Unleashing My iPad

Lisa Louise Cooke.  Turn Your iPad into a Genealogy Powerhouse.  
c2012, www.lisalouisecooke.com.

Most of the genealogy books at my public library are for in-library use only.  I was glad to see Lisa Louise Cooke's book, Turn Your iPad into a Genealogy Powerhouse, on the shelf recently and available for check-out.  This book had actually been on my gift hint list for a while so I was happy to finally read it.

We've had an iPad for over a year and a half, plus another tablet computer, so I was pretty familiar with a lot of the tips she covers in her book.  I liked the way she organized tablet apps by category - file sharing, genealogy, note taking, organization apps, plus many others, so I just skimmed through parts of the book.  But, as with any good read, I learned some new tricks.

I've been using Evernote for several years, primarily for note taking when watching webinars and for making to-do-lists.  It took reading Cooke's comments about adding iPad photos into Evernote for me to realize that my tablet computer can function as a scanner.  No more hunting change for the copier or trying to find its location in an unfamiliar research facility!  (Note: just remember to ask permission first before taking photos of document pages.)  Once I add the photos into Evernote, they are easy to tag, put in a folder, or transfer to other software.

My other favorite section was her comments on apps that let you view videos which need Adobe Flash Play.  Its inability to use Adobe Flash is about the only negative I see in our iPad so we are currently looking at the options she suggests as work around apps for this problem. One is a free app, the others are reasonably priced for what they purport to do.

Whether you are an experienced table computer user or a newbie, Lisa Louise Cooke's book is filled with helpful hints about apps and ways to use your tablet in your genealogy research.  The book was definitely well worth the time to read and the notes I took.  Check it out yourself.