iPad is a mobile internet browsing device. The shape, design and ease of use make surfing the Internet on this device easier in comparison to a laptop. The Safari browser appears to be lacking in certain features that many iPad users would like to see.

The following are iPad browser apps that can prove fabulous alternatives to Safari.

1. SkyFire Web Browser for iPad ($4.99) | Download

Apple does not allow Adobe Flash applications on the iPad.  SkyFire Browser for iPad is one exception to this rule. SkyFire proves unique with the browser allowing users to view videos. You cannot do this with other browsers on iPads because Apple does not allow flash to be installed.  This browser processes flash content on their own servers and streams the video information back to the iPad. If you enjoy watching Flash-based videos, SkyFire is a must-have.  SkyFire contains private surfing and “Full Screen” browsing. It features Google Reader and Facebook integration.

2. iCab Mobile ($1.99) | Download

iCab Mobile proves an excellent alternative browser. It has a full-screen mode that lets mobile users take advantage of the iPad’s available screen-space.  The tabs are similar to desktop tabs. ICab Mobile provides the option to open links in the background and private browsing.

iCab Mobile allows for downloading items from the Internet and then exporting them to your personal computer or laptop for later use.  Other features include ad blocking and Google language translation.

3. Atomic Browser ($.99) | Download

Atomic Browser has tons of features that are not found in Safari and includes full-screen browsing, private surfing and 1-touch tab buttons. The full screen mode is impressive and gives users access to iPads’s available screen space.  Unbelievably, it lets users customizes the opacity of the full screen menu buttons that will assist in browsing the web while in “full screen” while clearly navigating between web pages.

Atomic Browser’s 1-touch tab feature proves to be one of the best browsers among other iPad browsers on the market.  The browser automatically opens new tabs when a link that belongs to different domains is selected.  It would be neat if users were given choices of opening new pages in backgrounds with 1-tab.  Thisoption would seriously be welcomed by iPad users in future updates.

4. Browser Duo ($2.99) | Download

Browser Duo is an application that performs one thing well – viewing two different web pages on one screen.  If you want to browse two web pages simultaneously, this is the one browser you want to buy.  It provides private browsing and a full screen. The downside is that the screen mode proves less than perfect.  It does not use all of the iPad’s screen space like iCab Mobile and Atomic Browser do. If you are seeking an alternative browser solely for the full-screen mode, this is not the best choice on the market. Alternatively, if you want to perform duo page browsing, this browser would prove a fantastic choice.

Are you adding birthdays to iCal on your Mac and setting the event to repeat every year? Congratulations! You’re doing it wrong. Adding birthdays to iCal manually is a pain in the ass, plus it forces you to create another colored label that you don’t need. (and I want to keep iCal as clean as possible.)

Don’t feel bad because I was entering birthdays to iCal this way for years… Years.

You can understand the problem or skip to the bottom to see the solution – or the right way to enter birthdays in iCal.

FYI: This post talks specifically about using iCal and Address Book on the Mac. However, everything mentioned will work with the iCal and Contacts apps on your iPad or iPhone.

The Problem

We’ve all been trained to add important dates to our calendar – whether your calendar is hanging on the wall or on your Mac. Find the day and scribble down your event, meeting, birthday, etc. Right? How long have you done it this way? Forever?

The problem with this thought process is, Apple has created a different set of rules just for birthdays. In fact, birthdays are different from any other “data” you enter into iCal.

Apple thinks birthdays should be associated with a person – NOT a specific date. (This will make more sense in a minute…)

To associate a birthday with a person, you need to edit that person’s information which… lives in Address Book.

Why Enter Birthdays in Address Book?

Yes, Address Book is where you should enter all birthdays for friends, family, coworkers and all of your contacts.

The truth is I don’t know any of the people/developers who created iCal or Address Book. I’m going to guess why birthdays should stay in Address Book. Here goes…

Address Book contains every bit of information about a single person: Name, street address, email address, phone number, etc, etc. Basically, everything you need to know about that person… Which makes sense why you’d add a birthday in that same location. Right? At least all of the info is in one place.

Imagine having to search iCal for “Jane’s birthday” every time you wanted to send a gift a couple of weeks before. Instead, the easier way is to open Address Book and find Jane’s profile. You’ll see all her contact info and birthdate. Boom. Done.

The best and most important part is, any birthday saved in Address Book will automatically show up on your iCal calendar.

Now that you know why birthdays belong in Address Book, you can find out how to set them up quickly and easily.

The Right Way to Keep Track of Birthdays

Show birthdays in calendar
First thing you have to do is make sure iCal will automatically show birthdays. Open iCal and go to the Preferences. Click the “General” tab. Now check the box next to “Show birthdays in calendar”:

Add birthdays to Address Book
To see the birthdays in iCal, you need to add birthdays to your contacts in address book:

Automatic updates
As soon as you save the birthday in Address Book, you’ll see the birthday appear in iCal. Notice the red “gift” icon. That’s how you know the birthday was entered in Address Book. Cool right? :

Birthday details added automatically
Now Jane’s birthday will automatically appear in iCal, sync to my iPhone (if using iCloud) and repeat every year:

Bonus Tip
In Address Book, you have two options. You can enter:

• Only the month and day
• Month, day and year your contact was born

If you enter Month/day/year, iCal will show you how old the person is. If you look at Jane’s example above, you can see we entered 1980 as her birth year. iCal is smart enough to pull that info and tell us that December 15, 2011 was Jane’s 31st birthday.

Everything mentioned above works with iCal / Address Book on the Mac OR iCal and Contacts on your iPad or iPhone.

Main image by spool32

In our world today, it’s nearly impossible to go anywhere without bumping into some form of access technology. From buses to trains to hotels, almost everything requires some sort of card or pass in order to ride or move through.

This access technology is not limited to the transport system, but is also present more so in commerce and payment systems.  When was the last time you booked a hotel or rented a car using cash? Can’t remember? I thought so.

Though Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology is not new and has already been with us for more than 20 years now. However, it has not been fully implemented in a practical and commercial way that consumers can easily and readily have access to. Up to now, practical NFC Technology is still in its early stages of development but, as this report mentions, it has great potential in improving all aspects of our lives – especially those of us who rely on our everyday companion, the ubiquitous smartphone.

So it isn’t any wonder that Apple wants to get in the game and be the first to bring NFC Technology to the next iteration of its premier iDevice, the 2012 version of the iPhone (if and when iPhone 5 is finally released.)

According to this recent article, Apple wants to incorporate the NFC Technology into its iPhone 5 and will partner with MasterCard in making NFC payments a reality.  Of course, we all know how secretive Apple is when it comes to its plans, and how Apple demands discretion from its business partners – so we get a lengthy and curious quote:

“The timeline is always as rapid as it makes sense for consumers,” he says. “That’s a combination of having a critical mass of the merchants, which is what you’re seeing right now, and getting devices into the hands of consumers. I don’t know of a handset manufacturer that isn’t in process of making sure their stuff is PayPass ready.”

So that would include Apple then?

“Um, there are…like I say, [I don't know of] any handset maker out there,” McLaughlin says. “Now, when we have discussions with our partners, and they ask us not to disclose them, we don’t.”

That’s saying a lot without saying anything – short of confirming that Apple will indeed be their partner.

In November 2011, Apple introduced its In-Store Pick Up and Self Check Out process in its retail stores which has proven to be a success. And if this rumored NFC Technology being incorporated into the new iPhone, Apple will again lead the pack in making the innovative technology available to the masses and… it would only be a matter of time before others follow.

According to a very knowledgeable source, about 12% of iDevices in the world are jailbroken. But in China, a survey conducted in May 2011 says that a whooping 34.6% (about one-third) of iDevices in the country are jailbroken.

The recently released Absinthe Jailbreak by the Dream Team may have already increased these numbers and, in fact, a report claimed that the app was downloaded more than a million times in the first 24-hours – which means there are at least a million more jailbroken iPads and iPhones.

Of course, jailbreaking your iDevice is just the first step to full control of anything and everything on your gadget; free from the shackles that Apple use to tie us down.  This is basically the essence of jailbreaking itself : freedom.

If you own a jailbroken device, it’s time for the fun stuff to begin.  But before you can install the tweaks that will bring all the bells and whistles to your iDevice, you still have to do a little tinkering with Cydia.

The stock Cydia app is already loaded with sources (called repositories or repos) which house the fun stuff.  Upon installation and as standard, Cydia sources include the following :  BigBoss, ModMyi, repo666.ultrasn0w, Telesphoreo Tangelo, ZodTTD and MacCiti. With these repos you already have access to the most basic tweaks for any jailbroken iPad and iPhone, but to make things more interesting I recommend you add the following sources/repos to Cydia. These are my favorite s:

1. Hackulo (http://cydia.hackulo.us) – The Hackulo repo houses both Installous and AppSync which are necessasy for all jailbroken iDevices.  Installous is your primary source of apps which you can try out and then buy from the App Store, if you like the app, that is.  You only need to install the Installous app and AppSync will also be automatically downloaded and installed.
2. Insanelyi (http://repo.insanelyi.com) – This is the best source for cracked Cydia apps, tweaks and themes. Some of the best known apps and tweaks from this repo include the Infini-series, MultiFlow, Barrel and other cool Springboard enhancements.
3. iHacks (http://ihacksrepo.com – If you are enjoy all-in-one sources, then you should definitely include this repo to your list because it pretty much have everything you can ask for – apps, tweaks, utilities, and even ring tones. A particular stand out is its collection of SBsettings themes.
4. SinfuliPhone (http://sinfuliphonerepo.com) – Like iHacks, this repo is also a gold mine for Cydia themes and apps. Notables include AndroidLock, FaceBreak, iRealSMS, My3G, MyWi, GameBoy and NES emulator.
5. xSellize (http://cydia.xsellize.com – Rounding up my top 5 favorite Cydia repos is this one which is chock full of ROMS packs for Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64 and NES as well as the usual crop of apps, tweaks and other enhancements to completely personalize your iDevice. A must have for any game console lover out there.

There you have it folks, my list of sources/repos to add to the standard sources included in Cydia. Now you can really customize your iDevice.

Main image by htaule

As you know, Microsoft and Apple have very different marketing strategies. We can debate the implementation, target audience, marketing goals, etc. But that’s not very fun.

Instead, you can watch the video from 2006 (how’d I miss this??) called “Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging.” The video shows just how different the two companies are when thinking about product packaging.

In Microsoft’s defense, the video goes to the extreme to make fun of how Microsoft looks at packaging.

My thought is, the video shows how traditional, corporate companies use designs that everyone else uses – features & benefits, call-outs, tech specs, etc. All of these design elements lead to packaging that looks like everything else on the shelf… instead of doing something different and standing out.

I bet a lot of moms (and dads) out there have heard the following: “It’s too early”, or “I’m not tired yet”, or even just the plain “I’m not sleepy”. Well, this is the same problem our heroine Anne faces from Light Sleepers wonderfully colorful children’s book Anne Can’t Sleep.

Anne Can’t Sleep is an interactive animated story book specifically designed with very young readers in mind.  Upon opening the ebook, the readers are welcomed by a familiar sight of a house during night time with the bright yellow moon highlighted by deep blue hues of the sky.

The soft music leads the reader to the first page where they see an animated hand inviting them to touch the words. Upon doing so, you’re quickly transported to Anne’s bedroom with the soothing spoken words of the narrator.

In her bedroom, Anne quietly sits on the edge of her bed yawning but awake. So Anne gets up and goes to her drawer to pick a toy from her collection. First she picks her dancing doll and takes it to bed with her.  As soon as she lies down her dancing doll starts to dance and Anne is awake again.  Anne takes her doll back to her place and she picks another toy to take to bed with her – hoping it will her her fall asleep.  This goes on until…well, you just have to get the book to find out for yourself what happens.

Video preview of Ann Can’t Sleep

Anne Can’t Sleep will delight young readers from 1 to 6 years old, but will also hold the interest of older kids with its slick animation and engaging background music. The developer’s use of simple everyday words to tell Anne’s story will surely appeal to readers who are just starting their journey into the wonderful world of books and will encourage them to explore further.  Young readers can relate to the story as Anne tries to find a friend (her toys) who can help her go to sleep and as we see in the surprise ending, it really does.

Though the ebook is quite short when compared to other ebooks by Light Sleepers (Koto Go Silence is a good example), I would still recommend this to parents of kids who have difficulty sleeping because it would teach them to find a way to get a goodnight’s sleep with a friend.   Aside from the ebook’s readability, young children will want to read it again and again, not only during bedtime but during rest and nap times as well.

All in all, Anne Can’t Sleep is a well-thought of ebook that puts the competition to slumber. Get it now from the App Store.

FREE $10 ITUNES GIFT CARD! Type the promo code into the REDEEM area of iTunes on your iPhone/iPad/Mac/PC, etc. First person to do it, wins! Please leave a comment if you’re the lucky winner. Good luck everybody! And happy Friday!

Read this if you don’t know how to redeem an iTunes Gift Card. Details are toward the bottom.

If you’re interested in knowing when the next free gift card will be posted here, like AppleSlut on Facebook. The Facebook fans are the first to know when it’s coming.

Its been a very long five days since the Dream Team released the latest and the only existing jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1. I must tell you that I almost lost hope when I first tried to jailbreak my iPad 2 and ran into some issues.  But after several days of frustrations and perseverance, I was finally able to see the magic on my iDevice as Absinthe went to work and did the deed in no time at all!

Just a couple of days ago I reported to you that I wasn’t able to jailbreak my iPad 2 because of some unknown issue with the the jailbreak tool.  Yes, the process would start just fine and install the Absinthe app on my iPad, but when I tried to finish the jailbreak by starting  Absinthe, it just hangs there. I suppose since the white whirling thingy was still going, but after several hours (3 and half, to be exact), I decided to reboot the device because nothing was really happening.

Let me tell you that the whole jailbreaking process was nothing short of a nerve-wracking experience and it left me drained and frustrated after several days without success. I gave it a rest.

Not wanting to give in to failure, I tried again the next day. It worked! If you’re having the same problem, below you will find a detailed description of what I did to get the jailbreak and Cydia working on my iPad 2.

• Check that your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 is on iOS 5.0.1. Mine is an iPad 2 16GB Wi-Fi (9A405). Absinthe was specifically designed to work with these two stubborn iDevices and nothing else.
• Back up your iDevice using iTunes, just in case something goes awry and you want to restore your unit.
• Download Absinthe from here (Windows), here (Mac) and here (Linux).  Put it in a folder on your desktop for easy access and run the program. Don’t forget to connect your device via the usb cable.
• The program will do its thing, your iDevice will reboot and after about 5 to 10 minutes you’ll be instructed to slide to unlock the device and look for the Absinthe app somewhere on your Springboard. All you have to do now is open the Absinthe app on your device and if everything went well (fingers crossed), Absinthe will finish the setup, reboot your device and you will have Cydia installed on your device.  That’s it.  You now have a jailbroken iPhone 4S/iPad 2 on iOS 5.0.1!
• If you’re one of the unlucky few and you have the “Absinthe is now setting up, please stand-by” on you device for more than 15 minutes, then I suggest you kill the app and reboot.  Don’t worry, we’ll do it the long way around and you’ll have to reset your device to factory settings then start fresh using iTunes.
• After doing this, you’ll have your iDevice in a like-new condition and you can start the Absinthe jailbreak again on your computer or use a different computer which I did to make the jailbreak work.  Just follow the steps mentioned above and with luck, you’ll be running Cydia in no time at all.

Remember, the procedure described above worked for my iPad 2. I hope people having the same problem can use this guide. I cannot guarantee it will work on your device as flawlessly as it did on mine, but I know it will work for some of you.  Also, if you have other problems regarding jailbreaking, you can drop me a line here and we’ll try to work things out. How about that?

Next time, we’ll be talking about all the Cydia goodies you can put on your newly jailbroken iDevices to make it even more personal and useful.

Stay tuned.

A couple tech blogs are talking about the idea of an Apple Macbook running iOS instead of OSX. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, iOS is the operating system found on all iPads, iPhones & iPods. OSX is found on all Apple computers (iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro & Macbook Air/Pro).

Basically, they want a Macbook running the same software as an iPad.

From Harry at CNET: What the world needs now: An iOS Laptop :

[I'm] able to focus better on my work, because I spend so much less time futzing with the device itself than I do when I’m using a Windows PC or a Mac. (That’s why I prefer the iPad-plus-keyboard setup to something like an 11-inch MacBook Air.)

Let’s be honest for a second… If you’re using a Windows PC, obviously you have problems (zing!). Next, I don’t know what you mean by “futzing” – but from one blogger to another, I don’t spend any time messing with my Macbook Pro when trying to hammer out blog updates. I open Writer (my favorite writing app) and start writing. The process is pretty simple. No futzing required. Maybe your PC has a virus?

From Ben at Techpinions.com An iOS Laptop is a Compelling Idea :

Obviously, I would love to see what Apple could do in this area of a iOS/Laptop combo. However, they are also smart enough to be aware of some of the challenges that remain in order to make a device in this category that does not feel cheap, or present a sub-par user experience. For now, personally, I would accept being able to run iOS apps on my Macbook Air.

Apple already has a lightweight, small hard drive computer, it’s called the Macbook Air. Did I mention the Macbook Air has a keyboard already installed? You can even get a mouse if you’d like.

Luckily, James Kendrick from ZDNet.com isn’t sure Apple will produce this new iOS computer.

An iOS laptop would have to be cheap, really cheap, to make it worthwhile for buyers. An iPad 2 with keyboard is currently around $600, so the laptop would have to be much cheaper than that; otherwise there is no real advantage to the purchase over our iPad/keyboard combos. I like the fact that I can use the iPad 2 as a tablet most of the time, only strapping on the keyboard as needed. An iOS laptop wouldn’t have that benefit, so it would have to be cheaper to justify giving up that function.

I don’t see what the big deal is with the keyboard/iPad combo. If you love the iPad, but want a keyboard, just buy a stinking keyboard.

Personally, I’ll never get a keyboard for my iPad because then it’s not an iPad. The benefit of the iPad is the small size and portability. When you add a keyboard it becomes as large and clunky as a laptop. No Thanks.

As expected, the Jailbreak Dream Team has made good their word and delivered the newest and the only existing iPhone 4S/iPad 2 on iOS 5.0/5.0.1 jailbreak, Absinthe.

It’s been a rollercoaster ride not only for us but more so for the Dream Team whose collective efforts have given us this newfound freedom.  As the Chronic Dev Team said,

“Hacking the A5: Not Exactly a Walk in the Park – The ridiculously complex combination of exploits-within-exploits that make this iOS jailbreak possible have consumed thousands of hours of brain-power & effort from a legion of world-renowned hackers, several of whom have been working diligently on this project since the dual-core A5 processor was unveiled by Apple last March.”

We recently reported to you that Pod2g was joined by other famous hackers in cracking the A5 running iOS 5.0.1.  Before that, in December 2012, the Chronic Dev Team released its untethered jailbreak for all iDevices on A4 processors running iOS 5.0.1.  This was great news for the rest of world but left iPhone 4S and iPad 2 users with A5 and iOS 5 high and dry (and obviously envious too).

Then came Pod2g’s advice for the rest of us, thru Twitter, that we should all update to iOS 5.0.1 before it’s too late. So with gritted teeth (and against my son’s protest), I took his advice and updated my iPad 2 to iOS 5.0.1. Of course, I lost my jailbreak as well as all the Cydia tweaks and enhancements but I thought it was a small price to pay and that I will be able to get all of them back once the Dream Team releases the much-anticipated A5/iOS 5.0.1. jailbreak.

Friday, January 20 was THE day for jailbreakers all over the world and the Dream Team finally gave us ABSINTHE.  The Dream Team released the Mac version first, then the Command Line Interface (CLI) version for Windows and finally, the Windows GUI version.  Linux users are still waiting in line but they have been promised that their version is coming along just fine and will see the light of day soon.

Everyone wanted to be the first to jailbreak their iPhone 4S and iPad 2 and this resulted to Cydia being hammered with requests, the greenpoison site going down and just about everything that can go wrong, went wrong.  The Dream Team was in control though and they were on hand to answer most of the jailbreakers’ concerns thru forums and updates in their websites.

I have been trying for three days now to jailbreak my iPad 2 but it seems that luck isn’t on my side (yet) this time.  I have been having some issues with the Absinthe app itself on my iPad 2 which completes the jailbreak and not the Absinthe app on my Win 7 desktop.  For some reason, the Absinthe app on my iPad cannot complete the jailbreak because it cannot connect to the greenpoison server/site. Perhaps my connection is a bit slow or there are still a lot of people trying to do the jailbreak overloading the site’s capacity. I also tried using another laptop to try the Windows version of the jailbreak but still no success.  Later on, I will do this on a Mac using the Mac version of jailbreak program and will definitely get back to you fine folks if I am successful or not.

To those of you who were able to jailbreak their iDevices without a glitch, I say good job and congratulations.  But for the rest (yes, including myself) who have been struggling with the latest jailbreak, I say keep on trying and that all-elusive jailbreak will eventually come.