This is what it looks like outside my house at the moment, snow covered and -7 degrees C:

My Garden Looks a Bit Like Weather HD

and here’s the conditions outside, according to the app – see the resemblance? I wish you could see this animation live, as the snow’s constantly falling from the sky – some near to you, some much further away – the sense of perspective also surprised me, it’s easy to think you’re looking at a 3D animation here. I wish it was a screensaver, so I could have it on one of my monitor screens permanently – I haven’t got sick of it in the slightest over the many months I’ve owned it.

Art Imitating Life from Weather HD - similar imagery

I think it does anyway. Feel free to contradict me if you think otherwise

If you need an app that tells you what the conditions outside are like – anywhere in the world – or just where you are right now – this is a beautifully designed app that does just that.

Every condition has it’s own beautifully crafted animation – I often leave my iPad with this app on when I’m not using it for anything else – it’s like a very cool screensaver! It tells you the forecast for the next 7 days, or the next 24 hours if you tap the ‘show hourly’ button.

I’ve got about 12 cities stored in the memory already – places I visit or where friends live. They’re accessed using the right arrow you can see at the top left of the screenshot above, to the right of ‘Wakefield’

This is a functional app that tells you everything about the conditions outside that most of us will ever care to know. It’s also one of those killer apps that will impress anyone who sees it on your iPad – it’s that beautiful. I show people complex apps that have great depth and application, they never impress people as much as this app does.

Get yourself a copy of Weather HD, it’s only 59p these days – I paid more, and it was still worth it… It’s another Two Thumbs Up recommendation from me!

Words with Friends HD for the iPad

Words With Friends HD on the iPad looks rather like Scrabble… and it plays rather like Scrabble too… hmmmm… anyway put those thoughts out of your mind and read on.

You get seven Letter pieces from which you must make words to get the highest score you can. You can play against friends, passing round the iPad, or you can play against friends and random Wordies online – which makes the game much more fun.

On the board are certain bonus squares where you can score double or triple points for letters and words… Hang on a minute, this game is rather like Scrabble!

I didn’t bother with the Scrabble iPad app after reading lots of complaints about the Scrabble UK English dictionary – much as I like my American pals, I’d like to stick to the English version I was born into. I can ‘speak’ and write both dialects – but naturally migrate to my mother tongue. So far, I’ve not had the right letters to make words that differ between our 2 great nations, so haven’t tested the Words With Friends dictionary on this point yet.

It’s great fun, sometimes you play someone and your game is finished within a few hours, sometimes a game lasts weeks. As it’s turn-by-turn, you’re dependant on your opponent completing their turn promptly so you can take your next turn. This is both good and infuriating – you only have to play when you’re ready, but when someone makes you wait 2 weeks for your next go, it’s a little tedious. Fortunately, you can have as many games ongoing as you want, so you’re not just stuck waiting for 1 other person… You’re waiting for loads!

If you like word games, or you’re a Scrabble fan, W-W-Friends will appeal to you. If you like games you can play while you’ve a spare minute, you’ll like it too. It’s simple to pick up, play, put down and move on. I’m still playing it 3 months after buying it, which is no mean accomplishment for the game – most of my iPad games have had a few plays then are saved just to show people what the iPad can do – so to still be in my regular plays list after 3 months indicates that this game has serious longevity. It helps that no two games are ever the same.

In summary, Words With Friends is a great, Scrabble-like word game that’s simple yet engrossing. Who knows, it could increase your vocabulary too!

I haven’t decided on the one way I’m going to standardise ratings for apps yet,I’m not going with stars cos you could just read those in the App Store. So I will use my first choice for ratings – the thumb system.

Today, Words With Friends HD gets Two Thumbs Up (that means I really like it)!

It’s fun for all the family, and tests your word skills, it must be slightly educational too stimulating a desire to know more words – that’s the effect it had on me, I now get ‘Word of The Day’ pushed onto my iPad through the free Dictionary.com iPad app!

Unfortunately, my Grampa died, so I have been kept busy with family matters, and got away for a couple of weeks.

I’ll be back very soon… very soon indeed!

Rob

Part One: Email

The general consensus among my pals is that the UK iPad advert makes the device look very cool and trendy, but it probably wouldn’t be any use as a work tool, just for ‘play’ – looking up things, reading sites and blogs, looking at photos and the like. That kind of surprised me, as I thought the opposite – I considered it a game-changer that would allow me to work away from my desk, being far more portable than my laptop and faster, through not needing to be booted up every time I want to use it – although I didn’t realistically expect it to allow me to do all the things I can on a full-blown laptop or desktop PC.

I’ve now had my iPad for a month, so have been using it day in, day out for work and play. How good a work tool is it? I’ll be discussing its’ suitability for various aspects of work over the coming days and weeks.

Today, we begin with Email. Note that I have blurred out personal details in many of the email client pics.

I work in digital media, helping businesses grow through better use of the Internet and Web & Mobile technologies, so my business framework is already very ‘cloud-oriented’ i.e. I use a lot of web applications like GAPE (Google Apps Premier Edition), Freshbooks and WordPress. I use a lot of graphical tools, web design tools and clients for my work, and most of all, word processing and email.

As many of you know, prior to the launch of the iPad, I delivered mobile business services using the iPhone as the primary device. With the advent of the iPad, it caters for a much larger audience, as the screen and virtual keyboard, are both much bigger and easier for the average person to use. I reckon my typing speed on the iPad is about 90% the speed of my typing on my desktop PC. The screen and keyboard make it much easier than the iPhone to use to type e-mails and documents, simply due to their larger size.

Email on The iPad – The Built-In Client

iPad Email Client

The built-in Email client allows you to link up to several email clients easily – Microsoft Exchange, MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, and POP and IMAP servers. The process of setting up each is simple, and you can have multiple accounts – currently I have 2 Google Premier Apps email accounts, a MobileMe account and a Yahoo Mail account all accessed through the same simple interface.

The interface is a step up from the iPhone – where you have a single panel display on the iPhone, you have a 2 panel interface on the iPad, allowing you to select your email account, then see a list of your folders or messages in the left panel, and a view of the selected email in the larger right column. This is very similar to the interface in most desktop/web email clients, so feels very natural and is picked up really quickly.

I find myself using the iPad to pick up and deal with emails in a much wider variety of locations – it’s easier to use in bed than a laptop (which matters a lot when you have a back condition like mine!), and it’s very convenient in other locations – I answer lots of emails these days from my hammock in the garden (in fact, I’m writing this article from said hammock, laid back with the iPad perched on my lap… It’s been such a warm and muggy day today I can’t stand to be inside!).

Web Clients – The Google Mobile Client (Gmail)

GAPE Mobile View

Anyone who has an iPhone probably has the Google Mobile app already.

It’s a great way to access many of the tools from your Google Account on the go. For email, Google’s mobile interface works so much better on the iPad, once again due to the larger screen size and two panel display.

Your email labels become folders in the mobile client, making them more like traditional email folders. It took me a while to get used to labels after years of using Yahoo mail’s folder-based structure, so it makes me laugh that they use the labels as folder names here. The labels also show in your inbox as they do in the desktop app.

GAPE Basic HTML View

You can choose the format of your Gmail at the bottom of the screen – mobile (as pictured), basic HTML, and Desktop.

Desktop is the only one that gives you access to your 3rd party apps through Google Premier Apps, but it doesn’t really work as you can’t scroll the screen to see older messages. Not a big deal, but it would be more useful to be able to access all my business apps I access through my Google Premier Apps interface from the mobile interface.

The mobile interface gives one click access to my Google Docs, Calendar and Talk – but none of the multitude of 3rd party apps I also use though GAPE (Google Apps Premier Edition)

GAPE Desktop View

Overall, it’s a very well designed and easy to use interface, but lacking the 3rd party app integration seen in the desktop version of GAPE. I tend to use the iPad’s native email client to access the same emails more.

Yahoo Mobile

Yahoo Mobile Client

I have history with Yahoo. For many years, while others cried Google, I stuck with Yahoo… I still have a Yahoo Pro email account for my main personal email address. Unfortunately, I think my time with the Pro Account might be coming to an end.

Why? It’s a number of things – for email it’s this.

I have the Yahoo Mobile app on my iPad, but it only loads my email once in every 3 or 4 tries. It then displays them in a ridiculous single panel across the entire screen – can’t see my folders. And to cap it off, it only loads and displays 11 emails at a time. It’s like the 1980s took over an app!

It’s the same app as on my iPhone, and it wasn’t great on there. I don’t use it if I can help it – I use the iPad’s client instead.

Yahoo Mail Desktop Client

The Yahoo Mail web client looks exactly the same as it does on my desktop – BUT that’s where the similarity ends. Like the Google Desktop Client, it fails to scroll, whether you try single or multi-touch, so you can only see the first 12 emails from any folder, and when you select one, you can only see the very top of the message!

As you might be able to tell, I’m not a fan of Yahoo mail on the iPad as either a mobile or a desktop app – to access my emails from my Yahoo account effectively, I route them through the iPad’s native email client.

Summary

As an email device, the iPad is really convenient – you can check your emails and reply almost anywhere. It’s a lot more convenient to manage your emails than powering up your laptop and going online – it’s also waaaaaaaay faster.

It takes me around 3 minutes to turn on my laptop, log in and access my emails, it takes me around 7 seconds to do the same thing on the iPad.

The built-in email client is very easy to use – with push notifications and audio alerts so you know when a new email comes in. It’s fast, simple and flawless. I’m very happy with it, and easily run multiple email accounts through it.

Mobile clients from the big providers vary in quality – some are still iPhone apps enlarged, but some like Gmail are iPad focused and a pleasure to use.

Would I recommend you use an iPad for your email? Without a doubt – I manage my emails mostly using the iPad now.

Rob

That’ll Do, Pad

The New iPad Arrives

My new iPad arrived on the 8th June, as Apple ‘promised’ when I ordered it on the 12th May. Yes, it was a little frustrating that they arrived in the shops 2 weeks before that, but I can forgive that easily – I’ve a background in Marketing, so appreciate that certain things have to be done when a product comes out, like actually having some in the shops… but then what’s the point of pre-ordering?!?!

Regardless, that soon paled into into insignificance when said iPad turned up at midday in the hands of the delivery guy. I haven’t been that excited since… Well since my iPhone arrived ! Being a responsible owner, the first thing I did was plug it in to charge (it prolongs the anticipation!), although it must have been precharged to some degree as it only took an hour or so to fully charge.

Setting Up The iPad on a PC

I set up my laptop with a clean install of iTunes 64-bit, and plugged the iPad in via the USB… Nothing! So I unplugged it and plugged it in again… Looking for driver…This driver has not installed… Hmmm, odd, thinks I, so goes over to the Desktop PC where my main iTunes installation for my iPhone is, plugged it in, and… Yay, success first time. It recognised it, downloaded a driver, then iTunes auto-opened and the adventure began…. By it synchronising every single one of my iPhone apps onto the iPad, even ones no longer installed but not deleted from my PC – so I now had 205 apps on my iPad, 130 of which I immediately deleted!

My First Impressions Of The iPad

Setup other than that went very easily. First impressions – it’s a delight to work on, and I can type almost as fast as I can on my main desktop keyboard using the onscreen keyboard.

Using The iPad Interface

You can tell a lot of thought has gone into the user interface again, as it’s so pleasant to work with – I find this a major factor when comparing iPhones and iPads to Androids and other smart phones. Apple put a lot of time into deciding how the user interface should act – how quickly pages turn, how smoothly you can slide though pics etc… which makes their products a joy to use. I’m no Apple fanboy, I hasten to add, I’m PC to the core! However, I try out quite a lot of gadgetry, and Apple mobile tech interfaces always seem so much more pleasant to use, like they put so much more thought into them than others.

I’ll report more shortly. Here’s to a long and fruitful relationship together, I think you and I are going to get on fine, Pad.

I might break my rules about naming tech, and give my new iPad a name… So far, I just call it Pad… What do you think I should call it?

Rob
That’ll do, Pad!

The site is currently under construction, while I wait for delivery of the iPad (est Shipping Date 7th June 2010). I live in the UK and they’ve only been available a few weeks – I preordered mine, but have to wait 3 weeks after launch for it to be shipped – boo!

When the iPad arrives, everything done on this site, that is possible to do via the iPad, will be done using the iPad. I already help business owners to use iPhones and Web Apps to break free from desk culture, and more effectively run their businesses – faster and cheaper – through web apps and iPhone apps. I do a lot of work with Google Premier Apps for small to medium businesses, too, so a big part of this site will be devoted to using the iPad in business, but there’ll also be a focus on non-business apps that allow you to manage your life more effectively.

At this point in time, my iPad is scheduled to be shipped in 3 days… so check back soon

Rob

That’ll Do, Pad

It’s pretty swarthy on your iPhone too!

If you are accessing the blog on your iPad, you’ll see a different home screen, with post ‘buttons’ to take you to any post within each blog category. If you’re reading landscape, I recommend you turn to portrait to read each post – you see much more text at once, like the iBooks app – well, kind of!

Rob