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Failure of Verizon LTE on the New iPad

I had high hopes for Verizon and their LTE network when I first unboxed my new iPad. I knew the LTE spec could be as high as 20Mbps down and 10Mbps up — but I’d settle for half of those numbers.  I’d read reports that people were getting LTE speeds in NYC of 10Mbps down and 6Mbps up and I’d love to be able to live that fast on the web.

Unfortunately, my initial tests in Jersey City were lousy, and yesterday, I did some informal LTE testing around Bryant Park in New York City.  You’d think at 6th Avenue and 40th Street you’d have a saturating LTE signal from Verizon.  Here are the results of my first, dismal, test:  Two Verizon LTE bars and 1.7Mbps down and 1.47Mpbs up.  Ugh.  That’s miserable 3G territory!

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New iPads Arrive: Typekit Fonts Now a Blogging Necessity

Today was a busy and glorious day. Our new iPads arrived three days early from China and we enjoyed setting them up via iCloud and experiencing our first, if limited, tastes of LTE on Verizon. In Jersey City, LTE comes and goes in our apartment. Sometimes it flickers to life. Other times, we’re stuck on 3G with no way to understand the why or wherefore of being pressed off the LTE network. Here’s a quickie screenshot I was able to grab of my iPad on LTE with two service bars active. 5.67 Mbps down and 0.19 Mbps up.

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OnLive Desktop Plus Review for iPad

UPDATE: February 24, 2012
I was using Internet Explorer via OnLive last night and the speed was so fast I decided to see if I could get quantification for download and upload speeds for the Plus service.  I couldn’t get my old favorite, Speakeasy, to load on OnLive, but I was able to get Speedtest.net to work and here are the results:  An astonishing 88.05Mbps down and a fantastical 70.72Mbps up.  Now that’s some fast internet!  NYU slowly turns green

Today, I just shelled out my first $5.00USD monthly fee for OnLive Desktop Plus for my iPad 2.  I decided to go the money route for OnLive Desktop Plus to get priority access because the free version is incredibly slow and monotonous.  I also wanted to see just how fast the Internet Explorer 9 interface was on the iPad going through the OnLive Desktop Plus backend.

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Björk and Biophilia on the iPad

The iconic Björk released a new album — Biophilia — for the iPad and it is a magical experience to interact with her music with your ears and fingers and eyes.  This is how music is meant to be experienced.  You can touch the tones.  You can manipulate rhythm and melody — and everything still remains innately Björk — but your unique involvement in changing the music through experimentation cannot be denied:

For Biophilia, she’d originally envisioned a musical house — like a museum, she’s said — wherein people could roam from room to room, with each interactive space designated to a different song. Later, she envisioned an IMAX film experience with visionary filmmaker Michel Gondry. When both of those ideas fell through, Björk commissioned an iPad app with which users can manipulate her music with various games, remix it and further understand the scientific and musical principles behind each song. It’s a lot like her idea for the musical house, but in a digital environment. It’s also just the kind of bonkers vision that Björk would be drawn to, and if it all works, it ought to be ingenious and tons of fun.

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Steve Jobs Replies from the Grave: From iBoles to iPad to iAuthor

When the iPad was originally introduced, I was already an Apple fanboi with iBoles and iJanna and a couple of Apple books in the pipeline — and I was especially interested in the iPad as a book publication vehicle.  At that time, Steve Jobs was still alive and randomly replying to email inquiries, and on March 23, 2010 at 8:29pm, I decided to take my shot with Jobs and I emailed him my iPad Book Publishing Query:

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Jazzwise Magazine for iPad Review

Over the last two days here in Boles Blues, we’ve taken a hard look at two guitar magazines — Guitarist and Guitar World — published for the iPhone and iPad via Apple’s Newsstand application and we came away disappointed in the lousy textual reading and wanting multimedia experience.  Today, in our final installment in the neverending search for a grand music publication for the iPad, we happen upon Jazzwise — a UK-based magazine that provides wonderful writing, but results in an even more dire and dismal reading experience than Guitarist and Guitar World put together.

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The Guitar World Magazine for iPad Review

Yesterday, I reviewed the UK-centric Guitarist Magazine for the iPad and today, I’m here to review its American sister-friend, Guitar World Magazine.  Both publications are produced by the same company and, unfortunately both Guitarist and Guitar World suffer the same, awful, interface fate as iPad Newsstand subscriptions.

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