Still there’s so little that would have to be done to make the iPad SO incredibly awesome for creators, and open doors left and right. I know it’s possible, iThoughtsHD (iTunes Link), a great mind mapping app has already done it!

When building a mind map, like many tools on the iPad, you can save off to the cloud somewhere, box.net, dropbox,etc. Unlike many apps, and all Apple apps. You can load from cloud.

It’s that easy. They did why didn’t/hasn’t Apple?

I caved, and paid $10 for Pages. Complete waste of money. I edit a lot of pages files. Sponsor packets,etc. All the time. I’d love to pull one up on my iPad, edit, and without having to think about plugging into iTunes, copying the files out of iTunes back to my iDisk where they live, overwriting the old one.

Pages, and most apps, come kinda close, you can access the file, pull it in locally, make edits, but then you’re stuck, the document is trapped in the iPad and iTunes.

Why not make the iPad apps (at least the Apple ones) more connected to Oh I dunno, say Apple’s own cloud services. iWork.com and mobileMe. Some of us (still) pay for mobileMe hoping it’ll mature and actually be useful. I have no idea what iWork.com is for, but it seems like it’d make perfect sense to tie the iWork iPad apps (maybe the new iLife ones too) to Apple’s own (though dropbox, et. al. would be nice too) services to extend their usefulness.

Please Apple here my plea! The iPad is great for games and consumer shit, hook those of us who create up! It can’t be hard, a third party did it! You can too!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty, but not useful. Yet.

And before you decide I’m just an Apple hater, let me lay out my credentials for those that don’t know me.

I own:

Unibody Macbook, 2 Minis, 3 iPods (including an iPod Photo), 2 iPhones, 1 iPad, 2 Airport Express, 1 Airport Extreme, my wife has a white plastic macbook.

I’ve Previously owned:

a Macbook Pro, Newton 110, Powerbook 510, Performa.  I think it’s safe to say my fanboi-ness is secure.

That out of the way.

The iPad is a very pretty device, and if your life (as some do) revolves around reading websites, watching videos, and …. well that’s it. Checking email I suppose too. Then the iPad is the perfect toy for you (albeit, for those simple tasks, the price IMO is a bit steep).

I tried. I didn’t write this review the night i got my iPad, I didn’t write it Sunday night, I waited and actually tried to do things I’d normally grab my Macbook for.

First I went up on my deck, to get some sun, and enjoy working outside. Since I was just gonna reply to a few emails, I grabbed the iPad.

• While I enjoy seeing myself, i don’t want to watch my face as I type emails. That’s easily fixable though, so it’s not a knock. Why Apple is obsessed with uselessly glossy screens is beyond me.
• First I tried holding it and typing with my thumbs. I prefer landscape mode, and have locked it in that orientation. I have big hands, so it’s quite possible, but not a long term thing. Then I set it in my lap, as many have proclaimed is the perfect use case… I got a sore neck. By this time I’d responded (lengthy responses sure) to two emails. Perhaps if I invested in a $40 (?) case from Apple that i could sit on our patio table, and use? Or buy a Bluetooth keyboard?
• One email I needed to send an export of attendee data to. I couldn’t. The export is .xls of CSV. kudos to Mobile Safari for opening the .xls and showing me, but I needed to send it to some one. Sure the iPhone doesn’t support this, but if the iPad is a revolutionary bridge device between my iPhone and a laptop, I expect a few laptop like things to be there.
• Of course since I can’t run two things at once, I had to close out mail.app mid compose to look up a discount code for a sponsor. Close mail, open safari, go to eventbrite, copy the code, close safari, open mail.app
• Then I thought I’d take a break, check on my Kingdom and my weird little people on Planet Wilker. Thankfully the display is so crisp and bright, it overpowers (mostly) the sun, so i could actually enjoy those games.

Last night I went to a user group meeting, taking only my Mifi and my iPad.

• The auto brightness doesn’t seem very responsive, so I was routinely blinded when loading something with a white screen in the darkened room. No biggy really, annoying a little, sure, but not a “Damn you Apple”
• I had two tasks I was hoping to get done, or at least get started, while listening to the presentation. Write an email to attendees of 360|iDev (thru eventbrite.com’s email feature), and compose the last speaker email to speakers at 360|iDev using mailchimp. The result. FAIL. Both websites use HTML based text editors, apparently not the html web that Apple supports. Kinda crappy. Can’t use Flash, can’t use some HTML…
• So I spent the UG meeting, not using my iPad except to occasionally tweet, and that was only because my iPhone was in my pocket

I’ve tried to replace some of the things I do on my iPhone and my laptop

• I completely understand why Apple made the iPad support iPhone apps. It’s nice to launch and crow about 100k + apps. I have yet to use an iPhone app on the iPad that wasn’t completely and utterly fail. Why use it in 1x mode? I’ll just fire up my iPhone. In 2x mode, no app escapes the ugly tree. I understand the logic, but think Apple should have given developers more time to get their apps ready. I mean really, no facebook app? Hell, the mobileMe app… uh Apple. I know you want me to shell out $30 for the iWorks, but I’d love to be able to access my mobileMe account in a native iPad app, how about that?
• I think the iPad will be much more interesting 3 months from now. Now that developers have an actual device to test with, those that (I can’t blame them) waited to actually use the device before building apps for it, will begin releasing apps. Right now the iPad app store is woe-fully anemic… well maybe not if you’re independently wealthy, and can afford every $9.99 app, LOL. Even then, there’s only a small list of apps I’m buying later, as I feel richer. Most of the apps I want, aren’t there.

Yeah Apple is about the experience, I agree, and sure surfing the web is very nice, if you only want to surf the web and consume. If you actually want to create… well so far the iPad hasn’t done much to support creation. I read one review that gushed and gushed about how awesome surfing the web is. OK sure, but I don’t spend my day complaining about surfing the web now.

So what do I like?

• The feel of it. It’s a nice piece of equipment. The screen (once covered in a smudge/glare free cover) is awesome. Sure I’d like to not have letterboxing when I watch a movie but whatever, that’s a first world problem, and not that important to me.
• The OS, it’s the iPhone OS, which while I wish wasn’t so closed off, and anti-hacker (Pro user), it’s an easy OS to understand.
• The Apps. iPad apps, are nice. They use the screen really well. Those that will shine are the ones that didn’t simply recompile for the larger device.
• The future potential. The iPad right now, for me is a cute toy that gets attention, and let’s me play a few games, and waste time. The iPad in 6 months, could seriously kick ass. There will be more apps that are useful, there will be (Please Apple, it’s kinda obvious) some way for me to work on files in mobileMe (or Googledocs) over the cloud. Screw this dragging files into iTunes, and back and forth. It’s 2010 Apple, you have a cloud storage service, that people are paying money for now. Tie that in to your devices!

What don’t I like? (and please, you don’t have to agree, I welcome your opinion, but if Apple makes you happy with what they deliver, don’t try to tell me what I should be happy too)

• It’s a bit heavy. Not really a “Bad mark” but it’s not light.
• The video app needs an update. Looking at my movies, it’s fine to see the thumbnail and name. Looking at TV shows. A thumbnail from an episode, isn’t helpful. I had 6 icons. Some Seinfeld, some Big Bang Theory. No labels. I had to open one up to see that it was the folder for a season of that show. I like the breakdown by season, that’s nice, but not having any visible clue, it’s like hunting around to find the show you want to watch.
• The single port. This is totally an Apple thing, and I wasn’t surprised, that they’d only have a dock connector, and sell $29 things that plug into the dock connector. Doesn’t mean I think it’s ok.
• The lack of Flash. I don’t actually miss Flash THAT much, because I’ve had my iPhone for a while. I think flash on the iPhone isn’t really a deal breaker. But the iPad is another device entirely. I expect on a media consumption tablet, that I could hit up Hulu, or youtube (fuck having a separate app, that’s lame), or any of the what? 80% of the web that uses flash to deliver content. It’s a business play pure and simple, and as a business person, I can’t find fault. As a consumer, hacker, and person who tries to see thru bull shit, I think it’s weak sauce. “Open Web”, my ass, it’s the “Apple Web”, and them trying to come off like it’s anything but a power grab, is disingenuous at best.
• the iPad of now. If 360|iDev wasn’t the weak after iPadmas, I probably would have waited. It just doesn’t do anything I can’t do now with the tools I have. I don’t need “an semi-adequate alternative” I need a “solid replacement”… the iPad isn’t there.

Since getting back from 360|Flex, I’ve been full tilt forward on 360|iDev (rest? Decompress time, weak sauce!!), but wanted to take a few minutes to write down my thoughts on this latest 360|Flex.

For one thing it was a huge success. We made money. Not a metric buttload, and it would have been more if we hadn’t carried a ton of debt with us out of 2009. BUt still, we made money, and that’s a good sign for the event and the company.

We did a few things (as usual) differently.

1. We had volunteers to help out. We had I think 8 folks, that got a free pass in exchange for helping out. w had them help assemble SWAG bags, work the reg desk (This was THE first 360|Event where the keynote wasn’t delayed, and where I was able to actually hop up on stage, vs have some one go start the keynote.) work our video cameras (more on that), and in general be around to do whatever we needed.
2. We had Nicole on board officially. As Tom leaves, Nicole joins. It’s pretty cool to be working with my wife to make the events even better!
3. Video. We’ve wanted to do video since Seattle ’07. In fact we had video in Seattle, but marketed them poorly. We had Video in San Jose ’09, but it was Adobe TV. This time we decided to go lo-fi to start and see how it works. We used 8 SD Flip Cams, and Camtasia Relay. Volunteers swapped cams out for each session, and set up Relay on speaker laptops. Now that hard part. I’ve got 40+ sessions to process into usable video. We’re not sure what to do yet as far as distribution. Attendees will get the video for free, but I’d love to try and sell access to the video (un-DRM’ed of course) files. I think there’s value in the videos, and think it’d be nice if we could support the company between events with video sales.
4. Panels. Panels are another thing we toyed with for a while, thinking it’d be cool to do, but never really executing. We decided to pull the trigger. 360|Flex had 3 panels, and they all rocked! Panels are here to stay. We also put a panel as the last session on the last day, to bring everyone together at the end of the conference. The panels are a great way to have all attendees in the same place, and get great discussions started! I’m really excited about the Panels, and can’t wait to do more.
5. Official hotel while using Ebay. Normally when we do the SJ event, we don’t have an official hotel, or if we do it’s just a room block at the Holiday Inn. This time we went downtown San Jose to the Marriott. Who offered a shuttle bus each day. That worked out awesome! Each day the bus brought everyone to Ebay and took them back to the hotel at night. After the evening receptions, folks bussed back to the Marriott, and partied at the bar, out in downtown, etc. it was awesome.

Over all I couldn’t be happier with 360|Flex San Jose. We had an almost sell out crowd, at about 365 registrations, not to mention the “I had to register?” Crowd that we printed badges for on the fly.

I learned on my flight out, that Frontier won’t be servicing SJC after mid-May, which means for the most part, my reasons to fly Frontier at all are drastically diminished. I’ll probably start flying Southwest to test the waters of that airline. Since I never watch the free DirectTV that I get with Ascent level status, I won’t miss that. Everything else I enjoy about my Ascent level status, I can pay for with Southwest.

Sorry frontier, poor service of late, terrible website, and now leaving SJC…

Now on to 360|iDev, San Jose! I can’t wait to see my Apple crew! We’ll all be fresh off iPad euphoria, and ready to talk iPad apps!

When i saw that GorillaPod had an iphone app, and a camera app no less I was intrigued.

The iPhone camera is kind the suck. At least for anything more than, “Oh hey a unicorn in the middle of the street, lemme snap a pick for twitter”

Try taking an “arms length” picture and good luck tapping the right place on the screen.

Enter GorillaCam (iTunes Link)!

It’s pretty simple, it replaces the existing camera app on your phone. It replaces it with WAY more functionality.

Pros

Timer: Awesome. Especially when doing arms length photos, etc.

Time Lapse. Less impressive only because of the apps slowness (see the ‘cons’ section). The lapses would be 30 seconds or more apart. not sure what benefit that gives.

3 Shot burst is nice.

Bubble level: blah whatever. I don’t need perfectly level photos from my iPhone.

Grid: Kinda cool, just for lining things up in the shot, I like it, but I think i like for some useless nerdcore reason.

Press Anywhere: Worth the price of the app just for this. Again, when taking those arms length-eiffel tower-in the background shots, having to tap the exact spot on the screen where the shutter button appears is almost impossible. It’s led to plenty of pics of me and Nicole where we’re laughing at the silliness of the problem or making a weird face thinking I hit the button, when I didn’t, but then did hit the button when I wasn’t planning to.

Being able to just tap anywhere on the screen is AWESOME. It’s made the app really useful.

Cons.

The biggest, and only real downside to the app is the saving. I don’t know if it’s the app, the camera API, or what, but it’s slow. Almost unusably slow. It’s fine if you’re just taking a one off photo of something, but if you’re trying to snap pics at an event or something where you’d like to take more than 2 pictures a minute, you’re out of luck. Hopefully it changes in a future release. Right now it’s not a full replacement of the Camera app. Close though.

In the end, if you’re looking for more features from your iPhone camera, this app is great. It offers a ton of cool (and some less cool) features that just make taking pictures easier/better. If you can live with the delay, it’s worth it, no question.

Oh and I’m on a 3GS, so it’s not (I assume) a hardware issue.

Wil Wheaton said it best “It’s only a matter of time before the TSA decides that passengers simply will not be permitted to board airplanes. You know, for safety.”

What strikes me the most is that since 9/11 the TSA has put us (You know, the American People, voters, etc) through all sorts of shit. Making us miss our flights, being rude to us in line, destroying personal property, and more all without any recourse on our part. How many complaint boxes have you ever seen? I’ve only ever seen one in New Orleans. Ever tried to complain on site and been told “Talk to the TSA it’s not our fault.” Which TSA? The guy behind the x-ray machine, the three patting people down? There’s no clear “I’m in charge complain to me” person anywhere. I’m sure trying to find said person would result in:

1. you missing your flight.

2. you being permenantly on the shit list

3. (and almost guaranteed) you not getting an answer or speaking to anyone who can give you an answer. :(

The TSA is making air travel a miserable experience, and in the end, not stopping the guy with explosives in his underpants.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Transparency? Nope, not in the TSA, DHS dictionary. Accountability? Nope, not in the book either.

As a fairly frequent air traveler (about 20k miles a year) I don’t feel any safer about air travel now, than I did on 9/10. It seems most terrorist attempts since 9/11 have been thwarted by other travelers.

From http://stat-computing.org/dataexpo/2009/posters/

I’d feel more safe if I knew there was an Air Marshal, on every flight. Since there are so many fewer flights (Remember when missing a flight was ok, because there was another in an hour or so. Sidenote: Data to the right shows fewer delays post 9/11. Think that’s efficiency, or just fewer flights?) than the pre 9/11 days, it shouldn’t be a budget buster to have Air Marshals, if we ditch some of the extraneous costs we’ve added to the pre flight portion of travel.

Of course in light of the recent incidents, the TSA is knee jerking and banning things that (as far as I can tell) have yet to ever actually be used in terrorist attempts. I’ve heard no reports of laptops, iPod, PSPs, etc being in any way used by terrorists. Box cutters, yes. ACME shoe bombs, yes. underwear bombs, sadly yes.

There’s plenty of reading on the subject,

Will TSA rules affect inflight gaming?

TSA Directive begs serious questions (I completely agree with the questions by the way. Especially “How far will the TSA go?” If you say as far as it has to to protect us. News flash it was a passenger who stopped underwear bomb guy, and if I recall, the same for ACME shoe bomb idiot. We’re protecting ourselves better than the TSA is)

Next time you fly prepare to be patted down

For the next 360|Flex in San Jose, I’m planning (unless things change) in looking at Amtrak. It’s (Another blog post) more expensive, by almost 100%, but at this point I’m feeling like as a consumer my only recourse is to punish (stronger term than I’d prefer) the airlines, since I can’t punish or even speak to the TSA. Hopefully more people will follow suit and the airlines will put pressure on the TSA/administration because they’re the ones suffering the TSA’s ridiculous policies (except United who reaps $5 per traveler the TSA screws over)

Why? Beats me. I didn’t undergo any additional screening. The ticket agent simply followed the normal steps, then said something about entering my name or checking me off.

I’d love to hear the reason this (especially instituted around holiday travel time) new directive was created and what safety and security issue it attempts to solve.

Here’s how it impacted my travel.

I had to fly United, whom I hate, because no other airline from DIA had direct flights to New Orleans. Should I ever have to fly to New Orleans again, I’ll suffer a stop over in New York or Africa if need be.

United in their ongoing attempts at seeing how hard they can screw their customers, charges for every single piece of luggage. No first bag free. Every bag, $20 or $15 if you check in online.

Well I couldn’t check in online.

So I wait in the check in line and get to the counter. I ask if I can at least get the $15 bag fee, since after all I  didn’t want to be speaking to the ticket agent, I didn’t want to wait in the line with the other schmoe’s who either got “picked” or were too lame to print their passes at home.

“Sorry, it’s $20 at the counter. I can’t help you. It’s the TSA’s rule, not ours, so you’re SOL” (She didn’t say SOL, but she also didn’t seem remotely inclined to help. She did say ‘sorry’)

So basically the TSA is Colluding with United to rip customers off of $5 a bag, and cause problems with people’s travel plans.

She hands me my boarding pass, my receipt for my $20 luggage, and my luggage tag sticker, all loose. No nice little sleave. Really?

No only am I paying $5 extra for my luggage, I’m having to wait in line for no clear reason, but I don’t even get the $.15 sleeve that makes my life easier having all my papers in one place not loose slipping out of my hand… come to think of it, I don’t even know what happened to my luggage tag, glad they didn’t lose my bags.

I’m seriously thinking, that AMTRAK is looking better and better. I can work from the train with my MIFI, so I wouldn’t lose productive time, I can make calls, etc. And the TSA wouldn’t be ruining the experience every chance they get.

I’m all for safety, but 1. I don’t feel safer now than I did before 9/11, and sadly in reality air terrorism wasn’t rampant before 9/11, so I find it hard to believe, they (the TSA) are thwarting attempts left and right, daily at every airport, on every flight.

Like most things the government starts to get involved in, air travel is getting worse and worse

Thankfully, what I assumed was just a natural state of affairs, I had no control over, turns out to be a completely manageable process, thanks to Network Location. I would have never known this app existed, if not for twitter. Someone (I don’t recall who) pointed out the One Finger Discount site, and after looking over the offerings, I was clicking purchase.

It was especially good timing. I was leaving for a trip to San Jose, so I’d get to test the app out. Set up is really straight forward. You define your locations (Home, Office, Travel, Starbucks, etc)

The things that get me, are printers, Time Machine, etc. When I’m traveling for work, I almost always have my portable HP printer, so I’d like to not have to remember to change printers.

I hate having Time Machine try to run when I’m not home, sitting there spinning wasting cycles, and bandwidth looking for the drobo that isn’t there.

Defining my locations, solves those.

The nice thing is, while yeah it will pop up a nice little widget asking me where I am, it can also auto sense, and take action, based on geolocation, and Access Point name. So now, whenever I’m at home and connect to my home AP, it’ll mount the drives I want mounted all the time.

This past weekend it’s been so nice, knowing my Default printer was what it needed to be.

If you’re a road warrior, that has to constantly fuss with settings between location, this app is for you!!

I was having a beer with the LoDo Conversations guys after being a guest on the show, and was talking to Corey Gilmore about iPhones, and we got on the subject of Navigation. Corey had tried a great many of them, proclaiming the all sucked.

We looked at two of them at the bar, I agree, they looked pretty lame. One couldn’t even figure out we were in CO, and when Corey type Denver, it only offered up Denverton.

I’m all for the iPhone doing a lot of things, but navigation ain’t one. Google maps is just fine for a quicky, “Where the hell am I?” type need. If I’m taking a long trip i use my dedicated GPS Nav. It’s UI is specific to it’s purpose, and so is the hardware. No additional brackets needed, no cel service needed to help get a fix, etc. Turn it on, it works. If it runs out of batteries I can still make calls on my phone.

While it’s telling me where to go, I can also make and receive calls on my phone, go figure.

The Kindle (I’ve talked about this before) is another great unitasker. Any eBook reader is. I don’t want to read on my iPhone, or my laptop. Why? because I want to read a book that’s dedicated to doing one thing really well, making my reading experience great. Oh and I want it to be good for more than 4 hours on a charge, and when I’m done reading, I want to be able to pick up my phone and have it not be dead.

I also don’t want to surf the net on my eReader. The typical problem with the jack of all trades device, is that it does lots of things, ‘ok’ but nothing exceptionally. the Kindle (And I’d guess all or most other eReaders) let you read books exceptionally.

The Unitasker will always have a place in society and especially in technology.

It was for our friend’s wedding.

Lucky for us it was also Oktoberfest in Vail, w00t! We actually didn’t endulge since we had to be coherent for the ceremony. We did buy new light jackets which was good :)

The wedding was awesome, despite the rain gods choosing to open up right as she started to walk down the aisle (Outdoor wedding of course), but we all ran inside, hung out for about 10 minutes, then did a nice take two. Worked out perfectly.

We bummed around Vail Sunday morning before leaving. Actually just around Lionshead, which was a short walk from where we were staying.

Overall I’d love to visit Vail again, probably next summer since the skiing is a bit outside my skill level. Next time we’ll bring our bikes, I’d love to bike down some of the runs.

It was nice to get a chance for Nicole and to just hang out. Between conferences and other obligations/events around town, it’s been a while since we’ve just hung out together. Doing that in Vail, well that’s just icing.

I originally looked for a broadband hotspot I could use my extra AT&T SIM with, but alas, the only option I found was for sale overseas and shipping, and conversion to Euro’s well put it out of my price range (Still looking for a device to use that SIM in, not really a netbook guy, so don’t offer that up :D ). Luckily our sprint cards were upgradeable. Well one was. the other was free to cancel so we did.

Now we share the mifi and whomever travels gets it, and when we travel together, well we can both use it.

It’s an awesome little device. We used it this past weekend in Vail. The hotel had wifi, but hell if we could find it. Every SSID was locked, and no one provided us the password. Mifi to the rescue, power it up and bam, surfing along just fine.

As much as I’m a fan of public wifi it’s just not reliable. Either the coffee shop router is unplugged, maxed out, or “I don’t think it works” or worse, NOT FREE. So I don’t bother. Sit down, fire it up. iPhone can use it, laptop can use it, hell someone I’m sitting with can too. I don’t have to worry about the guy next to me streaming pandora, or the girl in the corner using Skype to conference call, etc. I have my own 3G connection. Sure it might not be as fast as a hardline, but it’s always available, and ready.

Pros:

• Super portable
• Doesn’t waste a precious (On a unibody Mac) USB port
• Doesn’t require stupid drivers or apps
• easy to set up and connect to
• did I mention super portable?
• The controls interface (web site) is really easy to use
• You can run it on AC power too, so if the battery dies you’re not SOL. I haven’t tried running it off, USB power yet.
• Biggest Pro. I’m AT&T Proof. (See below)

Cons:

• Not sure if it’s Mifi or what, but sometimes the iPhone and Macbook, don’t immediately see the AP, even when it’s on and ready to go. They seem to forget that they’ve used that AP before. Possibly an IP thing? Kinda lame sometimes to have to re connect.
• Battery life. 4 hours with 1 isn’t so bad, but it goes down with each connection

AT&T Proof?

It’s common, if anecdotal knowledge in downtown Denver that during Rockies home games, the AT&T network pretty much collapses (sad, but true). You’ll have full bars, and can’t complete a call or open an email. I’ve taken to carrying the Mifi in my pocket or backback (as the case may be) and having it on the whole time and letting that serve up data for my iPhone. Voice is a little trickier, but Skype solves that issue, if I REALLY need to make a call right then. Sad, but hey, it’s a nice back up plan, since AT&T can’t be relied on.