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technology

iPad apps

OK, I’ve had a day or so to fool around with my iPad, here are some of the apps that have stood out to me…

 

1) iPod. This is something I didn’t anticipate using since I wasn’t going to put any of my music on the ipad. There’s a new wrinkle though that has made it something I will use quite a bit. That wrinkle is called home sharing. I can stream anything from my main itunes library to my ipad inside the ipad app. Why would I do that? The ipad is a lot more comfortable than my laptop for viewing videos, plus the screen is better too. Now I can watch my stuff at home without having to take up any space on the iPad.

 

2) Reeder. This is a great RSS feed reader. It’s simple, legible, and stable. I was caught off guard by how nice it is to read my copious rss feeds in this app. It’s quick, and easy on the eyes. I like the full page view which removes just about everything except the article I’m reading. It’s hard to explain, but for an infovore like myself, this is going to be one of my most used apps. I tried using Flipboard, but I found it too busy, tooiPeng precious. Reeder does it right. Give me the article and remove all other distractions.

 

3) Email. Once again, this caught me by surprise. Reading email on this device is a real pleasure. There’s something about having the message take up the whole screen that is lovely. All the other mail clients I’ve used look and feel clumsy and busy by comparison.

 

4) iPeng. I have this app for my iPhone as well, it’s something I use quite a bit around the house. It is a remote controller for my squeezebox. I was a bit peeved to find out I had to buy it again for my iPad, and it was 10 bucks no less. Still, I knew I would use it a lot, so I sprung for it. Wow, this is a big improvement over the iPhone version! Sure, it is bigger, but it also has a lot of other refinements. For instance, I have much finer control over the volume on this as compared to the iPhone version. Plus, it is great to see the cover art so big too. If you have a squeezebox, this is well worth it.

 

5) Mobile Me Gallery. I use this app on both my Iphone and iPad so that I don’t have to take up much space on my devices but still be able to see all of my pictures. I’m still using it for that, but wow, pictures look great on this thing. It might even inspire me to go and take some more pictures…

 

6) TED talks. TED is a well known conference with great speakers. This app brings them all together and makes it easy to find the ones you’re looking for.

7) Omaha Steaks. Warning, do not use this app if you are hungry! It has a bunch of recipes, instructional videos, and, oh, they happen to have an order system just in case you want to order any steaks…

There are several games that I have been very impressed with. I’m going to give some of them their own posts and I’ll do some of them here. I want to say that I really didn’t anticipate games being much of an attraction to me but once again, put them on the iPad and they become so much more difficult to resist.

The first game I downloaded was Words with friends. It’s a scrabble like game that I started on the iPhone. Having the much larger screen really makes a difference. The other game is one I tried on a whim, it is called Bust a Marble. It is a classic match colors and things blow up kind of game. I seem to be a sucker for those sorts of things, I’ve played lots and lots of Bejewelled, this is just as addictive.

 

As I come up with more apps that are great, I’ll post about them.

 

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