Thought Garage

Finally here is a Blogger application on iOS devices. Primarily its an iPhone (iPod) application but can be run on iPad as well. Google announced the app on the blog and you can download the app from the App Store .  Read more about the announcement and features here :  Blogger Buzz: Announcing the Blogger app for iOS .  Here are a couple of quick screenshots from iPhone using the Blogger app. List of Posts Composer Screen Glad, they made it compatible with all iOS devices by making it compatible on iOS 3.2+. The work flow is smooth and intuitive to work with. However, the composer doesn't support rich text, so you will see all HTML markup when you are trying to update an existing post. But big deal for me is it makes life lot easier now to post pictures directly to Blogger blog. Emailing a picture wasn't working as Blogger has difficulty in parsing images embedded in emails.

Here's What an iPad Looked Like in 1994 http://allthingsd.com/20110813/heres-what-an-ipad-looked-like-in-1994-video/ It's quite strange, it took almost another 15-16 years for iPad. If it had been successful some how right then, imagine what 15 years of iterations and evolution could have done to the whole tablet market. Glad at least, Apple made it real this time. 

This is the picture of an Amazon Kindle, I enjoyed for a really very short time before returning it today. May be a remarkable gadget on its own and may have been the most popular product on Amazon, but I found in a short amount of time I held it in my hands that its not for me. After spending a significant amount of time on my first generation iPad, Amazon Kindle felt like a feather, almost weight less. Give it to contrast theory.  But that was the only thing I really liked it. It is much smaller than it looks. Its Paper like screen, crisp font and little keyboard are nice but nothing impressive. I normally don’t go to a beach or sit in the backyard and read books in broad day light. I wish I could. But with a toddler in the family, only time you get to skim through a book is once kids go to bed. So, ability to read in a broad day light isn’t a feature for me. Moreover, lack of backlit display was indeed a big drawback. May be if you are reading colorless fiction, its black an...

I have been thinking for a while to learn and develop iOS applications but has been putting off due to other commitments. Last week I have finally decided to take the plunge and get started. I am planning to post my travelogue with notes and links to resources of this exciting journey on this blog.  Join or subscribe to RSS Feed or by Email if you are interested. Courses & Resources After few hours of watching and reading various content available, I found that there is no place better than the Apple : iOS Dev Center to get started with developing iOS Applications. There are tons of content ranging from working samples,developer guides to full length WWDC videos delivered by none other than Apple’s own engineering staff. If you prefer a class room style, with a prescribed direction and outline, here are some courses I found on iTunes that are teaching or have taught iOS development. Stanford University CS193p : Developing Apps for iOS (Fall 2010) CS193p: iPhone Applic...

What an amazing concept and implementation. Probably the BEST application on iPad. The Flipboard application on the iPad can create a stunning and truly delightful magazine from any Twitter feed (or Facebook for that matter).   It looks at a tweet, access the URL and compose the original article in a beautiful magazine format. It also picks up images from the article and arranges them in various magazine formats.   If the tweet is not referring to an URL, then it nicely composes the tweet like a quote in a magazine. A little intro to the  Flipboard for iPad. Introduction to Flipboard for iPad Take a look at a couple of awesome screenshots of the Magazine created from Twitter feed of @inspions.

After a few hours with the iPad, I realized that I was feeling a sensation I'd only remembered once before: back in 1995 when someone showed me the World Wide Web. There's no dramatic new technology, we've seen tablets before just as we'd seen hypertext before. But the overall package was game-changer. I don't know if the iPad will be The Device, but I do think that this kind of device will make huge difference to how we read and watch things in the future Source : http://martinfowler.com/bliki/iPad.html

As per Nielsen report, Kindle owners are more wealthier, older and educated compared to younger and majorly male  iPad owners. Source : Nielsen

Chris Anderson and Wired offer yet another riveting conclusion (sounds like a prediction for some of us) that the Web as we know is dead as we are getting more and more connected on the internet with apps and devices. You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone. -- The Web Is Dead. Long Live Internet, Wired I agree 100%, as it is just a fact for how I consume content on the internet. Almost (99%) everything I do on the internet is done through a custom application (mostly on iPhone and iPad) rather on the web. Active Learning Suite In fact the applications I have been building as part of Active Learning suite exemplify the same conclusion about web.  Active Player lets you enjoy and learn from your favorite videos and podcasts without ever visiting a single web page. If a website doesn’t offer an RSS Feed, you can create your own RSS Feed of any content available on the internet with Active Feeds and help the rest of the world...

Well, I haven’t bought an iPad. But I can fancy looking my blog, Thought Garage on iPad through iPadPeek.com .  I believe, true innovation of iPad lies in the user experience interacting with site, by physically holding the ‘magical’ piece; definitely not the way it looks. For that matter, its the same Safari Browser that renders a page. Having said that, what’s the point of this post?, Well, just want to say, I wish I already had an iPad. Trust me, this is my first ever blog post on iPad. The picture looks awesome though, with a wide black border.

iPad is now official and awesome. And in my view, there are two categories of products that will suffer a great deal if not completely get ignored in the market: Netbooks and e-Book readers (like Kindle) .  iPad will be a real break-through not because hardware (despite gigantic touch screen) or for software, but for great and intuitive user experience in consuming content. Finally, consuming content on web feels like reading a book or magazine, close to your heart. Something I always wanted. Hmm, I will be poor by at least another $500. The fact that any of those 140K apps that run on iPhone or iPod touch run on iPad without any modification is quite irresistible. And for those who already have an iPhone or iPod touch, using iPad is just natural and hence nothing exciting. It not only looks and feels like a gigantic iPhone or iPod touch, but powered by the same software core.