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Macworld - It’s true that you can use your iPad instead of your Mac to take care of many common computing tasks. But unless you’re ready to ditch Mac OS X entirely, you’ll still need to transfer files back and forth between your iPad and your Mac if you’re going to get work done.

Unfortunately, transferring and synchronizing files between the Mac and the tablet isn’t easy. There are several different ways to do it, but none are perfect, and each has its deficiencies. Frankly, this is one area where Apple could vastly improve the iPad experience. Until that happens, here are your choices when it comes to transferring files between your various devices.

iTunes

Apple’s officially endorsed route for file-transfers between iPad and Mac is via iTunes file-sharing. Unfortunately, it’s an amazingly clunky process.

For one thing, it only works with apps that support it. All of Apple’s iPad creation tools—Pages, Keynote, Numbers, GarageBand, and iMovie—use iTunes to move files back and forth. Some third-party apps—e-readers, text editors, and media creation tools—do too.

But even then, different apps use iTunes in different ways: Apple’s apps, for example, require you to select Save to iTunes when saving a document; other apps make their files available to iTunes automatically.

Worse, though, is the constant manual effort required to keep files in sync. By now, you probably know the routine: Connect your iPad directly to your Mac and open iTunes. Select your iPad in the iTunes source list and click on the Apps tab. Scroll down past the list of installed apps and look for the File Sharing section. Tap the app you want to copy a file from, so its files appear in the Documents pane. Drag one or more of those files to the Desktop (while holding down Option key) to copy them there, or use the Save To button to open a traditional save dialog. If you update a file on your Mac and want to send it back to the iPad, you must then drag that changed file back into iTunes, onto the correct app’s document list again.

It’s hardly elegant.

See other option from the full article here from ComputerWorld.

There are scores of compelling healthcare and telehealth apps that help practitioners do their jobs better. Sign up for our medical apps competition and tell us about your favorites. 

Imagine this scenario: You're a family physician who's admitted a man to the hospital with an acute myocardial infarction. You've run all the cardiac enzyme levels, done the initial ECG, and now he's stable--for the moment. So you head home for the night.

But in the back of your mind is that one troubling anomaly on his test strip. Ideally you'd like to remain at the bedside to see follow-up ECGs, but you can't be there 24/7. If you had AirStrip Cardiology, that wouldn't be an issue.

A mobile app produced by AirStrip Technologies, AirStrip Cardiology sends a patient's ECG tracing directly to an iPhone or iPad in near real time. A physician can see readings for each of the 12 or 15 leads, zoom in for a detailed view, move back and forth on the time line, and even do measurements in each waveform.

Of course, every silver lining has a cloud, and in this case, it's cost. This isn't a technology that simply requires the download of an inexpensive mobile app. As the vendor points out on its website: "The hospital must purchase the interface, server, and individual subscriptions from AirStrip for their physicians in order to operate the system using existing hospital IT infrastructure." Price will depend on the needs of the specific healthcare organization, AirStrip says.

The full article from InformationWeek appears here

One of the most compelling aspects of Office 365--aside from its overall value--is that you can access it from virtually anywhere. Because it is delivered from the cloud, the tools and services in Office 365 are not tied to a single PC or device, and data can be accessed from or synced among a desktop PC, the Web, and your smartphone--assuming you have a Windows Phone 7 smartphone.

Microsoft may be trying to create a value proposition to drive adoption of Windows Phone 7 by ensuring it has a uniquely integrated experience for mobile business productivity. But, whether it's because Microsoft is cocky or foolish is irrelevant: The fact remains that Microsoft is missing a prime opportunity to firmly establish Office 365 as the de facto mobile productivity suite, just as Microsoft Office is the dominant productivity suite for PCs.

Yes, it is possible to use the Web-based tools from an iPhone or Android smartphone, or from an iPad or other tablet PC. But, "possible" can be a far stretch from "optimal." What Microsoft needs to do is create Office Mobile 2010 for other mobile platforms.

While Office 365 works just fine from a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari, the version of Safari in iOS is not supported. When logging in to the Office 365 on an iPhone 4, you get a sort of warning message first. It explains that the browser you are using may not render Office 365 pages properly, and as a result some features may not function properly.

Read the full article from PCWorld here

Apple devices dominate the medical field, but Android doubled its market share, according to a survey of 550,000-plus subscribers to Bulletin Healthcare.

Bulletin Healthcare, a medical news service, examined the reading habits of its 550,000-plus subscribers and found that the vast majority of healthcare professionals are using Apple's iOS-based devices to consume its daily email briefings. Android came in a distant second. Bulletin Healthcare collected its data over a nine-month period between June 1, 2010 and Feb. 28, 2011.

Bulletin Healthcare reported that during the test period, use of mobile devices to access its content swelled by 45%. It concludes that nearly 30% of healthcare professionals are using mobile devices for content consumption, with 70% sticking to desktop computers.

"Combined, the iPhone and iPad grabbed more than 90% share of use in February, while Android saw only 6% use, and other platforms like RIM and Palm barely registered," said Bill Mulderry, president of Bulletin Healthcare, in a statement.

That doesn't mean that Apple's hold on the medical field is absolute. In fact, iPhone use by medical professionals fell from 86% to 79% and use of Android devices double its market share during the test period. iPad use jumped from 8% to 14% during the test period.

Read the full article from InformationWeek here

Adobe Systems announced that it has begun shipping out an all-encompassing software package that lets publishers create, monetize, and analyze periodicals for Android, iOS, and even QNX tablets.

The Enterprise Edition of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is a set of hosted software services aimed at "large publishers" that creates, distributes, monetizes, and analyzes digital magazines, newspapers, and publications, Adobe wrote in a blog post. A pre-release version was launched last July, but now customers can access more services on their own.

"What this means is that publishers can access services they weren't able to access before and continue using the authoring tools in our pre-release program. They can start delivering content through our distribution services or access built-in reports or Viewer Builder, for instance," explained Lynly Schambers-Lenox, group product marketing manager, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. "This will dramatically speed up how fast publishers can get their apps to the Apple App Store or Google One Pass."