I hear this is a pretty good day to start your holiday shopping. Did you know I have a page with some of my favorite things?
The GroovBoard
I get a lot of work done on my iPad. In addition to using it to manage my life, I also find it a great place to get serious writing done. One trouble I do have, however, is getting comfortable with it while sitting on the couch or in bed. I had pretty much given up on being able to use my Apple Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad in these situations until I received my GroovBoard ($119). The GroovBoard is a piece of milled lumber with grooves cut in it for holding the iPad, Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and a stylus. It is manufactured so you can hold in a variety of positions.
For example, while sitting on a couch, you can set a Apple Bluetooth keyboard on it and have it prop up the iPad and go to town.
If you work with your knees bent, you can lay the iPad against your knees and set the GroovBoard underneath it, where the GroovBoard will hold a Bluetooth keyboard so you can start typing.
The device also has a series of holes in it to hold a stylus. I don’t use those very often since I’m not a big stylus user. I find it just as easy to tap screen commands with my finger and that’s one less thing for me to lose. However, if you’re an artist, I can see how this would be handy.
The GroovBoard actually comes in two pieces. They are connected with a series of strong magnets and pins to keep everything in line. I generally use the whole thing put together. However, if you’re not using the keyboard and simply want to use it as an iPad holder, remove the extender.
The GroovBoard is manufactured in a small shop in Germany. They come in a variety of woods including alder, apple (Yes, I know), ash, cherry, maple, oak, plum, and walnut. (I like the walnut. It’s no secret that I do a bit of woodworking myself and I really like my GroovBoard.
Sponsor: Sendy
My thanks to Sendy for sponsoring MacSparky.com this week.
Sendy is a self hosted email newsletter application that delivers your emails via Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).
Compared to hosted newsletter services, Sendy is an app you can install on your own server. That means, you don’t have to pay monthly fees just to maintain your account. As Sendy uses Amazon SES as the sending engine, deliverability is high at a very low cost.
Sendy uses multi-threading to deliver your emails to Amazon SES, Amazon in turn enable your emails to pass SPF & Sender ID policy checks enforced by many ISPs & DKIM-sign all outgoing emails to ensure high deliverablity rate.
The features you get with Sendy are what you’re familiar with other hosted services, like lists & subscriber management, giving your client access, beautiful reports, custom fields, autoresponders and so on.
Find out more about Sendy or get your copy at sendy.co.
Happy Thanksgiving Fellow Geeks
A few tips for the day:
- Love your family.
- Don’t deep fry your turkey or at least be really really careful.
- Give thanks to at least one person. I’m thankful to you for being here.
Productivityist
Mike Vardy’s newest project is interesting. I’m looking forward to see where he goes with it.
MPU112: Self Publishing and iBooks Author
I’ve received several inquiries from readers and listeners asking about the details of writing a book in iBooks Author and the thought process that went into releasing the Field Guides through the iBookstore only. This week’s Mac Power Users episode explains it all in detail. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the podcast. All the cool kids do.
starwarigami
I just spent way too much time looking at paper based spacecraft. You can too.
Pixar Shorts
Those little shorts Pixar puts before for each of their movies are fantastic. I love watching these things. My kids’ favorite is probably Jack Jack Attack, the back story of what happened with the baby-sitter during the Incredibles movie (though Presto is a close second). I think my favorite is Boundin’, which always sets me right when I start feeling sorry for myself. The short from Brave, La Luna, is now available online. As a dad, this one gets to me every time I watch it.
As an aside, the I was pleased to see Disney put a short at the beginning of Wreck-It Ralph, Paperman which is, in my opinion, Pixar caliber.
Sponsor: Dozeo
My thanks to Dozeo for sponsoring MacSparky this week.
dozeo is a young and innovative team of developers and online media experts from Stuttgart, Germany. Together we are excited about redefining videoconferencing and providing a hassle-free solution for people to meet online and communicate live and interactively with each other.
dozeo represents a new kind of social video conferencing. It combines powerful features into an intuitive and stylish design that can easily withstand a comparison with the established online conferencing tools.
Upcoming integrations of dozeo into existing social media platforms will increase the fun factor and improve the effective use of online collaboration tools. With the existing integration for Github we have already made a start: developers get the chance to avoid lengthy plain text discussions and join a video conference directly from GitHub.
Check it out for yourself and sign up for a free dozeo account.
Happy meetings!
Try hassle-free video conferencing with Dozeo today.
Sponsorship by The Syndicate.
Backup Basics
James Coleman over at TechRoom.com just started a nice series on backup. I’m looking forward to see where he goes with it.