Jim Karpen

Author Details

Jim Karpen's picture

Author Details

Jim Karpen

Jim Karpen holds a Ph.D. in literature and writing, and has a love of gizmos. His doctoral dissertation focused on the revolutionary consequences of digital technologies and anticipated some of the developments taking place in the industry today. Jim has been writing about the Internet and technology since 1994 and has been using Apple's visionary products for decades.

The annual Macworld/iWorld trade show is underway in San Francisco, and Macworld magazine already has named its Best of Show winners. They include some gotta-see gadgets for the iPad and iPhone, such as an iPad robot, an iPad case that doubles as a speaker, and a 1TB external hard drive for the iPhone and iPad.

The irony. When Rush Limbaugh and co tried to get Apple to advertise on his popular radio talk show, Apple wouldn't even talk to him. Limbaugh acknowledges that, politically, Apple doesn't have anything in common with him. And he acknowledges that Apple's technology is highly restrictive. But despite all that, he loves Apple products. And on his show yesterday he talked at length why he loves Apple products in response to a caller's questions, making assertions such as: "It's just the stuff works.

I have a second-generation Apple TV set-top box, and really enjoy using AirPlay to stream movies from my iPad to my 42-inch HDTV. It's fun how simple it is. If you have an iOS device and Apple TV on the same WiFi network, you simply start playing a video and tap a button that gives you the option of playing the movie on your TV instead of your iPad. If you need to go out and want to continue watching the movie, you simply toggle back to the iPad and continue watching.

It's nice to see an app by fellow blogger Todd Bernhard, president of No Tie software, win an award at CES. Getting recognition was AutoVerbal Pro Talking Soundboard, a $9.99 app that allows people to communicate who are unable to speak due to conditions such as stroke, surgery, cerebral palsy, and autism. The app has hundreds of photo buttons representing common words or phrases. Users can also program a variety of buttons to speak custom messages. In addition, users can type anything and it will be spoken using text-to-speech.

Summertime is vacation time. And if you use campgrounds when you're vacationing, you'll want to check out Woodall’s RV & Camping Copilot (free). It lists more than 12,000 private and public campgrounds and RV parks in the United States and Canada, plus Mexico. It offers campground information, including amenities, services, types of campsites, on-site recreation, as well as identifying many camping discounts offered at parks. Private campgrounds also include Woodall's 5W/5W Rating System.

In my ongoing series on novel uses of the iPhone and iPad camera, here's yet another: an app that lets you take a picture of a leaf and then gives you information about what type of tree it as. Leafsnap (free) returns the likely species name, as well high-resolution photographs of and information about the tree's leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds, and bark. The app was funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and was developed by the Smithsonian Institution, University of Maryland, and Columbia University.

I'm always amazed by all the novel uses of the camera on iOS devices — from taking your pulse to helping those who are colorblind determine colors — and wrote an article about that in a recent issue of the magazine. And I just received a press release for another. CaMeasure lets you use your camera to measure size or distance. It does this in one of two ways. For smaller objects such as furniture, the app asks you to put an object of known size, such as a sheet of paper or a credit card, by the object.

Pages