Pronounced Dead

John

Here, now, 48 short months after the last signs of life, I, John R. Perfect, pronounce this blog dead.

It lived a good and full life It was never very useful (or good), and you can now find slightly more useful content from me elsewhere.

I’m trying a new writing project here: AppendOverwrite.com

I’m posting some doodles here: BeardedOnion.com

I occasionally tweet here: @johnrperfect

I can always be found here: JohnPerfect.com

The PSDigital brand (such as it is) is also being demoted to a more utility level function in my nearly non-existent online existence.

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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Gadget Expiriment, Update 0

John

Here’s a quick update on life without a laptop:

I miss my ThinkPad. Sure, I like my iPad a lot and it’s an amazing piece of tech, but it is much more of a consumption device than a creation device. Yes, I know you create content with it (I’m typing a blog post on it now), but it’s sort of like using a large wrench to drive in a nail. You can probably get the job done, but it would be a nicer experience all around if you had a hammer.

I do have an app recommendation. Gusto is an HTML Editor with syntax highlighting, FTP/SFTP support, and more. It’s been reliable and easy to use for me and if you do work in HTML I suggest you take a look at it.

$9.99
iTunes link here.

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.

Experiment: Can Gadgets Take the Place of a Real Computer?

John

I’ve started an involuntary experiment. I’m going to see this week how well an iPhone, an iPad, and a Droid Incredible replace a Core i5 ThinkPad.

The fan on my T410 went kaput (my sympathies to those who bought t410s last spring, it seems they had a bad batch of fans) on Saturday, so by the time I get my computer back I should have a good idea of how useful these gadgets are, or, rather how limited they are.

I can type fairly fast on my iPad, but not as fast as on my ThinkPad… I so far have put off doing any HTML coding and I’ll probably give in and do it on my desktop at work rather than attempt it on this.

Anyway, I’ll post later to let you know how it went.