New York, NY – Mayor Bloomberg Using iPad at Press Conference Instead of Index Cards

New York, NY – Mayor Bloomberg has a sleek black and silver security blanket – his iPad.

Since the mayor unveiled his handy device last month, he’s been spotted with it night and day, including last week’s once-in-a-lifetime visit with Queen Elizabeth.

“He takes the iPad with him everywhere,” said Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson. “He uses it all the time.”

Bloomberg reads his speeches off it – he was making last-minute tweaks before his appearance with the queen – gets his briefing material on it and even switched his magazine subscriptions, including Aviation Week, to his iPad.

But he still buys all city dailies, including the Daily News, said spokesman Stu Loeser.

“He’s less constrained to a briefing book, but we have one as a backup,” Loeser added.

The tech-savvy mayor showed off his spanking new tablet computer at a Staten Island civic meeting early last month, declaring that he is trying to go paperless.

“I put some notes on it [that] normally I have on my cards, and we’ll see how it works,” he said at the time.

Now he uses it to check the weather in locations he’s traveling to – sunny in Bermuda? – and consults Google maps constantly to find the quickest route for his next gig, his staff said.

And in his last few weekly radio shows, he touted two books he is reading on the iPad, including “The Fires” by Joe Flood and “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” by Daniel Okent.

Despite a security snag with his iPad that exposed his e-mail address, Bloomberg is an avid user and said he even called Apple founder Steve Jobs to tell him how much he loves his new toy.

“It’s amazing. I told Steve Jobs the other day, if he can improve on this, it’ll really be amazing. I just, every time I play with it, I discover something new,” he said recently at a technology conference in Manhattan.