digital life

iPad and ebooks, or I should say iBooks ?

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:14:57 +0000

I will publish my findings about publishing books on the iPad. Follow the blog for more info on tools and tricks.

First trick: if you try to add a book to the iPad, don’t drag the book to the iPad in iTunes. Drag the book to the Library. If is your first book you will not see a Books category but, the category will be added. Then syncronize the iTunes with the iPad.

Publishing tip: The books with special diacritics (special romanian characters) are looking ok for only 3 of the fonts. Also they are taking a long time to update after a font change.

Tfl – very funny.

admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 21:24:03 +0000

Sunday night.
Warwick, my PM, decided is late and after all tomorrow is Monday so a new week is starting, so he sent everybody home.
Got to Liveerpool street station and guess what, my train will leave in 15 minutes. Normally I will use the Metropolitan line but, for some time now, the Met line is closed during the weekend.
Anyway, gotthe train, close to home, 2 more stops. Right, the train stop. And I mean: STOP. Everybody is shuttered, we got the driver announcing that the train is broken. In a few words:35 minutes later the driver with his shopping is going to the other end of the train. 2 more busses and I will get home. Till now: 2 hours and 20 minutes. Let’s see what else.

iPad – how is the positioning working

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:43:40 +0000

Today I started the iPad maps application. Very strange, the iPad picked my location with an excellent precision.
So the positioning/location/find me feature works.

So I started to investigate how is that possible.
At first Paola suggested based on some article that she found online that is based on geo-IP or is doing a triangulation of some kind.
Triangulation can be done on 3 different ways (at least using main stream technology). GPS, GSM or WiFi.
The iPad has no GPS or GSM yet. Will be available on the next release, soon I hope.
So the only options remaining are geo IP and WiFi triangulation.

Walked out, and got disconnected from the WIFI. And the maps locate me still works. Also I bet that the IP of the company is not actually mapped as precise.

SO, the only remaining option is WiFi triangulation. I wonder if Google, with the street view, had anything to do with mapping the WiFi coverage.