Category: tech

My Top 5 iPad Apps

John

I was talking with a friend about my iPad use the other day and in the course of the conversation I came up with a list of the apps I use most on the iPad. (this list is not ranked)

iPadTop5

1) OneNote

I use OneNote on every computer and device I own. the iPad app is somewhat limited, but overall OneNote is the best digital notebook available in my opinion.

2) GoodReader

GoodReader seems to be without peer in the mobile and tablet world. It is the best PDF reader I’ve found, with amazing annotation functions, page spreads, left-to-right page scroll, and more. It also opens MS Word docs (read-only), images, and zip archives.

3) Bible

I use two Bible apps fairly heavily, the YouVersion and Olive Tree apps. Both offer many downloadable versions. YouVersion has more free versions available offline and has a cleaner interface, but Olive Tree has better search and left-to-right page scrolling. I think I use YouVersion a bit more than Olive Tree.

4) Flipboard

Flipboard is an amazing news reading app. it’s hard to explain, but it is something like a customizable digital magazine. Flipboard curates some streams based on subject or you can add any RSS feed, Twitter stream, or Google+ …um.. stream (or whatever it’s called).

5) iBooks

I dump EPUB books into iBooks which is a decent ereader.

Honorable Mentions

I didn’t include any of the built in apps, but I use the Safari browser and the Mail app a lot.

Dropping iCloud

John

I decided this week to drop iCloud, so I needed to find new solutions for syncing Contacts, Calendars, Tasks/Reminders, and Notes across my devices.

I’ve ended up with the following:

Contacts

I moved my Contacts to my main Google account and I sync them with Outlook on my laptop via GO Contact Sync Mod, with my HTC phone via the built in Android People App, and with my iPhone and iPad via Exchange ActiveSync (instructions).

Calendar

I moved my calendar to Google Calendar. I sync GCal with Outlook on my laptop via Google Calendar Sync, with my HTC phone via the built in Android Calendar App, with my iPhone and iPad via Exchange ActiveSync (instructions).

Tasks/Reminders

For my tasks I’ve moved to Wunderlist (link). It’s very simple (which means slightly limited), but free and available on Mac, Window, iOS, Android, and online. There’s no ability to create recurring tasks currently, but if I have a recurring task I make a recurring event on my calendar anyway.

Notes

I’m a Microsoft Office user and I love the flexibility of OneNote. I started using the mobile OneNote apps a while back and it has become my go-to notes app everywhere. OneNote ships with all Microsoft Office 2010 suites and there’s a free WebApp at SkyDrive.com. Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad) versions are available free. (Notes: 1). The first couple versions of OneNote for iOS were horrible, but the current one is quite usable. 2). The mobile apps are free unless you want to sync more than 500 notes).

Gmail Struggles

John

I’m a pretty big fan of Gmail (yes, I know, the Gmail Man is reading my email), but I was having some problems this evening. I went to check my mail on my iPad and I got an error message saying “Cannot Access Mail” and saying the the username or password was incorrect.

I freaked out a little bit thinking maybe my account got hacked or something, but I was able to log in fine on the web.

I’m still not sure what the cause was, but I did find a fix; go to this site, enter your password, and fill out the captcha. Viola! you can IMAP your Gmail.

Thanks to shaheerk over at the Google support forums for this fix.

 

I know it’s been a while since I posted, but that is one benefit of having no readers; it doesn’t matter how long I go between posts.

Efficiency Tip: Use Alt+Tab

John

Here is a little tip that you may find to be useless (if you already use it or you are one who never lets go of your plastic rodent) or amazingly helpful:

In Windows you can use the key combination ALT+TAB to easily switch between running applications and open windows. If you tap the key combo you simply flip over to your previous app or window. If you hold down the ALT key (hold down ALT, tap TAB, and continue to hold down ALT) you get a window that gives you clickable previews of all your running apps. You can keep tapping the tab key to cycle through the apps or just click the one you want.

 

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Windows Automatic Updates (Free Reboot Included)

John

Do you ever get tired of your PC rebooting all on its own because it updated and decided it would reboot now instead of waiting for you to tell it to? Every once in a while I would  unlock my laptop to sync my netcasts for the morning commute and see that none of my apps were running. For the most part I never lost work and usually my nightly download of Tech News Today had finished downloading before iTunes closed and the PC rebooted, but it’s still annoying.

For those who are also annoyed by this you can drop a key in the registry so that Windows Update will never force an unattended reboot if a user in logged in.

You need to dig down to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows and add a new key named WindowsUpdate. Under WindowsUpdate we need another new key named AU. Under the AU key you need to create a new DWORD Value named NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers. This Value needs to then be set to 1.

So you will end up with the following: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU and a DWORD key named NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers with a value of 1

Remember, playing in the registry can be dangerous and just because I did something doesn’t mean it wasn’t stupid and/or dangerous.

Thanks to Paul Thurrott, Editor-in-Chief of the SuperSite for Windows at winsupersite.com and the author of many fine tomes including the Delphi 3 SuperBible.

You can read Paul’s guide for fixing this here.

Dealing with Death (the Blue Screen Sort)

John

The other day at work I was attempting to install Win XP Pro on a refurbished system from Dell. I bought the system without an OS because we had licenses available under our Volume Licensing agreement with Micro$oft. I was extremely annoyed to find that the system (an Optiplex 755) kept blue screening very early in the setup process. I tried multiple discs, multiple disks, and swapped out the RAM, but no joy. I would get to the point where the install CD asks what you want to do and where you want to do it and {BANG} blue screen…

The problem? In the BIOS the Hard Drive Controller was configured as “ACHI”. After switching the controller mode to “Compatibility / IDE” everything was great. Simple problem, simple fix (once I knew what to do).

If you are getting the BSOD while installing Windows XP on a no OS system, double check the HD controller settings. It may make your day just a little bit better.

NOTE: If you are installing Vista or 7 you don’t want the SATA operation to be IDE/Compatibility/Legacy

Thanks to OceanMaster over at the kioskia.net forums for helping me out with this one.