Watchup Video News iPad App Updated: Adds ESPN & New Features

by on in iPad Apps

ESPN on Watchup

Watchup is a great video news app for the iPad and a recent pick for our Best Free iPad App of the Week. The app received another substantial update yesterday, to Version 1.11.0.

One of the most notable items in this update is the addition of ESPN to the channel list. For sports fans this is very good news – as most of the app’s channels have been more general news up to now. It’s good to see the leading sports network added. Other new channels added in this update include the New York Daily News, This Week in Startups, and local channels from Boston and Portland.

There are also some nice UI changes in this update:

All-new interface:
• Subscribe to up to 20 channels.
• Just turn the app on and your automatic newscast will play continuously.
• Swipe to the next video, just like a magazine.
• While watching, you can now see and manipulate all your queue: queue up or play any video straight away
• Want to browse videos per channel? Just pull down the top panel and pick your favorite clips to add them to the queue.
• Pull up the lower panel to reveal extensive descriptions about each video.
• Multitask: subscribe or unsubscribe to/from a channel by pulling the left handle while watching.

Watchup continues to be one of my favorite news apps on the iPad, and the developers have done a great job with frequent updates over recent months.

Here’s an App Store link for Watchup for iPad; it’s still a free app.

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Feedly RSS App: How to Prep for Its Migration from Google Reader to Feedly Cloud Sync

by on in iPad Apps

Feedly iPad app

The Feedly RSS service has taken a leading role in providing a replacement sync solution for when Google Reader is shutdown on July 1. They are now reaching the final stages of their migration from the Google Reader backend over to their new Feedly Cloud – and yesterday they published some advice for users on how to make sure they’re prepared for the upgrade.

The first and most important step is to make sure you are running Version 16 on all your devices – current versions are 16.0.513 on the desktop, 16.0.1 on iOS, and 16.0.5 on Android. Their guidance is that if you’re unsure of your version number on a mobile device, you should uninstall and reinstall it. 

Here’s more of the advice and guidance on the upgrade:

Sync’ing via the cloud

Over the next 2-3 days you should expect to receive a green banner message (desktop) or a green card (mobile). This is the notification that your feeds and categories and up to 1,000 starred items have been successfully migrated to the feedly cloud and the articles you are seeing are coming from the feedly service.

It is important at that point that you restart the app on all your other devices so that they all connect to the feedly cloud.

The one part we did not migrate from google reader is your history (too much data) so you have to expect that you are starting from a blank history and your unread counts will be reset. This is a one time issue.

In some cases, there might be a gap of a few days in the saved items because migrating a few million accounts takes a few days. We have done our best to minimize that gap but we apologize if you are missing a few saved items. This is a one time issue too.

How do I login to my feedly cloud account?

To simplify the transition, we are going to continue to use Google Authentication to let you access your Feedly Cloud. We will be adding support for Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and LinkedIn shortly.

How do I know which backend/version I am running?

If you visit http://www.feedly.com/home#console you should see a list of data about your system.  [click to continue reading…]

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ARTcloth: Some Artistic Flair with Your iPad Screen Cleaning

by on in iPad Accessories

ARTcloth

ARTcloth is a line of cleaning cloths for the iPad that brings some artistic flair to the decidedly unglamorous task of cleaning your iPad touchscreen. As many of you know, I’ve become a big fan of cleaning cloths for the iPad and my other touchscreen devices. They’re all terrible smudge (and germ) magnets and a good cleaning cloth is an unheralded but essential accessory for them.

I’m not against having a cleaning cloth that looks nice, as long as I still does its job well – and I’ve been trying out ARTcloth with all my devices for quite a while now. So now I’m ready to share a few notes and thoughts about them.

The ARTcloth is made of 100% ‘deluxe’ microfiber. I really couldn’t tell you what the difference between just microfiber and deluxe microfiber is, but it sounds good. These are anti-bacterial and ‘dual-textured’ – with a soft side used to clean and a smooth side used for polishing and buffing after cleaning. They should work well with any touchscreen devices.

[click to continue reading…]

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Microsoft Office Finally Comes to iOS, but Not to the iPad

by on in General

Office Mobile for Office 365 Subscribers

Towards the end of last week Microsoft brought a version of Office to iOS for the first time – while leaving out an iPad version. Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers (catchy name!) is an iPhone only app for now, and is ‘the official Office companion optimized for your iPhone’.

Here’s a little more of the App Store description for this new Office Mobile app for iPhone:

You can access, view and edit your Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint documents from virtually anywhere. Documents look like the originals, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes. When you make quick edits or add comments to a document, the formatting and content remain intact.

The one big catch on this app is that it requires an Office 365 subscription to use it. For home users those start at $100 per year. Compared to the $20- 30 range for a number of Office compatible suites on iOS (like QuickOffice, Documents to Go and Apple’s IWork suite) that’s a very steep cost. If you really *need* official Office compatibility and rely on Office docs heavily in your job, I imagine it’s not an issue – but I wonder how that’s going to go down with more ‘casual’ Office users.

Microsoft is also coming into this market on iOS very late. And they’re still offering no iPad version – which ties in nicely with their TV ads mocking the fact that an iPad can’t run a Powerpoint app. I still think Apple has the last laugh here – as I don’t see a lot of prospective new tablet buyers finding Powerpoint a killer feature and Microsoft are leaving potentially billions of dollars on the table by not selling Office on iPad and iOS.

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iPad Art: Father’s Day

by on in iPad art

Fathers Day

As of last night I hadn’t yet chosen an image or images to use for this weekend’s iPad Art post. I often have some ideas on the theme for the weekly post but leave my final selection until Sunday morning. Well, this week that approach couldn’t have turned out any better – because I spotted this striking image in the iPad Art Google+ community that I run.

I think it is just perfect for Father’s Day – especially since these are the words that accompany the painting:

Holding your hand, I can cross river of fire…… Happy Father’s Day….

This iPad painting was created by Google+ user Rohit Bhardwaj.

I hope all the dads out there are having a wonderful day.

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