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Daily iPad App: Perfect365 touches up faces in a snap
I'm really impressed when powerful applications or techniques migrate to iOS and seem to work as well (or better than) as they do on the desktop. A good example is Perfect365 HD. This iPad app lets you take a photo of a person and modify it, 'improving' their facial structure, lips, eyes, nose, cheeks -- just about any part of the face that may need a nip here or a tuck there. Basically, the app gives any person a one click makeover. It's plastic surgery without the risk. Portrait photographers and advertising agencies have been using these techniques for years, but usually the work is complicated and takes a long time. Perfect365 can do it in a click or two. Facial recognition features identify the parts of the face and with a couple of clicks your can turn your significant other into something a bit beyond their normal look. You can be subtle or extreme. Images can be from your photo albums, or you can activate your camera and take the picture any time you want. When you're done, the enhanced image can be saved back to your photo album, or sent to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr. I tried the app on some pictures of people I had stashed on my hard drive, and I must say the results are pretty amazing and easy to accomplish. Some friends really liked the enhancements, some found it all a bit creepy. I found subtle changes were the best, cleaning up complexions or whitening teeth. The app provides a before and after view so you can see exactly what has changed. I have some examples in the gallery. The app sells for US $4.99. I've used some Mac applications that are far more expensive but give similar results, although they offer more control and features. There's an iPhone version of the app that is now selling for $1.99. If you're a casual photographer with friends that aren't happy with their 'look' I'll bet this app will please them and make you popular at the same time. With the holidays here up you may be taking a lot of photos, and I think you'll be pleased with Perfect365. The app requires iOS 3.2 or greater. Arcsoft, the company that created the app, also has a Mac OS X version coming with, you guessed it, more control and more features. Check the gallery for some before and after photos. %Gallery-139899%
Daily iPad App: Wild Chords
Wild Chords is a really amazing app -- at its absolute base, it's an excellent and easy-to-use guitar tuner, perfect for kids or adults. But the real magic of Wild Chords is in actually playing the guitar along with the main game; this game will teach you, chord by chord and string by string, how to strum away some really excellent tunes. The app very colorful and well-made -- its simplicity hints that it's for children, but even as a beginner-to-medium guitar player, it was never condescending. The app starts easy, with a quick tune-up and then just an open chord test, and things get harder from there. The basic idea is that you're playing along to tame animals, so you need to play the right chord as your in-game character passes them while walking down a street: Eventually you'll be playing the A chord to tame an Ape, and a C chord to tame a crocodile, and so on. The game even shows a really nice sense of musical wit: The A minor chord is portrayed by a sad ape, the A major is a happy ape, and so on. The other level type, meant to teach individual string plucking, features birds sitting on five different telephone wires, with each of them given a number. On that game, you're mean to hit the fret marked by their number, and then strum the string they're sitting on. It's a very nice visual way to show tablature, and it works great. The feedback isn't perfect -- strumming the birds just puts them to sleep, and that's not too instinctively positive. But once you get the feedback whether you're doing it right or not, it works. The best part of this is that all of the animals you're collecting and taming are all attached to real songs, so as you strum to hit the right notes, you're actually accompanying an original song on the iPad as you play. Even the first lesson of the open chord is included in this, so Wild Chords pulls off the impressive feat of going from no guitar experience to being able to play along with a song in seconds. The later songs are really great too -- unfortunately, there are no lyrics, and these are all original songs, not pop hits or even the "traditional" tunes most people learn early on in guitar lessons. But they're all very catchy across a nice variety of styles, and given that the game doesn't ever punish you for experimenting (as long as you hit the notes you're supposed to hit), you can improvise and play in between the beats all you want, and it all works great. That said, if you're already a guitar expert, this might not quite be challenging enough. While the levels do get tough (you can even demo the more advanced levels, just to see what they're like), expert guitar players might not find much to learn until the very last few areas. Still, I think what's there does fit in with what most amateur players would want to learn, and Wild Chords does a lot with very little. I don't know what note detection system they're using or how it was designed, but considering that I was simply using the iPad's microphone in a quiet room with no special connection or setup, I was impressed by how well the app detected what I was playing and rewarded me accordingly. And here's the real kicker: The app is completely free to play. There are a few in-app purchases for extra content, but there's enough content in there already that you'll know after downloading and playing with it for a while if you need any more levels. I haven't done a lot of shopping for guitar tuner apps on the App Store yet, so I'm sure there are more advanced or feature-filled tuners out there, but in my mind this tuner is nice and works well enough that it alone is worth downloading the app for. Wild Chords is a really excellent app for the iPad -- it has already won awards in Europe, but just recently arrived on the North American App Store. If you've got young ones who've been looking to start learning guitar, or wouldn't mind figuring out a few chords for yourself, grab a five-string and the app, and see what you think.
Daily iPad App: Weird but True!
While geared toward kids, National Geographic's Weird but True! is a treat for anyone with an iPad who enjoys perusing random trivia. Shake or swipe the iPad within the app to get a random interesting fact, then rate it based on how weird you think the fact is. You can bookmark facts you like, email them to someone or use a fact finder to look for something specific. You also can see weekly top weird facts as rated by users. Weird but True! has 300 facts, and I can see future updates adding more. The type is large and easy to read, and the graphics are catchy and have the same professional quality as National Geographic magazine. If you want an educational trivia app for the iPad, Weird but True! is a good deal for US$1.99.
Daily iPad App: GeoMaster Plus HD
I tried the original GeoMaster app from French mobile developer VirtuaMobile a long time ago, but the HD version is well-suited to the bigger iPad screen. GeoMaster Plus HD is a geography quizzing game. It is simple enough, flashing text on the screen and asking you to tap the appropriate location. You battle against the clock but only to beat your times. This is a basic learning tool, and is fun yet relaxed, lacking really flashy or annoying elements. As such, it is perfect for kids learning geography. You can choose from states, countries, capitals and French departments, and players need only tap the appropriate spots on the screen to register answers. GeoMaster Plus HD adds a few things for the iPad. The larger screen makes it somewhat easier to tap the maps. Still, you can pinch to zoom and swipe to pan around if you can't hit Rhode Island with your giant fingers. The graphics are crisp and attractive, and the app really nails the chalkboard look. The drawstring on the pull-down map (which accesses the Atlas) even interacts as you tilt the iPad. The Atlas is a basic factoid lookup tool for the geography used in the game. It isn't that detailed nor is it as fun to browse as the game is to play. There are much better atlas apps, so consider this a somewhat weak freebie. Still, GeoMaster Plus HD is a fun, accessible and useful educational game for learning geography. Even at full price I can recall paying much more for flash cards which weren't nearly this enjoyable. Pick it up if you have a friend or relative who needs to learn some basic geography fast.
Daily iPad App: Walmart
Walmart recently released an iPad app and I decided to give it a whirl. I live in a rural area where Walmart is the biggest store near me and the first place I check for electronics. Walmart doesn't have the largest selection in the world, but it has saved me the hour drive to Best Buy on more than one occasion. With its new in-store pickup feature and an iPad app, shopping at Walmart has gotten a little easier. The iPad app is a tablet-optimized version of Walmart's website and does most everything the website does. You can find store information like hours of operation, phone number, services and even driving directions. You can browse products and read product reviews. The app also lets you select your local Walmart so you can see the prices and product availability at the store you choose. Bargain hunters can browse their local weekly ad and rollback savings. Walmart wants to make it easy for registered users to shop and has added a sync feature to the app. You can login to your Walmart account on your iPad, add items to your cart or saved items lists and then view those items later from a desktop browser. If you prefer to keep shopping on the iPad, you can checkout using the app and choose to have your items shipped to your house, shipped to your local store or reserved for in-store pickup. If you don't have a login, you lose the sync feature, but you can still checkout as a guest. The iPad app is perfect for people who shop at Walmart. My only critique is not how the app performs, but how it looks. Keeping with Walmart colors, the app has vibrant blue and bright orange colors, especially during checkout, that are a little hard on the eyes. It's a minor complaint and wouldn't stop me from using the app. The Walmart app for the iPad is available for free from the App Store.
Daily iPad App: ShopSmart by Billeo
Billeo is an online shopping assistant and payment service that saves passwords, fills out forms and helps you both shop and pay bills online. To expand its service, the company just released ShopSmart, an iPad app that keeps track of reward cards and other discounts while you shop. When you launch ShopSmart for the first time, you are prompted to enter your existing Billeo account information or setup a new account. You don't have to setup a Billeo account to use ShopSmart, but most of the value-added features are not available without an account. Having a free Billeo account lets you fill in form information automatically, receive additional discounts and save your credit card information in the app's e-wallet., Registering for an account is easy, all you need is an email address to create a username and password. Once you enter your account information, you can add your Loyalty cards to the app in the settings. At launch, Billeo lets you add offers from providers like Visa, Discover, AARP, and Billeo itself. There's only six providers, but Billeo plans to expand this list in the future. Within the settings you can also manage your e-wallet information, add location information for your Daily Deals and setup your Facebook account so you can share while you shop. Once you've entered all your personal information, you are ready to jump in and start finding some bargains. The app has a web browser interface that lets you shop by searching for an item or visiting a retailer's web site. If I want a new Baxter State Parka from L.L. Bean, I can go directly to L.L. Bean's website or search for the item using the search field. If you search, the search results will include an offer tag to highlight those stores with a redeemable discount. As you shop, discount offers will be shown in the bottom left-hand corner. Just click the offers icon to see your current discounts. If you accept a discount, it will be automatically applied during checkout. ShopSmart will also fill in your shipping, billing and credit card information, too. It's cumbersome to type all that personal information using the iPad, so being able to let the app do it for you is a huge bonus. ShopSmart also has a social component called ShopTalk that lets you share items you want to buy and offers that you find. ShopTalk keeps track of your posts and lets you read and respond to comments within the app. It's a great way to get feedback about a product before you purchase it. As you can tell from description thus far, ShopSmart is geared towards online shopping. There's no tie-in for local stores, primarily because most people aren't going to use their iPad while walking around the store. The only local features are found in the Daily Deals section which is populated by Groupon. This section, like the Loyalty cards section, will expand to include other services. Overall, ShopSmart is great for the online shopper who wants the convenience of using an iPad and has a lot of different reward card offers. Right now, the app is a little lean on the number of available offers that you can add and this definitely detracts from the overall experience. I would love to keep track of my AAA discounts, Best Buy discount, Barnes & Noble discount using ShopSmart, but right now I can't. I do like the clean interface of ShopSmart and the familiar web browser look. I especially appreciate the app's ability to do most of the grunt work like filling in forms and entering discount codes. If Billeo can add in more credit card offers and retailers, then the app will become a valuable tool for the discount shopper. ShopSmart from Billeo is available for free from the App Store.
Daily iPad App: Photogene
Unlike many, I didn't buy the iPhone 4S for Siri. It's nice to have a voice assistant, but what I really wanted was the camera. I shoot a lot of photos throughout the day using my iPhone and have been looking for a good image editor to complement its camera. Now with PhotoStream, I am no longer limited to using the iPhone for editing. I can automatically transfer my photos and edit them on my iPad, a convenience that led me to try Photogene for the iPad. Photogene is a fantastic editing application that's great for tweaking and touching up photos. You name it and Photogene has it. It lets you crop, straighten, resize, sharpen, reduce noise, adjust color, correct red-eye and remove unwanted blemishes or spots. If you want to get more creative, there's also specialized effects like reflection or vignette and standard effects like dodge & burn, blur, and grayscale. You can add captions and text to images and apply artistic filters such as sepia or charcoal. There's even several categories of presets that'll let you add a border or change the look of your photo in just a few taps. And if you don't like what you have done, there's multiple undo and redo. One of my favorite features is the collage creator which takes up to six photos and turns them into one image using templates. The app comes with a handful of collage templates and you can buy a pack of 60 that gives you twelve designs for each group of photos (12 templates for a 2 photo collage, 12 templates for a 3 photo collage, and so on). When you're done, you can export your images back to your iPad's photo library, upload them to an online web service like Dropbox, Flickr or Picasa, or share them via email, Facebook or Twitter. If you have a printer, you can use AirPrint to get a hard copy. Photogene is available for $2.99 from the App Store and is a must have for anyone that uses their iOS device for photos or image editing.
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]
