Apple updated their office suite (Pages, Keynote and Numbers) for the iPad earlier today. The updates include bug fixes and several new features. The new features include better file transfer support as well as improved import and export with Apple iWork and Microsoft Office files for iPad users.
The updated Pages, Keynote and Numbers iPad apps include the following new features:
If you’re a budding artist and happen to own an iPad, you might want to check out Layers from developer Ben Gotow. Layers has been available on the iPhone for some time and has been a top seller. Layers is a natural media painting application and is packed with several new features designed specifically for the iPad.
After launching into Layers, you have the choice of creating a new painting, working on a previous painting or browsing the art gallery. The new painting screen has a clean design and provides you with quick access to your painting tools. Users can chose from a set of paint brushes, smudge tools or erasers to create and edit your own Picasso masterpiece.
Apple’s iPad has been on the market 5 days now and we’ve been bombarded with news stories, YouTube videos and tech blogs reporting on it. Several other companies are now planning to, or have already, introduced their own version of the “tablet computer” to the market place.
Despite iBooks lovely graphical interface for your e-books, there are times you may want to read other documents not supported by your iPad such as PDFs, spreadsheets and presentations. But, how can you read all of these files with your iPad? Good.iWare Ltd. brings you their GoodReader app to help solve this problem.
GoodReader is one of the most downloaded iPad apps to date and is only $0.99 in the App Store. This handy app has sold 8,000 copies per day since the launch of the iPad. It’s desigend to allow you to transfer and read a wide range of documents to your iPad by plugging it in via the USB docking connector.
The iPad helps promote lots of ideas across different market segments. One that comes to mind is sketching. Think of it, a sketching app can help people collaborate and bring new ideas to life. Sketching is often an overlooked component in the creative process, especially where any sort of design is concerned. This is exactly what EffectiveUI set out to resolve with their iPad app called Ideate. This is one of the first apps created specifically for your iPad.
The app reproduces sketching in a way that is simple, intuitive and engaging to give as good an experience as possible without a physical pen and paper. The app comes with a large number of starting background objects, called Templates. It also provides a large number of UI-related backgrounds, including a variety of grids and monitor resolutions.
If you’re a blogger, chances are you’re doing it on WordPress. WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today and powers some of the most popular sites on the web today, including PadGadget.
You can imagine our excitement when we received word that WordPress updated their iPhone OS app to support the iPad. WordPress’s 2.4 release combines iPhone and iPad support into a single elegant app.
Tired of trying to manage all those spiral notebooks and binders? Getting an iPad when you show up at school in the Fall and wondering what you are going to do with it? Well, CourseNotes is something you might want to add to your iPad apps collection. After all, who doesn’t need a little help with organization when it comes to note taking!
CourseNotes is a note taking, organization app for the iPad. It allows students to take notes during class and then organize those notes by subject and class meeting. Slept in and missed your class? Don’t worry! Get the notes you missed from a friend. Notes are easily exported via email or transferred peer-to-peer from other CourseNotes users. CourseNotes also lets you track assignments and ToDo lists for all your subjects.
Yesterday we showed previews of new game titles coming to the iPad. Today, we’re taking a sneak-peak at iPad productivity apps that allow you to stay organized and get more done on your shinny new gadget.
First-up today is smartNote which is a perfect app for note taking. This app should appeal to students and professionals alike, with its slick interface and powerful set of features.
Good news for all of you travelers or just simply people on-the-go. Boingo is ready and awaiting the iPad launch on April 3rd. This is another reason to pre-order your iPad since you’ll be able to do more with it than simply read the newspaper. No matter which model you buy —3G and WiFi or just WiFi—with Boingo’s WiFi service you’ll be able to access Boingo hotspots, which you’ll find across many airports and various chains around the world.
Another interesting thing is that Boingo plans to offer the same service many of you may be accustomed to via your laptops. In addition, they plan to offer their wireless in 1-hour segments. This is the perfect way to cater to everyone around that daunting airport terminal. One thing is for sure, your iPad will bring you lots of fun and now with the wireless in 1-hour segment you get to enjoy your new toy and pay for wireless access for a reasonable amount of time.
iWork is a suite of applications from Apple currently available for MacOS. The applications include Keynote for presentation/slideshow creation, Pages for document preparation and Numbers for spreadsheets, charts and tables. With the introduction of the iPad, comes a new version of iWork specifically designed for the iPad. iWork will allow users to create professional products with the touch of a finger.
Keynote will function in landscape mode and offers a number of templates to help users get started. Users will have the ability to create professional presentations using text, graphics, music, tables, charts, graphs and a number of new features developed specifically for the iPad.
If you’re like me, you need all the gentle reminders you can get to help you through your busy day. To make sure I stay on track, I have been a longtime user of Cultured Code’s award-winning time management app, Things.
I have Things on my Mac and iPhone and I’m looking forward to using this core productivity tool on my new iPad once Things for the iPad is released. Luckily, an iPad version looks to be right around the corner. Culture Code blogged “one other arrival that is approaching very quickly is the iPad version of Things. We’ll have more to share with you about it once April 3rd gets closer, so stay tuned.”
Things is a great app to keep track of all your tasks and projects and the app hosts an assortment of useful features such as tags, due date alarms and iPhone syncing. Things is definitely an app worth checking out if you need a hand getting and staying organized.
It’s Spring Break and things are still calm early in the morning with the kids asleep in bed. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to have a few moments of peace and quiet this morning so I sat down to eat breakfast and read my March issue of Better Homes and Gardens. Not too long into it (page 24), I discovered an article about digital helpers in the kitchen. This particular section, called “fresh TECH,” contained an article which recommended four different ways to go digital in your kitchen. The first item was a digital recipe reader which was of no interest to me; however, the next three were definite possibilities. One was an iPhone app to help manage your groceries and grocery list, another was an online grocery shopping site and the third was a coupon website.
PadNotes is a new app, which takes the advantage of the large screen and multi-touch interface of the iPad. It works by allowing you to open a PDF file and make it the “background” of a drawing. Once the file is opened into the app, it is placed into a document manager and may be called up any time for annotation. The neat thing about this app is that you can highlight in any color, draw onto a PDF and type notes just as if the file was opened in Acrobat.
This app can become quite handy when you start thinking about some use cases.
(1) It can become quite useful for students. When you think of it, it allows the user to:
Allrecipes.com, an online recipe site, recently released Dinner Spinner Pro, an enhanced version of its original iPhone app.
The “Spinner” portion of this app allows cooks to select a “Dish” (Appetizer, Bread, Salad, etc.), “Ingredient” (Beef, Cheese, Fish, etc.) and “Ready In” (the amount of time you have to prepare) button. It then searches the recipes at the allrecipes.com site and provides users with a selection of recipes matching their criteria. In addition to the ingredient lists and cooking directions, cooks also receive nutrition information and reviews and ratings from other cooks.
I find this app useful with one drawback, the size of my iPhone. The size of the screen makes it a bit challenging when cooking and I’m hoping all that will change with the introduction of the iPad.
According to TechCrunch, “Allrecipes’ president, Lisa Sharples, agrees that the iPad will be a “killer” device in the kitchen.” It will offer a larger screen than the iPhone and help expand the eBook market. I’m hoping allrecipes.com is busy working on an app that will embrace all the iPad has to offer.
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