Posts tagged with "iPad"

Slide Reader: A New Google Reader Experience for iPad

What’s to be considered when reviewing a RSS app for the iPad today? The interface design? The features? The Flipboard-killer factor? Or maybe just how much the app is indeed meant for the iPad?

My point is, many apps are just bigger versions of stuff we’ve already seen on the iPhone last year. Some of them are cool and sold well at launch, but they can’t really hope to revolutionize a crowded market such as that of reading news. Then there are a few of them, made by those who took risks, that change the way we make technology fit in our daily lives.

Let’s take a step backwards and think about the iPad as a new device. Is it still possible to create a new app to read news on it? That’s what the Slide Reader developers are trying to achieve.

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Wide Angle Brings Beautiful Photography to the iPad

It’s no secret that the iPad is great at displaying pictures. I mean, it looks like a digital frame, right? And Apple even put a slideshow button right in the device lockscreen. For this reason photography applications are flourishing in the App Store, especially Flickr ones. Think about FlickStackr, Portfolio To Go, or the upcoming Rouse app by Robocat. Not to mention Flipboard’s feature to consume pictures from Boston.com and the like.

A few days ago I downloaded a new app called Wide Angle which allows you to view beautiful photos from The Big Picture and CBC Photo Galleries on your iPad.

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Nebulous Notes for iPad

When I saw Nebulous Notes for the iPad in the App Store, I raised an eyebrow at the reviews. An otherwise solid looking notepad was getting shit ratings because the developer started things off on a good note with an honest, self review. Yes, he gave himself five stars. But I don’t know why people get bent out of shape when the developer openly admitted he’s reviewing himself when there’s shady companies that do this hundreds of times over to game the system. One five star review isn’t going to greatly affect an app ranking in the large scale of things, so kudos to the developer for his strong beliefs in an application he’s put a lot of work into. I think there was good intentions here, even if commenters on the App Store have taken it the wrong way.

So I downloaded the application, and I found Nebulous Notes to be okay as an ideal Dropbox application for taking notes. All the icons are pretty, Dropbox syncing is seamless, and I can lock my contents to keep my work private from users I share the iPad with. With a few improvements, this could be my go-to notes application.

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Survey Favors iPad as a Go-To Device

One of the reasons I read on the iPad so much is because of tools like Instapaper, Reeder, and Times. I think of my Dad every time I use Instapaper, as I imagine the plentiful snippets of articles I send him are immediately dropped into a “do later” folder that never gets checked. His ability to readily read content would be dramatically increased via Instapaper’s web app on his aging Dell, especially if I created a script for it. I haven’t heard from him lately, but I imagine he’s still perusing through Yahoo or MSN news rather than reading the few All Things Digital or Ars Technica gigs I send him.

I used to visit sites every day, but by achieving a workflow with so many wonderful tools that all do different things, I’m able to delegate content for later reading, tackle it now, or share good articles with my friends. You can bookmark and highlight text in a paperback book or a newspaper in real life, but the digital savviness acquired by the iPad (and even the Kindle) have made digital content less disposable than physical paper. Mind blown right? Obviously it should be the other way around. While we’ll elaborate on this some more another time, a recent survey in the United Kingdom has me hoping that people live along the same lines of thinking I do. Digital content is more convenient, accessible, and engaging than paper equivalents.

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Carmack Shows Us The Future of Gaming on iPhone [Video]

id Software isn’t new to impressive tech demos. Remember when they first showed Doom 3? The game eventually turned out to be pretty boring and full of cliches, but the technology behind it was impressive.

John Carmack, co-founder of id Software, showed off Rage for iPhone yesterday at QuakeCon 2010. Yes, that Rage. The tech demo is impressive, and it relies on the proprietary megatexture technology that id Software used in the past. Carmack said that demo was working on an iPhone 4, but the engine (he calls it “game framework”) works great both on the iPad and the original iPhone 2G. According to the VG247 the title will be available in the App Store later this year, and a second one will be released together with the official PC version in 2011.

Check out the video below. [via Engadget]

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SoundPrism for iPad Will Blow Your Mind

There are many music apps available for the iPad, especially DJ ones. Great apps, which sport a stunning attention to UI design and rather “professional” features. I bet you haven’t seen anything like SoundPrism by Audanika, though.

SoundPrism will let you “create music” in a different way: you can’t do nothing wrong with it. It always sounds great. So what’s the point? The point is how you create that music: with multi-touch and a beautiful interface specifically designed for the iPad and with iPad users in mind.

Really, just take a look at the video below. The app has been submitted to the App Store, but you can follow @audanika to stay updated. We can’t wait.

[via Jason Fried]

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Time Warner Cable Prototype iPad App [Video]

Time Warner Cable is working on an official application for the iPad, not publicly available yet, and they’re showing it off in a series of videos where TWC CEO Glenn Britt, CTO Mike LaJoie, VP of Web Services Jason Gaedtke and Director of Digital Communications Jeff Simmermon discuss the future of their online services and the possibilities that new devices like the iPad create for content publishers.

Even in its early development stages, the app looks good. It embeds a TV guide, and allows you to schedule recording with a few taps. Another section of the application lets you stream content to the iPad, but it’s still unknown whether the first version of the application will allow you to sync the status of your watched shows across multiple devices.

Check out the video below, and find other vides of the discussions here, here, and here. [via Engadget]

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