Earlier today Apple announced a new version of their iBooks app (version 2) which now allows you to use and display interactive content in the book, paving the way for text books to be fully interactive in the class. Coupled with this announcement was a new FREE Mac app called iBooks Author which now allows you to create these books & publish them for FREE !!

Imagine the possibilities !!??

Also included in the announcement was a new app specifically designed for iTunesU, the “University” section of iTunes which allows educational institutions to publish course in iTunes and make them available for download. The app now gives you a dedicated interface into that part of the store.

To get an idea of the goodness of these game changing apps, do the following:

• Download or update to the new version of iBooks. The update is more geared towards the iPad though.
• iPad Only – Download the FREE interactive text book called – Life on Earth. Here you will get an idea of what the new capabilites of the app are
• Download the FREE iBooks Author app from the Mac App store. Here you can design and publish your own Textbook. If you that way inclined :)

I can’t wait to see if South African schools will pick up on this.

Rural Areas – iPad  - 3G – Free Text Books – Interactive – Apple TV – Airplay —> BOOM ! :) *Just Imagine*
 

Getting a US iTunes account is fairly quick & simple, and you need to follow a couple of easy steps to sign up for one. I have posted this before, specifically on how to get apps from the US iTunes store, but you can also use the account for music as well.

You can download the step-by-step guide by simply tweeting about the guide, with a “pay-with-a-tweet” option

Or, you can simply download the file directly from -> http://iguy.me/u4XhE1

Once you have your account, you will need to top it up using vouchers. I have used a couple of providers in South Africa, and I can say, all of these below are great, and they all deliver the codes instantly

• iEverything – Instant EFT, Credit Cards, Moneybookers
• WildTwig – PayPal

If you have any issues signing up for the US iTunes account, you can leave a comment below, and I will try and help where I can.

So, today is iOS5 day. I have been using iOS5 for a couple of weeks now, and I can promise that this update is probably the best I have seen of all the updates. There are loads of new features included in this release, and definitely make life a lot easier.

So, here are a couple of cool tips & tricks I have found over the last few weeks on how to make the best of iOS5. Some of them are a bit different and not your standard stuff. If you want a complete list of over 200 new features & changes, I highly suggest checking out this post on Techzoom.org – iOS 5: Complete List Of 200+ New Features or 15 iOS 5 tips from Cnet.

1. Keyboard shortcuts

Hidden deep in the new OS is a nifty feature called Keyboard Shortcuts, which will help you save time when typing the same message over & over. So like an email signature, or  twitter hashtag. As an example, I have setup “omw”, which expands to “On My Way!”. This pops up in the same way as an auto complete.

To turn this feature on: Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Keyboard -> Add New Shortcut. Very cool :)

2. iMessage

iMessage is an awesome new addition which allows instant messaging between iDevices. This also means iPod Touches, iPads & iPhones. For the iPad & iPod Touch you can set an email address (your Apple Account) as your contact address, while the iPhone works with Telephone number & email.

To make sure iMessage is turned on, go to Settings -> Messages -> iMessage -> On. To add an email address or phone number scroll down on that page, you can also add additional email addresses under the “Receive At” menu

3. WiFi Sync

Another cool feature is WiFi sync, which allows you to sync your phone over your WiFi network, ensuring you don’t need to plug it in every time. I can promise you this is a HUGE time saver, and syncing your phone becomes so simple. Apparently the phone also automatically syncs when it is plugged into a power source, although I haven’t used this yet. Another feature is you can now use your iDevice in the background while it is busy syncing. No more waiting hours to finish a sync.

To set up WiFi Sync, you need to ensure you have ticked the “Sync This iPhone over WiFi” check box in iTunes. You can do this after updating to iOS5 and your phone is still plugged in with a cable.

To do a manual WiFi Sync from the phone you need to do the following: Settings -> General -> iTunes WiFi Sync -> Sync Now. It will also show you the computer name you are trying to sync to.

4. Custom Vibrations

Ok, might seem like a bit of a silly one, but cause I have a bit of a hearing problem in 1 ear, this has def helped me quite a bit. You can also assign a specific vibration pattern to a specific contact. So if my wife phones me, it vibrates differently to other contacts. Soon you can pick up the differences :)

To set Custom Vibrations on you need to do the following

Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> And turn Custom Vibrations -> On (Another really cool tip here is to turn LED Flash for Alerts on, so your Camera LED flashes every time you get a call, message, or alert. Aka BB)

Once you have turned your Custom Vibrations on, you need to go to:  Settings -> Sounds -> Scroll right to the bottom to Vibration Patterns. Click the Vibration button and You will see a list of predefined vibration alerts. You can create your own vibration pattern by tapping “Create new Vibration” And tap your new vibration sequence out. Loads of fun :)

To assign a Custom Vibration to a contact, go into contacts and edit, and then set the Vibration alert (about halfway down the page)

5. Notifications

Probably one of the best features in iOS5 is the new notification centre, which allows you to see any notifications you have received.

When you receive a notification for any app, missed call or voice mail, you can simply swipe from left to right on the home screen and it will take you directly into that app.

If you need to see all your previous notifications, on any screen in the phone, you simple drag the top bar (where the time is) down. This will bring up all your notifications from all your apps. And you can clear these by clicking on the x above each app. Tapping on a notification will open that app

You can also select which apps display on this screen by setting individual alerts under Settings -> Notifications -> And tapping on each app. You can then select a banner alert (top of screen) or Alerts  (old style alerts) You can also set how many alerts per app you want to see, or turn the alerts off completely.

And that is my top 5 tips & tricks. Of course there are LOADS more. Any cool ones you have picked up on ? Leave a comment below.

(Big thanks to @yash0505 who pointed this out to me.Thanks :) )

To get this set up follow these steps:

• On your iPhone or iPad go to Settings -> Store
• You will see a new menu, called Automatic Downloads appears which allows you to turn on what you want to sync
  
• Then go into your iTunes app, and you will see a new tab called “Purchased” appears. Here you will see all your previous music that you have bought.
• You can re-download this music to your device.
  
• If you buy any new music, on either device, it will automatically sync to the other
• Same goes for apps, and you will now see a purchased tab under the update menu on either device.

This is a huge step up, as previously you could not download your purchased music to another device. Thanks Apple :)

“Today it is a real hassle and very frustrating to keep all your information and content up-to-date across all your devices,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iCloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices. All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and because it’s integrated into our apps you don’t even need to think about it—it all just works.”

The free iCloud services include:

• The former MobileMe services—Contacts, Calendar and Mail—all completely re-architected and rewritten to work seamlessly with iCloud. Users can share calendars with friends and family, and the ad-free push Mail account is hosted at me.com. Your inbox and mailboxes are kept up-to-date across all your iOS devices and computers.

• The App Store and iBookstore now download purchased iOS apps and books to all your devices, not just the device they were purchased on. In addition, the App Store and iBookstore now let you see your purchase history, and simply tapping the iCloud icon will download any apps and books to any iOS device (up to 10 devices) at no additional cost.

• iCloud Backup automatically and securely backs up your iOS devices to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi when you charge your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Backed up content includes purchased music, apps and books, Camera Roll (photos and videos), device settings and app data. If you replace your iOS device, just enter your Apple ID and password during setup and iCloud restores your new device.

• iCloud Storage seamlessly stores all documents created using iCloud Storage APIs, and automatically pushes them to all your devices. When you change a document on any device, iCloud automatically pushes the changes to all your devices. Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps already take advantage of iCloud Storage. Users get up to 5GB of free storage for their mail, documents and backup—which is more amazing since the storage for music, apps and books purchased from Apple, and the storage required by Photo Stream doesn’t count towards this 5GB total. Users will be able to buy even more storage, with details announced when iCloud ships this fall.

• iCloud’s innovative Photo Stream service automatically uploads the photos you take or import on any of your devices and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices and computers. So you can use your iPhone to take a dozen photos of your friends during the afternoon baseball game, and they will be ready to share with the entire group on your iPad (or even Apple TV) when you return home. Photo Stream is built into the photo apps on all iOS devices, iPhoto on Macs, and saved to the Pictures folder on a PC. To save space, the last 1,000 photos are stored on each device so they can be viewed or moved to an album to save forever. Macs and PCs will store all photos from the Photo Stream, since they have more storage. iCloud will store each photo in the cloud for 30 days, which is plenty of time to connect your devices to iCloud and automatically download the latest photos from Photo Stream via Wi-Fi.

• iTunes in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from iTunes can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that replaces your music with a 256 kbps AAC DRM-free version if we can match it to the over 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, it makes the matched music available in minutes (instead of weeks to upload your entire music library), and uploads only the small percentage of unmatched music. iTunes Match will be available this fall for a $24.99 annual fee. Apple today is releasing a free beta version of iTunes in the Cloud, without iTunes Match, for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users running iOS 4.3. iTunes in the Cloud will support all iPhones that iOS 5 supports this fall.

Apple is ready to ramp iCloud in its three data centers, including the third recently completed in Maiden, NC. Apple has invested over $500 million in its Maiden data center to support the expected customer demand for the free iCloud services.

Pricing & Availability
The iCloud beta and Cloud Storage APIs are available immediately to iOS and Mac Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iCloud will be available this fall concurrent with iOS 5. Users can sign up for iCloud for free on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5 or a Mac running Mac OS X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. iTunes Match will be available for $24.99 per year (US only).

iTunes in the Cloud is available today in the US and requires iTunes 10.3 and iOS 4.3.3. Automatic download of apps and books is available today. Using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7; Outlook 2010 or 2007 is recommended for accessing contacts and calendars.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

“The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion we plan to keep extending our lead,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The best version of OS X yet, Lion is packed with innovative features such as new Multi-Touch gestures, system-wide support for full screen apps, and Mission Control for instantly accessing everything running on your Mac.”

New Multi-Touch gestures and fluid animations built into Lion let you interact directly with content on the screen for a more intuitive way to use your Mac. New gestures include momentum scrolling, tapping or pinching your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, and swiping left or right to turn a page or switch between full screen apps. All Mac notebooks ship with Multi-Touch trackpads and desktop Macs can use Apple’s Magic Trackpad.

Full screen apps take advantage of the entire display and are perfect for reading email, surfing the web or browsing photos, especially on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. With a single click your app fills the display and you can swipe from one window to another, between full screen apps, or back to your Desktop, Dashboard or Spaces without ever leaving full screen. iWork and iLife apps, as well as Safari, iTunes, Mail, FaceTime and others, all take advantage of Lion’s system-wide support for full screen apps.

Mission Control combines Exposé, full screen apps, Dashboard and Spaces into one unified experience for a bird’s eye view of every app and window running on your Mac. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to display your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full screen apps and your Dashboard, and allows you to instantly navigate anywhere with a tap.

The Mac App Store is built into Lion and is the best place to discover great new Mac apps, buy them with your iTunes account, download and install them. Apps automatically install directly to Launchpad, and with Lion’s release, the Mac App Store will be able to deliver smaller “delta” app updates and new apps that can take advantage of features like In-App Purchase and Push Notifications.

Launchpad makes it easier than ever to find and launch any app. With a single Multi-Touch gesture, all your Mac apps are displayed in a stunning full screen layout. You can organize apps in any order or into folders and swipe through unlimited pages of apps to find the one you want.

Lion includes a completely redesigned Mail app with an elegant widescreen layout. The new Conversations feature groups related messages into an easily scrollable timeline, intelligently hiding repeated text so the conversation is easy to follow, and retaining graphics and attachments as they were originally sent. An incredibly powerful new search feature allows you to refine your search and suggests matches by person, subject and label as you type. Mail includes built-in support for Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Additional new features in Lion include:

• Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;
• Auto Save, which automatically and continuously saves your documents as you work;
• Versions, which automatically records the history of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, revert and even copy and paste from previous versions; and
• AirDrop, which finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X Lion will be available in July as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard from the Mac App Store for $29.99 (US). Lion will be the easiest OS X upgrade and at about 4GB, it is the size of an HD movie from the iTunes Store. Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and will be available in July from the Mac App Store for $49.99 (US). Pricing is for US only, further international pricing will be announced at a later date.

Lion requires an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon processor and 2GB of RAM. The Lion upgrade can be installed on all your authorized personal Macs.

The Mac OS X Lion Up-To-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge via the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. Users must request their Up-To-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of their Mac computer. Customers who purchase a qualifying Mac between June 6, 2011 and the date when Lion is available in the Mac App Store will have 30 days from Lion’s official release date to make a request.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

The reason this is happening, is because your address is not in fact a valid physical address. You will need to update your details either through iTunes (iTunes Link) or using the App store app on your iPhone/iPad.

Your address needs to be valid, so I would suggest finding one an address that actually does exist, like your favorite hotel or Fast Food Resturant :)

If you are getting an error using a Valid address, try changing “Street” or “Drive” to “St” or “Dr” or vice versa.

Make sure you your new address’s telephone number matches your new address as well.

Good luck :)

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Enter Medialoadr (Mac App Store link – $4.99). The awesome Mac OSx app, that allows you to simply drag & drop your images, and upload them to your wordpress site.

The Medialoadr interface is so simple to use, all you do is drag your images to the Medialoadr icon in your taskbar, and it starts uploading them. As easy as that !!

From the Medialoadr site:

medialoadr is a lightweight application for OS X that allows you to upload multiple files to any of your WordPress powered websites. Simply drag your files from Finder or drop a zip folder** onto the menubar icon, choose your account and watch as the files upload to your chosen account without needing to open your favourite browser.

The app costs $4.99 and can be downloaded from the Mac App Store. I also have 2 app store codes to give away so you can download the app for free. All you need to do is leave a comment below, and a random winner will be chosen.

The software and platform is totally free to use, and you can update & view your tasks by either using the the very cool web interface at http://www.wunderlist.com, or you can download software for Mac or Windows, and even an iPhone, iPad or Android app. So many options !! And, they all stay synced with each other.

I have found this to be really handy, as it helps me keep on top of what I need to do. You can also share specific lists with other people. As an example, I have created a list that I shared with the wife to keep a list of all the things that need to be sorted out around the house. You could also create shopping list, and collaborate on whats needed, and then print the list off.

I have tired so many of these things, and none of them have ever done the job, but I really think this one has the upper hand, and I’m really looking forward to getting things done !

Related articles

• Wunderlist: The to-Do List App to Beat (appreaders.com)
• App Review: Wunderlist is a Cross Platform, Easy-To-Use Task Manager (lifehack.org)
• Wunderlist, a simple and beautiful task manager releases its web app (thenextweb.com)

• $30 bundle – R275
• $60 bundle – R535
• $100 bundle – R880
• $250 bundle – R2135
• $500 bundle – R4200

Some cool deals in there, so if you looking to bulk up on your iTunes vouchers, I suggest getting from iTunesUSA