• The gadget in question: An iPad

• 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?

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!

Symbaloo 2.0 on the iPad

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.

I just had yet another Facebook (FB) crash. I type too fast for FB to keep up in comments and notes. When this happens, the screen dims and I know that the error message isn’t far behind.

Tonight, it happened while I was putting in a comment on a friend’s note containing travel hints. (Which, by the way, I will be adding as a guest post when this post is done.)

Instead of panicking, I thought “Snagit”! My first attempt was a text grab, but the text was too faded. The second attempt was an image grab – that worked. When my browser re-opened, I just set the two windows side by side and re-typed the text. The image I grabbed was:

If I had been thinking, I would have dropped it into OneNote to grab the actual text. It just takes a few moments to drop the image into OneNote, copy the text from the image, paste it on the note page, edit it, and copy paste it to the note after the browser comes back. OneNote did a halfway decent job of recognizing the text, as you can see here:

Has SnagIt saved the day for you? How? Let me know!

(In the interest of full disclosure: TechSmith takes good care of those who help them beta test and discuss thier products. In my case, that good care includes a few great tchotchkes through the year and a paid account on Screencast.com. I regularly tell Betsy Weber that I would write about and talk about the products even without the extras and that they rock. If you think so, you should tell them too!)

Did you get one?

(Video created on Animoto. Easy as pie to do it too!)

On a regular week, you can find Donna’s baked goods at the only year-round farmer’s market in Iowa. Good things like cookies, bars, pecan mini-pies, homemade bread (including tomato bread – yum), and so much more. Everything is made from scratch per her personal recipes. It’s all homemade and all amazingly great. If you have ever had her brownies or rolls, you know what I am talking about.

The market is located in the Old Depot (526 Main Street) in Ames IA. Saturday, @mindlessfluff and I stopped by to see Donna at the market. Unlike the markets we are used to in California, this market is indoors. Each seller has table or shelf space.

Like the markets we are used to, the food sold is all natural and chemical free. Besides the baked goods Donna sells, the market also sells meats, wine, coffee, biscotti, fresh veggies, take-and-bake items, and craft items. Everything is locally made by the members of the market.

This time of year, not only is Donna stocking her table at the market with her regular stuff, but she is also baking cookies. Dozens and dozens of cookies. She has already made almost 60 dozen cookies of varying kinds for the day, and has at least that many more she wants to make. These cookies are both a labor of love and a way to survive. Why? Because the income from the cookie walk goes to support the market.

At the cookie walk, you pay $15 for a clamshell container. You then walk around the market picking up cookies and putting them in your container. Average people get 3 to 4 dozen in each container. The record appears to be 6 dozen.

If you are in the Ames or Des Moines area, stop by the Ames Farmer’s Market.  It’s worth the trip. The food is good, the prices are nice, and I bet you will find the people there absolutely amazing!

I took advantage of our visit and took some pictures of the winter veggies which you can see in the video below. The video also shows shots of Donna’s cookies and other baked goods. Enjoy!

That said, there is one thing about Skype that bothers me. By default, Skype saves everything forever. For a screen recorder like me, that can leave me open for some embarrassing screen moments.

There is a fix: Clear your history. It is actually a two step process: Set Skype to not save the history and then clear the history itself. The process itself isn’t hard. It’s finding where to do it that gets complicated.

How do you learn what to do to clear the history? Watch the screencast – It tells you just what you need to know!

(See the video full size.)

What other tools would you like to see screencasts on? Let me know and I will pull them together. As QueenGeek can tell you, I take requests!

See the full screencast on Screencast.com!

I love doing screencasts. They are a great way to share tips and ideas. This one was made with TechSmith‘s Jing. I’m willing to make more of them, so if you want to see something specific, let me know!