ipad posts

Find My iPhone/iPad is one terrific benefit of MobileMe. In fact, to me, it is the best part of the service. For an Indiana man, the ability to find a missing iPad worked as it should, but too late to do much good.

Here's the depressing story. One of our readers was moving stuff into his car with his Dad. With hands full, Dad put the iPad on the hood of the car. Then the pair drove off, leaving the iPad in the street. When our reader discovered the missing iPad he went straight to MobileMe, and the service dutifully located the iPad a few blocks away.

The police assumed the iPad was stolen, and as they searched the apartment building where the location was, the police asked the owner to send a sound to the iPad so it could be found. They did locate the iPad, and the guy who had it said he found it in the street and was going to try to find the owner the next day.

The iPad had been run over while it was in the street, and the case didn't look too spiffy, but amazingly the iPad still worked well enough to contact MobileMe servers, but the screen was cracked and not displaying anything.

Lessons #1: don't leave your iPad on the top of a car. It's unlikely to stay there. Lesson #2: Find My iPhone really does work. Lesson #3: the iPad can "take a licking and keep on ticking," as the watch commercials used to say.

Check the gallery for Find My Phone in action and the grim results.

Thanks to Jack K. for sending us his tale of woe

Here's an interesting way to use 9 iPads. Photographer Jesse Rosten mounted the set on several pieces of plywood, maxed out the brightness on each and had assistants move then around while he shot his model. In fact, the iPad arrays were the only light sources for this particular shoot.

Was it a publicity stunt? Of course (and well done). But watch the video after the break. The photos came out well! We hope Jesse borrowed the iPads because 9 x $499 is $4,491. Still, it was a fun idea with nice results. Good work, everyone.

If the name Jesse Rosten sounds familiar it's because we recently featured his awesome "iPad + Velcro" film. Now we're eager to see what's next.

iBiomed is not for everyone. It's a niche app designed for detailed tracking of care management for patients with complex medical conditions, such as autism. Once set up (and that can be a bit daunting), a care-giver can take control of everything related to the care of a patient. iBiomed is totally flexible, allowing a user to input all pertinent information and keep historical track of everything involving the patient. It can send push alarms, too, when it's time to administer the next dosage of any supplement, medicine, or test. That just scratches the surface of what this amazingly-flexible, multifaceted, and free app can do.

Walking you through its functions will give you a good idea of just how detailed and important this app can be for care-givers. You start by creating a patient profile, including name, birth date, and sex. From there, you fill in information about the treatment history of the patient. Beginning with diagnoses, you can enter information for each one, be it autism, allergies, or any other problem. Descriptions can be added for each condition.

Next, using a summary treatment screen, you can enter information which details required supplements, medicines, tests, diets, and alternative treatments. Once you get the hang of entering one topic, which is detailed and can take some time, it gets easier since most of the input modules are quite similar. For example, when entering supplements, the required information includes the name of the supplement, the start date, what quantity comprises a dose, and the dosing frequency. A stop date is optional, and any notes you would like to enter are also optional. The same is true for medicines and a number of other items. Each item needs to be input and saved individually, which can take some time.

This is very cool -- Beautiful Modeler is a software tool used between an iPad and a MacBook above to gesturally sculpt a 3D model using the iPad's touchscreen. As you can see, the iPad works as a controller for the app running on the MacBook, and not only is touchscreen information passed on to the 3D modeling program (I like that multitouch works as well, so you can mold five different points in the sculpture at once), but accelerometer information is also passed across, so tilting the iPad around also tilts the onscreen view.

The source code for the project is readily available on the site, and while the gesture control currently hooks up to just one kind of form modeling, technically you could hook this up to any 3D sculpting program and sculpt away. The app even outputs a special 3D format that can be connected directly into a 3D printer, so you can make a form with the iPad and the modeling app, and then turn it into a real 3D object by printing it out.

Very impressive. Even Apple probably never envisioned using the iPad as this kind of interface, but that's what happens when you have such a relatively cheap and powerful touchscreen computer available to almost anyone.

South Korea's KT Corporation will begin taking iPad pre-orders "this week." Initially banned by the Korea Communications Commission, the iPad eventually passed inspection and has been highly anticipated by customers. KT Corp. hopes to begin shipments in November. All models will be sold, though a firm release date was not available as of this writing.

Meanwhile, KT Corp. competitor SK Telecom is preparing to release the Galaxy Tablet. SK holds about half of the country's wireless market. The heat will be on in South Korea when this tablet battle commences.

[Via The Mac Observer]

British photographer David Sims is rumored to have been shooting a TV ad for the next generation iPad in New York City recently. According to 9to5 Mac, the shoot took place at Pier 59.

As with most rumors, details are few and far between. Sources say that current-model iPads were used in the shoot, which will be replaced in post-production. Apparently security was very tight and all participants were required to sign non-disclosure agreements (you can see how well that worked).

After the break you'll find a video of an ad David shot for perfume. It's certainly got an old-school iPod ad feel to it, yes?

Viz Media, LLC introduced its first iPad app this past week, Viz Manga, and it's something that I've personally waited a long time to see.

I've been a manga fan for years, ever since I saved my allowance as a teen to buy $18 copies of Ranma 1/2 in the mid-90s. A good section of my bookcase is devoted to volumes in both English and the original Japanese.

As, first, the Kindle, then the iPad were introduced, I looked at both of these devices as not only a more convenient and cost-effective way of obtaining more series, but also as a chance to hopefully cut down on the frequent pirating that goes on in the manga (and anime) world. Hundreds will take the latest chapters of well-known, licensed series, such as Bleach and One Piece, then translate and release the chapters online within days of the Japanese release. While Viz, one of the larger companies out there, has taken strides toward getting chapters of the English releases done at the same time as the Japanese, it's not fast enough for a very picky community that wants their fix before the releases have even hit the printing press.

There is manga out there that's available for the Kindle and iPhone, but these are niche titles. TOKYOPOP took a step in the right direction of making more mainstream work available by releasing Hetalia through the comiXology app. Dark Horse introduced more digital content in October, but that focused more on traditional comic books than their manga titles. There is also an iPad app coming from Yen Press. But by Viz opening its own store on the iPad, we're finally getting to see the mainstream manga releases like Bleach, Naruto, Dragon Ball, and more in a legal, digital format, and I couldn't be happier.