Printing from an iPad

A very useful feature added with IOS 4.2 was AirPrint. This makes it easy to print email, photos, web pages, and documents. Air Print allows true wireless printing, the iPad automatically locates and connects to AirPrint-enabled printers on your wireless network.

The downside is that it only prints to AirPrint enabled printers. At this stage only HP has AirPrint enabled printers and there are only 17 models supported. See here for a list of supported printers. 

There is an alternative option for Windows PC,s by adding an service on your PC to simulate an AirPrinter.

Follow the step-by-step instructions provided below will help you  to re-enable AirPrint on Windows.

Prerequisites:

1. Download and install iTunes 10.1 or later
2. Make sure the printer is setup as a shared printer on your local PC
3. Printer and iPad must share the same Wi-Fi connection
4. Make sure you have full administrator privileges to enable / disable services on your PC

How To Enable AirPrint On Windows:

• Download AirPrint Installer

Step 1:

Download AirPrint installer for Windows from one of these links [Mirror 1] [Mirror 2], right-click on setup.exe and choose Run as administrator from the pop-up menu.

Step 2:

Just follow the on-screen instructions to install AirPrint service on Windows:

Step 3:

Once installation completes, Windows Firewall will prompt you allow or deny AirPrint features to be shared over networks. Click on Allow access button.

When you select print from your iPad you will see the shared printer on your PC which is now available to print to. You will be asked for a User Name and Password  the first time you connect. This is the local account on your computer and corresponding password.  If you have any problems you an refer to the comments at the bottom of this article.

Marking-up PDF Documents on an iPad

One of the iPad Apps I find very useful is Aji iAnnotate. It allows you to read PDF documents on you iPad and to mark these documents up. These PDF documents can be added from iTunes Sync, or pulled in from DropBox (see previous posting).

When you need the document you can open it and start reading wherever you are. It also allows you to add Text Notes, Highlight or Underline text, create a Free-Form Drawing, add Stamps and Bookmarks. I find it very useful for reviewing documents or drawings that I don’t have time to read at the office, or for marking up drawings on site.

Once you are finished you can either email it from your iPad for updating or it will synchronise back to iTunes next time you sync your iPad. You can also print directly from your iPad using AirPrint (see next blog) It is possible to print either the original document or the marked up document.

The downside of this is it is not a free app but I believe it is well worth the $9.99. It has saved me a lot of time and effort by having my documents with me wherever I am.

Sharing Data

So one of the most difficult thinks to achieve on an iPad (and iPhone) is the sharing of data between your laptop and iPad. The recommended way is to use iTunes to Drag and Drop files into the application.

This is not very helpful unless you carry your laptop with you whenever you need to access a document. I don't travel with a laptop anymore so this option becomes very limiting.

There is another option called DropBox. This is a Cloud Based Storage where you can save your documents in the Cloud and then have access to them from you laptop, iPad, iPhone or a simple Internet connection on any PC. You can click on this link to get a free account from DropBox. You can also download the DropBox app  from the App Store. So now you can store all your documents in the Cloud and access them from anywhere in the world. DropBox will synchronise the files to your Laptop/PC and they are available even if you don't have an Internet connection. Changes files will be automatically synchronised when you reconnect your Laptop to the Internet. This is also a useful tool to share your files between multiple home computers, it synchronises on the LAN.

Another useful function of DropBox is the ability to share documents with people in the Cloud. It is a very simple method of sharing information. I have a folder with MTB GPS Tracks that I share, as well a a Maps folder with 1:50000 maps. You can select who can share the folders.

So now you have DropBox loaded on your iPad and your files are saved in the dropBox cloud. You can now open DropBox on the iPad and select the file you want to open, you then select the app that you want to open the document in, e.g. Pages. You can now make the changes you require and save the document to the iPad or email it to yourself. This is not particularly useful as you need co then save the email from your Laptop back to DropBox.


Not to worry, there is another option, the iPad supports WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning). Unfortunately DropBox doesn't support 'WebDAV at this stage, so we need to add another piece in this jigsaw puzzle. There is a product called SMEStorage which bridges this gap. You can create an account at SMEStorage and install the app iSMEStorage on your iPad. You now add DropBox to the cloud provider in SMEStorage.

Now you can save documents from your iPad back to DropBox. It is not a particularly elegant solution but it works. I am sure DropBox will provide direct WebDAV connectivity in the future, but until then this works.

Let me know if you found this useful or know of another method.

Flipboard

The first thing I do in the morning while eating breakfast is open Flipboard in my iPad. I then flip through Facebook, Twitter, all the blogs I follow, BBC News, Mahshable Technology and the Swimsuit edition.

So why Flipboard? Well I love the presentation, you can read Twitter and Facebook as if you are reading a magazine that is customised to your needs. 

Twitter is concise but not very interesting, but Flipboard pulls all the related links and pictures related to the various Tweets and presents it as a magazine. May be I am still old fashioned, but I like the concept of reading a magazine. You can drill down deeper into the articles is you need to see more, or if you are not that interested you can just read a sumarised version.

Apple has also picked Flipboard as the app of the year, they get my vote as well, the Swimsuit Eddition isn't bad either ;-)

It only for the iPad and its a free app, well worth checking out.

My Apple Experiences

How did it all start?

I have had most of the iPod Nano's, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th generation. The latest 6th generation is my favorite with it's touch screen and small size. I am waiting the the watch straps to come out so I can wear it as my watch, the LunaTik seems to be making a hit at the moment. I can't wait to get rid of my single function device (watch) and replace it with something more functional. Tik Tok

I got my first iPhone a few years ago before they were available outside the US. I had a business trip to Canada, and had done all the research before hand. When I got to Toronto at my first meeting I asked the client if he knew how I could get one. It turned out that one of his colleagues had bid on 2 on eBay and got both. I bought it that day. Those were the days of having to hack the iPhone as they are network locked to AT&T in the US. It was quite a hair raising experience every time as you were not sure the phone would survive an upgrade. The early hacks were very manual and took around 2 hours to download and go through the entire process (that's if you got it right first time). Eventually the screen packed up (this was a common fault on the first generation iPhone, you could buy DIY kits to replace the glass).

The iPhone 3G then came to SA about 2 years ago and I bought one, but had to port my MTN number to Vodacom as they were the only service provider offering iPhones in SA. This was a big mistake, I don't know if it is the porting to Vodacom or the Vodacom network but I miss call on a daily basis. The bonus was that it was not network locked so it would work without being hacked. I did initially hack it so I could load other app on it but eventually went back to a standard unhacked phone as the iTunes apps have almost anything you can think of.

Aileen got the 3GS about a year ago and she agreed to swap phones with me (what a nice wife I have). The 3GS is about 50% faster than the 3G and now supports multitasking on IOS 4.1 and above. This allows you to run multiple apps at the same time. To access them you need to double click the menu button and the switch between them. In this mode you can close unwanted apps by touching one of them until they 'jiggle' and then close the apps.

I have my iPhone 4 on order and I am going back to MTN so hopefully all my connectivity problems should be at an end. Unfortunately I have to wait to mid February 2011 for m old contract to finish.

Now onto my favorite toy, my iPad. I had been following the rumors and watched the launch of the iPad, and I just knew I had to get one. A colleague at work was going to the UK so I asked him to bring one back. It turned out that all he could get was the 64Gb 3G model. I wanted the 3G but would have been happy with a 16 or 32Gb model. The 3G model uses a micro SIM card which was not available in SA at the time. I did some research and found that you can cut the standard mini SIM card to fit. I used an old card to test and once ti worked I made a template for cutting the SIM cards. How to make a micro SIM card

The iPad Is the most brilliant device, it has just won the best gadget for 2010. Time Magazine iPad best gadget 2010.There are some limitations which make it more challenging to use. The most difficult is to get information onto and off the device without using iTunes. I will cover this in a later blog. Apple 'sandboxes' all it's allocations so they can't share data or see each other. This makes the apps more stable but you lose some functionality.

I'll cover some of my favorite apps in the next blog. Please send comments and questions and make this interactive.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Douglasdale, Johannesburg