River of News for iPad is Not Fast as They Claim

River of News for iPad, an iPad client for Google Reader

From the time I got my iPad, I have always been on the lookout for the best RSS aggregator and reader that I can sync my Google Reader account with.

I've tried Feeddler and Reeder, and now River of News. (I've only paid for both Reeder and River of News).

There has been some positive reviews about River of News, that's why I decided to buy one for myself. Here is one of the moments I wish there really is a refund policy in the iTunes Store.

Let me tell you why:

• There's no caching of images. The features list is quite misleading. It says you can save images in your photos gallery--yes, in your Photos application. But it doesn't cache the images for faster loading of articles. You need to always be connected to the internet in order to read your news;
• It's painfully slow--contrary to their claim.

That's it. If you're planning to buy this app, I suggest no. Better stick with Reeder, as the latter caches and caches them quite fast.

Playing Correspondence Chess for the iPad

One of the great uses of the iPad is playing games. I loved especially playing mind games like chess in the iPad.

There are a lot of chess games available for the iPad. My favorite in terms of computer strength is Shredder chess, which comes at $7.99.

However, playing online chess in the iPad may not be ideal. That's because you can only connect the iPad via wifi. There's no faster ethernet connection to ensure lag time to the minimum.

That's why correspondence chess is the best way to go. But not many apps offer this functionality. There are a lot of correspondence chess services available online that one can play with. My favorite is chessworld.net. But when it comes to the iPad, I think so far the only app available is chess.com.

Check out chess.com app for more details, and let's play correspondence/email chess. My handle is deuts.

The VLC is Closing on the iPad

For whatever reason that I don't understand, Apple's iTunes store is pulling out the VLC player for the iPad. This is so lame. I loved VLC in the desktop, both in Windows and Linux. Why, if you ask so? Because when playing different video types, it doesn't need audio or video codecs anymore. They're almost built in.

The VLC for the iPad is especially valuable because there are certainly some videos (some are even podcasts from the iTunes) that cannot be transferred to the iPad because they're not playable in the latter anyway. I have experienced some videos from the College Humor podcasts that cannot be transferred.

So download the app now while it is yet available.

More readings:

• VLC for iPad/iPhone to be removed from the App Store?
• Last Chance to Get VLC for iPhone/iPad? Likely to be Pulled from App Store?

A Proud iPad Owner

I'm starting a new blog again, I know. But this one is dedicated to my "precious" iPad.

Yes, I'm a proud owner of one. If I were to describe the iPad in one word--that would be "Revolutionary". It's really brings a new way of computing.

More on this later.