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Posts tagged with "iPad"

Daily Notes for iPad Makes A Comeback with Tasks, Dropbox Support

Daily Notes was one of the first apps to adopt a custom interface on the iPad back in the days when iPad apps were a novelty. Reviewed by Cody Fink in May 2010 (a month after the release of the tablet, and the grand opening of the iPad App Store), the app sported an intriguing faux-leather UI that allowed you to organize and schedule your daily events and priorities as if you were using a real agenda. Cody wrote:

Daily Notes is a more traditional styled notebook with lots of calendars built in. Seriously, you cannot miss a date wherever you turn. Asides from what could be overdoing it, Daily Notes has a couple great features built in, but also shows some odd design decisions that need ironing out. Despite some minor gripes, this is probably one of the best looking notepad applications currently available on the iTunes App Store, offering a fair level of organization, note tracking, privacy, and customization.

After a few months of silence, the app is making a comeback today into the App Store with a brand new version 4.0 that comes with several new features like backup through Dropbox and TextExpander integration. Together with that (and I’m sure being able to create daily notes through TextExpander snippets will be appreciated by many) the app can now organize tasks into a dedicated tab and has full multitasking support. But there’s more. You can switch between 30 different themes and 80 fonts, browse fullscreen photo attachments and insert multiple notes per day.

Daily Notes is chock-full of features, but I wish the interface was a little more streamlined. Admittedly, some users might find sections and calendar views confusing at first – thus the implementation of a tutorial when you first launch the app. Still, this is a truly complete app that I hope will get support for more online services in the future. Go check it out here.

Restaurant Chain Will Let You Design Your Own Pizza - With An iPad

Since the iPad’s release, we have seen several restaurants replacing printed menus with iPads, which provide a good solution to build an interactive experience for customers and save on the cost of paper and ink with a constantly updating menu that’s also cool to use. Digital menus, however, might become a thing of the past as soon as Stacked: Food Well Built launches its restaurant chain, heavily based on iPads to order and design meals.

As USA Today reports, the co-founders of Stacked aim at placing 100 iPads per restaurant atop every table, allowing diners to order meals using static menus or design their own burger, pizza or salad through the iPad’s intuitive multi-touch interface and a custom app built specifically for the restaurant chain. The setup:

The iPads at Stacked will be in metal frames that sit about 3 inches off the tabletops. Folks wanting to order burgers will select the type of bun, meat and toppings on the iPad by clicking and dragging icons. The burger stacks visually on the iPad screen. Ditto for pizzas and salads.

Oh, and what if you try to steal the iPad by carrying it out in your bag? An alarm will go off. This sounds like a really clever implementation (do they have custom doors with iPad recognition?) and marketing technique, although the founders claim they won’t market their chain as “the iPad restaurants”. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how the iPad will further integrate with restaurants, coffee shops and bars in the next years. iPad cash registers are already in place in New York City.

First Screenshots Of Opera for iPad [Update: Video]

At Mobile World Congress 2011 the folks over at Softpedia managed to get their hands on preliminary version of Opera for iPad, and apparently they were impressed by the speed of the browser. Released on the iPhone last year, Opera for iOS raised some doubts over the quality of the app, mainly due to scrolling smoothness and font rendering on pinching and zooming – clearly inferior to Apple’s Mobile Safari. Opera for iPad is set to provide a much better experience on the tablet screen, with an interface that reminds of the desktop version (visual tabs on top) and menus accessible from a huge Opera button in the upper left corner. The developers also confirm the iPad app has been built on the same engine the powers Opera desktop.

The app runs very smooth, and allows for some rapid movement between visual tabs (open pages). Visual tabs allow users to have several web pages open concurrently and quickly switch between them using tabs. Each tab allows users to preview a thumbnail, as well as the page title and icon for each web page they have open.

Where the default touchscreen keyboard provides a less-than-optimal user experience, users can take advantage of Opera’s virtual keyboard to type and edit information without having to leave the page they are viewing.

I’m curious to see this Opera virtual keyboard and see how it compares to the iPad’s default one. No release date was provided by Opera at MWC, but Softpedia speculates we might see the app in the Store as early as next week. It will likely be free, and quickly jump the charts of free software like the iPhone counterpart did.

Check out more screenshots of Opera for iPad below. Read more

Dayboard: Animated Clock, Weather and Twitter Widget for iPad

Dayboard by Blend is a beautiful and, at the same time, interesting application for all those who prefer to keep their iPads on the desk as a clock widget / second monitor while they’re working. The app, sold at $0.99 in the App Store, combines a minimal, elegant and sexy design with clock, weather, calendar and Twitter widgets displayed on screen at the same time.

Dayboard provides all kinds of information without being just a flip clock – like many other apps in the App Store. Upon launch you’ll be asked to grant location access to the app, and I’ve noticed Dayboard reliably and correctly fetches my current location – which, for some reason, has been kind of a problem with several apps lately. Together with location and weather info, Dayboard displays time and date. On top of the animated flip clock, there’s a button to switch from dark theme to light theme. Last, a widget at the bottom rotates Twitter trends – and you can even pick local trends for your country or stick with the worldwide ones. You can’t tap on them to load Twitter in Safari, but the animation is pretty cool.

Dayboard is available at $0.99 in the App Store. Give it a try if you’re looking for a great addition to your desk.

Midnight Inbox Touch - Get Things Done. Beautifully.

Today Midnight Beep Softworks released a major update to Midnight Inbox™ Touch, a GTD app for iPad. Midnight Inbox™ Touch is a professional-grade GTD productivity app and it’s now $9.99, compared to Thing’s $19.99 and OmniFocus ($39.99). The total system for an iPhone, iPad, and a Mac is only $35. There’s even a free version for Mac, Inbox Classic, if you want to save a few bucks and use an older version. Read more

iPad Magazines With Subscriptions Start Showing Up in the App Store

Well, look at that. Apple announced App Store subscriptions earlier today and, contrary to recent speculation, iPad magazines using the new billing system are already showing up in the App Store, before the public release of iOS 4.3. As noted by WSJ and AdAge, Elle and Popular Science are the first apps to come with the new Apple subscriptions, which rely on weekly / monthly / yearly payments and give customers the possibility to decide whether a publisher may access personal information like email and ZIP code or not. Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday

You can always tell when an holiday passes, app prices jump back up! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

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