Author name: Doug Felteau

My New iPad A User's Guide Best iPad Apps

Review: My New iPad: A User’s Guide – No Starch Press

2 Comments / Books, Music and Movies, Reviews / By /

My New iPad A User's Guide Best iPad Apps Wallace Wang, best seller of My New Mac and My New iPhone for the No Starch Press publisher has written a new book detailing everything you need to know about the iPad in a book called “My New iPad: A User’s Guide.” No Starch Press provided a reviewer’s copy of “My New iPad: A User’s Guide” for this review.

“My New iPad: A User’s Guide” includes seven chapters including: basic training; customizing your iPad; getting on the Internet; sharing data with your iPad; video, music, and eBooks; organizing yourself and additional tips. Each chapter is small and comes in easily consumable chunks of information that can instantly help new users complete a certain task with easy to follow step by step instructions.

The first chapter called “Basic Training” teaches you how to turn on and off the iPad, what the various buttons and slides perform and how to use and customize the virtual keyboard. Apple changed the Screen Location Lock since the book was published so information has changed since the publish date resulting in incorrect information.
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Mindflex Duels by Mattel

Mattel Announces Mindflex Duels

2 Comments / Gaming & Toys, News / By /

Mindflex Duels by Mattel Mattel has announced the next game in the Mindflex series called Mindflex Duels. Mindflex Duels will give two players a chance to see who can use Jedi mind tricks to control a foam ball using their powers of concentration. The goal is to move your ball to the player’s side of the table using your mind.

I’ve played with Mindflex games before and absolutely enjoyed the challenge and can’t wait to pit my superior brain against any challenger!

Mindflex Duels will be available in August for $99.99.

Angry Birds Knock On Wood board game best iPad App

Mobile App Turned Board Game – Angry Birds Knock on Wood

1 Comment / Gaming & Toys, News / By /

Angry Birds Knock On Wood board game best iPad App How great would one of the most addicting and top rated mobile games for the iOS be in the physical world? The Geeks have even rated Angry Birds as one of the best iPad apps available today. The world of Geeks shall soon rejoice in May of this year when the Angry Birds Knock on Wood Board Game is released by Mattel for less than $15.

The Mattel board game will be a table-top game. One player draws a construction card that show a picture of the pig habitat to build and while they build the structure the other player loads a catapult to send the Angry Birds flying in hope of destroying the other player’s pig habitat. I’m not sure how you explode the black birds or make the yellow birds zoom without tapping a screen so I don’t think the board game will match up to the epic mobile game.

Will the Angry Birds mobile game translate to the physical world?

Groupon and FTD Coupon Fail – Who’s to Blame?

9 Comments / Holidays, Networking & Internet / By /


Group coupon startups beware… be careful who you partner with when releasing coupons. In Groupon’s first major misstep (leaving aside the horrible Super Bowl ad), Groupon partnered with the nationwide FTP florist to provide $40 worth of flowers for $20. Once shoppers clicked through the deal, the shoppers found out the prices offered through the Groupon deal were more than if you went to the site not through the deal.

FTD blamed the problem with the Groupon on the fact that the Groupon’s were for non-discounted items. In the flower world, Valentine’s Day is equal to a toy store’s Christmas season so FTD’s site was filled with discounts. In an attempt to save face, FTD credited the difference between the retail price and the sale price to the accounts of people who bought the sale items through Groupon while Groupon updated the deal to reflect lower prices.

In this Geek’s humble opinion, the Groupon did not feel right so I did not buy. Why? There were red flags posted saying you must click through Groupon’s link to the FTD site. Additionally, the Groupon was for retail prices which is another trick I’ve seen from the likes of Michael’s employ with their coupons (50% off any 1 items not currently on sale, but every item in the store is already on sale!). It sure felt like FTD was trying to pull one over here and got caught having to do what they should have done in the first place.

Comcast XFINITY iPad TV app

Comcast XFINITY TV iPad App Released

1 Comment / Home Automation, Networking & Internet, Phones, Portable, Software / By /

Comcast XFINITY iPad TV app Comcast announced an upgrade to the XFINITY iPad app which was released on February 1st. This new (and free) upgrade allows Comcast consumers to watch their favorite On Demand shows and movies right on the Apple iPad. This is in addition to being able to use your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch as a remote control, to search On Demand and TV listings and to schedule your DVR even when you’re away from home.

If you have Comcast and use this app, we want to know what you think. This feels like a new killer app for the iPad similar to the Netflix iPad app.

Valentine's Day flowers

Happy Valentine’s Day – did you forget?

2 Comments / Holidays / By /

Valentine's Day flowers Valentine’s Day may be a hotly contested “Hallmark” holiday around your house, but if you did not come to an agreement with your significant other prior to today… you should pick up some flowers, a gift and attempt to make a reservation at a nice restaurant. Otherwise, prepare to sleep on the couch for a month or until your next good deed.

Don’t fret! The Geeks are here to help you and all it will take is about 15 minutes.

First, the flowers… at this point, you can’t order flowers so you need to pick up flowers on the way home. The most common place to pick up flowers is a grocery store. If you want to skip that crowd, look for a street vendor selling roses or actually go to a flower shop and pick up some flowers there.

Second, depending on your significant other, a gift might be a requirement. You can always get the heart shaped box of candy’s but that’s a bit cliche. For the partner that loves music, you could always spring for an iTunes gift certificate for the new Gaga song or Beatle’s LOVE. If you guys watched the Grammy’s last night and enjoyed it, you could grab a gift certificate for the Grammy performances.

If music isn’t your partner’s thing… maybe they’re a Geek and would love a gift certificate from ThinkGeek to pick out that perfect Bazinga! Babydoll T.

Finally, you could go with the universal love for movies with a Netflix subscription or go even more generic with an Amazon gift certificate.

Now that you have flowers and a gift, go over to Opentable and see if you can find a table for two somewhere in your city tonight. This may be your most difficult task today.

Cloud City - China building a city for cloud computing

China building Cloud City

7 Comments / Networking & Internet, News / By /

Cloud City - China building a city for cloud computing China is building a cloud computing and office complex that includes a mega data center primarily for cloud computing with the partnership of IBM. The complex will cover over 6M square feet with the initial data center space accounting for almost 650k square feet. That seems impressive but I thought they meant “Cloud City” not “Cloud Computing City” so I was less than impressed when I found out the complex wasn’t going to float in the clouds.

Check out the article on Computerworld.

Best Superbowl Commercials

1 Comment / Miscellaneous, Reviews / By /

The football season culminates with the Superbowl, and starting in the early seventies marketers realized the potential and started creating ads targeted to the TV audience. In 1984, Apple’s Superbowl commercial using a “1984” theme changed the advertising landscape for Superbowl commercials.

In recent years there have been a few hits and many misses and this year is no different.

In my opinion, the Best Superbowl Commercial was a VW Passat commercial starring a mini-Vader. I loved this car commercial, and usually I hate car commercials.

Continue on to see which other commercials caught my eye… the list isn’t too long.
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AT&T vs Verizon: Battle for the iPhone

1 Comment / Phones, Portable / By /

iPhone on Verizon We no longer need to ask if Verizon will get the iPhone as at the time this post goes live, Verizon will have started taking pre-orders for existing customers to get the Apple iPhone 4 ready to run on Verizon’s more reliable CDMA wireless network instead of AT&Ts faster GSM wireless network. As we mentioned in an earlier post, we’re excited for the competition.

So the Geeks have gathered some data about Verizon and the iPhone and compared to AT&T in a handy Google Spreadsheet embedded in the jump to the next page. Let us know by leaving a comment if we missed anything on the spreadsheet.
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