The Twelvesouth guys are well-known for making awesome Apple-dedicated accessories.We reviewed the Bookarc for iPad months ago, and it’s still one of the best products available. A few days ago they launched a new stand for iPad, called “Compass Mobile Stand.” You can find all the details here.

“Compass is a stylish compact folding stand that lets you use your iPad in two different modes. First, as an easel, Compass displays iPad in both portrait and landscape modes. Second, flip open the secondary leg and Compass now holds your iPad at the perfect angle to let your fingers fly across iPad’s onscreen keyboard.

Forged from heavy gauge steel, this slim, travel friendly stand lets you enjoy both hands-free and hands-on use of your iPad anywhere your iPad goes. iPhoto slideshows to Keynote presentations, Compass lets you see and do more with iPad. Compass folds up to the size of candy bar, requiring very little space in your backpack, computer bag or purse. Store it in it soft travel sleeve, which matches the Apple iPad case, and you’re ready to go.”

In my opinion, it’s great, and looks very useful. Check out the images below.

Read more

So you’re giving a presentation on stage. iPad in hand, you swipe through your presentation images, conveying different ideas. At the end, a quick Q&A question presents you with a scenario you couldn’t predict. “How would your website do this?” Quickly, you bring up AirSketch, and in front of an audience of dozens, begin sketching your plans. But whether it’s for presentations or fun, AirSketch is a seriously cool sketchpad for the iPad that allows you to wirelessly share your masterpieces via your local network.

Read more

The iPad lacks a built-in calculator but there’s no shortage of 3rd party ones in the App Store. I’ve already reviewed Calcbot for iPhone and iPad and I’m loving it, but this one’s good, too.

Digits Calculator by Shift looks like a simple calculator app for iPad, with very large numbers and a surprising attention to typographic details. There’s a tape on the left side to retrieve all your past calculations, numbers and some buttons are at the center of the screen. Don’t be fooled by the looks of it: Digits Calculator is powerful. It’s a scientific calculator, with a wide array of options to customize the way it works for you located in the settings.

You can change the colors of the app, enable the currency and scientific formats, show labels and color total values. The app rearranges items on screen with a nice animation when you change orientation.

I’m no math expert, but I can spot a good calculator when I see one. If you already own Calcbot, you may want to give this a try anyway, especially considering that it’s just $0.99 in the App Store and will be available soon as Universal for free to previous customers.

Go download it.

Read more

Mailplane is a nifty little app for Mac OS X which wraps Cocoa around Gmail’s web interface and allows you to quickly switch between multiple accounts, drag & drop from Gmail to Mac OS X’s Finder, pick up contacts from Address Book. It’s got many other additional features, it’s one of my most used Mac apps to date and it was one of the first applications I reviewed here on MacStories.

So when I heard that Ruben Bakker, the developer behind Mailplane, had no plans to release an iPad version, I was kind of sad. Ok for the iPhone, we have Mailroom there. But on the iPad? It would be perfect on it. With the larger screen, Gmail’s iPad web interface and the magical factor of the device, I bet it would turn out to be awesome. Still, no Mailplane.

Luckily for me, for us, and for anyone else willing to configure 5+ Gmail accounts in a single app, there’s Mailboxes for iPad. Is it Mailplane? No. Does it let you switch between multiple accounts? Yep.

Read more

The iPad is so magical it even does 3D now. Sorta. Aircord Labs have released a video showing an iPad that outputs 3D images visible to naked eye thanks to a specially designed projector that beams images into a pyramid-like screen thing.

Take a look at the video below. It looks like those images are real, floating in real space and answering to human’s feedback like clapping hands. I don’t know if we’ll ever see an iPad doing this stuff by default or if this technology will actually turn out to be any useful in real life (maybe), but just the fact that it’s possible sounds great to me. I mean, think about tweeting in 3D. Or arranging icons. Or moving notes around.

You get the idea.

Read more

I’m just going to state this up front: visual news readers are the next (and current) big thing on the iPad. Pulse was featured in the The New York Times, then made its way to the iPhone, too. My Newspapers. The Early Edition. Blogshelf, featured in many other blogs.

But the thing that surprises me most, is that people actually keep on buying these apps. They’re willing to try something new. They’re spending their bucks every single week for the new kid on the block of visuals news readers just to, perhaps, change their habits again the next week. I have the feeling this kind of applications are what Twitter clients were for the iPhone in the early days: a goldmine. Just like people discovered that tweeting from a phone (from the iPhone, especially) could be a highly enjoyable experience (sometimes even better than on the desktop), now they’re looking for a better, new way to consume news. It’s the natural circle of things: a developer comes around and reinvents a genre.

It is a few ones’ job to fine-tune it, just look at how Loren Brichter waited to develop his Twitter client, eventually acquired by Twitter itself.

Developers are coming out with these visual news readers. Should we give them a new name? Let’s say visual feeds, because that’s what they are now. Plus some adjustments to browsing and navigation, that is.

Can Apollo News claim the throne of the best new app in this new category?

Read more