I recently wrote an article about the dangers of trojans, which are a type of “malware” somewhat similar to a virus.  In the article I mentioned how it’s important to keep your computer up-to-date as one important step to protecting it from dangerous software.

In response to my article I was sent a question by one of my computer newsletter subscribers, Sara, who wanted to know

  Well Sara,  iPads at this time have no similar threats. One of the benefits of the App Store is that if you only download free or paid apps from there, you’re at much lower risk of malware because Apple vets the apps before allowing them into the store. 

   This doesn’t mean it’s impossible for a threat to develop due to a bug or other security vulnerability.

   This is why updating an iPad is just as important as updating a regular computer.  If you’re up to date with iOS 5 then you will see when updates are available by the appearance of a red “badge” with a number (like 1 for one update) that appears on the Settings app icon. 

   The update can be installed by going into the Settings app, tapping General, then Updates. 

    If you still are running iOS 4 you’ll need to install the update through iTunes on your computer and then you’ll be able to update directly through the iPad from that point onwards. I strongly recommend staying up-to-date, so definitely do this if you’re still running iOS 4.

    I have a video lesson covering updating your iPad in my iPad tutorial app.  You can find the video lesson by opening the app, then tapping the house icon in the lower left to make sure you’re at the app’s home/main menu.   On the main menu tap iPad Lessons, then tap iPad Settings and swipe upward to look for “Settings: General: Software Updates”  and tap the play button to watch the steps.

   Hope that helps!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

I received an iPad question from Kathy, sent in via the ask question function of my iPad tutorial app. She writes:

So let’s see — first off, I had to double-check this, but it doesn’t seem that Apple has given us any way to print our list of contacts unfortunately.

They are pretty good about listening to customer suggestions, so you might want to use the official iPad feeback & suggestion form to tell them you’d like to be able to do this!  They may add it to the next version of the software, you never know.

Now for working with groups in Contacts. For those who don’t know, groups just refers to organizing your contacts into categories like “Business” and “Personal” so you can just see your coworkers or just see your personal friends.

This is another gap Apple needs to fill, as there is no way to add people to groups directly on the iPad yet. Once they’re in the groups, you can see them in the list, but you can’t change who is in the groups.  However, unlike printing the contact list, there is what we call a “workaround”.

What you need to do is go to iCloud.com (and unfortunately you’ll probably need to do this on a computer) and sign into your iCloud account with your Apple ID.  Once you’ve signed in, you can click Contacts, then click the red “bookmark” button to get to the Groups screen where you can add groups, remove them, and drag your individual contacts into those groups.

If you want a person in more than one group, just drag them into one, then the other, and they’ll appear in both.

I recorded a video showing how groups work and covering most of this and I’ve added it to Basic Tips for iPad.  Owners of the app can watch the video by tapping the blue and yellow “How to Use iPad” icon on your home screen, then tap iPad Lessons, then tap Apps From Apple, then swipe upwards and look for the Using Groups lesson located alphabetically under “C” for Contacts.

I hope that helps, and thanks for the offer of cookies! : )

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

I was sent a question by Brenda, an owner of my iPad tutorial app, who asked if it was possible to send an email to “undisclosed recipients” from her iPad. Yes, you can – let me explain.

First off, for others reading this, if you’re not familiar with how this works, sometimes you may have received an email that said it was addressed to “undisclosed recipients”.

This is done by using something called “BCC” which is short for “Blind Carbon Copy”. BCC is used to send copies of an email to multiple people without revealing the list of people receiving the email.

This is something most email programs can do, and something I’ve recommended people to do for years in my computer training courses, but fortunately it’s not exclusive to computers. I’ve recommended people use BCC when sending to multiple people to help protect the recipients’ privacy and to help stop the spread of viruses, worms, and spam.

The iPad can send using BCC, but there’s a setting you may need to turn on first.

You’ll need to go into the Settings App (the grey gear icon) then go to “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” and about half way down the page you’ll find “Show To/BCC label” which you’ll want to make sure is set to On. Just tap the on/off switch if it’s not.

After that, when you’re composing an email you’ll see the CC/BCC label underneath the To: line — tap it to show the CC and BCC lines, and you can enter addresses or names there as normal.

Once you send, everybody you send it to will see “Undisclosed recipients”.

You can see how to do this by watching the video lesson as well — just open up my tutorial app, tap iPad Lessons, then tap Apps From Apple, and in the alphabetical list of lessons swipe upward and you’ll find the lesson under “M” for Mail App.

Hope that helps!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

An owner of my iPad tutorial app named Doug Brown sent the following question in via the “Ask iPad Question” feature of the app:

Hi Doug, I’d like to help with your question, but I need a few more details.

First off, are you talking about movies you’ve purchased through the iTunes app? The files can be quite large and normally will take a little while to download.

Also, are you trying to get several movies at once? If so, you may be causing a “traffic jam” by trying to get too many at once.

Are you doing this on WiFi, or do you have a 3G iPad and are trying to download over the cell phone 3G network?

WiFi is *much* faster, and you should also try to avoid downloading a lot over 3G because the cell companies often hit you with extra fees if you do (they’re very stingy).

You can see if you’re using WiFi by going to the home screen (where all the icons are) and looking at the top of the screen on the left side — if you’re connected to WiFi you’ll see a kind of radio wave icon (curved lines like a cartoon drawing of a radio wave).

If you need help learning how to connect to WiFi then go into my tutorial app and go to iPad Lessons, then go to iPad Settings, and  look for “Settings: Wi-Fi: Connecting” for a lesson on how to do that.

But overall, downloading a bunch of videos at the same time can be expected to take a while, and in my own experience when connected to a decent speed Internet connection via WiFi it can easily take 20 minutes or more to download a single movie.

The speed depends on how fast the Internet connection you’re using is, and how much it’s being used at that moment (including what you’re doing on the iPad, but also what other people on the network may be doing too if it’s a shared connection).

Let me know if that helps and if you have further questions, and thanks for being a student!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

> Hi,
 >I cannot get the iOS5 to download on my iPad 1.
 > Can you walk me through the proper steps? Thanks

I also received a question from Patty, who wrote:

> How do I upgrade ipad2 ios5 to ios5.1?
> Why can't I buy the earlier version of Pages that works
> with my pad?
> I really do not want to upgrade. Some users say upgrade
> induces new problems.

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

Basic Tips for iPad

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

Basic Tips for iPad

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

In this lesson, a preview of my new app which teaches you how to use the iPad with easy video lessons, we take a look at how to use Airplay to beam video and audio from an iPad to a TV set and/or sound system via an Apple TV or an Airport Express.

Airplay is very easy to use and works with a wide variety of video and audio, including this video if you’re watching it on an iPad (or on iPhone or iPod Touch). I find the Airplay video streaming to be especially cool now that my lessons are available for iOS devices.

A few years ago when I started this business (teaching computers only at that point) I had to decide between having my customers able to play my lessons on DVD or on CD-ROMs. I ended up choosing CDs for a bunch of reasons I won’t bore you with, but that meant my students couldn’t watch the lessons on TV if they wanted to.

Now we can watch video on TV, a computer, an iPad, an iPhone, or all of the above, and do so with ease. Gotta love it.

My iPad course app is currently being reviewed by Apple for inclusion in the App Store.

So far the Basic Computer Training & Tips app for iPad & iPhone is in the App Store with 3 more apps in review with more to follow.

You can find what is currently available by searching for my name — Worth Godwin — in iTunes on your computer or in both the iTunes app and the App Store app on your iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

To open the app in the App Store:

Video Training Course for iPhone

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

New York Times columnist David Pogue has posted both a funny video (see below, Flash required unfortunately) as well as a more serious-toned article comparing the new Samsung Galaxy Tab with (obviously) the iPad.

On the plus side, Pogue says: “The most hotly awaited Android tablet is the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a sleek, sturdy slab, 7.5 by 4.7 by 0.5 inches. The glass front is a 7-inch multitouch screen; the back is off-white plastic…

Samsung sweated the details on this thing. The screen is gorgeous.

The touch response is immediate and reliable. The whole thing is superfast and a pleasure to use. “

On the down side, “As smooth and slick and convenient as the Galaxy is, though, it’s not without its frustrations… the Galaxy’s browser shows the stripped-down, mobile versions of [many] sites. According to Samsung, there’s no way to turn that feature off and no way to visit the full-size sites.”

“Another problem: most of the 100,000 apps on the Android store are designed for a phone-size screen, not a tablet. The Galaxy either blows them up, at the expense of clarity, or lets them float in the center of the larger screen with a Texas-size black border. “

Overall the gist is, it has a lot going for it but seems a little undersized and overpriced. I’ve had a few conversations with friends and clients about the iPad size and I think it hits the sweet spot pretty well, though I sometimes wish for a little more room.

The Galaxy Tab seems oversize for a phone and undersize for a tablet, but that may be just me.  For the full review, head over to Pogue’s review of the Galaxy Tab on The New York Times website.

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

On Monday, Apple released the GM of iOS 4.2, which basically means iOS 4 is finally here for iPad. Just wanted to post a quick update and let you know that now that iOS 4 is available for iPad, I’ll begin recording iPad training video lessons and post them to the site.

I started working on this project right after the iPad was originally released early this year, but due to a series of complications (both technical and otherwise) the project was held back to the point where it seemed to just make more sense to wait until iOS 4 was out for iPad.

I just finished the update process and got all my files synced back onto “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (the name of my iPad) and it’s very late, so unfortunately I won’t be able to play with the updated OS until tomorrow.

I have a couple projects to finish up in the next few days while I check out the changes to the iPad software, and then I’ll start getting some lessons recorded which will start showing up on my site and on the podcast.

If there are any topics you’d like me to start with, let me know in the comments.

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

In the previous lesson I showed the steps for how to add an “other” type of email account (such as the one provided by your Internet service provider) to the Mail app so you can check your email on your iPad.

This video lesson shows you the steps to set up one of the popular email services such as Gmail, MobileMe, Yahoo Mail or AOL (it seems people still use AOL!).

You’ll find that the setup for these email services is extremely simple; easier than setting up an account using the “other” option in the Mail setup. In the lesson I demonstrate using Gmail, but the steps are the same if you use Yahoo or one of the other options.  All you’ll need to follow the steps are your email address and password.

Watch the video to see how simple it is:

If you need help with email on your computer, remember to take a look at my easy computer training courses for Apple Mac or Windows PC. I have a whole set of lessons for using email safely and easily:

Email How to For Apple Mac

Email How to for Windows PC

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

Email How to For Apple Mac

Email How to for Windows PC

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!

You can find the How to Use the iPad Tutorial Videos app in the App Store using the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please take a moment to leave it a positive rating and review!