New iPad - Compliments of EECI2010

Posted on 17 August 2010 | by Ryan Battles

At EECI2010 in San Francisco, I was a lucky winner of an iPad drawing. It arrived in the mail yesterday, and these are my first impressions of the interesting new device.

I'll have to admit, at first I wondered what the iPad was for exactly. I have a laptop AND a desktop, and I plan on purchasing an iPhone when my contract with Sprint is through this fall. What niche does this fourth device fall into?

Here are my initial thoughts:

The Ultimate Children's Entertainment Platform

My twin daughters are almost two years old. We are taking them on a plane ride this weekend and have wondered what on earth we are going to do to keep them quiet. Enter the iPad. Already they are playing a multitude of games, browsing flashcards, listening to Raffi on Pandora, and watching movies that we've uploaded to the device. We purchased a couple of children's headphones to keep the rest of the airplane sane in leu of Dora's perpetually yelling voice. I can't think of a feature that this thing doesn't have to keep my kids content.

The Ultimate RSS Reader

I'm still getting my hands dirty with this, but with the plethora of RSS reader apps available for the iPad, in combination with the instapaper app that makes saving for later reading a pleasure, I can say that I will now be a more informed consumer of blog posts. Already this morning I sat with the iPad in a local coffee shop perusing the thoughts of those whose feeds I subscribe to. I will say that one thing that the iPad is not good at is leaving comments on other people's blogs. What used to be a quick gesture after reading a post now turns into a ten minute headache of trying to fill out all of the forms with my email address, name, url, and typing a comment. The on-screen keyboard is useable, but not for typing much more than a URL. My buddy says I'll get used to it. We'll see.

Coming Soon

I haven't had this thing more than 24 hours, but there are a few other uses that I know I'll use the iPad for:

Streaming TV shows (as soon as something decent replaces LOST)
Second Monitor (with AirDisplay, once my stand gets here from Amazon)
Digital Photo viewer (when I'm just setting it aside)
Bible Reading Plan (hopefully it will help keep my reading more consistent)

Of course, I'm open to suggestions of how else to use the iPad. I'll be interested to learn from others what their experiences with the iPad are.

About EECI

EECI is an ExpressionEngine and CodeIgnitor developer's conference held at various locations around the world. This past Spring it was held in San Francisco, and is coming soon to Leiden, The Netherlands. It is a great opportunity to learn from others, share ideas, and network with others from around the world. For more information visit http://eeciconf.com/

Tags: ipad, apple, eeci conference, technology

Comments (4)

Motivational Quotes Oct. 15, 2010		I've been thinking about getting an iPad. I was wondering if it had any sort of external speakers (or like the iPhone, doesn't, but still can project sound)? And also if you can plug a regular headphone jack into it. It seems like it would be pretty thin (I've never used an iPad) so it seems kind of like regular headphones wouldn't be able to plug into it. Does the iPad have external speakers, and can you also plug headphones into it?
sports tickets Oct. 21, 2010		I need an app where i can show and control a presentation from my computer and have someone watch it on and ipad, but not be able to control it from the ipad; Just watch it. Does that App exist?
cooking games Feb. 22, 2011		Good work posting this. It is interesting article and I'm interested within the subsequent comments!
ALENA JULIA Apr. 12, 2011		interesting post of iPad that is so interesting and its good suggestions you shared to us about it it so entertaining and good for use. thank you