Daily Bits

Arnold Zafra

5 Cool iPad Games that I’m Dying to Play

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Reports had it there are already more than 3,000 apps available on the iPad Apps Store. Most of these apps are probably games ported from the iPhone to the iPad. Since I’m won’t be receiving my iPad until a couple of days more, I’ve scoured the iPad App Store looking for games that I will most likely play on my iPad. Look what I’ve found? Old iPhone favorites making their way to the iPad. I’ve got five of them listed.

Glyder 2 for iPad

I loved this game when I played it on my iPhone. The game environment is beautifully rendered, the animation was flawless and the graphics is definitely colorful. Can you just imagine how great it will look on a 10-inch HD display of the iPad? The game’s exclusive features for the iPad include – enhanced graphics, multiple controls, enhanced navigation, 3D world viewer and Facebook connectivity. (Price: $4.99) iTunes link. [Read more…] about 5 Cool iPad Games that I’m Dying to Play

iPad and iBooks Will Eventually Kill the Kindle

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You don’t need to get your hands-on the iPad to realize that it has the potential to kill the Kindle unless Amazon does something drastic to make its  boring gray, e-ink display into something colorful. The iPad supports full color display and the iBooks app for the iPad will transform your  e-ebook reading experience into something colorful albeit a fun one.

I mean, just take a look at the sample screenshots of an e-book being rendered on the iPad using the iBooks apps. Rich, colorful graphics that accompanies e-books, be it children’s books, fiction, sci-fi or business-related, it will surely be more pleasant and appealing to read e-books on the iPad than it is on the Kindle.  And don’t even get me started on the issue of readability and eye strain due to prolong use. You can always shut off your iPad and rest your eyes a bit if you think that your eyes are already strained. So, it’s not really a negative point of the iPad that it’s display was said to be not mean for prolong reading pleasures.

And for the iBookstore, I’m pretty sure electronic publishers will dive into the iPad wave pretty soon if they haven’t started doing so, yet.  You don’t even have to worry if not too many publishers will not support the iPad.  The Project Guttenberg with its thousands of public domain books will provide you with your e-book fix.

What Apple needs to do to complete its e-book market domination and successfully steal the thunder from Amazon is to make the iBookstore available outside the U.S. Especially as soon as Apple starts marketing the iPad to the international markets.

TweetDeck App Fully Optimized for the iPad

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With the large screen real-estate that the iPad offers, I wasn’t really quite surprised that the first adopters among application developers would be those with mobile Twitter client apps. If you checked the iTunes iPad App Store right now, you’d find several Twitter apps for the iPad – both new and old ones ported to the new platform. One of these Twitter apps which happens to be also my favorite on mobile phones is TweetDeck.

Thankfully, the TweetDeck folks didn’t just ported their mobile TweetDeck app to the iPad platform but build a new application instead. In fact they’ve build two new interfaces – for portrait and landscape modes. TweetDeck for iPad also takes full use of the device’s multi-gesture features.

Feature-wise, TweetDeck for iPad lets you do practically everything that you can with its mobile phone versions. The app lets you fully manage all your Twitter accounts, check web pages from within TweetDeck, use columns to manage your real-time feed, sync your data with the desktop and iphone client, iPad gesture based navigation, geolocation data and map interface, and of course all the basic Twitter functions such as composing tweets, retweeting and sending DMs.

And guess what? TweetDeck for iPad is a free download. Get it from the iTunes iPad App Store once you received your iPad.

Or watch this video showing the TweetDeck for iPad in action.

Automattic Launches VaultPress, Back Up Service for Self-Hosted Blogs

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Automattic has announced its new service that is aim to help self-hosted WordPress blog owners ensure that their blog properties are safe and secure. The new service called VaultPress is an online backup service built on the Automattic grid which in case you’re not aware is serving more than 10 billion WordPress.com blogs and 250 million monthly visitors.

VaultPress would ensure that your blogs and sites are completely secure no matter what happens to the server where it is hosted.  The service will secure your plugins, themes, comments, posts revisions  and of course every bit of content of your WordPress blogs.

Despite the complexity of what it can do, using VaultPress will be surprisingly easy. It’s actually your usual WordPress plugin that you can install on your blogs.  And you can always add additional blogs easily anytime you need to.

And once you get VaultPress running, it will continously monitors and stores updates to your blogs and sites. Everything that you do – write, edit, and upload will be simultaneously reflected in your VaultPress backup.

Sounds wonderful, right? Unfortunately, VaultPress will be offered as a Premium service.  Monthly fee is expected to be around $10.  But hey, it’s not really a big sum of money considering that it will safely secure that your blogs will always be online.

VaultPress is about to go on close beta state. If you want to be part of the beta testers, you may sign up here.

Will you register your blog on VaultPress once it goes public? Are you willing to pay for it?

MySpace Hosts Casting Calls for Glee

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Glee Open Casting Call Video with Matthew Morrison

Glee Auditions | MySpace Video

I’m not really a fan of the hit musical Glee, but if you are and you’ve dreamt of becoming part of the cast of this show, you might be interested to know that auditions for the next season of Glee has just started.

And guess what? You don’t have to go all the way  to the Fox studio to audition. You can show the producers and casting crew of  Glee that you’ve got the talent to make it to the next cast of Glee  via the MySpace Glee audition site. Yes, MySpace? You still remember that social networking site, do you?

If  you are up for the challenge, here’s how you can audition for the next season of Glee:

  • If you’re an amateur or professional performer between the ages of 16 and 26, submit an audition video at www.myspace.com/gleeauditions, explaining why you want to be on “GLEE” and demonstrating your stellar singing ability to the sounds of one of 10 “GLEE” hits via MySpace Karaoke. You can also opt to upload your own pre-recorded video.
  • Audition videos must be limited to five minutes in length (intro one minute and song up to 4 minutes) and one submission per person.
  • Whether auditioning or not, viewers can share videos, post comments and rate favorites with gold stars in real-time.
  • Visit the official “GLEE” Auditions MySpace page for more information, song list and additional rules.

Want me to enumerate the list of songs that you can use for your audition? Well, you probably know that more than I do. If you’ve made it this part of the article means that you’re a big fan and you’re interested with this gig. So, have fun!

LinkedIn Releases Mobile App for BlackBerry Devices

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LinkedIn expands it services further with the release of  its new mobile applications for all BlackBerry  devices including Tour, Curve and Bold models running OS v4.3 or later. The new LinkedIn for BlackBerry is a handy application that will be most useful for looking up professionals worldwide, in real-time.

The LinkedIn for BlackBerry gives you a full, rich feature set designed to bring the most useful features of LinkedIn to your BlackBerry devices. It has six modules:

  • Network Updates – for viewing and sharing crucial business intelligence and updates.
  • Search – for searching across 60 million global professionals, and get the answer back in seconds through a  unified search across both your direct connections and the entire LinkedIn network.
  • Connections – for getting  quick access to any of your connections to get their up-to-date profile information, and the ability to send them a message immediately.
  • Invitations – for accepting outstanding invitations immediately.
  • Messages – for integrated access to BBM and LinkedIn messages.
  • Reconnect – for bringing suggestions for new connections.

Of course, it’s major purpose is for quickly viewing LinkedIn profiles right on your BlackBerry devices, anytime, anywhere.  In the business setting, you can get an upper hand during board meetings  if you know some personal details about the people you will be negotiating with, prior to the meeting proper.

LinkedIn for BlackBerry is available now as a free download here. It will soon be available in the BlackBerryApp World as well.