iPad: Did you know....

Did you know that pages and iannotate (amongst I'm sure others) play nicely with the mail program built into the pad? This weekend I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could actually open messages from my hotmail account and their attachments straight to the pad.

I know, people with "real" computers are scoffing right now, but some of the fun challenges of being on the bleeding edge are these new discoveries. With 3.2 the iPad is able to share documents, albeit a little cumbersomely, across apps. You can use your connect app to download and view your documents, but then determine that this particular one insults your good name and must be annotated/edited you can just click on the header to "Open in".

Still waiting for someone to come up with something a little more seamless than the iTunes sync option to transfer docs back and forth. Every app needs to "export" to that folder that iTunes knows about in order to be able to sync. Makes keeping things up to date in both locations a bit of a pain, and while using Google Docs would resolve that, that too has its challenges. What google needs to do is come out with a desktop app that lets me assign folders and sync them so I can just drop a file in a folder and whoosh there it is uploaded. The extra 3-4 steps to get a document up there are sometimes more hassle than they are worth.

Padsync looks promising, except its Mac only right now... ah well only a matter of time with close to 3 million iPads sold the growing kinks will be out of the system and we'll all be better off because of it.

Xbox: Lost Planet 2

Alright well most people are tired of my iPad antics, too bad because I have not been doing much else for the last couple of... um... months? But I had pre-bought lost planet 2 a couple of months ago. Anyways, premise of the game is a first person over the shoulder shooter...

You are a futureistic marine on a planet that is dominated by some alien creatures (I suppose that they would consider you as the aliens) who you routinely have to kill. Somehow they are controlling the temperature of the planet, when you kill one of them the area around them freezes.... Gaia to the rescue really.

I spent 3 hours today on the "train" episode. There are no save points, no check points, you have to start the entire thing over again... there was much swearing, of this I can assure you... and as of writting this, I haven't finished the damn episode yet, working up the courage to get back at it. The game is really solid, you get to control Mech warriors, airplanes, you name it... and when your mech id almost dead, you just jump out and repair it... time consuming so if you don't have time, just rip the gun off the side and carry on...:)

iPad: Northern lights game

Northern lights is like peggle for nerds... Well peggle is also like peggle for nerds, but anyways. This game brings peggle and the astrological signs together, as well as mixing in some other constellations. The premise is the same as peggle, get rid of all the balls before you run out of shots.

Main difference in this game is you can charge up your shot with magic, and fire a laser which will destroy everything in its path. The game progresses through 44 levels of complication, starting out simply with having to destroy all of the red balls,and moving into balls that take more than one hit to break, as well as balls that are indestructible

Then, about 2/3 of the way through the game black holes appear, these will redirect your shots, or if you aren't careful, eat them entirely. If you shoot too often into the black hole, it will expand and suck in everything around it before collapsing. This isn't as bad as it sounds, and is actually the only way to finish one of the levels that I could find...

Over all, a decent game, which is currently free, for wasting a couple of minutes at the doctors office, or while grocery shopping...:)

iPad: The things that AT&T and Apple don't want you to know

OK so fair warning this tip requires that you Jailbreak your iPad. Now, Jailbreaking has come a LONG way in the last 3 years, gone are the issues with bricking your phone, no longer do you need to be a propeller head who can SSH and FTP to your phone and hack the command line, now its a simple EXE that you click on your desk top and in 5 seconds your iPad is Jailbroken.

So what? What does Jail breaking get me? Well first off it gets you access to apps that are not allowed in the apple app store, for whatever reason. This is good, and bad as some of those apps probably shouldn't be allowed anywhere but whatever... However if the ONLY thing you get from Jailbreaking your iPad is this tip, then you got your money's worth (heck its free!)

Now with AT&T's recent changes to their Data plans this might be of interest to the rest of you as well as me. Note that all android phones have the ability to be a Wifi hotspot, but not Blackberry. Theory being that BB doesn't want to overwhelm their proprietary network with data traffic, something they learned from AT&T.

Jailbreaking your iPad (or iPod touch for that matter) gives you the ability to tether your iPad to your blackberry... Thanks to the people at Crackberry for this tip!

"Requirements:
- Jailbroken iPad
- Blackberry phone (tested with blackberry storm 9530)
- ibluever: Install from Cydia (you can try the demo for free. if demo works, ensure to uninstall before installing paid release)
- PDAnet: PdaNet -- Use your BlackBerry as a USB Modem (click 'install pdanet 1.30' only *Editors note: This should be run from your Blackberry.)

1. Run ibluever from your iPad
2. Click 'ON' You should be able to see your phone
3. Click on blue arrow of your device to edit the following fields
pin code: 0000 (or any combination of numbers)
dial number: #777 (for verizon wireless)
chat script: default non GPRS (refer to link at bottom for reference as to what options to choose)
Authentication: On
Sniff Mode: Off
Waiting SDP: On
4. Go to your blackberry bluetooth options menu and DISABLE 'dial up networking' and click save
5. Run PDANET from your blackberry device and 'Enable Bluetooth DUN'
6. Open ibluever from your iPad, select your blackberry device and run
7. You should now see two icons on upper right status bar of your iPad

*NOTE*- This will not give you 3G speeds. Bluetooth DUN using PDAnet gives about 50kB/s. Faster than edge, but half as fast as 3G. Thats fine by me, as I won't have to pay for additional data plan to verizon.

- If you are being redirected to verizon website, ensure that 'dial up networking' is disabled in your blackberry bluetooth options.

- For directions on other mobile carriers, please go here for reference."

iPad: Rosewell app reviewed.

The long weekend, and a broken car, gave me a lot of extra time to look for and download games. As a direct result you are being penalized with new reviews...

Rosewell is a classic shooting game, you are a daredevil pilot flying through alien infested area 51 shooting down airplanes. Navigation is controlled by dragging your finger around the screen with a plane following your every move. I played it on normal difficulty, which was a little too easy. I completed the game in about 30 minutes, but during that time I had a very hard time putting the game down (I also had a blister on the end of my finger as I found myself dragging my finger around more forcefully than needed)

Fire control is not required, like the classic arcade games of old you are always shooting. There are power ups as you blow away various bad guys, ranging from the little stars that power your super weapon, to a nuclear bomb that you can drop to destroy everything on screen.

In every sense, including a trip to outer space when the aliens destroy earth, this is a classic of it's genre. If only I could remember what this genre is called...:) well worth the $1.99 I paid for it, the only minorly annoying thing was that whenever you would start a new level late in the game, your plane would be frozen until something crashed into you, but past that the game is awesome.

iPad: Charging your iPad from your computer [Endgadget quote]

If you're one of the many iPad customers having issues with charging, there may be relief in sight. A few popular PC motherboard manufacturers have released new drivers for their mobos that supposedly enable (or help with) iPad charging. If you have an ASUS, Gigabyte, or MSI motherboard, you can try hitting those links, downloading and installing the new drivers, and see if that helps. Unfortunately, this is still a YMMV situation -- there are a ton of different factors that go into the kind of power that can come off of a USB port, and even if you have the right software for the right motherboard manufacturer, there's no guarantee it'll work exactly right.

Still, if you've been craving a little extra power while charging your iPad on a PC, and know your way around a motherboard software update (which can be quite a task in itself, let me tell you from experience), attempting an update might be worth it. If you get it working and see an improvement in your iPad's charging capability, be sure to let us know in the comments.

[via Engadget]

iPad: Civilization Revolution app reviewed

OK well I have managed to put down the iPad long enough to write this review, but I don't know how long it will be, have to get back to reasearching Banking!

Civilization was one of the first games that I played on my computer that made me lose sleep... Not that I worried about it, I just preferred playing over sleeping. The latest release in the saga has all the bells and whistles we came to know and love with the magical iPad added as a platform.

I have completed the game on Warlord and have been routinely slapped down as King (hard?). With 5 levels of play I figured the middle one would be "challenging" enough for me, and so I went with warlord the first time out. I ended up spanking my competition so figured i would try king, the jump in difficulty is substantial, to the point where the americans were launching space stations and I was building my first catapult...

Anyways, if you liked Civ, this is a must have for you, even at 12.99$ its a deal. Consider thats two meals at McDonalds, or a down payment on a console game..