http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/09/ipad-2-review/
The Ipad 2 is out, and is very nice. The biggest new feature is the 2 cameras, which are not as good as the iphone camera’s, but they let you do facetime quite nicely. If you are wondering, yes you can facetime to any iphone or computer with facetime. There is also a new A5 chip that is twice the speed of the old chip, and it will now let you mirror the screen to a TV or monitor with the right adapter cables.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380921,00.asp
The biggest feature is that it has Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, which is 20% faster than the old I5 chips from Intel. So if you buy the 2.7 GHZ dual core, it will go as if the last generation was at 3.24 GHZ..! If you get a quad core and do multithreaded things like video encoding, expect it to be twice as fast as the old quad cores..
There is also thunderbolt, which will not be terribly exciting until there are thunderbolt devices to buy that you need the extra speed, it is 20 times faster than usb 2.0. The webcam is better, battery life is better, and the 3D graphics is a lot better thanks to a new ATI graphics.
Also if you get last generations laptop refurbished, the dicounts are really good right now for a great machine!
There is now a way to opt out of some of the banner ads on the web, they use opt out cookies… Even the most paranoid cookie hating person would agree is a good use of cookies is to show that you don’t want to see any ads on a webpage!
There are over 50 companies that if you have the right cookie on your computer, they simply will not display certain types of ads, note that Google does not participate, so at least half the ads you see will still be there.
Last year I talked about free government websites that had all sorts on info on people, now there are more and more paid websites that mine the internet and put this info on an easy to use friendly face.
One such website is
www.spokeo.com
sarah at sarahlane dot com
@techguylabs.com
They will dig through the social network sites for blog posts and commnets, flickr and photo websites for pictures, store websites for wishlists, radio websites for music they like to listen to.
I thought this was really neat
This movie goes into geotagging pictures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vARzvWxwY
Here is facebook’s official video on geo-tagging
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150265360030484
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/02/24macosx.html
Lion will be out sometime this year, the most notable feature it the app store, and a new way of launching and switching between programs. I expect Microsoft to include some of these new features in Windows 9…
Now apple is giving away findmyiphone without having to pay $100 a year for mobile me. The trick is you have to have a mobileme account and link it you your phone. You can then log in to any computer and find you iphone, lock it out, or wipe it clean.
This is handy if you drop your phone in a field, it will pinpoint on a map where your phone is waiting for you!
There is a online video show called ipad today that talks about everything there might be to do with an ipad
http://twit.tv/ipt
The hosts are Leo Laporte, and Sarah Lane, and they do a great job going through some really neat stuff to do with you ipad, Of course 90% of what you can do on your ipad can be done with your iphone.
The new iphone OS will let you switch between open programs by double tapping the bottom button. Some programs work in the background, and quitting the background programs will speed up your phone, and make the battery last longer.
Also if you have a program that is misbehaving, you can reset it by shutting it down using the application switcher and re-launching.
If you switch to the left on the application switcher, there are controls for your music, and the only way to lock the screen orientation.
You can increase the battery life by turning off Bluetooth, wi-fi, and 3g, but I don’t recommend it if you use the features regularly.
There are a few easter eggs in the iphone that come with the default applications.
The alarm clock that has gotten plenty of press for not working is in the clock application. There is also a stopwatch and timer in the clock application.
If you double click on the number in the calculator application, you can copy and paste.
The compass also has your full GPS coordinates at the bottom, and lets you switch between true north and magnetic north.
The Voice memos is a sound meter, and will let you trim a conversation, and email them.
FindMyIphone!
If you got to Mail, Contacts, Calendars it will let you set up a mobile me account for free. And you can set up the Find My Iphone service here, and if you ever loose your iphone, you can find out where it is. Don’t wait until you loose your Iphone to sign up for it.
If you touch the screen on the camera, it will focus on what you touched, and then the zoom slider will show up as well.
Remember that the camera that faces away from you is much nicer than the one that faces you.
Photos: Photos has a places at the bottom that is easily overlooked
Maps: Is really nice, you can place pushpins and email you location to people, you can also search for Pizza, Gas, or Taco if you need a breakfast taco.