Tag Archives: ipad

Your iPhone Can Read To You #cooltip

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Your siri-capable iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch can read to you, if you enable it.

Your siri-capable iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch can read to you, if you enable it.

I am probably the last person to find this out, but using an accessibility feature in iOS, you can set your iPhone or iPad or iPod touch to read any selected text to you.

This is something I’ve been looking for, especially while I am trying to consume text content at the gym or in any other situation where reading it is difficult.

Lifehacker gives us the skinny:

To enable this feature, follow these steps or (watch the video above for a demonstration):

  1. Open the Settings app on your home screen.
  2. Tap the General tab.
  3. Scroll down and tap the Accessibility tab.
  4. Tap the Speak Selection option (it should be set to off, currently).
  5. Tap the toggle switch to turn it on. You can also adjust the rate of speech as well. It’s worth noting, however, that the default is already pretty fast. If anything, you might want to slow it down.

Once you’ve got Speak Selection enabled, just highlight any text like you would if you were going to copy it but tap the “Speak” button instead. This option will change to “Pause” while the text is being spoken so you can stop it at any point. Pretty cool!

Enable this on your iOS device to get cool text-to-speech functionality:

Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speak Selection to enable. (Click to enlarge)

Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speak Selection to enable. (Click to enlarge)

Select text, then choose "Speak" to hear it. (Click to Enlarge)

Select text, then choose “Speak” to hear it. (Click to Enlarge)

In Which I Experience Lust For the iPad2

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I do not want to want this as much as I want this.

The Apple iPad2 is here, and darn it all if it doesn’t look pretty dang amazing.

imageI agree with Conan that maybe they are getting just a wee cocky though:

See the official announcement video over here somewhere.

The truth is, I really, really wanted the Motorola Xoom to rock my socks because I really want to stay on the Android platform, but with one half of the smart-phone holders in my household already dropping the droid for the VZ iPhone 4 (and I can’t deny how it rocks), this is getting tough.

Chase Mobile Banking App Goes Android

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My App-day-Monday post this week gives a shout out to Chase Bank (J.P. Morgan Chase, if you’re not on a first-name basis) for updating their mobile app cache to include an android app.
Other mobile operating systems are “iPhone ®,, iPad TM, iPod touch ®, and Android.” Blackberry users will still need to use the fairly savvy web interface for now.

I can check accounts, pay bills, and even deposit checks anywhere by taking a photo of it.

Nice work, Chase. Check out Chase’s Mobile Banking page.

Verizon Selling Apple iPad Now

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As of this morning, you can finally buy the Apple iPad from someone other than Apple or AT&T. I wonder if this larger marketing push may be a way to get the iPad in the hands of more people… I wouldn’t be surprised if we see retailers like Best Buy or even Wal-Mart carrying the iPad for the holidays.

The following email blast went out to Verizon customers this morning.

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The announcement, which came about 15 days ago, brings the Apple/Verizon partnership to a new level, with speculation buzzing even more that the game-changing iPhone is next to finally break-free from the AT&T exclusivity deal.

Details:

  • As Mashable notes, “the collaboration won’t see Verizon compatible technology embedded in the iPad, it will bundle the iPad Wi-Fi with a Verizon MiFi 2200 Mobile Hotspot.”
  • Concerning pricing of the add-on MiFi device, Techcrunch notes “Apple is agreeing to sell all three varieties (storage sizes) of their iPad in Verizon’s stores across America starting in two weeks. When purchased with their MiFi device, the two together cost $629.99, $729.99, and $829.99 for the 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB variations, respectively. Yes, those are the exact same prices that Apple is selling the iPad with built-in 3G from AT&T for. But again, the MiFi is a stand-alone product, so Apple/Verizon are selling you the WiFi-only version of the iPad to use in conjunction with this device.”

For me, I’d rather have an android tablet, I’m wondering if the Samsung Galaxy is worth the hype it’s getting (and possible maneuvering from Apple to keep their sales up?)