I pre-ordered 2 x 2 iPads using two different e-mail addresses and two different package forwarders, MyUS and Bongo. Both services provide a local US telephone number you can add to your order, but I’m honestly not sure if Apple will check it. MyUS gives you an address in Bradenton, Florida and Bongo gives you one in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Shipping with Bongo

Signing up for Bongo was quite a hassle. First you need to allow them to withdraw a small amount from your account and once you can see how much in your banking records, you enter the amount to their website and you get your Bridgeport address. Luckily I signed up at Bongo about a week before Apple released pre-ordering, so I had my address ready when ordering needed to be done. The iPads were delivered on a Saturday (April 3rd) and Bongo’s office was closed, so no one was there to sign for my package. That meant it was delivered on Monday, but they shipped it to Denmark immediately after that so it arrived in Denmark on Wednesday (April 7th). For some reason you need to warn Bongo about incoming packages, which takes quite some time to fill out, I don’t quite see the reason to do so. Bongo allows you to consolidate several packages into one shipment, meaning that you need to manually release incoming packages for shipping.

Bongo shipped with DHL International Express, which cost me 105 USD for a 3.6 kg package with insurance (insurance was 7 USD). Subscription to Bongo is 15 USD a month.

Shipping with MyUS

Signing up for MyUS was a lot easier than Bongo, once I had paid the setup fee (10 USD) my account and address was active. You don’t need to warn MyUS about incoming shipments, you receive an e-mail once a new package arrives. They automatically ship packages to you, since consolidation is a subscription service. MyUS was open on Saturday and signed for my iPads when they arrived. For some reason their internal logistics are a bit worse than Bongo though, my iPads first left Florida on Monday (April 5th) and still haven’t arrived in Denmark. For whatever reason the package ended up in Romania, where they are currently trying to have it sent to Copenhagen. Since they also use DHL International Express, my suspicion is that they messed something up when sending out the package from Florida. Getting a straight response from support (which is super-fast and friendly though) has been tough, I still have no clue what’s going on and they keep blaiming DHL, which is really not of any use for me.

Shipping cost me 117 USD with insurance. There’s no subscription fee, if you don’t need consolidation.

Import tax (Denmark)

I paid about 100 USD a piece in Danish import tax. Paid using credit card to the DHL delivery guy, pretty cool!

International power plugs

There was some paranoia before launch about the iPad AC adapter being US only, but don’t worry: It’s a normal Apple AC adapter with interchangeable plugs just like the iPhone or Mac adapters. Be aware that your iPhone adapter won’t charge this baby though, it’s only 5W and the iPad needs 10W. So even though the adapters look exactly the same, they are not.

Downloading Apps

To download apps to your new iPad (even free ones) you need a US iTunes account. There’s been written quite a few guides on how to do that, Google will be your friend.

Using Netflix and ABC

If you want to use Netflix or ABC Player on your iPad you’ll need to tinker even more. They both check on IP to see if you’re outside US, so you need to make them think that you are actually inside US. To do this you need a fast VPN (since you’re looking at streaming video, heavy data traffic) and I chose HideMyNet to get started, it’s rather cheap (5 USD) and neither Netflix nor ABC have blocked it yet. To set up the VPN, chose Settings -> General -> Network -> VPN on your iPad and input the settings listed at your provider. Usually the provider will give you an iPhone guide, and it’s almost exactly the same, or at least HideMyNet had an iPhone guide. Let me know if you find an even better VPN provider, HideMyNet is definitely not the fastest.

That’s it, now all you need to do is go down to your local café and pick up a girl or ten with your new chick-magnet.

I’m not closing this blog though. The new blog will be an experiment with my dear friend Rasmus K. Kristiansen, where we’ll try and explore what’s possible in making physical interactions digital. We both know just about nothing on this field today, but will try and build a few experiments to see what’s possible and what’s not.

One of the first things we’ll try out will be building something with The Roomware Project.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D

Impressive OpenGL graphics (I know it doesn’t look like much on the screenshot, but please try it), and great gameplay. You control the car by tilting your iPhone from side to side, feels a bit like Wii for iPhone. iWii! This is so far the only app I have purchased, it cost me 59 danish kroner.

WeatherBug

Advanced weatherreport, showing wind directions and more. The feed from Copenhagen Airport is pretty good.

Eventful

If just Eventful has more danish events, this would rock. It’s a basically a concert calendar that looks at your current location (using CoreLocation) and shows events near you coming up.

Tap Tap Revenge

The classic from iPhone1.0, could easily be explained as “GuitarHero for your iPhone”. I can still spend a lot of time on this game, and the stability and interface has been dramatically improved in the iPhone2.0 version.

Talking German Phrasebook

A free travel parleur financed by ads (atleast it seems), got most comon travel-ly phrases that plays when you click. Several other languages exist, for example Spanish or French. Could come in handy one day.

Twitterific

An amazing Twitter client for the iPhone. You can easily get a quick overview of latest tweets, reply on a specific one or post a new one. Interface is fantastic – one of the best I’ve seen on the new platform.

Remote

Control iTunes on your computer from your iPhone. God, have I been waiting for this, and it works perfect. It controls iTunes using WiFi (which means your iPhone and computer should be connected to the same WiFi spot), and then acts completely as the iPod application with covers and all.

Nearpics

Shows pictures from nearby (it locates you with CoreLocation) as a slideshow. I figure this would be great when you’re in your hotelroom in another city and just wants to quickly see what this place is like. Photos from Panoramio, like Google Maps.

Twittervision

Shows latest global tweets on a worldmap, I had this running while eating dinner today, great fun.

Midomi

Hum or sing a song that you’ve forgotten the name of, and Midomi will find out what it is. Now also when you’re not infront of your computer. Here I hummed the pink panther theme and it found out.

Shazam

Sort of like Midomi, just that Shazam looks at the fingerprint of the song, which means you can’t sing or hum it, but you turn on the app and it listens to the music playing and finds out what it is. I have now tried this in two bars (Jolene and Bang&Jensen) and both places it found out exactly what was playing – it’s magnificent!

iPint

An ad-app from Carlings, where you need to balance your iPhone to move a beer from one end of the bar to the other. When it reaches the goal, you get a virtual beer that you can drink by “drinking” from your iPhone. Good concept, Carlings.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg’s app with financial information, seems to be pretty solid. When you tilt your iPhone, it displays a big graph of the stock you’re looking at. Ofcourse you can zoom by pinching the display.

Evernote

I’ve become a great fan of Evernote, the webapp where you can upload photos of documents or receipts and it OCRs the content so it’s searchable. Great for receipts especially. You can both upload notes and search current notes with the iPhone app.

Facebook

Facebook has long been the largest time consumer on my iPhone with their splendid webedition, and now their app has launched. It seems pretty solid (the webedition + 10). The biggest change is that you now can use Facebook Chat mobile, just like SMS.

Today I first read about The Flip, a smart and small video camcorder for those small videos. The camera is both simple to operate, but also simple to connect to your computer and sharing the video on e.g. YouTube afterwards.

What is most astonishing about this camera: You can get about 20 Flips, for the price of one SR12!

Imagine buying 50 Flips for your company, giving them out to employees or customers and asking them to do themed videos on what your company does for customer care, work happiness, or whatever story you want to get out there. The price is so low now, that everyone should try this out!

I am deeply in love with the concept of EveryBlock, an idea I also had way back about making an app that would sort-of interpret the danish “Døgnrapport” from the Police. I never got around to it though, and now the EveryBlock folks seems to have hit the nail on the head.

I still have no clue what to use it for, but it would be fun to have one at the office. How many offices in Copenhagen actually sport a 3D printer without being deeply into engineering or stuff? :-)

Being able to “stream” HD-quality video using Flash, is very new to me. I had no clue this was possible, but with the recent launch of HD at Vimeo, it seems to be the case. I am flabbergasted by the quality in full screen mode, not to talk about how fast it loads. It takes 2 or 3 second for a video for begin, and then streams without much choking.

Now that’s what I call TV on demand!