Category Archives: Hardware

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GoodReader – a solid file system for the iPad

iPad

A big jump in functionality.

GoodReader on the iPad

While GoodReader for the iPhone has been around a long time I never bothered with it. There’s only so much I want to do on so small a screen. But the iPad version adds a quantum leap in productivity to that already stellar device for the princely sum of $0.99.

GoodReader for the iPad adds a file system to the iPad where there is none. Using this tool you can transfer files to and from the iPad using wifi. Further, you can easily access files on any number of cloud storage devices, be it Mobile Me, DropBox or on servers at your hosting provider.

To invoke wifi file transfer to the iPad from your Mac, you load GoodReader on the iPad and touch the wifi icon. Once you have set up the iPad in your Mac’s Finder as a server (Finder->Go->Connect to Server) you will see the iPad in Finder as another folder or drive and can drag and drop files into that folder using your Mac’s Finder. It couldn’t be easier. During file transfer you cannot touch the iPad – once multitasking is added in the revised OS4 this fall, this limitation should go away.

The iPad’s address is automatically provided by your Mac

You can store this address in the lower panel (‘Favorite Servers’), above, by hitting the ‘+’ sign; I prefer to personalize mine (as 10.0.1.7 means nothing to me) and you can get a personalized address from the GoodReader wifi screen on your iPad which you then enter as shown below – ‘Tiggers iPad’ means something to me when I have many servers connected to my desktop HackPro:

Personalizing the device name

‘Tigger’s iPad’ is what I named my iPad when first syncing it with the desktop. If you give yours a unique name then that’s what you will be using, above. Handy if, like us, you have more than one iPad in the home.

If your iPad is password protected (you did do that, no?) then you will be asked for the iPad’s password first time you try to connect, which password you can store in your desktop’s keychain to avoid subsequent reentry.

During wifi transfer from your desktop to the iPad, the iPad’s screen will display the following message, and flash a red warning sign telling you not to disconnect it:

Wifi transfer of files to the iPad in progress

In the first screenshot, above, you can see, in the left panel, where I have transferred a folder containing no fewer than 291 pictures, to the iPad and I can view these using GoodReader in flick-to-change or slideshow formats at will. Further, I have transferred a chunky PDF containing stock research to the iPad and can read that large file wherever I have the iPad, regardless of the presence of wifi, as the file resides on the iPad. Here you can see that PDF on the iPad’s screen. The reader includes bookmarking capabilities, which are essential for long, complex documents of this kind.

PDF file on the iPad viewed from within GoodReader – the original is much sharper

As I manage money for a living and read many research reports, this sort of thing is a blessing, and avoids the use of slow mobile connections when I need to access something.

The picture transfer completely sidesteps the clunky iTunes/Sync process and simply transfers the files directly to GoodReader on your iPad. The 43mB folder took some 5 minutes to upload to my iPad using a 10mb/s down/1.4mb/s up wifi connection. The viewer on the iPad is excellent and supports touch turning between pages. Zooming in is also supported. You can also password protect files, and I have done so as an example, with the Photos folder, as the padlock denotes.

Now refer back to the first illustration and look at the right hand panel. You will see that I have set up no fewer than five remote servers. The first (‘thomaspindelski’) is my account at MobileMe where I can store files needed on multiple devices. (I strongly counsel against using Google’s cloud storage as that corporation seems to impugn privacy rights daily. If they are going to clandestinely monitor your web use, as they have just admitted to doing, why on earth would you trust them with your data?)

The second (‘th****@*******ki.com‘) is my cloud account at DropBox – a handy, more limited version of MobileMe, and free if you don’t need a lot of storage. The third (‘BlueHost’) is the hosting provider in Utah where this blog and my other photoblogs and web sites reside. ‘Readyhosting’ is another hosting service which I use as a backup. Finally, ‘HackPro’ is my office computer. It’s not functional at present as I have not yet figured out how to see its files on the iPad. All of these connections require wifi to access.

Update May 26, 2010: Dr. P., famous for never giving up, has found a solution to remotely accessing any computer using the iPad and you can read all about it here.

Finally, you can upload files in other formats, including MP3 and Excel and Word, bypassing iTunes. Note, however, that files which have been password protected in their native application cannot be opened by Goodreader. Until multitasking comes to the iPad later this year, listening to MP3 files requires that you remain in the app – unlike with the iPod on the iPad. Expect that limitation to go away this fall when OS 4.0 is released. Note also that GoodReader does not support transfer of files from the iPad to other locations – it’s a one way device.

So, for the grand sum of $0.99, you get a file system for the iPad which vastly expands its capabilities. If, like me, you are data hungry, that represents a quantum leap in value added.

Update: For a tremendous value added use for your iPad and camera, click here.

Update July 12, 2010: If your iPad is connected by USB cable to your computer you can make lightning file transfers to GoodReader using the free GoodReaderUSB using drag-and-drop. It gets better. You can also transfer files form GoodReader on the iPad to your computer. Much the preferred approach with big PDFs where wi-fi is pokey by comparison.

Sony NEX-5

Cameras

Strange.

There’s an old Wall Street mantra of which I have long been a fan.

The subject is Loyalty and it goes like this:

“If you want Loyalty, get a dog.”

So when a new way of thinking in camera design comes along, I am more than interested. And I have no loyalty.

In this regard, I am worse than the common whore. If it works for me, I’ll go for it and dump yesterday’s infatuation.

What’s that, you say? You were with Leicas for over thirty years? Yes. Guilty as charged. They worked for me, for what I wanted to do, which was to take street snaps.

But then along came fast, small and automatic, with better image quality to boot, and like the street scrubber of old, I crossed the road to the better lit lamppost.

That lamppost was the Panasonic G1 for me. You can choose your own poison. Suffice it to say that there is no way I am going back to manual-anything. No, siree. I just want to press the button and get the instant gratification that we street denizens crave. A sharp moment of time.

So when Sony announces the NEX-5, I pay attention.

The Sony NEX-5 – APS-C in a very small box.

It’s an interesting piece. No viewfinder, of course. And an APS-C sensor. Though they still don’t get it – to make the lenses small you have to make the software fix the defects, not the gargantuan hardware they have opted for. But it is thinking outside the box as regards the body. Well done!

Sony may have lost its way in the last few years as their core competencies have become mass marketed and readily available. “It’s a Sony” now largely means “It’s overpriced”.

I rather doubt whether this ugly duckling will catch on, but I laud Sony for trying.

Vanity Fair comes to the iPad

iPad, Photography

The best photography on the best portable viewing device

I have mentioned more than once that some of the best contemporary photography is to be found in Vanity Fair and Condé Nast, the publisher, has just come out with a truly splendid iPad app for the magazine.

Click the picture for more.

This begins to show some of the potential for the iPad as a magazine reading device – beautifully laid out, an easily accessed table of contents and smart behavior in both portrait and landscape modes.

Many of the advertisements – an essential part of the VF experience with some of the best photography – are not yet interactive, meaning when you see that diamond encrusted Cartier watch you cannot just touch it to place it in your shopping cart, but that will come.

The old saw about advertising has it that 50% of it is effective, the problem being which 50%? Well, if interactive advertising doesn’t save magazines, nothing will. The advertiser will, for the first time, know the click-through rate, the location of the reader and hence the demographic profile, so will be able to finally determine the return on his investment. Indeed, given that he will be prepared to pay a premium for access to this ‘shelf space’ this sort of thing will actually hasten the demise of newsprint, and not a moment too soon.

And, yes, I have to admit it, I was the body model for Cristiano Ronaldo on the cover.

Guardian Eyewitness

iPad, Photographs

A fine photo gallery app for the iPad

Britain’s Guardian newspaper is not only a repository of thoughtful news reportage, it has also just released a free new iPad app named Guardian Eyewitness.

The first release includes 100 photographs:

An especially nice feature is that clicking on Pro Tip tells you what makes the photo special:

Worth checking out – it’s the sort of quality content and presentation you will not be seeing from the knuckle-dragging right.

The new art book

iPad, Photography

Content conversion is the challenge.

The Beautiful Planet app for the iPad gives you some idea of the future of books. While the navigation is rudimentary, basically being limited to broad geographical locations and seemingly random order of content once you choose a location, it works well as it showcases great photography and the viewer doesn’t much care whether the photograph was taken in Montevideo or Moscow.

But that’s not an approach which will work well for most art books, be they about paintings or photography. Context and background information are required to make the book truly useful.

One of the finest books in my small collection is Raphael by Pierluigi De Vecchi and while the quality of the reproductions and writing are both splendid, it’s never lost on me that the book weighs in at over 8 pounds. It’s simply not comfortable to keep it in your hands or on your lap for any period of time. As a long time fan of the Italian master, I have always kept images of most of his works, sourced from Google Images, in iPhoto and would take these with me on my now defunct netbook when traveling. There’s nothing finer than relaxing with the Italian master’s work before settling in for a night of the dreamless, with iPhoto giving me the option of musical accompaniment of choice.

So it was a moment’s work to synch my Raphael collection with the iPad, and I threw in two other Renaissance masters, Titian and Caravaggio, for luck. This is how the album looks on the iPad:

And here’s a specimen full page view:

What is significant here is that the iPad’s weight remained unchanged at 1.5lbs …. and each album of 70-100 images consumes maybe 75mB of storage. So ten albums, which will get you most of the greatest western art ever painted, run under 1gB. Not a lot.

In addition to the weight (as in lack thereof) advantages, a computer screen is transilluminated, so a well processed original will have tremendous dynamic range – inky blacks and snowy whites. And unlike using a netbook or laptop, as long as the original has enough detail a simple unpinching motion with thumb and forefinger allows me to zoom in on Raphael’s brushwork to enjoy some favorite detail. What is sorely lacking is context. While I have no particular need of the detailed narrative presented in the original book, what I would really like is some sort of index, and the ability to touch a painting on the screen ane be told about its history, location, etc. But given the slow moving art world, the myriad of complications regarding licensing and reproduction rights and so on, I’m not holding my breath. It will be ages, I suspect, before art books take advantage of the magical properties of touchscreen technology.

Further, it is obviously unlikely that the couple of hundred books of photographs I own will ever be converted to digital files. Most are out of print and one of the quickest ways I can think of losing money is to publish photography books.

So it’s time to take the law into your own hands, and remove the book from them at the same time, if you get my drift.

Mercifully Rube Goldberg lives, in the guise of a gadget named the Scan Robot made by some foresightful inventors in Germany and pointed out to me by fellow iPad owner and blog reader, Gregg L. Thank you, Gregg!

You can watch the hypnotic video by clicking below. The maker, Treventus, claims 25 pages per minute can be scanned, though I have yet to find out what the dpi resolution is.

I have no doubt that the device is anything but cheap, but once some smart person at HP or Epson twigs the market potential, we should see high volume production take the price down to the $1-2,000 range. Some other smart person will go into the leasing business and this consumer will be first in line for a lease, after which all my books will be in digital format. Let’s see – 250 books, 50,000 pages, 35 hours, $10 per hour for the student working the thing, $500 to lease it … and a $10,000 tax deduction when I give all the originals to the local library. That solves.

Now let me take this thinking further. My local library, the Burlingame Public Library, occupies a gorgeous building on the prime acre of real estate in the town of Burlingame in Northern California.

I would estimate the value of the lot to be $100 million. It houses 216,579 books with a replacement cost of, say, $5 million. So after sale, the city is left with $95 million and the taxpayer is relieved of the tax cost of probably 50 employees who will now be required to find jobs in the for profit sector. A win-win. What about that $95 million left over? Well, I would guess that the Burlingame Public Library has no more than 5,000 regular visitors and seemingly 20% of those are bums looking for a warm place to hang out during the day. The cost of a tablet computer for each member is $3 million and digitization of the library’s contents is, at say $5 a book, another $5 million. Yes, that’s right. Give every member a tablet computer at the taxpayer’s cost – it saves money net, which is the name of the game. Heck, go crazy and give every one of Burlingame’s 25,000 residents a tablet computer. Cost? A mere $12 million.

The Burlingame Public Library. Prime real estate, awaiting development.

Bottom line?

  • The City has $80 million left over which it can steal for other useless purposes or, God forbid, return to its taxpayers.
  • Apple’s iPad sales go up by 25,000 for this one library alone and you and I make money on the stock
  • All those new iPad users now have real incentive to ‘visit the library’ and, in true American fashion, will have no need to get off their burgeoning behinds
  • $5 million of unproductive payroll and overhead is removed from the tax bill
  • Developers redevelop the site for a for profit business (likely as not a larger Apple Store to handle the increased demand) and the tax base expands accordingly
  • Natural resource use plummets from all those saved 1 mile drives to the library. Air quality improves. Traffic falls. Road repair costs drop. Accidents and police costs fall.
  • Schoolchildren have online access to a vastly expanded library
  • Repeat for all those libraries – starting with the one on Fifth Avenue in New York which would make for some nice high end condominiums – and you begin to eat into that budget deficit. I figure that one would easily raise $3 billion for the city block on which it sits.

And, yes, the chances of any of this happening in my lifetime are zero.

But the art book’s future is clear and when the 21″ iPad comes along I propose to be one of the first to have all my art books on it. Along with the hundreds of DVDs and CDs I converted years ago.

Of course, I hope the Burlingame Public Library is still around then, as I will need the tax deduction from the gift I will be making of my whole collection. It’s not like I’m about to end up out of pocket on this little venture now, is it?

Still, it seems I’m not the only one who gets it: