Top 10 apps for for Ipad (May 2011)

Having just invested in an iPad 2, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time online looking for the best apps.  I’ve filtered the rubbish, so if you’ve just bought an iPad, download these apps first.  And yes, there are 13.  I just put top 10 because it’ll get me more hits…

Flipbook

Quite simply the reason the iPad is such an attractive toy.  Aggregates your Twitter, Facebook and News Feeds into an audio visual magazine, has to be seen to understand how beautiful they’ve made social networking look.  The idea is pretty simple, provide thumbnails to people’s shared links in a magazine spread that you can flick through.  The result is spellbinding.

PS Express

Photoshop’s free editor is simple but high quality – allowing you to Crop, Exposure, Saturate, Tint, B&W, Contrast, Sharpen and add a few effects to your photos.

Teamviewer

For the geeks, but easy to use.  Allows you to remote control your PC or Mac over the internet using a simple username and password.  Imagine you’ve a file on your desktop that you need when you’re at work or you want to start a download so it’s ready when you get home.  Was a bit awkward on the iPhone, pretty smooth on the iPad. Nice

VLC Media player

No need to convert video files or deal with the hassle of importing into iTunes.  Simply load this app and copy the files straight to the device.  Straightforward and time-saving, the VLC Player has been my media player of choice for years. Has syncing options available too in case your video goes out of time.  Awesome-0.

Sky News/RTE News Now

Whether you have a healthy disdain for Murdoch’s media outlet or not, you have to admit their news player is slick and exactly what you want from a news source, video, text and up to the minute news available at a fingertip.  RTE News now is nowhere near as polished, but for Irish news it’s actually not bad.

Wired

If you’re a fan of the brilliant next-gen journalism pumped out monthly by Wired, you will be in awe of their iPad app.  Wired has been optimised to create a totally different magazine experience, with drag down gallerys, video clips and animations for every article.  You have to pay for the magazine each time of course, but this is par for the course for any iPad mag app, Wired just do theirs particularly well.

Photoshare

Ok, so this isn’t a native Ipad 2 app, but it’s a great way of quickly sharing photos between iPhones and iPads without having to be online on a slow 3g network  or near a Wireless network.

4oD Catch up

The highlights from last week’s Channel 4 programmes, plus access to some of their best comedies/dramas/docs.  Essential app.

WavePad

As a radio guy, handy to have an app to record sound, edit it right there, multilayer, normalise, add echo or gain, fade in, fade out, save the file and even email it to someone or ftp it to a site with just one click.  Only problem is that it doesn’t integrate with Dropbox, so to edit files you have to copy them in thru iTunes or edit files you recorded with your iPad.

iSwifter

This is a pretty smart app.  Not only does it play Flash for those who want to access sites that demand it, but it also directs you thru an American IP address, so that means you look like you live in the USA.  That means access to any American video site like Hulu, Fox that is normally blocked over here.  Bit finicky at first (for example, not always clear where all of the audio is coming from, but worth it for the unrestricted access.  Video comes out a pretty decent quality too as long as you’re on broadband.

MyPad

Explain me this: Facebook don’t have an iPad app.  Really.  Still unsure as to the reasoning, but a number of crafty companies have tried to fill the gap in the market and MyPad is my personal favourite, although Friendly is pretty good too.  The bonus about MyPad is that it allow you to log in as different users from the start page which means I don’t have to log out and log back in again if my wife has been on talking about whatever it is that women talk about.

TED

If you have 20 minutes to kill and want to learn something from smart people about cutting edge design, science, medicine or even philosophy, the TED app gives you access to all of their incredible talks through a slick interface.

Marvel

For a long time, comic book fans have wanted a device that replicated the feel of a comic book or graphic novel in a way that was faithful to the printed version.  The iPad is that device.  Marvel allow you to access scores of their comics to get a taste of what’s on offer, then you can buy and download the episodes on demand.  If you appreciate the beauty of the modern graphic nove, it’s a must-have app.