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Archive for the ‘Gadgets’ Category

iPad – Music and Guitar. The future is bright!

So it’s been a while since I last posted on here. The reasons are many but of no interest here.

One reason though was the acquisition of an iPad.

First my views on apple products before I took the plunge – shook hands with the devil!

As a PC user I disliked apple products for a few reasons.

The two main ones being Cost &Apparent smugness.

There go the apple users at this point, but hey hold on!

I said apparent smugness, let me quantify.

I play guitar and I teach, all my guitars are of a price range agreeable with my students.

That is to say not one guitar passes the £500 mark.

For me to own priceless gibsons and martins would in my mind be off putting, besides I feel the same way about people who have gibson guitars.

Gibson = apparent smugness.

Yes I know, looks like jealousness to me but it’s not, it’s about access for everyone.

And that is why I love pcs.

When you teach you want your students to feel comfortable and have the best they can afford.

What really is the difference between a squire telecaster and a gibson gold top when you can’t play?

This is also my thinking when it comes to apple macs.

It’s about accessibility, I could afford a mac now but would it be the right thing to do?

I teach recording and programming as well and lets face it almost everyone has access to a laptop or desktop.

The apparent smugness left apple for me when the iPhone came out, oh it was there at the beginning in my mind because it was new and I was stuck with my blackberry.

But the iPhone fascinated me, the apps I heard where amazing.
Dammit I had access too!

I had friends and students showing me, and that feeling of apple smugness left.

I became jealous and intrigued.

But I still resisted, why?

Blackberry!

Yes you read that right.

Blackberry was central to my business, the fact I could get email instantly was of utmost importance to me business wise.

But Blackberry was losing it’s grip.

The apps are business orientated and clunky.

But worse still Blackberrys crash, a lot, a real lot.

Also their business use became difficult and time consuming.

Using vista or windows 7 meant even more difficulty.

And they crash.

A lot.

Labouring the point?

I think I must, and here is why and how I became an apple fan and on the road to buying an iPad.

After 16 months of my contract using my Blackberry Touch 2 something happened.

Halfway through a phone call my phone died.

I was on the phone to a student who had missed a lesson and then had called me to apologise.

At a crucial point in the conversation the phone died, just went into spin mode and then stopped.

It looked like I’d hung up.

I panicked, I was out at the time and had no access to a pc.

Now ok this could happen to an iPhone, the battery could die mid conversation but this wasn’t the battery, this was the blackberry just giving up on me.

Fortunately when I got home I could access my pc and get the phone number of said student and call back, luckily for me he understood but the damage could have been done.

And it had, for me Blackberry was dead.

So my choice had to be made, I needed a new phone.

Do I go Android or iPhone?

I’d seen both, the iPhone 4 had been out a while and seemed to be the stronger choice.

Decent battery, well compared to the Blackberry it is.

The best apps?

It seemed so. I’d had the use of an Android tablet and wasn’t overly impressed.

So iPhone it was.

And there it was, I was in love.

It worked, it worked well.

It did everything a blackberry did but better, it has never crashed, the apps are awesome, It can play music, it connects to wifi all day and I still get a days usage out of it.

And that was the start of it.

My head was turned but was it enough to buy an iPad?

The iPad for me was a gadget, something that smug business men pulled out on trains and waved at people lugging laptops around.

It seemed too far, but my curiosity had been fed by my iPhone.

I knew about the music software and had been instantly envious but could not bring myself to buy a £400+ gadget.

Then came the call from my phone provider.

A special offer.

For loyal users.

A 3G iPad 2.

Resistance is futile(Internet geekery? Never watched start trek!)

The iPad 2 – feels like at this moment we need some music, revelatory music, or a big light bulb turning on.

The last 8 months has opened up with the iPad 2

I’m a fan, a massive fan, a massive smug wave it at people with laptops fan.

I even have apple tv, I have a subscription to iTunes match, I’ve bought an iPod touch, I even contemplated buying a second iPad and now I’m waiting for the iPad 3.

I sold my laptop! (bit over the top and something I regret in hindsight)

The iPad 2 is a very important part of my business now.

For me as a guitar teacher it has given me a greater workflow.

I can write guitar solos out using a great software package called Progression. It’s hands on, no mouse! From a working fast point of view it’s hard to explain how damn satisfying that is.

I can write out song sheets with chords and strum using a griffin stylus(£10) and a software package called Notepad. Again no mouse or having to painfully use a graphics tablet.

The calendar, the email, the contacts, the reminders need I go on?

GarageBand and Notion my two favourite apps.

AC-7 Core – control your pc daw – a wifi midi controller, amazing.

iBooks!

Internet browsing.

And it never crashes,

Sometimes an app will but I’ve found that to be rare.

It’s fast.

And it’s silent.

I will be looking at the music and guitar apps in more detail in the future.

And I apologise for the ramble but needed it out of my system.

Long live the iPad!

Scroll 7″ Storage Options Tablet Device – Review

Scroll 7″ Storage Options Tablet Device – Review and Advice

Is it it worth a punt?

The answer to that question is do you have the time and patience?

I recently bought one of these devices off ebay for £51 including P&P

This review comes in 3 parts.

On start up I was pretty suprised at how well it worked, that is until I decided to try and download an app from android.marketplace.

Be aware this device doesn’t have this facility from the get go.

It’s also only Android 2.1 with no future dates for updating to 2.2 – investigate before you buy and decide if it’s worth it.

Some apps will not work on 2.1 – and think hard about the future.

It takes some work – see part 3 below.

Also I found scrolling on the device pretty difficult(ironic seeing as it’s called the ‘scroll’).

You’ll find yourselves opening items that you don’t want to.

But those problems aside here is the cool part and what makes the Scroll worth the dosh:

Part 1: Out of the Box

1. Kindle App – if you can get it downloaded you’ll be able to turn the scroll into a cheap kindle with access to all of Amazons books available in the kindle store. (free classics) – you can download from slide.me an app already installed on the device.

2. PDF viewer – If you’ve got a google docs account you can save all your pdfs and view them online.

3. Browser – Works well and with the device being wifi means you’ve got access to the web and networking.

4. Email – Really easy to setup – sync from your gmail account.

5. Calendar – As with email.

6. Contacts – Again as with email but be aware there is no app to see them! That said you can use the search facility to enter a name and the contact details with appear. (took me a few days to figure that one out)

7. Networking – If you can get apps downloaded there are some very cool ones that allow access to other pc’s allowing printing, sharing, streaming and remote control – see part 2 – Printing

Accessing more:

To get apps on your device you can side load them – this is where you plug your Tablet into your pc and download straight from the internet and copy the files to your device.

(See Side Loading Files) ^[1]

Part 2 – Cool Stuff! – *Installed after Rooting see part 3

(note) You’ll need to read instructions on how to setup each item. This article is just a quick run through of what you can do and where to get files.

Record Sky* – if you’ve got SKY+ you can get access to your sky recorder with a couple of apps, if you’ve got marketplace working search Sky+ and find the free app – I have it working at the moment and it’s very cool.

Control Windows Media player – I have pc in my office but it’s audio output is wired to my stereo in my front room – my house being open plan means I can control my media player from the kitchen.

You’ll need WMP remote for android and HomeMedia for the pc.

Printing* – This was a hard one to do – All my files for lessons are saved as jpg – (TABs and Chord sheets) – these are hosted on my pc so I needed access to them.

1st Option Remote Access of PC:^[2]

2nd Option Print from Android:^[3]

Control Your DAW – TouchDAW – Control surface emulation & MIDI tools. Works directly with native MIDI drivers.TouchDAW is a full-featured DAW control and general purpose MIDI control app. It allows you to tweak a large set of parameters in popular digital audio applications as accessible through standard hardware control surfaces.

You’ll need drivers for your DAW – http://www.tobias-erichsen.de/rtpMIDI.html

Of course these are just a few nice little additions and there are many more but for the cost of a couple of pounds each I now have some serious power in my tablet.

Some other apps that I like are:

OurGroceries*which is a program that syncs to my Blackberry over the web.

Taskos which syncs my Google Tasks

Part 3. – Serious hacking and getting Marketplace to work.

To get the most from the Scroll I had to go through some serious processes.

Do not do this unless you are desperate, the Scroll has it’s limitations but for £50 what do you want?

I’m going to list these in the order I installed. This fixed the marketplace problem and made my device faster.

I take no responsibilty for your decisions from now on in.

Market Fix for Android 2.1 – This fixed the downloading problem for some apps but not all – it did however give me an Android id for marketplace.

Rooting and Slimming Down – After I did this the Android became faster it also made marketplace work better allowing me to install lot’s more software including SKY+ – be aware though this buggers up youtube – there is a fix though on the same link.

Well that’s everything feels like I just emptied my brain.

Time for a coffee.

Hope some of this nonsense helps – sorry no screen shots – maybe I’ll come back later!

Maybe not.

^[1] Side loading files is a process where you can download apps direct from the interent to pc and then over to tablet.
The Android tablet has an installation file called a n .apk file – this you will need to search for(google is thy friend)
Also there are some websites that allow you to download to pc to sideload:
Pocketgear and Slide.Me
Just download file to folder you can access – usually called downloads(huh!)
Now plug in your tablet use cable into pc -the socket on the Scroll is next to the charger socket and is called USB
using host won’t work. (sorry but that’s what I tried!)
Next you’ll hear the Scroll beep – you need to mount the Scroll device.
If you look at the top of the Scroll there is a grey bar that stretches across the screen,
it has battery and time on the right hand side.
If you grab the bar by pressing you finger down on it and then drag it to bottom of screen
this will open up your notifications.
It will now say USB connected(Internal) and USB connected(External)
Underneath each instance it will say ‘Select to copy files from your computer’
Choose which one you want to transfer to.
To keep things simple we are going to cop our file to the nand directory on the internal storage.
Press below USB connected(Internal) ‘Select to copy files from your computer’
It will now ask you Mount. Press that button.
An AutoPlay popup will now appear on your PC. Open to view folders. Keep window open.
Now goto where you downloaded .apk file copy file(ctrl c) and paste to tablet folder.
DO NOT UNPLUG YET!
Go to tablet and drag notification down again it is not already in that state.
USB connected(Internal) Select to turn off USB storage – press and press Turn Off button.
Next look for grey TAB at bottom of screen that opens application list.
Look for App Installer – open that and it will scan your folders.
Hopefully the app you copied over will now be there. Press and it should install.
↩
^[2] You’ll need androidVNC for Tablet and TightVNC for PC – this way you can access files and print remotely. ↩
^[3] The previous option was a bit like trying to paint through a letter box and quite slow but worked -
Even so I wanted something a bit quicker.
You’ll need a Dropbox account , Dropbox for Android and Sync Folder+Wolshon’sAccount for Dropbox
This is convoluted and uses space on your SDCard – when you setup sync state which folder you want to sync
and also you’ll need to point to sdcard/Dropbox folder.
This now means that you’re files on your pc are setup to sync with you wherever you go.
To print – to your printer from anywhere – you’ll need Filelinx for android and Filelinx for PC
↩

Home Recording Articles, Tips, Tricks and Advice

Archive for the ‘Gadgets’ Category

iPad – Music and Guitar. The future is bright!

Related Reading:

Scroll 7″ Storage Options Tablet Device – Review

Related Reading: