On Monday, my wife, Leanne, completely surprised me with an iPad. I had convinced her to go to the Apple store, so I could finally get a chance to at least try out the gadget I had been somewhat obsessed with for the past week or so. She made me promise not to buy one. I said that’d be fine, as I was planning on doing at least a few more weeks of research before really contemplating purchasing one because that’s how I think.

We arrived at the Apple store, and I beelined right toward the iPad display, selecting one in an empty corner so I wouldn’t be interrupted. My wife, who was carrying around our 11 month old son, Maddox, at the time, said she was going to take him for a walk to keep him occupied. I nodded absentmindedly, already completely engrossed with the iPad. At some point (I can’t say when as I honestly lost track of time) she stopped by and asked how it was going and that I should have at least a few more minutes before our son got fussy. I said a quick “Ok!” and she disappeared again.

Then a minute or so later she came by with a bag, and asked if I could hold it so she could carry our son more easily. I said sure and took the bag and placed it next to the iPad I was playing with. Then this sequence of thoughts took place all over the course of about two seconds:

• I hope since I took the bag she can hold Maddox for a bit longer
• I wonder what she bought? I didn’t think she needed anything
• This is a funny looking bag
• This is an Apple store bag
• What did she buy from the Apple store? She usually asks me about computer stuff she needs
• Is she still standing next to me?
• Why does she have that grin on her face?
• What is that rectangular shape in this page?
• What is in this bag?
• WHAT IS IN THIS BAG?

At that point I pretty much hyperventilated and Leanne had to carry me out of the store. She laughed about how easy it had been to purchase it behind my back since I was so completely absorbed with testing it out.

Form Factor

When I first picked up the iPad, I was surprised at its weight. This wasn’t my dad’s Kindle (it’s about twice as heavy). The weight isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. It feels substantial and far from cheap, and I have yet to really get tired holding it up.

Holding the iPad certainly takes some getting used to, and I’m sure is a technique people will perfect as time goes by. Not having a set way to use it though can be a benefit, as I’ve found you can use it in almost any position (laying down on your stomach, on your side, reclining, sitting up, standing). Most of those positions are impossible with a laptop, if anything because of the odd ways you have to contort your wrist to use the mouse.

It also takes a bit of getting used to holding this with your fingers on the screen. I personally treat my monitors as pristine surfaces that must never be touched by bare human flesh, so it’s certainly a change in mentality to just grab the iPad with my hands.

The size is also a bit odd in terms of portability. I’d like to be able to bring the iPad to the mall when my wife spends 30 minutes looking at baby socks. But it’s an odd size for that – too big to fit in even an oversize pocket, but too small for it to fit into a normal sized backpack type bag. I have seen demos of bags with straps made specifically for the iPad, but they look a bit … odd.

OS

This thing is incredibly fast, smooth, and stable. It’s the first of many reasons why I think a locked-down, controlled environment like the iPhone OS can be a good thing.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t find the lack of multitasking to be a huge deal. It would be nice on a client call to have Safari open and be able to take notes at the same time, but that’s the only time I’ve wished for multitasking.

Display

This thing is freaking gorgeous. I did not expect to be so bowled over by this screen, but it’s like nothing I have ever used before. The brightness and colors in everything from photos to videos to comics is just truly outstanding. The fact that you can also view it easily even from a severe angle is really nice.

I had a chance to use the iPad outside on Wednesday when it was very bright and sunny. There’s certainly some glare and reflection when outside in sunny weather. It’s more of a distraction though than a hinderance, in terms of being able to see what is on the screen. And after a few minutes of reading, I got pretty used to it.

Plus, I would much rather be able to use this unassisted in the dark and sacrifice some outdoor use to do so (compared to the Kindle). I read in bed at night much more than I do outside.

Battery

Astounding. I got the iPad on Monday, and charged it last night for the first time – and it was still only at 47%. Of course that wasn’t four days of extremely heavy use, but that’s not the point. The point is that I need to charge my iPhone every day even if I don’t use it, because by the next morning I’ll be down to 10% or 20%.

It’s not just my iPhone that requires a lot of charging though. My MacBook Pro does as well, and while that handles standby much better, I use my computer enough to need to plug it in usually every night. That didn’t used to be a big deal, until I had a kid, who beelines for the power cord and loves ripping it out of the laptop.

I think the fact that I can go nearly a week of light use without having to charge is amazing and really adds a lot to the usefulness of the iPad.

Apps

The Apple promotional videos do a good job of demonstrating how well things like Mail and Safari perform on the iPad. While I normally use the Gmail interface for all my mail, I currently have to choose between either the iPhone mobile version, which feels like I’m wasting space, or the desktop version, which I feel lost with without keyboard shortcuts. The nice HTML5 interface is only available for actual gmail.com addresses, not Google Apps. So I’ve been using Mail and have been really happy with it, especially in landscape mode.

Of my few complaints about the iPad, and one of the things I’m sure I will pay for by being an early adopter, is lag you can get in Safari when scrolling a large webpage with lots of images. I’ve only noticed it on one site (Gizmodo), but it just feels so … unlike Apple. So when the next version of the iPad comes with twice the RAM, I’ll be kicking myself a bit. But it’s only a slight annoyance, and doesn’t really effect my actual web browsing much.

Personal Use

So here’s the most important part. It’s something that will differ greatly between people, but I also think is one of the most important part of any iPad review, as people are still discovering how this piece of technology fits into their lives.

This is my typical iPad day:

Early Morning: I wake up from the alarm on my iPad (appropriately enough). I check to see if any mail, Facebook messages, Twitter DM’s, etc came in overnight, and then lookup the weather. Same things I did with my iPhone, though a bit more pleasant as I don’t have to squint with my sleepy eyes.

After I get ready for the day, I sit down for breakfast. This is where I truly love my iPad, as I’m able to fully enjoy the New York Times. I used to read this on my iPhone, but that felt like a very cramped experience for any newspaper. I’ve also tried watching NBC Nightly News from the night before, which I download via iTunes. I’ll catch up on Twitter and then use the beautiful Calendar app to check my schedule for the day.

Noon: Every day for lunch I go down to our conference room and read for a half hour. I used to do this on my iPhone. Now I do it on my iPad, and it is such a nicer experience. I can actually lay the iPad flat on the table and still read it while keeping it a safe distance away from my lunch. This is something I could not do with my iPhone.

Also, I can see myself watching more videos via Netflix or the ABC app, something I never bothered with on the iPhone’s tiny screen. I also occasionally play a game like Plants vs Zombies when I’m not in a reading mood, and that’s again where the iPad really shines.

Evening: This is where I’m using the iPad most – something I’m very surprised at. In fact, the first week I had my iPad, I didn’t touch my Macbook Pro.

The iPad is just so much more comfortable to use. I do an average of two hours of computer use at home every night. Doing all of that on a laptop is ok, but I rarely feel like I’m relaxing while using it. Even with it on my lap, it’s similar to how I use my computer at work, so I kind of feel like I’m in front of a computer the whole day. Not with the iPad though. I also brought it outside on evening last week, something I never ever do with my Macbook.

I also like the fact that there’s no multitasking, as I can really focus on what I’m doing at the moment, whether it’s web browsing, emailing, or catching up on Twitter. There’s no distractions.

I’ve been heading to bed earlier, as I can finish up whatever I’m doing on the iPad. I hated trying to use my laptop in bed, as it just never felt comfortable.

I noticed that there is a big gap here – the mid-morning and afternoon. I just haven’t found the need for my iPad when I have a 27″ iMac in front of me at work.

A Laptop Replacement?

No, not completely. I did use my iPad for about 75% of my computer time over the past week, which is pretty astounding. But I really needed my Macbook for the remaining 25%. Obviously, I could not do website development on my iPad, and that was the main use of that time. I also was researching cars this weekend, and I found for an activity like that which involved rigorous research, the Macbook served me better as I had tons of tabs open and was taking notes at the same time. Lastly, I brought out the Macbook a few times when I had lengthier emails or posts (like this) to write.

Besides that, it was a joy not having a hot, heavy laptop on my lap for most of the evening. The iPad’s battery has really spoiled me on my Macbook’s battery as well. I often have to use my Macbook plugged in as the battery just does not last as long as it used to.

Conclusion

Put simply: I honestly think the iPad will change computing. In one week it has drastically changed the way I use computers in my life. It is expensive in that it is a luxury item: It will not replace your phone, it will not replace your laptop. But I have discovered that there was indeed a massive hole in-between those two items, which the iPad filled perfectly. It has really improved the technological quality of my life.

The scene: My attic computer room, circa 1996. I was thirteen at the time, and just been given reign of the attic floor, which my father had recently made into a livable space. One room was my bedroom, and the other I made into my “computer” room (though my parents insisted on referring to it as the “guest bedroom”, but that just didn’t sound as cool).

To connect to the internet, I would begin by flipping an old fashioned switch on the wall. See, our house had two phone lines; one was the main line, and the second was a business line for my mother’s photography business. Of course, it didn’t take very long for me to commandeer that second line as my modem line. Unfortunately, our house was very old, and the phone lines crossed in such a way that any calls to the main line would disconnect the second line. I started to despise anyone who called while I was on the internet. Remember, this was in a time when downloading a ten megabyte file could take hours (or at least what seemed like it).

Hence, the wall switch. This did some magical spell to the wires (I was never really good with hardware) that prevented me from being disconnected. Next, I would dial the local number for our internet service provider, IDT. I would log in with my password, a random sequence of letters and numbers that I still use today.

Finally, I would bring up the page for my web host: Tripod. Anyone remember Tripod? I believe they were even before Geocities, and gave a massive free five megabytes to anyone wanting to develop their own website. For me, this website was on a subject dear to my heart: Video games. Hence, “Video Game Haven” was born at the somewhat cryptic URL of http://www.tripod.com/members/M/MaDHaTtEr999/vgh.

Imagine my surprise when I did a quick search for that old nickname of mine and actually found that the website still exists – thirteen years later! I have to admit I’m extremely impressed that Tripod 1) is still around and 2) actually still has my account online and posted.

Here’s a few things I noticed when looking at the site:

• I was a member of the “Internet Link Exchange“, who I’m sure went out of business a long time ago and is now apparently owned by Microsoft. It was a banner exchange system where you put dynamic code on the top of your site that rotated in and out sites with a similar theme as yours. Why didn’t we just put in text links to our other favorite sites? I’m not sure. I think it was the mentality back then that banner ads were the pinnacle of advertising.
• I used an actual image map! I remember how complicated it was to set this up, and looking at it now I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t just use separate images.
• I had the classic 90’s counter and guestbook. The guest book is pretty entertaining. One post is from a “clan war” that got started when I named my Quake clan (which consisted of, well, just me) after the same name as another clan. The “war” consisted of them spamming my guestbook and contact form.
• I practiced some very bad HTML habits. For instance, if I wanted lots of spaces I would repeat the paragraph code a few dozen times. I linked to images on other sites instead of hosting them on my own. I don’t think I closed any tags besides centering and links.
• I have to admit, the HTML code I used to stylize the title of each page looked pretty darn cool.
• I made a lot of promises that the website would be updated soon, which were usually below another update saying even better updates were coming along.
• Apparently, my idol back then was Alicia Silverstone.

How it works is, you sign up for an account, put in your phone number, and add their toll free number to your phone. Whenever you need to make a note to yourself, you simply call the number and say your note (I.e., “Check out that great Hemmingway novel”). A few minutes later, you’ll receive an email with your transcribed note. It was really handy when I needed to remember something and couldn’t write it down, like when driving.

To test out the service, I initially made some really, well, weird notes. Yet I was continually impressed with the accuracy of the speech-to-text engine they used to transcribe my notes. Or so I thought …

This morning I caught a paragraph length blurb recommending Jott, in the Boston Globe. Yet in that paragraph, they mentioned that it was actually people overseas who transcribe my notes! I immediately felt as if my privacy was violated, although it’s entirely possible this was in one of those ten page long agreements in a ten row long box that you simply click “Agree” to.

The problem I see is that it doesn’t seem entirely unlikely for someone to use this service to record something confidential, and have the transcriber somehow use that information. I know I will definitely hesitate to use the service for anything but the most generic of messages from this point forward – and not only because I have a beautiful notebook to put it all in instead.

I really like the concept, and realize that I actually declared myself email bankrupt in my recent move to Gmail, as described in a comment I posted at Web Worker Daily:

I just declared “email bankruptcy”, in a way, by switching over to Gmail and not bothering to import any of my old email from Outlook. And it worked wonders!

My Outlook was so bloated full of emails that it took nearly two minutes to load and check for new messages (though to be fair, I think I can attribute some of this to Outlook just not handling a large volume of email all that well – even when it’s archived.

Those problems, coupled with the fact that I was tired of trying to make SMTP work as my means of accessing email anywhere, AND that I discovered an easy way to access GMail on my Verizon phone, convinced me to make the switch. Oh, and the fact that I could actually access my own domain’s email via GMail (though the whole “Sent by” field that appears in emails I send isn’t all that great).

Anyway, this forced bankruptcy has really helped me refocus how I approach email. Instead of treating my inbox as storage, I’m using it as an actual inbox of items which need addressing. Not only does this make me more organized, but I’ve also found it helps a lot with making sure I take care of tasks that need taking care of.

However, should I ever need it, I do have Outlook still installed with all my old email. Though in the past few weeks, I’m surprised that I haven’t had to load it up more than once to look up an email. My advice is give email bankruptcy a try if you are feeling overwhelmed, but make sure you have a backup!

Unfortunately, it also introduces yet another remote onto my already cluttered coffee table. That makes four remotes: Cable, television (the only button I use is to switch the picture size, but I use it fairly often), HTPC, and now audio. Not only does this add general clutter to the area, but having to switch between remotes so often is a pain. Not to mention it’s quite confusing to my wife (not that she can’t understand it – she just doesn’t want to, and I don’t blame her!)

This is where a universal remote would fit in perfectly. Of course, they’ve been around forever, but have been limited by the fact that their list of support devices is usually small. So instead, I’ve begun looking at the Logitech Harmony series of remotes, specifically the Harmony 520. Besides from looking great (a LCD screen on a remote? Yes please), it also sounds like they work very well.

Some of the benefits include 100,000 supported devices, a web programming interface, and macros. For instance, if I sit down and want to watch a movie on my computer, I have to 1) Turn on my TV 2) Turn on my HTPC, bring up the Movies menu 3) Turn on the receiver and switch to HTPC input 4) Dim the lights (well, maybe some day when I finally understand home automation). The Harmony would let me press one button to do all of this for me, instead of switching between four remotes.

I have looked at these for awhile, but my biggest problem was spending nearly $200 on … a remote control. It turns out though that you can get the 520 model for around $55 on eBay, and the super-duper 800 series refurbished on Amazon for $100. Not too bad. I do hope though that this is one of the last items I’ll need to buy for my home theater for awhile.

Nowadays, the closest thing I have to a Blackberry is my LG VX8300 cell phone. While I love Verizon service in terms of reliability, I hate the software they use for their phones – namely BREW. Other phone companies use open source Java, which means when companies like Google offers mobile applications of things like Google Calendar, you can download it (for free) and use it (for free). Verizon would have none of this “free” business though.

So what’s a cheapskate like me to do? Find a way to access my email without paying $15 a month (or more) for a neutered service like vCast. Thanks to the guys over at Howard Forums, this was actually pretty simple.

See on a Verizon phone, like most any cell phone, you can access the mobile web. Through this mobile web you can get useful information while mobile like movie times, stock quotes, and email. Unfortunately, you have to pay a pretty penny for data access when you access the web through Verizon’s servers.

Luckily, there’s a way around this. By accessing the service menu in your phone, you can change the IP address that the phone connects to when trying to access the web. You instead change that IP to your own computer. Then, you can install a proxy server (I use HoTTProxy) which serves as the middle-man between your phone and the internet. Since you aren’t connecting to Verizon’s servers, they can’t keep track of your data usage. Instead, you just get billed for airtime minutes, which at least for me are plentiful. So now I can access any mobile webpage I want for free.

One other little trick I love doing through this is sending free text messages. I pay $10/mo for text messages – on just ONE of my shareplan phones! I can’t imagine actually paying $20/mo to be able to send 1 or 2 kilobyte sized messages over my phone. So what I’m able to do instead is log into GMail mobile and send an email to @vtext.com – for free.

Speaking of Gmail, this was one of the major reasons I switched to it. I previously used a SMTP server to be able to access my email from any of my computers, but couldn’t find a single way to access SMTP email over a cell phone. Gmail provides me with a central place for my email, all with a great mobile interface.

Everything looked to be working fine. I registered an account under our publisher’s name, posted a welcome message, and posted a copy of the day’s newsletter.

At this point, I was banned. The newsletter contains advertisements, which my plugin picked up as spam (correctly). Unfortunately, it didn’t have any configuration options and apparently has no problem banning a user with administrative rights.

The problem was, it wasn’t just that login that was banned, it was my IP address. So I couldn’t log in under the administrator account either. I even tried a proxy server (which I could use to mask my IP address), but it caught me doing that as well. I removed all entries of my IP address from the database itself, but I still couldn’t log in (in the end, it looks like there was a ban cache file that I missed).

It was also at this point that I noticed my publisher had a big red “BANNED” sign next to his name. Classy.

I ended up reaching a friend who saved me by taking a few minutes, logging in as administrator, and unbanning me. However I soon realized, after trying to find support for this issue, that this software as a bit too barebones for what I needed to do. I ended up trashing the whole thing and going with another recommended software, Simple Machines Forum. I got that up in 40 minutes, just in time to edit the URL to the forums in the newsletter and send it out.

Sometimes, those little frantic moments can be quite fun.

How could I be so sure of that? It’s thanks to one of my favorite websites, Yelp!. For awhile now, I could never really figure out why you could find hundreds of review websites, and yet none of them were for restaurants. Sure, there were sites that tried like Chef Moz and Chowhound, but they never really caught on enough to be of real use. Sometimes I would search for a restaurant and find a review listed there, but rarely could I just go to that site to search out a specific restaurant.

I didn’t really understand why there wasn’t any good source of reviews for restaurants. Yes, a night on the town doesn’t cost nearly as much as a digital camera, big screen television, or signing a year lease on an apartment. But over time the costs add up, and most Americans spend thousands of dollars eating out each year. Plus, the quality of a restaurant can be just as important as the quality of other items for which there are reviews.

Then about a month ago, after having moved to Salem, I was doing some searches on Google Maps for a nice Italian restaurant to go to. Google Maps is a fantastic resource for anything local – something the internet was really lacking in. I found quite a few nearby, and clicked the nearest one. In doing so, I saw an area for reviews, and saw that several of the reviews all originated from the same website, some place called Yelp.

That was how I discovered Yelp, and have used it countless times to narrow the field for dining and take-out. And although taste can be quite subjective, I’ve found most restaurants get fairly similar reviews across the board, with the occasional outliers (I’ve actually found Mexican to be particularly hard to review, as there seems to be an ongoing battle between what is real Mexican, and what is Americanized). I found it so useful that I decided to contribute myself.

Luckily, I am not currently searching for a job (and hopefully won’t be doing that again anytime soon). However, I did notice that a google search for Jon Heller pulled up some random results that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Interestingly enough, the first result is a director of computer technology, born the same year as me. He lives in Botswana though, so I doubt there’d be much of a mistaken identity problem there. Most of the next results are for someone named Kevin Jon Heller, and for some reason I find it insulting that this guy, who has the middle name of Jon, shows up before people with the first name of Jon! Even worse though, the next real result for a Jon Heller is from a site called College Humor, which shows someone with my namesake creating explicit sculptures out of snow.

In any case, that served as a nice catalyst for me to register this domain name … whatever this domain name may be, as I am actually writing this entry before I have registered it. I have to decide between jonheller.net, jon-heller.com, and jonathanheller.com. I have a slight hesitation to get a .net address, though I doubt it would effect google results. It would be nice to have a .com address, but a dash further complicates the URL (especially when I already have to tell people it’s Jon spelled J-o-n). Jonathan Heller is my real, full name, but is certainly a mouthful when my email would be jon@jonathanheller.com. So at least at this point, I plan on settling for the first option.

Back to the subject at hand: I have heard, for about a year now, about the issues of incriminating material online – especially in regards to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. It always sounded like common sense, i.e., don’t post pictures of yourself doing things you wouldn’t want the general public knowing about. Then I read in the aforementioned articles (and a few others) that anywhere from 25%-75% of employers will actually go googling prospective employees! This surprised me, mostly because of how much I had read about how the average recruiter spends just a few seconds looking at a cover letter. I suppose that a Google search can reveal much more than a cover letter though, and that does explain its use.

I am not sure if I fully agree with using Google as a tool to research prospective employees. For one thing, Google can reach back to the late nineties, meaning I can still find forum posts I made when I was a junior in high school. Secondly, the problem of mistaken identity seems just too likely. The aforementioned Jon Heller from Botswana is a good example – the fact that there is another person, my age, who is also in computer science with the exact same name seems surprising. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone would look at my name on a resume, google my name, and guess that I was that Jon Heller (maybe assuming that I had moved back from Botswana).

Which is why I am taking the preemptive step of establishing my real identity, so on the off chance that anyone googling Jon Heller looking for me will actually find me. Too bad that will cause problems for all the other Jon Heller’s of the world!