Tech Notes

So a quick update on some Tech stuff from the week. I have been getting iPad apps in the hopes I can get some real use out of them when we deploy. However, the other day I was at AT&T and got to look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

I have to admit the Tab was a pretty cool device. Even though our family has gone all Apple lately, I am still a fan of Android. I think it still has some rough edges, but had it been available when I first invested in the iPhone, I might have gone that way. Anyway, the Tab seemed really fast and smooth, something I hadn’t really seen in the Android sphere. I do like having usable widgets on the home/lock screen and I think this is a real iOS miss. The size was nice too. If Steve Jobs thinks there is no market at 7″, he is mistaken.

I also played with Skype over 3G. I was pretty impressed. The video chat worked really well over 3G thanks to the way their algorithms work. It was quite usable and not even really choppy. Good thing is, I will probably be able to Skype over wi-fi on deployment via iPhone. It’s much nicer and more convenient than using a webcam.

I finally got around to playing Scrabble on the iPad and it was pretty neat. The wife and I linked our iPhones to the iPad, and our tiles were on the phones and the board on the iPad. It worked really well. I can see why Apple used this as a tech demo. I also got SimCity and Command and Conquer.

As far as productivity, I think I finally settled on Noteshelf as a “notepad.” it had everything I wanted (minus a quick keyboard) and was smoother and more usable than Pen Ultimate, White Note, or Note Plus. I also am using Chapters to keep my journals, Evernote for “stuff,” and of course Kindle for iPad for about 90% of my e-books. I am still deciding on a good todo app. I used 2Do for awhile, then ToDo, and now Awesome Note. I like Awesome Note and it does a lot more than just Todos, but the syncing is HORRIBLE. It just copies the todos, notes, etc to GDocs or Evernote. If you “sync” an iPhone and an iPad it makes two separate sets of folders in either ever note or GDocs instead of actually keeping them in sync. It also makes separate folders for each category making things messy, Especially in Evernote. Outside of that it’s pretty awesome as a note/todo app.

That’s the quick run down. If you want to know what else I use regularly, let me know. I’ll let you know I use the built in calendar,address book, and mail pretty heavy. Also, any suggestions would be cool as I’d rather get them now then try to find a net connected wi-fi just for an app downrange.