For my recent Florida to Massachusetts trip, I purchased an Eye-Fi SD card and downloaded the Eye-Fi App so that I could automatically transfer photos from camera to iPad, cable free. Sadly, I can’t recommend it! The Eye-Fi specifically lists my Sony A55 as compatible, and the Sony display has an indicator for Eye-Fi communications; [...]
Just completed a less-than-direct drive from Florida to Massachusetts, and used Navigon East as my only navigation aid during the drive. First as a summary, the $30 App performed very well, providing reliable guidance and clear spoken instructions at all times, timely for exits and without ever experiencing GPS issues on my iPad 2. However, [...]
For almost the first year I owned an iPad, my browser of choice was not Safari, but Atomic Web Browser; I find the tabbed browsing much better than the scheme used by Safari – especially the ease with which links can be opened “background”. But now, Atomic is off my iPad, replaced with iCab Mobile! [...]
Planetary is a very strange, rather beautiful, probably pointless, way to access music on your iPad … it groups music alphabetically by artist / album, but then display it in a galaxy / solar system format! Here is the Electric Light Orchestra solar system, looking at the Out Of The Blue planet, orbited by it’s [...]
I’ve never been too satisfied with news Apps on the iPad. Early, the various news Apps were too buggy so I stayed with Google News – which normally works quite well and learns to deliver interesting-to-me news, which makes it better than any App. However, recently I started using Zite, which is very impressive – [...]
City Of Secrets is a fabulous new iPad game, absolutely worth the $5 fee; very entertaining dialog and artwork, interesting puzzles and an ongoing background plot to keep you interested. You play sometimes as Moley (a Mole!) and sometimes as his friend Rex (a dog); after an early sequence “up top” you descend to a [...]
The Daily has been hyped for a while now as “the second coming” of news for iPad … maybe I’ll wait for the third coming. My first problem, admittedly on a slower internet connection, was the amount of waiting time to access The Daily (not counting the time to download it) – this display remained [...]
Unfortunately, iDOS was a short-lived visitor to the App store, but (thanks Josh) I did grab a copy … iDOS is a quite full featured DOS emulator running on iPad, good enough in fact that someone got Windows 3.1 running within it! I didn’t go that far, but I did get Lemmings The Tribes running [...]
It’s been a while since I looked at iPad news Apps – mainly because I don’t use them! The iPad is quite capable of showing most news in readable form via the Safari browser (or Google Reader), and when I tried news Apps early on most were buggy and/or limited. USA Today in particular, which [...]
Puzzle Agent HD is an amusing game I found recently – it’s not so much a puzzle game as a cartoon movie with some puzzle interactions; much of the game involves watching and listening to short “movie” sequences where our hero, Tethers, interacts with other characters: The actual puzzles, at least as far as I’ve [...]
The iPad is an amazing computer, easy to use and accessible to almost everyone – but of course it’s not the first, and one of the most popular early computers in England where I grew up was the ZX Spectrum. When I bought one, it was specifically to play two games: Atic Atac, and Manic [...]
Right since I got my iPad, I’ve been wanting to use it as a daily journal – but I have MANY years of paper journals that I also would want to enter in to the iPad, so I’ve been looking for a journal App with easy entry capability, including a simple way to enter “past” [...]
Maxjournal was the “dark horse” of journal Apps; when I first tried it, it had very limited capabilities but a major update in October brought it to the point where it was very close to exactly what I wanted! The user interface is clean but very informative and useable: The main part of the screen [...]
Finally! Space Inversion is a good Space Invaders game for the iPad, semi-retro graphics, good sounds, and nice improvements like optional turbo play mode letting you fire more than one shot at a time! Good value too – get it!
Not a great game, but perhaps you’ll think it’s worth the $0.99 it costs … Stone’s Adventure did not start well; after the loading screen above, I selected “Play” and the display went blank – and stayed blank for the minute or more that I waited. I thought I’d been sold something useless, but discovered [...]
News on the iPad continues to be re-invented; one of the latest attempts is from ABC News, offering an unusual world/globe interface: Current stories are wrapped around the globe which you can spin in any direction to view different stories, and tap to call up any story; unfortunately while the globe interface is cool, it’s [...]
Unlike disappointing Dreamscape, the Giana Sisters HD game is fabulous and totally deserving a “Best” rating! The game has multiple levels to challenge you, laid out on a map which requires progress level-by-level, but happily once you’ve completed a level even if you lose your lives, you can start with more lives and full access [...]
I like platform games (I grew up on them on my ZX Spectrum in the 1980s!), and so I purchased Dreamscape HD recently as it looked like a great “old school” platform game: Well, I don’t like it at all! The game attempts to be good, offering three different ways to control – traditional “touch [...]
Since I got my iPad, one thing I’ve really wanted to do is track my car MPG; I’ve been doing it since I owned a car, but using a spreadsheet on my home computer – and by now it’s clear that I should be able to do it on a portable device! I checked out [...]
One of the things I regularly need to do “on the road” is access my office Mac computer – which also runs Windows XP in a Parallels install; a while back I tried the free Mocha VNC Lite, but there were a few issues. I’ve tried a few other VNC Apps, and settled for now [...]
I’ve always loved Wallace & Gromit all the way back to A Grand Day Out, and now there’s an excellent Wallace & Gromit movie on the iPad: The Last Resort: But wait! It’s not a movie, it’s a game with lots of movie sequences; or it’s a movie that you direct by game play – [...]
Doodle Galaxies is less fun than it should be! First, it’s “made with GameSalad” – this means it’s much too slow to load! Apart from that, the graphics are cute but game control is minimal – you slide left/right to control your ship, but shooting is automatic and continuous so no skill there; just the [...]
I like this version of Klondike Solitaire, it animates nicely and has a few nice touches like optional “auto card placement”; a good card game to while away a few minutes (though it doesn’t seem that great at shuffling – like me!): I had bought Solitaire Favorites a few months ago, but it just didn’t [...]
I used to read Readers Digest Magazine, and now I can read it on the iPad – the print magazine is small format, so it’s transfer to iPad works very well in portrait mode (although rather less well in landscape): There’s a few oddities with this first release – downloading is too ready to fail [...]
I tried Oil Tycoon 2 tonight, but it didn’t much impress. Rather a waste of iPad screen when for example looking at the help tutorial: No animation in the graphics either, all disappointingly static: And a screen icon / name that just looks strange! Yes, it’s free … but it’s still disappointing, not up to [...]
We spent this weekend in the White Mountains region of New Hampshire, and AT&T basically has zero coverage there – just a little service in some towns, but nothing at all in many areas. So navigating with MotionX GPS Drive HD was challenging, at the least … The App knew exactly where we were, thanks [...]
Desktop is curiously named, as it basically divides your iPad screen in two and lets you load a different (or the same) function in to each half – most usefully perhaps, two browsers looking at two different web pages, or a browser and a notepad … The App offers a number of choices to load [...]
Google Earth is now available for the iPad, and it’s very nice! Although, since the Google Maps App is so good, there’s some less need for Google Earth … You can search and zoom in with Google Earth to the same level of detail as with Google Maps, but there are some nice extra features [...]
Catch a few iPhone games from Electronic Arts, reduced to $0.99 for a short while; I decided to try Game of Life, and it’s an amusing way to pass the time … Sadly, EA is not putting any iPad games on sale – and Game of Life would not switch to “2x” display so I [...]
Less than a month since two million, and Apple reaches sales of three million! “People are loving iPad as it becomes a part of their daily lives,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more people around the world, including those in nine more [...]
If you’re interested in current and recent movies, check out the excellent Flixster; this App provides easy access to recent movie info including synposis, trailer, reviews, still pictures, and quick links to external review sites like Rotten Tomatoes! Of course all the movie info is quite easily available online, but Flixster pulls it all together [...]
Recently I purchased and reviewed MotionX GPS Drive HD, concluding that it was excellent. Paying $3 for the App is quite preferable to paying $15-$50+ for one of the “true” navigation Apps from Navigon, TomTom, etc; but there’s one significant downside to the MotionX App – it does not include maps, instead they are downloaded [...]
There’s a few traffic Apps around, both free and paid for; a few weeks ago I tried Beat The Traffic, but I didn’t much like it: The problem is that Beat The Traffic shows road speed in red/yellow/green, so when you look at the map above, traffic looks bad – only a little green, lots [...]
The Twins is a breakout style block busting game with a twist, that turns out to be a big negative! The $0.99 App looks good enough initially with a nice loading screen that animates if you wait a while: As you see, the game offers a two player mode – each player has their own [...]
It turns out that you CAN use your iPad as a “voice communications device” – a Phone. Skype works fine on the iPad, even though it’s an iPhone App (it’s just a bit pixely at 2x, and a bit small at 1x – but you’re talking rather than reading!): After successfully using Skype’s test call [...]
Well, sort of … There’s a few Apps available that allow use of your iPhone to take a photo and then transfer it to the iPad: CAMERA-A, Wireless Camera, Coolibah CoolCam, etc. While CAMERA-A seems top-rated, CoolCam is free so that’s a big incentive to try it out! This type of App can be complicated; [...]
If you know Stephen Fry, you’ll know that he is hilarious, and that he loves technology (see his iPad launch article in Time Magazine. Stephen Fry has a “bloggy” website, and now has an iPad App which repeats his website content in, perhaps, a more iPad friendly form: His article “No Comment” is an entertaining [...]
After trying Google Maps on the way to work on my iPad yesterday, I looked around for any other iPad ready navigation Apps, and discovered there aren’t very many. But I did find MotionX GPS Drive HD (from MotionX), and at the price of just $2.99 I decided to try it – and wow am [...]
I had wondered about buying the full App, and then Robber Bomber HD Lite became available so I tried it today – and saved myself some money: this game is awful! You will see this tutorial screen a lot, since it displays it at every start! The tutorial is not even much use, it could [...]
When I discussed WordPress posting, I found that the App is useful for getting pictures up to the website, and editing text – but editing in the browser is the best way to post pictures into the entry, and for such as pasting in links. However, there is no way to scroll the text box [...]
Atomic Web Browser remains my favorite App browser, but last night I purchased Perfect Web Browser after reading it’s claim Perfect Browser can spoof user agent string and render web pages like the target browser of your choice: Chrome, Opera, Firefox or IE, with a startling 1:1 level of similarity; I contacted the author to [...]
It is worth exploring your iPad – check out Accessibilty options in Settings / General, where you will find the “White on Black” option: This option simply inverts all colors, resulting in a very strange home screen: But reading iBooks at night might be easier on the eyes: Also in Accessibilty, you can set clicking [...]
I found another excellent fun game to play on my iPad: Marblenauts which recently appeared at a perfectly reasonable $0.99 and runs on both the iPhone and iPad! In the game, from Crescent Flare, you simply have to destroy blocks so that the Marblenauts can get to their appropriate colored exit squares – easy, no?! [...]
I’ve already written about the “official” iBooks App (and the issues I had with it), and about Amazon’s Kindle App. Quick reminders: The iBooks App is perhaps the nicest looking and most usable, with a fully integrated book store and the “book shelf” library theme: In portrait mode, a single page is displayed: In landscape [...]
After
A quick reminder about Atomic Web Browser. My habit when web-surfing is to visit a site (TUAW, Google News, whatever), and open all interesting links in a new tab, while reading the main page; then I can go to those other tabs to follow the links I opened. This works fine in Safari on my [...]
Unless you have ultimate patience, steer clear of this App! The loading screen announces “made with GameSalad”; not so interesting but you stare at it for about TEN SECONDS! This is not a big complicated game, but it’s slow to load and slow to switch from screen to screen; no doubt this slowness is part [...]
Finally, we get to see the iPad version of WIRED, at an unpleasant $4.99 (especially as I already pay for the print version). So far, it’s good – but not perfect. The whole App works nicely in both portrait and landscape mode; it’s been properly created with layout altering subtly so that it views sensibly [...]
Although there are Flash limitations on the iPad, Google successfully created a Pacman game that works fine on the iPad as well as on other targets, for the games 30th anniversary! iMac plays Google Pacman (keyboard arrow keys to move): iPad plays Google Pacman (touch to a side of Pacman to move): Hopefully Google will [...]
I’m still looking for a good, simple, Space Invaders type game. But while Space Strike looks good, it just doesn’t play very well. Space Strike has some lovely graphics, with multi-colored aliens hovering left/right above you, and pretty backgrounds – but notice that line down the left edge with the red blob on it … [...]
I really hate this “game“! It’s the first time I would like my money back – thankfully, it was on sale for just $0.99, but I still feel I wasted my money. I hardly feel right calling it a game; basically your dragon character travels left to right at faster and faster speed (or the [...]
Even if you don’t own a BMW, you should check out the BMW magazine App. Unlike other magazine Apps I’ve tried, this one has a really quite good user interface and behaves much closer to what I was hoping for when I got my iPad. The App works best in portrait mode; load it up [...]
Kindle for iPad offers a quite different experience to iBooks, with a less elegant interface – especially in landscape mode: The same page in landscape mode – a big waste of display space, not as nice as the iBook “two up” display: Using the Kindle App is nowhere near as simple as iBooks either; you [...]
I haven’t done much reading yet on the iPad, but before my flight home I thought I’d check out what’s available – and sadly there’s not so much really! But I was interested by Craig Ferguson’s American On Purpose, promoted on the front page of the iBooks store today: So I downloaded it, read the [...]
Further to my initial thoughts about Herod’s lost tomb for iPad, I’ll conclude by saying that the game is too short / easy! I’ve finished already … There’s only six “chapters” (areas) to play, and each has between 12 and 36 items to find; it doesn’t take long to finish them all – especially considering [...]
I’ve found a way to save money on my iPad! Tap “spin” lots of times, instead of dumping coins into a real slot machine Fruity Slots Deluxe from Mobile Amusements is an attractive slot machine simulator that offers lots of chances to win! As well as being a fun way to waste a bit of [...]
I’m thrilled that my favorite iPhone puzzle game, Marple, has been updated for the iPad with full size crisp graphics and the same challenging game play (the iPhone version was 2x playable, but this is much better!) The game has a good descriptive help section, but it’s best really to play a level while using [...]
Down the gopher hole HD could be a psychedelic trip down a “gopher hole” tunnel, tilting left, right, up, down to avoid various nasty obstacles and reach the end of the tunnel before the clock runs out! It’s really quite a simple game, with too short tunnels, too few tunnel choices (only two), and not [...]
Just now, I almost had to use my desktop machine to post a weblog entry on GBMINI.net; I needed to “right-click” to get the address of an image, but no way to do that on my iPad! But a quick App search gave me IHTMLplus which easily displayed the raw HTML from my Gallery page, [...]
I’m a fan of hidden object games – nothing too challenging, and sometimes you learn too! Herod’s lost tomb for iPad from National Geographic is one of those games, and at a reasonable price too. The game loads up with a number of objects to find in various locations; as you clear each location you’re [...]
This game doesn’t quite seem to know what it’s called – Go Ladybug Go is the loading screen name, but the App is called LadyBugfree and in the App store it’s called Buggies HD free; whatever it’s called, it’s free, quite cute, but too much of a pain for me to keep playing! When the [...]
I wanted to like God Finger HD – and maybe I would if I was in to all the “online / social” aspects, but … I’m not! So, it’s not for me. First, you *have* to create an account before you can even check out the game. Second, there’s adverts The game itself could be [...]
This App was one I downloaded and wrote about early; it doesn’t do much except display memory statistics, battery remaining (which you can see on the top status bar of the iPad if you configure it) and a few other things. But it’s main downsides (overrun with mini adverts and portrait mode only) have been [...]
I’m still interested in magazines on the iPad, but apparently it’s still too early … I decided to check out How It Works Magazine, as it sounded really interesting. Luckily, it’s free to try, including one issue … it begins badly, by displaying instructions on how to access the pages, including how to zoom in [...]
Apparently Stickbolt is “extremely addicting” – but it lasted only a few seconds on my iPad! It was free to download for a while (thanks AppShopper), but it was awful enough to immediately get deleted! Maybe it’s a great game, but I couldn’t get past the poor quality user experience – clearly it’s been quickly [...]
Previously, I liked The Guardian Eyewitness, but it’s first update has basically trashed it! There was always the issue that, after first downloading it and enjoying all the photos, you get only one new one each day – but at least you can look back, and keep favorites. Well, after the update, you can’t: Apparently, [...]
If you like Soosiz (which I do!), you might like iBlast Moki HD too – it’s not frantic at all, and somewhat challenging; not as cute as Soosiz, but still quite entertaining … When you start the game, there’s a set of islands to play; within each island there’s a set of similarly styled levels; [...]
I tried out Photopad a few weeks ago, but now ZAGG has released a new version of Photo Pad and it’s quite significantly improved! My original review mentioned the odd way to control cropping, as well as a general lack of features. While the odd cropping control is still there (but I guess you’d get [...]
First … I’m not a cook, but I like food! My next door neighbor does like cooking though, so we checked out Epicurious; start it up and it opens with a list of featured recipe categories: There’s lots of ways to find a recipe – I fancy “decadent desserts”, so touch the tab and you [...]
An amusing little App I tried today, because it’s on special offer FREE for the weekend, Calc & Draw; you’re offered a “blank slate” (slate, green, or lined), and a set of colored “pencils” to draw with – you can adjust the line thickness – as well as an eraser; you simply point on the [...]
I’ve looked at the first issue of TIME Magazine before, and I wasn’t particularly impressed – too expensive ($5 per issue), and a whole new App for each week … Well, there’s a new TIME Magazine App, and it fixes one of my complaints – it now offers in-App purchasing of each weeks issue, so [...]
My new favourite “quick reference” weather App is Weather Station Pro from Toopia; it’s so attractive and easy to use, it’s perfect! No, it doesn’t have animated maps showing radar heading for you, or any maps at all – but it does have a pristine display of all the weather data you need to know, [...]
WordPress is the weblog system I use to create iPadThoughts, and I love it – so do many other people! When I started ‘blogging, I used Blogger, but after a while I wanted my own hosting – the ability to handle photos better than Blogger could, for example (back in early 2003 when things didn’t [...]
Head to CNET for an interesting App comparison of 20 popular non-game Apps that have both iPhone and iPad versions, including comparison screen shots:
Yes, it’s another iPad game – and once again it’s a game that looks gorgeous and doesn’t require too much thinking! My type of game, and I find such games to be a perfect alignment on the iPad, where I want to pick up and play for a while – but not too long (for [...]
Last night, I needed to capture part of a screenshot – but the iPad has no built-in photo editing, even anything as simple as cropping. As I learned when I tried PhotoPad, it’s crop works strangely! I’m sure I’ll be purchasing Photogene some time, but I decided to try the iPhone program Crop for Free; [...]
One thing I definitely have to do when away from the office, is access my office computer; on my Macbook Pro portable, I use Chicken of the VNC to log in to Windows XP running RealVNC; both free and very useable solutions. On the iPhone I had tried Mocha VNC Lite, but it’s almost useless [...]
Having mentioned a few Mahjong Apps for the iPad, I’ll now mention my current favorite, Mahjong Artifacts: Chapter 2 HD from G5 Entertainment; the game starts nicely with well designed tiles and a different layout for each level: But this game offers a little more than traditional Mahjong, playing the “quest” version gives a little [...]
There’s a heap of different Mahjong games for the iPad already! A game I enjoy, as it doesn’t take too much time to play a level, and can be quite satisfying and entertaining. My first Mahjong App was iMahjong HD, now called iMahjong 2 free – it’s free, but it’s hardly worth it! I don’t [...]
Tonight I saw mention of PhotoPad by ZAGG; it’s “free and will always be free” so I thought I’d try it. I’ve also been a Photogene user on my iPhone, and might buy that for the iPad eventually (once I have the camera connector) – but trying a free program is low risk so why [...]
Soosiz is another wonderful iPad game – and my preferred “platformer” game style. Hardly much like an old-school platform game, but still of the “run around, collect things” genre. Much cuter though! In the game, you control the main character as he(?) travels through lands collecting friends and coins, and largely disobeying the traditional laws [...]
I don’t buy into the iPad as a laptop replacement—not quite. But it is fantastic at tapping into your computers to access video and audio, documents, and even your full desktop, remotely. Here’s how. GIZMODO discusses Air Video, StreamToMe, GoodReader, Mocha VNC Lite and Desktop Connect. I’ve used VNC Lite, but it can’t handle the [...]
Even before getting my iPad, I’d been thinking about developing a better browser than Safari – and especially once I got my iPad, since switching from one “tab” page to another in Safari is much too inefficient. I was thinking that it would be great to be able to swipe left/right, maybe with two fingers, [...]
This is definitely a MISS for me! Weather Underground has a very popular weather website, but WunderMap disappoints me! The App starts well enough, with a scrollable map and temperature / forecast display – tap the “locate me” button and you get local info abbreviated (current temp only) or full, including a forecast: The map [...]
One thing I really found my iPhone too small for, was playing games; the iPad is perfect for this, with a bigger screen but all the ease of use of the iPhone … a favourite game in my first week of iPad ownership is Cash Cow Deluxe: The simple object of the game is to [...]
The iTunes store classifies this under “photography”, but it’s a fine line whether it belongs there or in “news”; either way, it’s a very nice App that offers beautiful photographs from around the world: The App opens with a full screen photo; at the bottom left is a caption which can be removed (tap the [...]
TIME Magazine App is one of the first “new wave” media attempts on the iPad, and it’s generated lots of opinions; I was very reluctant to “encourage” charging $5 for a single issue of a publication, but since the cover has Steve Jobs I decided to try it! There’s quite a lot to like about [...]
When I got my iPad, I expected to be able to use it instead of my Macbook Pro for most quick tasks – accessing mail and websites from a comfy chair, etc. But one thing that’s frustrated me is RSS feeds! I’ve set up Google Reader to track RSS feeds from various forums and websites [...]
I’m disappointed by the BBC News App; growing up in England, the BBC News is “the” news, so I had great hopes for this App … Sadly, it’s rather too poorly implemented at the moment. The App opens (in landscape mode) with half the screen listing stories (each with a thumbnail image), and half the [...]
Are you a techie / geek that needs to know the insides of everything? You might like Pad Info, which is free (but offers advert links) and does one task only – displaying a pile of internal iPad data: So now you know all about the iPad memory usage, although the rest of the info [...]
I think Reuters News Pro for iPad might be my News App winner; it looks good and offers loads of news stories and pictures, with seemingly no adverts! On the “front page” you scroll vertically to access all the different news topics (which includes top news, business, US and World news, technology, science … as [...]
AP News is another News App choice on the iPad; when I first tried it, I thought it a very different and nice styling, with horizontally scrolling article snippets, below highlighted photo and video choices: It’s possible to customize the included stories (though the process is not “iPad intuitive” and it doesn’t seem possible to [...]
There’s a lot of choice when it comes to News Apps on the iPad (and that’s ignoring all the News websites you can visit!); right now everything is bargain priced (free!), and there are a lot of different ideas on the right way to do News … the New York Times offers an Editors Choice [...]
When I started writing up weather Apps tonight, The Weather Channel App was my preferred – mostly because of the nice “local” screen with clear weather forecasts for the day, and the next 10 days too: Tap on the map, and it opens to a full scrollable display offering display of radar history for the [...]
Having deleted Accuweather, I tried WeatherBug, another weather App that I’ve used successfully on my iPhone … sadly WeatherBug doesn’t really satisfy me, either! Happily, I can freely scroll and re-center the WeatherBug map, so finally I can see what the weather is like in Gloucester, MA! By default, WeatherBug does not show radar, so [...]
Apple did not include Weather with the iPad, so there’s a need to find a good weather App … my first stop was Accuweather Cirrus Free, since I use it regularly on my iPhone. Sadly, it’s quite awful on the iPad! The initial screen is OTT, with huge graphics conveying the forecase – have you [...]
