For Mother’s Day I’m buying my mother the new iPad from Apple. I own one myself, and I think it will be the perfect gift for mom. Unfortunately, the iPad does not come with instructions or a manual, so I had to do some researching to find one myself.



The iPad has so many features, gadgets, apps, etc. It’s hard to wade through all the information the iPad throws at me. This is especially difficult for my own mother, who is not very tech-savvy.


If you’re going to give your mom an iPad for Mother’s Day, be sure to give her this manual as well. Save your mother the frustration and headache trying to figure it out on her own. Download iPad Manual/Instructions for her today!


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Over the past months some really great albums have been popping up. This is so perfect right now because I am completely tired of listening to everything. Even my Spotify Fresh Gems play-list is starting to not seem so fresh! Even with some rotting play-lists, there have been albums that continue to play in my head even though I stopped listening. These are the albums that I really love to listen to, even if I overplay them. If you click on the album cover images you will be redirected to that album in Spotify!! Your welcome!

Tori Amos: Night of Hunters – This album grows on you like no album you have ever heard before. Tori takes classic pieces and transforms them into her very own special gem. Each song tells a story of lovers, family, and lost friends. It truly is an epic adventure told through they keys of Amos’s grand piano.

Brite Futures: Dark Past – If its a Monday morning and the five hour energy you took is doing nothing for you, then put on this album and dance in your office chair. Brite Futures is formally known as Natalie Portmans Shaved Head. Although they changed their wicked awesome name and dropped a member of the band, they still have sick poppy beats that will simply drain the negativity out of any day. To me, every song is a hit.

Le Tigre: Live EP – This EP is a pure diamond of a gem. Since Le Tigre went on hiatus in 2005 nothing has been going on with the group. This album has high energy funk riot grrl classics that will really get you going. Every song is a bit different from the original, which kind of helps release some of my Le Tigre cravings. Although its the same songs, it’s so lovely to hear that Le Tigre are still working to put out new things!

Miike Snow: Happy to You [Deluxe edition] – This album is visually stunning. With each song comes a very interesting point of view tied in with crazy stories of divorce, the end of the world, and aliens. Every song is its own entity and can move you with a sense of miraculous inspiration. Nothing compares to this groups uniqueness, and their high quality song writing and production skills.

Grimes : Visions – Speaking of uniqueness, Grimes has crossed uniqueness with quality and demands the opposite. It’s a very big contradiction between what most people would consider great music and bad music. You simply will like the album or you wont, but for some reason I just can stop listening to it. The music video for oblivion is a great starting point if your looking to get into something completely different from what you would typically listen to.

Santigold: Master of my Make Believe – WOW. That’s what this album is. I have been overly obsessed with Santigold, formally Santogold (name change due to legal reasons back in 2008). Every beat, every lyric, and every music video will bring you in and never let you go. There is everything from dance music to sick hip hop beats that will really get your mojo flowing out of control. Although this album just came out in the states, I see a very bright future for Santigold, it’s just a matter of if she wants it.

These albums are all amazing, and while I’m designing your graphics, creating your mobile applications, or even creating your website, I am totally listening to one of these albums most likely. These guys continuously inspire me to think better and inspire others.

We have only recently began developing iPhone and iPad applications, but who knew we would take it on so gracefully and naturally. With the successful launch of our first iPhone application for the iTunes App Store, we were able to spread our wings into other markets. We have since developed two other applications, giving us a well developed sense of estimated completion dates, pricing, and exact quality. It really has been a wonderful adventure to learn such an amazing and state of the art system. What clients don’t seem to understand is how everything works.

The best thing for anyone wanting to make an app isn’t money, its time. Rather than putting a ton of money into an app and forcing your team to push it out, creating rational and reasonable deadlines is number one. We are living in the age of the great race where everyone wants everything yesterday. You can tell which apps were massaged to perfection and which apps were pushed out with money and harsh deadlines.

A great app isn’t made in a month, no matter how many people are breathing down your neck! Finding the time to beta test, design the UI, program to perfection, follow the one hundred and one rules the app store demands you follow, creating the concepts, the graphics, the app store profile, etc. will never be done well with a rushed deadline, and you can expect your app to crash over the weirdest things!

Here are some good examples!

Flixel: Flixel is an iPhone app that really does something quite unique. Flixel is an app that allows a user to create a GIF animation by simply taking a photo of something and erasing the part that you want to move. The bad part is that it’s extremely slow and glitchy. When you try to post to tumblr, your gifs do not move, also having to scratch everything off of your image can be quite tedious, and the app has crashed on me several times. With only 2 and a half stars as its official rating, this is the perfect example of a rushed application. It has a wonderful idea, great concept, and good graphics, but it has so many problems that nobody gave a darn to fix because of self inflicted deadlines. Adding just one more month to their process would have sent this app over the edge, where it should be today.

Spotify: I love Spotify, so it pains me to diss its iPhone application a lot! Please go out and download its services for your Mac or Windows platform. With only five bucks a month for unlimited music, its a great purchase. Unfortunately, the app was obviously released and even updated under a rushed deadline. The app is simple enough. You can create a playlist, search for music, share music, see what your friends are listening to, etc. The bad thing is the crazy amount of bugs that are scattered throughout multiple types of iPhones and various versions. For example, the entire view will shift making everything unclickable. Some people report the app crashing after a few songs play. The music sometimes just stops. The app should be a perfect five star rated app, but because of all of its issues, its rated only three and a half stars in the iTunes App Store. It increased since its last update of only two and a half stars. If they would have just beta tested this app for 2 more weeks, that would have kept their rating up and more people would be using Spotify.

Facebook: Facebook for the iPhone use to be terrible. It would crash all of the time, and its buttons would never work. Pictures would load that were not even the right photo, and sometimes messages were never sent. Today the Facebook application for the iPhone has only a handful of bugs, but these are still due to rushed deadlines. The most annoying bug I have seen on this app is when I have a message. Sometimes the message shows up, and sometimes it only acts like its going to show up. You can’t play videos in the timeline at all. The really strange part about this whole thing is that it doesn’t have an official rating at the moment. There is a very good reason for this and its because everyone thinks this app is horrible. There is a total of 250,760 reviews, yet there isn’t an official rating. Sounds to me like Facebook paid a lot of money to Apple for that to happen when they should have paid their developers to take a little more time and smooth out all of the bugs.

So with the right amount of time, the right amount of money, the right idea, and Helium Design Co, I can guarantee that your app will be more successful than Spotify, Facebook, or Flixl. If your interested in our prices, feel free to contact me robert@heliumdesignco.com.

I have found the most amazing coffee shop in downtown Seattle. Great staff, friendly people, and great music. Its the perfect place to work becuase you don’t have distracting jazz music blairing in your ears. It can be a hot mess at Starbucks because they tend to play crappy music, have crappy service, and don’t offer anything special to their customers besides their not so special promotions that they force down the throats of many.

Maybe its just the fact that I use to work at a Starbucks that really has made me a bias coffee shop goer. I don’t really know, but I am certainly in love with this hole in the wall. Its a little dingy, its a little rough, but its absolutly its own special entity. I don’t even mind the long bus ride to get here. The staff is super cute.

The music is typically streaming off of this indie music radio station in Seattle called KEXP. They play really underground, culture filled music that many people can appreciate. Right now they are playing new music from the Shins, and earlier they were playing Miike Snow!

There is tons of art haniging up, and scattered throughout the shop, of which is super special beacause its obviously created by some of the local artists off the street. Its really amazing. They promot local events around the neighborhood that range from tattoo parties, to burlesque shows, to local art shows. I love it. Its not main stream, and thats something that doesn’t come often.

Bedlam has a really cool open mic night on Tuesdays at 7pm if anyone is interested in checking out the place when something is actually going on, but if your expecting the typical, then don’t come. If I had a choice between taking the easy rout and buying a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks by my house or tracking an hour out of my day to get to Bedlam, I would choose Bedlam. I love it here, and its finally starting to feel more like home.

Go there you squares!

I have just released my first phone skin collection for YumSkins! I created the collection based on images used for this website. I really like the look and feel of our website as of late, and it has inspired every aspect of my work since. I thought it would be a fitting way to celebrate the current design, and where my thoughts are creatively.

The skins are part of YumSkins which is currently in beta testing. If you don’t have a YumSkins printer, you can still visit our collection and download our designs as wallpapers! Click on the image or the link below to get my skins!

Download my YumSkins here: here.

These high definition wallpapers for your iPhone are from the archives of Helium Design Co. I spent a lot of time hand crafting each image, and I hope somebody gets some good use out of them! I think space is the new blue for some reason.

There is something so cool about whats outside of this planet. What are other species like on other planets? I can only imagin the beauty that is just waiting to be seen an experienced. None of this is possible and only hypothetical in terms of what glaxies, or anything in far away universes actually looks like.

The way scientist are able to hypothosis what each unknown element is in the universe is by taking photos of the gasses around stars and galaxies. A computer is able to generate colors, depth, etc. by determining the gasses and how light reflects off of them. Sounds pretty complicated really.

Space is a big part of pop culture right now as well as thinking about the future and how amazing it is going to be. People want to know the unknown. Especially from my generation where we think that dark colors mixed with bright designs is essential when your trying to be cool. Space is natural, and contains all of the unspoken requirements to be considered a big part of American pop culture. It has been for a very long time. Its bright, its heavy, its all around you…

Even before man was able to set foot on the moon. Comic books from the old, less technology driven ages would create these far off guesses of what things looked like outside of this universe and other planets.

I believe outer space will forever be apart of the mainstream culture in America, and everywhere else for that matter. Even our ancestors thought that space was amazing. They would write about it and guess what lied beyond the stars, creating stories, and ridiculous beliefs of space people coming back to get us.

Well enjoy what I have given you, and share it with your friends. I spent so much time creating these from straight up scratch, so enjoy. These are super cool and beautiful for the iPhone 4S and all previous versions of the iPhone. Plus they freaking look beautiful!

Santigold has just released her new music video for the her new song “Big Mouth”! The video is beautifully hand-drawn in a simplistic style. I really love this whole video, and the song is amazing. I’ve been waiting since 2008 for new Santigold material. Enjoy “Big Mouth” below!

As of yesterday, pod2g released an official redsn0w jailbreak that is sure to unlock any iPhone that is not the iPhone 4S or iPad 2. At first redsn0w 10b1 wasn’t working very well. I thought I would have to restore my phone because I thought that I had bricked it. Fortunatly, I just re-tethered using 9b8, and all was well in the world of Roberts iPhone 4. Then I did a google search today for a fix. I knew that my iPhone was running on software 5.0.1, but the jailbreak used the 5.0 firmware file. This caused a lot of problems including an error while uploading the ramdisk during the jailbreak that also said something about the firmware. This led my google search. I found out that redsn0w released an update just a few hours ago that fixes a lot of the issues people have been having with the 10b1 jailbreak. You can download redsn0w 10b2 here.

Everything worked fine. I made sure to slide the power off and then did the reset into DFU mode. I proceeded with the jailbreak and unchecked Cydia based on the tutorial guidelines. It worked perfectly, until I noticed that some of my Cydia apps were broken and the apps where not showing up in my settings. It took some time, but basically you need to update Cydia. You can download the file here.

To update you will need to install iFile through Cydia. You can get a free version of iFile by adding http://cydia.xsellize.com/. Click on the package source and look for iFile. Once installed click on this link in your Safari browser on your iPhone and click “open in”. Select iFile. This will open iFile and launch another set of options. Click install. Reboot your iPhone. The update should be complete. Now launch Cydia.

Click on changes and you should see a black bar on the top that says a bunch of stuff. You may get a few errors. Cydia is still working on fixing some of the repos that are not showing up. I have a lot of custom repo’s so this is why some people are experiencing further technical difficulties in regards to errors when downloading packages. Eventually, if you keep trying as I did, you will get through the congested servers and see a couple of updates. The big one you should be looking for is Mobile Substrate. The update should be numbered in red under changes and you should update all. Reboot your phone after the update is complete.

There you have it. A bit of a rocky jailbreak in my opinion, but it’s better than being tethered!

Every year we go out to the malls and other retail outlets to find our gifts. We think, it has to be cheaper than going any other day. I mean, December is the month of sales. We did go out to find these deals, but there really wasn’t much to save in regards to time.

You can find all sorts of deals if you look hard enough. But then you have to wait in line until the end of time and deal with rude people in overcrowded places.

The next thing you know the cashier is rude to you, and they mishandle your gift. As soon as I got home, one of my glass pieces was completely destroyed! I can’t believe the hassle Xmas has officially turned into. It took us all day just to buy four gifts for three individuals. I’m glad I didn’t buy anymore than that. I would be in line right now!

My recommendation to anyone who still has gifts to get is to get them today. There are plenty of online sales going on, and tons of places are either offering free shipping or discounted prices. Ebay.com is a great place to get gifts for people that you don’t really want to spend a lot of time or money on. There are some risk with ebay.com, for example you might not get the gift in time so you should make sure the shipper is guaranteeing pre-Xmas day shipping. This can greatly reduce the variety of gifts you may be able to find for your loved ones, but that’s not to say its harder than going out and looking for any scraps that may still be lying around Target, or the Mall.

Amazon.com is still a great place to go Xmas shopping because the items listed are all guaranteed to be delivered pre-Xmas day. There is a huge variety to select from. You can even check out the quality of the item, for example if the item has a box it comes in, if it’s been used, or if its slightly damaged. Sometimes the perfect gift can be slightly dented, for example a Gibson Guitar.

My point is to not go shopping in the doomed malls and outlet stores this week. The discovery and the prices are not worth it at all! You can find something more special online for your loved ones, and relax while doing it.

I found it on perezhilton.com! Its live see it live now gaga marry the night official music video released right now!!!!!

I understand Lady Gaga is way to famous, and her ideas are so crazy they seem pretentious at times. But I must say, Lady Gaga continues to impress me every time. I am a long time fan of Lady Gaga. Joshua and I both use to stalk her on the internet and watch her grow. I remember when Gaga was in all of the gay pride shows down in Cali. She was on the Hills, a show that I can’t stand to watch, and I remember that blowing me away. Paparazzi was a music video that I will never forget, and her catchy pop interludes were always on point. We love Gaga so much. Joshua and I saw Gaga in Chicago right before she blew up. The House of Blues was so small that another show was added right after that. It was the most amazing experience.

So as you can tell, I am a Gaga SUPER-FAN. I can write books on the subject, but I don’t really have all day because MARRY THE NIGHT IS ABOUT TO BE ON!!!! I can’t wait. I am going to have it streaming live right here on the site thanks to Perezhilton.com You know you want to watch the marry the night official music video!!

I found it on perezhilton.com! Its live see it live now gaga marry the night official music video released right now!!!!!

Thanks to Perez for this video!!

Thanks to http://www.perezhilton.com/