The WordPress App For The iPad Is Pretty Good

The WordPress app for the iPad is pretty good, and I usually write the entire blog post in this editor. It’s important to note that there is no fancy visual editor (WYSIWYG) like in the web-based version. It’s a simple text editor that works well for text entry. It’s also a HTML editor, so those familiar with HTML can use it to make posts with sophisticated formatting. I’m too far removed from the old HTML blogging days, so I avoid it. I simply use the WordPress app for writing the text content of the blog post. The photo handling capability of this app is not very sophisticated, so I avoid using it for that purpose.
　　
TIP: The WordPress app is great for following comments left on the blog, so don’t overlook that ability. Even if you don’t write blog posts using the app you might find it useful for working with blog comments.
　　
It may seem that my iPad work with the blog post is over at this point; if that were true, then full blogging couldn’t be done on the iPad in my case. This is where it gets really fun — I fire up LogMeIn Ignition on the iPad, and log into either a Mac or Windows PC in my home office. I leave at least one of them running for this purpose, with the LogMeIn server running in the background.
　　
Using this method, I am in effect working with my Mac (for example) on the iPad, using the slate display as the Mac’s monitor. More importantly, since LogMeIn is optimized for interaction via touch on the iPad, I am able to do anything I normally do on the Mac (or Windows PC) by touching the screen. I use this method to start the Firefox browser, and enter the web-based WordPress editor on the home machine.
　　
Writing blog posts in the WordPress editor using the iPad’s on-screen keyboard is more efficient than I dreamed possible. I expected this keyboard to be good for knocking off a very short email, but not for writing blog posts consisting of hundreds of words. What I’ve discovered is with a little practice it’s easier to type on the screen than you might think; it’s certainly a viable method in a pinch. For much longer posts I use an external Bluetooth keyboard. It folds up and fits in my pocket, yet opens into a full-sized keyboard. I don’t absolutely need it for writing on the iPad, but I’m no glutton for punishment. I have the tool so I use it when it makes more sense.
　　
Clever readers will ask why I don’t just log into the home machine and write the post in the browser, rather than create the draft using the iPad local app. That’s a fair question and the proper answer is I could easily do that. But as well as the LogMeIn method works, when I am concentrating on the post writing process itself, I prefer the distraction-free environment of the local editor. It’s strictly personal preference, but there’s no reason doing it all through the remote connection wouldn’t work. I have done it that way, as a matter of fact, and still prefer to do it in two steps.
　　
I must make it clear that this method works for me as I already have everything in place to make it work. I have multiple computers in the home office, so it’s no burden (financial or otherwise) to have one available for remote access. I already owned LogMeIn on the iPad ($29.99), so I didn’t have to spend the money just for blogging. This may not be the case for you, and I am not recommending you spend a lot of money to do this.
　　
This method is working so well for me that I could easily employ it for short trips without impacting my ability to work. I don’t intend to do that, but I could if I needed to. That’s a liberating thought.
　　
Prior to the launch of the iPad bloggers started thinking about how convenient the slate might be for sharing information. Some even believed the iPad would make such an impact on the process that it would change blogging for the better. While it’s certainly true the iPad makes interacting with the web easy, and something that can be done almost anytime, it’s still not clear how useful it can be for the actual process of blogging. The fog is clearing, however, and some bloggers are using the iPad to handle most of the blogging process. I would never want to use the iPad as my only blogging tool, but I admit I am finding it far more useful for the task than I thought it would be. With some careful thought and best practices, blogging can indeed be done on the iPad.

Samsung Galaxy Player 3.6 Acquits Itself Well As A Basic

An inexpensive alternative to an Android smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Player 3.6 ($149.99 list, 8GB) acquits itself well as a basic, budget MP3 and video player that also runs most of the 400,000 Android apps available. It's for people who want to play "Draw Something" but don't want to deal a smartphone contract, and it costs $50 less than the same-capacity iPod touch ($199, 5 stars). But its low-res screen may limit its appeal to status-conscious teens who could make up its core market.

Physical Design and Networking
The Galaxy Player 3.6 (Best Deal: $149.99 at Amazon) looks like a small budget smartphone. Made of black and chrome plastic, it has standard MicroUSB and headphone jacks on the bottom panel and a matte back. The front is mostly a somewhat-dim 3.6-inch, 480-by-320 LCD screen with three standard Android touch buttons below it. At 4.6 by 2.6 by .4 inches (HWD) and 4.2 ounces, it'll fit easily into any hand and most pockets.

Here's the thing about the screen. Yes, it's the same resolution as many low-cost smartphones. But remember that we're competing with the Apple iPod touch here. Because of the touch's dominance in this category, there are different expectations for media players than for phones, and this screen is noticeably dimmer and grainier than that of the iPod touch. In a row of iPods, the Galaxy Player 3.6 will stand out in an unattractive way. That's why we're more likely to recommend the larger-screen Galaxy Player 4.2, whose 800-by-480 screen stands up better against its top competitor.

The Galaxy Player uses its Bluetooth connection to pull off a neat trick: The handheld can act as a Bluetooth headset for a simpler phone you have lying around. When it's connected to your phone, you can answer calls on the Galaxy Player as if it was a smartphone. You can also dial from the Galaxy Player's contacts book, though there's no traditional dialer, and no easy way to activate voice dialing. The Player doesn't share your phone's Internet connection over Bluetooth. To get on the Web, you'll need a Wi-Fi connection; we had no problem connecting the Galaxy Player to our 802.11n network.

The relatively dim screen and lack of phone capability make for great battery life; we got 8 hours, 15 minutes of full-brightness video playback time on a charge, compared to five and a half hours on an iPod touch with its screen brightness set to full and eight hours with the iPod touch's brightness set to half.

The included earphones come with a microphone, and clear rubber flanges that create a bit of a seal within the ear to improve sound and provide some very basic passive noise cancellation. You should still look at upgrading, but this pair is better than the signature white earbuds that come with the iPod touch.

Performance
Built around a 1GHz, single-core Cortex-A8 processor, the CPU is the same as you'll find in many inexpensive-to-midrange smartphones. It runs Android 2.3, with no real hope of an upgrade to 4.0. It was undistinguished at benchmarks, but performed well overall because of the low-res screen. With fewer pixels to push, the processor doesn't have to work as hard as it does with higher-resolution devices.

Casual games like Angry Birds and Draw Something performed well. Web browsing will feel cramped if you're used to the now-more-common larger 800-by-480 screens, but at least the Galaxy Player supports Flash 11.

Along with the standard Google Play market, the Galaxy Player comes with the Samsung Apps store, a selection of mostly free apps curated by Samsung. Proprietary Samsung apps let the Galaxy Player be used as a remote viewfinder for Samsung Wi-Fi-enabled cameras, or as a remote control for Samsung Wi-Fi-enabled TVs.

There's 8GB of on-board memory as well as a MicroSD card slot that you must remove the battery to use. Our 64GB SanDisk MicroSD card worked fine, so you can get quite a lot of media onto this device. The Player handled AAC, WMA, MP3 and OGG format music files at a range of bit rates, and played MPEG4. H.264 and WMV video files at up to 640-by-480 resolution without any issues. The Player has a moderately loud, single speaker that delivers undistinguished, but not awfully distorted sound loud enough for a small bedroom; you can also use wired or Bluetooth headphones.

The low-resolution screen doesn't bring video to life the way the iPod Touch screen does, but it's adequate for TV shows and cartoons. Netflix, TV.com and Vevo apps work. The Hulu app said it does not support this device.

The FM radio works when headphones are plugged into the 3.5mm jack. It automatically scans for stations, which is very convenient. I found that it locked into stations easily and played them clearly.

There's a 2-megapixel camera on the back of the Galaxy Player 3.6 and a VGA camera on the front, but don't expect much of either of them. The rear camera takes slightly hazy, very contrasty pictures with some low-light blur and in one case, rather odd fish-eye distortion. The front camera is for taking basic snapshots of your face. You can record unremarkable 640-by-480 videos at 25 frames per second with the rear camera; there's no flash.

Conclusions
You're not actually saving much money by getting the Galaxy Player 3.6 instead of a smartphone. Looking only at prepaid no-contract Android phones, Virgin Mobile has the LG Optimus V (4 stars) for $129.99, MetroPCS has the HTC Wildfire S (3 stars) for $119, and Cricket has the Samsung Vitality (3 stars) for $99.99. None of them are really standouts, but neither is this device.

So the Galaxy Player 3.6 is for the niche of people who really, truly don't want a smartphone, but also want a touch-screen gadget that runs apps. I suspect many of those people will be kids. (They want smartphones, but their parents won't let them have them.) At $150, the Player 3.6 is a decent device that undercuts the price of the iPod touch by $50.

With the Galaxy Player 4.2 and iPod touch now both at $199, there's no reason to pay any more for your media handheld. The older Galaxy Player 4.0 (4 stars) still lists at $229, with no advantages over the less expensive Galaxy Player 4.2. The Sony NWZ-Z1000 ($249, 3 stars), meanwhile, has a faster processor but worse battery life than either Galaxy Player, and no camera or camcorder. Don't buy that one either.

But I think those $199 products are the sweet spot, and the Galaxy Player 3.6 is shooting a bit too low. With every similar competitor running at 800-by-480 or greater, the Player 3.6's grainy 320-by-480 display just looks cheap in comparison. Save your pennies for the Galaxy Player 4.2 or the iPod.

Toshiba Announced Its 13-inch Excite Tablet: Who Will Use Mobile Computing?

When Toshiba announced its 13-inch Excite tablet Tuesday, the company made an argument that one size does not fit all when it comes to touchscreen devices. But who will actually use such a large slab of mobile computing?

“The Excite 13 is what we see as a home tablet,” Jared Leavitt, a Toshiba spokesman, told Wired. “The larger size makes it an ideal kitchen tablet. You can watch how-to videos while you’re cooking, or look up recipes. And then later, you can bring it into the living room to watch videos with the kids, or to look at family photos with friends.”

Thankfully, Toshiba is shipping the Excite 13, which runs on Google’s Android 4.0 operating system, with a stand that will relieve owners from having to hold, or prop up, the large device themselves. And despite being bigger than pretty much every other competing tablet on the market, the Excite 13 is fairly thin and light for its size, Leavitt said, noting that it will weigh 2.2 pounds and measure 0.4 inches thick.

Nonetheless, anyone who’s watching the tablet market has to wonder why Toshiba is releasing a tablet behemoth in a world enamored with smaller devices. After all, the first tablet to gain any widespread consumer adoption other than Apple’s iPad is the 7-inch Kindle Fire. And looking forward, the hottest rumors focus on an iPad mini and a 7-inch tablet that would be Google’s next flagship mobile device. In short: Small is in, and big isn’t even part of the conversation.

Jared Spool, the CEO of User Interface Engineering, a usability research firm, agrees that Toshiba is thinking about tablet design in a way that its rivals aren’t. But Spool doesn’t agree that the world needs, or wants, a 13-inch tablet.

“This is the sort of typical maneuver of just adding another feature without improving the actual user experience,” Spool told Wired. “It’s just bigger, and it’s not clear to me that anyone is asking for bigger. You can only get the iPad in one size and nobody is saying, ‘Gee, it just feels a little too small to me.’”

But while there seems to be no consumer demand for larger tablets, the use case of watching movies as a group, or flipping through photos with loved ones on the couch, on a 13-inch slate isn’t too hard to imagine, says Jakob Nielsen, principal at the Nielsen Norman Group, a usability research firm.

“If a small group of people is trying to use the tablet together, sitting on the couch and consuming content, this size makes sense,” Nielsen told Wired. “But I do think [the Excite 13] might be a bit of overreach. I don’t think that people only need one computer. Nowadays, most people have two computers, between a laptop and a smartphone. But where this Toshiba tablet fits in — between those devices and the TV — I’m not sure. It’s not likely to be a big success.”

Spool also predicts that the Excite 13 will be neither an iPad killer, nor a top-selling Android tablet.

“These types of enhancements are knee-jerk reactions from companies who are trying to ‘out feature’ other companies,” he said. “But what this comes down to is that it’s not the specific technology in a tablet that makes it exciting. It’s the user experience. And there’s just a lot less to do on an Android tablet than an iPad. And what there is to do is much clumsier because the screen sizes and specs for Android tablets are all over the place. A 13-inch screen and a bunch of top specs do nothing to change that.”

Among the other specs the Excite 13 touts are a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear facing camera, and four rear-mounted speakers to blast audio from the tablet’s aluminum back. The tablet also sports a 1,600×900 screen resolution, a micro-USB port, a micro-HDMI port and a full-size SD card slot.

The Excite 13 sits at the top of a revamped tablet line for Toshiba, in terms of both price and screen size with a price tag of $649.99 for the 32GB model, and $749.99 for the 64GB model, when it hits stores in early June.

For those looking for a more traditionally sized tablet that still packs a quad-core punch, Toshiba will also ship in June a 7.7-inch version of the Excite (known as the Excite 7) at $499.99 for 16GB of storage and $579.99 for 32GB. A 10-inch Excite, dubbed the Excite 10, will ship in May for $449.99 with 16 GB of storage and $529.99 for the 32GB. The Excite range of tablets replaces Toshiba’s old line of Thrive slates, which were offered in both a 7-inch and 10-inch model.