PadPivot for iPad: A Review

PadPivot strapped to leg

My PadPivot arrived last week. It's a special swivel holder for the iPad, Kindle, Nook and a few other devices. Ordering the PadPivot was an interesting experience. I was one of the many thousands of backers (4,823 by their official count) who used Kickstarter to back the project in its infancy.

For a pledge of $25.00 I was a backer. My pledge would provide me with one PadPivot, a small carry pouch, a tether strap to hold PadPivot on my leg when in use and a dust cover to protect the Grip Plate. Oh, and the bonus was free shipping for USA and Canada. Canada is rarely included in special deals like that so I was pretty happy.

Pledging meant you were backing the development of the product with your money. So you waited. You waited until the protoype units were built, the final unit manufactured, tested and ready to ship. But I didn't mind as my credit card wasn't billed for the pledge for several months. Mind you there were setbacks and I had to wait another 4 months before my unit was shipped. But the two inventors of the PadPivot kept all backers up to date with constant emails and videos.

Yesterday I asked my husband to give the PadPivot a test run for me. He used it for several hours and pronounced it of good quality. He liked that it allowed him to have his hands free for texting on his iPhone while using his iPad! He noted that his arm gets tired after holding his iPad for a few hours so this was a great way to rest his arms.

Using iPad with PadPivot

Two things that he found disconcerting were:

1. Swiveling the iPad to horizontal postion on PadPivot made him feel that it was going to fall off his leg (it didn't and he noted that you could just tighten the tether strap)

2. Because he had to keep getting up to attend to the dogs or answer the phone, he found it annoying to have to remove the PadPivot.  That reinforced his decision that he would not use PadPivot for casual use but rather for extended periods on his iPad. But I pointed out that he could have set the landline phone on the table beside him.

Hubs thinks it would be a great thing to have if you were on a long airplane flight or in some other situation where you were going to use your iPad for an extended period of time. His final summation was that if you use your iPad a lot it is well worth the money.

Dropbox Just Keeps Getting Better!

Readers of Olive Tree Genealogy blog know that my favourite and most-used cloud service is Dropbox. With Dropbox I can store, sync, and, share files online for free.

Here's a brief look at how Dropbox works. I've saved a file to my computer hard drive but I want a backup and I want to be able to work on the story from my iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Laptop or other computers. All I need to do is "drop" my file into my free Dropbox Account. Dropbox automatically syncs the file to all my devices that have the App installed. I can also access the files from any computer simply by going to the Dropbox website. I can also give other family members or contribuotrs access to the file and they can participate in the story writing, or simply enjoy reading it.

With Dropbox I can take a photo from my iPhone camera and immediately send it to Dropbox. But here's the good news! You used to have to add one photo at a time to Dropbox. It was tedious. It meant going into Dropbox app on your phone, selecting the camera icon and then choosing ONE photo from your Camera Roll. When that was done uploading to Dropbox, you selected the camera icon again, back to your Camera Roll, try to remember where you left off and choose one more photo. It was time-consuming and you could only upload 2 photos every minute.

But now Dropbox has the coolest update - the ability to mulitple select photos on your phone's Camera Roll! I tried it out after accepting the update on the App Store. I opened Dropbox on my iPhone and chose the Uploads icon. Then I clicked on the + sign and dropbox immediately went to my iPhone's Camera Roll where I began selecting photos. I added 22 at one time! Each photo I chose popped up a little check mark. When I was done, I clicked on upload.

I was able to put my phone down and do other things while all 22 photos uploaded to my Dropbox account. This is a huge improvement. Now when my husband and I take our cemetery photos we can upload dozens at one shot. I am curious if there is a maximum number for an upload and have not tested that yet. Sometimes we take over 100 photos in a cemetery!

Dropbox gives you 2GB of free storage plus ability to earn extra free space up to 8GB. No size limit on files. Sync files automatically. Available as an App for iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices. Able to access files from any computer (Mac, Windows, Linux) or mobile device. Sign up for your free Dropbox Account of 2GB and get an extra 250MB free through this link