Review: The Beginner's Bible

Title: The Beginner's Bible

Publisher: Zondervan

How often does your iPad find it's way into the hands of your children? It's definitely a bonus to keep a collection of educational and entertaining apps for your children. I know mine has saved me many times. The doctor's office, dentist, church, the list goes on... Zondervan's latest Beginner's bible is a great collection of bible activities and stories designed to entertain, educate and edify your children. Once you open the app, kids will have the opportunity to choose to read (or be read to) or play. Clicking on the read icon opens a colourful bookshelf with 6 included bible stories. The stories included are; The Beginning, Adam & Eve, The Sneaky Snake, Noah's Ark, The Tall Tower and A New Home. You'll also have the opportunity to purchase story packs that include new stories, colouring pages, puzzles and bonus activities.

The stories are a great opportunity for new readers to follow along with the narrated voice. The words are displayed on the left of the page while an interactive picture appears on the right. Kids can choose to have the story read to them or read it for themselves. Touching on the picture as the story progresses triggers little animations and sounds that can also be turned off (for times where being quiet is important).

The Play button opens a similar bookshelf with colouring pages and simple puzzles. Kids can colour the pages and the finished product can be saved to your picture roll or emailed to a relative or friend. 

Overall, the app is well designed and the pictures are colourful and kid friendly. Although I am not a fan of apps that rely on a lot of in-app purchases, this one seems to give lots of content for a relatively low price and any time spent listening and learning about the bible is less time spent playing Angry Birds or Cut The Rope! Check out the Beginner's Bible app by Zondervan on the App store for iPad and iPhone! It's a great opportunity to introduce kids to interactive, bible based learning.

Jeff McCann

Fix for Windows XP Fresh Install Stop Error Code 0X0000007B (0XF898F524,0XC0000034,0X00000000,OX00000000) on a Dell E520

Recently, I have been having some issues with some old machines I had lying around the house. Since I have started into cutting vinyl decals on an older Roland CJ-60, it's made it necessary to have an older PC around running Windows XP. My Dell Dimension E520 fit the part perfectly, except that no matter how hard I tried, I could not install a fresh copy of Windows XP on it. 

Nothing worked.

I tried everything from using different XP install discs, scanning the hard drive for errors, fdisk, erase and refresh the master boot record (MBR), swapped cables (it uses SATA DVD and hard drives) and I even installed Ubuntu on it to prove (mostly to myself) that both the DVD and Hard drive were fine and the issue was either a stubborn virus or a very tricky intermittent hardware issue that was playing games with me.

Each time I tried to install Windows XP, the same thing would happen. It would boot up, I'd push F12 for the boot menu, choose to boot from the DVD drive and Windows XP installation would begin, it would load the drivers and just before it would begin to install files, it would give me a stop error.

After days of running tests, trying things, talking to friends, I came across the solution.

Dell built this particular system and set it from the factory in RAID configuration. This setting is found under the drive listings in the bios (hit F2 when you see the Dell Logo to get into the BIOS settings). For whatever reason, changing the setting from RAID to AUTO clears up this issue. My only question, is why would Dell ship a system that defaulted to RAID if it would only cause problems?

My hope is that anyone else with this issue will find this article and benefit from it!

If you read this, and it solves a problem for you, let me know in the comments!

Jeff.

New Link for Cueator 3.0 Pro

Since this is the second most read post on my blog, I have provided a new link for Cueator Pro. It is now privately hosted.

Here's a link to the updated post. http://thehopelessgeek.blogspot.ca/2006/05/cueator-30-genius.html

Enjoy!

iPad Predictions - The Night Before The Big Announcement!

{Reprinted with permission from http://www.addcast.blogspot.com}

A lot has been speculated about what Apple's next product announcement will reveal. Will it be a tablet, a new phone, both? Since Apple is very tight-lipped about it's announcements, no one really knows what will be shown at tomorrow's press event.

Here's my thoughts on what Apple will announce:

iLife 10 - It's time for an iLife update. At this stage in the game with the rumored tablet, iLife will need to be updated to work properly with the OS running on the tablet (which is reported to be a version of the iPhone OS). I also believe that we will see a version of iLife released to the App store (either for free or a small fee) for the iphone. Since we already have video editing and a decent camera on the iphone, I think Apple will take things to the next level and implement a version of iPhoto (replacing the camera roll) as well as a basic version of iMovie. This would line up with one aspect of the creative element to Apple's press for the announcement.

iPhone OS 4.0 - A major iPhone OS update is needed in order to take advantage of the thousands of apps already available in the App store. To do this and to maintain continuity across their product family, Apple will need to make the tablet and the iPhone play nice together. It wouldn't make sense for them to build a new OS ONLY to exist on the tablet. This is also likely a cost cutting measure for Apple. If the tablet runs on the iPhone OS architecture, it can also utilize lower cost hardware, which in turn keeps the price low(er), which is essential for this product to be a success.

E-BOOKS, E-MAGAZINES, E-NEWSPAPERS OH MY! - The iTunes Store will be updated to become more of an online outlet to sell all forms of Newspapers, magazines and digital books with subscription models for magazines and newspapers. So, you'll pick up your tablet in the morning and read the New York Times or your Time Magazine subscription will come full color (ads included) every other week to your device and be ready to read whenever you wish. The tablet will be front and center as the preferred device to read and view these publications on with it's large multi-touch screen, but more than likely this will also apply to the iPhone as well. If these new digital books, magazines and newspapers are in the iTunes store they will almost definitely be available on your iPhone with the ability to share between devices. Just one more reason for apple to make things universal across the iphone and tablet OS's.


The Tablet - So much has been said about this, I'm almost afraid to put my own opinion out there! I disagree with a lot of what TWIT and MacBreak Weekly are saying about this.

Here are my own opinions on what will make up the tablet.

• Multiple Tablet Models - This product will be dead at the gate if it exists solely as a carrier subsidized product (meaning that you purchase it on a contract just like your cell phone.) Forums all over the internet are rife with people stating they will not purchase a product (no matter how great it is, if it requires a contract and monthly fee). So I believe there will be a high end model for 3G networks which makes for instant purchase and delivery of books/magazines/newspapers (see next bulletpoint), available on a subscription plan, likely with an OLED screen (which, is less battery intensive than traditional LCDs) as well as a more basic model with wifi and a traditional LCD screen offered as a one time purchase. NOW....Here's the clincher! I'm going to predict that the high end model of the tablet will be offered at a lower initial price than the basic model simply because the high end tablet will be subsidized by a Cellular company, so if you're paying for it over a 2 or 3 year contract, the initial price will be lower. This will make all the gadget freaks think long and hard about the extra bells and whistles that Apple may sink into this higher end tablet before they make their decision and may be the best way for Apple to persuade customers into another long term contract.
• Stereo Speakers - This is a no brainer. Need I say more?
• Single Docking Port - There have been rumours that the tablet will include two docking ports for landscape and portrait mode. I don't think Steve's minimalist personality would allow for two ports (which could potentially create repair issues down the road) I believe the tablet will feature a landscape docking port. My reason is that pictures in portrait mode will still be viewable, you can still turn the device sideways and view content in portrait mode, but I believe that 3rd party docks, and potentially any new devices that will utilize the tablet as a control interface (if this becomes a possibility) will use the tablet in native (landscape mode).
• Two Wireless Receivers - Wifi (for the basic model) and 3G for the subsidized model.
• Ports - No USB or firewire ports.
• Web Access - There will be the same basic internet functionality available in the iPhone such as Youtube, Email, Safari etc. Apple will not make this device without the same internet functionality as the iPhone.
• Style - The tablet will feature the same style as the iMacs and current line of Macbooks. Glass and metal with a glowing mac symbol on the back.

Whatever happens, It'll be a major milestone for the company and a huge game changer in a variety of ways. I'll be watching for sure. What are your thoughts?

Have You Seen Scribus?

Scribus is an award winning open source page layout program! Open source means the authors of the program have released the source code on their site so that other programmers can add, make changes and further develop the application! This is great news for those of us who are struggling to get quality page layout software without coughing up the hundreds of dollars for InDesign or Quark Express! FREE IS GOOD! It runs on Windows/OS X/Linux and even OS/2! If you haven't given it a show, please check it out! Get Scribus here!

Griffin's PowerMate - Sweet Gadgety Goodness!

This...is the sweetest gadget I've ever laid my hands on. Griffin just makes the coolest products ever. It's almost as if Apple gave them some pointers on design here. This particular gem is called the Powermate. It is a highly polished, heavy aluminum glowing USB dial/knob that can be tailored to any applications for many different uses. Photoshop users can zoom in and out of photos by turning the dial, movie producers can whisk back and forth between frames and clips in movie editing suites, DJ's can control pitch in their favourite music production software and Listeners can change the volume or mute their music the the flick of a wrist. Niiice.

What's more, this thing is pure sweetness. It's glowing blue base pulses when your computer goes to sleep. Do you need anymore reason to buy this? Available in charcoal (gunmetal) color and steel natural aluminum color. Mine's on it's way!

Cueator 3.0 - Genius!

For those of you who know what it's like to download a file in .Bin format only to find the cue file corrupted, this little gem will make you happy. Although the process of creating a .cue file isn't rocket science, this little program takes your .bin file and creates a .cue file to match it and drops it in the same directory allowing you to go ahead and burn that image to disc with no problems! Nice....Even better, it's free!

GET CUEATOR 3.0!!