While I was attending a business technology conference, I was blown away by the number of iPads. In a 500 person presentation room, there would easily be 300 iPads, a handful of laptops, and maybe one or two other tablets (I saw exactly one Blackberry PlayBook, two Lenovo Android tablets, and one (I think) Samsung Android something-or-other)

There were a few great apps that came in handy worth highlighting:

• TripIt - if you ever travel and you haven't used TripIt, you are missing out. Simply forward all those airline, hotel, rental car, and restaurant reservation emails to plans@tripit.com. It automatically creates an iterinary, which can easily be modified on their website or a mobile app, and the pro version also checks for airline fare reductions and flight changes. Really handy.


• Flight Status is a great companion app as it syncs with TripIt, and gives you real-time flight information. It also has push notifications and often knows about gate changes, delays, etc before they are announced at the airport.


• Instapaper is a great app and service that works with your web browser. When you come across a lengthy article you want to read later, clip it to Instapaper. Using the iPhone or iPad app, the text of the article is downloaded and stored on your device for convienent reading, even without an Internet connection


• Tweetbot - the best iPhone Twitter client, period. Great interface and I've yet to find a feature I needed that it didn't have - only wish they made an iPad-optimized version


• Spotify is a phenominal music service. For $10/month, any song in their catalog can be streamed or downloaded to your PC, Mac, or mobile device. The iTunes music store still has a slightly bigger selection, but Spotify's catalog is impressive.

I vividly remember some of the immediate effects of our collective shock. It took a week or so for television to return to anything but news, and I still recall Jon Stewart returning to the Daily Show with tears in his eyes.

As a nation, we reacted by starting a few wars, and made it impossible to board an aircraft with items as threating as a tube of toothpaste.

But one thing that I remember in the weeks following is that everyone, I mean everyone, was nice to one another. Doors were held, people made eye contact with complete strangers, and drivers even waved people into the line of traffic on the highway. We had all just been attacked and the common sense of shock reminded us of what was important.

That didn't last as long as it should, as we slowly returned to the new normal in the following months. A lot of brave, innocent people were lost that day. Perhaps the best way to honor their memory is to return to that common sense of kindness towards one another.

Blackberry was the first to do this with Blackberry Messenger. BBM is a great tool in that it is fast, works really well, and is free. But of course, both parties must have Blackberries. iMessage is seemingly similar from a functionality perspective but adds the usual Apple flair with a nice UI. Apple has also integrated SMS into iMessage, so at least if you need to contact someone who isn't using it, you don't need a separate app to fall back on SMS like you do on Blackberry.

Rumor has it Google also has something in the works; whether this is an enhanced version of Google Talk or something else remains to be seen. However, since every smartphone platform has a more or less similar mobile instant messaging service, how does this differentiate or give one platform the edge over another? It will never happen - but if BBM could talk to iMessage could talk to Google - that would be the true killer of SMS and really drive up adoption and usage.

SMS works across any phone - even non-smartphones of course - but carriers use it as a cash cow. AT&T even dropped their cheapest SMS plan recently, making the monthly cost $10 at a minimum. It reminds me of how PRODIGY used to charge per email message in the 1990's. You got 30 for free, and then had to pay per message after that. We haven't come far in 15 years in terms of billing or service models apparently.

I have used things like Kik messenger, which running on iOS and Android, is fairly close to a true cross-platform solution. But even Kik should be integrated with the others. Imagine if you could only email other users of the same email platform as you. "Oh, you use Outlook? I'm on Gmail. Sorry!" It would never fly. Why do we have to put up with it in text messaging?

1. Its something else to carry
2. Unless you have a table to lean on, its nearly impossible to balance a keyboard and the iPad on your lap.

While the iPad in my mind is still very much a touch device, I recently picked up an InCase Origami case for my Apple wireless keyboard. The Origami is a case just for the small Apple Bluetooth keyboard, but it folds in a rather unique way that allows it to also function as a pretty useful stand for the iPad when opened. Even better, the iPad itself can remain in many cases and still be put in the Origami and be kept steady enough to sit in your lap without a table. If you are looking to use your iPad as a laptop replacement, the combination of the Origami case and the Apple Bluetooth keyboard is a good match.

People then ask - "but I heard you can't make a phone call and surf the Internet at the same time, is that true?", of the Verizon iPhone. It is a valid question, but most of the people who have asked are already Verizon customers - their current phone can't do it either! This is a limitation of the CDMA network that Verizon uses and applies to all of their current phones. Yes, simultaneous voice and data do come in handy, but it is a fairly new feature across the board. The original iPhone couldn't do it either - it wasn't until the iPhone 3G that this was possible on the AT&T iPhone. Of course, the exception which is rarely mentioned is that if you are in an area with a WiFi connection, you can continue to access data while on the phone. Even on my iPhone 4, 99% of the few times I use this feature, it is in my house, where there is abundant WiFi connectivity.

The second surprise for me, specifically for current Android users, is when I ask them about their apps. Android apps won't run on iOS, and vice-versa. While many apps are available cross-platform, if they are not free, you'll need to pay again.

This would certainly be a stumbling block for me to switch my primary phone off of iOS. While I enjoy many free apps, I also have a fair investment in paid apps and wouldn't want to repurchase all of them to switch to another platform.

Surprisingly, many of the people I have talked to are concerned, and then realize that most of their Android apps are free, with maybe one or two paid apps - no big deal. Conversely, of the people I know who already have an iOS device, many have numerous paid apps. While I'm sure this isn't the case for all Android users, I suspect the easy purchasing process in the iTunes App Store vs. the Android Marketplace may be Apple's secret weapon to keeping customers using iOS for a long time to come.

One gap in their service is that they have yet to release an iOS-compatible version of their client; while you can access your home computer from Mac, PC, or Linux, there is no way to use it from an iPhone, or better yet, iPad. This feature has been "coming soon" since the iPad was released, and with no commitment to a solid release date, I began looking at alternatives.

A main competitor to GoToMyPC is a service called LogMeIn. LogMeIn is actually cheaper than GoToMyPC and they have a reasonably-well-rated iOS client available for $30 on the app store. While it offers a security model similar to GoToMyPC, LogMeIn requires that you enter your PC or Mac's password directly into their application - and this set off my computer security paranoid alarm.

Having ruled out LogMeIn, I looked at a new iOS app called Screens. Screens is a VNC client that works equally well on iPhone and iPad. Mac OS has a built-in VNC server, and to increase security, also offers SSH for creating a secure tunnel for the session. Thankfully, Screens also has built in SSH support.

There are a few steps I needed to take to setup my Mac and firewall to allow the connection. First, I setup DynDNS so I can find my Mac on the Internet - my ISP, Comcast, gives me a dynamic IP address. I use an Apple Airport Extreme router and thankful DynDNS has published instructions to configure that router to automatically update DNS whenever my Comcast IP changes.

I also had to open a port on my firewall - not something I like doing, but I came up with a clever method to lock the service down that I will detail later. In the Airport utility, click the Advanced Icon, choose "Port Mapping", and then click the "+" to add a new mapping. Select "Remote Login - SSH" and click Continue. 

Back on my Mac, in System Preferences, I turned on the "Screen Sharing" and "Remote Login" services in the Sharing pane.

Once these are all set, I fired up the Screen app on my iPad, created a new connection and entered the DynDNS hostname I created. The only manual setting was to turn on SSH.

I mentioned earlier I don't like leaving the SSH port opened - while SSH is encrypted, I'd rather protect my personal Mac than risk an unknown security vulnerability be exploited.

To get around this, I created a quick AppleScript that would toggle the Remote Login service on and off:

run application "System Preferences"

tell application "System Preferences" to set current pane to pane "com.apple.preferences.sharing"

tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"

click checkbox 1 of row 7 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of window "Sharing"

end tell

quit application "System Preferences"

There is probably a better way to do this, but the script simply opens the System Preferences application, opens the Sharing pane, and checks (or unchecked) the Remote Login service.

To tie this all together, I created a mail rule in Mail.app. I set some specific criteria (i.e. has to be from me, to me, with a specific subject line and body) and the rule then fires off the script. I simply leave Mail.app running. When I want to start a session with Screens, I send myself an email with the keywords that the rule is looking for, the script runs, and SSH is activated. I then connect with Screen, and at the end of the session, send the same email again, and the SSH server is shut down.

Not foolproof, but better than leaving the server up and running all of the time, and gives me access when I need it.