Timeframe: released in January 2011

A simple testcase

BZine is a simple iPad application that gives you the ability to read your favourite blogs and feeds in a simple magazine/newspaper layout. The idea was to have a tool to read your Blogs at Breakfast or Bedtime like your holding a magazine.

BZine was conceived as an inhouse technical testcase in iPad development by Foreach developers, but we decided to wrap it up into a package and upload it to the appstore in january 2011. The app can be downloaded and used completely free of charge.

Over the next couple of months we will see a variety of tablets showing up in the stores. Ranging from end-consumer overall iPad competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Tab to enterprise-only devices like the Avaya Flare.

These new tablets will mostly have differing sets of specifications packed onto a number of different operating systems.  However, there are a couple of common specifications we can safely expect in these newcomers

Not long after the announcement of the iPad we received word of the APad, a Chinese alternative running on Android.  Nowadays dubbed the iRobot, we managed to get our hands on one of these Chinese gadgets and we deemed it only fair to write down our first 5 minute impressions as to have a small comparison between the iPad and the iRobot…

Being a small and still quite unknown development company, we’re always looking for new ways to introduce ourselves in the world.  Making new business connections is a challenge and very much a necessity, it’s the only way to get people introduced with the web and mobile services we provide…

So, since we already have one but it’s not like we’re not willing to share, we figured we’d put our iPad to good use. 

The idea is simple: if you’re wondering about what the iPad looks like, feels like and what you can do with it: make an appointment with us and we’ll drop by for a hands-on session.  As a media publisher, museum or health-care institute; it’s fairly easy to think up some cases where devices like the iPad can improve the way of providing services to your customers; but how big is the gap between theory and practice still, and what about the business you’re in? 

We’ve been dragging around our iPad for about a week now, and since we’re still one of the few in Belgium we decided to showcase it at one of our customers for a couple of days.

The interest for the gadget at newspaper publishers is obviously big, since one of the major questions is if iPad can save the traditional newspapers. We showcased the iPad to some of our customers, put it in their hands and let them play around with it a little. Just to get a feel of what the latest Apple gadget is all about; the nice part is we got to see both real believers and sceptics doing a 5 minute try-out and I’ve tried to sum up some of the more recurring first impressions.