iTunes + iPad and syncing photos

  

The main incentive for picking up an iPad was to use it as a photo back up device during a long vacation; this post focuses on further woes with iTunes that stem from syncing (or not as it turns out) an iPad with photos that had been imported to the iPad via the official Apple iPad Camera Kit from an SD card.


The initial plan was to use the iPad to import images from a camera's SD card through the Apple iPad camera connection kit and onto the iPad; and eventually syncing the iPad back to a desktop PC running Windows XP to archive the photos. Essentially this would allow me to carry a small amount of flash memory on a long trip. Testing this out for the first time this week I noted that on syncing the iPad it only synced photos that had been transferred onto the iPad originally by iTunes and would not sync photos imported via the Apple iPad Camera Kit; cue big disappointment.

iTunes and moving the iPhone/iPad backup location via symlinks

 

iTunes has recently been eating up the C drive of one of my machines with backups of an iPad. The C drive in question is purposely small at around 15gb to allow for a Windows XP install only; with all other data being stored on other drive letters. This is partly to improve fragmentation and to maximise the performance of read/write operations. iTunes stores the backups of Apple devices within the user profile of the current user.

iPad (1) Gmail setup - IMAP vs. Gmail

After setting up the iPad with iTunes, syncing and upgrading the next challenge was to setup Gmail. I ran the standard iPad mail account setup procedure, selected the built-in Gmail configuration option and followed the prompts which worked successfully. The success was short lived as I discovered that upon opening up the Gmail mailbox within the iPad mail client there was no 'delete' command, mail could only be 'archived'. Read on...

NeoRouter simple VPN setup integrating Android, Windows, Linux and OSX

Looking to move away from Hamachi I've been looking around for alternative free zero config VPN tools since LogMeIn has taken over Hamachi and I suspect the days of the free Hamachi are limited. NeoRouter is a cross-platform zero-configuration VPN solution that securely connects Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD computers at any locations into a virtual LAN and provides a networking platform for various applications like remote desktop, shared folders and printers, offsite backup, voice & video chat, etc. I like NeoRouter since 1) it's free 2) you can host your own server and 3) it has a free Android client these are all thumbs up from my perspective.
Read on for the configuration of the client and server...

BBC News + Flash + Secure Settings = Black Screen (FIXED!)

 

For the last couple of months I have experienced an issue whereby flash videos on the BBC News website would not play. A black box would render in place of the video as if buffering with a red loading logo and then nothing, no sound, no video. Youtube and other flash sites played without issue which left me rather bemused and despite reinstalling flash, upgrading, downgrading I could not remedy or pinpoint the issue. Read on...

iOS AirPrint without a true AirPrint compatible device

My latest iOS mission has been to enable Apple AirPrint introduced in iOS 4.2 to work with non AirPrint printers. At the time of writing I am only aware of HP printers that are AirPrint compatible out if the box; therein lies the problem since poor experience with HP and Canon consumer printers in the 90's has left me a staunch Epson owner ever since. 


Epson at the moment have no AirPrint enabled devices available and have taken the stance that they will not be retrospectively updating firmware for existing models to enable AirPrint support. I've only recently acquired several variants of the Epson SX600FW family which have been great to date, so being keen to maximise their potential I spent an hour or two 'enabling' AirPrint compatibility using an Ubuntu server to act as an AirPrint server. Read on... 

HP Proliant Microserver (HP-N36L / HP-N40L)

There's been a lot of noise recently about the HP Proliant Microserver HP-N36L / HP-N40L which can be picked up for circa £120 ($192) after HP £100 rebate. I think it's a cracking deal for a small low powered server running an AMD Neo CPU when you consider that there are plenty NAS boxes on the market costing a lot more than these Microservers and offering a lot less in terms of flexibility and build quality. I picked up one of these units with the aim to set up a fully fledged media centre & server running Ubuntu 11.04 (when it is released) with XBMC acting as the front end. It'll also be used to host an rsync server, AirPrint server and act as an Apple timemachine server for backups of various Macs. Out of the box it won't be able to handle HD media playback so I intend to add on various parts to get it up and running to satisfaction. Read on...

iPad (1) Install, setup and frustrations with Windows XP SP3

My first foray into the world of owning an iPad was recently helping a relative to setup their newly purchased iPad 1. I have been contemplating picking up one for myself for several months and had been holding out for the Retina Display to arrive with the iPad 2... it looks like I'll be holding out (restraining myself) for another 18~ months with fingers crossed for iPad 3. Read on...