As the iPad will not be available in europe before the end or May, I bought one from eBay. I got the 16 gb wifi iPad for $750 with shipping (the seller made a good markup as the device retails for $499). This was still somewhat bearable, but Finnish customs decided to impose a quite hefty customs fee of 250€ bringing the total cost to around 800€. If device will retail for 499€ in Europe (pricing and availability will be announced on May 10:th), the premium I paid for being an early adaptor was about 300€. I can live with that, especially now that the Europe launch date has been postponed.

I got the device just in time for my paternity leave so I have had quite a lot of time to play around with it. It a spectacular device that will propel the pad into a new popular device category and give netbooks a run for their money. It succeeds very well in being quite convenient for casual web surfing and e-mail checking needs and delivers even more through apps.

Here are some highlights:

• The screen is gorgeous and multi-touch works well making web surfing quite pleasant. My iPhone feels suddenly very small and limited as I’ve become accustomed to the bigger screen estate. All internal apps are pretty much the same as on the iPhone with the mail client and browser gaining most from the increased screen size. The on-screen keyboard works well and the only complaint is that device is a bit on the heavy side (needs to be supported whenever using for a longer time)
• I actually like the fact that the OS lacks multitasking and switching apps isn’t too convenient. It makes whatever you are doing so much more reflective, i.e. there are no disturbing factors interrupting you (yes, this doesn’t have that much to do with multitasking but more with the window manager – having apps run and perform tasks in the background is a major improvement in the upcoming iPhone OS 4)
• Newspapers and books will be a big thing. I have found myself reading the Wall Street Journal every day for the past week and I like the way they have built their app. It will be interesting to see what Finnish media will come up with.
• I have not read a book on the device but can easily picture myself doing that (the device is backlit which is a big plus over the Sony Reader device I have). Apple’s own iBooks and Amazon’s Kindle are both available as apps making shopping for books very easy. A free Winnie the Pooh book is accompanied with the iBooks app and children’s books will sell in quantities for sure.
• My mother and two aunts were quite excited by the device, a fact worth noting as 50+ women seldom are excited about anything computer related. They cited reading as the killer app for the device
• iPhone apps work on the iPad but the experience is lacking. The app store isn’t yet filled with quality iPad apps but the situation will get better quickly as vendors optimize their apps and release “HD” versions. Twitterrific is the app I use most and this is being written with the official WordPress app (a bit lacking, a proper blogging app is seriously needed).
• The app store doesn’t work in any other market except for the US market at the moment. This meant I had to get a US account (this can be done without having a US credit card) and in order to be able to pay for stuff, I had to buy US gift certificates through a third-party (can be easily found using google) – a bit cumbersome and against the TOS but now I can pay with dollars and get access not only to apps but to movies and books as well. This suddenly also made my apple tv device so much more usable and I have now spent over $50 on apps, movies and tv series in a week.

So, to summarize, I am quite happy with the device and I’m sure it will be used a lot around the house. Would I recommend it to others? YES

My reasons are quite simple, some of them are:

• Most of the blogs and news sources I have been following post on Twitter, the ones that don’t do not matter
• 140 character limit on Twitter forces the writer to summarize whatever is said – easier to find good stuff
• Twitter is faster and the clients are good (especially on mobile; I use my iPhone and iPad more and more and the experience is way better compared to google reader in a browser)
• Twitter has good feedback+commenting and subscribe / unsubscribe mechanisms built in
• Overall, I find the signal-to-noise ratio to be better on Twitter (and unsubscribing is a one click action)
• Twitterrific on the iPad is superb (with link activation done just the right way), tweetie works well of the iPhone

A quick recap in chronological order of what has been going on since the last update:

– got married
– sold the company and now work for a somewhat bigger entity
– at the same time growing employee count from 5 to about 30
– moved
– became a father

Quite a lot, huh?

A clip of our apartment in Helsinki, the name of the game is pipe renovation. Quite happy not to have been there for the last month. Hopefully they’ll stick to the timetable and get it finished before Christmas..

The problem with mobile transcoders (like Skweezer, Google and others) is that they try to fit the whole page into the small screen that is our mobile, making finding the good parts though. What if collective usage tracking would be utilized to create a transcoding service that would a bit smarter and leave out the most irrelevant portions (making the decision based on actual usage patterns)? And with a sufficient amount of tracking information, maybe it could be generalized to create an algorithm to analyze pages automatically based on their structure..

Just an idea…

Anyway, a couple of things have happened since my last post.

First of all, I’ve quit my job. As of this month, I’m no longer in charge of FlyerOne, a company I co-founded almost six years ago. I’ve had the pleasure of watching an emerging business (mobile marketing) evolve from the very beginning to a stage were it is blossoming like never before. So is FlyerOne. I took the opportunity to step down at a moment when business is solid and the outlooks are good. I’ll remain an owner, and we’ll have some interesting changes happen at FlyerOne too (more about those later).

The second change is that I’ve semi-temporarily re-located to Tartu, Estonia where my girlfriend is working on her vet degree (we have a pipe renovation going on at our home in Finland, rendering our flat there pretty much unlivable). I’m going on my third week here, and really enjoy it.

So, what am I doing now? A still dedicate a big portion of my time to FlyerOne, but now I’m able to work on a project basis. That’s important, as it keeps stress levels lower etc. and I actually get stuff done more efficiently. Besides that, I’m looking into implementing projects that have a mobile aspect, but from a different point of view (as compared to the messaging based marketing projects we’ve mostly done within FlyerOne). I am interested in looking into client side applications (I have a couple of Symbian related ideas brewing), browser based stuff running both on desktop and mobile clients, and more generally linking the desktop web/internet with the mobile world. Can’t promise anything, but I am excited with the opportunity to do something a bit different. And now I actually have time to pursue other interests.

As I’m pretty much a consultant at-large, I’m looking for mobile related gigs. If you have any lying around, I can always be reached via e-mail at alindh at iki dot fi.

All of these platforms are wildly different, but they share the capability of enabling third-party content and/or applications run on the device (this Wikipedia page has an excellent overview of the differences). If you can spot any errors or omissions, please leave a comment.

Conclusion: Java/MIDP is by far the most popular platform with its huge installed base. Symbian, and in particular Series 60, has a strong hold of the Smartphone segment, where the challengers are Windows and Linux (it will be interesting to see how that battle works out).

Flash Lite is an interesting technology that will no doubt gain widespread support given time, but sadly the improved 2.0 version isn’t currently being shipped on many devices (Nokia has e.g. started shipping some devices with the older version). For those who are interested and do not have a phone shipping with Flash Lite, versions 1.1 and 2.0 can be bought directly from Adobe for various devices)