Productivity
I would like to think that my iPad could eliminate the need for me to carry different note pads with me to several of my classes, instead taking “just” my iPad. While browsing the App Store a couple of weeks ago, I found an app which looked very promising for this, CourseNotes.
Good Looking and User Friendly Interface
One of the reasons why I decided to give CourseNotes a go was that it looked well from the screenshots and the app icon. After using the app for two weeks now to see how well it works I have found the interface to be helpful to me in that it allows me to find what I need quickly. This is essential when in a class as to not miss out on anything because you wanted to say, start a new note.
Managing Subjects and Creating Notes
Setting up CourseNotes, you can add all the subjects you wish to take notes for. Each subject can have an icon attached to it so that you can visualize which one it is quickly. This course setup screen also lets you type in your instructors name and also a subject website (if there is one).
Content management systems need applications for smartphones. It is just that simple. As an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad owner using WordPress, you will be pleased to know that an application for WordPress is available to make it easy for you to publish to your blog(s).
Interface
Looking at the WordPress app and its interface, you are not in for the special piece of art but you are not in for a bad one either. Interface wise, the designers have gone with all the usual iOS styles to make an app which is very easy to use and looks the way you would expect a general iOS app to look.
Functionality
Managing multiple blogs is not a problem in the WordPress app. On the front screen you can tab the plus button and add as many blogs as you want to be able to write to (or edit) from within the app.
Reunion for Mac is hands down the best genealogy program out there! I've used it for years and it's been a joy to use. Of course when the iPhone version came out last year I got it. Although the iPhone version is definitely functional, I didn't really use it a lot simply because of the small size of the iPhone display. Reunion for iPad changes that! This is a brand new App built from the ground up to take advantage of the iPad. First off let me say that this App is a "companion" App for Reunion on the Mac. In other words without Reunion on the Mac the App is of no use to you and there is no reason to get it. If you do use Reunion on the Mac, then you can get Reunion for iPad to sync and update your Reunion file. This new App let's you display your Reunion data in a very iPad friendly way. You can also share Family cards via email to those family members that don't have Reunion. The idea of this App is that you can take Reunion on the go, look up information and more importantly update the information right on the iPad itself. Once you get back to Reunion on the Mac you can then sync your changes. You can even sync changes in both directions. So if someone was making changes on the Mac while you were out or with other iPads, Reunion will sync all the changes in both directions. One of the other big additions for me in this new App that I'm still surprised was not in the IPhone version is the ability to also add photos to the records just like you can on the Mac. This is handy with the iPad Camera Connection Kit.
The Interactive Family Tree Is Amazing
Visually the thing that I was most blown away by was the Family Tree tab. Once you tap it to view it you start with the record you were last viewing. You can navigate the tree using your finger to drill down and branch off to different family members. It's really cool to see. The Ages display is also neat. For any given person you can see a linear break down of every event that has taken place and what age that person was when it happened.
Reunion for iPad definitely has everything I want. What I'd love to see is support for the iPad VGA connector so that I could do a live presentation at my family reunion of the interactive tree. Other than that, this App has it all!
You can get Reunion for iPad here from the
*NOTE – Reunion for Mac is required to use this App!
Although I have access to my 20GB of space on my iDisk with my MobileMe account (family pack), it's hard to ignore some of the great FREE alternatives out there. Dropbox is a great service for people that want to share large files. Most email services cap the size of the email that you can send to anywhere between 15-20mb per email on average. While that's probably plenty for your JPG pictures, it's definitely not enough for video files. With Dropbox you signup for a Free account and then you can access up to 2GB's of online space from your computer or your iOS device using their FREE Universal App. Not only can you access your files for sharing, but if they are in a compatible format you can view them right in the App too. So for example, if you upload a PDF you can view that PDF from your device. Many apps offer this type of viewing. What makes Dropbox different is that you can also elect to send someone a LINK to the file so that they can download it from YOUR Dropbox. This way instead of emailing the large file, you're just emailing a link that they can click on to download the file to their computer. This is also a great solution for having an online backup of an important presentation. Since it's also web based you can access your files from any computer on the internet by going to dropbox.com and logging in.
iPhone 4 users can share HD video
It's great that you can shoot 5MP stills and HD video from your iPhone 4. With the Dropbox App you can upload those files directly from your camera roll to your Dropbox account and share them! If you need more than 2GB of space there are paid options starting at $9.99/month.
Although it's great to be able to send/share files from your camera roll, I would really like to see this App updated with to register itself with the "Open In" command. For example, if I already have a PDF on my device in another App, I'd love to be able to say Open in Dropbox to share that PDF.
You can get Dropbox here from the
Macs and Windows PCs have the ability to control other Macs and PCs via VNC and Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocols. The Mac has this built-in using the Mac OS X Sharing features (VNC) and it's a quick and easy download to enable this on the PC as well. Desktop Connect allows you to use your iPad to control either a Mac or PC on your network or over the internet wirelessly. I use this functionality from time to time to check the status of a process running on a Mac in the other room or on another floor or even from across the world when I'm traveling. Perhaps it's a video render or a download/upload that requires further attention once it's done.
With Desktop Connect I can not only see my Mac, but I can control it too
I've used other VNC compliant Apps on the iPad, but I must say that I'm very impressed with Desktop Connect's user interface. It quite frankly blows away everything else I've tried to date. The interface is full featured and easy on the eyes too. I also love the fact that you can setup and it remembers multiple computers to control. For example, I have the necessary ports open on my router and directed to my Mac mini Server to control it from anywhere I happen to be in the world. However, when I'm home I also from time to time control my MacBook Pro from afar. Just yesterday I was monitoring a clone backup from a distance directly on the iPad. I found the setup to be pretty straight forward and easy to get going. I haven't tried this to control a PC, but if the setup is anywhere near as easy as it was on the Mac you'll be up and running with an encrypted connection in no time. Another use case for this is to run technologies in your desktop's web browser that aren't available on the iPad like Adobe Flash or Java apps. Although I've got a screen shot above of Photoshop CS5 running on my MacBook Pro, let me level set expectations here. There is a small lag from the time you tap something until it refreshes your iPad display. This is normal for this type of connection. So don't run off after reading this thinking you'll be doing all your photo retouching, page layout and video editing from the beach on your iPad. Although I can run an App like Photoshop remotely, I would only use this to do some quick and basic things. I would NOT want to do this for any extended period of time. The lag would drive me insane and it's just not designed to turn your iPad into a "terminal". Think of it more as you need to click a button, run a command, launch an App, look something up, drag and drop something from here to there. Perhaps you left a file at home that you need and you want to login and email it to yourself. Those are the kinds of quick things that this is well suited for. That being said, this is by far the best App I've seen in this category. I love the buttons at the top that give you quick access to an expanded keyboard with the keys you'd want such as CTRL, Command, Option/Alt, etc. as well as a mouse that you can tap to change from left click to right click, etc.
You can get Desktop Connect here from the
The built-in iPhone calendar client is great if you're using iCal or Outlook on the PC to sync to. However, if you prefer Google's online calendar for its more open and free collaboration features, then you're probably going to want a good way to view and work with your Google calendar on your iOS device. That's where Calendars comes in. Calendars is a native Google calendar client app for the iPhone. It syncs directly with Google Calendar and doesn't interfere with the built in Calendar in any way. You can see all of your sync'd calendars right in the app and of course you have the ability to schedule, search, edit, move around or delete your appointments. The nice part of using this App vs. the website is that it works both online and offline. So you can still see your calendar when you don't have a connection to the internet.
SMS Notifications, Invitations and More
One of the cool features of this app is the ability to have it send you SMS text message reminders of upcoming appointments. Also unlike the native Calendar/MobileMe you can invite people to your appointments. I never understood why iCal allows this for MobileMe calendars, but not the iPhone calendar??? You get the same kinds of views including Month, Week, List and Day views. In Month view you get a cool unique feature that allows you to physically drag an appointment from one day to another just like you can on your computer. Very cool.
Although I'm not a Google Calendar power user, I can definitely see that if I were this would be the App for me. It's fast elegant and does exactly those things I would expect a calendar to do. My only gripe with it is if Google is not your only calendar, then you would have to look at both the built-in and Calendars App to make sure you're open for an appointment. Otherwise this is THE GOOGLE CALENDAR APP!
You can get Calendars here from the
If your iPad is just sitting on your desk not being used while you work on your Mac why not use it as a second display? Macs have supported multiple displays ever since the Mac II (introduced in 1987). I gotta admit that when I first heard about the Air Display App I wasn't all that excited. I just didn't think the performance would be good enough since it connects via WiFi. However, I just got around to testing it yesterday via my 802.11n WiFi network and I was really taken back by how well it works! Wow! I downloaded and installed the Mac client. After a reboot and launching the App on my iPad I had the choice of using it as a second display to my MacBook Pro. The next thing you know I was dragging panels over to it from Photoshop CS5. I was dragging Safari browser windows over to it and most importantly I was using it to view images in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 since Lightroom has Second Display support! I was doing this all wirelessly without any hiccups. It just worked. I was also impressed that it even supported the rotation of the iPad display in both portrait and landscape on the fly. Again, it just worked. No lagging to speak of. No issues.
The icing on the cake…
Since your iPad is a touch screen, using the iPad as a second display for your Mac also makes it a touch screen Mac display. This means that you can tap on whatever is on that display to click the mouse on that spot or to make selections. You can drag things around and basically use your finger as the mouse. Now while I've only tried this App on the iPad it was recently updated to work on iPhones and the iPod touch as well. Frankly, with such a small display size (iPhone) I couldn't really see using it on anything smaller than the iPad. Also the only other thing that you have to keep in mind is that although the connection from your Mac to your Air Display iPad is wireless via WiFi, the iPad'd display is going to be on the whole time. So you're most likely going to want to plug in your iPad to AC/USB power as to not suck down the battery. Otherwise, if you're an iPad using Mac user this is one of those must have Apps!
You can get Air Display here from the
The relatively large size of the iPad lends itself to note taking. While I'm not totally hooked on the on screen keyboard for any extensive text input, I do like the flexibility in having an App that allows me to "handwrite" or sketch AND key in text as well. PaperDesk aims to give you more than just simple note taking. One of the first things that blew me away was the built-in Whiteboarding feature that works in conjunction with the iPad VGA Connector. This means that if you were in a meeting you could hook up your iPad to a projector and rough out your ideas for all to see. This kinda replaces those giant Sticky Notes and grease boards that we see in so many conference rooms today. I can't count how many times that someone said, "ok I'll take all of these ideas and type them up and distribute them to everyone here" only never to receive them. With PaperDesk not only could you choose to handwrite those same notes, but you could also choose to type them as well using the Keyboard Dock or a Bluetooth Keyboard. Even if you hand wrote them for speed (as we do today in meetings), you could actually email them out as is to everyone in attendance. Sure, handwriting recognition would be ideal, but I haven't seen an App that does it yet, let alone one that does it well enough to not have to do tons of corrections.
More than just pretty pictures and text
PaperDesk also supports audio notes. The more I think about this App, the more I'm starting to wish I had something like this in school! Think about it. You could type notes, scribble down things quickly AND recording the lecture too! Besides emailing the PaperDesk generated notes you can also "Sync" them with the FREE account that you setup at MyPaperDesk.com
Although notes can be multiple pages long and contain text, sketches and audio recordings, they can't contain pictures. I tried copying a picture into a note and rather an paste the image it pasted the name of the image. Oh well, Perhaps this will come in time or perhaps next time around when the iPad gets a camera some day.
You can get PaperDesk here from the App Store
This is one of those reviews that has been a long time coming. I'm not new to Evernote. It was actually one of the first Apps I tried once when the App Store opened and it became available. My friends and readers of this site are always telling me about how good it is and how much they love it. Yep, Evernote is very popular! However, there was just one thing that has always kept me from getting excited about this app and that is "offline viewing." I remember that the first version had no facility to view your notes if you weren't connected to the internet and for me that was a deal breaker. Sure I'm online most of the time, but there are those times (like when I'm above the cloud) that I need to look something up and don't have internet access. So I followed the progress of Evernote from afar.
Access your notes everywhere
I decided that it was time to have another look at Evernote. It was probably around the time that they introduced the update for iPad. Also I continue to grow more frustrated that Apple still doesn't allow wireless syncing of the built-in notes app with the notes in Mail. This still only works via USB/iTunes. So it was time to check out Evernote again. I installed it on my iPad and setup the Free account. I created a note and like magic it worked. I could instantly view that note either on my Mac via a web browser or via the Evernote App for Mac. I could also of course see the note on my iPad. Next I installed Evernote on my iPhone 3GS and again all my notes were there. Now for the big question. What happens if I turn on Airplane Mode and disconnect from the internet. Can I still see my notes? The answer is yes and no. It depends on a couple of different things. First off Evernote allows you to create different kinds of notes. So you could create a simple text note, you could grab a web page, you could take a screen shot or use another photo (snapshot) and you could make a voice recording. My text notes were still viewable when I went into Airplane mode. However, "some" of my web notes were not available and that kinda makes sense. My snapshot and audio recordings were also still available. While there is definitely some "caching" going on, you don't always have access to everything offline with the FREE account.
You can get Evernote here from the App Store: 
One of the app categories where there are a big field of apps to choose from, is in the note taking field. One of all apps these apps is Awesome Note, combining both the note taking and task management into one single app.
The Interface
There is perhaps a reason why the app is called “Awesome Note”. It is pretty awesome, especially the interface! It does not adhere to the Apple interface guidelines and does not really look like the typical iPhone app. I do mean that in the best way possible.
See, there are a few apps that can get away with using a different interface than the standard, usually as long as it is useful and looks stunning, Awesome Note is definitely on of them, with a gorgeous interface.
Get it here on the App Store:
