Posts Tagged ‘iTunes’

The iPad will never replace my desktop, but it has already replaced my laptop after just two days.

I love, love, love it!

@JesseLuna said it best: “If HBO was your ‘home box office’, then the iPad is your ‘mobile box office’.”

It’s also a dream for reading, blogging, and managing social media networks on a realistically readable device. (I love my iPhone, but the small screen has its limitations.) I know I will be using my iPad for most of what I do as a non-techie user. I also know I will still need to go to my desktop for large professional projects and probably most photo editing. (More on photos later.)

My setup consists of the iPad, the Apple cover, the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, a stand, and a lap desk. (And sometimes earbuds.) This is perfect for sitting in an armchair. Of course, if I were at a desk or table, I would not need the lap desk. Also, when lounging in bed the stand is too precarious, so I just lay the iPad flat on the lap desk. The Apple cover is made of a grippy rubber material that doesn’t slide around at all, which is awesome.

Being a creature of habit, the first things I tried on my new iPad were all the things I already used on my laptop and/or iPhone: Safari, Gmail, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Netflix, Scrabble, Momento, iTunes, Wikipanion, and Notes.

Overall, these all worked as well or better than the on the laptop/iPhone. There are a few tiny glitches, where features don’t work the way I expect, but all of them are software issues, which I’m sure will be addressed by the developers.

Aha! moments:

- streaming Netflix in bed (with earbuds) while my husband sleeps

- stocking my iBooks shelves with free texts thanks to Project Gutenberg

- writing this blog post in Pages which I will later email to @JesseLuna

All of these tasks could be done with some other gadget or device, but before now I would have used a separate gadget or device for each activity.

New stuff I love on the iPad: Pages, iBooks ereader, Marvel comics viewer, Toy Story read-along, NPR, USA Today, and ABC viewer. Gorgeous picture quality, leagues better than my (10-year-old) PowerBook. Super-fast over WiFi. Screen size is perfect for personal viewing. So many options – both media and content!

Stuff I haven’t done, yet, because it isn’t supported: Hulu.

Stuff I haven’t done because I haven’t bought the right app(s): games.

A final note on photos: there is a camera connecter accessory, but I didn’t buy it. I simply took photos with my iPhone, emailed them to Flickr. On the iPad I opened the Flickr app, selected my image and saved it to my Photos, then accessed it from there. That works fine for me.

This is so awesome! You can submit your 12seconds.tv stream and have it show up as a video podcast in the iTunes directory.

Submitting my 12seconds.tv stream to iTunes never occurred to me until I went to check for iPhone app updates via my desktop iTunes. I did a search, saw the three flavors of 12seconds apps, then noticed some 12seconds feeds. Wow!

This year, the name of the game is Own Your Stuff. In this case, by creating a Podcast out of a 12seconds.tv, users can repurpose and redistribute the content that they have created. And the best part is you get to tell folks that you have an iTunes Podcast.

So let’s get to the good stuff and describe the process to get things listed.

1. Go to the Apple iTunes “Making a Podcast” page and review the process.




2. Test your feed. Open iTunes, under the “Advanced” menu, select “Subscribe to Podcast” then enter your 12seconds.tv feed and click “OK.” Your feed will look like http://12seconds.tv/channel/jesseluna/feed, but you will substitute your username instead of “jesseluna.” Doing this should bring up your latest 12seconds update.




3. Submit your podcast. Open iTunes, click on the Podcasts tab or main link. You’ll see a “Podcast Quick Links” section on the top right hand side. Click on “Submit a Podcast.” It will take you to the “Submit Podcasts to the iTunes Directory” view.




4. Note: Before you continue you need to have an iTunes account and be logged into iTunes.




5. BEFORE YOU SUBMIT THE FEED, make sure your avatar is the one you want to show up in the directory. I submitted before double-checking that and when I went in to change my avatar in 12seconds, I found that the change did not cascade through to the iTunes store.




6. Submit the feed by entering the feed URL and clicking on the “Continue” button. You may be prompted to log into iTunes.




7. If there are no errors, you will receive confirmation that the feed is being reviewed and you will receive an email. It took 24 hours to receive the confirmation that the feed was approved and for it to be accessible from the iTunes directory.

This worked for me the first time so that bodes well for other efforts.

Follow Up:

1. Add me as a friend on 12seconds.tv




2. Leave a Comment if you have questions or use the FormSpring “Ask Jesse” box on the right of this page to leave an anonymous question.




3. Once your feed is set up, come back and tell us about it so we can check it out




4. Subscribe to my 12seconds Podcast (opens iTunes)




5. Make sure to keep your 12seconds.tv account updated or iTunes will remove your feed from the directory. Update at least every 3 days.

You just learned how to add your 12seconds.tv video stream to the iTunes Podcast directory!

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