I’ve arrived at the airport and done the unthinkable… I’ve left my laptop at home! The time has come to see whether I can manage my working life on an iPad, while on a three week tour of Europe combining a number of academic visits with a short holiday in Austria. There has been much written about this already (see for example Tony Bradley’s “30 Days with the iPad”), but as far as I know there is nothing yet from the perspective of a roaming academic.
As an astrophysicist, my work is rather varied. I will require the iPad to do a range or tasks, from preparing and giving seminars, lectures and conference presentations, writing papers with mathematical equations using LaTeX, a professional typesetting package used almost universally by mathematicians and physicists, writing letters, signing documents with an electronic signature, preparing budgets, reading and archiving scientific papers, accessing preprint archives and journals, together with the usual emailing and social-networking. That’s a tall order and although I am not entirely convinced that I will be able to manage, I hope that in three weeks I will be able to report that from now on my laptop will remain where it currently is – firmly grounded on my desk at home. And then there is of course writing this blog, so this is a good topic to start with.
There are many blogging utilities out there and available through the AppStore, but, with the ability to easily embed pictures and do basic HTML formatting without any fuss, BlogPress is still one of the best and the one I have chosen to document my iPad experiences over the next three weeks. WordPress is also not bad, but it lacks the ability to easily position images in the text and there are no HTML shortcuts.
In order to write this blog I will have to do a number of things beyond just writing plain old text. I will have to take screen shots of the various tools I use, manipulate (rotate, crop, enhance the resulting images and import them into my blog. For those not familiar with this feature, screenshots can be taken by simultaneously pressing the home and on/off buttons, with the resulting image stored in the camera roll. For editing images I use Photogene.
This excellent app may not have all the bells and whistles of professional photo journalism software, but it does all the basics needed to put the finishing touches on images (such as my screenshots) for blogs and for sharing on social networking sites.
The combination BlogPress and Photogene turn the iPad into a perfectly functional blogging device able to produce good quality posts with imbedded images, which can be published directly from this device. BlogPress has the added advantage of having Facebook and Twitter integration which allows one to automatically announce the publication of your post to your friends and colleagues.
Finally, to close off today’s post, I need to say a few words about typing on the iPad’s virtual keyboard. To be perfectly honest, for short stints, it’s perfectly adequate, but if you really want to be productive and prefer something much closer to a laptop experience, invest in Apple’s bluetooth keyboard and one of the many third-party iPad stands. A good lightweight option is one produced by Belkin. Alternately, Apple’s smart cover also provides a good solution to this problem.
Over the next few weeks, I will review a selection of apps that I use to produce academic content on the iPad and hopefully answer the question whether it really is possible to leave that laptop at home. If you have any comments and want to share similar experiences please email me at dunsby@gmail.com
