iPad Tips

It’s been two months with my iPad and I’m still loving it. My poor laptop has become the desktop “office” computer and the iPad now gets carted around the house, yard, work, and bedroom when I want to surf, check e-mail and twitter, watch movies, or just goof off. And when I’m done with the iPad, I just leave it on the coffee table, breakfast bar, or wherever. Who cares?

Tips
1. Sometimes I’ll find myself at the bottom of my Twitter stream or a long list of e-mail messages. To rocket to the top, just tap the very top bar of the iPad. If you have two columns, like in Mail, you can tap above either column and it will only effect the one you want. Pretty cool.

2. Until iPads get support for folders, our apps are getting unruly. Many prefer to use Spotlight search instead of thumbing through 6 pages of apps. In preferences you can set the Home button to bring you to Spotlight with two clicks. Very useful.

3. An iPad case is nice (I’m still using Apple’s) but don’t waste money on a stand for your desk. Look around your house and I promise you’ll find something that will do the trick. I’m currently using a Gorilla grip tripod flipped upside down. It works great!

4. You can download any ePub file and use iTunes to sync it back to your iPad. Once you do, it’ll show up in iBooks just like e-books you’ve purchased. Voila!

5. Use the latest version of Handbrake to rip your DVDs or downloaded AVI files into MP4 files you can sync over to your iPad with iTunes. The AppleTV preset looks great. A previous version of Handbreak (0.94) included a bug that made its MP4s unreadable by the iPad.

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