sbk MARKETING

Calgary’s Ernest Barbaric, a social media & digital marketing geek (Ernest called himself a geek!), was gracious enough to answer my 10 questions on ‘Why an iPad?‘. This post is #3 in this series. 

Ernest is well know in Calgary’s social media industry. He is an accomplished and sought after social media speaker and consultant. Watch out for this savvy marketer, he’s a rising star. 
 
1.       What do you use your iPad for?

It’s a mix of business and personal. Most of the time, I use it to read. iBooks, Kindle and Kobo for regular books and then Mashable and Pulse for reading various RSS streams. I stopped buying printed books and magazines mostly due to the iPad.

2.       How often do you use it?

Every day for at least a couple of hours.

3.       What kind of iPad did you purchase? 

I wasn’t too sure about how it would plug into my work and life, so I got the basic 16G WiFi model

4.       What accessories do you have?

Just the Apple brand cover.

5.       Would you recommend an iPad? If so what type of a person would you recommend buy one? 

It would depend on what you do. I would say that anyone who travels would definitely appreciate the battery life and convenience of an iPad.

6.       Do you also use a laptop, if so how do you use the laptop vs the iPad? 

Yes. Laptop is my primary workhorse and I use it for pretty much everything from web design, to writing articles and watching movies. iPad on the other hand is more for quick and easy access to the internet or e-mail and of course for reading.

7.       What do you dislike about the iPad?

It would have been nice to have a USB port and functionality that supports it. Also note that the iPad isn’t really meant to be an input device.

8.       How do you see your use of the iPad evolving in the future? 

Probably with different input devices and higher computing power, I can see a device like an iPad replacing computers over a course of few years. I see one device emerging that will combine the functionality of a cell phone with the processing power of a computer, all integrated with different and immediate inputs and outputs to provide us with true augmented reality.

9.       What are some apps you would recommend? 

DropBox, Twitterrific, Popplet, PulseNews, Flipboard, Evernote and of course SpringPad

10.   What apps would you not recommend? 

Penultimate, WheatherBug and most of the office type apps (QuickOffice, Docs to go), they’re just not quite up to par just yet.

Anything else you would like to mention? 

I thought the iPad would replace my laptop at most meetings, but that wasn’t the case. I find that as time goes along, I’m using the iPad more for personal use then for business and I think this is due to getting the WiFi model. If you already have a data plan, I would recommend getting a 3G model and then setting up a shared data plan OR if you have an Android phone that can create a mobile hotspot, it would be more business friendly.

Thank you for sharing Ernest! Contact Ernest if you are looking for a social media speaker, he does travel everywhere and is very knowledgeable and great in front of an audience.