I’m going to give the Cons first:

• There is no USB port installed! You need a little dongle that plugs into the iPad to get a USB attachment. Going to lose that in the couch with the Apple remote…
• There is no way to change the battery yourself. This is the a full-body aluminum casing and there is no way to get to the battery but to take it apart.
• There is no way to change the hard drive with out taking apart the iPad.
• It only comes with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of solid state hard drive space.
• Programs can’t run in the background, so multi-tasking is out of the equation.
• It cost $130.oo more for a 3G data card installed… not only are you paying 200x the normal price for this adapter but you have to pay the $30/month for unlimited 3G access (or $15/month for 250MB/month… oh what a deal…) to AT&T.
• It doesn’t come with headphones.
• There’s no mic.
• There’s no camera.
• No Adobe Flash integrated on the browser yet… wtf.
• Low power processor that is only 1 Ghz.

The Pros:

• It’s light at 1.5-1.6 pounds
• It can run iPhone apps that you purchased already.
• Simple interface design… same as the iPhone
• Up to 10 hours of battery life.
• High Resolution screen
• The developer community is excellent and there should be some interesting apps coming to iPad only.
• Play movies that are purchased through the iTunes store.

As you can see, I don’t think the $499 (minimum) price tag is worth it. This thing needs a lot of improvements before I consider purchasing one. Since the unibody design has been released on most Apple products, I refuse to purchase any of them. They may have great hardware and software, but if I can’t upgrade things myself I don’t want it. I’m a tech at heart and I’ve built my own computers, so I know how to save money in upgrades and not waste it on over priced memory or hard drives.

I’ve read a few reviews and I understand that this is not suppose to be a full-powered PC but a simple task-oriented PC, but if I’m paying up-the-wazoo for this computer, I should have the ability to enhance the performance to my needs. Maybe I want to edit movies, built websites, and play WoW with out the computer lagging or taking 5 years to encode a media piece. I can only imagine if WoW was released on a multi-touch tablet PC…OMG!!

Let me know what you think about the iPad. I’m up for suggestions… maybe it will convince me to purchase one.

**All images on this post belong to Apple Inc.

Now, Seesmic has just released a downloadable new app for Windows called Seesmic Look. This app is based on Windows’ Silverlight technology, so OS X users can not use this Application. So far, the app is very pretty but definitely geared toward the simple consumer and computer user. If you like advance searches and trend seeking, then this isn’t going to work every well. But this app looks great for the simple computer user to understand Twitter and the information out in the world. The great thing is that the a user won’t need a twitter account to use this application.

There are a few not-so-great things about Seesmic Look. The application is Windows only… I’m a OS X fanboy, so I won’t be using it very often. The interface is too flashy and load time is slow, and there is no advanced trend options. Lastly, the launch and app seems like a very large branding commercial for Microsoft and all the people on the “channel” area on the application.

We’ll see how this goes and the updates to come. Look through my past posts and there are better solutions for Twitter management like Gist, HootSuite, or Brizzly.

Foursquare is a smart phone app. It uses GPS or signal triangulation to find where you are in a city. With your location found, the app will find a list of nearby restaurants, book stores… anything that can be named and located. So, I go to my favorite coffee shop, Pour House Cafe in Bloomington, and I click ‘check-in’, the app finds me and gives me the list. On the list I select Pour House Cafe and complete the check-in. This gives me points and I compete with my friends who are on my Foursquare social network. You can manage your friends and information via smart phone app, but the web app is bigger and easier to manage. You can not ‘check-in’ on your computer (or at least I haven’t found how) which is a down side, but it’s fun and you can keep track of your friends favorite places. Oh yeah, you get ‘badges’ for checking-in the most or at a number of different places. Lastly, there are Mayors of places on Foursquare. This means they have been there a lot.

Try it out! Have fun with friends and family, and let me know what you think about Foursquare.

Here are some screenshots:

While drinking a cup of coffee, I head to my home office and proceed to check my websites’ Analytics and Keyword ranking. I quickly develop a simple plan to help the ranking and boast my stats by  at least 5%. Checking the websites’ web stats and keyword ranking is very important to your banding.

Then, I log into my HootSuite account and check the latest news, my DMs, @s and my stats for my Twitter account. I can’t express how important keeping stats on everything you do will help build your brand!

Once I get my plan of attack, I eat my breakfast and get to work on SEO, Twittering, Blog posts, and communication with other Social Media addicts.

I figured I should give my readers a glimpse into my routine. What is your routine?

These options range from free to subscription based services but the starting costs is much lower than the current costs of word-processing programs. These programs are compatible with your current documents and a couple will allow to save to different formats that you can export (download) to your computer. The documents that you create and edit are kept in your personal account on the site, so there is no worry of your computer crashing and losing all the informations because the information is on servers far away ready to be accessed. Most of these servers have 99.9% uptime, so don’t worry about servers crashing. You will need to have high-speed Internet to access these files and edit them but, as stated above, Internet is ubiquitous.

First, I’ll discuss my personal favorite , Google Docs. Now this was created by the search engine giant and maintained by the Google Corporation. OK, I am a Google fan boy, but they do offer great products and services. Google Docs is free to use and handles all Microsoft Word documents. They offer creation and editing of documents, excel sheets, presentations, and forms(Access). For the price of ‘FREE’ you can share the documents via email or Google accounts and also collaborate on documents. The document creation is basic and doesn’t offer advanced document creation like borders or graphic art, but it gets the job done. Try it out for yourself!

Next, let’s talk about the Adobe Acrobat web application, Acrobat.com. This is about the same as the Google Docs word processing by creating and editing new documents and offering the option to share and collaborate with other authors, but with Adobe Acrobat.com you can create PDFs. It is a subscription based service but Adobe offers PDF creation, web conferencing, presentation creation, form creation, but no excel sheets. It’s very clean and the collaboration factor is very image oriented, so it’s much prettier to look at for longer time. Try it for yourself!

Lastly, the big web application company Zoho offers great options. It’s not free after a set amount of users (or space) but you get access to a lot of other applications. Zoho has a great user interface for word processing and sharing is easy just like the other options, so it’s really based on preference. What sets Zoho apart is the other applications offered by Zoho can be accessed under one login. Some are free and some are subscription based, but its very worth it if you need the option of the whole complete package. The down side is that you will start paying sooner or later if you use the applications enough. So, if you need to word process, create reports, CRM, and add a Wiki to your work; then this is the place for you! Try it out!

Overall, each option offers their pros and cons for using the web application, and it’s really up to preference. If you want to carry you office your laptop bag with no worries of cost and losing information, then one of these options could be right for you!

Let me know what you think by email or leaving a comment. If there are other options that you want me to review or discuss just let me know.

Smart Phones have become ubiquitous all around the world. New phones and competing devices are popping up everywhere and new reports are being written on unreleased devices. These mobile devices have multiple uses to them; for example, the iPhone plays music, records video, emails, plays movies, twitters, facebooks….. oh yea it makes calls. Companies and innovators are trying to brainstorm the best idea for these smart phones and the best idea for 2010 has finally come to us. The company is called Square.

Square is not only trying to revolutionize the mobile device market but they are also revolutionizing Credit Card purchases. It’s not just a simple beautiful app and it’s not just a small easy to use attachment, it’s the whole package! Visual Math: New Application + New Attachment + “Web 2.0″ company = very large growth potential for the smart phones and mobile devices, alike.

Square is the brainchild of Jim McKelvey, and backed by Jack Doresy (co-founded of Twitter) and Khosla Ventures. Square is a small credit card reading device that plugs into your headphone jack. To make a purchase, the vendor will type in the amount and slide the card. The vendor then hands their mobile device to the customer who checks the total and signs their signature with their finger. Once that is complete, the vendor enters the email address of the customer and emails the receipt to the customer… and that’s it!

Rumor has it that Square will give the device away with purchase of the app and monthly subscription of services with no commission. This will benefit small business very much by creating a static price for easy expending!

Let me know what you think about this Square idea.

The solution I’ve found most accommodating is called Dropbox. This web application works beautifully when you need a program or file. All you have to do is upload the files you want to access later, into your personal Dropbox. You can keep the Dropbox private or share it! You’re probably wondering if you’ll have to go to your browser and click upload for every file. Well, no but only if you download the very small application. This application syncs with your computer and now you can drag and drop the files into the virtual folder that the Dropbox desktop application creates.

Now the magic happens! So, you go to a meeting and didn’t bring the laptop, but instead of not presenting all the information to the client or partner you can now swing by a printing store, library, or friends house and login to your Dropbox account and download and print the documents you forgot. Say you don’t have time to do that, we you can use their iPhone App to access the files or the client’s computer. It’s that easy.

I use Dropbox religiously and probably won’t stop. Check out the website for more info: http://www.dropbox.com

1. Facebook App : Facebook did a great job on this iPhone app. It simple and gets the job done. You can update your status all day and manage your profile in the simple to use app. Check it out here.
2. Gist App : After my review of Gist. in a previous article, you know I really enjoy their web app. So, it’s at no surprise that I would recommend their iPhone App. The ‘importance‘ feature let me quickly control the list of people/companies on the feed from an importance ranking from 1 to 100. I can narrow down to just tweets, emails, or blogs. It’s very similar to the web app, so it pretty awesome! Check is out here.
3. Twitterific App : Iconfactory made another pretty app that is simple and to the point. Twitterific only works with Twitter and gives you the power to manage your contacts, tweets, and feed. They did add a geo tracking feature that lets you view tweets near your iPhone geo location. Check it out here.
4. Skype App : This is basically the Skype desktop application in the palm of your hand. Chat and voice is allowed through the app and it works on 3G. I recommend this if you are working on the go. Check it out here.
5. Wordpress 2 App : For all of you using Wordpress 2.7+ or a Wordpress.com account for blogging, then this is the way to go! Create new posts, edit old posts, and review comments on your iPhone. Nothing beats that! I do recommend not using the app when writing any longer than a paragraph. Check it out here.

So, there you have it, my top iPhone apps for managing your social media on the go.  If you have any other apps you want to recommend just comment on this post or email me. Let me know what you think!