…but not for long!

We’re giving them all away to twenty lucky entrants in our Apple-A-Day Twitter contest!

We had hoped to have these in our hands on the 3rd when everybody else did. Unfortunately Apple cancelled our first order, probably as a result of us ordering twenty when the stated limit was TWO. The credit card we originally used had also been cancelled thanks to the recent Monoprice fiasco by the time Apple was ready to charge it, so that probably didn’t go over very well either…

The good news is we were able to sneak in another order – and that one went through without a problem – and arrived today!

Bingo!

We unpacked 15 iPads, but the fourth box had a note…

Just kidding. I put that there. But it got your heart rate up a little, right?

So what can you actually do with 20 iPads? Quite a lot, actually!

There’s the obligatory doorstop.

Dominoes came to mind as well…

Playing chess on a touchscreen is like nothing you’ve ever experienced.

20 iPads have no problem giving someone bad news.

iPad/crowbar batting practice was a hit!

I’ve played a lot of bowling apps on my iPhone.

This one makes you feel like you’re really there!

The iPad talks a good game, but when it comes time to play a little Call of Duty, he falls flat.

Trash talking only works when you’re good at something. PUNK.

I’ll be honest – the iPad was much better at playing drums in Rock Band than I was. Had some problems hitting the pedal though.

With the day wearing on I decided that maybe nobody would realize if a few iPads went missing. So I thought it might be a good idea to swallow a few and sneak them out that way.

It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t successful.

The following Twitter users have won a 16GB Wifi iPad:
mrwickedd
enotsola
rafaldyrda
mike_Henderson
raimon49
feltpad
caoanroad4800
daniloeu
omtc
jbchan
twEapen
Onlera
emberna
mattmaher
MinaNJ
lisadrowe
LauraRogner
pkimbrel
benrwoodard
eminsker

If you’re listed above, CONGRATULATIONS! – and be on the lookout for a message from @dreamhost. We’re going to need some shipping information from you!

Winners must reply to @dreamhost on Twitter no later than May 14th at 11:59PM, PDT (one month from today) or they will forfeit their prize. At that time we will pick from the other entries received to select alternate winners. We don’t want to hold on to these things forever!

No iPads were harmed or removed from shrink wrap in the making of this blog post.

UPDATE 5/17/2010: We made several attempts to contact all winners and did not receive replies from four of them. The following Twitter users had not claimed their iPads by the deadline and have forfeited their prizes:
raimon49, Onlera, mattmaher, LauraRogner
So we’ve had to select four alternates. They are:
moonlettuce, JustCallMeJenni, samanatrix, john_blanton

Congratulations! The four alternate winners have until May 31st at 11:59PM, PDT to claim their prizes, after which point we’ll select MORE alternates if need be.

UPDATE 5/28/2010: All iPads have now been claimed. Thanks everyone for entering!

Well, our contest should be up.

I mean, the iPad came out a week ago. And the contest said it’d end when we got 20 (16GB wifi models). So, we must have them by now.

You’d think.

Well, I’m not sure what the hold up is. I mean, *I* got one no problem on launch day. I don’t know why *YOU* guys haven’t yet. Of course, I had to pay for mine.

So don’t complain. Or if you do, don’t do it on twitter. Or if you do, don’t use the “fail”. I’m sure we’ll have our prize iPads in hand this week, and the winners will be announced soon thereafter!

In The Meantime

I thought I might as well give my early hands-on review of the device. After all, who doesn’t want to know what Internet-pundit extraordinaire Josh Jones thinks about everything?

iGlad:

* the battery does seem to last a really long time.
* and yet, it’s zippier than an iPhone 3GS… playing Katamari on it is radical.
* it’s good for games for sure. To me, Flight Control HD is worth the $503.99 all on its own!
* for now, it’s still a chick magnet.

iBad:

* I’m still a newb, but so far I still type faster on the iPhone keyboard. Grrr.
* it’s new and so are the apps .. sometimes the wifi doesn’t auto-reconnect, and sometimes apps crash.
* old iPhone apps do not all work perfectly. For example, NBA league pass crashes when trying to watch any video, and bobby universal remote doesn’t respond when you push any button.
* it’s heavier than you expect. After using it for a while, try picking up your iPhone. You’ll throw it through the ceiling.
* it’s awkward to use when sitting at a table. Or on a couch. It’s kind of hard to prop up on things… and nobody’s really going to watch an entire episode of Lost on a 1.5 pound tablet they’re holding in their hands.
* you can’t download .epub files from Safari straight into iBooks… you have to download them to your computer, import them into iTunes, then sync them with your iPad… the iPad in general still requires a real computer.
* at current prices, the magazine and newspaper apps are not too “game-changing.” They cannot charge $5 an issue for a digital version of Popular Science! Whether it’s rational or not, people feel like a sucker paying the same price for a digital periodical as they do a paper one. They won’t spend $5 on a digital issue of something they can get a year’s paper subscription of for $12.

So?

I’d say it’s definitely a “third device” .. one that’s not going to replace cell phones or laptops. At least not until somebody makes a case for it like this Lenovo thing:

That, along with multi-tasking in iPhone OS 4.0 (due in September on the iPad), could potentially make it a laptop replacement for some people. An easy-to-use, sub-two-pound, 10-hour-battery-life, instant-on laptop for $500!

Hmm, in fact, some guy’s already working on the iPad LapDock. Hopefully it isn’t going to stay made of wood?! I wouldn’t put it past him. Jackass.

But as is, the iPad is still a pretty fun gadget! I’d pretty much describe it as a “toy” for now… one your spouse, your parents, your teenage kids and your toddlers are all going to want for Christmas. And by December, the combination of new peripherals, apps, and the OS update are going to make the iPad a legit netbook killer to boot.

Speaking of New Apps

Well, it’s not exactly an App (yet), but one thing I realized about a week before the iPad launched was how perfect it was going to be for children’s books.

Thanks to the Kindle, this eBook thing is starting to take life, but so far the children’s eBook thing is stillborn, due to the Kindle’s e-ink screen. On the other hand an iPad, with it’s full-color display, multi-touch capabilities, and uncanny resemblance to every child’s favorite device, is just right for them!

Which is why I whipped up ePub Bud!

It’s basically “YouTube for Children’s eBooks” (right down to the logo)… which means you can use it to upload, create, and share children’s books for the iPad (or any other ebook reader that supports the open .ePub format)!

What can you do with ePub Bud?

1. Write your own children’s ebook, and illustrate it with pictures you upload or choose from 20,000 free images.. then share it with the world or just your own family!

2. Browse through thousands of free children’s books others have written or uploaded, and download them to your iPad, read them from your browser, or save them to your laptop.

3. Upload your existing ebooks in any unencrypted format and have them converted to the .epub file format for loading onto your iPad (.epub is the only format the iBooks can currently read)!

4. Mail us your physical children’s books and we’ll digitize them for free into an .epub file… the book world equivalent of “ripping” your CDs to your iPod!

5. Finally, besides rating, tagging, and commenting on books, you can even create a new “edition” of any book on ePub Bud, allowing you to edit it to your own liking. Translate it to another language, put in alternative illustrations, or just fix a typo… it’s like wikipedia meets eBooks!

So that’s it, go get you some free children’s books for the iPad today!

You don’t actually need an iPad to read or contribute. And I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you, but….. it works for non-children’s books too.

Though you might as well get an iPad now. You’ll have one by December 26th anyway.

Today we’re revealing some never-before seen photos of some of the darkened corners of our datacenters.

It’s not something we’re proud of, but we intend to do something about it.

You network admins know how it is. Sometimes a server dies and it’s just easier to leave it there and reuse its network cable without rerouting everything. And sometimes it’s just too hard to put a new cable in the channel where it belongs so you end up draping it over the top of everything. It’s easy, it works, and your customers never need to know about it.

Before you know it your hardware is buried in a sea of cables and has become physically unreachable.

Let’s face it. Datacenters are kind of boring. The only major cosmetic change they’ve gotten over the past twenty years has been the size of the computers sitting in them. And maybe the colors of the cables running through them.

We’ve today announced a new initiative : Wireless Datacenters.

At our Los Angeles datacenter we’ve replaced literally thousands of miles of cat5, cat6, and fiber with a large supply of 802.11n USB wireless dongles. Everywhere you look you’ll find dongles dangling everywhere. Dangling dongles. (Internally this project was codenamed “Dang Dongs“.)

We’ve donated all of our old cabling to a local recycler, and the amount of clutter we’ve eliminated in our datacenter is phenomenal. You can now walk through the entire facility without tripping or fear of passing under a cable avalanche.

We’ve also reduced our carbon footprint by a huge amount. Do you have any idea how many trees it takes to make a 6 foot ethernet cable? Probably not very many…but still. Having less stuff generally means you’ve used fewer resources to make that stuff. It’s really a win-win all around.

Ethernet entanglements are now a thing of the past. 802.11n wireless is the future, and the future is now.

In fact it says right here on the box from Linksys that the new router we bought will “stream stored music to devices around your home” – no small feat. Imagine how fast it’ll serve your websites. Should be pretty great.

You can expect a white paper and some more photos of the new deployment soon.