CloudOn, a free app, released in January 2012, allows you to create, edit and view Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents on an iPad.

(UPDATE 12th April 2012: It can now open JPG’s, PNG’s, PSD’s and GIF’s as well as PDF’s!).

What makes it different to the other apps I mentioned is that it actually has the look and feel of Microsoft Office 2010. CloudOn is integrated with Dropbox (UPDATE 12th April 2012: It supports Box.net too) so any new documents you create or any existing documents you open must be stored in your Dropbox account.

Although there are some limitations (for example there is no VBA support, no easy way to print a document and no offline mode so you can’t even use the app unless you are connected to the Internet), 90% of the functionality of the desktop versions of the apps is available so for the average Microsoft Office user CloudOn is a great way to edit and view documents on the road. In Excel for example, all the functions that you’ll find in the desktop version are available, you can create pivot tables, insert SmartArt and shapes, configure the page layout, apply conditional formatting and much much more.

CloudOn can be downloaded from the App Store.

On May 31st I’m delivering a free webinar on how to use CloudOn. Read more about it and book a ticket here

Below is a short video that I created that provides an overview of CloudOn

In April 2011 the company decided to go for a multi-vendor solution and gave IBM notice of their intention. Tomorrow 11 months of uncertainty ends when my colleagues and I join Computacenter. Same job, same location but new employer.

Farewell IBM. Hello Computacenter!

Whether it’s a wedding, the monthly shopping or the purchase of a new item such as a car or computer, keeping within your budget is essential to the success of “the project”. Whether you use Excel, Numbers or something else, spreadsheet expert Mike Thomas will show you how to balance your budget and keep everything on track. So please join us and see just how seductive spreadsheeting can be.

The webinar starts at 8:00pm UK time and will last around an hour. Although it’s free, in order for us to track attendance we request that you obtain a ticket from here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2632077615

The following is the first few sentences of the article:

Man Utd is one of the massive four in British Top Group that located in Stansted. This football team is based on Outdated Trafford or often known as The Theatre OF Desire. Manchester United was Founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Team in 1878, the club transformed its title to Man Utd in 1902 and gone after Old Trafford in 1910.

Manchester United is the most successful soccer team in Uk sports, that having 19 Language Group titles, 11 FA Cups , 4 Category Mugs and also 2 Champion League Glasses in 1999 and 2008. Each year, most of the football team alter their hat and Manchester United among them. Manchester United shirt is still domination of red color for property jersey and glowing blue , black or whitened for absent shirt. The small remains white and black along with the objective keeper nonetheless use yellowish shade for house jacket.

So what should it say? Well this is my “best guess”…

Man Utd is one of the Big Four in the English Premier League, located in Stretford. This football team is based at Old Trafford, often known as The Theatre of Dreams. Manchester United was founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Team in 1878, the club changed its name to Man Utd in 1902 and moved to Old Trafford in 1910.

Manchester United is the most successful soccer team in UK sports, having 19 League Championship titles, 11 FA Cups, 4 League Cups and also 2 Champions League Trophies in 1999 and 2008. Each year, most football teams change their kit and Manchester United is among them. Manchester United shirt is still mainly red for the home jersey and glowing blue, black or white for away shirt. The shorts remains white and black and the goalkeeper’s shirt is a yellowish shade for home matches.

Original article: http://www.nowebpatents.com/man-utd-shirt/

Whether your interests lie in tech, business, travel, general news, sports, entertainment or style, there’ll be something for you in this app. By linking FlipBoard to services such as Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google Reader and Flickr, the app will display whatever content and stories your friends and followers are sharing.

To move from page to page, you swipe your finger across the iPad screen and FlipBoard turns the page with an “animated flip” (hence the name of the app). The iPhone app works in a similar way, except that you swipe up and down rather than left and right.

One feature that is unique to the iPhone version (it’s coming to the iPad soon) is Cover Stories, which displays stories that Flipboard’s algorithms determine are most relevant to you. The feature, “learns” with use, very much like Zite.

FlipBoard is free and is available from the App Store.

For anyone who missed the review, Zite trawls through hundreds of thousands of news sites and blogs, looking for stories that it thinks you will find interesting. As Zite themselves, say “Your Zite magazine is compiled using automated algorithms that find and deliver articles that have buzz: that is, they’re being discussed on websites, blogs, and popular social media services. Your content isn’t chosen by a person”.

Just like paper-based magazines and newspapers, the app contains “Sections”. Tap the Customize tab to display a list of Sections which includes Sports, Tech News, Film and TV, Cooking, Business, World News. Tapping the name of a Section in this list adds it to “your” magazine. Typing a keyword into the “Enter your own” box offers up more Sections which allows you to further customize Zite.

Although Zite uses complex algorithms to decide what stories and articles to deliver, it also uses activity on your Twitter, Google Reader. Delicious and Read It Later accounts to help it to figure out what topics you’re interested in (this bit is optional – if you don’t use any of these services you can still use Zite). It also analyzes your use of the app over time to fine-tune its story selections. For example, if you tap the “thumbs up” icon in the Sidebar next to an article or you share an article on Twitter, Facebook or via email, Zite will, in the future, provide you with more articles of a similar nature.

In my case, I entered only my Twitter name into the Configuration settings and Zite generated a list of Sections that included Mac News, Social Media, Technology and iPad – pretty accurate I’d say! I manually added Food & Cooking and Manchester United.

Each Section consists of several pages with each page containing several stories. To navigate through the pages, simply swipe your finger across the iPad screen. To load a story (you only see the first paragraph or two of each story plus an image) just tap on it.

To select a different Section, tap on its name from the Sections from the list on the right hand side. If you want to amend your Sections or add/remove a “service” (Twitter, Google Reader, etc), click the Customize button.

Profiles

Do you have Zite on multiple devices? Does more than 1 person use Zite on your iPad? If so you should take advantage of the Profiles functionality now offered by Zite. Profiles allow you to 1) sync your preferences (selected Sections, Twitter and other Service accounts and even the intelligent ‘learning’) across devices and 2) allow multiple people to use Zite on a single device where each person can have the app configured independently so it really is YOUR content.

If you have Zite on an iPad, tap the Save Profile button at the top left and then click Save. To create a Profile, enter your name, email address and create a password. The current configuration is saved to this Profile. The Save Profile button is now replaced with a button containing the ‘Name’ that was entered when the Profile was created.

To create another Profile, tap the Profile button, tap New Profile and repeat the steps above. At this point you are logged in as ‘user2′, so define your Sections, Twitter account etc.

To login as another user (where the Profile has already been created), tap the Profile button and select from a list of Profiles (these are Profiles that are stored on the device) or tap the Log In button and enter another username and password.

If you don’t have an iPad or you haven’t created a Profile on the iPad but want to use Zite on the iPhone, the first time you run Zite on the iPhone, you are asked if you have already set up Zite on another device. Click No, then set up your Content preferences (i.e. choose your Sections and optionally configure your Twitter account).

You can create a Profile at any time on the iPhone, however, note that the iPhone doesn’t support multiple Profiles because, according to Zite Support, “not many people share iPhones”.

When I ran the app for the first time on the iPhone, I answered Yes to the question “Have you already set up Zite on another device” because in my mind, I had set up Zite on another device. I was using it on my iPad but I didn’t actually have a Zite profile as they didn’t exist when I first installed Zite on the iPad. I was presented with a sign-in screen to sign in using my Profile. As I’d not created a Profile I had to tap Cancel, then tap No.

Later on, I created my Profile on the iPad (because I was on the iPad at the time I thought about creating a Profile). The problem I then faced was that when I wanted to login to my Profile on the iPhone (to sync content and settings across devices), there was no way to do this. The only option on the iPhone is to create a Profile – there is no way to login with an existing Profile.

I contacted Zite Support who advised that I uninstall and re-install Zite and when I run it, it will act as if it’s a ‘first run’ and ask if I have Zite set up on another device. I should tap Yes and then enter the username and password that I setup on the iPad.

Not really a satisfactory way of working, that you can’t log in to your Profile on the iPhone unless you do it the first time that you run the app. If I get any further with Support, I’ll report back.

All in all, an excellent pair of apps which are both available for free from the App Store.

Dropbox opens files in read-only mode and as I wanted to edit the file, I tapped the “Open In” icon at the bottom right of the screen.

This displays a list of installed apps that can open/edit the file (this list differs depending upon the type of file selected). The app that I wanted to use, which I knew was installed on the iPhone, was not listed.

I checked the settings and preferences for both Dropbox and the app in question but there was nothing that I could configure that was related to my issue.

I mentioned it to Elaine and she checked her iPhone and iPad and asked how many apps I had listed. I had 10 apps listed in the Open In list, the same as she did.

After doing some digging around forums, I found the answer. The Open In list on both the iPad and iPhone is limited to displaying 10 apps. There is no logic as to which are displayed, but I suspect that it’s based on most recently installed. The answer that was suggested by others in the forums was to uninstall apps one at a time until the desired app appeared and then re-install the apps you had uninstalled.

However, I see two problems with this – one is that as you re-install apps they will be added back to the Open In menu and the app you really want on the menu will be “pushed off” and the other is that because apps have to run in their own sandbox, when you uninstall an app, any data that is stored “inside” the app will be deleted from the iDevice.

There was unfortunately, no solution to my problem. I had to wait until I returned home to edit my document on my Mac.

Connected to my MacBook Pro I have an Elgato EyeTV DTT, a USB TV tuner/recorder. I usually have the app’s window sized to about 6 inches, though if there’s something exciting on I might hit the “Enter Full Screen” key!

In addition to allowing me to watch and record live TV, it comes with software that converts the proprietary .eyetv files (generated when you record a programme) to various formats including M4V – which means that I can watch the recording on an iPhone or iPad.

There is also an EyeTV app for the iPhone and iPad which allows you to, amongst other things, stream live TV to your device.

As long as your iPad/iPhone is connected to the same WiFi network as your Mac(s), when you run the app it displays a list of all Macs on your network that have the EyeTV software installed. Tap the name of the Mac whose TV you want to stream. If the EyeTV software is not running on the Mac that you select, it asks if you want to start the EyeTV running.

From the menu on the left, you can choose whether to watch live TV, watch a programme that you have previously recorded, display a list of future programmes that are scheduled for recording on the Mac (you can cancel recordings from here too) and view the channel guide (where you can also set a programme to be recorded) on the eyeTV on the Mac.

To watch live TV, simply tap the channel that you want to watch. If you have the EyeTV running on your Mac, the Mac will be tuned to the selected channel (so be careful if someone else is watching on the Mac!).

If you want to watch an EyeTV recording on your iPad/iPhone, it has to be “prepared”. This is done by right-clicking on the recording in the Mac version of the EyeTV app and selecting “Prepare for iPhone access”. This process doesn’t convert the file to an M4V. It remains an .eyetv file but is now playable (as a streaming file from the Mac) on an iPhone and iPad (although the command is “Prepare for iPhone”, it plays full screen on an iPad, not at 2x)*.

A small issue that I had recently was a problem with the audio. The volume was set to maximum on the iPad itself (using the volume switch on the side).

However, when I double-clicked the Home button to bring up the list of currently running apps and swiped my finger to the right to display the volume controls, I found the mute was turned on.

Simply tapping the volume icon turned off the mute and restored the sound.

The EyeTV app is available from the iTunes Store and costs £2.99 / $4.99

*Thanks to Elaine Giles for this tip…the .eyetv file that is created when a recording is created is actually a package. If you right-click on the file in Finder and select Show Package Contents, you will see a number of files including a .mpg. This is the actual video file. When you prepare an EyeTV recording for iPhone access, an extra file is added to the Package. This file is an M4V. As well as this being the file that is streamed to your iPhone/iPad, courtesy of the EyeTV app, you can play it directly on your Mac or copy it to your iPhone and play it with an appropriate app such as VLC.