-- Post From My iPhone
Location:Northwest Ave,Fresno,United States
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
DMV wait
Never loose ur license!! Avg wait times in the valley is 2:30 minutes sheez!!!!
-- Post From My iPhone
-- Post From My iPhone
Sunday, April 4, 2010
My iPad review
So I've had the iPad for less than 24 hours (more like 18 hours, 8 Minutes, 30 seconds). Keep in mind that this is the 1st generation iPad and it's not going to have every single feature that we thought it would come with. I'm sure there will be a 2nd generation out in hopefully a year from now and yes, I will probably buy that one too. If you know me, you know that I tend to buy just about every product Apple sells.
So why did I buy the iPad? Well two main reasons really, first I needed a bigger display to work from than my iPhone. For what the iPhone provides it's awesome, but sometimes its just too small to get work done while traveling or while trying to wrap up a service call. Ya, I could lug my laptop around, but it's heavy and some of the software that I need to run has to be ran in a virtual machine or on a terminal server. Plus since there is an application for most of the work I do on my iPhone I assumed that the iPad would be the next logical device to own. (oh, there are will be a few surprises in this article) The second major reason was for ConnectWise, since they have an iPhone application I "assumed" that I would be able to run the ConnectWise application on my iPad. I even asked my sales rep in a brief conversation when we reactivated our mobile licenses if the program would work on the iPad and she said that she had heard that it would run on the iPad when it came out. Now, I want to make it clear that I am not holding her or ConnectWise to that comment and ConnectWise did not say it would work on the iPad, more about that later. Oh and there was a third reason too, I had to have it!
So I received the box around 2:20p from UPS. The UPS driver asked, "What's so important about these devices?" I told him that it's the much anticipated release of Apple's iPad that can sort of be summed up as a cross between an iPhone and a laptop device. The driver said, "Well they must be pretty important, because they have GPS on us and they are tracking our every move!" It's interesting to hear that, now I'm sure they always have GPS on their trucks, but UPS must of had some type "special" GPS tracking for these deliveries if the drivers are feeling "tracked". I wonder if any drivers got held up for their iPad shipments??
The good, bad & the ugly
As always the boxing for Apple's products is very sleek and well thought out. I was surprised of a few things. 1. There was no cloth provided to wipe the display off and keep it clean. After a few ours of using the device there are a LOT of finger smudges on the device. 2. There were no headphones for the device, now I would not use them (they don't fit my ears), but for paying $499 at a minimum for a device you can throw them in Apple! So after the device was fully unboxed I connected it to iTunes, I must have something wrong with my iTunes because it beach balled for about 5 minutes before it synchronized to my iPad. All of the purchased apps I had in iTunes were installed onto the iPad. I was so inpatient that after the applications were on synched I canceled the synch and dove in.
General web surfing on the device is snappy and looks great! That is unless you stumble upon a site that has flash. :( I pulled up my company website www.cpnllc.com and everything looks great. I can't wait until we get our new site goes live in a few weeks. The template we have selected as a jumping off point supports iPhone devices and will be interesting to see how we can adapt that for the iPad.
e-Mail works very similar to how the iPhone works. I like to use the mail app in landscape vs vertical mode as hides the pop-up of folders that hover over the message while I'm trying to read them and I can quickly see all messages in a list on the left. Since I synchronized my iPad with my Exchange server all my contacts were there!
Where are the Photos??? I searched and searched for the photos and finally when I wanted to get into the photos I would go to spotlight and type in Photos. I finally figured out it was in the dock, boy did I feel like a dork. I have to say though, I gave the device to two other people and they both asked the same thing, "How do I get to photos?" Is it so engrained in our heads to only look in the dock for the Phone, e-Mail, Safari & the iPod applications? Now we can put 6 items down there, what are your top 6? Mine are iSip, e-Mail, Photos, TweetDeck, ConnectWise & Safari, for now that is.
Applications Applications and more Applications
For the most part all applications appear to work pretty good. I wanted to review a couple of my favorites. Feel free to recommend new ones to me, there are so many it's hard to keep up with all of them.
e-Mail / Exchange Support - Setup was just like on the iPhone, put in the the username, password, domain, remote server and viola you have e-mail. Have not tired accepting appointments or any advanced functions but I will try to review them in the up coming days.
iSip - So no phone on the iPad? HA, if you are running a SIP based VoIP solution in your business or home, just throw a copy of iSip on your iPad and you have a phone. Since there is a built in speaker and microphone, just dial and have a FREE conversation. This is not a iPad native application so hopefully they will update this in the upcoming weeks. Note: We sell a business VoIP solution TotalVOICE to our business clients, but we are working on consumer based product that should be out in the next 6 months.
ConnectWise Client - So this is the "surprise" application I talked about earlier in the article. We use ConnectWise (CW) all day long in our business. CW keeps track of EVERYTHING, as Arnie Bellini says, "If it's not in ConnectWise, it never happened!" we live by that in our business. So I fire up the CW app (it's really a webpage that works similar to how google voice works on the iPhone) and everything is going just fine and then BAM I get a square with ? mark... is it flash? NO the iPhone does not even support flash. So I dig around and turn on debugging in Safari and there it is.... JavaScript Error: Undefined "Attempt to create a database on a platform that does not support offline capability" how do you fix it? e-mail Help at ConnectWise dot com and get back a service request. I've been escalated to Tier II so we will see what happens come Monday morning.
EchoLink - I'm always trying to keep in touch with my local amateur friends. I fired up the EchoLink client and logged into the WA6BAI-R repeater, yelped out CQCQCQ but no answer. Does it really work? Well the ECHOTEST servers says it does, I'll just have to try a few other nodes later on. This is not a iPad native app either.
iBCNU APRS Client - Keeping with the hamradio theme I fired up iBCNU the only APRS native iPhone app that I know of. Fired it up, put in my callsign and viola, I'm on APRS from my iPad. While this is not an iPad native app it does seem to function okay. Did you get my APRS message Jim?
iTap RDP - Frequently I will be on-site, traveling or just sitting at home and I will get a service request for a server that is having an issue and I have to login via RDP to do some work. iTap RDP was just updated to support the iPad and let me tell you it's NICE! I even tricked my friend Jim and told him, hey, I love my iPad so much I've already hacked it look. I had launched iTap RDP and was sitting at our terminal server desktop. Said, look, I hacked it and put windows on it, as I launch Outlook 2010 and you could not even tell it was really loading on a remote server. He was blown away and so was I. Okay, Steve, don't yell at me!
TweetDeck - TweetDeck is a great program and looks so great on the iPad. I have to admit I am a newbie to TweetDeck, but I have to say I'm loving it. Since we are doing more in the social arena I'm looking for tools that make my job easier and TweetDeck & HootSuite are where I'm starting. Thanks Chris for all your help with the social side of things.
There are too many applications to review and I'm not going to review all of them, but I will try and post a few reviews here and there as time permits. Overall all of the applications that I use on a regular basis work on the iPad except for the ConnectWise site. I'm sure they will get that fixed in the next few weeks and I'm sure there will be new features that come out as well. I have downloaded some of iPad native applications and they are nothing but stunning and I will keep you apprised of my findings.
Wrapping things up
Overall I cannot keep my hands off the iPad, well that's not true I'm on my MacBook Pro right now typing up this post. I was going to try the iPad for the post, but there is just no way that I would have been able to complete the post. It's going to take some training to get used to typing in the air. The battery seems to be holding up, I used the device right now of the box, it was fully charged (started around 2:20p) and when I called it quits at 12a the device was only down to 44%. Amazing it's back at 100% this morning! LOL
If you have any questions feel free to drop me an e-mail ted.freitas at gmail dot com and I'll be more than happy to give you a hand.
So why did I buy the iPad? Well two main reasons really, first I needed a bigger display to work from than my iPhone. For what the iPhone provides it's awesome, but sometimes its just too small to get work done while traveling or while trying to wrap up a service call. Ya, I could lug my laptop around, but it's heavy and some of the software that I need to run has to be ran in a virtual machine or on a terminal server. Plus since there is an application for most of the work I do on my iPhone I assumed that the iPad would be the next logical device to own. (oh, there are will be a few surprises in this article) The second major reason was for ConnectWise, since they have an iPhone application I "assumed" that I would be able to run the ConnectWise application on my iPad. I even asked my sales rep in a brief conversation when we reactivated our mobile licenses if the program would work on the iPad and she said that she had heard that it would run on the iPad when it came out. Now, I want to make it clear that I am not holding her or ConnectWise to that comment and ConnectWise did not say it would work on the iPad, more about that later. Oh and there was a third reason too, I had to have it!
So I received the box around 2:20p from UPS. The UPS driver asked, "What's so important about these devices?" I told him that it's the much anticipated release of Apple's iPad that can sort of be summed up as a cross between an iPhone and a laptop device. The driver said, "Well they must be pretty important, because they have GPS on us and they are tracking our every move!" It's interesting to hear that, now I'm sure they always have GPS on their trucks, but UPS must of had some type "special" GPS tracking for these deliveries if the drivers are feeling "tracked". I wonder if any drivers got held up for their iPad shipments??
The good, bad & the ugly
As always the boxing for Apple's products is very sleek and well thought out. I was surprised of a few things. 1. There was no cloth provided to wipe the display off and keep it clean. After a few ours of using the device there are a LOT of finger smudges on the device. 2. There were no headphones for the device, now I would not use them (they don't fit my ears), but for paying $499 at a minimum for a device you can throw them in Apple! So after the device was fully unboxed I connected it to iTunes, I must have something wrong with my iTunes because it beach balled for about 5 minutes before it synchronized to my iPad. All of the purchased apps I had in iTunes were installed onto the iPad. I was so inpatient that after the applications were on synched I canceled the synch and dove in.
General web surfing on the device is snappy and looks great! That is unless you stumble upon a site that has flash. :( I pulled up my company website www.cpnllc.com and everything looks great. I can't wait until we get our new site goes live in a few weeks. The template we have selected as a jumping off point supports iPhone devices and will be interesting to see how we can adapt that for the iPad.
e-Mail works very similar to how the iPhone works. I like to use the mail app in landscape vs vertical mode as hides the pop-up of folders that hover over the message while I'm trying to read them and I can quickly see all messages in a list on the left. Since I synchronized my iPad with my Exchange server all my contacts were there!
Where are the Photos??? I searched and searched for the photos and finally when I wanted to get into the photos I would go to spotlight and type in Photos. I finally figured out it was in the dock, boy did I feel like a dork. I have to say though, I gave the device to two other people and they both asked the same thing, "How do I get to photos?" Is it so engrained in our heads to only look in the dock for the Phone, e-Mail, Safari & the iPod applications? Now we can put 6 items down there, what are your top 6? Mine are iSip, e-Mail, Photos, TweetDeck, ConnectWise & Safari, for now that is.
Applications Applications and more Applications
For the most part all applications appear to work pretty good. I wanted to review a couple of my favorites. Feel free to recommend new ones to me, there are so many it's hard to keep up with all of them.
e-Mail / Exchange Support - Setup was just like on the iPhone, put in the the username, password, domain, remote server and viola you have e-mail. Have not tired accepting appointments or any advanced functions but I will try to review them in the up coming days.
iSip - So no phone on the iPad? HA, if you are running a SIP based VoIP solution in your business or home, just throw a copy of iSip on your iPad and you have a phone. Since there is a built in speaker and microphone, just dial and have a FREE conversation. This is not a iPad native application so hopefully they will update this in the upcoming weeks. Note: We sell a business VoIP solution TotalVOICE to our business clients, but we are working on consumer based product that should be out in the next 6 months.
ConnectWise Client - So this is the "surprise" application I talked about earlier in the article. We use ConnectWise (CW) all day long in our business. CW keeps track of EVERYTHING, as Arnie Bellini says, "If it's not in ConnectWise, it never happened!" we live by that in our business. So I fire up the CW app (it's really a webpage that works similar to how google voice works on the iPhone) and everything is going just fine and then BAM I get a square with ? mark... is it flash? NO the iPhone does not even support flash. So I dig around and turn on debugging in Safari and there it is.... JavaScript Error: Undefined "Attempt to create a database on a platform that does not support offline capability" how do you fix it? e-mail Help at ConnectWise dot com and get back a service request. I've been escalated to Tier II so we will see what happens come Monday morning.
EchoLink - I'm always trying to keep in touch with my local amateur friends. I fired up the EchoLink client and logged into the WA6BAI-R repeater, yelped out CQCQCQ but no answer. Does it really work? Well the ECHOTEST servers says it does, I'll just have to try a few other nodes later on. This is not a iPad native app either.
iBCNU APRS Client - Keeping with the hamradio theme I fired up iBCNU the only APRS native iPhone app that I know of. Fired it up, put in my callsign and viola, I'm on APRS from my iPad. While this is not an iPad native app it does seem to function okay. Did you get my APRS message Jim?
iTap RDP - Frequently I will be on-site, traveling or just sitting at home and I will get a service request for a server that is having an issue and I have to login via RDP to do some work. iTap RDP was just updated to support the iPad and let me tell you it's NICE! I even tricked my friend Jim and told him, hey, I love my iPad so much I've already hacked it look. I had launched iTap RDP and was sitting at our terminal server desktop. Said, look, I hacked it and put windows on it, as I launch Outlook 2010 and you could not even tell it was really loading on a remote server. He was blown away and so was I. Okay, Steve, don't yell at me!
TweetDeck - TweetDeck is a great program and looks so great on the iPad. I have to admit I am a newbie to TweetDeck, but I have to say I'm loving it. Since we are doing more in the social arena I'm looking for tools that make my job easier and TweetDeck & HootSuite are where I'm starting. Thanks Chris for all your help with the social side of things.
There are too many applications to review and I'm not going to review all of them, but I will try and post a few reviews here and there as time permits. Overall all of the applications that I use on a regular basis work on the iPad except for the ConnectWise site. I'm sure they will get that fixed in the next few weeks and I'm sure there will be new features that come out as well. I have downloaded some of iPad native applications and they are nothing but stunning and I will keep you apprised of my findings.
Wrapping things up
Overall I cannot keep my hands off the iPad, well that's not true I'm on my MacBook Pro right now typing up this post. I was going to try the iPad for the post, but there is just no way that I would have been able to complete the post. It's going to take some training to get used to typing in the air. The battery seems to be holding up, I used the device right now of the box, it was fully charged (started around 2:20p) and when I called it quits at 12a the device was only down to 44%. Amazing it's back at 100% this morning! LOL
If you have any questions feel free to drop me an e-mail ted.freitas at gmail dot com and I'll be more than happy to give you a hand.
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