This is it! Your opportunity to own your very own Ugo! The picture above shows him in all his glory. Your limited edition Ugo will be all hand-made by Aly of BlissForest. This first edition is limited to 10 items only. So if you want one, I suggest you get in your order right away!

Ugo stands about 12″ tall and is ready to be loved – or taken on wild adventures in space (you choose.) The cost is $22 plus shipping (which is $6 anywhere). Aly will ship Ugo to you in a Tyvek shipping bag directly from her workshop.

The plushes will be made in the order in which they are purchased. Keep in mind these are hand made creations, so please be patient. Once we go through the orders, I will have Aly update on delivery schedule.

Ready?

Order your Ugo plush now!

Well it’s been something like a month since I purchased an iPad, partly in thanks to a very generous reader who donated a chunk of money to help me out. I’ve been a little critical of the device, partly in backlash to the insane hype around it. Particularly in webcomic circles where some had golden dollar signs in their eyes the moment it was released.

I could probably write a fairly long review getting into all kinds of details, but there’s enough of that out there already. I think I’ll just present my high level thoughts in summary.

The iPad is “cool.” It’s a really neat device. Anytime you get to be an early adopter of something really new it’s fun. And this is an Apple device, so many things are done really well. Let’s start with the good things.

It’s Fast
It finally struck me last night, when we were having a real huge thunderstorm. It’s 2 a.m., and I want to go and check and see if there’s a tornado or severe storm warning, because it is really getting hairy outside. I could go downstairs and either turn on the T.V. or load up a site on the computer. But I realize I have my iPad there, with The Weather Channel app on it (one of the top apps IMO.) So I pick it up, and within 15 seconds I’m looking at all the warnings, the radar and the outlook. Just like that.

And I think that is the absolute best win about the device. Things happen fast – fast like computers were supposed to be in 2010 – but are not anywhere close. Apps open fast and things in them load fast (for the most part). Doing things in apps is fast. The whole experience is fast. This is a key to the device and it needs to stay that way. It allows you to grab it, do something and be done.

It’s Fun
Apple has done a good job of extending the iPhone interface to make it generally a delight to use. It has its shortcomings (I’ll list a few below) but on the whole, it’s great to use. I’ve downloaded various games and played with them, and the touch interface makes things new and different. I’ve played “Sorry” with my daughters, Space Frontier HD (beautiful game, and the HD rocks) a variation of “Risk” and a few others. It’s fun for a little diversion.

Even better, I streamed a whole movie on it this week (3 Days of the Condor). My wife had hurt her back and was in bed, and we wanted to watch a movie. I pulled it out and streamed it, and it worked perfectly. While the screen is small for a movie, the resolution is very good and we had no problem with it. The only downside was the one little speaker wasn’t great, but I could see plugging into a small speaker set and it would be perfect. Not something I’d want to do all the time, but if you’re in a spot where you can’t get to your T.V. but you have internet, it’s definitely an option.

I have a few apps that check sports scores, read comics and various other things. I’m starting to find out what is useful for me. I just downloaded Dropbox (I already had an account) so I have another way to swap files around, too.

It’s Portable and Fairly Long Lasting
Well I guess that’s obvious. It’s a little more portable than a laptop, so not too big of a deal to carry around if you are taking it from home to work or vice versa. However, it’s too big to be something to kind of carry around with you all the time (like a phone), that just won’t work. The battery life is really good. I seem to get a few days out of each charge.

In short, I enjoy using it and I enjoy discovering new ways where it can either enhance or replace my current computing habits. Now some downsides.

General Shortcomings
I’ll just hit on some smaller issues that have been well documented. The screen can be overly reflective if you are either outside or near a light source – to the point where you cannot see what you are doing. Inside the house it’s generally great. Eventually they will need to solve the problem.

It’s too expensive. I say that with the caveat that I am in “early adopter” territory and that is somewhat expected. But the price needs to come down. I bought the cheapest version with the least amount of memory and it still ended up costing me close to $700 with the Apple Care program (which I think you’d be foolish not to get.) Nowadays, $700 will buy you a *lot* of computing power. In my tablet, I only have 16GB of memory and only WiFi – no 3G access. Eventually those things will probably come back to haunt me.

Some of these things are sacrificed for speed. Right now, I’ll take speed over memory space any day. But there’s going to come a time where I have memory issues, and we’ll see what happens then. I would expect that in the coming years the price will fall and the device will improve just like the iPhone did.

It’s small, but heavy after awhile. It seems light until you hold it in one hand for a few minutes. It’s not going to be great as a book reader, at least not for me. Others have documented it but the brightness is too harsh for extended reading. This device is not going to steal away hardcore e-readers who like the Kindle. It’s not for that.

The Apple case is pretty much junk. For as good as Apple is with industrial design, I’m pretty appalled at how crappy the case is – especially for the price. It seems like not much thought was put into it. It marks up easy, the edges get in the way of the volume and off control and it’s really no protection at all for the device. Soon the market will be flooded with alternatives that are better, and I’ll pick something up.

There are general interface issues that don’t work as well in the iPad as on the iPhone. Jakob Nielsen has just released a paper on it, so I will point you there. One quick example, the bottom toolbar works well on the iPhone, but on the iPad it’s not visible enough to be as effective. And of course, not every app is designed well. Some are pretty bad, but that’s not an Apple thing, it’s a software thing.

The keyboard is neat but just doesn’t function well for me. I cannot get used to it. It’s great that it is big, but typing is all about touch. And you can’t touch the keyboard like you would a normal one, because you will type that characters. So if your hand/finger brushes up against something, it goes up. So somehow you have to “hover” your hands over the keyboard in proper position to type. This while you are in various positions, on the couch, in a chair, whatever. I guess some people have it figured, but not me. I think they need to put in some kind of “sensitivity” control on the keyboard, where I can brush a key and it won’t trigger. Not sure if that is doable.

Right now I basically do a 4 finger technique that gets me along. It works, but I don’t want to type much on the device right now. Maybe that will change as I get used to it, but it hasn’t so far.

Please, someone – anyone – get rid of coverflow in the App store! Ugh. Nothing is more useless than coverflow. I guess people think it looks neat, but there is no point to trying to flip through “covers” of literally tens of thousands of apps. It’s pointless. The categories and lists are 100% more effective. I really wish there was a preference to turn it off.

The iBook reader… meh. I suppose it’s neat. I have no desire to read anything on it as of yet. I like real books.

Which brings us to comics. What to do, what to do!

As a publisher, doing an Apple app is not all that desirable other than having your app in the marketplace. It’s a closed system where Apple has say-so on content, and they take a 30% royalty on transactions via apps – I find that ludicrous.

The thing is, the web is perfectly accessible with Safari. You can browse my comic on it right now with no problems. So in a way we’re all already “on the iPhone” as long as your site is not in Flash. But that’s not quite using the device in an innovative way.

It does seem perfect for comics. Steve, Eddie and I at Wishtales definitely think there’s something to be done there. We’ve been kicking it around for awhile and we have some basic ideas. We’re even in some initial talks with a developer about actually doing something. I actually have some positive hopes about how that might come out. Nothing I can say now, but I will if and when the time comes.

In the end we want to do something that will work on *all* devices, not just the iPad. Apple does not have the head start on tablets that they did on the iPhone. Later this year the market will begin to get saturated with new tablets. And some of them will be very good. Just having an Apple app will not get you on those devices. So that’s something to think about.

I hope sometime this year we have something to announce and we’re making strides trying to blaze a trail on tablets. Only time will tell.

So those are my thoughts. It’s cool, it’s fun, it’s got a few shortcomings and it’s a little overhyped and expensive. But I’m glad I’ve got one!