Video: New iPad Commercial – What is iPad?

Apple released a new iPad commercial entitled What is iPad. The commercial concludes with a voiceover saying “..it’s a revolution, and it’s just begun”.

Stylus and Pen Options for your iPad

While we all know what a pain having to use a stylus can be, that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the freedom of choosing to use one, when appropriate. Artists, people who like taking notes by hand, or just someone who doesn’t want to leave smudges on their precious Apple touch devices, I present to you your options:


Pogo Stylus for iPad Pogo Stylus has been around since people started asking for styli for iPhones, so they seem to have the most credibility in the market. They are reasonably priced at $9.95. And come in a variety of colors such as hot pink or gun metal.

Fosmon Metal Stylus for iPad/iPhoneThis Fosmon branded stylus seems to be a new addition to the iPad Accessories world, but shares many of the same sleek looks of the Pogo Stylus and it’s a couple bucks cheaper at $7.95 so it’s great choice if you are looking for a bargain.

DIY Stylus Videos
For those of you who have the DIY spirit in you here are a couple good video tutorials on how to make your own stylus.

and there is also a Instructables Article with a different take on homemade stylus options.

Feel free to leave comments detailing how you’ve improvised a stylus.

Review: Dropzone by Aptonic

Drag and Drop functionality has been a hallmark of the simplicity of the Mac OS for as long as there were was a GUI, Dropzone from Aptonic has taken Drag and Drop to a whole new level; allowing power users to accomplish more using a simpler workflow.

Installing/Removing applications in Mac OSX is so simple that automating the process of installing an application from a DMG can get repetitive for a power user. Dropzone allows your to drag your run-of-the-mill .dmg installer file onto it’s icon and have the .dmg mounted, the .app moved into your Applications folder with a simple drag and drop.

File management is becoming more of a chore now that half our data is in the cloud. As we begin to put more of our pictures, documents, and other miscellaneous information on remote servers, Dropzone gives a seamless way to interact with multiple online services such as Flickr, Bit.ly, Dropbox and many more all through it’s refined drag and drop functionality. It’s also developer friendly offering open APIs you can use to extend Dropzone allowing it to work with even more services.

Dropzone has a bright future ahead given their open nature and dedicated development team who recently took care of a bunch of first release bugs and have the newest version 0.3.3 running great. Download Dropzone for yourself, you won’t be disappointed.

The iPad is for TV

In a very interesting article on AppleInsider the Financial Timesreports that Apple will announce a new pricing structure for some but not all of it’s TV Show offerings, brining the cost to 99c per show for a select number of shows, and only in standard definition. This price reduction is set to coincide with the Launch of the iPad.

In another article on the very same website states that TechCrunch is reporting that the popular online TV site HULU would be making it’s content available on the iPad. Hulu currently uses Flash to stream it’s content so they would either have to make a custom App or rewrite their player using HTML5 to stream videos to the iPad and iPhone. If I had to guess they will end up developing both overtime and launching whichever is more compelling at or near the iPad launch date.

It’s looking like the iPad more and more is about TV. Apple couldn’t persuade TV Execs to change pricing with the Apple TV but the iPad seems to have caught their attention.

I would gladly pay $1 per show for a handful of shows I watch as opposed to the $90/m I pay for the basic digital cable package which includes channels I don’t want and forces me to Timeshift (using the cable companies DVR of course). TV ala carte simply makes sense, if Apple pulls this off we’ll soon be counting down to 10 billion TV Shows sold.

TapnScrap – Scrapbooking on your iPhone

Mac News Online is happy to announce that TapnScrap a Scrapbooking App for the iPhone, iPod Touch and soon the iPad has been released into the App Store. If you enjoy making scrapbooks, and you have an iPhone I highly reccomend you download TapnScrap [iTunes Link].

iPad Features Still to Come?

The buzz prior to the existence of the iPad is almost as the outcries from disappointed fans and critics alike. The prevailing comments I get from a the tech savvy observers familiar with the iPad seems to be:, “It doesn’t have X feature so it sucks.” or “I don’t think I need that”. While the latter mindset was addressed in the previous post, some new and interesting information about the iPad that speaks to the former has been trickling out. As consumers scour the Apple site; and developers the SDK searching for more insight into this increasingly mysterious device.

The iPad might support Flash. According to the analysis done by iPhone Alley the iPad is demonstrated browsing the NYT website, and showing a flash element being rendered properly on the tablet. This is in contrast to the ugly blue “missing plugin” icon safari showed during Jobs’ keynote demo. Could this be an early prototype for some more loosely defined variant of flash, or even a custom written apple flash lite player, designed to use the A4 processor for performance and energy saving gains? Doubtful, but it seems as though that would be a viable option.

The iPad may get a camera (possibly before launch, possibly in a the next revision. Ars Technica explores the iPad’s camera options in this article.

Let’s all try to remember that the iPad is still 2 months away from shipping and it’s not impossible to suppose Apple could add features prior to launch as production hasn’t been fully ramped up. Besides, that fat black bezel is begging to have a front facing camera installed.