The Definitive Apple iPad Coverage

Those of you who follow my video coverage will know that I have thoroughly covered a lot of information on the Apple iPad. With an unboxing, product tour, main review and then stacks of app reviews. More recently there have been some quality case & accessory reviews. Well, for those of you who might have missed something, here is a playlist with ALL of my Apple iPad videos to date… enjoy!

FileMaker Pro taking databases to new heights

Having previously used FileMaker Pro a long time ago, I found it quite a convoluted application to use. Just recently though I started using Bento a lot more and thoroughly enjoyed the experience both on the Mac and on the iPad. You can in fact check out my review of Bento on the Mac here.

I was given the opportunity to test the newest version 11 of this application and to my surprise the new features and user interface all started to make sense. It is laid out in a way that allows you to build new databases very quickly.

In its simplest form FileMaker Pro allows you to do things like Contact Management, Stock Control, To Do Lists, Invoices and Event Databases. However, some of the new features take it to a whole new level. To kick things off, charting allows you to create visual representations of your data using bar, line, area and pie charts. These look very impressive with 3D effects, excellent shading and a great amount of visual control. Another really useful feature is 'Recurring Import' and this is brilliant. Let me set the scenario… I manage a list of members to a tennis club and I use something like Microsoft Excel to store their information. However, I want to use FileMaker Pro to manage a database that helps me analyse the information. I simply set up a recurring import through the normal import menu. Setting it as recurring is genius, each time I update my member list in Excel the changes are reflected right within the database.

If you run a small business, you will also be please to know that the package includes an Invoice Starter solution. So you get a really nice looking template (which you can further customise) that pulls in your customer information from your Contact Management database and allows you to quickly and effectively invoice them. Of course getting money in is great, but tracking things accurately with ease is equally important and I found that this application allowed me to get to my data very fast indeed.

It is important that you don't think of this application as simply residing on your own computer, with all that data being available for your eyes only. Web Publishing is a big part of FileMaker Pro. With just a few clicks you can easily and securely publish data onto the web with no additional software required. This data can then be accessed by up to five users at the same time. Imagine the possibilities if you run a retail business with a couple of sites, this sort of thin is invaluable for keeping track of stock.

There are a few different versions of FileMaker to choose from, including their home targeted offering that is called Bento. However, if you need more power hungry features, then Pro is the way to go. This is a very polished piece of software that allows you to do so much more than just store information. It is very dynamic and will soon have you wondering how you managed without it.

Product: FileMaker Pro 11
Supplied by: FileMaker
Price as tested: £219.00 

Gaming on the iPad - How Good Is It?

In this video I take a look at just how good (or bad) gaming is on the iPad. Are the controls awkward? What are the graphics like? Will the iPad change the way we game?

Includes looks at Asphalt 5, Bejeweled 2, Tap Tap Radiation, NOVA, Chopper Lite, Plants vs Zombies and Air Hockey.


Hardware manufacturer website: Apple
Sponsor: Eazydraw

Netgear Stora Review

Netgear Stora Review - Home Media Network Storage Device. Taking all the complexity out of a network attached storage (NAS) device, the Stora is a very well designed piece of kit. Check out the review.


Supplied by: Netgear