What do you do when the latest geek gadget isn’t something you need, but is something you would like to write about? You borrow one, of course!
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The gadget in question: An iPad
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Loaned to me by: Symbaloo
Full disclosure time:
Symbaloo is a sister company and client of The Social Media Party, my current employer. That said, I fell in love with Symbaloo on first introduction. I love the concept of the mixes and the implementation. Sharing content from the web just got a lot easier for US netizens. Join me and try it out!
My thoughts
I had use of the iPad for a week. I loved some of it, hated other parts of it. The things that impacted me the most?
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Good |
Bad |
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Creating content |
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I had real problems with creating any kind of content on the iPad. The key pad that pretends to be a keyboard just isn’t for me. I want to be able to touch type and couldn’t. I ended up using hunt and peck to type anything. |
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Network connections |
The connection to our home network was easy, smooth and consistent. |
From work, the connection was terrible. I am not sure if it is the connection here at the office or the iPad, but it wouldn’t stay connected. |
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Syncing with another device |
Once we got Bruce’s iTunes account up to date, syncing the iPad to the music and pictures on his Mac was easy. |
Returning the iPad meant stopping the sync with Bruce’s account. Or rather, I thought it would. It actually seems that there are two ways to sync – one is to sync your account and the other is to erase and sync the content. Once we got past that, re-syncing worked. |
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Apps |
I installed a number of free apps. Adding them was easy. Find the app in the store, click the Free button in the left column, then click it again to actually download and install it.
I liked what was available. Found some games I really liked. Found some useful gadget-like apps. |
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Pictures |
Another win – pictures do look really good on the iPad screen. |
Though I do wish it had a camera or an easier way to get the images onto the machine. I know I can use the sync mechanism to get them there, but I want to just add them. |
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iBook |
The page turn effect is nice. The color pictures are nice. If I had kids, I could see using it to read bedtime stories. That said… |
I didn’t find reading on the iPad as easy as on the Kindle or the Nook. The way the pages are shown made it harder for me to do any long term reading. |
What I loved: Symbaloo 2.0 on the iPad
Symbaloo 2.0 allowed me to navigate the web in a natural, consistent, and convenient way. Symbaloo is a site new to the US. They allow you to create landing pages (called mixes) created of tiles. Each tile is linked to another piece of information on the web, such as:
- Web pages
- News or RSS feeds
- Widgets
- Other mixes
Want to learn how easy it is to use Symbaloo 2.0? Kimmie Chann, Symbaloo’s Community Director for the US, has posted a series of videos on how to use it. Check out this one on “How to Edit and Search for Webmixes”:
How to edit and search for webmixes on Symbaloo
Symbaloo 2.0 wasn’t created for the iPad. It just happens that it works there amazingly well. See for yourself!
I also found Symbaloo 2.0 a great way to access my feeds through my iPad. I didn’t like any of the free RSS readers I saw in the apps list. Symbaloo 2.0 let me get to the feed content without hassles or expense. I created an RSS tile for the feeds I wanted to read on the iPad and saved the mix. Voila – My own RSS reader!
Symbaloo Mix for Social Media Feeds
See those feeds live via Symbaloo 2.0!
Clicking a link inside one of those tiles gets you to the linked post. Clicking the box itself usually takes you to the home page for the feed. I say usually because some of the feeds are set up to take you to a page where you can auto subscribe. That’s a feature of the feed settings, not Symbaloo 2.0.
Because Symbaloo 2.0 is all tile based, it was easy for me to navigate without typing. Since typing was the one thing that really bugged me on the iPad, finding that Symbaloo 2.0 worked so well was a definite good thing.
I won’t go so far as to say that I would buy an iPad to use Symbaloo 2.0 on it. I might think about it with a 3G iPad, since that would give me anywhere access. What I will say is that after this week of using the iPad, if someone offered me one – I’d keep it. Until then, I will keep using Symbaloo 2.0 on my desktop and my tablet and leave the iPads to the rest of you.
