[Pturner]

Broke down and bought an iPad2 last week. Downloaded a bunch of apps. Some of my favorites:

The Good
PhoneBook: Search businesses, it returns their location on a map, with choices to get driving directions and add to your contacts. If you enable "locate" services, it automatically gives the directions from where ever you currently are with your iPad. Choose "add to contacts" and it automatically populates all the relevant fields (bus. name, address, phone, email, etc.)

Discovr Apps: Know of an app that does something you want, but don't know if it's the best app your your particular style or needs? This apps for you. Type an app you are interested in and tells you other apps with similar features. You can click on any of the suggested apps to learn more about them in the App Store before deciding which one to buy.

FlightTracker: Just key in the airline and flight number of your flight (or someone coming to visit or whatever) and it will track the flight's real-time path.

NASA App, National Geographic and Google Earth all look mighty good on iPad. Star Walk: Take it outside and it identifies everything you see in the sky.

Radio, TV and Movies: So many good apps for streaming TV, radio and movies. Most are fee so help yourself to as many as you want.

Zino: About 400 leading magazines included.

Dropbox: Cloud sharing. Drop a document or photo in a Dropbox folder from your iPhone, iPad or computer, and the doc will show up on all the other devices without the need to wire sync. (In addition to installing the app, you download a folder to your computer from the company's website.)

TapTrack: Among many good sites for tracking weight goals, calories and nutrition and exercises.

Atomic Web: Better browser than Safari. Has tab browsing and is faster.

Flex Search: Simplifies searching from a number of leading online reference sources. You can also call up a website and do a keyword search. Great for finding old threads on TOTV!


The Better
Wikihood: Learn about the sites to see, geography, history, companies, people, landmarks, schools, the local media and anything else you might want to know about home or anywhere else on the planet you are visiting or planning to visit.

Fax Print & Share: If the only reason you keep a land-line is to fax, you can ditch your land line and fax from this app. Also prints to any wifi printer (no added software needed) and has document management features. Can also send docs directly to Fedex Office (formerly Fedex-Kinkos). $8.99 but great app.

News360: Actually, I have quite a few news apps that I enjoy. This one is different in that it is organized by subject rather than by source. Click on a category (World, U.S., Bus., Tech, Arts, Health, etc. etc.) and it will bring up many articles. For each article, it shows dozens of news sources that covered the same story. So, if you think one source is biased, you can easily see how a different new source covered the same story.

Notes Plus: Several note apps let you take notes on the iPad with your finger or a stylus. This is the best of these I could find, putting Penultimate for example to shame. Notes can be drawn, handwritten, voice recorded and/or typed, all on a single page. Best adjustable palm rest for hand writing and drawing. Draw something that looks like a geometric shape and it will automatically make the shape perfect. Easily erase. Good filing, printing, sharing and exporting support. If you export a page with any voice recordings, it adds the play, pause, etc. commands on the exported page. Very cool app!

The Gorgeous
iMuscle: 3-D tour of all the muscles in human body and a huge reservoir of exercises for each muscle with animated demo. Same developer has several other gorgeous educational apps, but this is only one I downloaded (so far).