When my iPad is charging, I die a little

I cannot believe how essential my iPad has become to my existence. The battery lasts forever so I've only charged it twice since I got it. Last night, I charged it during the evening hours.

Brrrrrrr. Even a few hours without my iPad is unbearable. I couldn't believe how many times I went to reach for it, only to realize that it was charging. I was lost.

I've become a fierce user of dictation. I talk to my iPad all day long -- and I've learned how to get the most out of dictation. There are hardly any errors, of late. So all day (and night) long, I'm talking ideas into my iPad. It's been stellar, truly. There is no easier, simpler way to get your ideas into your computer, than talking to it. And when the notes are on my iPad, they're also on my desktop Mac, my Macbook Air and my iPod Touch. And even if I lose all of those devices, the information is saved in the cloud. Heaven!

I'll never charge my iPad again while I'm awake. The loss I feel is too keen. I need my iPad to survive. That's the way it is, and this transformation only took a couple of weeks. Desktops are dead. Laptops are dead. Long live the iPad!

So how's that iPad workin' out for ya, Keith?

I'm so glad someone asked. This iPad is great!

My main reason for getting an iPad was to have Siri and dictation available on a mobile device. My iPod Touch is too old; it lacks these features. My fondest wish for the device was that it would give me a way to record ideas without using my computer.

It met my expectations, and more. Now I can pause a football game, reach for the iPad and talk an idea into it. Does dictation make mistakes? Yes, but not often if I speak clearly. And this is the interesting thing: when it gets a word wrong, if I put my finger on the word to highlight it, it suggests the correct word. This is true although the correct word may be lightyears away from the original word it produced.

I think what happens in these cases is that dictation thinks "it's this word or this one" and puts one of them out there. If I click on it, it suggests the other word it was pondering, and this is almost always the correct word. And I suspect that all the while, it's learning about my voice and improving itself. Very cool. So I got what I wanted, in terms of dictation. I've been writing entire blog posts with dictation. I'm typing this one but I dictated "Goodness gracious" below. Works great!

As for Siri, if I have a pressing need to know the population of Pakistan during a game (and I do, sometimes), I ask Siri and boom, there's the answer. Plus, as I've noted here before, Siri is great with sports. I say, "show me the NFL schedule for Sunday" and there it is. I ask "what NFL teams are playing tonight" and Siri shows me the Steelers game, with the start time. I love Siri.

And I love my iPad. Everyone needs one of these, especially writers.

Amazing tech story

Here's the idea: you'll be able to run Windows on your iPad (!!!) for free, and for $5 a month, you'll also get an internet connection that's faster than anything now possible with an iPad. It sounds crazy. The service is called Onlive Desktop and it will eventually ramp up to a system where, for $10 a month, you'll be able to run any Windows program on your iPad.

It's crazy weird (and wonderful, if it works) and you can read about it here. It's like something out of a sci-fi novel. You'll actually be sending commands to a real, live Windows computer which will enact your commands and send the results back to your iPad. Lickety-split, if the article can be believed. And it'll provide Flash, the missing element on current iPads.

As a PageMaker junkie I really, really miss being able to create publications with it (because I moved to a Mac). Quark Express will never ring my bell. I've got it and hardly use it. I want my PageMaker and this may provide it. Guess I'll need an iPad too, huh?