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Daily iPad App: ReaddleDocs
ReaddleDocs, if you haven't used it, is one of the first document management apps to land in the App Store. Version 3.0 of the app recently landed and it's a significant update that helps ReaddleDocs retain its title as one of the top document managers and viewers for the iPad. By far, ReaddleDocs biggest selling point is its ability to import files from a variety of online sources and save them for offline viewing. It can import files stored in online services like SugarSync, Box.net, DropBox, Google Docs and a handful of other smaller services. ReaddleDocs can also pull down documents from an external FTP, SFTP or WebDav server. It does support Apple's older MobileMe service, but not the newer iCloud service. Besides online services, the app lets you import files wirelessly via an IP address provided by the application, or via a USB connection and iTunes file sharing. A built-in web browser also lets you capture full web pages or partial web pages for offline reading. If you are like me and receive a lot of documents via email, ReaddleDocs also taps into the iOS mail app and lets you import any attachments, manually or automatically. Once you have a collection of documents, ReaddleDocs will let you sort them by name, type, date and size. It also lets you place them into folders which is great for organizing a large collection of files. As a file manager, ReaddleDocs has the ability to rename, copy, move, delete, email and zip files. It also has a toggle to select all or deselect all files which is very handy when you want to manage several files at once. There's also a new "Recents" section that provides quick acces to documents you recently opened. Besides being a useful file manager, ReaddleDocs is also a very good document viewer. It supports PDF, Microsoft Office, Open Office Writer files and Apple iWork files. Other file formats, though, will have to be converted to PDF before being imported into ReaddleDocs. Once a document is in PDF format, though, ReaddleDocs lets you annotate it in several different ways. You can add bookmarks, create outlines, highlight text, add notes and even mark up PDF text with underlines and strikeouts. When opened, most documents were formatted properly and easy to navigate by swiping from page to page. I did encounter a few hiccups, like the app copying some HTML code along with the text when I used the built-in web browser to capture content, but these problems were few and far between. Overall, ReaddleDocs is a very capable and very flexible document reader and file manager. With a price tag of $5, it's a no-brainer for iPad owners. You can grab ReaddleDocs from the App Store.
Daily iPad App: Codify
I've been diving into some rudimentary (very rudimentary, trust me) iOS coding lately, and as soon as I picked up an iPad, one of the first thoughts that occurred to me was the idea of having a version of Xcode (the IDE that Mac and iOS developers use to make their apps) available for the platform. There are plenty of text editors available, and even some designed to actually write code on Apple's tablet. But I haven't seen a way to actually run that code -- until now, that is, with Codify. To be clear, Codify isn't a Cocoa development tool like Xcode, so you still can't write and run iOS apps right on the device (though I have to believe Apple is indeed working on some sort of Xcode for iPad, somewhere in the bowels of Cupertino, right?). But it is a development environment for Lua, a lightweight and simple object-oriented programming language used in all sorts of places. You can basically write and run Lua right inside Codify, which gives you a very powerful tool for creating your own small apps, prototypes and games right there on the iPad. There are a few advantages and drawbacks to this. The advantage here is that the iPad of course uses a touch interface, so Codify has really smartly invoked touch in a few different ways while you're coding. To see coordinates or colors, for example, you can just drag your finger around on the screen. And you can scroll right through your code, your objects, or Lua's documentation just like browsing through anything else on your iPad. While I'm not hugely familiar with Lua (yet), the whole experience seems really great, and should hopefully convince other app makers to start looking at using iPads in this way more. The biggest drawback, however, is that as far as I can tell, there's no real way to get your code out of the app, other than just cutting and pasting it off to email or somewhere else. There's also no (official) way to get other files like sprites and sounds into the app, though the FAQ says that's being worked on. These are more obviously issues with the iPad and iOS itself, of course, rather than the app, though it would be nice at least to see FTP or Dropbox integration. But I do like the idea of using my iPad for actually writing code. That bigger touchscreen just seems to encourage creativity, and while most code writing in the past has been the domain of the desktop, why shouldn't there be apps designed to bring code and app creation to more and more people with simpler and better tools? Codify is a great first step in that direction -- it's $7.99 on the App Store right now.
Daily iPad App: SoundCloud
Popular social music network SoundCloud released its iPad app on Thursday and we took the app for a quick spin. For those that have never used SoundCloud, it's an online service that lets you upload and share audio clips with other SoundCloud members. The clips can be short sound bites, music tracks or even audio books you create yourself. It has a strong social component that lets you promote your tracks or discover new tracks. It launched in 2007 and has rivaled MySpace as a place for musicians to distribute their music and interact with fans. The iPad app does a nice job of combining the social aspect of SoundCloud with the music discovery and playback features. The app uses a multi-pane interface with a left-side tool bar that has four selectable items. There's a profile section that lets you see your account information, a track section that lists new music in your stream, a comments section that lists the feedback you've received on your tracks and a search section that lets you find new music and new people to follow. This multi-pane interface makes it easy to view multiple layers of information at one time. You can click on the profile icon which opens a pane containing your account information. You can then click on a link to "Your Likes" which displays the tracks you have favorited in a second pane. A click on one of your favorite tracks opens a third pane that lets you control music playback, share the track on twitter, and more. You can only display two panes at a time, but you can swipe between these panes to select the ones you want to view. This layout makes it easy to use the app in portrait as well as landscape view. The SoundCloud app does a nice job with the social features of the service. You can comment on a track right from the app and share the track on Facebook, Twitter and tumblr. The app also does a good job interconnecting members and music. You can listen to a track and view that member's profile. You can see their followers and the music they like and so on. You can spend a lot of time travelling from one profile to another, adding new tracks and new follows along the way. The one thing missing from the iPad app is the ability to view other people's comments on a track when it is playing. On the SoundCloud website, other people's comments will pop up when a track is played. You can read the comments, read responses and add your own. On the iPad, you can add a comment at any point in the track, but you can't see what other people have said on the fly. This isn't a deal breaker and I imagine it's a difficult feature to implement on a mobile device like a tablet. (Good news! SoundCloud reached out to me and the ability to view comments as the track plays back is there. You just have to fullscreen the track to see them. I never used the fullscreen view because I love the multi-pane view so much. I was happily tapping away, finding new follows and looking at new tracks that i never checked out the fullscreen view. If you want to find the comments for a track, just start playing it back and click the fullscreen button. Voila! There they are, and they pop up just like the SoundCloud website,too.) The app is very responsive and music streaming is quick, with minimal buffering over a WiFi connection (I did not test 3G). Music plays in the background, so you can launch SoundCloud, fire up some tracks and move on to another task. Track information also appears on the lock screen, but there are no playback controls that'll launch SoundCloud when you unlock your device. Besides listening to music, you can also record sounds using the iPad and its built-in microphone. When you're done recording, you can upload the clip to your account. The iPad app is a nice addition to SoundCloud and is a must have for iPad owners that use the service. The SoundCloud app is available for free from the App Store. The service is also free, but does require a login and account. %Gallery-137838%
Daily iPad App: The Professional Chef
I'm not a professional chef, but I love to cook and serve up 30 plates of food each day. Like many amateur cooks, I struggle with recalling the differences between sauteing and braising and what makes a roux, a roux. That is why I was so excited to see The Professional Chef land on the iPad. Created by John Wiley & Sons and the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the digital version of the chef's ultimate bible contains 1,200 pages filled with cooking information. There are 100 videos, 850 recipes, 175 figures, and 750 photographs of food. There's so much content packed into its 36 chapters, it's almost overwhelming, but in a good way. The app uses Inkling, an interactive learning framework for the iPad, to organize and present its content. The app was designed as both a learning tool for professional chefs and a reference guide for amateurs. Besides its wealth of food information, The Professional Chef includes quizzes to measure your mastery of the content and a searchable glossary to help you brush up on your cooking terms. And if the glossary isn't enough, you can also access Google and Wikipedia from within the app. There's even a virtual notebook that's useful for storing bookmarks, highlights and other content you want to review. The Professional Chef has a social component which includes a note-taking and discussion feature that lets you share your thoughts with others. These social features are great for chefs that want to share what they know or have discovered about the techniques in the book. They also fit in perfectly with a classroom scenario. Students can add notes and discussion topics to content within the book and then view responses left by the instructor and other students. You'll have to create an account to access the social portion of the learning network, but you can login using your email or Facebook account. The interface is clean and very usable. You can tell the designers spent a lot of time organizing even the smallest details, like the navigation bar on the left which shows your relative location within the book and within a chapter. There's also an adjustable font size so you can pick one suitable for reading close up and another for when you are using the iPad book in the kitchen. This attention to detail makes using The Professional Chef a pleasurable experience. What really sets this iPad book apart from others is its stunning content. The cooking and food information is very well organized into discrete chapters and each chapter is subdivided into individual topics. My favorite is the chapter on cooking eggs which is broken down into frying, poaching, scrambling, omelets and more. Each individual sub-section has a high-res picture of the topic, a comprehensive description of the food item and details on how to cook it. Most sections also include a short video that demonstrates the cooking technique. The video isn't from your typical homegrown cooking show either; each one is a high quality production that makes the recipe or cooking technique look stunning. The video of the fried eggs will leave you wishing every meal was breakfast. Best of all, the book covers more than just recipes. It contains cooking information and buying tips so you can learn how to identify the right type of food, select the freshest item and discover the best way to prepare it. The 36-chapter Professional Chef costs a pricey $49.99, but you do get a wealth of cooking information for that money. Value-wise, I think it's worth it to get all that information packaged into one iPad app, but the casual chef who doesn't need all this information may not agree. Those who prefer not to buy the whole book can purchase individual chapters for $2.99 each, and the soup chapter (Chapter 14) is available for free. You can purchase The Professional Chef from the App Store or check out a demo on Inkling's website. %Gallery-137734%
Daily iPad App: The Weather Channel
Today's Daily iPad App is The Weather Channel for iPad. The Weather Channel has had an iPad app practically since the iPad launched in early 2010, but The Weather Channel has released version 3.0 of the app, and it's a complete rewrite. Besides an entirely new UI, the new Weather Channel for iPad app borrows some features from other popular iOS weather apps like full-screen animated weather backgrounds for local weather forecasts and in-line hourly forecasts. There's also an improved mapping feature which lets you view the current weather in select cities around the world on an interactive spinning globe. Of course, having an entire cable news channel behind your app means it can also do some things the other weather apps can't, like provide instant news updates and stories, complete with a built-in tweet viewer for The Weather Channel personalities like the constantly over-excited Jim Cantore. The app also offers a nice selection of videos, which include weather forecasts as well as clips from Weather Channel TV shows. The problems with the new Weather Channel for iPad app, however, are the same as with the old app: the advertising. There's simply too much of it. There's actually so much it becomes distracting. Yeah, The Weather Channel for iPad is a free app and they've got to make their money back some way, but it would be nice if TWC offered an in-app purchase for $0.99 or so that allowed people to get rid of the ads. Those ads really do keep a good weather app from being a great one. The Weather Channel for iPad is a free download and requires iOS 4.2 or later and if you want to take advantage of the animated backgrounds, an iPad 2 or later.
Daily iPad App: Seahaven GT
Seahaven GT ($0.99) offers a simple iPad adaptation of Free Cell solitaire. I first encountered Seahaven GT a few years back and thought it was a terrific implementation of a basic card game. It is fun to play and has really satisfying interaction elements. Then a few months ago, I noticed it had disappeared from the App Store. So I pinged Dave Hardin, its developer to see what had happened to it. Turns out that life had interfered with his iOS work and he had pulled the app for the time being. It wasn't until mid-October that crises cleared up and Hardin was able to re-introduce the app back to the store. Now that it's returned, here's your opportunity to pick up the game. It only costs a buck and offers a good value for the money. Seahaven GT is not a particularly shiny adaptation. It doesn't have tons of bells and whistles or any special effects. What it does have is solid game play. I have played this game a lot and it just...works. When you drag cards around, they do what you expect them to. When you double-tap them, they make sensible hops up to the free cells. When you reach the end of a game, the app knows it and provides a pleasing animation / sound effects. There is a lot to be said for apps that are unspectacular, whose joy comes through the actual game play rather than the ornamentation around them. If you're a card game enthusiast, give Seahaven GT a try. I'd love to see Hardin given the opportunity to develop more card games (hint *Spider* hint) if this re-launch takes off.
Daily iPad App: Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico originated as a German board game) and has made the leap to iOS. It'ss a multiplayer strategy game that allows players to assume a different role in each round so everyone gets a chance to try something new. In this game, you're a colonist trying to grow crops on a plantation in Puerto Rico, which you will then sell or ship to another destination. You also build a city that provide goods and other functions that aid you in creating a productive farm and eventually govern the island. In solo mode, you're playing against two computer-generated characters. Throughout it all, you're trying to earn victory points in your quest to gain dominance over the island. Puerto Rico makes the transition to the iPad pretty well, and Ravensburger does a great job with the graphics, though the game controls are a bit fuzzy and hard to deduce. I highly recommend going through the extensive tutorial before playing the game, especially if you never played the original board game. Even after going through the tutorial, I found myself relying on in-game hints until I got used to the controls and gameplay. It's a challenging, fun game and the iPad version is available for $7.99.
Daily iPad App: Instapaper 4
Like to read? Got an iPhone or iPad? You really ought to have Marco Arment's US$4.99 Instapaper, which just got an upgrade to version 4.0. Instapaper's free web service allows you to flag stories to 'Read Later' with a single click, and you can always get your complete reading list via the site. For reading on the go, however, the cached stories in the app are ideal. The Instapaper app now features an iPad-specific article list interface; it swaps out the simple headline-by-headline scroll for a more spacious grid arrangement, complete with the first few lines of the story. The iPhone version has been streamlined too, with story excerpts, bylines and site information clearly visible. iOS 5 users get true hardware brightness control, making it easier to read under varying lighting conditions. Instapaper wants to let you know what your friends are reading, so now in addition to the stories flagged by your Instapaper-specific social connections, you can also browse all the linked stories posted by your Twitter and Facebook friends or by the Tumblr microblogs you follow (Arment is a founder and former CTO of Tumblr). For Instapaper subscribers who choose to fork over $1 a month to support the service, the app now includes full-text search of all the articles you've ever saved to Instapaper -- downright handy. You can see the full list of new features at Arment's blog. If you're only using Instapaper via the website, you're not getting the full-on experience. There are very few apps that have made themselves a home on the front screens of both my iPhone and iPad, and even fewer that rate a spot in the app Dock for both devices. Instapaper has been firmly lodged there since version 1, and I don't anticipate pulling it out anytime soon.
Daily iPad App: Agendas
One of the places where a lot of paper still flies about is for businesses and government are agendas. You walk into a meeting, pick up a paper agenda and, unless you're a reporter who holds onto it for future reference, tend to toss it in the recycle bin afterward. It's a huge waste of paper. However, more businesses and government organizations are adopting iPads, and this is where the beauty of Agendas comes in. The $9.99 app digitizes the typical paper agenda and turns it into an interactive experience. Tap new agenda to start a fresh agenda. You can then add elements such as photos, text and real-time polls that can be answered by other people with Agendas loaded on their iPads. Publish the agenda by pressing the talk bubble in the menu bar. You can choose a name for your iPad and an entry code. Once the agenda is published, other Agendas users can access this agenda by typing in the entry code. The attendees can ask questions through Agendas, and positive feedback on the question from other attendees will flag the presenter to let that person know to add it to the agenda. Once you have a complete agenda, you can print it out for those desiring a paper copy or email a PDF. A meeting length indicator lets you adhere to a certain time so you can keep on track. Agendas can be updated on the fly to add and remove items as needed during the meeting. In the top right corner of each agenda section, you can tap a pencil icon to make person notes on each section of the agenda. The icon changes to black if you've done this, so you know if you need to go back and refer to a section later. The notes are included on emailed and printed agendas. Agendas is a great app if you're looking for a program to use to decrease paper usage for your meetings and utilize iPads in the office more efficiently. I would love to see for this to be adopted at my day job for meetings.
Daily iPad App: 2Do
I'm not exactly the paradigm of organization -- it took me years to get a regular calendar set up and working, my email inbox is usually a mess of various reminders and things that need replying to, and my present to-do system is usually just whatever piece of paper I can grab in real life and scribble some tasks on. But I do want to be more organized, and so when I finally bought my iPad last week, I poked around the App Store for solutions and tried to find one that 1) was easy to use and pleasing to the eye and that 2) I would actually stick with. Things is generally recognized as the champion of the bunch, and it's very nice, but at $19.99, it's an investment as iPad apps go, especially if you're not sure how long you'll stick with it. At $6.99, 2Do is a more reasonable place to start, and after playing around with it and a few other to-do apps, it's currently my system of choice. Before I get into specific features, I will say that the most exciting thing about 2Do is that it does what all great iPad apps should: really use the immersiveness of the device to model real-world objects and situations. As you can see above, the app is color-coded by project, and uses a nice "legal pad in a leather binder" theme to keep everything laid out. One of the biggest benefits of 2Do is that rather than just an arbitrary list of tasks, everything can be assigned a start date and a due date, so you're not just laying out things you need to do -- you're actually organizing them into a calendar that you can then filter views from, looking at only the tasks for today, tasks in the next week, and so on. Creating a task is as easy or as hard as you want to make it -- you can either just press the + button and type a name in, or you can go through and add the aforementioned dates, notes, alarms, or even voice notes, map locations, and pictures or URL to the specific task. You can also create checklists or full projects to work on, which are lists of subtasks to work through that have their own date and data associated with them. Checking a task off is satisfying, as it should be -- a little pencil pops up to cross it off your list, and all of the tasks you've finished can be seen in the "Done" tab (unlike other apps, which will just remove them off the list completely). The app is very easy and quick to use -- the only hitch I ever came across was when the keyboard sometimes popped up in portrait mode, and would cover up the "Close" button on the bottom of the task editing screen. Putting it at the top of the task seems like it would be a better option, and a little easier to find, in my opinion. But other than that little issue, everything runs smoothly, and there are some really cool implementations (like selecting multiple days on the calendar to see all tasks associated with those days, or an actual clock-faced time selector) to play with. 2Do will sync up with MobileMe (and presumably iCloud with iOS 5), the Toodledo service, or with your PC or Mac via a sync application, and all of the extras that you'd expect in a full-featured to-do app (like email alarms and repeated reminders) are all there as well. There's an update coming soon, too, with even more features and tweaks to the layout. It's definitely a quality app with a solid interface, and an excellent choice for anyone looking to get organized. As for me, let's hope I stick with it -- I'm not sure I've quite mapped my mind to 2Do's system quite yet, but I'm working on it. The app itself is a great tool, but it's up to me to make good use of it.
Daily iPad App: Facebook
I won't lament on how it took ages for Facebook to come to the iPad, but with the program's release earlier today, users finally get an interface tailored especially to the iPad. If you're up to speed on the ongoing changes to Facebook's web interface, then the iPad app will look familiar. As with the website, you're presented with a split screen with Facebook chat on the right and statuses on the left. Top stories appear first with recent stories beneath. However, tapping the blue box in the upper-left corner doesn't allow you to toggle a particular top story off your feed like the Facebook website does. And, it's pretty buggy for an app that's been in development for awhile. Casually scrolling through my news feed caused the app to crash several times. Along the top, you can update your status, add a photo or check in. Above that are the familiar icons for checking friend requests, messages and notifications. The notifications appear in the chat sidebar. Swipe from left to right and you'll see the normal rail that's runs down the left side of Facebook's page, showing favorites, groups, pages, apps and more. However, you don't see the new list feature, which I really like. Modeled on Google+'s circles, the lists allow you to filter your news feed to only show certain people. I'm disappointed that this feature isn't on the iPad and hope a future update implements it. Only the apps that are compatible with the iPad are shown here, so if you're hoping to answer your Cityville notifications from the iPad, it's not available. You don't even see those notifications on your news feed. If you try to access an app that requires Flash, you'll get an error message stating that the application has not configured its mobile URL or it could not be verified. Although Mashable reported that games are available in full-screen mode, when I tried out Words With Friends, it kicked me to the App Store to download the app. Same as with Lexulous, another word game. If you already have these apps installed, then the Facebook app will switch you to that particular game's app. Browsing a photo album takes advantage of the iPad's bigger screen and easy navigation. It incorporates some, but not all, of the Photos app's gestures. You can't use multitouch to enter an album, but you can pinch a photo to exit it. You can add photos to Facebook using the iPad's camera or media already loaded on it. It supports HD video and AirPlay for streaming out to a compatible device. Facebook for iPad doesn't break any new ground, but it does provide a proper interface for the social network that should have been on the device from day one. The free download is available now.
Daily iPad App: iBuild ABCs
iBuild ABCs is a children's game that helps youngsters learn their letters and improve their fine motor skills. It's designed for young children and its gameplay is appropriately simple. There are 26 letters that are exploded into three to five parts made of different building materials like wood, pipes or steel. The child must build each letter by arranging the parts on a virtual blueprint. Each part of the letter will match the blueprint diagram perfectly and there are holes to help the child line things up. There are also hinges and bolts that must be placed on the letter to hold it together. The iPad learning game has nice big interface that's perfect for the small hands of a two to four-year-old child. And it has just enough sound effects and verbal rewards to keep the game interesting, not loud and annoying. It's a great game for the pre-school child, as long as you don't mind handing over your iPad to your three-year-old. iBuild ABCs is available from the App Store for a very reasonable 99-cents.
Daily iPad App: Showtime Social
Showtime Networks recently released a social iPad app that'll let you explore Showtime's lineup of movie and television programs and share what you find with your Facebook or Twitter friends. The app has trailers, webisodes, photos and more from Showtime's movie and popular television shows like Dexter and Homeland. Not surprisingly, the app also lets you find and sign up for Showtime service. It's a social app that aggregates all the tweets and Facebook status updates in a stream that appears on the right side of the display. You can respond via those social networks and add your own real-time reaction with four preset emotions: happy, sad, shocked or angry. At the end of each show, this information will be compiled into a timeline that summarizes people's reactions to the program. Besides the preview and social features, Showtime Social includes scheduling information so you can view the TV show and movie lineup for the next couple of hours or the next few days. You can also use iOS's notification feature to remind you when a program is about to begin. This app serves as a sneak peek into Showtime's programming and will be an excellent compliment to Showtime's upcoming Showtime Anytime, a TV Everywhere service expected to launch in the next few weeks. The Showtime Social app is available for free from the App Store. [Via Engadget]
Daily iPad App: Doodle Jump for iPad
Doodle Jump, created by Lima Sky, is one of the first indie success stories to emerge from the App Store. It's a simple tilt-based vertical jumper that has you navigating your Doodler up a series of platforms without falling. Doodle Jump has enjoyed great success as a time-waster and, after a long wait, the classic iPhone game has been ported to the iPad. So how does this tablet version compare to the original? The gameplay on the iPad is refreshingly similar to the iPhone. The tilt-play, familiar characters and scenes are all there. Gamecenter support is present, too. The biggest difference is in the iPad itself. The larger tablet device provides a wider playing field, but is unwieldy to hold and tilt for any period of time, especially since you have to play in portrait mode. There is no landscape. Eventually, you do get accustomed to the size, but I have to admit that I prefer the smaller size of the iPhone. Besides the size, there are two other differences between the iPhone and iPad game. First, the iPad includes an exclusive submarine level that's not present on the iPhone version. Second is the use of cheats. The common ones used on the iPhone do not work on the iPad, so there's no Easter bunny level. For fans of the game, Doodle Jump for the iPad is an excellent companion to the iPhone version. It's exactly what you expect - a version of Doodle Jump for the iPad. That's not bad as most of what you know and love is now available on the iPad without having to double the pixels of the iPhone version. Doodle Jump for the iPad is available for US$2.99.
Daily iPad App: Netter's Anatomy Atlas
Any medical student or professional will instantly recognize the name "Netter." Frank H. Netter was a physician and artist who drew over 500 plates, or individual medical illustrations, covering virtually every aspect of human anatomy. Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy, the book, is a classic in the field of medical reference. It outshines Grey's Anatomy, not only in its depth and accuracy, but also because of the detail of the images (not to mention, they're in color). If you're a medical student, Netter's is a must. However, the biggest problem with Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy, as with most medical reference books, is medical students might break their backs carrying the book around. It's a tome that weights close to ten pounds. The extra weight has now been alleviated however, thanks to Elsevier Health Sciences finally bringing Netter's Anatomy to the iPad. Netter's Anatomy Atlas for iPad offers users all the benefits of the book and more. Because it's an app and not an ebook, Netter's Anatomy Atlas offers interactivity that could never be obtained in paper format. You still get all 531 Netter plates, but the app also gives you the ability to bookmark individual plates, add notes to the plates, customize and toggle labels, and offers a search functionality that allows you to quickly find a plate by plate number or keyword. The app also features some cool extras, like an additional 40 Netter plates once you register the app. Though I'm glad Netter's is finally available on the iPad (my copy of the 4th edition is literally falling to pieces), there is one major drawback to Netter's Anatomy Atlas for iPad. In a baffling move, the app only works in landscape view. You can't look at the images in portrait orientation even though that's how they were drawn. This means you're scrolling a lot through some of the taller images. I imagine this landscape-only limitation will be addressed in a future update (at least, I hope it will be). Besides that landscape orientation problem, the rest of the app is solid and I highly recommend it for anyone in the medical field. Like the book, the iPad app isn't cheap. Netter's Anatomy Atlas for iPad costs US$89.99. But there is also a free sample version, Netter's Anatomy Atlas Free, for those of you who want to try out the app first. If you do buy the full app, be warned: because of all the highly detailed plates it takes up a whopping 1.35 GB of space on your iPad. %Gallery-134922%
Daily iPad App: Demibooks Composer
One of the great Apple products many years ago was HyperCard, which allowed non-programmers to easily build interactive "stacks" with many linked pages (cards). Now a new iPad app, Demibooks Composer (free) brings a similar capability of easy creation to anyone who would like to publish an interactive iPad book and sell it on the App Store. You can learn the basics of Demibooks Composer in just a few minutes through a built-in tutorial. Once you're done with the tutorial, looking at the three built-in projects is a great way to learn even more about how certain effects were accomplished. The sample projects include two interactive children's books and a chess puzzle game, all using sound, graphics, and element physics in different ways. While HyperCard required some coding to achieve fancy effects, Demibooks Composer is completely code-free. Objects are moved and resized through standard gestures, and at any time during development of a project, you can preview how things are going to look or act with just a single tap on a preview button. For people who are thinking of developing a lot of projects, Demibooks Composer thoughtfully provides Dropbox support for online backup or sharing of project files. Once your project is completed, it can be published on the App Store through an upcoming service called "PrintShop." Prices will vary depending on the level of service you want, starting at US$499. You'll also need to have an Apple iOS Developer account. There's a overview video of the app below that shows just how easy it is to use Demibooks Composer to create interactive projects, but the best way to get familiar with this powerful creation app is to download it. It's available for free during the introductory period, so get it now and see if it's right for you.
Daily iPad App: Ghostwriter Notes
Ghostwriter Notes for the iPad is a note-taking solution that'll let you scribble your thoughts or jot down the highlights of a lecture on your tablet device. The app uses the idea of a virtual notebook to store your writings and lets you create an unlimited number of these notebooks. You can customize these notebooks and the pages within by naming them and changing the backgrounds with paper templates or background images. Writing on each page is simple and easy - all you need is your finger or a stylus. The text is predictably large when you use your finger, but it can be scaled down to normal size using a magnification view (shown above) for writing. When you choose a pen, a box appears at the top of the page and a magnified view of that region appears at the bottom of your display. You can write in this zoomed-in region and the text appears at the top. It's a little awkward but it does help you write more clearly and lets you use the entire page of the notes. This magnified view only works with the pen. If you choose the text box, markers or highlighters for writing, then you will write on the full page without any magnification. Ghostwriter also supports PDF files, so you can easily annotate and save these files. When you are done writing or editing, you can sync your notes to Dropbox or Evernote. You can also send them via email or print them wirelessly. Ghostwriter Notes is a great replacement for the traditional notebook. It would work well for students, work meetings or conferences. The magnification view is helpful for writing and its nice to have a variety of tools to use for writing, highlighting and drawing. The only negative is the interface which is good, but could be better. You get used to the controls quickly but I had to search to find the eraser under the "Pens" menu and was surprised when the up/down arrows at the top let you import and export your notebooks. I expected to jump to the top or the bottom of the page. There's also no support for the swipe gesture to turn the page. There's a little slider to move back and forth through pages, but it's not as natural of a motion as swiping. These few drawbacks take away from the experience but they don't diminish my enthusiasm for the app. The developer has a support page and is very responsive to customers so hopefully these quirks will be addressed in future versions. This responsiveness, in my opinion, means the developer is serious about the app and will work hard to improve any deficiencies and add new features. Ghostwriter Notes is available for US$4.99 from the App Store.
Daily iPad App: Skillz
Skillz for iPad is a rhythm game for existing and wannabe digital DJs. It has two turntables and lets you mix, cross-fade and scratch your way to DJ stardom. The gameplay is similar to Tap Tap Revenge and requires you to control both left and right album decks, the sampler and cross fader. When you are ready to play, you can select your DJ avatar and adjust your audio settings in the options. You can also download extra DJs and tracks, though the choice is still limited. There are several gameplay modes including Custom Play and Career Mode.There's also a nice tutorial that steps you through all the moves. After you have selected your mode, you can chose the venue, the song you want to sample and the difficulty level. Once the game starts, you have to respond appropriately to notes, rhythms, scratches and crossfades coming down the sampler track. It's a complex series of motions that takes two hands to complete. Achievements are rewarded as fans, and the better that you do, the more fans you will earn. Your fan level is important as it'll let you unlock new levels, characters, and achievements as you play. The crowd also responds to your performance and will cheer wildly when they like what they hear. Skillz for iPad includes 25 tracks that span a variety of hip-hop and dance genres so you have a good starting selection. The game also supports OpenFeint so you can share your achievements and post them on OpenFeint's leaderboard. Skillz is an enjoyable and challenging game for anyone who enjoys this genre of music. The gameplay is fast-paced, even on the easy level. The two-handed play definitely keeps you hopping. The music is decent and the graphics are bright and lively. The only complaint is that the effects are subtle. When you scratch, it's sometimes difficult to hear the scratch sound that you're making because of the background music. The same applies to the notes and cross-fading. This takes away a bit from the gameplay, but you can tweak the audio settings to find that your preferred balance between music and effects. Skillz for iPad is available for US$5.99 in the App Store.
Daily iPad App: Ramses II
My favorite games always have centered around solving mysteries and figuring out puzzles. These have ranged from Nintendo's Professor Layton franchise to the classic game) where you play with a deck of cards. Ramses II is a twist on the card game. The basics are the same: Items are placed under pyramids in a sumptuous Egyptian setting and a deck of cards is to the side. When a card is revealed, tap a pyramid to see if the match is underneath it. If not, you'll either get a hallway leading to other cards, or the wrong item which means the card on the top of the deck goes out of play and your turn ends. The game tosses in extra challenges on top of this. In solo-player mode, sandstorms are your enemy. Draw one in the deck, and the board spins around. In multiplayer mode, there are scorpions that force you to give a card to your opponent and superpowers that let you move multiple blocks and other options. The game is good for either pass-and-play with family or friends, or playing alone. You can have the computer stand in for extra players if you're by yourself, allowing the other options such as superpowers, scorpions and merciless duel to be unlocked. I preferred this mode rather than the regular solo mode as it made the game a lot more interesting and last longer. Ramses II is available for the iPhone, but the iPad is where it shines with gorgeous graphics and a nice soundtrack that isn't intrusive. An in-game list summarizes the different cards that can possibly come up. The one thing I couldn't quite figure out was when you create a computer character what the slider in the middle is for. I'm guessing that it's to toggle how difficult the AI is. Ramses II is a great memory game and the iPad version is US$2.99 on the App Store.
Daily iPad App: Mini-Monsters
Creepy and fascinating are two words that come to mind when I think about 3D4Medical's new iPad app, Mini-Monsters. The app is a photographic journey that reveals the creepy crawly side of common insects. You can get a close look at the proboscis of a mosquito, the stinger of a bee and more. The app is a large gallery of over 500 insect images taken with a scanning electron microscope and then colorized. The detail and the colors are stunning. Each image also has information about the habitat and the behavior of the insect, a nice feature that makes Mini-Monsters both educational and enjoyable. You can browse or search for images using the insect name or category like herbivore or carnivore. Other filters include the biological class (like arachnid, the one category I avoid) and insect characteristics like the number of legs, the ability to fly, etc. Once you've found an image that you like, you can zoom in to get a closer look or save it to a favorites list. All your favorites can then be displayed as a slideshow. Mini-Monsters is the perfect app for the large display of the iPad. And it only costs $2.99 which is a reasonable price for 500 stunning images that'll both delight and gross you out.
