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Recommended Reading: Cool Tools review, drone delivery and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities by Kevin Kelly This may well be the greatest catalog of all-time -- and given its Boing Boing connection (Cool Tools was cofounded by Boing Boing creator Mark Frauenfelder), you can be assured it's full of wonderful things. Want to draw a graphic novel, design a fabric, shoot a film on the cheap or survive in the woods during the coming apocalypse? There's a cool tool for each of those activities -- several, in fact. Each tool sports a quick description (from one to four paragraphs), the price and a URL where you can buy it. There's also a QR code by each, to save you precious seconds of typing time. Cool Tools doesn't actually sell any of the gadgets itself, so the massive tome comes with a fairly lofty $40 price tag, but for the person who thinks he has everything, here's nearly 500 pages to show them just how wrong they are. -- Brian Heater, Director of Media
Video extender powers iPad 2 wireless HDMI hack: The streaming adds 2 pounds
If you don't mind spending a bit of money and adding a couple of pounds of weight (and a two hour time limit) to your iPad, this video demonstrates that a simple HDMI wireless extender will allow you to transmit audio and video to a remote presentation system. After watching the clip, we hopped on Amazon to see what it might take to duplicate this hack; we found the HP Wireless TV Connect (the same product that appears to be in use) for US$150, and a similar Brite-View product for $160. Although you can choose a VGA extender over an HDMI one, you will not be able to transmit audio the way this solution does -- and you'll end up spending more. So how much should you expect to spend, beyond the iPad and receiving screen? The HP transmitter should work fine, although you can scale up to more professional HDMI transmitters for more dough if you need the quality. The Digital AV Adapter is $39, and the battery pack will add another $24 -- then you'll need a case to hold it all together and stronger arms to carry the iPad around. Still, for mobile presenters and trainers who absolutely have to roam around with iPad in hand, it's an intriguing and (relatively) economical hack.
Ecamm introduces iPad document management with PadSync
It's a sad fact. The current version of iTunes can barely handle the new document management features introduced by Apple. As part of the 3.2 release of the iPad and soon to extend to the iPhone, the Apps tab now allows you to manually add, replace, and delete documents from applications that support iTunes-to-user file sharing. The big problem is that iTunes does this poorly, with lots of bugs in its implementations. Worst of all, you cannot directly access files from iTunes to edit those documents in-place. Think about it: You offload a text document to your iPad, make some in-place edits, and want to continue updating that document on your Mac until you next hit the road. Enter Ecamm. The company, well known for its Mac and iPhone utilities, has released the first version of its PadSync tool. PadSync, which retails for $9.95, offers direct access to your iPad Documents folders from a desktop Mac application. As the gallery here shows, your shared files are accessible on an app-by-app basis. Double-click on a Word file, and you can open it in Microsoft Word, edit it, and save it back. Updates on the Mac instantly sync back to the iPad -- with one exception. Ecamm is still working on subfolder support, such as the Inbox that's created by the 3.2-and-later document sharing classes. Beyond that, PadSync offers all the instant synchronization you could wish for. Oh, and don't forget my favorite feature: since files are mirrored as well as synced on the Mac, you can access those files and queue up new ones even when the iPad is not connected to the Mac. PadSync offers a 7 day free demo, so you can test out the app before purchase. %Gallery-94504%
hacksugar: Bringing back the on-screen keyboard
You've got an iPad. You've got a Bluetooth keyboard that you love. Now imagine this: You're in bed. Your keyboard is somewhere downstairs. And yet, it's still in range and paired to your device. You can tap, tap, tap in the iPad Spotlight text entry field, but there's no keyboard for you to use. Frustrating, no? Sure, you can hop over to Settings and globally disable Bluetooth. But there has got to be a better/easier way to recover the on-screen keyboard without messing with Bluetooth, right? There is -- but it's only available right now if you're a developer (sign it using your credentials) or using a jailbroken system. I've posted a little utility, which I call KeysPlease over on my website (direct application link) and on the ModMyI repository (thanks, Kyle!). I've added it to my iPad dock, and now when I'm in the wrong room I just tap the app icon to retrieve my soft keyboard. Bluetooth remains unaffected and I can keep working on whatever I've been working on.
Cool tool: Change your Mac's boot image with BootXChanger
Every once in a while, I get reminded about a cool tool that I've used and then totally forgotten about. In today's example, the reminder came in the form of a post on UNEASYsilence about how to change your Mac's boot image.The boot image, in case you're new to the Mac world, is that gray Apple logo that you see after the startup chime when booting up your machine. It's surprisingly boring, so back in December of 2007 Jésus Álvarez wrote a small tool to replace that drab gray Apple with something more exciting. BootXChanger is free, and it changes the Mac's boot image. There are limitations to what you can replace the gray Apple with -- the background must remain the boring #BFBFBF gray, the image can't be too complex, and the image should be sized at 128 x 128 pixels -- but you can do a lot within those borders. BootXChanger comes with a dozen sample images (below), and instructions are provided on how to create your own. I was torn between "Colour Apple Logo" and "Radioactive", so I ended up trying both. You simply drag and drop an icon file to the application window, or you can click "Default Image" if you decide to go back to the current Apple icon. Here are a couple of photos of my MacBook Air starting up with the new boot images for your entertainment:
