IOS printing via CUPS
iOS printing via CUPS - Mac OS X Hints
Haven’t tried this, but it looks interesting, especially for folks who’d like a free printing solution until Apple includes it in a future update.
The iPad Tour: Uploading Photos at 196mph!
I am currently writing this on the TGV high speed rail (at 196 mph!) in France, heading to Nice, after spending 3 weeks in the UK, and France, flying back home tomorrow (and with any luck, at bospdaug next Tuesday)
Before the trip, I did a lot of research on what software/hardware/config to use— and have been using the combination of running the camera in RAW+jpg mode, where I get a reduced size jpeg, as well as the raw output of the sensor, using the camera connection kit to upload from the sd card to the iPad, and on the iPad running PhotoGene for photo editing, and flickstackr for uploading jogs to my flickr page.
One of my goals for this trip was to shoot photos with my digital camera, and store, edit and upload photos using my only computer, the iPad. (Here’s a photo of Seamus and family just uploaded to flickr)
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| bospdaug UK |
I’ve also brought along two 16GB sd cards, and two 8GB cards for the camera. As you know, I have acquired local 3G cards in the UK, and France— however, I have uploaded to flickr mostly using local wifi, but sometimes with 3G, mainly in the UK where 3G is a lot cheaper! Truth be told, the iPad is a few bug fixes,and feature implementations away from being a true photagrapher’s tool for use with raw photos.
First, I have discovered there is a very nasty bug in the iPad photo app— it will regularly crash while downloading photos with the connection kit (and sometimes kernel panic with auto reboot)
This crash happens anywhere from 1-3 images into the download from the sd card to the iPad… and you’re then forced to have the photo app rescan your card again, which can take many minutes… But then occasionally it just magically works, and all is well. The trick is to just be patient, and keep retrying until all the photos are transferred.
About a third of the way through the trip, I used a friend’s MacBook to pull all the raw files off the iPad, and upload them to a server in the US using conventional transfer, but as of now, my 64GB iPad (mostly emptied of videos beforehand) is full.
While the iPad will store and transfer the raw files via iPhoto, or Lightroom, Apple does not provide an API to access the raw images on the device— so any photo app can only access the added jpg, or the crappy jpg in the .dng file, if you don’t configure for raw+jpg.
Photogene has been quite reasonable in tweaking images a bit (For example bring up the levels in the blacks in contrasty images, or crop a bit) but I find quite a bit of distortion added if the tools are applied more than just a little.
I think a iPad version of Apeture that supported raw mode, some image resizing, etc., would be the ultimate solution.
In the meantime, with a little patience, the iPad is quite useful, and viewing photos on the iPad screen while traveling is very nice indeed.
The iPad Tour: In France, It’s nice (necessary) To have friends
i write this from a 400 year old inn in Vence, France on my newly 3G local sim card enabled iPad. I’ve been in France since Monday, and without 3G since the Eurostar dropped into the chunnel, and my UK carrier equipped O2 iPad went out of range of the O2 network. iPad stuff in France
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“Welcome to the most expensive service in the world!” my UK friend Andre (who helped me get my O2 service last week) had trumpeted to me in a text message as I arrived at my first hotel stop in Nice, France, late Monday night (gleefully happy to tweak the French— apparently the hundred years’ war not yet quite over!)
There was more than a grain of truth to all of this— as I found out, getting local service of any kind was not so easy in France.
My plan was to continue in France what had worked in the UK— get a local sim card, this time from Orange, and instead of paying $100 for 100 megabytes from AT&T, get a decent USA sized chunk of service for many less euros, and fill in the gaps with my $7.95/mo Boingo wifi service.
What I quickly found out was that Boingo didn’t seem to work anywhere in France (their maps claimed otherwise) and Orange had a strange policy where 3G data could be used for anything other than e-mail!
… And one other small detail… to get a micro-sim of any kind in France, one must have a French bank account! (Why, said Andre, “because they’re French!”)
A good friend, from my contracting days for Digital Equipment (parts of which now known as HP), no longer a software developer, but a beekeeper, lives locally here in France, and offered to use his local credentials to get me online.
A little research, and we ditched Orange for SFR, which offers a 1GB ‘unlimited’ account for 29€. A short wait in line at SFR, some contracts signed, a sim password, and a cash transfer later, I’m now data enabled until my return to the USA in about a week and a half.
Setup was simpler— instead of applying through the app, it was done in store, with a sim pin. There is a no-term contract, which my friend has to cancel after I leave.
At dinner tonight, a woman at the next table (UK based photographer) upon seeing my iPad got up and walked over to my table, and asked if she could look at her website— which had just been converted to support the iPad.
“You must be mad for this iPad… Is the network always this slow?”
Mad perhaps, but frankly, I was glad to have any network at all.
The iPad Tour: O2+MS Mobile-AT&T=$$$
The iPad Tour is well underway. I have been in the UK since early Saturday AM, and have now scoped out (with some help from bospdaug’s Seamus, and the friend we’re staying with here) the correct way to roam with iPad data while in Europe. Originally, before leaving Boston, I had bought a small amount of wireless data from AT&T at an exorbitant price for both my iPad and iPhone, and also a very inexpensive wifi roaming plan from Boingo. Up until now, I’ve used the Boingo extensively, and the 3G, not so much. It is really painful, for example, to worry about megabytes, and for example, not to have Google maps at your disposal. Someone I asked for directions on the street yesterday pulled out their iPhone and said kind of dismissively: “This is so easy now, isn’t it?” Yes, if you have wireless data! After a lunch with Seamus, and some research online. I found that I could get a free micro sim card from O2 (iPad UK carrier) and then, with the help of a paper clip, and a little work, switch from AT&T to O2 for then duration of my time in the UK. Here’s how it all went down: First a visit to an O2 store in Tunbridge Wells, UK, where I described myself as a: “Roaming data refugee from the United States, looking to contribute some money to the UK Economy”. This went over well with the store staff, and the small crowd of teenaged girls who were watching my iPad from a distance, and whispering “brilliant!” to each other (apparently iPads are still rare here). I was handed an O2 Sim— and described some prices: £2 per day for 500MB, or £10 for 1GB, £30 for 3GB/mo. All of this beat $119 for 100MB, from AT&T international roaming, don’t you think? It all went slightly strange at this point, as the O2 staff at the store handed me a sim ejector, and asked if they could observe— …as none of the staff, nor the giggling teenagers in the corner had actually done what I was about to attempt, that is swap the SIM in an iPad for another service— EVER. So I swapped the SIM, and not a lot happened. There were now a few ‘Sim Applications’, available in ‘Carrier Settings’, none of them seemed to do much— and I was seemingly stuck. Just then, and this is not unlike the scene at the end of the original Star Wars, where Han Solo swoops in unexpectantly from the glare of the sun, and disables Darth Vader’s squadron, so Luke can destroy the death star— a young woman wearing a ‘Microsoft Mobile’ golf shirt walks into the store, on some other pretense, hears my conversation and says to me: “I used to work for Apple until recently, and I know how to do this, and I can help you” The trick is: Swap SIM card Sync with iTunes on your macto update carrier settings Get signed up on O2’s free wifi to connect online You now get a signup form option in your carrier settings (you need a UK address of some kind to make this work) and you’re off to the races, contributing £2 to the UK economy. Only one problem— my MacBook is back in Boston, 3000 miles away. No worries— there was an ‘iShop’, a kind of pseudo Apple store in the same mall as O2— connecting my iPad to one of their macs for a moment updated my carrier settings, and I could now deploy my credit card and 2£. I am all signed up, and using 3G on a train into Central London. I will get to try the same trick next Tuesday in Nice, France at Orange, the next leg of my journey.
BOSPDAUG MEETING, July 13th@MIT 3-133
On Tuesday July 13th at 7pm, MIT room (3-133, but possibly TBD), the Boston PDA User’s Group presents a discussion of general andunexpected PDA topics. The meeting is free, and open to all users of
handheld and PDA technology.
At the July meeting we will be following all the latest news and developments with ‘iOS’ devices, the rise of Android, the death of the Danger-inspired ‘Kin’ and many other topics of interest to you.
We should be in 3-133 now, but if not, there will be a room move notice left on the door at 3-133.
The Boston PDA User’s Group is an organization made up of those who choose to walk freely among us with handheld, palmtop and wireless computers. Formed in 1992, its goal is to connect with the newest and coolest mobile computer technology. BOSPDAUG meets on the second Tuesday evening of each month at MIT in Cambridge MA in MIT room 3-133 at 7pm, and welcomes users of all PDA platforms for lively discussions of handheld and PDA technologies.
WWDC Analysis at BOSPDAUG MEETING Tuesday June 8th@MIT 3-133
On Tuesday June 8th at 7pm, MIT room (3-133, but possibly TBD), the Boston PDA User’s Group presents a discussion of general and unexpected PDA topics. The meeting is free, and open to all users of handheld and PDA technology. With the Apple WWDC keynote happening on Monday, the 7th, there just may be something interesting to talk about during the meeting Tuesday night. Bospdaug, as always will cover this completely and try to make some sense of it all. The Boston PDA User’s Group is an organization made up of those who choose to walk freely among us with handheld, palmtop and wireless computers. Formed in 1992, its goal is to connect with the newest and coolest mobile computer technology. BOSPDAUG meets on the second Tuesday evening of each month at MIT in Cambridge MA in MIT room 3-133 at 7pm, and welcomes users of all PDA platforms for lively discussions of handheld and PDA technologies
My iPhone seems to be shrinking in my hand as we speak
Yes, I am now the owner of a new iPad 64GB 3g as of last Friday, the 30th, 6:30pm.
I have had almost a week with it now, and here is my story (so far).
My good friend Dr. Wu (her father taught Donald Fagen Kung Fu in Ohio back in the 70’s and she claims the song is named after him) and I decided to buy our iPads together— but we did not pre-order. We intended to become part of the ‘scene’ at the local Apple Store.
When we arrived at the store in Chestnut Hill MA at 6:30pm on Friday there was indeed a velvet rope line running about 150’ back from the door to the store… except there were no people actually in that line.
Where were the lawn chairs? The people selling their spots in line for $1000? The giddy fanboys? Camera crews, the funny hats?
What happened to ‘The Scene’?
Two Apple store employees at the door insured us that there had indeed been a ‘scene’ at 5pm— the line ran outside into the parking lot… but that had all passed and was done (I guess at that point we were the scene).
The Apple store prides themselves on providing personalized, friendly service— and there was plenty of that, but also something a little more subtle— an easygoing but firm ‘hard sell’ to try and convince you to buy additional things.
I got the hard press on MobileMe— even when I told them I had my own servers online, and indeed I run my own mail service they asked “How many servers do you have?” before finally giving up.
I suppose I prefer this kind of thing to going to a big box electronics store where the employees are untrained and clueless— but to some extent I found the whole experience just a little intrusive. They did convince me that it would be a better ‘deal’ to buy the keyboard today ($30 off bought with the iPad— is Apple a little worried about the screen keyboard?).
It was not all bad— the good side of all this was that they activated the device for me, walked me through adding the 3g service, and our devices had a full 100% charge when we walked out the door.
We were happy. Wallets lighter, but happy.
The iPad is everything that everyone else has said up to this point— I won’t beabor the point that it’s fast— very fast, slick, easy to use,and just the best personal web browsing experience you’ve ever had while lounging around your home.
3g adds to the iPad the extra benefit of providing the best Google maps experience you’ve ever had— a portable road atlas in a readable size.
In fact, anything with a map— weather, road, air traffic, package tracking is really, really slick on an iPad.
The first instinct you have after syncing your iPad to iTunes for the first time is to figure out which ‘iPhone’ apps you can update to ‘iPad size’ — as the compatibility is great— but the upscaling experience, not unlike watching standard definition TV on an HD set.
Here is my list of ‘must have’ apps for the iPad:
- At Bat 2010 — ($14.99) In game baseball stats, radio, and video highlights for every game, every team on a big, big screen.
- Goodreader for iPad — ($0.99) read all your PDFs on the iPad. This is pretty awesome.
- Netflix — (Free) If you have a Netflix account, Netflix on Demand on your iPad! (Columbo never looked this good)
- iSSH — ($9.99) full sized ssh terminal client. The iPad keyboard needs a ‘ctrl’ key in the right place!
- BBC News — (Free!) I find myself leaving this up during the day, and listening to the included ‘BBC World Service’ radio feed (in fact, I am listening to the BBC right now)
- Wundermap — (Free!) Weather underground full screen google mashup for iPad.
- Weather Bug Elite for iPad — (Free) weather maps, video forecasts.
- Weather Channel HD for iPad — (Free) data and video content from the weather Channel.
- Delivery Status Touch — ($4.99) full iPad sized package tracking. Cloud syncing of data for your mac, iPhone, and now iPad.
- Filterstorm — (Free) iPad sized photo editing app, and free too!
- Chess Wise Free — chess is great on a large screen.
- Marvel Comics - (Free) Andy Inhatko was right— comics are a killer app on the iPad!
- Night Stand HD — ($0.99) full screen clock and alarm for your iPad in its dock at night.
- iSip — ($5.99, but a free version that does not use your phone book) This is an ‘iPhone’ sized app… but if you have a SIP voip service account, you can make phone calls from your iPad (even on 3g). Google bought my favorite SIP provider— Gizmo5. Expect at some point that there will be SIP credentials you could use here.
There’s a whole class of apps to do flight tracking, air traffic, even shipping traffic in the harbor near you that I have spent time with as well, but are of not things you’d generally use, unless you were looking for that specific type of information. I think this class of app, truly delivering contextual data in real time, out in the field with a readily available, standardized hardware will be very important on this device.
The most interesting thing about having an iPad— As if I’ve been somehow irradiated by aliens in a bad 50’s Sci-Fi movie, my iPhone suddenly seems to be shrinking. When I take it out of my pocket and look at it, it is tiny in my hand.
It shockingly seems to shrinking perceptively smaller seemingly every time I use it.
How odd is that?
IPAD DEVELOPMENT at BOSPDAUG April 27th, MIT 3-133 (room possibly TBD)
On Tuesday April 27th at 7pm, MIT room 3-133 (room possibly TBD), the Boston PDA Developer’s Group presents a forum open to developers of all PDA platforms.
At the April meeting we’ll be looking at development for the iPad— either converting an existing app, or starting from scratch.
The Boston PDA Developer’s Group is an organization of professional and non-professional programmers for various PDA platforms including iPhone/iPod touch, Pilot, Danger and Newton. Our resident cabal of developers, responsible for many well known shareware and vertical applications for Pilot, (soon Phone/iPod Touch), Newton and other platforms are a ready knowledge base for your PDA development questions. We meet the fourth Tuesday of each month at MIT in Cambridge MA in MIT room 3-133, and welcome developers of all PDA persuasions. As always, our resident team of PDA experts can answer almost any question about the care and feeding of nearly any handheld platform, including iPhone, Android, Palm, Danger, Psion, Pocket PC and Newton. Check out the map on our website http://www.bospdaug.org for directions to MIT 3-133First iPad impressions
I visited the Natick Apple Store late this AM to see what the ‘scene’ might be like.
As one might expect the place was packed, and there is a gauntlet of blue shirted Apple Store employees who stop you at the door, and ask ‘Did you pre-order an iPad?” and if you did not, you get past the velvet rope into the store.
The front right corner of the store is abuzz with a very dense crowd intently working on demo iPads (all of which are stamped ‘demo, not for resale— can’t wait to find these on eBay someday).
There is a wait to get ahold of one, and while waiting for my turn (I was told I need to ‘elbow my way in’ ) I also found out that store employees did not see an iPad until 7am this AM.
Once I did get ahold of the device, it was kind of hard to put it down.
It’s as fast as described, and it just flows like butter. Web browsing is pretty effortless. If you’ve used an iPhone, or iPod Touch, you know instinctively the user experience, but it’s better— because the screen is big, and did I mention… it’s very fast. Fast. Pinch zooming is instantaneous. Intuitive.
Lo and behold— I can touch type of the thing. The only drawback, and if you are a touch typist, I think you know what this is— you can’t feel the keys, and therefore can’t look away while you type— but first minute, typing into the ‘Pages’ app, having to look at the keys, I ran at about 80% of my normal typing speed right out of the box.
With the iPhone it took me about a month to get to the point where I could ‘type without thinking’. This is going to be a lot better.
It’s heavier than you’d like it to be— heavy, not hugely overweight— not like it’s made out of depleted uranium, or full of lead ingots— but has some heft. Solid, quality build.
The original iPhone, and even the first iteration of the 3g phone seemed like a ‘1.0’ device. This, because of its iPhone/iPod touch lineage feels much more ‘finished’, complete.
A bunch of apps were pre-installed on the device. My main plan for the iPad will be to go around giving presentations with it, so I of course ran Keynote, and it was just pretty wonderful and intuitive to use.
The built in apps are all great, redone to take advantage of the device. The google maps app is especially wonderful, like having a live road atlas in your hands.
I found the experience of running iPhone/Touch apps much like watching NTSC standard def video on an HD flat panel. Fuzzy and not right. I’ve got to imagine that every app developer who is able (and I’m one of them) will be updating their apps to take advantage of the expanded screen real estate.
Kind of the feeling you get if you have an iPhone— you wonder how you got along without it, the iPad is going to be that kind of experience.
… and by the way, the woman at the door told me that if I wanted to buy an iPad, to come out and see her, so yes, as of 12:30pm this afternoon, Saturday, launch day, you could buy one, without having pre-ordered (at least at the Natick MA store).
I am though, waiting for the 3g version, but this is going to be quite good indeed.
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