The Apple iPad and Galaxy Tab

If you own a device like an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab, you want to be able to use 3G data when you are not at home or in the office where the Wi-Fi flows like water. The problem with having a SIM card in one of these devices is actually managing the data usage!

It’s not often I’m using my iPad outside of a Wi-Fi enabled area, so signing a 24 month data contract for my iPad doesn’t make sense. However, running a pre-paid SIM card for data only is a real hassle! Topping up with data requires you to top up the SIM card with credit, then take the SIM card out and put it in a cellphone to then convert that credit into a data bundle. You can also go down to cellular shop and they can automatically top up your SIM card with a data bundle, but once again, that takes effort.

Enter Flickswitch

Flickswitch is a hassle free way of managing data on a pre-paid SIM card. You load money into your Flickswitch account, setup rules to determine when and how many times you would like to top up with data bundles and then easily monitor your data usage!

I’ve currently set mine to only top up with a 110mb data bundle a maximum of once a month. Also, it will only top up when my current data bundle falls below 5MB. For those data hungry users, you can easily change the rules depending on how your current usage. What’s even better is you are able to monitor your daily usage too!

You can also manage multiple SIM cards on Flickswitch and their service is not only used for data. You can manage pre-paid credit and data, so you’ll be able to manage your family’s and business SIM cards!

The service costs R6 per month per SIM card and their data and top up pricing is the same as retail pricing.

What is Find your iPhone all about?

Find your iPhone is an app that you install on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, that allows you to do 4 things. Find your device on a map, send a message to the device, remote lock the device or remote wipe all sensitive data off the device.

So if your phone is ever misplaced or stolen, you’ll be able to remote lock the phone with a pin and leave a message on the phone for the person to contact you to give it back!

How to activate Find your iPhone

The app that you can download to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch is only useful if you have multiple devices. You can however login to Mobile Me with your free account and monitor all your devices from the web.

To activate Find your iPhone, go to settings > Mail, Contacts, Calenders and Add Account. Then add a Mobile Me account and login with your Apple ID. It’s the same username and password that you login to iTunes with. You can also create a brand new Apple ID if you do not have one yet. Once that has been done, just enable Find your iPhone and you good to go!

Login to http://me.com to test to see all is working and send your device a message!

The first stop for me when deciding to buy a camera (well in this case, a camera for my Fiance) is to look at the Camera stats on Flickr – here you can easily pick up which cameras are the most popular across brands and type (SLR, point & shoot, cameraphone etc). Not only can you see which cameras are the most popular, you can then browse photos that were taken with the camera.

So after all my Flickring, as well as chatting to my dad who was a professional photographer in his day, I had my eyes set on the Canon Powershot A590 IS. It has the following features:

• 8.0 Mega pixels
• 4X Optical zoom
• Optical Image Stabilizer
• Face Detection

These are the features on the box, simple and clear. However, some of the other features which I find very useful on the camera are:

• Built in Accelerometer – so when viewing a vertical picture, turn the camera and the image rotates.
• Focus check – after taking a photo, it can automatically show you a zoomed in version of the photo, thus determining if the photo was in focus or not.
• Speed of use – it takes less than 1 second from turning the camera on to the ability to press the shutter button – paparazzi styles!
• Video – the video quality is also very good as well as it has the ability to zoom while recording.

We haven’t taken lots of photos yet, but we will be snapping away at the wedding as well as on honeymoon, so add me as a contact on Flickr and check back soon!

Lastly, you can get this Canon Powershot A590 IS camera from SACamera for R1799. It was the cheapest price I could find online and at retail shops. Along with all the camera accessories they sell, they are also a authorised Apple retailer. In exchange for this review they offered to give me a camera bag and 2GB memory card. So a big thanks to SACamera!

So I want to edit the clips I have, add some text, pointing arrows, a couple of spotlight effects etc and iMovie on my Mac doesn’t seem to cut it. It’s great for basic editing, but for something I would think was simple – like adding an arrow pointing to someone, or positioning text, iMovie really looks lightweight.

I like the ease of use that iMovie offers, but need something with a little more flexibility.

Any suggestions?