Last night Google Hotpot launched. It is a very early version of Google’s local ratings service, giving users the chance to rate local restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs – well pretty much any place really. Initially I thought (as I suppose many people did) that this is only the web interface, but I also noticed this morning that Google Maps automatically updated on my Android phone (don’t worry, I told it that it could do that) to include a fancy widget to help you rate places as you go to them.

I was thinking the other day about how I use the iPad, Nexus One, netbook, MacBook, desktop PC and so on together. I found it strange how I could accept iOS 3′s restrictions on the iPad, but when I tried to use an iPhone I found myself constantly annoyed about being unable to perform the various tasks I wanted to do.

iPad Unboxing

I suspect what it comes down to is the fact that I expect my mobile phone to perform a lot of tasks – and in many ways, I have been spoilt by the Nexus One allowing me to do pretty much anything I could ever want it to. However with the iPad, there is no precedent – there hasn’t really been a truly widespread tablet of this kind before, so coming in to it makes it a new experience.

Nexus One

Sure, it isn’t without its annoyances here and there when things go horribly wrong (and hopefully iOS 4 will go some way to address that); but I still think the iPad user experience is managed and what I would expect it to be.

So, 24 hours in to the iPad experience, what do I make of it?

In short – brilliant. There’s nothing quite like the iPad for doing some activities and working in certain ways. We all know how I feel about the iPhone – worthless piece of junk that it is. For me, the iPad offers a lot more than an iPhone and a laptop or netbook in many different ways, such that I can comfortably accommodate it in my ever-growing arsenal of hardware.

Here’s why.

iPad

I may have gotten a little impatient while waiting for my Nexus One to update to Froyo.

So I took my phone into my own hands and followed some instructions online on how to force the update onto your phone. Turns out, it’s not so painful, but the instructions are less than clear. So I combined some together, made a video, and hopefully it should be simple now!

Check out the details below.

So the big news of the past few days is that Twitter have rolled out their own Twitter application to a major mobile platform – Android (n.b. I still refuse to count Blackberry as major or a platform).

Obviously I cut straight to it and got it installed – and was quite surprised by what I found.