UMBC Tech Bits

iPad Apps I Enjoy

Tags: | apps | iPad |

The iPad is one of my favorite devices. I got one as part of the initial rollout back in April and have now been using it for 7 months. Recognizing that the iPad was one of the most sought after gifts this holiday season I thought I would share a few of my favorite applications and uses and get feedback from others on what they are using the iPad to do.

Here are a five applications I find of interest.

Flipboard - This app is a beautiful app for doing social media and RSS aggregation. It allows you to connect and track your facebook, twitter, and RSS subscriptions in a beautiful and functional layout. When you start the app, you are presented with nine tiles you can configure. The site pulls in a lot of content so even if you don't have specific content you follow you can easily select topics or content to follow. What I love is that the app integrates the ability to go out on the web and view content elsewhere from within the app. The best thing yet it is free!

Freebooks or Stanza - are applications that provide access to many of the Project Gutenberg collection for free. You can access tens of thousands of books for free. This summer I used this to re-read selections from Mark Twain and and Charles Dickens.

Dropbox - Dropbox is a great application for uploading and sharing files. They have versions for the iPad, iPhone, and web-based versions for the Mac and PC. This application provides two gigabytes of storage for free. If you want you can pay a monthly fee and increase that. Dropbox is a great way to sync your files between computers or devices.

Soundnote - Soundnote is a note taking app that provides a unique set of capabilities. Besides taking notes on the keypad you can use a stylus and enter notes by hand. One unique feature is this app provides an audio recording feature. It will even sync your notes with the recording so you can jump to a particular part of the recording.

Todo - I've tried a lot of personal productivity applications for tracking todo lists and this has been the best so far. Todo gives the appearance of using a daytimer but allows you to add tagging elements and categories so you can easily organize your work. Best of all, Todo integrates with a web-based tool called toodledo and allows you to sync your todo lists across devices. In addition, and what I like best, toodledo gives you a unique email address that you can forward any email you get that you consider a todo. I use this all the time to track my todo's.

Posted by Jack Suess on December 31, 2010 7:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)