A Random Life In Review: Top 10 iPad Apps – August 2012

Now its time for my personal top 10 must have iPad Apps , once again its in no real order:

1. Evernote

The great thing about having a iPad is its integration with my MacBook, and so when I work on my iPad I kinda work on my MacBook – or that I can see my work on my Mac, and yes there are loads of note taken apps that will let you do just that, the great thing about Evernote is it does all this and more. With integration within other apps (so you can take notes directly from them) and a Chrome app its by fair the best note taking / sharing app going and all the different Evernote apps are Free.

 

Price: Free.

2. BigOven

The great thing about the iPad is its screen, yes you can get cooking apps on your iPhone but you know what – reading from a small screen when your working just isn’t fun. Big Oven is a great app, it has 1000’s of recipes from every style of cooking but whats more, you can also tell Big Oven what you have in your kitchen and it will bring back recipes

Lastly you can add to your shopping list and use the handy planner to plan your meals before you shop – it’s a great time saver.

Can’t remember the price but I think its £10.00 a year so cheap as chips.

 

Price: £10.00 (a year… I think) 

3. Netflix / Lovefilm / Blinkbox

 

 

 

 

These 3 Video Streaming services cover the best of them, the great thing about the iPad is its screen size, watching a HD film on the go is great and much more enjoyable than on the small screen of the iPhone – I will often use the different services apps on the iPad to browse whats on / available as and when I’m in the mode to watch a movies and its often quicker to open the open then turn on the TV / Computer to check the main site.

If you don’t know BlinkBox is like your cloud based film collection, if you create an account and then link it to your club card any Blue rays / DVD’s you purchase in Tesco’s will appear on you Blink Box account – aka a free digital copy that’s stored in the cloud.

Price: All Free (require a subscription service for Netflix and Lovefilm).

4. Spotify

Yep its a music streaming app, and yep it works on the PC, Mac, iPhone and iPad (and more) but for the iPad I like to keep my storage free for editing photos and videos I may need to watch to on the go so using a service like Spotify is great – endless music over the internet (recommend you use WiFi) with out taken up space on the iPad.

 

 

Price: Free (with options to upgrade). 

5. Zite

I’m note going to say this again, ok one last time – Good apps for the iPad make use of the extra screen space and Zite is a great app that does just this but for news – just let Zite know the subjects you interested in and it will bring news to you about said subject for free. With the ability to flip from story to story you have a real tactile feel to using the app (like the iBooks app)

 

 

 

Price: free. 

6. Numbers

Numbers is Apples version of Excel, it’s not a heavy as Excel but you can do most of the daily work you would want to run in Excel within numbers – it’s not the same as the Mac version but it will sync with the Mac version as well as allow you to store documents within iCloud and share via email.

Some basic functions Number will do: Vlookup, Sum, Graphs, Charts

What I love about numbers – if you need to create a nice looking report for a customer than Numbers is the App for you – it’s so easy to make even the standard chart look interesting (as possible)

Price: £19.99

7. Pages

Just like Excel has Numbers, Word has Pages, again its a light version but do let that put you off, perfect for written letters, blog posts, meeting notes and any other day-to-day word processing need you may have. I use Pages every day for customer meeting notes, why – because I can email a copy direct to the office from within the app, it syncs and stores copies on iCloud and has all the feature you need.

Including: Spellchecking, Left, Centre and Right hand align, Tab, Column, Images, Bullets / Lists and more.

Oh and whats more if you have the Mac version then yep you can start a document on your Mac and complete it on the go or the other way round.

Price: £19.99

8. Keynote

This is the last app that makes up iWorks and its Apples version of Powerpoint – now this is one app that I think is better than the MS Office version, again its light so don’t expect to do massive presentations on this app however if you need to do a 10 / 20 slide presentation then this is the app for you – it’s so easy to create great looking slides with animations that don’t look like you’ve done them on a cheep powerpoint template.

Very quick and easy and as with all the iWork apps it fully sync with the full Mac Version via iCloud and can be emailed as well as being able to open MS documents.

 

Price: £19.99

Alternative to the above iWorks Apps – CloudOn

No matter how good the iWorks apps are – some times you need the MS version, thats when CloudOn comes in handy – it was free when I downloaded the app and it basically lets you use all the MS Office programs via the Cloud so no massive app but all the power – down side is, you need a decent internet connection and as its Cloud based it’s not the most secure platform.

On the up side – all the function of the main programmes with very little space taken up .

Includes: MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint and MS Access.

 

Price: Free

9. Skype

 

Not sure what there is to say but if you like to call people, see a nice big pitcher of them but can’t use the iOS app (as well not every one has a iPad) then Skype is the best there is, every one knows it so there isn’t much I can say… Oh you could act out a scene of trigger happy, you know the one, with the big phone… yep “I’m on the phone…”

 

 

Price: Free

10. Flipboard

There is nothing better than keeping up to date with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other RSS feed then being able to read it like a magazine, that’s what Flipboard lets you do, follow the BBC or news source on twitter and Flipboard will open the link so in effect you’ve created your own living newspaper.

You can post, like, unlike, re-tweet etc all you want within the App as well as add additional subjects that flipbard will find and create your own news feed.

 

Price: £0.69

App of the Week

Chrome

 

 

 

 

 

Price: Free

Platform: iOS

Category: Web / Browser

At last Chrome comes to Apple (both iPhone and iPad), it doesn’t have all the features as the desktop version of the browser by the same name but if does have a lot of the features you expect to see on a phone browser including: Multiple tabs, History, Privet Browsing and what makes this a great app (if you use Chrome on your desktop / laptop) is that it syncs with the desktop version of it self.

I’ve been using it for about a week now with no crashes and no problems opening any webpage at all.

Rating: 4 out of 5

A Random Life in Review: Movies

Ok this instalment was a little unplanned (kinda of the idea of the random part of the blog), I couldn’t sleep last night so when I did it was very late (or early) resulting in me not getting out of bed until 12:00 today – the shame i know.

Any ways, I was woken by an email coming in, from Tesco’s about a free film for me to add to my Blinkbox account – I must have been asleep when blink box came along because I had never heard of it, but naturally I was interested and so I proceed to click on the link and check out the offer.

So what is Blinkbox

Think of Blinkbox as a direct comparison to iTunes or other rental services (such as BT Vision, Sky, etc etc), for this review I’ll be comparing directly to iTunes as i think every one understands iTunes and has seen iTunes to some extent.

Like iTunes you can rent or purchase a movie – unlike iTunes the quality isn’t as good, its DVD quality, not Blu Ray (so not HD) but there is a great advantage – the film doesn’t need to be directly copied to your iPad or PC, instead your purchases / rentals stream to your device of choice saving space, in fact saving a lot of space.

There is a second advantage, and thats the price of the rental / purchase – iTunes charge up to £4.99 for a 30 day / 48hr rental for the latest movie, BlinkBox charges £3.49 for the same rental terms as iTunes (so 30 days / 48hours) so thats like for like – also if you purchase a film from Tesco’s (as in Blue Ray or DVD) and provided its listed in the BlinkBox catalogue then the film is added to your library – its akin to 2nd copy (or digital copy) but again it doesn’t take up any space on you iPad or iPhone – all you have to do is confirm your Tesco’s Club Card number when signing up (and use your club card when you make the purchase at Tesco’s)

Thats great, Tesco’s need to highlight this in there shops and a point of sales, buy your film here and get a free copy in your BlinkBox account – its great, its really great and I know I will now consider buying my blue rays from Tesco’s more then I have in the past (after all the price is about the same as other shops but I get a free copy, that takes up no space on my iPad that I can take on holiday and stream anywhere I have internet).

Heres a screen shot of how it looks:

On the down side: it requires internet connection, you if you buy a film directly from the site then you don’t have a hard copy and when I was streaming a film at home (see my review of BT Infinity) over my WiFi the screen often turned green or froze, which wasn’t great.

In summary: for me the streaming problems (over a good internet connection running at good speeds) means I will mainly keep BlinkBox as my – thanks for the free copy from Tesco’s rather then replacing buying Blue Rays or HD films and movies from iTunes but again thats not a bad thing. I recommend you check it out.

Rating: 4 out of 5 – its free to use, the selection of films appears ok, and you get free copies when you purchase a movie from Tesco.