November 2010 Apps

These are the Apps installed in November:

• Pulse (feed reader, prone to crashing; deleted!)
• FeeddlerRSS (Google feed reader;  my review)
• Alarm Clock (lovely digital clock with local weather conditions, alarm clock functionality as long as this app is running then the iPad goes to sleep (pre-4.x), wake to customizable alarm sounds or iTunes music in pro version; discreet Google ads in free version can be dismissed at startup) 
• World Without Photoshop (interactive book features artists who use Photoshop and showcases their artwork with a time-lapse animation showing the art from start to finish)
• CBC Radio (if you missed a radio show, you can catch it with this app)
• Craft Finder (instructions for making holiday themed crafts for children of all ages)
• Helloflower (3D flower modeling)

These are game Apps; mostly from the Free App A Day site:

• GravBot
• Sherlock (difference-finding game)
• Mr. AahH!
• Rocket Bird
• Uconnect (join the dots by drawing lines without repeating a path)
• Train Conductor
• Train Yard
• Toy Shop EB
• Santa's Village (13 games in one; hangman, tic-tac-toe, etc.)
• Super Laser (scrolling space-alien themed shooter; I am enjoying playing this one)
• Radiant HD (scrolling space shooter with retro graphics)
• MX Mayhem (side-scroller motorcycle riding with rag-doll physics)
• Cut the Rope Lite

Update: The "Compose" mode of Blogger doesn't work on the iPad Safari browser so my first version of this post was plain text (I was not going to type HTML on the iPad keyboard, though I was sorely tempted).
Update 2: added link to my Feeddler review.

Watch TV Alone, Together

The yap.TV app allows you to make TV-watching in your living room a global social event.

3G Data Usage, First Month

With two days remaining in the first month of the 3G data plan, my iPad's data-usage was 449MB/5GB. I guessed correctly that the 250MB plan would have been insufficient. My guess was solely based on the novelty of having internet access-- I was expecting around 1GB of usage.

This usage is mostly reading a few newspapers in Safari, using the BBC News app, an occasional visit to the Wikipedia and browsing JCrew, LCBO and Sears.

I just installed the NASA app and showed my Dad around the NASA Image of the Day, the Astronomy Picture of the Day and the videos. Since it has NASA TV, there should be some bandwidth usage increase for next month.

Hopefully, there won't be problems watching the Nov. 1st launch of the last Shuttle, STS-133.

Netflix Streaming in Canada

Netflix streaming arrived in Canada this week.

There is a one month free trial and unlimited streaming (but technically limited by your usage-cap) for $8 per month on a variety of devices, including the iPad. There seems to be a very limited number of shows to watch, compared to the offerings in the U.S.

It was not without a few controversies: it seems actors were hired to portray passer-bys excited by Netflix and these actors were subsequently interviewed by the press for quotes. The CEO of Netflix apologized for a joke he made about self-absorbed Americans.

(Coincidentally, Blockbuster, DVD rental company, filed for bankruptcy in the US.)

More Apps (August)

Latest Apps I've installed:

• Virtuoso (piano keyboard)
• GraphBook (interactive plots)
  
• KJV Bible (allows additional translations to be purchased and has the ability to display and scroll two translations side-by-side)
• Holy Bible (deleted; many free Bible translations, but the fonts render poorly)
  
• Planets (has nice animations of rotating planets), GoSkyWatch (has compass) (astronomy)
• Panzer Class (physics puzzles)
• Cat Physics (similar to Angry Birds)
• Oven Break Lite (side-scroller, popular with the young kids)
  
• Chess Free (ads at the bottom, considering deleting), War Chess [deleted; extremely buggy] (animated humanoid chess pieces with placement hints)
  
• Mahjong Lite
• Gravitarium (interactive zen)
• Air Master (spaceship flight simulator, objectives are confusing)
• Cogs HD Lite (puzzle game)
  

Oh, Bother

Here I will collect a list of things that bother me, that could use improvement or that should be customizable on the iPad:

• Calendar: in month-view, the numbers are a) too small, b) low-contrast (light-grey on white); I would like the numbers to be bigger (there's no reason they can't be rendered in the background of each cell and the appointments for that day overlayed on top of them translucently). Update: Jul 1, 2010. Apple requested a screenshot be added to the bugreport.
• Movies: when I click on a movie, it opens an intermediate window with an informational screen on the left and the poster frame on the right. I would prefer if the movie started playing, bypassing the informational screen entirely, if there is no supplemental information available (I don't really care what the movie pixel-resolution is).
• Settings: In Calendar settings (IIRC) my timezone was set to Cupertino; the iPad has GPS, it should know where it is at all times. If I hadn't browsed through all the settings, I wouldn't have noticed it.

Jun 25, 2010

• Settings: Wallpaper: It would be nice if I could customize the lockscreen wallpaper with the contents of an album so a new, different image from the chosen album would appear every time the iPad was switched on.

Jun 28, 2010

• iPad: Battery-charge Indicator: When I asked my dad whether the iPad needed charging, he didn't know. I had to point out the location of the battery-charge indicator on the home screen.

Jul 1, 2010

• Calendar: "Page turning" feature request: I often find myself reaching for the bottom right of the calendar in month view and trying to turn the page to look at the next month. So I submitted a feature request. Update Jul 2, marked as duplicate by Apple.