Tag: "Tips"

iPad Quick Tip – Managing iPad Memory

By Bill | September 30, 2010 | 2 comments

Keep your iPad from Crashing: The iPad doesn’t have multitasking yet so memory management shouldn’t be a problem, right? You would think so but users can still run into situations where your iPad refuses to launch an app and pops up a message saying “Your memory is low.” So what causes this and what can you do?

Well, the iPad already supports multitasking but it’s limited to only a few Apple specific apps like the iPod, Mail and Safari. For example, on the iPad you can start playing music in the iPod app, return to the main screen, tap on the Mail app and then check your mail all without missing a beat in the music. This basic multitasking can sometimes have an impact on your memory and apps.

By Bill | July 28, 2010 | No comment yet

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If you’re a regular here at PadGadget, you know I’m a bit of a shutterbug. I started shooting in high school and learned how to develop and print my own B&W, Color Positive (Ciba Chrome -Slides) and Color Negatives from a great set of teachers. In college I was lucky enough to be friends with a pair of fresh new fashion photographers that did work for a number fashion sites including Vogue. These guys were good friends and I learned a lot from them about photography and the essentials of the trade such as composition and lighting. Unfortunately most of us don’t have friends professionally trained in photography to help us hone our picture taking skills. But don’t worry, if you own an iPad you can now use Scott Kelby’s Photo Recipes Live: Behind the Scenes: Your Guide to Today’s Most Popular Lighting Techniques to learn great photo techniques from a professional.

Best selling author Scott Kelby, has taken “Photo Recipes” from his The Digital Photography Book, and turned them into a powerful teach app for the iPad. The app is a whopper, weighing in at over 1.2GB in size, it is chock-full of over two hours of useful video tutorials spread over 16 different chapters. The chapters cover a range of photography topics including shooting portraits, landscapes, product shots, food, flowers, etc. Each chapter teaches you how to get that professional look by using the right gear, camera placement and the proper lighting for your photographs.

In the app, Kelby takes you behind the scenes and shows you how photographers put together those “special” shots you see in magazines. The step-by-step guide shows you how to recreate the look and gives you tips on dealing with scenes in various indoor, outdoor and studio lighting conditions.

By Bill | June 25, 2010 | 2 comments

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Save Your Web Images : Have you ever been out surfing the web on your iPad and come across an image that you really liked and wanted to share with a friend? Well, with this handy tip you’ll be able to save web images in no time.

Open up Safari on your iPad and surf on over to a web page that has a cool image. Tap and hold your finger down on the image for about two seconds and you’ll see a dialog box pop-up with options to Open, Save or Copy an image. If you want to save an image, simply select save and the web image will be saved to your iPad’s photo library.

If you want to e-mail a cool image to a friend, simply select Copy from the menu, launch the iPad’s Mail app and paste the image directly into the body of your e-mail message.

You can also save cool images on the web and turn them into a Wallpaper for your iPad. Find the image you like and save it to your Photo library. To set this as your new Wallpaper, tap the Settings icon on your Home Screen and then choose Wallpaper from the list. Now simply select the image you just found and whether you would like to use it for the Lock Screen, Home Screen or both. Voila, you now have a cool new Wallpaper for your iPad.

Now that people are getting their iPads, we’ve started our iPad Quick Tips series to help you get the most out of your new gadget. We’ll post our tips on a regular basis so keep coming back to find out the latest tricks and tips.

iPad Quick Tip – Safari Bookmarks Bar

By Bill | May 5, 2010 | 11 comments

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Safari Bookmark bar on your iPad: Out of the box, the iPad doesn’t give you a bookmarks bar like you might be familiar with on you Mac or PC. A bookmarks bar puts your favorite websites at the top of Safari and just a quick tap away.

To enable the bookmarks bar on the iPad, simply go to “Settings” and select the “Safari” option. You’re presented with several Safari options, select “Always Enable Bookmarks Bar.”

By Roberto | May 3, 2010 | 1 comment

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Three weeks ago, Wired was still insisting that its magazine app for tablets would still reach the iPad despite being built using Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone tool. At that time, publisher Conde Nast said, he was working with Adobe to develop the reader, but was adamant that it would still pass Apple’s iPhone 4.0 guidelines. Many of us were still speculating, whether Wired had actually discovered a workaround for Apple’s guidelines, or was simply hoping that it will be given an exception.

Recently, TechCrunch reported that Encoding.com shows some trends in the past four quarters, in which the H.264 format went from 31% of web videos to 66%, and seems to be the largest format by far. Encoding.com is a service that has encoded over 5 million videos in the last year, including those of Brightcove, MTV, WebMD, MySpace and Red Bull. According to the data, at this time last year, 69% of the videos they were encoding were in Flash, either VP6 or FLV; now it is only 26% combined. H.264, on the other hand, went from 31% to 66% over the same period.

By Bill | April 30, 2010 | No comment yet

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Quick Video Zoom: The iPad is a great device for watching videos and many popular websites have reworked their web videos to support the iPad.

If you come across a site with embedded video, you can easily zoom the video to full screen with a single multi-touch gesture. Simply reverse pinch any web video and it will zoom to fullscreen. To get out of fullscreen mode, pinch the video and you are transported back to the page you were just surfing. Now go get some popcorn and enjoy the show!

Send us your favorite iPad tips and we might include them in a future post.

iPad Quick Tip

By Bill | April 27, 2010 | No comment yet

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Customize Your John Hancock: If you use the iPad’s e-mail app frequently, you have probably noticed it appends all your e-mails with a “Sent from my iPad” tag line. In today’s iPad Quick Tip, we will show you how to add a signature to your e-mails. Your signature can be any text tag line such as your name, title, phone number, quote, joke, etc.

To quickly customize your e-mail signature, open up the iPad’s Settings window. Select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” and then choose “Signature”. You can now enter whatever text signature you want to have appear at the bottom of every e-mail you send. Go ahead and pick something unique so your friends have fun reading your next e-mail.

Send us your favorite iPad tips and we might include them in a future post.

iPad Quick Tip

By Bill | April 26, 2010 | 2 comments

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Typing in Silence: If you’re an iPhone user, you’re well aware of the iPhone’s mute button. This little gem not only silences the iPhone’s ringtone for incoming calls but also kills the sound generated by any iPhone app. This is a quick way to enjoy a game while not disturbing your neighbor on the plane with all the Pows, Bangs and Kabooms. Another nice use of the mute button is to silence the keyboard clicks when typing an e-mail during a meeting.

If you’re on an iPad, you unfortunately don’t have a quick mute button to quiet the keyboard clicks when typing up notes or an e-mail during a meeting, so what do you do? You have two options: 1.) Use the quick mute shortcut we featured in an earlier post or 2.) Turn off unwanted sounds in the preference menu.

By dag | April 25, 2010 | 4 comments

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Keyboard shortcuts: If you happen to type a lot on your iPad, you must have been tripped up by the apostrophe on the keyboard at least a couple times.

Simply hold the exclamation point/comma key down for an extra half-second, and the apostrophe will actually present itself. You don’t even have to select it at that point, just let go of the key and your apostrophe will be validated.

Update: The keyboard actually offers many other shortcuts, as well as access to foreign characters (for instance foreign currencies like the Yen), screenshots below:

By dag | April 24, 2010 | No comment yet

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Shuffle Songs: Even though the music app for the iPad looks very much like iTunes, its options are not necessarily as intuitive.

Besides Genius, one of the main features most people enjoy is being able to shuffle their songs, especially when they play games with sub-par soundtracks, or when they read a book.

Nobody really knew where the option actually was, until the folks at cnet managed to find it (note: this video won’t play on your iPad).

iPad Quick Tip

By Bill | April 21, 2010 | No comment yet

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Zoom Video: The iPad is the perfect device for consuming content and video is a favorite. The iPad makes watching video easy and fun and with this tip you’ll be enjoying web videos even more.

If you come across a website with embedded video you can quickly zoom the video to full screen. Simply reverse pinch the video and the video blows-up to full screen. You can pinch the window to shrink the video back to its normal size.

Send us your favorite iPad tips and we might include them in a future post.

iPad Quick Tip

By Bill | April 20, 2010 | No comment yet

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Now that people are getting their iPads, we thought it would be good to start an iPad Quick Tips series to help users get the most out of their new gadget. We’ll post our tips on a regular basis so keep coming back to find out the latest tricks and tips.

Find Applications Fast: If you’ve loaded your iPad with a bunch of apps, you might like a faster way of finding that one special app. Your iPad’s Spotlight feature can help you find and open apps quickly.

To search the names of all apps installed on your iPad, simply enter the application name in the Spotlight search box. Then tap on the results to open the corresponding application. Finding your apps has never been easier.

Send us your favorite iPad tips and we might include them in a future post.

iPad Quick Tip

By Bill | April 19, 2010 | 1 comment

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Force keyboard to appear: If you regularly use an external Bluetooth keyboard you’ve probably noticed that the iPad’s onscreen keyboard doesn’t work when the two are paired. If your iPad is paired with a Bluetooth keyboard and you want to use the onscreen keyboard instead, simply press the Eject key on the Bluetooth keyboard and your onscreen keyboard should now appear.

Send us your favorite iPad tips and we might include them in a future post.

iPad Quick Tip

By Bill | April 17, 2010 | 2 comments

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Erase Your Footsteps: Sometimes you might need to erase your tracks when surfing the web. On your Mac or PC that’s a fairly straight forward process. We are here to show you how easy it is to get this done on your new iPad.

Go to Settings and select Safari from the menu on the left. Now simply tap on the buttons labeled “Clear History”, “Clear Cookies” and “Clear Cache” to have your web trail instantly erased.

Clearing the iPad’s Cache may also help when you are experiencing issues with a particular web page.

Send us your favorite iPad tips and we might include them in a future post.

iPad Quick Tip

By Bill | April 16, 2010 | No comment yet

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Grab an Image: Let’s say you’re surfing the web and come across a picture that you want to e-mail to a buddy, how do you do it? Simply find the image you’re interested in and then touch and hold the image, then tap Save Image. The photo is automatically saved in to your photo library. From here you can share the image with friends via e-mail or your Mobile Me gallery.