More and more, people are performing web searches on their smart phones. It’s great to be able to do that, but it also can be frustrating to try to find what you’re looking for on that tiny screen, or without the full tools available to you with a keyboard or mouse. For example, how can you easily search for and jump to a particular word or term that’s down towards the bottom of a web page, and not visible at the top of the page?

One of the biggest (and indeed only) frustrations for people who use the iPad (be it iPad 2, iPad 3, or originally flavor iPad) for business, or even for personal email use if you don’t use a Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or other webmail address) is that the native mail app on the iPad will only use your webmail address as your “From” address, even if you have a different default email address set within your webmail app. For example, your Gmail address may be example@gmail.com, but you may have example@yourdomain.com set as your default “From:” address in Gmail, and Gmail will honor that, but the mail app on your iPad will insist on sending your email ‘from’ your example@gmail.com address instead of your default example@yourdomain.com address. There is no way to change that default “from” address on your iPad. But it turns out that there is a way to beat your iPad into submission, and to set your default “from” address to whatever you would prefer it to be. Here’s how.

Many people don’t fully explore each and every option available on their mobile phone (and even fewer fully read the user’s manual). So unless you have made a point of looking at each and every feature listed in your “Keyboard” setting on your iPhone or iPad (and who among us has?), you may have missed this fantastic goodie: Keyboard macros! Meaning custom keyboard shortcuts that you can create, allowing you to type a short set of letters that will magically expand to full phrases! For example, you can set up a keyboard short so that when you type “ty” it types “thank you”! You can create any shortcut that you want to… create custom signatures, frequently typed phrases, you name it! Here’s how to do it!

By now you may already know that the iPad 3 is out, but what you probably really want to know is how it’s different from the iPad 2. Is it really worth spending the money to buy an iPad 3 when you have a perfectly good (and still relatively new) iPad 2, or even iPad 3G or original iPad? Well, that depends on what you use your iPad for – for example, the dictation software is incredible, but that may not be that important to you. So, to learn the major differences, read on.

Many people thought that the Kindle Fire would be the iPad killer, and while the Kindle Fire has dipped into the iPad market, it turns out that the iPad’s biggest competitor is its own cousin, the iPhone 4S.

With the launch of textbooks for the iPad, Apple Inc. has set in motion the potential for students to say “so long” to the days of lugging around heavy book bags. The textbook initiative was announced last Thursday, January 19th, and begins with a small selection of standard high school books.

If you have the new iPhone 4S, you may find that Siri has her hand in your pocket. According to new research, using Siri can as much as double how much data your iPhone uses, which can be costly indeed. Sure, Siri is fun – but is she worth it?

It’s so easy to end up with a big collection of apps, isn’t it? There are so many free applications, so many interesting looking apps, that you can eat ’em like candy. But eventually they start taking up too much space on your iPhone, iPod or iTouch, or on your hard drive in iTunes. Here is how to remove an app from your device, from iTunes, and from your hard drive.

State Farm, the insurance company, has just released an iPhone app that evaluates how you drive. Called the State Farm Driver Feedback app, the iPhone application uses your iPhone’s accelerometer and GPS to track your acceleration, cornering, and braking, and then gives you a grade. But is that all it gives you? What about increased insurance rates, or even being declined insurance, based on how you drive, as recorded by the State Farm Driver Feedback app?

In response to the howls of outrage over the news that iOS4 is tracking and storing every location you visit with an iPhone or iPad, Apple has finally, more than week later, issued a statement on the matter,. In essence, they say that a bug made them do it, and they are going to fix it. Sort of.

While we are talking about how to lock down the Internet access on an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad so that you can safely let a child use it without having to worry about what they may access on the Internet, you may find yourself having forgotten the parental restrictions passcode (that allows you to reset parental controls to disable Safari, email, etc.), and wanting to reset it. If you haven’t jailbroken your iPod Touch or iPhone or iPad, then the standard advice – to do a factory reset through iTunes – may still be your best bet. But if you have jailbroken your iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch, then you can actually remove and reset the parental restrictions passcode without having to reset your device! (Oh happy days!) Here’s how you do it:

If you are a conscientious parent who wants to let their child use an iPod Touch (or “iTouch”) or iPad, but who wants the iPod Touch wifi disabled before you give it to them, you may be frustrated at the lack of any way to disable wifi so as to lock down the iPad or iPod Touch internet access. You can’t password protect the internet access on an iPod Touch or iPad, as there are no passwords for iPod iTouch wifi. In fact, natively, there is no way to disable or password protect the iPod Touch internet access (how stupid, Apple, get on the ball here! Give us some iPod Touch wifi apps to disable wifi!) Oh sure, you can put parental control restrictions on individual applications (Safari, Email), but your child can still turn the iPod Touch wireless internet on, and for some parents, that’s still too much of a risk (and we say “Bravo!” to them for ‘getting’ it). There is, however, an iPod Touch hack that will allow you to disable wifi on your iPod Touch or iPad, by password protecting the iPod Touch wifi on/off switch, and here it is.

Researchers have discovered that Apple’s newest operating system, iOS4, is literally spying on iPhone and iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G users’ movements, using geolocation to create a file that records every place that the user carrying the device passes through. At least as bad, the file, called “consolidated.db”, not only is on your iPhone or iPad, but is unencrypted, meaning that anybody who can access the file can read your every move.

Hugh Hefner announced yesterday that Playboy is coming to the iPad. It may just be a coincidence, but Steve Jobs has always insisted that the the app store and iTunes be squeaky clean, and family friendly, with nothing over what seemed the equivalent of a PG rating, and now the Playboy announcement comes quite literally on the heels of Steve Jobs announcing this week that he will be taking a medical leave of absence.

The Google Book Store or, perhaps more accurately, the Google eBook Store, was officially launched today. The store, stocked with at least 3 million books, allows you to download Google books from the Google eBookstore to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android phone or device, the Sony Reader, and even the Barnes and Noble Nook, as well as to read Google eBooks with your browser.