In Memoriam

We all knew Steve Jobs' health couldn't have been good when he stepped down as CEO. But I was still shocked by news of his death - I had assumed he had on the order of six months left, not six weeks. I've never seen such a reaction to a celebrity death on my social networks. If nothing else, the man has been well-memorialized all over the web; here is a collection of my favorites. I've included my own story as just another user/fangirl after.

RIP Steve Jobs

The world can only hope that in his life he found other visionaries to carry on. It will be a less interesting place without his particular mix of creativity and business savvy.

Why jailbreak?

So far all I've said about jailbreaking is that I briefly screwed things up with IncarcerApp - but all was well once I deleted it. Not a ringing endorsement! But the truth is, JBing has given me control over a variety of features that make using my iPad easier and more enjoyable every day.

SBSettings/Activator - these sort of go hand-in-hand, and are generally suggested to be the first things you get from Cydia, as many other tweaks depend on them. Among other features, with SBSettings I can now swipe my status bar and get control of a variety of settings, like brightness and switching wifi on/off. (My iPad and router don't always agree, so being able to reset wifi with a touch is a huge improvement for me.) Also note in the screenshot below that my status bar shows not only the time but the date and how much memory I currently have free - also due to SBSettings!



Activator, on the other hand, allows me to assign meanings to a variety of actions - for example, a certain swipe on the screen brings up the task switcher bar, without the possibly-baby-waking noise of a double-press of the home button.

NoLockScreen - What it says on the tin. A lock screen makes sense on a phone to avoid embarrassing butt-dials. But when was the last time you hit the home or sleep buttons but didn't actually mean to turn on your iPad? If you're tired of sliding to unlock, here is your fix.

BrowserChanger - If you use a non-Safari web browser like Atomic or iCab (and if you don't, you should check them out), you're no doubt frustrated that links in all other apps still open in Safari. Fixed!

RetinaPad - Now we're getting into paid packages. You know how Apple cripples iPhone apps on the iPad, not allowing them to run at full resolution even when you hit the 2x button? They did this for an okay reason - to encourage developers to create real iPad versions of apps instead of just resting on their iPhone version. But now that the iPad is a bona fide hit, it's kind of silly to keep the pixelated mess - RetinaPad will fix that for you.

Dimmer - I actually just bought this tonight, and I don't know what I was waiting for! If you've tried to use your iPad in bed (say, during 2am baby feedings, not that we know anyone doing that right at this very moment...), you know that the brightness controls really don't go down that far. Dimmer lets you dim the screen as far as you like - and I am loving the results so far!

iFile - Direct access to your iPad's filesystem. Don't use this one unless you consider yourself clueful enough not to move or delete anything important! This has been really helpful to me in getting some word and excel files back and forth to DropBox from apps that don't let you do it directly. The downside is that I've discovered just how many apps don't really store your work in individual documents that can be easily moved around!

I've installed a few other packages, but these are the ones that I actually use regularly and that have a real impact on my iPad experience. Do you have any to suggest?

They didn't think their clever plan all the way through....

Somehow, browsing through random apps, I came across this one. The devs seem to have apps for several celebrities - Britney Spears, Nikki Minaj, etc. And Amy Winehouse.





This app promises all the latest on Amy Winehouse - her tweets, her new photos, her new YouTube videos!

Um. :^/

Well, clearly her death took the devs by surprise and they just haven't had time to pull (or at least update) the app, right?

Look closer....





This app was released over a month after her death.

*headdesk*

Better than the Website 2: Photobucket

Lots of sites have poorly-designed apps that just aren't necessary or useful considering how well the iPad browses the non-mobile-optimized web. But a few have apps that I even prefer to the website on a desktop browser.

The latest is for photo sharing site Photobucket. Although it has long been my photo host of choice (or at least, since Yahoo! Photos shut down), the website is slow, clunky, and cumbersome to navigate. In fact, I think I share fewer photos because it's just a pain to use.

The app may completely change my photo sharing habits. The interface is simple and sleek, photos load quickly, everything works smoothly and like you expect it to.




Icons in the top right let you navigate subfolders, upload and download pics to/from your iPad, and share the photos. When you are viewing a single picture, you get the familiar list of copy-and-paste options for sharing it on different types of websites.




I have yet to run into a single glitch or bug, though I've only been using the app for a day.

This is an especially great find for me right now, because with a new baby I've been looking for ways to streamline my photo taking/sharing. I have a small camera with an Eye-Fi card in the diaper bag, and the card uploads all pics both to my computer and a private folder on Photobucket. This app now makes it ten times easier and more convenient for me to sort through those uploaded pics, move the good ones to public folders, and share them with friends and family.

The one thing I would love to see in an update is the ability to select multiple photos in an album to perform batch actions like deleting and moving to another album. Currently these actions are only available as you view each photo. But even so, I'll take this app over the website any day!

iPad: Mommy's BFF

If a pregnant woman were to tell me she had a few hundred dollars to spend on something to make her life as a new mom easier, assuming she's already got all the standard baby stuff, my response would be: get an iPad, and no, I'm not joking.

Those first few weeks are tough. Not only aren't you sleeping much, but you're surgically attached to a growing, hungry baby for hours on end. Even when E wasn't actively eating, he was napping - but only so long as I held him and didn't move! The iPad quickly became my best friend and connection to the world. It's the perfect size to fit beside the baby in my lap - an actual laptop would be far too large and cumbersome. My case gives me several options for balancing the iPad with one or no hands free. And I have become a master of one-handed typing, which is FAR easier on the touchscreen than with a normal keyboard.

What have I been up to while baby E eats and sleeps?

- Reading parenting message boards
- Looking up breastfeeding advice
- Playing Pocket Frogs, Solitaire, Drop7, and Plants vs Zombies
- Posting to my blogs
- Shopping on Amazon
- Reading five million Cracked.com articles on FlipBoard
- Reading two million other articles on FlipBoard
- Watching Netflix (both on here and on the Wii, I admit)
- Using baby tracking apps to be sure he's eating and pooping enough
- Texting my sister for free
- IMing my husband at work
- Reading scholarly journal articles in Papers
- Reading Baby-Sitters Club books in Kindle
- Taking photos and videos of baby E
- Browsing for new apps
- Jailbreaking and tweaking my iPad
- And of course, figuring out how to work my diapers

You get the idea. He's nearly three months old now, and I'm spending a bit less of my day (and much less of my night, thankfully) sitting on the couch with him eating or sleeping on my lap. But it's still my main activity for several hours total out of each 24, and the iPad is still my best friend.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Ooooopsie

Well, I ran into my first JB problem. I installed IncarcerApp, which is supposed to let you turn off the home button at will - trying to iPad one-handed while feeding the baby, I often hit home by accident while holding the bezel.

I went in and turned it on... And my iPad promptly froze. I had to do a hard reboot (holding down both sleep and home buttons), but then I was able to go into cydia and remove the offender. No permanent damage! But it did remind me that I should really be backing up more often, especially before I install any JB apps that aren't well-known to be stable. But yeah, steer clear of IncarcerApp.

I do, however, have RetinaPad, SBSettings, Activator, BrowserChanger, and several other JB apps/tweaks running beautifully!