ReadWriteWeb

According to Dow Jones, some colleges have banned the iPad from their networks. Princeton and Cornell, for example, are seeing major networking and connectivity issues that mirror the problems many users are seeing with their iPads at home. Princeton also decided to share details about the issues it is seeing on its network in a detailed statement that could help Apple diagnose and fix the connectivity issues that have plagued the iPad since launch.

Some new owners of Apple's slate computer, the iPad, are having issues with the device's Wi-Fi connection. Multiple forum postings, both on Apple's own support site and elsewhere, have users reporting that they're experiencing weak signals in an area where their other Internet-connected devices have no issues. Another common complaint, which appears to be related, is a dropped connection. Some iPads lose their connection to the Wi-Fi network, then prompt the user to re-enter the network password. But doing so doesn't work. The only "fix" seems to be either shutting Wi-Fi off and back on again via the settings, or worse, rebooting the computer...err...iPad.

In addition to confusion over charging that we covered yesterday, a number of other issues have come to light to mar the iPad's debut.

The most common, according to Apple's iPad support forums, are weak and intermittent Wi-Fi signals and overheating.

The heat issue might make the beach bums ReadWriteWeb mentioned earlier as early adopters default to other devices - or make the long move to Peter's Sink, Utah.

Now that we've finally embarked on a future of tablet computing (didn't we do that ten years ago?) with the iPad, we immediately got to wondering: What does iPad adoption look like across the country? Luckily, online ad network Chitika has offered some numbers on what its seeing for iPads broken down over time and state by state.

Chitika took a look at where and when it was seeing hits from iPads and built a real-time page to show you what's going on with the release of the latest and greatest in Internet gadgetry.

On Saturday Apple let the public get their hands on their newest creation, the iPad, setting off a flood of hype and media coverage which has likely yet to reach its peak. Yes, this is yet another post about the iPad, and my apologies go to those who are tired of being choked by the frenzy of stories surrounding the iPad launch, but a few things I learned from this weekend might come in handy for undecided developers.

It is fairly evident that the iPad and cloud computing are deeply tied to each other. A selection of storage and cloud management apps now are available on the iPad. So, we want to know: "How will the iPad affect cloud computing?"

But before we get to that question, let's take a look at last week's poll. We asked: "Is Oracle a Cloud company?"

The iPad makes a perfect coffee table book and photo browser but a new application called Art Authority sends the touchscreen interface back through centuries of humanity's finest imagery.

Built by 1980's Apple engineer Alan Oppenheimer, Art Authority (iTunes link, $9.99) is a beautiful way to get some art education and ponder the human condition while flipping through more than 40,000 historic works of art on your iPad. Oppenheimer calls the app a public domain and web art browser. It makes good use of Wikipedia, has a great breadth of Western art and is the kind of app that just makes sense for this platform.

Thanks to a deal with Apple, books from Smashwords, the e-book self-publishing service for independent publishers and authors, will be featured in the new iBookstore on the iPad. There are already about 2,000 Smashwords books in the iBookstore today and as the company's CEO Mark Coker told us, the company plans to add another 2,000 to 3,000 books in the next few weeks.

Interestingly, Apple - which is famous for strictly controlling the content of the App Store - seems to be more than happy to abdicate control over the inventory in the iBookstore to its partners.

One of the iPad's biggest selling points is its potential as an e-Reader. The included iBooks application and the optional downloadable Amazon Kindle app, for example, provide hundreds of thousands of books to read, all in a relatively standard format: swipe horizontally to flip a page. iPad magazines, however, are trying to be far more creative. As we've mentioned before, the new magazine-style applications include everything from video to music within their pages, plus interactive features and clickable ads. But one problem with these innovative new 'zines is that they each do their own thing, in their own way. While this early adopter applauds the innovations we're seeing on the iPad platform, the mainstream user may find the variations confusing.

With the iPad's arrival this weekend, a holiday weekend for many Americans, this new iPad owner had the chance to see the device in action. In fact, "see" is the operative word here. Not, "play with myself," as is the case with most new tech gadgets I purchase. Instead, I simply watched from a distance as, over the course of the day, the iPad found its way into the hands of nearly every family member from ages 4 months to 87 years old. The incredible thing? No one walked away confused, frustrated or disappointed. It did precisely what they wanted it to do and with such ease that my tech support was not required - not even once - allowing me to sit back and relax...with an old-fashioned, paper-based magazine.