Hijinks Inc.

Tag: iPad

  • iPad 3G Data Usage for September

    Despite my iPad crashing and needing to be restored, I managed to use 18.3GBs of data for the month of September. Bringing my total data usage for the year to 84.3GBs, I’m feeling pretty positive about breaking 100GBs total by the end of the year.

    It will be interesting to see if my data usage decreases now that I’m also using the Droid X, which depending on data speeds I will most likely be using to tether to my laptop instead of the iPad.

  • Hijinks Reviews: DoodleGeddon

    Publisher: Three Sprockets, Ltd.
    Platform: iPad
    Cost: $1.99 [iTunes Link]
    Release date: September 02, 2010
    Version Reviewed: 1.0

    When the iPhone first launched, a little company called Lima Sky created a monster with Doodle Jump, since then numerous companies have tried to cash in on the “Doodle craze”, very few of them offering much in the way of compelling game play when compared to Doodle Jump. Even fewer mimicking the financial success of Lima Sky.

    Enter DoodleGeddon.

    DoodleGeddon boasts that it’s a “…fast paced missile command style game…”. But is it? Well, sort of. It certainly is a missile command style game, that much is obvious. But the gameplay itself is horrendously slow until about wave 12, then things get a little crazy. While I can see why they choose to ease people into the game, it’d be nice if they offered different levels of difficulty.
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  • Hijinks Reviews: Parrot AR Drone

    Yes, the Parrot AR Drone is finally shipping! And we of course couldn’t pass up using Hijinks Inc. as an excuse to test out the AR Drone ourselves (since we’re not cool enough to go to CES). Our ceremonial unboxing pictures can be found here.

    In case you’re unfamiliar with how the AR Drone works, it broadcasts a wireless signal (802.11 b/g) and you connect your iDevice to it via WiFi. Basically just an ad-hoc wireless network. In our tests we had problems switching between multiple devices, our iPhone connected/disconnected fine, but when we went to try it out with an iPad we couldn’t lease an IP. Un-pairing the drone didn’t help, nor did restarting it entirely. Hard coding an IP address on the iPad also yielding no results.
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  • iPad 3G Data Usage for August

    Seems like my data consumption is averaging out a bit, last month I used 22.4GB, this month 27.4 so the mid-20GB range seems to be the sweet spot.

    I’d still like to break 40GBs in a month, just to stick to AT&T, but I’m not going out of my way to make that happen.

  • Tablets Are the New Netbook

    Remember when the iPad was announced and people said “meh…”? And now, less than a year later, it’s a huge bread winner for Apple. Everyone else appears to be noticing as well, in the past few weeks more and more tablet rumors have popped up with the vast majority of big name players in the industry on board.

    Don’t believe me? Let’s review…

    • The long rumored Notion Ink Adam has pricing, and is expected to launch between November 2010 and January 2011.
    • HP confirmed internally a webOS tablet, then confirmed publicly both a Windows and webOS based tablets for 2011.
    • Bloomberg reported recently that RIM is working on a poorly named tablet, dubbed “BlackPad”, which is supposedly going to launch in November.
    • ASUS was quick to announce the Eee Pad, but it likely won’t ship until March of 2011.
    • LG has confirmed their own tablets are in the works, including a Windows 7 based model and Optimus, an Android tablet. Promised ship date is Q4 2010.
    • Kmart is selling a cheapo Android tablet and even though it has terrible specs they seem to be selling like hotcakes, with Kmart barely able to keep them in stock.
    • Acer teased an Android tablet back in May, but apparently put it on hold until it can ship with Android 3.0 Gingerbread.
    • Toshiba just shipped, and promptly sold out of, a limited run of its dual-screen Libretto tablet.
    • Also from Toshiba is a rumored Android tablet, hitting the streets in September or October.
    • And of course Google and Verizon are supposedly prepping a Chrome OS tablet of their for launch next yet.

    While I did go outside the scope of the past few weeks, you get the idea. I’m also probably leaving out a ton of other tablets, like the failed JooJoo tablet for example.

    This whole jumping on the tablet bandwagon seems to me to closely resemble when ASUS first launched the Eee PC and the netbook revolution took off, people were a little skeptical at first and then realized it was a great idea. Now I’m not saying tablets will kill off netbooks, but they seem to be the flavor of the month for the foreseeable future. And reportedly the iPad by itself has caused a decline in netbook sales for ASUS.

    Bottom line, I love the iPad, but I really am excited to see cheaper (and hopefully better) tablet solutions from companies besides Apple.