Jeremy's Blog

On the book review column I started at the Outhouse (www.theouthousers.com) - Reading Realms I posted a thread asking for additional reviewers. Any outhousers, please head over and check it out. Since the site is fan run we all do this on the side in our own time, so combining our efforts would be a big help in keeping up with other blogs of the same type.

To those interested in reading our reviews, I hope to have them coming out more often in the coming months.

So about two weeks ago I was at the store debating on whether to buy an iPad (or wait for 2nd gen version) and started looking at the ipod touches.  After going back and forth and playing with both for about an hour I decided the ipod touch did everything I would want out of an ipad + was more portable + was half the price.  Needless to say I bought one.

I have attempted to make my life more portable after moving about four times in the last couple years; living out of boxes a bit even in between and having another moved plan out to California in a few months.  I sold about 75% of my comicbook collection, donated tons of clothing I didn’t use and other miscellaneous stuff.  The biggest problem I still have is tons of books I don’t want to part with.  But I have also purchased a Kindle a couple months ago, so that is at least helping me not collect as many additional physical books.

As for the ipod… I spend a lot of time on the computer and wondered how well I would be able to live my computer life off of that.  Obviously all of the apps are awesome, many of them free.  Banking, facebooking, tweeting, video, music, etc. and of course tumblr.  I’ve set up a few new accounts made just for mobile devices like my instagram picture account.  I deleted over 400 facebook friends to clean up my feed and actually help me keep up with and communicate with the people I really wanted to.  I’ve added a bunch of site specific apps to skip the safari need and check news, geekstuff, etc.  So there is plenty of cool gadgety stuff to enjoy that has gone well so far.

One of the big things I was concerned about was typing… I am a very fast typist and was worried I might be annoyed at having to work the virtual keyboard (a problem that wasn’t any better playing with the ipad in store).  After a couple weeks I can say that doing long posts like this are easier on a keyboard, but outside of that I haven’t had any real issues.  It is much better than typing texts on a phone, I actually like the smaller board and being forced to just use a finger or two instead of trying to use both hands on an ipad sized keyboard that never quite measures up.  The text correct works great as well, I probably have better grammar and spelling in most forum posts and tweets than ever before.

The resolution on the thing is amazing.  You can actually read entire non-mobile websites zoomed out on that tiny screen if you want to, but all you have to do is tap the text area and it immediately zooms into the column you want to read.  The best part though is how many sites have mobile versions, cutting out all the clutter you normally have to look around when browsing on a normal computer (not to mention gizmodo, lifehacker, io9, etc. all have sucky redesigns lately that I don’t have to look at in the mobile version).

I think one of the biggest issues I’ve had are trying to save images.  Sometimes it works fine, although it automatically puts them into a set folder and doesn’t let you select the destination.  Other times… often in site specific aps, you cannot save an image at all.  Some apps have setups to work with facebook, twitter, read it later, etc; some don’t.  So I guess I’ve found managing all the twitter accounts I run, writing columns for book reviews and other tasks that require a variety of steps sometimes between bit.ly, photobucket, browser, etc. are much faster on the computer still.  I guess all in all there are several little clunky things about having to work between multiple programs that you encounter on the ipod/pad you wouldn’t on a regular computer.

In the end though, it’s a great device.  It makes it a lot easier to keep up with things while still doing whatever else.  I don’t have to get on the computer to check anything, it just beeps if someone emails me or messages me on twitter, facebook, etc.  One of these days I’ll upgrade to an actual iphone, but for now this works great for me.  If you already have one (or similar android device or whatever) then you know what I’m talking about, if not you might want to pick one up if you don’t want to go all out for a smartphone yet.