It’s iPad 3G release day and guess what? I seem to be stalled at $13.02 worth of donations. Yay! The thought that this is actually going to work is starting to fade. Granted, my strategy of “begging for money for a luxury gadget during a recession” probably isn’t the most well thought out plan. But if I somehow manage to get enough donations from the wonderful “people of the internet” and get an iPad despite my wife’s definitive “No!”, it would be my crowning achievement.

So I’ve decided to give away a 64GB iPad 3G plus an Apple wireless keyboard as soon as my donations reach $1800 (One for me, one for you. Do the math.) Now I know what you’re thinking. “Wow, that’s really crappy seeing as how you only have $13.02 so far. I bet this giveaway never even happens.” And to that I respond, “Yes, you’re probably right. Quit squashing my iPad hopes and dreams. ”

Now, I can’t ask anyone to donate to enter the giveaway, so in order to win you just have to:

1. Follow @MyWifeSaidNo on Twitter.
2. Send out a tweet from your Twitter account with this link http://goo.gl/IVvL and the #MyWifeSaidNo hashtag included (the rest of the tweet text is up to you, but feel free to be creative! ex. “What a crappy giveaway. This will never happen. http://goo.gl/IVvL #MyWifeSaidNo).

Each tweet sent with #MyWifeSaidNo and the link included will be considered an entry into the giveaway. When (if) the donations reach $1800, a winner will be randomly selected and announced via Twitter.
Yes, this is a super lame last ditch effort but my wife said “No!” and I still want an iPad.
See Official Rules for details.

Engadget has a great write up on a fantastic piece of hardware from China. Moonse (you like how I reference them as if you’ve heard of the brand?) has a new tablet called the E-7001. It sports a 7-inch touchscreen, runs Android 1.5, an SD card slot, built in Wi-Fi, a front-facing camera and a USB port. Not too shabby. And the rumor is it’s set to come in around $130 US. Of course, that’s if it ever really comes out. No word on availability.

The only real problem I see with this whole plan is that I’ll have a crap Chinese knock-off that does slightly more (Flash) than the iPad and my wife won’t understand my techno-babble about how it’s not really an iPad so she’ll be mad. Super.

So, this is humiliating. People have already gotten bored with their iPads to the point where they are now filming their cats playing with the device. I can’t decide if they officially have a group that has gotten together to taunt me or if it’s more of an informal gathering of like-minded individuals.

Well, it just got slightly harder to criticize the iPad. Apple has announced the addition of multi-tasking to the iPhone OS in version 4.0 and while it won’t hit the iPad until this Fall, it does squash one of the major complaints against the iPad. The ability to run an app like say, Pandora, while also using Safari, email, and Pages really increases the likeliness that people may use the iPad to actually get work done rather than just consume content.

The way Apple has handled the multi-tasking isn’t truly multi-tasking in the sense of a desktop environment. It’s nearly identical to the way the newly announced Windows Phone Series 7 mobile series (or whatever they’ve decided to call it) implements it’s “multi-tasking” in that you don’t have a task manager to open and close apps. Jobs is quoted as saying

In multitasking, if you see a task manager… they blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.

So as it stands now, it’s more like multiple fast app switching with application state saved. Which just fine for a device like this. Basically, I’m just happy that if I ever get one (don’t forget you can donate as little as $1 I could potentially play games in meetings while also being able to quickly switch back to my “notes” when necessary

The amazing Jim Lee has taken to Twitter to document his first attempt at sketching using his new iPad. Lee is best known for his phenomenal work with X-men and is now co-publisher of DC comics.

@jimlee – Finished piece. Took 80 mins. Added blue bk into neck, eyes fixed but still a bit off. Always tough drawing symm

With the combination of the Sketchbook Pro app, his fingers and a little shy of an hour and a half, he was able to pull off a nice blurry Wonder Woman. Pretty cool stuff that makes you wonder if an iPad stylus might have it’s place as a future product.

Hyundai has announced their new luxury sedan, the Equus, at the New York Auto show this week and while the 385 HP V8 engine and Lexus-like stylings were mostly expected, their announcement that the owner’s manual would be an interactive iPad rather than the traditional paper manual was a bit of a suprise.
The vehicle is looks nice enough but coming in above the already pricey Hyundai Genesis, you’re going to need more than an iPad to get people willing to pay $55-$60K for a Hyundai. However, it did get me thinking. I desperately want an iPad, but my wife said “No!”. But if a luxury sedan showed up in the driveway this weekend and I quickly glossed over the fact it includes an owner’s manual on the iPad that you can make service appointments with, I might have found a loophole. The only thing standing in my way would be the part of the car in the back that says “Hyundai” and the missing $60K from our bank account.

Apple has just sent out invites to a “preview event” on April 8th for the new iPhone OS  4.0 (which also powers the newly released, iPad). What exactly they are going to preview remains to be seen but speculation across the interwebs ranges from multi-tasking (natch) via an Expose like interface all the way to new multi-touch gesture support.

Whatever they reveal, the timing of the event is a bit curious. Just days after the April 3rd release of the iPad, they are previewing an OS update? Is Apple trying to quiet some of the complaints against the iPad (no multitasking)? Or was this planned for some time now and this preview is just going to showcase new features that will be on the rumored iPhone HD in June? My theory is they wanted to release this update with the iPad but his royal Steveness didn’t deem it worthy for primetime. Of course, that’s coming from a fanboy who doesn’t have an iPad so it’s hard to say if the lack of multi-tasking is that much of a deal breaker (maybe someone could send me a “demo” unit?

I just demoed an iPad at our local Apple Store and I want one even more than before. I tried out a handful of apps (Mint, USA Today) and got what I expected but what I didn’t expect was how fantastic the games were. I demoed Garage Band and a racing demo and was really impressed. I hadn’t even considered games (I mostly wanted the comic book apps) but this is just one more feather in the iPads well designed cap.

I know the critics keep calling it a giant iTouch or a giant crippled iPhone but that doesn’t stop this fan boy from falling under the Apple spell once again.

I’m sure countless fanboys who got an iPad on Saturday (who’s wive’s didn’t say No) raced hope to fire up their new toy and watch a 30 second clip of Big Band Theory. No, more likely they nabbed the ABC app and were able to watch full streaming episodes of Lost (albeit with commercials and via wi-fi only streaming). When will the networks learn that their content isn’t THAT valuable. For $50 you can get an HD antenna and watch most of the major networks in HD for FREE. Not to mention being able to stream the shows from the network websites from a computer. So why change the model for this device? You could argue that they don’t want to cut into their possible profits from the shows in the iTunes store but that doesn’t seem to bother ABC. Whatever their rationale, why go to the effort of even creating a CBS app that only plays clips? That’s like creating a movie theater that only shows trailers.

Hopefully the HTML5 video we saw on the CBS site turns out to be the real way they plan on offering full episodes to all users. That way it’s a one-stop location for video and a separate app doesn’t have to be maintined.

With all the TV shows and back catalog of movies available from Netflix’s streaming service, I’m hard pressed to come up with reasons to pay a pricey cable bill each month. I’m curious how Netflix is streaming to the iPad since most of the other implementations of the service (PS3, Xbox, PC, etc.) use Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. Is it possible to do via Apple’s H.264 Quicktime setup?