iPad Skyping - A Blessing for Grandparents!

We love to Skype with our extended family.  With the grandkidlets in Texas, it is usually our only way to see them for weeks/months at a time and to maintain that precious relationship with them.  But with little ones, Skyping via a stationary computer can be challenging, at best.  Let's face it....toddlers and babies get antsy.  They'll only tolerate so much time spent sitting in one spot before they want to wander off.

In the past, Skyping with little Sweet Pea has sometimes been limited to her quick appearance at the beginning of the conversation and then a fast pop-in at the end of the Skype call for a blown kiss good-bye. It's been like eating only one potato chip.  We've wanted more.

That's where the iPad comes to the rescue.  With our daughter-in-law returned to medical residency, she now has an iPad and last night we were able to Skype with them using an iPad on their end.  Oh, boy!  Not only did it draw the attention of the kidlets, but it was super-portable.

Spud was particularly drawn to it, laughing at our images and trying to reach out to grab us.  At one point, he got down on the floor and Jason walked in front of him with the iPad while Spud crawled like a marathon sprinter on his knees following it.  We were able to watch the whole thing via Skype --- on eye, or should I say, floor level.

Little Sweet Pea kept popping in to show us different toys.  She even hopped off the couch and did some fancy twirling and dancing that we were able to watch, thanks to that iPad.

Sweet Pea and I sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" together and then she showed me how she could climb the stack of pillows on the couch (which I dubbed "Mt. Mika).  Oh, I know that a laptop could have been moved to follow the action but it still would have been cumbersome, trying to adjust the angle of the screen to catch the action.

Let's face it, there is something irresistible between iPads and  children.  They are just naturally drawn to them.  Add in the convenience of Skyping with the portability of the iPad, and you have a wonderful tool to stay connected with your extended family.  When I see smiles like these, how can I not feel blessed?

Testing the iPad

A friend called me tonight to ask me how you post an entry to Blogger from the iPad.

"Gee, good question," I thought. So I decided to do a little digging around to see what I could find out. You see, I had not posted yet from my new toy.





So I first installed BlogPress from the iTunes app store on my iPad and then decided to try posting a short blog post. I also wanted to insert a picture to see if that would work too. Hence the "eye candy" above.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Reading Magazines in Electronic Format

My iPad Zinio Library

I'm someone who enjoys reading magazines -- lots of magazines.  I usually have quite a pile of them at any one given time just waiting to be read.  When we go on vacations by car when I'm not driving, I always have a bag filled with magazines and I read them and toss them as we make our way cross-country.  Since I'm so used to reading a hard copy of a magazine, I was a little skeptical at the thought of reading a magazine on one of my electronic devices. The thought of reducing my paper clutter really appealed to me though.

Magazine Library on the Nook Color

 I started out by subscribing to a few of the entertainment tabloids on my Nook Color.  By golly, the experience was so enjoyable that I didn't hesitate at all to take the plunge once my iPad arrived. (Oh, by the way, I do NOT subscribe to "Elle" or to "Men's Fitness."  Those were "freebie" issues from Zinio.)  So how do the iPad and the Nook compare when it comes to reading magazines?  Here's my experience.

1.  Screen Orientation:  Let's look at the iPad first.  Since the device is bigger, the most obvious difference is going to be that you have a larger area in which to view your pages.  You can also turn the iPad so that you have a horizontal orientation that then shows you two pages at a time, similar to holding a magazine open.

Magazine cover on an iPad

Now let's look at the Nook.  The screen is smaller (6 1/4" x 3 3/4") so the viewing area will show a smaller image.  Duh!  You are also not going to have the capability of holding it horizontal and seeing the two pages at once.

Magazine Cover on a Nook

2.  Subscriptions:  I imagine there is more than one app to subscribe to magazines for your iPad but the one that is very popular and the one that I use is Zinio.  I noticed that when I found magazine titles that I wanted to purchase, I was given a choice.  I could either purchase a single issue OR I could subscribe to a year's subscription.  With the Nook, you search for the magazine titles at the Barnes and Noble store online and when you find one you want, you are given the option of purchasing a single issue OR subscribing, paying by the month.  Since you will have a credit card on file with B & N, you just click on "Buy Now" and it seamlessly goes through (provided your card is good, of course) and then the issues start arriving on your Nook.  The big advantage to the Nook in this regard is that you don't have that big chunk payment for the yearly subscription cost.  Barnes and Noble  charges your credit card monthly for the much smaller amount if you have picked the subscribe option.

Article on an iPad

3.  Article View:  If you have really good eyes, you can turn your iPad horizontally and read two pages before swiping.  My eyes aren't that good.  Most folks will be reading one page at a time.  Looking at the full page on the iPad, you can use your fingers to zoom in or zoom out on a particular part of the page.

Just remember that if you have zoomed in on part of the page, then you'll  have to move the page around with your fingers to see all of the article or the rest of the page or just compress the page back to its normal size.

The other option is to click on "Text" at the bottom of the page and it takes you to a text only version of the article in a special format optimized for e-readers.  You can then scroll up or down to read the article. 

iPad

When you are finished reading the article, click on "Page" at the bottom of your screen and it takes you back to the entire magazine page.

Page View on the Nook Color

Nook also gives you the option of looking at the entire page or going to a particular article on the page.  If you click on "Article View" at the top, you will see a drop-down menu listing the articles you can access from that page.

Touch the article that you want to see and it pops up in the special text format optimized for your Nook reader.  When you are finished reading, click on the "x" in the upper right corner and it takes you back to the page you were on.  As with the iPad, you can zoom and/or move around the page by using your fingers.

Single article view in Nook Color

4.  Hot Links - One of the great things about magazine reading on the iPad is that you can seamlessly click on hot links provided in the articles and go right off to see what is being referred to.

Hot Link in Magazine on iPad

 It might just be the magazine I was reading on the Nook Color but I didn't find any hot links in that magazine.  Even if other magazines DO provide hot links that you can touch and go when reading on the Nook, I have to think it wouldn't be as easy as it is to surf around the Internet on an iPad.  I use my Nook Color to read, play games, read email, and shop at the B & N store, not surf the Web.

All in all, I think both the iPad and the Nook Color make reading magazines an enjoyable experience.  I give a slight advantage to the iPad simply because it is a larger reading surface and because I find it easier to get around the Web on it, if I want to chase down hot links within an article.  I give the Nook Color the advantage when it comes to paying for the subscriptions.  Somehow, paying $2.99 a month (for example) just seems much easier than paying $24.99 in one payment.  I think Zinio would hook more readers (and get them to ultimately spend more) if it followed this "monthly" charge system.

One last mention should be that Amazon's Kindle does allow you to subscribe to magazines.  I have a Kindle, too but I just can't imagine how reading a magazine in black and white AND without the touch technology could compare with reading magazines in color on either the iPad or the Nook Color.  In this case, the advantage definitely goes to the later two devices.

Watt's Up?

Well, not our power, that's for sure, but let me backtrack a bit.   Thursday started out to be a VERY promising day.  Guess what arrived one day ahead of schedule?  My iPad!

Luckily I was at home instead of off running errands or else the delivery fellow would not have left it at the door.  Apple requires a signature for these things to be delivered.  I signed for and grabbed that package faster than you could say "Christmas" and had it on my table and unwrapped even faster.

I had already received my Smart Cover earlier along with the device to transfer photos from your camera to the iPad so it wasn't long before I had the smart cover attached to the iPad and I was ready to read the instructions on how to use my new toy.

Gulp!  This was all that was included in the way of instructions.  One little playing card-sized sheet of "instructions."  Not much for someone who likes things written down step-by-step.  Luckily, I had picked up two books at the bookstore last week that gave much more detailed information on how to set up and use the iPad so I forged ahead.

Soon I was synching my new iPad with the help of iTunes and then I was off to the races, so to speak.  One of the first things I did was download the Season Two premiere of "Justified."  I wasn't sure if I should pick the HD version or the standard version.  I had plenty of memory in my iPad since I got the 64 GB version so the only variable seemed to be how fast my internet connection might be.  We have Verizon FiOS, which is pretty darn fast, so I picked the HD version.  Hmmm, I don't think I'm going to do that again.  It took almost 40 minutes to download one episode.  Next time I'll just pick the standard version.  I'm sure glad that I didn't purchase the entire season via HD.





So that afternoon I was enjoying playing with the iPad and also researching what apps would be good to put on it.  I was happily engaged in that activity when my friend sent me a text message.  Hmm, a tornado warning had been issued for our area.  About that time I got a text message from my hubby.  Same thing.....tornado warnings for our general area.  I grabbed the iPad and my iPhone (are you sensing a theme here?) plus my Kindle and headed to the basement.  That's where my hubby found me when he got home from work, in the recliner with my feet up, knitting and watching the Weather Channel.

The Commander joined me as things were starting to get exciting but suddenly the lights flickered.  Oh, no!  Another flicker!  I dashed upstairs to turn off my computer while he dashed into his computer room to turn off his and then I made sure both of the dogs where downstairs as I returned to "Command Central."  We had just made it to our seats when the room was plunged into darkness.  Drat!

To make a long story short, that was around 7 p.m. Thursday evening.  Dinner was heating in the oven so we ate supper by candlelight in the basement.  Luckily, the iPad, the Kindles, and our iPhones had a pretty good charge on them so we spent the rest of the evening reading and playing games on our devices.

Friday morning dawned with still no power.  I headed off to the library with my chargers, iPhone, iPad, and knitting.  I found a nice study carrel with plugs and plugged in things and then settled down to spend the morning.  By Friday afternoon, we were still in the dark.

At 9 p.m. Friday evening, our power finally came back on.  We had already spent time mopping up water around the freezer and the refrigerator where the ice maker tray had leaked.  Now it was time to assess the damage.  Yikes!  Most of our items in the freezer and the refrigerator were not salvageable.  We had to catalog and throw out a lot.  Thank goodness that our downstairs freezer had very little in it and that I had been making a real effort to use up what had been in our upstairs little freezer. It could have been worse.

At least this way, we had an excuse to clean our refrigerator/freezer surfaces, which made the Commander happy, although it wasn't exactly how I planned to spend the beginning of our holiday weekend.

I did really appreciate his help, though with all the throwing out of leftovers that were ruined and washing out the containers.  We made a good team of washers/dryers.  The dogs stood nearby and watched for crumbs.

Moral of the story?  Make sure your electronic devices are fully charged whenever possible because you never know when you might lose power, especially with all these horrible storms that have been sweeping through the country lately.  Second moral of the story?  Buy a generator!