Scott Spiro Blog

After using the iPad for the past 24 hours, I can safely diffuse some of the rumors that have been floating around about the iPad:

1. That it’s just a big ipod touch. No, not exactly.

2. It’s simply a consumption device. Again, not true.

3. You cannot use it as a phone. Yes you can.

I’ll address those first two points in separate posts. For now, let’s talk about point number three.

Obviously more options for making phone calls will appear soon for the iPad, but as of today (one day after release) there are two options:

First, there’s Truphone. Truphone has released an iPad optimized app that not only allows you to call other Truphone customers for free, but also allows you to call regular land line/cell phones worldwide for a small fee. The system also plugs you into AIM, MSN, and Gtalk if you want- so you can consolidate these services with Truphone while it’s running.

Your second option is to use the existing iphone/ipod touch Skype app. It’s not yet optimized for the iPad but it will also allow you to make phone calls.

You can make calls with either service using the built in iPad microphone, or plug in a headset that also has a microphone. I tried setting up the Apple bluetooth headset with the iPad, but alas I was not able to make the connection.

Do you know any other iPad apps that allow you to make calls? Let me know!

In this video, I describe two brand spanking new features in iPhone 3.0. These are Microsoft Exchange features that Apple is not putting on their front page or really talking about at all. And yes, I do recognize that for many people MS Exchange integration with their iphone is probably not that big of a deal.

For many companies however, (including CSG) Microsoft Exchange is the central hub of their unified messaging system. It has always been agreed that if Apple is to move into the corporate space, Exchange would need to be fully supported. More and more of our customers have moved to iPhones to connect to our Harmony hosted Exchange Service, which provides unlimited data storage on an Exchange 2007 platform without the necessity to spend thousands on an in-house system.

The features I speak of on this video mean a lot to me because I didn’t even expect to be in OS 3.0, and they make my life measurably easier! There are a couple of honorable mentions however; like the ability to finally search e-mail messages by subject, from, or all. You can even search the server if you can’t find what you are looking for on your device. You can also utilize contact cards that are sent to you by others (adding them instantly to your contacts) and you can “share” contacts directly from the contact view.

Enjoy the video! Let me know what your thoughts are on these new iphone 3.0 features.