On Monday, my wife, Leanne, completely surprised me with an iPad. I had convinced her to go to the Apple store, so I could finally get a chance to at least try out the gadget I had been somewhat obsessed with for the past week or so. She made me promise not to buy one. I said that’d be fine, as I was planning on doing at least a few more weeks of research before really contemplating purchasing one because that’s how I think.

We arrived at the Apple store, and I beelined right toward the iPad display, selecting one in an empty corner so I wouldn’t be interrupted. My wife, who was carrying around our 11 month old son, Maddox, at the time, said she was going to take him for a walk to keep him occupied. I nodded absentmindedly, already completely engrossed with the iPad. At some point (I can’t say when as I honestly lost track of time) she stopped by and asked how it was going and that I should have at least a few more minutes before our son got fussy. I said a quick “Ok!” and she disappeared again.

Then a minute or so later she came by with a bag, and asked if I could hold it so she could carry our son more easily. I said sure and took the bag and placed it next to the iPad I was playing with. Then this sequence of thoughts took place all over the course of about two seconds:

• I hope since I took the bag she can hold Maddox for a bit longer
• I wonder what she bought? I didn’t think she needed anything
• This is a funny looking bag
• This is an Apple store bag
• What did she buy from the Apple store? She usually asks me about computer stuff she needs
• Is she still standing next to me?
• Why does she have that grin on her face?
• What is that rectangular shape in this page?
• What is in this bag?
• WHAT IS IN THIS BAG?

At that point I pretty much hyperventilated and Leanne had to carry me out of the store. She laughed about how easy it had been to purchase it behind my back since I was so completely absorbed with testing it out.

Form Factor

When I first picked up the iPad, I was surprised at its weight. This wasn’t my dad’s Kindle (it’s about twice as heavy). The weight isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. It feels substantial and far from cheap, and I have yet to really get tired holding it up.

Holding the iPad certainly takes some getting used to, and I’m sure is a technique people will perfect as time goes by. Not having a set way to use it though can be a benefit, as I’ve found you can use it in almost any position (laying down on your stomach, on your side, reclining, sitting up, standing). Most of those positions are impossible with a laptop, if anything because of the odd ways you have to contort your wrist to use the mouse.

It also takes a bit of getting used to holding this with your fingers on the screen. I personally treat my monitors as pristine surfaces that must never be touched by bare human flesh, so it’s certainly a change in mentality to just grab the iPad with my hands.

The size is also a bit odd in terms of portability. I’d like to be able to bring the iPad to the mall when my wife spends 30 minutes looking at baby socks. But it’s an odd size for that – too big to fit in even an oversize pocket, but too small for it to fit into a normal sized backpack type bag. I have seen demos of bags with straps made specifically for the iPad, but they look a bit … odd.

OS

This thing is incredibly fast, smooth, and stable. It’s the first of many reasons why I think a locked-down, controlled environment like the iPhone OS can be a good thing.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t find the lack of multitasking to be a huge deal. It would be nice on a client call to have Safari open and be able to take notes at the same time, but that’s the only time I’ve wished for multitasking.

Display

This thing is freaking gorgeous. I did not expect to be so bowled over by this screen, but it’s like nothing I have ever used before. The brightness and colors in everything from photos to videos to comics is just truly outstanding. The fact that you can also view it easily even from a severe angle is really nice.

I had a chance to use the iPad outside on Wednesday when it was very bright and sunny. There’s certainly some glare and reflection when outside in sunny weather. It’s more of a distraction though than a hinderance, in terms of being able to see what is on the screen. And after a few minutes of reading, I got pretty used to it.

Plus, I would much rather be able to use this unassisted in the dark and sacrifice some outdoor use to do so (compared to the Kindle). I read in bed at night much more than I do outside.

Battery

Astounding. I got the iPad on Monday, and charged it last night for the first time – and it was still only at 47%. Of course that wasn’t four days of extremely heavy use, but that’s not the point. The point is that I need to charge my iPhone every day even if I don’t use it, because by the next morning I’ll be down to 10% or 20%.

It’s not just my iPhone that requires a lot of charging though. My MacBook Pro does as well, and while that handles standby much better, I use my computer enough to need to plug it in usually every night. That didn’t used to be a big deal, until I had a kid, who beelines for the power cord and loves ripping it out of the laptop.

I think the fact that I can go nearly a week of light use without having to charge is amazing and really adds a lot to the usefulness of the iPad.

Apps

The Apple promotional videos do a good job of demonstrating how well things like Mail and Safari perform on the iPad. While I normally use the Gmail interface for all my mail, I currently have to choose between either the iPhone mobile version, which feels like I’m wasting space, or the desktop version, which I feel lost with without keyboard shortcuts. The nice HTML5 interface is only available for actual gmail.com addresses, not Google Apps. So I’ve been using Mail and have been really happy with it, especially in landscape mode.

Of my few complaints about the iPad, and one of the things I’m sure I will pay for by being an early adopter, is lag you can get in Safari when scrolling a large webpage with lots of images. I’ve only noticed it on one site (Gizmodo), but it just feels so … unlike Apple. So when the next version of the iPad comes with twice the RAM, I’ll be kicking myself a bit. But it’s only a slight annoyance, and doesn’t really effect my actual web browsing much.

Personal Use

So here’s the most important part. It’s something that will differ greatly between people, but I also think is one of the most important part of any iPad review, as people are still discovering how this piece of technology fits into their lives.

This is my typical iPad day:

Early Morning: I wake up from the alarm on my iPad (appropriately enough). I check to see if any mail, Facebook messages, Twitter DM’s, etc came in overnight, and then lookup the weather. Same things I did with my iPhone, though a bit more pleasant as I don’t have to squint with my sleepy eyes.

After I get ready for the day, I sit down for breakfast. This is where I truly love my iPad, as I’m able to fully enjoy the New York Times. I used to read this on my iPhone, but that felt like a very cramped experience for any newspaper. I’ve also tried watching NBC Nightly News from the night before, which I download via iTunes. I’ll catch up on Twitter and then use the beautiful Calendar app to check my schedule for the day.

Noon: Every day for lunch I go down to our conference room and read for a half hour. I used to do this on my iPhone. Now I do it on my iPad, and it is such a nicer experience. I can actually lay the iPad flat on the table and still read it while keeping it a safe distance away from my lunch. This is something I could not do with my iPhone.

Also, I can see myself watching more videos via Netflix or the ABC app, something I never bothered with on the iPhone’s tiny screen. I also occasionally play a game like Plants vs Zombies when I’m not in a reading mood, and that’s again where the iPad really shines.

Evening: This is where I’m using the iPad most – something I’m very surprised at. In fact, the first week I had my iPad, I didn’t touch my Macbook Pro.

The iPad is just so much more comfortable to use. I do an average of two hours of computer use at home every night. Doing all of that on a laptop is ok, but I rarely feel like I’m relaxing while using it. Even with it on my lap, it’s similar to how I use my computer at work, so I kind of feel like I’m in front of a computer the whole day. Not with the iPad though. I also brought it outside on evening last week, something I never ever do with my Macbook.

I also like the fact that there’s no multitasking, as I can really focus on what I’m doing at the moment, whether it’s web browsing, emailing, or catching up on Twitter. There’s no distractions.

I’ve been heading to bed earlier, as I can finish up whatever I’m doing on the iPad. I hated trying to use my laptop in bed, as it just never felt comfortable.

I noticed that there is a big gap here – the mid-morning and afternoon. I just haven’t found the need for my iPad when I have a 27″ iMac in front of me at work.

A Laptop Replacement?

No, not completely. I did use my iPad for about 75% of my computer time over the past week, which is pretty astounding. But I really needed my Macbook for the remaining 25%. Obviously, I could not do website development on my iPad, and that was the main use of that time. I also was researching cars this weekend, and I found for an activity like that which involved rigorous research, the Macbook served me better as I had tons of tabs open and was taking notes at the same time. Lastly, I brought out the Macbook a few times when I had lengthier emails or posts (like this) to write.

Besides that, it was a joy not having a hot, heavy laptop on my lap for most of the evening. The iPad’s battery has really spoiled me on my Macbook’s battery as well. I often have to use my Macbook plugged in as the battery just does not last as long as it used to.

Conclusion

Put simply: I honestly think the iPad will change computing. In one week it has drastically changed the way I use computers in my life. It is expensive in that it is a luxury item: It will not replace your phone, it will not replace your laptop. But I have discovered that there was indeed a massive hole in-between those two items, which the iPad filled perfectly. It has really improved the technological quality of my life.

Part of the reason may be due to the fact that the iPhone is what I consider to be one of the best pieces of technology I have ever used. Call out Apple all you want on their locked down approach to this device, but the result is a nearly perfectly functioning piece of equipment. This was clear to me after jailbreaking the phone: While some of the new capabilities were nice, the phone just wasn’t as stable or fast as it used to be, so I reset it.

So if the iPad is just a bigger version of the incredible iPhone, then I want it. My new TV is just a bigger version of my old one, and guess what? It’s much better. My 27″ monitor at work is bigger than the 19″ monitor I used to use, and guess what? It’s better. Bigger is indeed better in this case, at least in several regards – web browsing, reading books, watching movies. All things I plan to do a lot on the iPad.

iBooks would be a pretty big deal for me. I read solely on my iPhone now. I love having all my books accessible in one place, and I personally love holding an iPhone instead of a paper book. Of course, I’d want to make sure that holding an iPad to read is comfortable as well.

There is certainly a lot of negativity about the iPad. You’re not being forced to buy this thing! The two major negatives I hear both seem close to inconsequential to me.

No Flash? I have a plugin to disable Flash from all websites I visit. I never enable a piece of Flash, besides Youtube. Flash is buggy, slow, and is mainly used from ads. The fact that iPad doesn’t support it is a huge plus to me.

No multitasking? First, that isn’t true of course, since Mail and Calendar both run in the background. Second, I honestly can’t think of a time I’ve felt the need for it on my iPhone. Push notifications make up for it anyway.

I’m not too worried about a huge price reduction ala the iPhone (as John Gruber said, Apple doesn’t make the same mistake twice). I don’t care about a camera, as my iPhone does all the portable photography I need and I have an actual camera for better photos.

One of my biggest hesitations isn’t necessarily a fault with the iPad, but more with myself: I’m worried about dropping the thing. I’m worried about leaving it on my ottoman and then having my 11 month old son take it for a ride when I’m not looking. I’m worried that the iPad is meant to be carried, and that with all that carrying, I’m going to drop it sooner or later. I already paid $200 to fix a broken iPhone screen, and I’d really like to avoid the same thing with the iPad, which is probably more likely to break completely if dropped.

Initially finding those plugins was often quite a challenge though. While I often sing the praises of Wordpress, the plugin area of their site is honestly an embarrassment to the platform, if only because there is no way to sort through plugins. Thus one of Wordpress’s biggest benefits – the massive community – becomes a huge problem due to the sheer number of plugins. Without a way to filter or sort, you’re left with a massive list of plugins, the vast majority of which haven’t been updated in years.

So here is a list, in no particular order, of plugins which I’ve found very useful for a variety of sites:

WP-DBManager: A wonderful backup manager, it also includes optimize and repair functions. It is relatively easy to set up, as long as you have your database paths configured correctly. It’s also very simple to setup a recurring backup and have it stored on the server and/or emailed.

Clean Options: I’ve had a few issues with some of more heavily used Wordpress installations where a multitude of plugins have created a lot of orphaned data in the wp-options table, which can also really slow down a site.

flickrRSS: An easy way to use simple PHP code to display recent images from Flickr.

All in One SEO Pack: A very popular plugin, for good reason: It’s nearly essential for decent SEO in Wordpress. Offers lots of customization, and works flawlessly.

Search Everything: I actually use this for the opposite purpose: To exclude certain pages and posts from search results.

WP-Table Reloaded: This has saved me (and my clients) hours upon hours of work by allowing easy importing of tables (from Excel and other sources) into Wordpress, and then also easily allowing users to update those tables without having to deal with messy HTML table code.

WP Page Numbers: A simple plugin which replaces the boring (and limited) “Next Page” and “Previous Page” links with a list of page numbers, with several attractive styles to choose from.

However, all of the pages were descendants of the same great-grandparent, the catalog. I needed to find a way to check if a page was a grandchild of the catalog page, and if so, display the disclaimer.

Here’s the very simple code that made that happen:

<?php $ancestors = get_post_ancestors($post);
if (in_array(4,$ancestors)) echo "4 is an ancestor of the post"; ?>

The code gets all the ancestors of the post, throws them into an array, and then checks to see if the catalog page (in this case, page ID 4) is in the array). If that’s true, we can go ahead and display the information we need to.

In writing the code to allow this to be possible, I found quite a few areas that needed improvement. Here is our old order form:

And our new one:

So what were the changes?

1. The new order form uses fieldsets to clearly seperate the various sections of the form, and help to create a natural progression when entering information.
2. The labels, field text, and fields themselves are bigger. The last thing someone should need to do is have to squint while they input their credit card number.
3. Added a confirm email field. Even though it is an important field, and people must type it several times per day, we still found we were receiving a large number of orders with mistyped email addresses. Unfortunately the order may still go through anyway, even though the subscriber will have no way to receive their order, nor be contacted about the problem.
4. There was only one line for the mailing address, even though a fair number of individuals and even larger number of companies have two lines for their mailing address.
5. The state and country fields were turned into drop-down lists. This was originally done because our database needed states as abbreviations, while people would sometimes type the whole state name. But I soon realized that people are much more used to selecting their state and country from a drop down. A small note on this: United States is at the top of the list and selected by default. I often find it frustrating on U.S. based sites when the U.S. is listed alphabetically, near the bottom.
6. I added card type as a drop down. I had initially removed this field, as it seemed to be an unnecessary hindrance since the credit card type can be determined from the first digit. However this led to two problems. First, people would add “Visa” to the beginning or end of their number, thinking they had to put it in some place. Second, by having the user choose the credit card type, it seems to increase the likelihood that they will pay attention to which credit card they are inputting, and type the number correctly.
7. I added logos for each type of credit card accepted. It was mentioned in a speech at Pubcon that including credit card logos increased conversion by 1%, as they instilled confidence in the buyer. Along those lines, I also made sure that our Better Business Bureau and McAfee Secure logos were always visible.
8. The submit button was made even larger and placed directly under the previous field.
9. Several ASP field validators were added or adjusted, including a regular expression validator to confirm the credit card, and a comparison validator to check the two email fields. This allows for more error checking to occur client side, before the user submits their form.
10. If an order is submitted and rejected by the database, a large error panel is displayed at the top of the page, which describes the error but also provides instructions on how to answer customer service.

I’ve continue to register domains there over the years, and now have about ten personal and twenty for my work. Over time, they’ve added more and more bloat, and it’s taken more and more clicks to actually purchase a domain. Their management interface is overwhelming now, and the page design itself is quite the eyesore.

Still, I didn’t have any complaints strong enough to make me want to transfer registrars. Their prices are still reasonable and their customer support is actually one of the best I’ve dealt with: My calls are answered almost immediately, and usually by a very knowledgeable person.

I had heard about their ad campaigns, mostly because they were often banned from TV and played on their website instead. GoDaddy always made a big deal of this, which I never really understood the point of.

I didn’t actually watch the Superbowl last night, but I did watch some of the ads this morning, including the GoDaddy “Shower” commercial. I won’t bother linking to it, but I would have found it offensive and stupid for a beer company – let alone a domain registration company.

So when GoDaddy reminded me of one of my domains expiring next month, I thanked them and jotted down a note to transfer the domain to another registrar before them. I can’t say a commercial for a company I currently use has ever caused me to abandon them, but that certainly was the case with GoDaddy and their Superbowl ad.

I may end up going with Namecheap, who is taking advantage of commercial and offering a discount transfer code for customers who are “not happy with their current registrat or their advertising methods.”

Screenshot of Boxee

It was really cool, and I was constantly tweaking Media Portal. A few years later, after the popularity of HTPC’s grew, I bought a sleek Shuttle HTPC. More recently, I installed new software called XBMC to replace Media Portal.

Then in the past month, I started reading about new front-end software called Boxee. It supports playback of your videos, music, and pictures just like any other piece of software like this. But it’s built with the social web in mind -  you can add friends and see what they’re watching and what they recommend. Even better, it has built in support for a multitude of online video sites, from YouTube to Hulu to TED talks.

Unfortunately, until recently, Boxee was only available in Linux and Mac OS. My HTPC runs Windows. I thought, hey, accessible Linux seems to be all the rage nowadays, so why not try setting up my HTPC to boot into Linux.

Several hours later (not including the actual installation time), I finally had Ubuntu Linux up and running on my system. I load up Boxee, play a video, and … it freezes. No errors, no way to exit out of the program – I have to hit the restart button on my computer. I restart and try a few more times before giving up.

Then this week, Boxee releases an alpha version for Windows. I install it in one minute, and it’s flawlessly working the next.

There’s been talk of Linux giving Microsoft a run for their money since the turn of the century, but I stil l have yet to see any evidence that Linux is anywhere near being able to compete in an environment where ease and accessibility are key.

The keynote that really stood out was by George Wright of Blendtec. I wasn’t all that familiar with the Blendtec ad campaign before the conference, but I still found George to be an excellent speaker who did a great job telling the story of a tiny company who increased their sales 700% all thanks to a marketing campaign started with $50.

I spent Monday morning in sessions on two great sessions about video. I want to specifically mention Robin Liss of Reviewed.com. I saw her speak last year as well. She seems genuinely enthusiastic about what she does, which always helps make a speaker more interesting. She also really knows her stuff, and I was able to come away with a lot of notes.

Another speaker I enjoyed was Wil Reynolds, who gave a talk about keyword selection and had some excellent tips, such as seeing what words people used to tag their bookmarks on delicious.

A third speaker who I want to mention is Ted Ulle, of webmasterworld.com, who absolutely knows his stuff when it comes to information architecture, and often overlooked part of web design.

I have pages of notes from this conference (which luckily are all digitized this time around), and can’t wait to start discussing and implementing some of these ideas.

The only criticisms I have about the conference are in regards to the logistical parts of it, not the speakers, so I suppose that’s a good thing. Here’s a few suggestions for Pubcon 2009:

• Better directions. Everyone I saw went to the Las Vegas Convention Center South Halls first (where the conference was last year).
• On that note, maybe consider moving back to the south halls. The session rooms in the North Halls are three times as wide as they are deep, leaving you craning your neck to see the speakers and the powerpoint.
• Include coats and gloves in the registration bag. Seriously, I think I got frostbite in some of those rooms.
• Charge $10, $25, $50 more for tickets and DO NOT RUN OUT OF COFFEE! Also, while know it’s a minor complaint, a lot of the breakfast food tasted as if it had been sitting outside for days.

Those are just some minor gripes on an overall excellent conference.

On a personal note, I had a blast in Vegas as always (Stomp Out Loud and Craps both provided a lot of entertainment), and am very glad we took Saturday to see Death Valley, which is a really amazing place.

So I was fairly dissapointed when I came in today and was greeted by a “disk full” error. I have several hundred gigabytes free on the drive I am backing up from, and a few gigabytes on the operating system drive, so I wasn’t sure exactly what the problem was. I clicked the error for more details, and was greeted with a screen that said the error was unknown.

The error was unknown? First of all, if the program generates an error, it should never be considered unknown. Second of all, this was a disk full error, which should be one of the most common errors a user could encounter. So why was there not more documentation on this?

I grudgingly picked up the phone (I learned long ago that emailing support at companies was useless if you wanted a response back anytime soon) and called their support number. I was greeted by a menu system, pressed a button, and immediately heard ringing. Then just a few seconds later, a support technician picked up.

Well this is a good start, I thought. I explained the error to the technician, who immediately recognized the problem and told me the cause (Mozy uses the temporary directory on the main partition on my server, which does not have much space free). Then in about thirty seconds he stepped me through changing the temporary directory. I thanked him and hung up.

In about two minutes, I had reached Mozy and fixed my problem. Very impressive, so much so that I forgave them for their lackluster help file – though I did make a suggestion to put what the technician had told me directly into that help file.

* at least, theoretically. Right now it’s backing up the entire file every night, which is horrible since the file is 3 gigabytes but the changes are only a few megabytes. Let’s hope Mozy fixes this problem as well as they did the previous one.

Well, it’s not! People are very wary of giving their email addresses away, thanks to all those lovely princes of Nigeria who would like to send us money if we would be kind enough to send them a few hundred dollars first. Of course, we never sell or rent the email address of anyone who signs up for our list, but other, less savory companies do. So I don’t blame people for being a bit hesitant before giving up their email address.

The challenge is to convince them that we do, in fact, offer an informative and entertaining service. And that convincing is done almost solely through good marketing copy. It’s been my experience that copy is drastically more important than design when it comes to landing pages, partially because you want to keep your landing pages as simple as possible, to draw the user into the one sole action on the page they can perform: Signing up for your mailing list.

This is when Google Website Optimizer steps in. Once we have a new landing page put together, we’ll run it for a few weeks, as a control test of sorts, to see how it performs. Then we’ll load it into Google Website Optimizer and feed it a few variations. This can be anything from changing headlines around, to using a different image.

Next, Google works its magic by creating the necessary number of combinations based on the different variations you gave it (if I paid more attention in statistics, I could tell you this formula off the top off my head). Then it presents a different combination to each visitor of your page.

Here’s an example of the current test we’re running, with the actual numbers blurred out to protect our marketing director from receiving even more requests for work than he already does:

In this test, we are only trying out different headlines. But you can tell even from the graph how big of a difference a few words can make.

My favorite example of this was a landing page we did a few months ago which referred to the “#1 Stock” We tested this phrase against “Number One Stock”, and found that actually spelling out the phrase increased the conversion rate by 5%!. When you are paying for each and every visitor to your page, that increased conversion rate can mean thousands of dollars saved.

So if you haven’t tried out Google Website Optimizer yet, I urge you to give it a try, even starting with a simple A/B split test to get a feel from it. And if you have used it, I’d love to hear your success stories.