iPad Doodling

I enjoy playing around with particle apps on my iPad - here are some of my latest creations:

These apps hypnotize me - I get lost in them, spending hours swirling the colors and shapes around!

Awesome new Calendar App for iPad

My history with the iPad goes waaay back - we ultimately reached what I describe as a detente.

In a nutshell, I think it is great for games (which I have zero time for anymore), reading, and listening to music (although I don't use it for this - I prefer my iPod/docking station). But for web browsing, document handling, e-mail, and other productivity applications, I find it sorely lacking when compared to a PC. The iPad's keyboard is clumsy, and web browsing is just painful. Not to mention the frequent browser crashes. But anyway...

I did a lot of research and testing before I paid big $ for a calendar/GTD app that held a lot of appeal for me - ease of usability, nice features I really needed, etc. Of course, that was 6 or 7 updates ago, and the calendar app I used to love (Pocket Informant) is now bogged down with bells and whistles I didn't want, and that have greatly reduced its usability. I am just not going to spend 3-5 minutes and multiple clicks trying to delete or update an item on a to-do list. Sorry. Insert sad face here.

As I've mentioned previously, I had quite the go-round with one of the grocery apps - these apps that are supposed to simplify our lives and increase our productivity require multiple clicks and clumsy keyboard entries just to make a simple list - changing a 15 minute trip to Kroger into a Gilligan-worthy 3-hour tour. No thanks!

So, yesterday I had my hair cut. I took the iPad along, because my stylist is always running late, and I figured I could get 2 or 3 chapters read (Girl Gone) while I waited. Actually read 5 chapters before she called me back, but anyway....

Jump to haircut is done, and I'm at the front desk to pay and set up my next appointment. No need for ME to look at a calendar - I knew I needed a Wednesday, early AM appointment. The particular Wednesday didn't matter - so the receptionist scrolls through HER calendar, finds a date and time for me, and tells me verbally (no tree-killing appointment cards at THIS salon!) - I guess she assumed I would enter it in the iPad I was carrying. But No...I reached over the counter and grabbed her pad of yellow Post-Its, wrote down the appointment, and then briefly pondered what to do with this important piece of paper. (I wasn't carrying a purse) - But it was a very brief pause, as I quickly hit upon the solution:

That's right, stick it to the front of the iPad. I knew it wouldn't get lost, and would stay stuck until I was reunited with my calendar. That's right - I kick it old school, with a big 8.5" x 11" notebook-style Day-Runner I keep at the shop. Need to update an entry? Takes 5 seconds!

And let's not get started on my iPad case - this is the 3rd one this particular company has sent me (2 free replacements!) because the plastic hinges on it keep breaking (duh). So now, instead of getting a replacement, I use packing tape to hold it together. It's the 21st century version of the nerd with tape on his broken glasses, I guess!

So there you have it - my iPad calendar app that will never crash, never get a (useless) update, and never let me down. And you also know when my next haircut is!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I am going to try to post something here everyday (I know, you are on the edge of your seat!)


Maybe just a simple picture, or a book recommendation, or the story behind one of my designs; no promises, but I am going to try.

Blogger is a user-unfriendly platform, especially if the user is on an iPad (where Blogger will not allow spell-checking, or the embedding of pics), so I have been lax about blogging. And much like my jewelry photo-taking, the more I put it off, the more it piles up, and so when I would finally sit down to blog, the shear volume of information I wanted to share was overwhelming. Few people want to read all that stuff, and I didn't want to plod through the posting, so I trying a new approach. Snippets here and there.

Hope you have a wonderful 2012!

[A photo-less post from my iPad]

Me and my iPad, round 3 (oh, and I've made some jewelry, too)

Well, the iPad and I have reached a detente.

Here are the things I like about it:

• its portability
• the web browser (and everything else, duh) boots immediately, unlike my laptop
• SplashID: a terrific app for securely storing passwords and other sensitive info. You can toggle between the browser and splashID whenever you need to look up or create a new password.
• Netflix: the iPad is perfect for streaming video content
• the games: great animation, resolution, graphics. But my left hand and wrist get sore from holding the iPad, because while it is light (though my case adds some weight and dimension to it) it isn't weightless. And I only have one hand free for game play. My case has a built-in stand, but it isn't the right angle, or I don't have the right height stand to set the whole unit on, in order to have it be at an accessible distance both for my eyes and my hands, so there you have it.
• my calendar app: very handy (and portable) - and also serves as a To-do list. But this app has drawbacks - it takes far longer to make an entry of any sort than it does to jot in down in a day-planner.
• readers: they are all terrific (Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc) - well organized, back lit; just a pleasure for reading (but far heavier than a Kindle, and easy to inadvertently turn pages by touching the screen)
• the native Notes app: great for quickly jotting down grocery items, reminders, etc
• the photo album: I have finally loaded my entire jewelry portfolio onto the iPad. But this has drawbacks, too - you have to load all photos through iTunes on your laptop/PC, and it must do a full sync every time you want to add even one photo, and with 1850 photos and counting in the album, this takes a considerable amount of time (a full 30 minutes on my laptop to sync the photos).

In all honesty, most of my time on the iPad is spent playing games.

These are the features I find mediocre, and certainly NOT as functional as my laptop:

• document handling: I looked at at a number of apps, and finally chose the pricey DocsToGo, because it supports .doc, .ppt, .xls, and .pdf (possibly more, but these are the big 4 for me). It also must be synced though iTunes IF you want your documents to be hard-stored on your iPad. If you are OK with them being out in the cloud, and therefore only accessible if you have WiFi access, then that is another way to go. But I needed the ability to read and modify certain docs at any time, so iTunes it is. At least with the document file transfer mode in iTunes, you can quickly just add docs one or 2 at a time, without having to do a full document sync each time. 

My biggest issue with documents on the iPad is the #&$^% iPad keyboard. As I said above, I really need to hold the iPad to keep it steady AND at the correct focal length for my vision, and at the right angle. The built-in stand in my iPad case is great for reading, but not for using the keyboard or the touchscreen - the pressure of my fingers knocks it right over. So when reduced to one hand to type with, on that crazy iPad touch-screen keypad, I am basically typing with one finger (can't retrain my right hand to do the whole Qwerty keyboard by itself), so it takes forever to do data entry anyway, and add to this the fact that my fingers (which are truly average size) hit the wrong keys fully half the time, so I have to type very very slowly, and make a lot of corrections. So I try to do all document writing/editing on my laptop, and save the iPad document app for reading only. Not as efficient, but that's my solution.

• Zite: I am crazy about the idea of this customizable, intuitive news app. But I have to rate it as mediocre, because of the scrolling issues mentioned above - every touch of the finger opens something I didn't want to open. And even more annoying, the articles are often abridged articles from the web, and usually contain hyperlinks, and in order to access the links or the additional content, after clicking on the link, you get a pop-up asking if you want to open the content in Safari. This really seems like an annoying, duh feature to me - admittedly, Safari is the only browser I have on my iPad (does Zite know this?) - so of course, I want to open the link in Safari. Why do I have to click yes every damn time? Just open the link, please.  And since Zite seems to be a mini-search engine of sorts, much of the content in the individual sections is repetitive (for instance, Star Trek is a module I have added to my Zite, and while it has great content, this week it has had article after article from various sources wishing Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner a happy (80th!) birthday. So, happy, happy birthday Kirk and Spock.

Here are the features I try to avoid at all costs, and reserve for when I can be on the laptop

• web browsing: This is simply a comedy of errors on the iPad. I use the native Safari browser, but doubt any other browser would be different. And the same issues exist with many specialty web apps: The webpages are too small to be seen on the iPad, so you have to pinch to enlarge, and then scroll around endlessly, as each finger swipe sends you farther than you wanted to go. And in so many apps and webpages, so much of the content is clickable that if you touch the screen at all to try to slow down the scrolling or just to scroll a bit further, you are likely to accidentally click a hyperlink, and off you go...  And oddly enough, one of the worst apps for this accidental hyperlinking is AppAdvice, the iPad app guru - I can't scroll anywhere in that app without clicking into an article I didn't want to open. And if you touch anywhere near the bottom of the screen, you will likely be taken (inadvertently) to another section of the app
• e-mail: takes forever to read in the iPad - for the same reasons as the web-browsing. And to try to reply to e-mails from the iPad? Same issues with the keypad. Not a time-saver at all
• anything involving more than a few taps of the keyboard.

And here are features I personally find no use for, at least not yet:

• iPod: Yes, I've loaded my tunes onto the iPad. But there are far better options for listening to music in the situations I find myself wanting to listen to music. Would have to have headphones for listening to iPad tunes at a doctor's office, or on a plane; and I have a stereo iPod doc at home and at work, which provide better sound quality.
• GPS: I have one in my car, and really don't see how the apps that offer GPS/traffic info on the iPad would work without active WiFi access. Which one doesn't usually have while driving.

I've probably left some stuff out, but that is certainly most of it. So while I like my iPad, I can't say I love it, and I'd be fine without it. But we are peacefully coexisting.

Here are a couple of things I made this week: I beaded around a gorgeous raku cabochon, and forged and enameled a copper palmetto tree pendant (a custom order). I am still working on some ideas of how to creatively design a necklace to support the beaded pendant.

iPad, Round 2

Well, my last post has been picked up by iPad Gear Talk, a tech blog. 

On to today's iPad update:

Downloaded Grocery IQ, a free app designed to simplify my grocery shopping experience. Yay! I am all for that.

It has coupons (of course, you have to manually print them), and the ability to make different shopping lists for many different stores, and you can then customize your list by aisle according to the layout of your store. But it also has what is apparently the #1 most desirable feature of all the available grocery list apps: the ability to e-mail your grocery list to anyone. ANYONE, people*.

So please leave your e-mail addys in the comment section, as I am going to start an e-mail mailing list for everyone who wants to know what I'm gettin' at the grocery store. Fascinating! So fascinating, in fact, that I also plan on starting a new blog: My Grocery Lists. I have already heard the the Woz plans to be my first follower!

So I made up my first grocery list on the iPad today, using Grocery IQ. Took 55 minutes. For 16 items. I am absolutely blown away by how much this feature has already eaten away at  improved my busy lifestyle. Do you have ANY idea how long it would have taken me to write 16 items on a Post-it note and shove it in my pocket? Maybe 55 seconds .... but that is not the point, people. I saved a twig, here. (How many trees does it take to make a Post-it, anyway?)

Now, when I go to the store tonight after work, I have to take in the iPad, open up the app, roam the aisles finding my items while rearranging the built-in app aisle set up to match the actual aisle set-up at my store, and then check off each item as I find it. I wonder how many screens that will involve, since putting 16 items on my list involved, on average, 6 screens per item. And I'm not counting (although I should) the additional screens needed because the same "finger-swooshing" movement that you use to scroll through the app's many grocery items, looking for the one you want to add to your e-list, causes inadvertent selection of some random item you touched as you were swooshing, adding it to your list, and requiring 5-6 more screens to delete the unwanted item, and start hunting for the wanted one again. Wow. Simple!!

Not so pleased with this. It isn't simpler, more convenient, faster - certainly not more efficient.

Maybe I could e-mail a scan of my post-it shopping list to someone at Apple, and they could so my grocery shopping. Now THAT is an app I would even pay for!

*I fully realize that my amazement at the popularity of this ability to e-mail grocery lists to anyone and everyone you know is probably directly proportional to the fact that I live in a one-person, 2 dog household. The only entity who would be remotely interested in doing my grocery shopping for me would be Bailey, and he would skip the toilet paper, and load up the cart with Cheese Doodles, popcorn, and ice cream.

The iPad vs. the Luddite

Not really - I'm not a Luddite. I am a gadget slut. I admit it. Love the electronic gadgetry.

But the economic downturn has really hit me hard, and I can't afford all the cool toys (or groceries) that I wish I could.

So I felt like an addict falling off the wagon when a friend showed up 10 days ago with her iPad - naturally, I'd heard of them, but I had never SEEN one, and she pushed a few buttons, and I knew I had to have one.

And so I bought one that night. And posted same to Facebook. Where everyone told me how much I would Loooooove it!

It arrived a week later (from China, of course!), and I started loading it with free apps, and playing around with it, and spent some more $ getting my home and work converted over to Wireless, because you can't really use an iPad unless you have Wi-Fi connectivity, and here's my dilemma:

Loving it? Not so much.

So far, its major usefulness for me is to stream instant movies from NetFlix at work. Which I can also do on my laptop, but my work laptop is NOT in an area where I can also work on jewelry creation, so it's nice to be able to stream movies over at my workbench.

Of course, I was already watching NetFlix DVDs there on my portable DVD player, so it's not like the iPad has changed the movie situation that much - but admittedly now I can watch some instant ones while waiting for the turn around on the hard copies, though NetFlix's choice of instant movies is highly limited, so this capability is really NOT a big deal.

There's a Kindle app. Nice, but I really splurged for Christmas and got myself a Kindle, so I already had one! Now I have 2.  $$$, buh-bye. 

There's a browser, and the iPad boots instantly, so that's nice, but I can browse on my laptop, and it is much easier to browse and type with a mouse and a real keypad, vs the iPad's keyboard and finger-swooshing.

Calendar. Yeah, there is one. But it is so much faster to write an appt in my Day-Runner than to open the iPad, turn it on, unlock the screen (WTF with THAT feature), open the app, and then navigate through all the screens just to enter your hair appointment on the correct day at the correct time. Hunh-uh.

Lists. I love me some To-Do lists. But creating them in the iPad is another labor and screen-intensive ordeal (seriously? my lists have to have tags?); and I can't see myself toting the iPad around the grocery store, and waking it up every time I need to check the grocery list.  So the Luddite in me would probably sit down in parking lot of the grocery store, and re-write my iPad grocery list onto a post-it note to shove in my pocket for a more user-friendly grocery-shopping experience. 1 step forward electronically, 2 steps back.

iPod. Have one, and I have a wonderful stereophonic iPod dock at the shop, so I already have all my tunes at my fingertips. I've moved all my tunes to the iPad, but can't see myself using the iPad to listen to music. If I were waiting at a doctor's office, I would have to have headphones - and at work and home I already have my music set up. Meh.

Games - not a big issue. If I have time to kill, I'll read on the Kindle app.

Part of the problem, IMO, is that I don't get out much. I'm at home, I'm at work. Have laptops both places. So maybe if I travelled more, or was hanging out @ Wi-Fi spots, I might find the iPad more useful.

My brother has been offering lots of advice, which I really appreciate. He's been incredibly patient, and is like a walking iPad Wiki. One of his suggestions was to put my jewelry photo portfolio onto the iPad, so I can show folks the high-res photos of my work anytime. And I am going to start transferring these (thousands of) photos tonight.

My brother also sent me a link to appadvice.com, to help me make more informed decisions before purchasing any non-free apps. But I was laughing hysterically after reading just one description of a recommended app - it was written in such tech-speak I literally could not comprehend what they were trying to say. So I basically need an app to translate this app's geek-speak to English!

The iTunes AppStore gives extremely limited info on the functionality/capability of the apps, and then, for most of the apps, there are customer-provided "reviews". But just as the grass is always greener on the other side, one person's peeve about an app is another user's favorite thing, so deciding which apps to choose just based on the info in the AppStore is electronic Russian Roulette.

I am not trying to be Debbie Downer about this. I desperately want to love my iPad. It is mine now, and we must do more than peacefully coexist!

So I'm curious to hear from you iPad lovers out there - what do YOU love about your iPad, and why? And what has turned out to be a waste of your time &/or money, app-wise?