The Complete Guide to Managing iTunes Videos

This morning, I was wondering if it was possible to sort the videos and movies in iTunes into categories because they all appear on a single page on the iPad.

It seems iTunes only recently began supporting video organizational features, according to The Complete Guide to Managing iTunes Videos.

Skype 3G app released

Skype has announced an app that permits voice calls over 3G.

Called AppleCare for help with 3G activation

I have just finished calling Apple Support (talked to Jason) about the problem of being unable to activate the 3G connection on my iPad.

I was told two things (one of which really surprised me!):

1. The credit card billing address entered into the ipad has to be exactly what is on my statement (pretty sure it is);
2. The iPad requires Wifi connectivity and ports must be open to activate 3G.
   

Re. 1: Is there a reason the iPad does not pop-up a dialog box and inform me of this requirement when I have been trying to activate 3G without a Wifi conneciton for the past 3 weeks?!

Re. 2: The Wifi network I am on at work is behind a NAT, so it's likely my failure to authenticate is due to this.

More Apps Installed

I have installed a few more apps (free, or free for a day when I downloaded it) unless otherwise specified):

• The Human Genome at Ten (a free multi-media issue of Nature magazine)
• iDo Notepad (productivity) [deleted; couldn't edit past notes, puzzling interface]
  
• Stick Golf HD (game)
• Tower Madness (game)
• First Words Deluxe ($4.99 education spelling game for pre-schoolers)

I bought the Deluxe edition of First Words after downloading the Lite version and finding that it was quite excellent and the 4-year-old enjoyed it a lot. He still thinks it's a game and he hasn't figured out he's learning to spell words.

Update Jul 21: Some more games...

• Starship Shooter HD Lite
  
• Air War Lite [deleted; boring gameplay]
  
• ShipmatcH FREE (odd spelling) [deleted; over-sensitive controls, difficult and frustrating to operate, should have beginner settings]
  

The New Mass

This morning, my Dad asked me if I could download an app he read about called "The New Mass" ($.99) written by Cale Clark ,who is from Toronto.

The app can be used to learn the new responses to the Catholic Mass which will be introduced in 2011.

Last saturday, I showed my Dad iBooks and the iPod apps, after loading a variety of free books (the iPad Manual, Winnie the Pooh, and several free Project Gutenberg titles in Epub format, both from the iBooks store and directly from the web) and a selection of music (~1GB).

Aside: I would have downloaded the New Mass app except that 3G connectivity is still not working. Today, I kept getting a "Please try again message" after filling-in all the registration information in the first dialog box and pressing "Next".

Miyazaki on the iPad

Hayao Miyazaki comments negatively the iPad:

For me, there is no feeling of admiration or no excitement whatsoever. It's disgusting. On trains, the number of those people doing that strange masturbation-like gesture is multiplying.

I am a bit surprised.

Emacs (not) on the iPad

It doesn't look like Emacs will be available as an App on the iPad: the external keyboard doesn't send a few important keys; the Apple SDK license agreement prevents the distribution of apps outside the App store which conflicts with the GPL which requires the free distribution of source; and lastly there is the restriction of interpreters running on the iPad OS (I was hoping they would have made an exception for Squeak, but alas, no such luck).

I would have to jailbreak the iPad to natively install Emacs on it. But running it remotely is possible, if there was a decent terminal emulator; pterm seems to be crashy according to the comments on the iStore.

iPad and Kindle reading speeds compared

Jakob Nielsen performed an experiment comparing the reading speeds of an iPad and a Kindle to that of a book. The results were that both electronic devices were approximately 10% slower than a book.

I haven't used a Kindle, and I have yet to read an entire book on the iPad. I have loaded a few of the free Gutenberg Project titles: Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, The Three Musketeers in iBooks and I loaded The Hobbit and Neuromancer as PDFs.

I prefer the iBook interface to the PDF interface because the text can re-flow as the font-size is increased or decreased. I tried using Calibre to convert a text to ePub and it was very confusing to use.

Given a choice, I would still buy a solid book over the digital version because I can read it "anywhere", make annotations and notes (hand-written in a Post-It inside the front cover) and because there is currently no technology that matches the clarity of printed typography. I can also lend the printed book friends and family.

Coincidentally, last Saturday's Globe and Mail Focus and Books section, had an essay on the encroachment of the digital world into the traditional paper world and how it affects book collections and their collectors. Though the essay does make the usual point about digital books being unreadable in subsequent decades, it fails to point out that the content of digital books is far easily searchable that that of their solid brethren.

Activated 3G (Tried to, but Failed)

Last night, I activated a 3G cellular account with Rogers via Settings >Cellular >View Account on the iPad. The final dialog box said that the account had been successfully created and and I would be contacted later (via email or maybe via telephone?).

I have not yet received a reply. It is understandable as it is a holiday today.

I expected it to just work and that I would have connectivity immediately.

Update Jul 2: No response from Rogers Support other than an automated email. Still no 3G.
At this stage I don't know if my credit card will be billed, so I don't really want to try again unless I can get confirmation on that.