If you are wondering what should you do with regards to the question, should I get an iPad? The only answer is yes of course you should buy an iPad. If you don’t have a lot of money then you could wait until you see an iPad for sale cheap. There is also the possibility that you could get lucky and find a good deal to buy an iPad. Do you have any friends that have the iPad original that are upgrading to the latest version? You could buy the iPad from them for a good price and enjoy a bit of top-quality iPad computing.
Should I get an iPad original or a new iPad?
I am at present still using the original iPad on a daily basis and enjoying the experience. For the most part I don’t think I need to get the latest new and shiny version of the iPad. They specifically made for me with the iPad would be the ability to record the screen as video and unfortunately I can’t do that with the iPad original version. That really is the only reason why I would present consider making the upgrade move. If you don’t have an iPad at all rights now, and you are thinking, what should you do, what are you waiting for? Start doing a search for the best prices for iPad and saving the cash so that you can get the iPad that you desire.
Should I get an iPad 2 or the new iPad
I was looking at the prices of the iPad on the Apple website and there is not a huge difference in price between the iPad two and the new iPad. For the version that I was looking at the difference was only about €80. For such a small difference in price I would be better to wait until I had the extra €80 so that I could enjoy the higher resolution screen and the faster processor. Only if I was desperate to have a new iPad right now and I couldn’t wait until I had the extra cash, would I get the iPad two. The iPad two is still a worthy tablet computer to buy and considering how much I enjoy my original iPad, I would be even happier.
Which iPad 2 should I buy – Choices Choices.
Whichever version of the iPad you decide to go for you may still be wondering what should you do. So when looking at which iPad 2 should I buy, basically you have to think about whether you need to have 3G connectivity first of all. Then you can decide on how much memory you need. If you are buying from the Apple website there is not a lot of choice for a new iPad of this iPad model. 16 GB is the only available memory capacity for the iPad two. Then again, if you are buying second-hand you could still get one that is 32 GB or 64 GB.
So should I get an iPad?
Did you ever wonder – what do iPads do? Stop messing about and a bite the bullet. Head off now to your nearest Apple store and stop thinking about what should you do. You know that you want one and possibly even need one. It doesn’t matter if you buy the iPad original, an iPad 2 all the latest iPad, just so long as you can join in the fun. You can get some awesome iPad apps to work and play with and most will also work on the iPad original model. So should I get an iPad? There is only one answer of course and that is – You betcha!
I just started a new job in a school in Banyoles and there is very little of Apple within the school. I carried my iPad around with me and the plan was that for as much as possible, I would be using the iPad in the classroom. To start with, I have all of my documents that I thought I might need in Evernote. These were documents that were sent to me by e-mail by the other teachers that I would be working with in the languages department. To a certain extent it worked fairly well, as I was able to gain access to images and text that I needed from Evernote during the day.
Using iPad in the classroom
Mostly I spent my time using the iPad to access the documents, but I also used the iPad to show video to my students. I had uploaded a couple of videos using iTunes which is a good way to move files to the iPad. It is really handy when using the iPad in the classroom to have the iPad pointing towards me when I set it up, and then just flip it over to show to the students. I like the way that the iPad spins the image around, so that it works right whichever way the iPad is up.
Problems I had using iPads in the classroom
On account of the school being completely Windows-based, I was unable to print from my iPad. Not much change of anyone in this school using iBooks for iPad. There was a document I had received by e-mail that was in Evernote that I needed to print. If I had more time to work it out I probably could have worked out a way to connect to the network and access the printer. That will be something I can try on the next day I am working in the school.
I couldn’t get to the document through e-mail because the e-mail address was the iCloud.me account. For some strange reason on the Windows computer, I was unable to access iCloud in order to see the e-mail. I did try a couple of different web browsers, one didn’t work with iCloud and the other told me that the username and password was incorrect. Again that is something I will have to try to sort out on my next workday.
Using the iPad in the classroom – Other solutions
What I should do instead, is to put any documents that I might need into Dropbox, as I know I will be able to access Dropbox through whatever platform is available. The problems that I had within the school were more to do with working out access to the hardware facilities on the network, than having anything to do with using iPads in the classroom.
Using Evernote was okay, but I am wondering if I might have better used a different stand-alone note taking application such as SimpleNote. The problem with SimpleNote is that it is just for text and not for pictures. I did have the pictures that I needed for the lessons tucked away in iPhoto for iPad. Getting access to those photos was therefore going to be very easy indeed. With the children scattered around the classroom, perhaps I should rearrange them, so that they would be able to see the photos better. You know how it is, there are always those that like to sit at the back of the class.
A teacher using an iPad in school
Having the iPad as a device which does everything for me is what I am looking for. I want to have it there so that I can do the register for the day – Mark whether the students are present or not. I want to have the ability for using iPad in the classroom for making my own notes. I did use the iPad for this purpose. While the children were completing a task and busy writing, I wrote a few notes about them. I am also keen to use the iPad for keeping records about what was done with the class. Maybe Evernote is the best solution for this as I can have a notebook within it, that I can search through using the name of the class, that can be applied to tags attached to the note. I may have to do some testing to find out which works best for me.
An ideal solution would be something like the school in Scotland where all of the students each have an iPad. In this situation everybody including the teachers are using iPads in the classroom and getting the best benefit from the Apple technology. I will report back on how it is going with this iPad in classroom experiment. It would be lovely to have an iPad school classroom where all the students had the iPad classroom experience. There are some places like that and there will be more schools using iPads in the future.
It looks like March 7th is that day that the iPad makes its debut. Finally we will be able to have concrete information about what is inside the device and the rumour mongers will be able to start blowing hot air about some other Apple product. Most likely the next device to push the rumour mill will be the iPhone 5. Then again there are people that are saying that the Apple TV that really has a screen and is a television will emerge sometime this year and that could be before the iPhone5.
So have you decided which of the rumours that are circulating about the iPad 3 on the run up to the iPad 3 release date are going to be true. Which rumours do you want to be true? There could well be faster graphics and faster processor. In fact I think we can take that as a given. The Retina display for the iPad is probably a good bet too. I don’t expect the iPad to be able to make tea or coffee but it might get the Siri functionality so that we will be able to talk to it.
The new iPad or iPad 3 release date
Going by the way things are going regards the desire for long battery life then the iPad 3 will come with a bigger battery and or power saving functions that will make the battery last as long or longer than the present iPad. Can they make it any lighter and still make it better? has the iPad already achieved the optimal size? I am looking forward to the iPad 3 release date which we now have been informed is March 7th 2012. Will you be breaking out the camping gear so that you can wait in line for a new iPad 3? Have you started to write the advertising copy in order to sell you granny so that you have the money ready for when the iPad 3 hits the Apple store Barcelona or the Apple Store Orlando or Apple Store Baton Rouge.
There are going to be some excited people around that will be waiting both baited breath for the new and exciting bit of kit coming out or being announced Apple iPad 3 release date of March 7th. You should have a look at the time that the announcement is due to take place and see if you need to book time off work, so that you get the news live as it happens.
There is an application which you may be interested in if you are a movie buff. You can test yourself on your knowledge of the cinema going right back to the 1920’s. What this application does is to present itself as a game and it is basically a multiple choice quiz. There are categories available to choose from – The twenties to the fifties, sixties and seventies, the eighties until present day, or you could choose either actors or actresses to be tested on.
The developer has dropped the price for the Movie Awards Trivia HD app to 99 cents until the 26th of February, 2012 in view of the 84th Academy Awards as a special offer.
As an example, if you choose to be quizzed upon actors, an example question would be – Which three of these were nominated for best actor in 1965? Underneath the question I have four pictures, all in black-and-white which is surprising seeing as some of these must have been colour films. The nominees I can choose from are Laurence Olivier in Othello, Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Lee Marvin in Ship of Fools or Sidney Poitier in A Patch of Blue. I made a guess and chose three of them, the one that I left out was Sidney Poitier and what do you know? I was completely right. The application put on screen a U R Right and that does bug me a little bit, because they could of used the word correct rather than going for the teenagers idiom of using a letter to signify a word. Maybe the designer of the application was a teenager. After you have made your choice to answer the question you also get a icon to tap on, to allow you to see the image full-screen. You can’t actually do anything with it, you just get a larger version of the image that was the thumbnail image in the question.
Interactivity in the Movie Awards Trivia application
When you hit the home button while you are on the question screens, you get the opportunity to put your name in for a high score. I would have thought that there would be some sort of online connection to be able to compare your scores with other people’s scores, maybe that will come in a later version. When you get back to the homepage you can choose to see a slideshow, there is a dial where you choose a decade or a specific year. You might for instance, choose 1970’s best actors. The slides show for a couple of seconds per image and you get just the image without any information to go with it. It could have been handy to see the name of the film or the name of the actor pictured in the movie. In the slideshow and I chose to look at, it didn’t take long for the set of images to get to the end and start over again, the images played rather quickly. There was no option to change the amount of time each image showed, you just get a big button to close, which takes you back to the photo gallery.
Points for the right answers
At bottom of that home screen all you get is the invitation to visit the website for Movie Trivia Apps and underneath that, you have a play button, a scores button, how to play information and the slideshow. On looking at the information about how to play the game, it tells me that there are 1000 questions divided into groups of 20 per session. The points that you get per question depends upon how fast you answer the question and there are no penalties for getting the wrong answer. This makes the game very good for just guessing.
Overview of Movie Awards Trivia
This application would suit the person that was a complete movie buff that had already studied all of the movie awards. It seems that it is about the Oscars, although there are other movie industry backslapping events where awards are given. The application doesn’t really inform and educate you about the movie business or filmmaking in general, just as the Oscars is to a large extent just an opportunity for the movie industry to sell more movie theatre seats. I like applications that are in some way useful and this seems to be more a trivial game to play, the hint is in the title name of the application. Unless your knowledge of the awards given to actors and movies is really extensive, then much of the time while playing this game you will be making an educated guesses or even just tapping and hoping for the best. At least you may be learning something along the way, even if it is only just the names of the actors that were nominated or were winners of an award for a specific year. The design of the application is nothing special and there is room for improvement in terms of social networking connections facilities and I would recommend that you try the free version of the application before spending the cash to buy the paid for version.
In January 2012 Apple had their Apple iBooks author and textbook event in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was a small event, but I think in some ways it has the possibility of far reaching consequences for the publishing industry. When you consider the destructive force that Apple have been able to exert, to change the music industry and start to have an effect upon the movie industry, then it is surprising that books and the publishing of textbooks have not been looked at sooner. We now have Apple iBooks which will allow students and in fact also many non-students to read all sorts of books, including textbooks on the iPad 2. If the iPad 3 gets the high-resolution retina display, then these multimedia textbooks will be even more amazing. At the moment we have no idea about when will the iPad 3 be announced or available, but the rumour mill is turning over a storm of hot air. These rumours will be flying left, right and centre right up until the day before the iPad 3 will be released. It looks like we will see a lot of iPads in schools.
The large textbook publishing companies ready to sell through the Apple iBook store
At the Guggenheim Museum, Apple launched iBooks author and a new version of iBooks on the iPad along with announcements concerning iTunes U. This announcement could be a iPad game changer for education. While the textbooks with the interactive technology, that are going to be available from some of the large publishing houses such as, McGraw-Hill Pearson and DK Publishing there are many people getting quite excited about some of the possibilities for self publishing with the iBooks author application, which was made available for free. Directly from the event the iBooks author Apple application became available for anyone to download and start making some amazing interactive iPad textbooks. I downloaded the Apple iBooks author application as soon as I could myself, and I have already created a couple of iBooks. I have even created an account for myself to be able to publish those iBooks that I create. Unfortunately, due to the restrictions of the licence, I am only able to make the iBooks available for free. I will have to set up a different account if I want to be able to sell my iBooks through the Apple iBooks store.
Demo textbooks and Apple iBooks textbooks available for sale already
On the day of the event there was the new iBooks application available for the iPad. This new iBooks application works on the iPad 1 and iPad 2 and of course Apple will have a view to seeing this application being used heavily on the new iPad 3. There was a demo textbook available called ‘Life on Earth’ which I have downloaded, but have yet to properly explore. Also the way it works with the Apple iBook store, is that the publishers are required to put up a sample which could be perhaps a chapter. I will be downloading some of these to get ideas to use in the iBooks that I will be creating myself. It will be interesting to see the techniques that are used in these books to best show off the content of the book.
Comics getting in on the act
A producer of comics has made a sample iBook in which he shows off a selection of comic strops that he has produced. The other way to get these works out to your readers and fans is to put the iBook in a place where it can be downloaded. This fits in okay with the fact that these books can only be given away and not be sold, unless they go through the iBook store. So this comic which is called ‘Waking up with the Diesel Sweeties’ have been downloaded a ton of times in just a few day. The book contains all of the comics from the month of December of 2011 and has been put up in order that the author might try out the application from Apple, iBooks Author and also so that his fans can read his comics and give feedback. All of the comics are fitted into the book in one single chapter and you can scroll through the chapter using the scroll bar at the bottom of the book. When you tap on a page, it opens up to full screen and to go from full-screen to the chapter view, you do the pinch gesture.
What would be good would be the ability to zoom into areas, if this comic was of the type of comic that had areas of the drawing with small details images or text. That is not available in this particular comic, although I think that it could be possible to have this facility using HTML 5. It does seem a very good format for viewing comics and I’m sure that’s the comics fans will take to this way of viewing these graphic novels and picture stories like a duck to water. As with any of these iBooks textbooks it is possible for readers to add notes and to highlight certain areas of text. You just touch and hold with your finger to run across the text that you want to highlight and hey presto it’s done. On the front page of this comic book for iBooks there is an e-mail address, which when you click on it opens up a new e-mail ready to accept whatever text you want to put into it and send. There is also a live link in there to the website of the author. I tapped on the link and it took me directly to the website using iOS Safari.
When iBooks of this type are distributed in this way, it is a very simple drag-and-drop to take the book from wherever you have downloaded it to on your computer. You then drop it into iTunes, where it will be synchronised with your iPad the next time you do the synchronisation. It wasn’t difficult to move files to the iPad in this way. These new iBooks only work on the iPad although there is plenty of Apple commentators that are calling for the iBooks to also be available on the iPhone. If they are on the iPhone also, then some studying could be done, or a text or a comic could be enjoyed while out and about without your iPad. After all we always do carry our iPhones with us.
Learn how to get started and see an overview of iBooks Author
I have posted on the Wizardgold / Mac20Q YouTube channel, three videos showing how to get started creating iBooks using the Apple iBooks Author application. In the first of the videos on YouTube, I have demonstrated how to create a cover page within the application. The second video I am demonstrating creating an iBook showing how to get text from your other applications on your computer into your new iBook. The third video shows how to add a gallery which is one of the widgets that you can put into your iBook to show off a number of photos.
Wicked widgets in Apple’s iBooks Author application
Within the Apple electronic textbook creation application, you can add widgets which will give you a gallery, media widgets, review, Keynote, interactive image, 3-D widget and HTML. The widgets for the gallery, the media and the keynote are self-explanatory and to a certain extent the same goes also with the 3-D widget, if you have access to 3-D objects to put into your iBooks. The review widget is a special widget that goes into the book for you to create a question or a poll. This is most useful in a textbook where you want to use this questioning widget in order to reinforce the learning of a part of your text.
The interactive widgets, as yet, I don’t have any experience of these, but it could be something like where you have a map and you touch on one area to show a graphic that makes a particular point and touch on another area of the map which gives other information. The HTML widget basically is something that you will create using Dashcode, which is something that comes as part of Xcode that the developers use to create Mac applications. Following instructions on the Apple website for Dashcode, I was able to create a simple Dashcode widget which was a countdown to a specific date. It wasn’t terribly difficult and I would like to experiment more by creating other Dashcode objects.
Conclusion of this iBook’s Author overview
This new technology that has been made available for free by Apple to create iBooks etextbooks for iPad has amazing possibilities to be used for so many more things. It could easily be used to create anything from a cookbook, a manual for a camera, a user handbook for a car or even for instructions, using images and diagrams, showing how to put furniture together. We can be reading these eBooks on the iPad.
Without a doubt it is quite possible that this could spur on the creation of a whole new industry for creative types, to be the person in charge of the authorship of these types of books, for small and large companies. This is mainly because the application requires somebody, singular at the controls, putting the iBook together. It does require someone with a creative bent and could quite easily be a revitalisation of the desktop publishing industry. I can see this being very good for graphic designers.
Education and the Apple text books in iBooks
At the Apple event for iBooks iPad textbooks, obviously the emphasis was on education and creating books for use by students in schools and colleges. For this to really have credibility, there does have to be the large textbook publishing houses on board ready to sell textbooks through the Apple iBook store and it seems that this is actually the case, at least in America. About 90% of the textbooks produced are published by the publishers that have said they are involved with this initiative.
It doesn’t necessarily though have to be just from the top down with regards the publishing of iBooks textbooks. Teachers that are Mac users and even slightly technically savvy, will be able to produce textbooks for their classroom with ease. It will be extremely easy for the files to be distributed to the students through the school network. The best thing about this is that the textbooks will be totally customised to the school district, teacher, classroom and could even be tailored to specific groups of students. I expect we will see a world history textbook or even a plethora of world history textbooks along with a bunch of medical textbooks hitting the iBooks Store. Where can I buy textbooks for iPad? will be the question on the lips of students all over the place.
While I have been trying out this new application from Apple I have found that there are some bugs still in the application. The difficulties I have had, have not stopped me from creating iBook textbooks and I wouldn’t complain about this anyway, seeing as the application was free. In any case as a version 1 of a new software it certainly would seem a little churlish to complain. Apples’ iBooks textbook business looks like it will have a bright future in front of it as one the most useful educational apps for the iPad.
If you are doing any sort of business, then you can be fairly sure that at some point in time, business cards will be involved and you might want to use a business card app. Even if you are fully up-to-date with the latest technology and have your business card details within a mobile application that you can bump across to somebody else’s mobile phone, you are for sure going to meet people that will hand you a paper or card old-fashioned business card. It will be this way for many years to come, that businessmen and women will be using these little pieces of card to pass on their information to other business people in their industries and of course to clients and customers. So there is for sure, a definite need for applications like WorldCard HD to capture quickly, easily and accurately the details on the business cards that are handed to us. You can use your mobile device as a high speed scanner. You may well find the WorldCard HD app for the iPad coming up in business card scanner reviews.
The problem to be solved – Is that it takes time to enter data, so it can be boring and tedious, as well as there is always the possibility of adding errors while inputting the data that you are reading off the card. Also it is very easy to tuck away the business cards collected during a business meeting and put into a pocket, meaning to input the data later and then forgetting to do so. It is genius really to use our mobile phones as business card scanners using a business card scanner app. In fact because you always have the cell phone with you on your person it is the best business card scanner you could have. yes it is true, you can use the iPad in business.
Penpower WorldCard HD scanner app
Penpower WorldCard HD which is a scanner app, solves these problems for us by allowing us to photograph the card with our camera on our mobile phone or iPad 2 and have their system use optical character recognition, OCR, to do the work for us. All we need to do, is to check that the details have been recognised correctly and most of the job is already done. Then all that is necessary is to perhaps take a photograph of your business card giver and add that to the data that has already been recognised with the card. Then if you wish, you can add further information. There are the standard fields for adding extra data about your business person, customer or client and you can also add your own custom fields. Anything else can be put into a free-form notes field within the data record in this worldcards ipad 3 2012 for reading text and images for business cards. You can also use this app on ipad 2 hd and use this as a business scanner of business cards.
Extra editing of the business card image
When I took the photos of the business cards I was able to do a good job of taking the photograph. The camera was pointed directly at the business card, no weird angles and the lighting was just right. I understand from the help file that it is possible to straighten an image if necessary and it is also possible to rotate the image through 90°. In this business card scanner software on the page for looking at the details of the contact, you see the image of the business card. All of the recognised text is underneath it, all laid out very nicely. At the top you have some icons which will let you do things with the text and also the image. The first icon to the left is the edit button, that when tapped will let you get in to edit the data to your hearts content. You also do the editing of the image if needed in that section of the app.
Business card scanner - Cropping the business card image
When you tap on the button to let you crop the image, you get your rectangle with four squares on each corner. You align each of the squares with the corners of the business card, tap on preview for the software to process the image. From this part of the application you can also re-do the OCR, I suppose there may be occasions where it may be necessary to do that. When you use the button for More Functions, you may also add the back side of a photo from an album, replace front side photo from an album or delete the front side photo. So once you have checked all of the data is correct then you could swap out the image of the business card for a photo of the person instead. You get an picture of the person that is visible in more places in the app, and is larger than the picture in the space specifically for the person. So you get to see the face of your contact in the Photo View and not just in the list view.
Textkraft for your iPad – Another different writing app
With a being a writer and especially this month, as I am taking part in the NaNoWriMo, I can’t help myself when I see writing applications available for the iPad. I saw small notice somewhere online about an application called Textkraft, saying that it was interesting for writers. So I had to get my hands on it and I shall tell you now, that I’ve managed to get a review copy from the developers of the application.
The Dictionary in other iPad Apps
If you are a writer, then you are without a doubt concerned about words, how to use them, alternatives for words and you want to know whether you are using the correct word for the meaning of your sentence. If you are using the Apple application for word processing, Pages and also you will find this in other writing applications, when you select a word you will see an arrow to the right of the pop-up and you can get a dictionary definition for that word.
Dictionary Dictionary Dictionary
Depending upon the word, there could be plenty of information in there about that word. for example, I have just selected the word article and done that little trick to get to the dictionary and I now have a little pop-up box, with plenty of information about article. I can see that it is a noun, I can see how that word is supposed to be used, with examples. There is also some information about the origin of the word and in this case, I can see that it comes from old French and from Latin – How lovely, very useful.
Working with Words in Textkraft
First of all when you open the application, you will see that you have a nice open space in which to start writing. Textkraft is iPad for writers tool par excellence. Not only that you will see the numbers 1 to 5 in the bar below. What that does is to allow you to work on five different texts at the same time in the Textkraft application. Well not quite at the same time, but you can jump from one text to another by tapping on those numbers 1 to 5. Of course, as with many applications, one of the ways to get files on and off the iPad into this application, or out of this application is by using Dropbox. The other way that you can do this, is to use iTunes file sharing. I have also found that using an application such as GoodReader, you can take text files and open in Textkraft using the Open In menu. So there is no need to be complaining about how you’re going to get files on or off the iPad. The main, tried and tested ways of copying files to the iPad or moving files from the iPad have been included within this app.
iPad for writers
One of the things that worry me with an application that has extra, wild and wonderful features is that these features would get in the way of being able to do the normal or standard things that I would like to do, in this case to write in the writing application. There is no need to worry about that with this particular application, with Textkraft you get an extra couple of lines of keyboard and although they take up extra space they don’t feel like they are in the way because they are actually very useful.
What can you do with the extra set of keys above the keyboard?
When you’re working with the touch interface in other writing applications when don’t have these extra keys available, then you always have to use your finger to place the cursor where you want it in the text and to do things like selecting text. With this set of extra keys you get the extra facility of being able to move the cursor one word at a time in either direction. Also you can move from where you are in the line to either end with one tap of one of the extra keys. There are also keys which will let you move the cursor one character at a time, left and right and also up and down in the body of the text. One extra key that you don’t normally find in iOS and you may miss when you compare it to what you have in OS X is the tab key. What the tab key does is to allow you to put in a space as you would do usually the tab key on your PC. You also get a single quote key and a double quote key. The other two extra keys that are incredibly useful are the keys which will take your word next to the cursor and either give it a capital letter, or if it has one already, then it will put the word all in lower case letters.
Careful what you do – It might be best to use the word think rather than the word cogitate
As with any writing you do have to consider who is your audience for your text. If you use words like cogitated when something simpler and more to the point would be better for the audience that you are writing for, then you would not be doing your writing job properly. Nobody likes a smartypants!
When you are using the dictionary to supply you with words to stimulate your creativity, you will see words that are placed within coloured boxes in the suggestion area. This is what the colours mean.
Green – The dictionary has recognised the word as being correct
Red – The dictionary is not familiar with that word.
Grey – If you have exchanged one of the words already you will see this colour to let you know that you have worked with this word already.
Yellow – These are synonyms and other related words.
Purple – These are words that are close to the spelling of the word you have in the text.
Blue – Words that are shown in blue are on the ones that are dependent upon the X button and are extensions to the word. For example with the word what in the text, the blue word shows as some… With that I could tap on Use It and change the word what into somewhat. When the X is in the middle on the X button it doesn’t give me any words in blue. When the X is at the beginning, I get a selection of whatnot, whatever, whatsoever and Whatsyamacallit.
Overall verdict on the text editor application Textkraft
Textkraft is a good writers tool and if you are a serious writer then it will be worthwhile having for the quick links to dictionaries. I will not be using this to do my writing for NaNoWriMo, because with NaNoWriMo I don’t want to edit as I go. When the month of November is over and I have my 50,000 words or more and it is time to do some editing of the manuscript, then I could see that would be a good time to make use of Textkraft.
Having said that I would not use it during NaNoWriMo, I should say that I would not use the facilities of finding synonyms and other interesting words to use, as that would spoil the flow of my writing. But certainly I would consider using Textkraft if I am away from the office and I just needed to use a text editor within the iPad to type out a scene or two. Textkraft gets a thumbs up from me and the only thing I would change is making those buttons in the black bar on the left more context sensitive.
Getting into using iOS 5 on the iPad, what is the new operating system for iDevices really like? Well as you would expect it not such a radical change that you have to relearn everything from scratch. Yet at the same time you want something sexy and new that gives you facilities that to make the tasks you want to do at least ten times easier.
I tried out the split keyboard and found that for the most part I prefer the keyboard as it was before. It could be really useful if you need to see more of the screen while you are typing. What I found was that the keys just became too small. That could be something more to do with me needing to put the glasses on to help the eyes function that bit better.
The Amazing iPad Website – A resource for iPad Users
Hello welcome to the Amazing iPad website. My name is David Allen and I am an English iPad user that lives in Spain. I write about technology, especially technology that I really love to use and the iPad easily fits in that category. Seeing as you have arrived here, it is quite likely that you are like me where the iPad is concerned. I expect it is quite likely that you are an Apple fan also.
My Favourite iPad Apps
My favourite applications on the iPad do tend to change quite frequently, as I am always looking at new apps to write about. iThoughtsHD, the mind mapping app is an application that I am quite likely to use alongside the Mac. iThoughts HD is a great way to outline an idea or concept for an article that I would be writing, especially as I really don’t think in a linear fashion.
Quite often when I have my lunch, I will use the iPad to watch a movie or a video and I have found that AirVideo works very well for that, if I haven’t got around to converting the video and moving it onto the iPad. The iPad will also get used for checking e-mails in the morning, perhaps during breakfast. When I go travelling then the iPad has to be my computer that does all my work for me. On a recent trip to the Pyrenees in France, the iPad was very useful and I even used it to write a couple of articles while out on the road as it were.
On my Mac use I Dragon Dictation to dictate all of my articles, because it is so much faster than typing. I came to find out about how good this application is, because I was able to try out Dragon Dictate, the free iPad application. If you have read the Amazing iPad website from the start you’ll know that I quite like to try out as many text or note taking applications as I can find. Nebulous notes is one of my favourites and I also like Phatpad, for the handwriting recognition. Lately I have been discovering the applications for editing and enhancing photographs, finding that the iPad is very good for that too.
Please Contact Me
I would really like to hear from you if you have tips and tricks for getting better use out of the iPad. Perhaps you could let us know if you use the iPad in an unusual way. Don’t be shy, send an e-mail or leave a comment on one of the posts. You can also send in questions and I’ll do my best to answer them for you. It will also be great if you would like to tell me about apps that you would like me to review.
Can you do me a favour?
This is where I ask a favour of you. If you could give the Amazing iPad page on Facebook a Like, or if you find any of the articles to be useful give them a Google plus. It all helps to get the word out about the Amazing iPad so that I can build the site to be as useful as possible to us iPad users. Thank you very much if you are able to help us out that way.
After checking out ArtStudio for iPad photos editing, I decided to have a look at another photo editing application this one is called Fx Photo Studio HD. It is a paid for application, but it was not expensive at the price of €1.59. These are my first impressions of the application and the first thing to say about it is that it is pretty easy to work with. When it first opens up you see a nice big yellow panel in the middle of the screen and the option to go into the photo album, or to import a photo. If you click on import you can bring in a photo from either Facebook or from documents. The author, the developer has thoughtfully put a recommend button in that panel, so you can like it on Facebook, Twitter about it, or review it on the App Store. If you have already been working on a photo and you can see it behind the panel then you may dismiss that panel and continue working on your previous photo.
Getting Started with the App to edit iPad Photos
When you go to load a photo from within the application, or you tap on the button for the photo album at start-up, it is the same as when you just go into the photo albums to select your image. You are given the option to crop the photo to a square and then you can start going into your choosing which of the effects that are available. You can look at the effects by categories, all effects, favourites and presets. When you click on presets, all of the effects applied to the image previously during that session will be included in a new preset. So if you have loaded two or three effects and you like the effect that you have created, you will be able to use it again really easily. To have an effect put into the favourites section, you just tap on the star to the right of the picture that gives you the preview of that effect.
iPad Photos – Square or Rectangular
At the top of the screen, you will see the icons for load photo, share, undo and redo, tools and options. In the options one of the possibilities is to hide effects. So if there is a particularly horrible effect in the list, that you will never want to use, you swipe across the effect and you will see the hide button. You may also change the preview quality from normal, if you want the application to work faster, change it to low quality preview and too high if you don’t mind that it will load slower. I have turned off the square crop as I prefer to have rectangular shaped images.
Sharing Your iPad Photographs
Within this application you can save your image to the Photo Album, documents and to the clipboard. It is also possible to share your images via Flickr, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, tumbler, Instagram and you may also send it to a printer. I have successfully shared an image from this application to Facebook, but I found that it didn’t work out when I wanted to share an image with Flickr. I took an image of a train station in the Pyrenees in France and applied a distorted mirror effect which made it all wavy, I enhanced the colours of the photo and then applied an effect which gave it rain drops all over it, as if I was taking the picture from behind a piece of glass with raindrops on it. I suppose that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Some Great Effects and Some Daft Ones in Fx Photo Studio HD
There are 190 different effects some of the effects are frames of one sort or another some silly, such as the one that puts cupids around your picture or images of butterflies. There are plenty of effects within this app, that you would never use in a million years, such as the linocut tools. What is good about this application for the manipulation of your photos, is that when you choose a filter or effect to place on your photograph, you get some controls, which allow you to say how strong the effect should be. With some of the effects you only get one slider to change the effect, then on others such as the Hippie photo style, you can change both the contrast and the saturation.
A Bit Crashy here and there
So far I’ve been using this application for about an hour, twice already the application has crashed. When I started the application back up again I got back into where I was, but it was still annoying that the application crashed. The last time that I was doing something to cause the crash, was when I attempted to apply a mask to the photo. The first time it crashed it was because I attempted to use a filter effect on a Photo. So it seems that the application does still need some more work doing to it.
I have since attempted to create another mask on a photograph and it worked without any problems. When you have a mask you can apply effects to a photograph in just the small area that you have masked. One use of this would be to have an image that is mostly black and white and the main subject could be in a brilliant colour. That would be a very dramatic photo.
The Amazing iPad Verdict on Fx Photo Studio HD
The Fx Photo Studio HD iPad photo editing application is a versatile application that has a large number of effects. The effects can be laid over the top of each other and you also have plenty of control over the strength and application of the effect to your image. Despite a couple of application crashes, I can recommend this application as being well worth having in your arsenal of iPad photo editing apps. The application overall is good value for money, it does a lot with your iPad photographs, for the small amount of money it costs to buy it.
Other iPad Photo Editing Options
I was asked by a reader of the website, to check out another application for editing photos called Snapseed. Although the person that told me about the application told me that it was a good application, I decided not to buy it because the price was quite a bit higher at €3.99 and in the details about it in iTunes, it seemed a little bit devoid in terms of functionality.There certainly is a large variation of apps for editing iPad photos, QQ Image Editor, PS Express to Instagram for free and Snapseed and Fx Photo Studio HD that has to be paid for,
