Thursday, January 27, 2011

Links About the iPad Collection

Links Collection

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

GPS not working?!

I tapped on the Maps application and it does not tell me my current location. The iPad was only on wifi and I went to the WWW and was informed that it will take 15 minutes to determine location. However, a popup message informed me "Cannot Determine Location"!

I was puzzled why there were those who wrote that 3G must be turned on. Since I had no prepaid load on my SIM, I have turned the Settings>Carrier off. Turning it on, the iPad Maps application rapidly zeroed on my location! I think the ipad is not really using a GPS, but rather computes location using cell towers signald based on strength and applying a simple triangulation.


And wonder of wonders, after turning off my 3G Carrier, the iPad Map program was now able to show my location!


A simple geolocation service has expropriated the GPS(Global Positioning System) moniker!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Free Earthquake software gives me alarming news of current earthquakes.

The free earthquake software gives a nice synthesis of maps and client-push-on alerts of earthquakes happening somewhere on the Earth's crust.


It is informative but the frequent alarms (popup news of the most recent earthquakes) cannot give me peace of mind. I will remove it some of these days unless I get used to it and accept the fact that yes! the Earth is "alive" and is a geologically active body in the Universe.

Ipad saves me from buying a portable electronic piano.

Last December I passsed by an appliance store in Trinoma, and I was impressed by the low prices (less than 10,000 pesos of a Casio portable piano. When you dont even know how to play the piano, carrying a portale piano (or music keyboards) does not have appeal, unless you want to show off silly that you have it!

Browsing the iPAD store , I was lucky to find free piano software name appropriately "Piano Free". When I presented it to my niece, she immediately liked it so much.

I will have to spend more time with this eMusic software for iPAD before I give a more critical review. Buying an IPAD may be the best decision one can make, and it can be helped by people or organizations offering free software or by Apple opening up the SDK to developers, especially Python programmers, and offering IDEs.

There are other free piano softwares, and I suggest to try out the free ones first so to get the feel. But most softwares for the iPad are cheap!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Simple stat appliction provides basic statistical tests.

Simple stat for the IPAD provides basic statistical tests. These are

  1. Z-test for mean
  2. Z-test for proportion
  3. t-test for mean (sigma unknown)
  4. two sample t-test
  5. paired T-test

YOu cant complain about the price (it is free). These are quite easy to implement as a web service. See for example our very own Extreme adorio-research.org


All statistical tests are double-sided tests.
We expect this software to grow in features.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Nearly paid 15,000 pesos for a KIndle.

What's a piece about the Kindle doing here? Actually my iPAD has a Kindle application and I would like to warn my readers not to rush out buying the actual Kindle reader.

When I was serious about buying one last December, the price offered was 15,500 with black leather case for a Kindle with wifi. Now the advertised price is only US 139 dollars! That converts to 6,255 pesos only. Of course buying directly might set you back even more by paying for shipping, but it should not end up worth more than 10,000 pesos.

So Amazon should be commended for making their e-reader more affordable, but you should not pay too much for it in the Philippines.

For the specifications, visit Kindle 3 specs.

If you wait a few months out, we believe it will go down in price more.

Cheapest Screen Protector for the iPAD? - 93 pesos only!

I visited SM Clark today and I was pleasantly surprised that NBS (National Book Store) sells a screen protector for only 93 pesos! Compare that with 150 pesos from CDRKing but theirs were never on stock at its SM Clark branch even today!







However the packaging leaves a lot to be desired, the cleaning cloth is even exposed to the air! Duh.

A friend actually wanted to give me one last December, but in my haste to apply it, the plastic protector ended up full of air bubbles.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Jailbreak a new IPAD?

Click on the following link
RedmondPie.com

to quickly jailbreak an iPAD. Requires I believe an iMAC to tether the iPAD while on jailbreaking period.

I post this information in the hope I will quickly it when I need to. Of course, I have NOT yet jailbreaked my iPAD.

Monday, January 17, 2011

January 17, 2011. Taking stock of my current installed apps.

Here are the current apps aside from Apple's built in office/web applications(Pages, Keynote,Numbers) installed in my iPad.

NameDescription
SpaceTime math visualization, computer algebra system
Math Ref Free (ver 2.3) a mini handbook of basic formulas in algebra, geometry, physics, prob.statistics.
GoodReader a free multiformat document reader
Catholic Biblefree electronic bible
World AtlasNational Geographic Society maps
Dictionaryutility dictionary
Xe currencycrrency converter
AzulMedia Player
Upad litehandwriting
KindleEbook reader
Trails????
Instaviz???
Photo-Sort???
OmniGS???
OmniGraffle???
jRef Java 6.0Documentation files for Java
Six StringsVirtual Guitar
ChMateCh(html) file viewer
DocstoGoMultiformat doc viewer/converter
StanzaBook reader
Calculator ProCalculator
Power One SLCalculator
iLunaScapeWeb browser
PcalcLiteCalculator
KoboBook reader
Wordpressoffline blogging software
PocketCASCAS software

We will spend time exploring some of these in future posts!

Jan. 19, 2011. Deleted PocketCAS. When I wanted to graph the simple function cos(x), the application tells me I must install the full version!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

What to expect in the upcoming iOS 4.3?

What's your OS version? Tap on System icon. My IPAD displays iPhone OS 4.2.
The iOS 4.3Beta has been released. Here are some "new" features:

personal wifi hotspots
new multitouch gestures
customizable messaging alerts.
orientation locking function for the mute button.
new interface for App Store.

For more information:

Cnet
macstories.net
softpedia.com

We will be overjoyed if Apple implements or allows a Python interpreter to run inside the IPAD. As long as this feature is not available, there remains a good reason to jailbreak an IPAD which we have not done yet!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

IPAD Quick Guide and Reference

  1. Where are the complete official specs of the IPAD?

    Visit http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs

  2. How do I turn off/on the IPAD?


    To turn on the IPAD, depress the ON/OFF button. The Apple logo will show and later you will be asked to enter a Passcode.

    To turn off the iPAD, depress the ON/OFF button for a time until you see a slide to power off control. Do as instructed.




  3. How do you adjust the screen brightness of the IPAD?

    Go to Settings>Brightness & Wallpaper. On the topmost screen control,
    slide the brightness control to desired setting.

    It is always a good idea to set Auto-brightness to ON.



  4. How do you adjust the volume control?

    For hardware control, rock the volume control up or down to desired setting.
    For software control, goto Settings > General > Sounds and adust the slider. This sets the maximum volume of the sound.



  5. I find the clicks when typing annoying. How do I turn it off or on?

    Goto Settings > General > Sounds > Keyboard Clicks and set to OFF.
    Set it to ON to restore the key clicks.



  6. How do I remove applications?

    Beware of this action!! Removing applications will remove any work created by the application.

    Tap the app icon, hold, until it and all icons wiggle. Then press the X border icon of the application
    to delete. You will be asked to confirm the deletion. To stop the other icons from wiggling, press the
    bottom main HOME button.



  7. What/where are the office productivity apps for the IPAD?

    The Ipad as bought comes with the following builtin applications:

    Pages - document processing
    Keynotes - create and display presentation slides
    Numbers - spreadsheet


This post to be frequently revised.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Wanted: new name for our blog!!

Blogger.com always checks if a new proposed blog name is available before approving a new blogging site. Yet it is only today that I found there are other sites hosted somewhere else!!

Google alone lists more than 115,000 hits on "Me and my IPAD". Listing the sites would just make me more unahappy, so I am asking everyone to suggest a new name for our blog.

ILunascape web browser for ipad

I just installed iLunascape browser for iPad and I a happy to have an alternative to Safari. this browser offers tabbed browsing and I will be removing Opera Mini from my list of applications. Of course I am always cheering for other software developers to improve their products.

Variety is the spice of life and I feel less locked-in now with my IPAD without resorting to jailbreaking! But of course the time when Apple allows Python development on the IPAD is the time the IPAD can be really useful to me.

Opera Mini for Ipad, a little disappointment.

I downloaded the free Opera Mini browser for the IPAD but I noticed that there is no tabbed browsing and large fonts are not displayed well enough but were rough and edgy!
Here is the opening screen:


and here is a rendering of our main blog page:


The current blog article contents are not even readable, you have to zoom in the contents. We hope that Opera will improve to offer tabbed browsing and use the IPAD rendering technology to display text very well!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Nice Idea! LInux magazine: using the ipad with a Linux computer via an X session.

You can view a linux screen using the IPAD via ssh. Click on the following link:

Apple iPad: A Linux Administrator’s New Assistant

We hope that this article is a harbinger of the mind bending capabilities of the IPAD for interacting with Linux Os'ed PCS or devices.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Jailbreak your ipad? 500 pesos for those who dont want to mess with it.

I passed by a computer shop along EDSA and something caught my attention! A shop advertised jailbreaking services for the hefty sum of 500 pesos (1.38 % of the purchased price of the IPAD).
The guy who was in front of a laptop promised that it is easy to restore the original factory setttings in case you want to stop using the softwares which are more varied and make use of the IPAD hardware capabilities more efficiently.

I will pass up on this one at the moment. But all we can say, if you dont want to get your hands dirty on jailbreaking your IPAD, you have to shell out 500 pesos for the convenience and loss of any support and service from regular Apple channels.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Trying to connect to my C3.Failure.

Turning on the bluetooth devices on the C3 and the iPad, i see that they can detect each other.
But the C3 complains that the iPad has no application to service the active link. Seems that the iPad is only meant to connect via bluetooth to other apple products such as the IPOD and the IPHONE!

This might force me someday to jailbreak my own IPAD.I own the hardware, and if Apple insists on a vendor locked-in closed captive customer system, I will really do so.

Or I might buy the Samsung Glaxy tablet, except that I may suffer from insufficient funds!

Jan. 19. trying again, the iPad now displays Now Discoverable for a long time! even if my C3-00 shows it is paired with the iPad. Very disappointed again. I wanted to transfer photos from my C3 to the iPAD.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Looking for an inexpensive folding sleeve for the IPAD?

I looked for a folding sleeve for my IPAD in the uppermost floor of SM BAguio but the cases, sleeves were all in the thousand pesos category. So browsing at the web site of our favorite gadget seller, we discover one which cost only P280 pesos.

Click on the link CDRKing. Here is are some images of the sleeve cover:




As usual there were several times I promised NOT to anymore buy anymore from cdrking due to high failure/defect rates. But we still come back enticed by the new gadgets. I buy branded batteries and chargers from CDRKing like Eneloop/Sanyo and so far I am satisfied.