The solution for removing rented movies on your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone is actually very simple. Plug in your iOS device, go to iTunes, and then view the Summary page. Under Options check the box next to “Manually Manage music and videos”.

Apply the changes, and then expand the list view for your iOS device. Click on Rentals and then delete the movies.

How to fix rentals that won’t delete on your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone is a post from: Mobile Meandering

The best products and services are ones that try to solve problems. In particular, problems that the consumer has, not the producer.

The new iPad-only news source, The Daily, is concerned with solving one problem — how to make more money for News Corp.

At its core, The Daily is a giant leap backwards for online and mobile news. Its major drawbacks include:

• an app centric model
• a complete lack of diversity
• too little content
• no control over content
• inefficient user interface
• subscription cost

The future of the Internet is not Apps

One of the more absurd predictions that has been permeating in the technium social discourse — especially from ignorant blowhards that are trying to bring attention to themselves — is the demise of the website, and the rise of the mobile app.

I can only imagine the discussions that were held in News Corp meetings about the future of news, and how they think it will be consumed in the future. The technology-ignorant suits probably discussed how they’ll be left behind, that is, unless they sink their resources into a fully mobile app version of their content. All of this, while at the same time, already having multiple websites that could easily drive the content of their new panacea app. Instead, they chose to spend $30 million to reinvent themselves, resulting in more of the same, and completely missing the point of how people want to consume content via mobile devices.

A mobile app does one thing, and one thing only. It provides a device friendly interface for an Internet based service. 37signals recently provided a good example of this, when they launched mobile friendly versions of their Web apps. There’s nothing about The Daily that requires it to be made just for the iPad, and that’s one of the reasons why The Daily is pure gimmick.

My guess is that Apple – especially Steve Jobs – knew this from the beginning. However, they would be idiots to deter a major media company from spending millions of dollars to build and promote an app built exclusively for their hardware. Maybe Apple’s announcement about Jobs’ leave of absence was timed so he didn’t have to associate himself with this doomed to fail app launch. (yes, I’m kidding, mostly)

Taking away diversity is not forward thinking

The diversity of opinion and news available on the Internet is unprecedented, and that’s a good thing. That means we not only have choice, we also have more information to consider, enabling us to make more informed opinions.

By design, The Daily homogenizes and reduces the content you have access to. It places you into a news bubble, only occasionally reminding you that websites still exist. It also doesn’t solve the problem of needing easily digestible content. That’s because it’s already predigested. There’s no variety of sources, and the problem is not too much content, but too little.

People want control of their content sources

The demise of the newspaper isn’t simply because the medium is outdated and the content becomes quickly stale, it’s because people want choice. The Internet has allowed the role of editor to be shared with the reader.

Services like Google News have played a key role in providing these choices, but its RSS that has provided the foundation of choice. RSS allows the reader to control where they get their content from. For example, sports, political opinion, world news, and other other topics can all come from different news sources.

The Daily does away with that control, and reinforces the USA Today model, but only on an iPad. Lame.

Style shouldn’t hinder the user experience

Using The Daily on the iPad is only slightly less painful than using ABC News’ rotating globe interface. The main interface uses a CoverFlow-like model to swipe through news topics. It’s as if the designers said, “this is an interactive format, and you’re going to interact with it whether you like it or not!” The result is an inefficient series of swiping and navigation to sparse content.

When people consume information, they’re not concerned about the aesthetics and experience of getting to the content. People simply want to consume news and then get on with their life. If they could consume more information within a shorter amount of time, they would. So the problem that needs to be solved is not how experiential the consumption of news can be, it’s how can we make the consumption of information more efficient.

There are websites and apps that are already making progress with that problem. Flipboard provides an equally fancy iPad app, but is much more useful and efficient than The Daily. It acts as an aggregator of multiple news and social media sources, and then provides a simplified and condensed interface for quickly browsing and reading the content.

Screenshots from the Flipboard iPad app

However, the ultimate experience for efficiently aggregating and consuming news content already exists. For the iPad it’s Reeder, and for the PC (including Mac) it’s Feedly. They provide the ultimate experience for news by providing a stylish and efficient UI, and the ability to have full control over the content you retrieve and read. Feedly actually takes it one step further by using an algorithm to provide the news stories it thinks you’ll find most interesting.

Feedly on left, Reeder for iPad on right

Premium content shouldn’t be tied to the app

The Daily wants its app to be the one source for your news. However, it wants to severely limit the news you get, and charge you for it.

If the content is good enough, people will pay for it. There are already news outlets that have been successful with this model. Salon, an independent news company, has been very successful charging $30/year for access to premium ad-free content.

Screenshot of Salon.com's home page

That fact reinforces what I think is the perfect model for consuming news on the iPad — RSS feeds coupled with Reeder for iPad.

The future of news on the iPad is as simple as making Reeder better, or someone making a better alternative. In every way imaginable, The Daily is a step backwards and was doomed to FAIL from the beginning.

Why “The Daily” will FAIL is a post from: Mobile Meandering

This remote controlled helicopter has four blades, onboard cameras, is controlled by an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, and let’s you fly it like you’re in a real-life video game. It’s kind of amazing, and I must have it!

The quadicopter includes:

• A quadricopter made in carbon fiber and high resistance PA66 plastic
• MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) and video processing to ensure a very
• intuitive piloting of a radio controlled object
• Wi-Fi and video streaming for a modern interface with an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad
• Images processing software for augmented reality

The helicopter can be flown indoors, and has several games to choose from. They also appear to keep the firmware up-to-date, so you can expect bugs to fixed, and for the device to get even better over time.

Remote Controlled Helicopter that’s Controlled by an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad is a post from: Mobile Meandering

When the iPad first launched, there were a handful of magazines that released digital versions on the iPad. Time magazine took a minimalist approach, while Popular Science was somewhat avant garde. Most of the others were poorly thought out, lesser versions of their print editions.

Time and PopSci should be commended for their effort and innovation, Especially since they had the guts to be one of the first publishers to release an iPad version of their magazine. However, as good as both were, they still fell short of the ideal iPad magazine experience that most people would want.

Shortly after the initial magazines came out, Wired released their version of an iPad magazine. Unlike all of the other iPad magazines, Wired got it (mostly) right the first time. The usability, while not perfect, was far and above their competition. They made it easy to navigate, read, and fun to use.

They recently came out with their second issue of their magazine for iPad, and did something very clever. Instead of releasing it as a new app, they updating the first magazine app, and made it so you could preview the new magazine, and then do an in-app purchase and download.

The magazine provides multiple ways to view the table of contents, and adjusts perfectly when you change from portrait to landscape, or vice-versa.

The article content is also easy to read, and is laid out well for both landscape and portrait mode.

The price for the iPad version, $3.99 per issue, is still a bit high. If they can continue to enhance their issues – which I believe is based on new, unreleased software from Adobe – and provide a more affordable subscription model, then I think they may have something very viable for digital magazine publishing.

Wired Magazine Continues to Get it Right with Digital Magazine Publishing On the iPad is a post from: Mobile Meandering

The iPad goes well beyond an entertainment device. It supports the most common functions that one would expect from a desktop or notebook computer, including:

• Email
• Web
• Music
• Books, Magazines, and Newspapers
• Photos
• Videos
• Gaming
• Word Processing
• Spreadsheets
• Presentations

It also simplifies the user experience by hiding unnecessary operating system layers, like the file system. Instead, the user is presented with icons that represent the application and task they want to perform. And with the introduction of iPhone OS 4.0, common computing elements, like multitasking, will complete the necessary features required to make it compete with traditional computers.

Apple Pages for iPad

One of the most common computing tasks is word processing. Apple made an iPad version of Pages, which is supposed to bring word processing to the iPad. I put it to the test to see if the iPad could truly work as a word processer – negating the need for a traditional computer.

The iPad version of Pages has most of the commonly used features of its Mac OS cousin. Documents were easy to style, and many of the page layout features that people are accustomed to on the Mac OS version are there. In fact, they’re fun to use. For example, you get to move and rotate images with your fingers.

There are some features missing though. For example, there’s no view for Page Info. So if you wanted to know your word count, you’re out of luck. However, Pages for iPad makes up for missing features with its minimalist functionality. Most of what you need is there, and unlike a traditional computer, working in one application helps keep you from getting distracted.

Once you’ve finished writing your document, and you want to share it, you can easily email it, export it (for syncing with a computer), or make it available on Apple’s iWork.com. One notable feature that is missing from the iPad is printing. I’m not sure how they plan to handle this in the future, but it’s certainly going to become an issue if the iPad has a chance at replacing the need for a traditional computer. This problem may also be solved by Google’s Cloud Print initiative.

Writing Pages documents on the iPad is a breeze, especially if you’re using Apple’s keyboard dock for the iPad. It makes writing a pleasure, but it’s also great for using on other applications. I plan on leaving my seventeen inch MacBook Pro at home, and taking the keyboard dock and iPad instead. It’s a lot lighter, the battery lasts longer, and it’s the perfect size for airplanes and coffee shops.

Review of Pages for iPad is a post from: Mobile Meandering

Fortunately, the iPad runs on the same OS as the iPhone (the iPhone OS). That means you get the same security features you would have on the iPhone or iPod Touch.

To enable security, click on the Settings icon. Then click on the General option in the left column. Under the General options, click on Passcode Lock. An “Enter Passcode” window will appear. Enter a four digit passcode. After you save your passcode, you will also have the option to wipe the iPad of all data if the code is entered incorrectly too many times.

The next time you turn on your iPad, you’ll be presented with a passcode window. That means you’re iPad is now protected!

iPad Security is a post from: Mobile Meandering

Add Keynote or PowerPoint Presentations via iTunes

The easiest way to get Keynote or PowerPoint presentations on your iPad is to use iTunes. Open iTunes and plug in your iPad. Click on the iPad icon in the left column, and then click on the Apps tab. Scroll down the page and you’ll see the File Sharing options for Keynote. Click on Keynote, and then click on Add to add the presentation files you want to copy to the iPad.

Email Keynote or PowerPoint Presentation

Simply email the presentation to yourself, and then run the iPad’s Mail app. You can then download the presentation inside the message.

Once the iPad finishes downloading the presentation, click on it to open it. By default, it will open it in preview mode. However, if you have Keynote for iPad installed, it will provide you with the option to open it in Keynote. Click the Open In Keynote button and the iPad will import it into Keynote.

It will then open Keynote and import the presentation.

This is what a presentation looks like in Keynote for iPad.

To save space, you will want to go back to the Mail app, and then delete the message so you don’t have two copies of your Keynote files on your iPad. Also, Keynote for iPad doesn’t support everything that Keynote for Mac supports. For example, you can’t import presenter notes. If you try to import a presentation with notes, you’ll get this warning message.

How to Import Keynote or PowerPoint Presentations into the iPad is a post from: Mobile Meandering

Agile Web Solutions just announced that they’re going to release an iPad version of 1Password. Here’s the beautiful mockups of their new iPad app.

Screenshots of 1Password for Apple’s iPad is a post from: Mobile Meandering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4

Hitler Responds to the iPad is a post from: Mobile Meandering

The user interface is designed to do what you would expect it to do. Beyond the most simple functions, like button pushing, the iPad user interface allows you to swipe, pinch, and rotate objects. If there are a stack of images, and you want to get a quick sample without selecting all of them, you touch the stack and slightly expand your fingers. If you want to put away or close an object, you pinch. If you want to turn a page, you swipe.

Luke Wroblewski highlighted the iPad’s User Experience Guidelines, all of which describe a new way of interacting with data.

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for the iPad outline how to create user interfaces optimized for the iPad device. According to Apple, the best iPad applications: downplay application UI so that the focus is on content; present content in beautiful, often realistic ways; and take full advantage of device capabilities to enable enhanced interaction.

The list includes:

• Support All Orientations
• Enhance Interactivity (Don’t Just Add Features)
• Flatten Your Information Hierarchy
• Reduce Full-Screen Transitions
• Enable Collaboration and Connectedness
• Add Physicality and Heightened Realism
• Delight People with Stunning Graphics
• De-emphasize User Interface Controls
• Minimize Modality
• Rethink Your Lists
• Consider Multifinger Gestures
• Consider Popovers for Some Modal Tasks
• Restrict Complexity in Modal Tasks
• Downplay File-Handling Operations
• Ask People to Save Only When Necessary
• Start Instantly
• Always Be Prepared to Stop

The guidelines are available from Apple’s iPad SDK.

iPad User Experience Guidelines is a post from: Mobile Meandering