Review: PDF Expert for iPad

Managing documents has always been a cumbersome task on the iOS devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, but manipulating PDF formatted documents is even more difficult. Mainly because PDF is a format normally used for read only documents.

There have been applications like Adobe Acrobat and the amazing PDFpen on Mac OS X to allow users to edit PDF documents on computers. Now with the prevalent of tablet devices it is natural to expect tools to be available on these devices too.

At the beginning; sounds like a long time ago but it has only been a year, the iPad was thought of by many as a content consuming device. Fortunately innovative developers begin to realize the power and potential of the iOS platform running in a form factor larger than the iPhone or iPod touch. Various developers started to release original iOS apps taking advantage both the form factor of the iPad and the innovative multi-touch UI of iOS. The first among these apps were Procreate, Sketcher and MagicPiano.

Continue reading “Review: PDF Expert for iPad”

Review: PDF Expert for iPad

Managing documents has always been a cumbersome task on the iOS devices: iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, but manipulating PDF formatted documents is even more difficult. Mainly because PDF is a format normally used for read only documents.
There have been applications like Adobe Acrobat and the amazing PDFpen on Mac OS X to allow users to edit PDF documents on computers. Now with the prevalent of tablet devices it is natural to expect tools to be available on these devices too.

At the beginning; sounds like a long time ago but it has only been a year, the iPad was thought of by many as a content consuming device. Fortunately innovative developers begin to realize the power and potential of the iOS platform running in a form factor larger than the iPhone or iPod touch. Various developers started to release original iOS apps taking advantage both the form factor of the iPad and the innovative multi-touch UI of iOS. The first among these apps were Procreate, Sketcher and MagicPiano.

Continue reading “Review: PDF Expert for iPad”

iPad 2G on March 2nd [Updated]

Apple on Wednesday, Feb 23, 2011 (US time) sent out an invitation to a March 2nd event in San Francisco, CA, USA. The tagline reads

Come see what 2011 will be the year of.

With graphics on the invitation implying the event will have something to do with the iPad. Therefore it is very lightly Apple will be announcing/revealing the next generation iPad (aka. iPad 2G) on March 2, 2011.

If past history is taken into account, the iPad 2G will most likely be announced and shown off at the March 2nd event, but will not be available for sale weeks afterwards. Most likely months afterwards before it officially arrives in Hong Kong.

World Times for Apple’s Event on March 2nd:
08:00 – Hawaii Time
10:00 – US Pacific Time
11:00 – US Mountain Time
12:00 – US Central Time
13:00 – USD Eastern Time
18:00 – London Time
19:00 – Paris Time
23:30 – Mumbai Time
02:00 – Hong Kong Time (March 3rd)
05:00 – Sydney Time (March 3rd)

The First eNewspaper Custom Designed for the iPad

Ever since the release of the iPad in April 2010, newspaper publishers have been eyeing it as a platform to deliver their respective content on.

Rupert Murdoch’s project The Daily will most likely becomes the first newspaper custom designed and created only for the iPad platform on “rumored” January 19th. Most information about The Daily are from the grapevine without direct confirmation from News Corp..

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Review: BlogPress for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch [Updated]

If you are a blogger you are most likely using a blogging platform to host your blog. These blogging platforms will come with web based interfaces for users to compose blog posts. When these web based interfaces are accessed from a browser on the computer this works well, but may not be the case from mobile devices like the iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad. Of course there are exceptions, which I will discuss later.

It is hard to find an app that takes advantage of the capabilities of these mobile devices while supports the functionalities of the blogging platforms. There are two blogging platform specific apps for the iOS devices: WordPress and SquareSpace. The former is the first of its kind and its functionalities are fairly complete, but there are bugs that will sometimes cause the lost of blog posts. The latest version (2.6.3) is even worst, so this is not an app that I will recommend. On the other hand the offering from SquareSpace is very well designed. It has set the standards for all blogging apps in the iTunes App Store.

Then there are blogging apps that support multiple platforms, like BlogPress. It supports the following blogging platform/services: Continue reading “Review: BlogPress for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch [Updated]”

Review: Flickpad for iPad

If you enjoy looking at photos on the Internet you will be familiar with the social photo sharing site Flickr, and may even have an account on it. Aside from Flickr many have also shared photos on the social network Facebook.

The user experience for exploring photos on both of these sites are okay but they are rightfully focused on an individual rather than on the photos as they would if it was a photo browsing site, because both are social sharing web sites. Until now there are no tools to view these photos from your social graph on both of these networks together in one place, which the iPad app, Flickpad, is designed just for this purpose.

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North Point’s iBand Amazed with iDevices

The North Point Community Church’s “iBand” used apps on their iPad and iPhone to deliver an impressive performance of “Carol of the Bells“, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “Feliz Navidad“.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9XNfWNooz4

Although they are not the first to use iOS devices in a performance, they are one of the first to use so many apps at the same time. They even use Apple’s Logic to multitrack the arrangements before they perform the songs.

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How to Ensure You Have a Clean iOS 4.2.x Upgrade?

This morning (Nov. 22 PDT US time) Apple made the latest version (v4.2.1) of iOS available through iTunes. It is one of the highly anticipated upgrade for the iPad and other iOS devices. Not only because this version brings features to the iPad that had been enjoyed by other iOS devices, it is also the first version of the OS to align all iOS devices to the same iOS version.

As a result many iOS device users rushed to download and upgrade their devices, causing slow downs to the iTunes upgrade servers. If you have trouble downloading the new update you can try the following direct download links [compliments of MacStories]

Before you upgrading your iOS device you should always back it up by performing a synchronization using iTunes. I cannot reiterate enough how important it is to do this on a daily bases. Since these devices are mobile and you carry it around, so there is a high possibility of the device being stolen or damage resulting in losing your stored data on them.

The other thing you may need to do if you fall into one of the following groups of users:
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