekend I spent my time at WordCamp Chicago. It was an amazing weekend nonetheless and here’s a quick followup from my weekend. First, if you’re not familiar with WordCamps and are a user of WordPress, I highly suggest you go. Its a weekend full of WordPress users, developers, writers, and everything in between. These events reiterate how awesome the WordPress community really is!

Read more and find a WordCamp near you: http://central.wordcamp.org/

The night before, I attended a WordPress Chicago meetup and got the chance to meet a lot of great WordPress users and developers of the community.   If you’re in Chicago make sure to check out the meetup group:  http://www.meetup.com/mywplife/

(Happen to crash a ritzy lil party at Millennium Park with some new friends afterwords)

As for the conference itself, the quality of the content and the presenters was definitely worthwhile.  I was very impressed with the amount of great content I was able to take away.  There was two tracks, a developers and a users track, in which I found myself bouncing back and forth too.

There was a lot learned, so thank you to all of the presenters.  If you’d like to see the topics shared, check out the slides: http://www.slideshare.net/event/wordcamp-chicago-2010/slideshows

In short here’s a few bullet points from the weekend:

• WordPress 3.0 to be released June 14th
• New affiliate plugin for the WP-ECommerce plugin
• New event ticket plugin for same WP-ECommerce plugin
• SpriteMe.org – Great service to help sprite images on your site for performance
• The WordPress community is extremely friendly and simply awesome
• Widget Logic – Plugin to determine which widgets show on which pages
• Custom Post Types in WP 3.0 is my favorite new feature, WordPress is heading into the CMS direction, finally!
• Update Notifier – Plugin to notify you when plugins and themes need to be updated
• GoDaddy has WordPress designed hosting packages

Ultimately, though, these events are about connecting with people who are just as passionate about what you do.  This is my strong reason for going.  Think of them as events with speaker breaks.   And the after parties are where it’s at.  If you go to one of these events DO NOT MISS THE AFTER PARTY!   WordCamp Chicago had their after party at the Bull&Bear.  Again, the night was great, such a stellar group of individuals.

After chatting with a few new friends, we got on this sharing book spree, that it inspired me to put together a little internet book club.  Its invitation only, but feel free to email me for an invite code.  For now check out the great books we’re sharing here: http://www.pixelminute.com

Lastly, WordCamp Chicago couldn’t have ended any cooler.  I watched a very inspiring presentation of Cory Miller (at iThemes) and we all teamed up, raining GoDaddy stress balls on him.  I recorded a video of it with my phone but Qik is being stupid with me.  Luckily Mike Torbert was able to catch a shot of the mayhem:

UPDATE: My video of the Cory Miller ball rain finally uploaded, fast forward to about 3:55.

If you’re looking for something to do this fall, I’m helping with the organization of WordCamp Detroit this October. Register now at: http://www.wordcampdetroit.com

WordPress fans unite.

Thanks to everyone in Chicago for making it an amazing experience, see you next year!

2010: Products and Services I can’t live without

• Motorola Droid
  • This device is a huge epicenter to a lot of my interactions and productivity everyday.  From using Google Maps to find alternate routes skipping traffic to using it as my main connection to all of my social interactions, it’s surprising how valuable this device has become.  I’m absolutely in love with the Android platform.
• Gmail
  • For the past 7 years I’ve been strictly using GMail.  Not just Gmail, but also Google’s Apps which allows me to use the Gmail software with all of my other domain emails.  Organizing content heavily by labels and filters, this tool is amazing.
• WordPress
  • WordPress has quickly become a core to many of my web development projects.  With community and the ever growing library of plugins has made this open source platform stand out well beyond the rest.  Tell me it can’t be done with WordPress and I’ll show you it can.
• Last.fm
  • Without audioscrobbling, the service that works hand in hand with last.fm, I don’t know what better music recommendation engine there could be out there.  When I want to know about music, this is always one of the first sites I visit.
• Digg
  • Can content consumption get much better?  With social popularity of news articles and its aggregation of news from all over the internet, its my main site for news and updates.
• Evernote
  • A suggested tool after following the works of Tim Feriss, this quickly become my way of tracking notes.  With the use of the Firefox plugin and the Android app, my notes are easily saved and synced from anywhere.
• Foursquare
  • I think this is such an amazing thing.  Now that more and more of my friends are joining Foursquare, its great being able to see if they’re in town or at the same bar I’m at.  Also with the new focus for small businesses to encourage customers to become the mayor, I see a bright future for this tool.
• Amazon Prime
  • I typically go to border book shopping, but I buy nothing.  instead I use the Amazon Android app to take pictures of the covers of the books I want, and them to my wishlist.  Then in future time, I order the books I’m most interested in buying.  With Amazon Prime I’ll quickly have them within 2 days and save a butt load of money by using Amazon.
• Netflix
  • This has become the primary method of me watching movies, beyond the theatre.  With instant streaming to my Nintendo Wii and Bluray player, they just don’t make it much easier do they?
• Google Docs
  • This collection of tools wouldn’t be as impactful without its online collaboration and sharing.  When working with groups on projects, I always find myself using Google Docs.
• Picasa
  • I’ve not stored over 10,000 or so photos with Picasa.  This is so great when I want to show someone pictures of that past I can quickly login to Picasa where ever I am and enjoy.
• Jing
  • I find myself sharing and helping other a lot.  Or sometimes I need a quick screen capture.  This tool makes it quick and easy to do a screen capture and crop only what you want.  Even mark it up or circle/highlight things quickly.  Best of all, its free.
• Firebug
  • As a web developer I don’t know how I did development without it!  Its amazing how much more efficient my development has come with this Firefox extension.
• Google Voice
  • Two levels this tool is amazing.  First I never had to delete a voicemail and it’s even transcribed for searching (yet the transcription kinda sucks…for now).  Having these voicemails saved with Google I can listen to them without my phone on my computer.  So great when I’m getting back into work and I need to replay a message.  Second, international phone calls.  I couldn’t even tell you how much money this has probably saved me allowing me to make phone calls to Canada at no additional charge.  Thank you!!
• Facebook
  • We all know what Facebook is by now, hence the reason why I love it.  Being able to stay connected at the level Facebook provides has become part of all of our lifestyles.  That’s truly epic.
• Mint
  • Sometimes I really hate logging into my mint account because I’m reminded of spending that I totally forgot.  But in the reality, that’s what this tool is for.  It really is a great way to manage your money.
• Delicious
  • Having the Delicious extension in Firefox just makes it that much easier to save, share, and categorize my bookmarks.
• Bose QC 15s
  • Music will never be the same without these headphones.  I listen to my podcasts and music tracks on these all day long while I work and its freaking awesome!
• Tweetdeck
  • When I’m tweeting or trying to play catchup on Twitter, this tool couldn’t make it any easier.  Especially when at events and following a Twitter hash, this is great!
• LastPass
  • Password management is a huge issue as many of us know by now.  Using LastPass and its many browser extensions, I’ve quickly found a way to manage so many passwords by now.  Add a Ubikey for an additional layer of security and you have yourself one secure password management suite.

So there you have it a quick list of my favorites of 2010.  What are your products and services you can’t live without?

A Quick Introduction

There’s something beautiful in code, how the beauty isn’t necessarily in the visual code itself, but what it represents.  This blog is dedicated to my passion for coding and sharing my code snippets that I write or recommend along the way.

I’ve written a lot of the years and this is me giving a little something back.  You can learn more about me here or see some of my open source code projects here.

As for now, I hope I can share with you a few things…