This week's tips focus mostly on the iPad, but one of them will work on a iPhone running iOS 4. You will learn how to stifle your iPad's loud noise making tendencies, get more out of Mail previews, use the iPad dock more effectively and how to become your own iBook publisher.

Quickly Mute Your iPad

You've carried your iPad into an important meeting and you're sitting in the backrow playing a game when, oops, your finger slips and the sound of alien blasting is loud enough to startle those around you.

Never fear, this tip is here! Grab your iPad and hold down the down side of the volume button for about three seconds. Your iPad will quickly become very quiet and the sound will be muted.

Adjust E-mail Preview to See More

The iPad has a big display that is not always used efficiently. Even Apple's own Mail app is guilty here, since it is set to preview only the first two lines of an e-mail message. If you launch the Settings app and tap "Mail, Contacts, Calendars," look for the Mail section on the right. The Preview is set to two lines by default. That's not much, and if you want you can set the preview to be between zero and five lines. If you have more e-mail to read you can make a better decision about whether you need to open it or not right away.

iPad Springboard Dock Holds Six Apps

A lot of people don't realize this immediately, but you can actually place up to six apps on the iPad Springboard dock. That is two more than the default four that Apple defaults you to. Those six apps remain static and in place as you scroll through pages of app icons on your iPad. Use these six slots to hold the apps you use the most.



Be Your Own iBook Publisher

The iBookstore offers a lot of books and many of them are free, but you don't need it to read a book. The iPad along with iTunes can import eBooks you've downloaded from other sources, but there is one limitiation the eBooks must be in ePub or PDF format.

Project Gutenberg is a good source for about 30,000 free ePub formatted books that you can download, and some of these may even be available in the iBookstore. However, we think that may be a little easier to browse through the library of free eBooks on Project Gutenberg.

In order to use your own eBook file, simply grab it with the mouse then drag and drop it into the open iTunes window and iTunes will import the book into your library. The next time you sync your iPad that book will be added to your iPad.

If you want to roll your own books see this post about making eBooks with Calibre.

Tip: this hint will also work with an iPhone running iOS 4 and iBooks 1.1.