Having said this, the Pogo stylus has a couple drawbacks. For example, the setup of the pen is unclear. This confused me and a number of other Amazon reviewers who expressed their frustration at never getting it working. Stick with it! Follow the directions… it does work and it works well!

Secondly, the build of the stylus is sorta cheap. During the first usage of my Pogo Connect, I pressed the (flimsy) plastic button into the hollow body. Arg! How infuriating! And I am not the first to have had this problem. With no button, the stylus was unusable.

The Pogo Connect is an awesome tool. Now that I have it, I’m unable to live without it! But I’ll always press that button with a feather touch! -- Robyn Miller

Pogo Connect $62

This Cult of Mac video makes it look pretty easy to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad. What is a good reason to do it? If you have jailbroken your iOS device to do something cool that you couldn't have accomplished with a non-jailbroken device, please tell us about it in the comments.

2-In-1 iPotty with Activity Seat for iPad

(Via This isn't Happiness)

Here is a video of My Great Ghost, whose remix of "Music in 12 Parts" is the first track on the record, performing an entirely new track using the app.

More about the app:

The studio has built a REWORK app that includes interactive visualizations corresponding to 11 of the remix songs with visuals that range from futuristic three-dimensional landscapes to shattered multicolored crystals and vibrating sound waves. The app also includes an interactive “Glass Machine” that allows users to create their own music inspired by Philip Glass’ early works by simply sliding two discs around side-by-side, generating polyrhythmic counterpoints between the two melodies.

“This is a way for people who don’t have the experience of manipulating music material to see what it's like,” says Glass.

The app is available via the iTunes store here and more info can be found at the Snibbe Studio website here.

And for those in the NYC area: My Great Ghost is playing at the Studio at Webster Hall on Monday 1/21.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2013/01/17/my-great-ghost-glass-machin.html/feed 5 http://boingboing.net/2012/12/05/chocolate-fix-a-favorite-puzz.html http://boingboing.net/2012/12/05/chocolate-fix-a-favorite-puzz.html#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:00:29 +0000 Mark Frauenfelder http://boingboing.net/?p=171509
The puzzle game Chocolate Fix has been a family favorite around our house for years. The puzzle consists of 9 plastic chocolate candies (in three colors and shapes), a tray that holds the candies in a 3 x 3 grid, and a spiral-bound book with various challenges to solve. The challenges offer clues on how to arrange the candies in the tray. The hints sometimes show just the shape but not the color, the color but not the shape, or the shape and the color of a candy that belongs to a particular spot, column, or row in the grid. It's your job to figure out the single solution to correctly arrange the candies.

We got the puzzle years ago when it first came out, and the colors of the candies were dark brown, light brown, and pink. The dark brown and light brown pieces were hard to differentiate from one another, so I'm glad they switched to brown, cream, and turquoise (actually, turquoise is a weird color for a candy, but whatever).

I had forgotten about Chocolate Fix until today, when I found one of the pink pieces of candy in a desk drawer. It got me wondering if the puzzle had made its way to the iPhone and iPad. I checked and discovered that it had! Chocolate Fix turns out to be even better on the iPad than as a physical puzzle. The main reason is that pieces won't go missing, like they so often do with games and puzzles. (Of course, if you don't own an iOS device, then the physical game is a better option than buying an app that you can't play.) Interestingly, the colors of the pieces in the iOS version are brown, cream, and pink, which I find to be more attractive.

If you want to check it out, try the free version of Chocolate Fix first. The full version is $2.99.

IEEE Spectrum just released a fun iPad app that's all about real robots! You can learn about 126 robots from 19 countries, hear interviews with roboticists, and, of course, watch videos of our future overlords in action. "Robots for iPad" (Thanks, Ken Goldberg!)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/11/29/robots-app.html/feed 3 http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/gruber-on-ipad-mini.html http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/gruber-on-ipad-mini.html#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2012 16:30:40 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=191252 initial reactions when Gruber handed her the iPad Mini to see what she, "an avid daily user of an iPad 3," thought. "Her initial reaction matched mine exactly, and perfectly encapsulates the experience," Gruber writes. But his prediction: "This is going to play out much like the iPod and iPod Mini back in 2004: the full-size model will continue to sell strongly, but the Mini is going to become the bestselling model." [daringfireball.net]]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/gruber-on-ipad-mini.html/feed 14 http://boingboing.net/2012/10/29/parody-ipad-mini-promo-video.html http://boingboing.net/2012/10/29/parody-ipad-mini-promo-video.html#comments Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:40:30 +0000 Mark Frauenfelder http://boingboing.net/?p=190545

This parody promo for the iPad Mini is funny and factual.

This review is cross-posted on DownloadTheUniverse, a group blog that reviews science-related ebooks and discusses the future of the written word.

A Medeival Bestiary is just not that into me.

We should have gone so well together. It was a scanned copy of The Royal Bestiary, a 13th century manuscript stored in the British Library, enhanced for the iPad with text and audio interpretation on every page. I was a giant nerd. Clearly, a match made in heaven.

But I don't think it's going to work out.

It's not that the book is terrible. In fact, parts of it are, objectively, pretty damn cool. We are, after all, talking about an opportunity to virtually thumb through the pages of a very old book. And the scans are excellent. You can see stains on the vellum, and the margin lines drawn by the scribe or illustrator to make certain that text and images were put into just the right place on every page. You can zoom in on the beautiful, colored and gilded drawings of bees and eagles, lions and centuars. On every page, there is, indeed, a little tab that you can tap to learn more about the animals you see in the pictures – especially helpful for the book's many imaginary animals, such as the leucrota. Leucrotas, you may be interested to know, happen when a male hyena mates with a female lion. The result of that partnership looks, for some reason, rather like a horse, but with a forked tail and a creepy, Jack Nicholson smile. The Medieval Bestiary assures me that the leucrota's "teeth" are actually a single piece of sharp bone, curved into a U shape. If I tap the "Listen" button, this information will be read to me by a soothing, female, British voice.

In short, A Medieval Bestiary does everything it promised to do. In fact, I'm sure this book could make somebody very happy. (Maybe an art student?) Just not me. That's because, while it does do everything it promised, A Medieval Bestiary does only that. And not a bit more. I, unfortunately, need the bit more.

The truth is that some of this is my fault. I read the description and then set my expectations rather higher than I should have. I can't really blame A Medieval Bestiary for being the book it is (and said it was) rather than the book I want to be. And yet. And yet.

A book like this needs context. I need to know about the genre of bestiaries, in general. Did the authors make up the clearly made-up animals (and the clearly made-up information about real animals)? Or were they writing down longstanding traditions? What was the point of the book? Am I supposed to be studying the natural world, or exploring my own morality? Do books like bestiaries have a role in the development of true taxonomy and biology, the same way that alchemy had a role in the development of chemistry and physics? I have no idea. Because A Medieval Bestiary doesn't tell me. In fact, I had to run a couple Google searches to even figure out the book's real name. This is the full extent of context it offers on itself:

A bestiary is a book of real and imaginary beasts, though its subjects can extend to plants and even rocks. It combines description of the physical nature and habits of animals with elaboration on the moral or spiritual significance of these characteristics.

This amazing book was produced in the first decade of the 13th century, and is one of the earliest bestiaries to feature vivid paintings of animals. They are set on gold grounds and in colourful frames, supplanting the line-drawn renderings that populated earlier bestiaries. These lavish illuminations would have made this a costly book to produce, and so it is likely that it was produced for an aristocratic, or even royal, owner who could read Latin or had a chaplain who could do so.

Even more frustrating was the interpretation within the book. A Medieval Bestiary is in Latin (and written in that sort of fancy medieval font that makes it difficult to read even if you do know Latin). But there is no translation of the actual text. The interpretation merely describes the illustrations. In some cases (but not all) that includes a summary of the text around the image, but even then that's almost worse, because what you get are stunted plot points of a story that probably would have been a lot more interesting to read for itself.

Basically, I look at A Medieval Bestiary and think of all that it could be, but isn't. Particularly with the iPad book format, there's such an opportunity here to add lots of context: History, philosphy, quotes and links to other works. Done right, a reader could come away from this understanding more about medieval society as a whole and the development of science from magical/religious art to rational tool. Instead, A Medieval Bestiary just wants to tell you what's going on in the pictures. There's nothing wrong with that. But I'm too old and too wise to waste much time thinking I can change a book into something it's not.

Besides, in the course of breaking up with it, I discovered that A Medieval Bestiary had been kind of misleading me all along. I paid the equivalent of $8 for this book (I was offered a free review code, but couldn't figure out where to apply it during the ordering process). But, turns out, this isn't exactly unique content. In fact, the whole thing is available as free PDFs on the website of the Royal Library. Some of the scanned pages there even come with the exact same interpretation as is offered in the iPad version. Which just kind of serves to make the shortcomings of the iPad book that much more apparent. I don't mind paying $8 for something really cool. I mind paying $8 for an iPad version of something I can get for free as a PDF. If the publishers – eBook Treasures – were going to convert A Medieval Bestiary to iPad, why not take advantage of that and do some stuff that you couldn't do with PDFs?

Sadly, I think it's time this book and I went our separate ways. Hopefully, we can still be friends. And, who knows, maybe in the future, when A Medieval Bestiary has had some time to grow, we can rekindle the relationship.

eBook Treasures: A Medieval Bestiary

The British Library: Books of Beasts in the British Library: the Medieval Bestiary and its context (the book published on iPad as A Medieval Bestiary is listed here as Royal 12 C. xix)

Explore and learn more about medieval bestiaries as a genre at The Medieval Bestiary website (not affiliated with eBook Treasures or the iPad version of The Royal Bestiary)

Turnstyle's Noah Nelson interviewed comic book great Mark Waid, longtime creator of adventures for Superman, Batman, Spider-man and The Incredibles. He's now mastering the format's transition to digital media such as the iPad.

“That doesn’t change the image but it completely changes the context of what the story is.”

Take the comic Waid wrote for Marvel’s new “Infinite Comics” line. A hero hurtles through space, a red-orange blur behind him. When the reader swipes the screen, the page doesn’t turn. Instead the image shifts focus. The blur becomes the fiery cosmic Phoenix, the X-Men’s most deadly foe.

“I got news for you, I’ve been doing this for 25 years and this is the hardest writing I’ve ever had to do,” Waid said.

Be sure to play the audio at Noah's article: it's fantastically produced.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/07/comic-legend-mark-waid-on-the.html/feed 4 http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/spacecraft-3d-nifty-robotic-s.html http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/spacecraft-3d-nifty-robotic-s.html#comments Fri, 20 Jul 2012 18:45:21 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=172345

I recently had a chance to visit NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory with Miles O'Brien. At the NASA center in Pasadena, engineers are readying for the long-anticipated landing of the Mars Curiosity rover on Aug. 5. During our visit, we met with the team behind a cool new iOS app from JPL: NASA's Spacecraft 3D, an augmented reality application that allows users to "learn about and interact with a variety of spacecraft that are used to explore our solar system, study Earth, and observe the universe."

Using a printed AR Target and the camera on your mobile device, you can get up close with these robotic explorers, see how they move, and learn about the the engineering feats used to expand our knowledge and understanding of space. Spacecraft 3D will be updated over time to include more of the amazing spacecraft that act as our robotic eyes on the earth, the solar system and beyond!

The app is really a ton of fun. You can download it here for free, iPad and iPhone and iPod Touch. Here's the JPL press release announcing its release. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/spacecraft-3d-nifty-robotic-s.html/feed 3 http://boingboing.net/2012/06/29/zelda-the-kitten-plays-with-th.html http://boingboing.net/2012/06/29/zelda-the-kitten-plays-with-th.html#comments Fri, 29 Jun 2012 17:14:23 +0000 Mark Frauenfelder http://boingboing.net/?p=168353

The cartoonish art is very appealing, as are the monsters and towers. The goal of the game, like all tower defense games, is to prevent the invading hordes from making it through a gate to your kingdom at one end of the display. You do this by placing towers staffed with archers, knights, magicians, and cannoneers along the path that the monsters run down (the monsters appear from a trail emanating on the opposite side of the display). As you kill the monsters, you collect gold, which can be used to buy more towers. Even though there are a few more bells and whistles, it's a simple game -- but addictive.

Today, Kingdom Rush became available as an iPhone app. I would say that the $.99 price tag is a bargain, but if take into account the otherwise productive hours you will spend playing it, the true cost is far more.

WIRED today announced the reissue of its iconic inaugural issue on the iPad as a free download on June 1. Launched nearly twenty years ago in January 1993, the premiere issue featured science fiction author Bruce Sterling on the cover and quickly became a sought-after collectible. Re-envisioned using the latest publishing tools, the iPad version (1.1.1) is a page for page replica upgraded with annotations and perspectives on how it all happened and what became of the stories and subjects within from the founders, editors, and contributors involved.

"As far as we were concerned, making this free for all of the readers who have supported WIRED over the past 20 years was the only option,” says Howard Mittman, VP & publisher, WIRED. “We knew we wanted to revisit the first issue for our twentieth anniversary, and thanks to Adobe, we were able to make that happen. The only thing more exciting than looking back at that issue and seeing how relevant it is today is being able to share it with the WIRED community."

The issue, created through the sponsorship of Adobe, also features a 12,000-word oral history and archival images from the original team behind WIRED. Louis Rossetto, Jane Metcalfe, Kathleen Lyman, Kevin Kelly, John Plunkett, and many of the early writers, contributors, and investors recount the stories of WIRED’s birth from its inception in Amsterdam (Millennium was the working title) and initial investment pitches to the first story assignments and hot-off-the-press copies reaching hands at MacWorld in 1993.

Among the hundreds of anecdotes and stories within the stories:

· As the first editor’s letter said, WIRED was founded because “the Digital Revolution is ripping through our lives like a Bengali Typhoon.” Curiously “Internet” was only printed twice in that first issue. Then executive editor Kevin Kelly said he wanted to cover it in the broadest sense.

· WIRED issues have always been organized by numbers rather than dates (1.1 vs. January 1993). Founder Louis Rossetto didn’t want to be like everyone else so the numerical system is a nod to software with each iteration an improvement on the last.

· WIRED launched in the middle of advertising depression and many magazines hit stands without any paid advertisements at all. WIRED refused to compromise – one exception? Charity. Founders Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe donated a page each issue to a good cause.

Wired's first issue (1993) on iPad

April 4 in China marks Tomb Sweeping Day (Qingming Festival), an ancient cultural tradition in which families honor their ancestors by visiting their tombs and leaving offerings of food. Not unlike Día de Los Muertos, really.

Brian Ashcraft writes at Kotaku:

Paper replicas depict items that can be used in the afterlife, such as clothing, money, and cars, are burned. Over the years, this tradition has evolved with the times as evident by a recent must-have paper replica: the iPad.

Yup. More in China Daily, Shanghai Daily (with a photo gallery), The Telegraph.

The words "iiPad" and "888 GB" are displayed on a paper replica of an Apple iPad on sale for the Chinese Qingming festival, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The number 888 is auspicious in Chinese culture. Reuters/2011.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/04/03/a-new-tradition-in-china-hono.html/feed 25 http://boingboing.net/2012/03/22/thermal-imaging-of-new-ipad-vs.html http://boingboing.net/2012/03/22/thermal-imaging-of-new-ipad-vs.html#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:08:51 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=150931

Apple's newest iPad, (R) and its predecessor, the iPad 2, are pictured with a thermal camera in Berlin March 22, 2012.

Consumer Reports effectively launched "heatgate" hysteria this week, when it reported test results showing that the new iPad reached temperatures of 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsius) after 45 minutes of running an intense action game, or up to 13 degrees F (8 degrees C) hotter than the previous iPad under similar conditions. Consumer Reports, of course, was central to the earlier iPhone 4 "antennagate" storm.

But other reviewers have different findings on temperature/stress-tests with the 2012 iPad. Time disagrees that the issue is a problem. ZDNet has a contrary take on things also. And the Gruber. And Macworld, and The Loop, and CNET, too.

An Apple spokeswoman quoted in various news reports this week said the new iPad was "within our thermal specifications," which are listed on the company's website. The normal operating range for the new iPad is between 32º—95ºF (0º—35ºC). If the device exceeds that range, it is designed to shut off.

Whatever. I can't wait to get my hands on one. There are a number of features I want to test, and I'll be writing about my findings here.

A final note: It's not clear to me from this thermal photo released today by Reuters whether the cooler, "old" iPad is plugged in to a power source. The new one appears to be. That would make a difference in heat output. I've emailed Reuters to ask for more details about the testing circumstances under which this photo was taken. It's not from the Consumer Reports tests.

(REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/22/thermal-imaging-of-new-ipad-vs.html/feed 44 http://boingboing.net/2012/03/13/dodocases-new-ipad-covers.html http://boingboing.net/2012/03/13/dodocases-new-ipad-covers.html#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:34:09 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=148979

I'm a big fan of DODOcase's handmade-in-SF iPad cases, and the classic, restrained minimalism of their basic black line and "Essentials" collection. They've just announced a Spring/Summer series for the new iPad with vibrant two-tone colors, and the option of adding foil or black personalized lettering. And, if you like, a little hole for the iPad camera to peek through.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/13/dodocases-new-ipad-covers.html/feed 13 http://boingboing.net/2012/02/28/apple-tees-up-product-launch-f.html http://boingboing.net/2012/02/28/apple-tees-up-product-launch-f.html#comments Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:29:44 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=146292 Apple today invited tech reporters to an event in San Francisco on March 7, with the following graphic suggesting that the unveiling relates to a new iteration of its market-dominating iPad.

As is the custom with Apple, no confirmed details have been released about either the event, or any future iPad. But word is the third-generation version will include an upgraded display, faster processor, and the same form factor as iPad 2. There are also rumors that AT&T and Verizon will offer higher-speed coverage for the device on their fourth-gen LTE networks.

Your photoshop remixes for the invite graphic are welcomed in the comments.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/02/28/apple-tees-up-product-launch-f.html/feed 59 http://boingboing.net/2012/02/13/report-ipad-4g-to-be-offered.html http://boingboing.net/2012/02/13/report-ipad-4g-to-be-offered.html#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:01:52 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=143848 The Wall Street Journal was first to report that Verizon Wireless and AT&T will offer the next edition of Apple's iPad to run on their newest 4G wireless networks. ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/02/13/report-ipad-4g-to-be-offered.html/feed 0 http://boingboing.net/2012/01/12/in-former-soviet-state-of-geor.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/12/in-former-soviet-state-of-geor.html#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:20:03 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=138683

An employee demonstrates a "Police Pad" at the Algorithm factory in Tbilisi, Georgia, on January 11, 2012. Five thousand police officers will receive portable field computers, equipped with features that will assist them with their work, assembled at this factory, according to local media.

Update: An official response to this blog post from the government of Georgia is here. And a response from a Boing Boing reader who is a Georgian native is here.

From the Tbilisi-based Georgian language news organization Rustavi 2:

Five thousand police officers will be handed over portable computers. New police pads were produced in Georgia by the Algorithm Company. Minister of Interior Vano Merabishvili observe the process of police pad production in the factory personally. `I have an honor to inform Georgian society and the officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, that in a few days five thousand police officers will be equipped with such field computers, which will allow the citizens and the police officers to provide services offered by the ministry to our citizens more comfortably,` Minister said adding Georgian police would soon become the most developed and modernized police in the world.

Says a friend who travels to the region often: "100% guaranteed those crooked, fat, lazy cops will be using these devices primarily for porn and russian gambling services."

Update: A counselor from the Georgian embassy to the United States has contacted Boing Boing to express disappointment that the quote above was included in this article. The remark is unfair, the official says, and it's something of a sore point for a country that has done so much to address the issue in recent years. They direct our attention to the Georgian government's efforts to reform police and fight corruption—with results, they say, that are a global example of success for an emerging democratic state. We've invited the government of Georgia to share those comments in longer form, and we'll gladly post them here as a guest opinion piece in entirety. It should also be noted that the source of the critical quote in this article loves Georgia, its people, and its culture, and travels there frequently to this day. Some who applaud the success of reforms still argue there's more work left to do.

(photo: REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/01/12/in-former-soviet-state-of-geor.html/feed 46 http://boingboing.net/2011/11/09/ipad-2-unlocking-by-cover-vulnerability.html http://boingboing.net/2011/11/09/ipad-2-unlocking-by-cover-vulnerability.html#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:00:22 +0000 Cory Doctorow http://boingboing.net/?p=128283 its PIN-based security can be bypassed by hooking up a "smart cover" ]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/11/09/ipad-2-unlocking-by-cover-vulnerability.html/feed 8 http://boingboing.net/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-bio-out-early-as-ki.html http://boingboing.net/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-bio-out-early-as-ki.html#comments Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:21:14 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=125566

As every blog and news site everywhere has already reported (including Boing Boing), the definitive biography of the late Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, is out today.

Actually, it's out today in paper, but was released yesterday for download via Amazon and iTunes. I'm willing to bet it breaks some sort of download sales record.

Last night's edition of the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes was devoted entirely, 100%, to stories on Jobs and his products.

As Mike Godwin noted on Twitter, Steve Kroft asks during the segment how Jobs, "who dropped LSD and marijuana," goes off to India and returns to become a businessman. LOL @ "dropping marijuana." The show sure does know their demo. At least they didn't say he smoked acid.

Snarking aside, the 60 Minutes pieces are worth watching. Here's part 1, here's part 2, and here's 3 (!), on iPad apps for autism. In other news this week, Obama says we're bringing troops home from Iraq, and Qaddafi's dead.

Related: Dan Lyons, former Fake Steve Jobs, on the backlash.]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-bio-out-early-as-ki.html/feed 15 http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/tether-turns-ipad-into-vr-interface.html http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/tether-turns-ipad-into-vr-interface.html#comments Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:19:35 +0000 Rob Beschizza http://boingboing.net/?p=124943

T(ether) from Matthew Blackshaw on Vimeo.

T(ether) is a display that sees you. With motion capture cameras embedded in a special glove and headset, it tracks the user's movements and allows them to manipulate objects on-screen using gestures and movements. From Creative Applications:

The motion capture system consists of 19 cameras mounted on a frame, covering a tracked space of 14 by 12 by 9 feet, where the tracking of retro-reflective tags occurs. The cameras are connected to a server, which processes the marker data from each camera reconstructing spatial position and orientation. Apple’s iPad 2 tablets are used as a window to the virtual world.

Mr. Halliday better hurry up if he wants his haptic gear to be competitive.

Tether Cinder [Creative Applications]]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/tether-turns-ipad-into-vr-interface.html/feed 5 http://boingboing.net/2011/10/17/enthusiasm-for-tablets-grows-in-government.html http://boingboing.net/2011/10/17/enthusiasm-for-tablets-grows-in-government.html#comments Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:27:32 +0000 Rob Beschizza http://boingboing.net/?p=124097

Government workers are dying to get their hands on tablet computers, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and published by Government Attic. The files show, however, that security protocols may result in a slow roll-out at some agencies.

The Federal Trade Commission, National Archives and Records Administration, Deparment of Veterans Affairs, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority each produced internal records which discuss the merits of iPads and similar devices.

Another federal agency, the General Services Administration, said that it would charge $113,680 to yield its internal discussions.

Though Apple's market-leading tablet appears to be the clear choice among rank-and-file workers, emails show security-focused IT staff leaning toward RIM's BlackBerry Playbook instead—at least until they get a closer look at it.

At the National Archives, released documents[PDF] included a proposal to "extend the availability of tablets to potentially all NARA staff," a capital planning review, and various memos and emails between staff.

"We have found the iPad for be very useful in investigating work at the OIG," wrote one agency official. "For example, instead of taking a bulky laptop to the collector shows where we have a display, or in some cases just walk around to meet and greet, the iPad works much better. It is light, has great battery power and is super fast."

The capital planning review saw nearly universal enthusiasm in the feedback garnered: "The iPad has dramatically improved my productivity," says one worker. " ... It would be great if we could find an iPad use for staff tied to our hard core busines functions - record centers, pulls/re-files, description, reference, etc. That would yield a big productivity gain and demonstrate a solid business case for more widespread use of tablets for our staff."

Adds another: "NARA should start building [iPad] apps for customers."

In the VA's disclosures[PDF], a memo dated August 22 describes a a pilot program established to determine the viability of iOS. The program, conducted with the help of Agilex, a government IT services contractor, was scheduled to end Oct 1. The memo prohibited field operations staff from purchasing more iOS devices: "VA currently has enough pilot users to determine viability..."

In another letter, the VA's assistant IT secretary writes that its remote access solutions are not compatible with devices such as the iPad, and discusses the measures they might take to allow workers to use them.

A selection of heavily-redacted documents from the FTC include details of a pitch from RIM to equip staff with its Blackberry PlayBook tablet[PDF]. Unfortunately for the Canadian firm, the device's shortcomings soon crop up in the form of a negative PC World review shared among officials.

At the Tennessee Valley Authority, staff produced a slick internal newsletter[PDF] covering the increased interest in tablets.

At the NHTSA, the BlackBerry Playbook is seen to have security advantages over the iPad[PDF]: "Given that Blackberry has built a strong reputation in enterprise security for movile deices in the federal sector, it does give it a leg up over Apple in the Enterprise Security space," writes one staffer in an email.

Responding to reports of increased interest in Apple's iPad by other government agencies, a senior IT project manager suggests Apple's portables are insecure due to the ability of users to "jailbreak" them.

"It's pretty obvious that with a security flaw clearly known, these devices should not be distributed beyond the R&D group," he writes. "I guess I have to ask the obvious, how is this an authorized piece of hardware at this point in any gov't shop?"

Unfortunately, RIM's alternative suffers from its own disadvantage: no-one seems to want one.

"I'm not hearing a huge uproar for the Playbook, probably 'cause of the downsides ... mentioned below," writes on staffer.

"I'm going to skip it," writes the project manager, concluding one email thread released to the public. "I only had a passing fancy."]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/10/17/enthusiasm-for-tablets-grows-in-government.html/feed 16