Apple Design Award iPad Winners

The three apps that won the 2011 Apple Design Award in the iPad category are:

1. The game ($10), Osmos
2. Al Gore's interactive book ($5), "Our Choice"
3. Party app ($20), Djay

April 2011 Apps

I have been remiss in keeping track of new Apps I have downloaded which were mostly games...

I found out about Terra, a tabbed browser, just yesterday. Do I trust that if I type in my passwords, they are not being sent off to third parties? No. It's nice for surfing though.

Having deleted Flipboard because of boring content, I have been using Zite instead and find it has a lot of interesting articles. Recommended.

The Google App's most impressive feature is voice-search. Recommended for demo purposes.

Shredder Lite (iPhone) is a chess program that uses the Shredder engine.

Pop-out Peter Rabbit ($3.99) is an interactive book which reads itself or by tapping on a specific word. There is a lite version you can try out. Recommended if you have kids or as a demo app.

iPad 2 Launch brings App Sale for Limited Time

There is a limited time sale this weekend for many titles to celebrate the launch of iPad 2.

Reverting to an Older App

If you upgraded an App and found that you preferred the older version, you can revert to the older app (as long as you have a copy of it via TimeMachine, etc.).

Crayola ColorStudio HD

Crayola ColorStudio HD App works with a digital stylus, called Crayola iMarker.

iMarker safely interacts with iPad's Multi-Touch display, allowing the ColorStudio HD app to differentiate between the child’s input (fingers, swipes, etc.) and the iMarker automatically. This allows intuitive, creative play that brings the accuracy and ease of a stylus but, for the first time, allows the user to both manipulate the creative space and color, without having to toggle the app between modes.

This app and marker is great for kids, what what about artists who want different thicknesses and variety of brushes?

I hope we will soon see something for artists who want to use the iPad.

Test-driving MobileRSS HD Free for iPad

I am currently testing MobileRSS HD Free, a new RSS feed reader that syncs with Google Reader.

Initial impressions (compared to my current reader, Feeddler):
- prettier aesthetics
- the feeds can be sorted manually into a preferred order rather than appearing alphabetically
- switch to a night mode by changing the theme
- it displays favicons (a nice touch)
- IT REMEMBERS THE LAST ARTICLE I WAS READING, WHEN I RE-ENTER THE APP! YAY!

I discovered this reader via the Appsfire Appstream app, which I highly recommended you go download now and which definitely gives a better apps-discovery experience than browsing the AppStore.

Update: Jan 4, 2011, I have switched over from Feeddler. Review to come.

Appvent Calendar (A New App Everyday Until Christmas)

The Appvent Calendar is a promotion featuring a new app (some are free) everyday until Christmas.

"Infinity Blade" Available Dec. 9 for $5.99

Infinity Blade, the game built on the Unreal 3D engine (demo'd on Epic Citadel) will be available for $5.99 on Dec. 9, 2010.

One of the commenters said it was turn-based. I don't know what this means in terms of gameplay and sword fighting.

Discovering New Apps

Go, draw aside the curtains, and discover

The several caskets to this noble prince.

Now make your choice.  — Portia, The Merchant of Venice, II.vii

Robert Scoble wonders how people discover new apps for the iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, and how developers can best market their apps to achieve the largest exposure.

Is the internal marketing by Apple on the front page of the iTunes AppStore sufficient to raise awareness of new and notable apps or do app developers benefit more by mainstream (digital and traditional) press coverage, app discovery services and social networks ("word-of-mouth" discovery)?

He mentions some app-discovery sites I was not aware of:

• Chomp
• Appolicious
• Appsfire

Update: In one of his other posts titled, "Do you really use all those mobile apps?", Scoble links to a Flickr page with a screenshot of his iPhone homepage showing his folder organization categories and a detailed list of all the apps.

Pulse News/Feed Reader now Free

Pulse News/Feed Reader, which changed the face of RSS feed reading, is now free.

MUJI Apps

The apparel company MUJI has a calendar app (free) a notebook app ($3.99), a travel and mobility app (free), and an apparel catalog app (free) for the iPhone/iPad.

October Apps

I just read the news today the the NY Times Editor's Choice App has been replaced with a full NY Times app which will be free until early 2011 when the paywall goes up. Note that the app requires email registration (which then entails being spammed with NY Times "offers"). But I feel that's a small price to pay. There are ads at the bottom of the app and there is also the occasional video ad before the article appears (which can be skipped using the eponymous button on the bottom right).

I also installed What's on TV, a TV listings app, which is quite impressive for having TV listings of Canadian cable suppliers like Rogers and Bell. I had a bit of trouble getting the listings to show-up because I was indoors and location services was not able to get my co-ordinates. But once I entered by postal code, everything started working.

VLC Media Player is also out for the iPad meaning, I no longer have to transcode all my .avi files into .mp4. Update: It played the .avi files I copied over to the iPad with no problems; it did not, however, play a .flv video downloaded from YouTube. As expected, battery life suffers, as the decoding is done in software: 4 minutes of avi video playback caused the battery to drop 1%. To me, that is not worth it. I deleted the VLC app.

I should make a note of the Free App a Day website (they also have an app) which is  true to it's namesake with apps for both the iPad and the iPod Touch/iPhone.

I also installed the Stanza app which is great for reading comic books encoded in .cbr and .cbz. It also opens PDF files. File transfer is done via drag-and-drop from the Apps tab in iTunes (scroll all the way to the bottom).

Internet Radio

I installed AccuRadio (free) on the iPad this morning and gave my Dad a brief demo. I found a great baroque music station on it which should please him as the CBC Radio programming (which he used to love) became distinctly "contemporary" after the new director (who recently left) came to power a few years ago. The bandwidth usage should tell me 1) how heavy the streaming is, and 2) if he listened to any radio.

When he returned from a trip to Portugal recently, he mentioned the Internet Radio Station "Radio Amalia" which streams the audio as an MMS feed. I think he would definitely like it if that station was available on the iPad.

WunderRadio ($7 which my boss has on his iPhone) definitely has that station. But I don't know if it's worth the cost.

It would be nice if there was an iPad app that could input mms:// URLs; Fstream (free) seems popular, however it's iOS4 only and there are many complaints by iOS 3.x users about the upgrade.

Update Sep 30, 2010: This morning, my Dad asked my whether the radio could recieve Portuguese radio stations! I said mentioned that by November, I would be able to install an app that could do it. He listened to AccuRadio for about an hour and the data-usage was 52MB-- so the stream is approximately 1MB/min.

Update Oct. 1, 2010: I found an app called Streamer (free) that can handle mms streams and the radio worked. However, the app has the most appalling user interface. I think I am going to have to write-down the steps so my Dad can listen to his station.

Interview with the Guardian iPad app designer

Neiman Lab has an interview with John-Henry Barac, an art director and designer for the printed edition of The Guardian newspaper, who designed The Guardian’s first iPhone app.

In designing newspapers, you’re always thinking about how to offer the reader different ways into a story — so there’s the headline, there’s the standfirst and the rest of it, but there’s also other call-outs and boxes and other objects which allow the user multiple ways to access the story. And if those are used carefully and coherently, they help to build greater depth of the story that you’re trying to tell.

I think the iPad begins to offer that level of complexity. It offers the reader many different ways to kind of grab hold of part of the story that might interest them, whether it’s a small snippet with a link or another way to dig into a longer article.

September Apps

• Data Analysis (graphing/plotting app; free)
• eWallet Lite (password manager with 256-AES encryption; 10 "card" limit; free)
• Star Wars: Battle for Hoth Lite (tower defense game; free [DELETED: refuses to install on the iPad])
• Sep. 14, 2010: iPad OS upgraded to 3.2.2 as Hoth and Epic Citadel required it
  
• NPR (streaming public radio & news app; free; my Dad enjoyed listening to WGBH while visiting Cambridge so I added it to the favourites; found a fatal bug and reported it to the developer: BottleRocket)
• BBC News (news and videos; live streaming of one of the BBC Radio stations; free)
• Epic Citadel (Unreal 3D engine demo, explore a medieval castle and surrounding land; free)
  

Infocom text-adventure games

After a discussion of Maylon mode for Emacs, I thought of searching for and found that the Frotz Z-machine emulator is available for the iPad/iPhone.

I have three Infocom games that I never got around to playing on my Handspring Visor: Zork1, H2G2 and ZTUU.

It make for a good comparison to the latest in exploratory games: Epic Citadel (demo, based on the Unreal 3 engine; downloaded but not installed or played yet).

Photoshop Express for the iPad

Adobe as released Photoshop Express for the iPhone and iPad (and Android).

It requires the use of a Photoshop.com photo-storage account, however.

More Apps Installed

I have installed a few more apps (free, or free for a day when I downloaded it) unless otherwise specified):

• The Human Genome at Ten (a free multi-media issue of Nature magazine)
• iDo Notepad (productivity) [deleted; couldn't edit past notes, puzzling interface]
  
• Stick Golf HD (game)
• Tower Madness (game)
• First Words Deluxe ($4.99 education spelling game for pre-schoolers)

I bought the Deluxe edition of First Words after downloading the Lite version and finding that it was quite excellent and the 4-year-old enjoyed it a lot. He still thinks it's a game and he hasn't figured out he's learning to spell words.

Update Jul 21: Some more games...

• Starship Shooter HD Lite
  
• Air War Lite [deleted; boring gameplay]
  
• ShipmatcH FREE (odd spelling) [deleted; over-sensitive controls, difficult and frustrating to operate, should have beginner settings]
  

The New Mass

This morning, my Dad asked me if I could download an app he read about called "The New Mass" ($.99) written by Cale Clark ,who is from Toronto.

The app can be used to learn the new responses to the Catholic Mass which will be introduced in 2011.

Last saturday, I showed my Dad iBooks and the iPod apps, after loading a variety of free books (the iPad Manual, Winnie the Pooh, and several free Project Gutenberg titles in Epub format, both from the iBooks store and directly from the web) and a selection of music (~1GB).

Aside: I would have downloaded the New Mass app except that 3G connectivity is still not working. Today, I kept getting a "Please try again message" after filling-in all the registration information in the first dialog box and pressing "Next".

Don't be Alarmed

I thought it would be a nice thing if I got the iPad to wake me up tomorrow morning.

Except that there isn't a clock/alarm clock app on the iPad (the iPhone has a Clock app).

Very odd.