Making The iPad Even More Awesome

I recently jumped on the iPad bandwagon and although I haven’t been able to ‘play’ with it as much as I would like, I have managed to get some awesome apps to make my iPad definitely a work-friendly tool.

My initial hopes for the iPad as a marketing aid and mobile work tool have been surpassed. Before I bought an iPad my only experience with one was about an hour of drooling and gushing over the device at Best Buy, but when the June 7th cut off for the AT&T unlimited data plan came to light I decided to get the 3G version a little earlier than I had originally planned. I am glad I did because my experience so far has been beyond what I had envisioned.

One of the surprises is the keyboard. I thought it would be totally useless for typing anything longer than a quick email. But I have written quite a lot on it, including this post. Amazingly my fingernails don’t get in the way and the spell check helps when needed.

 
Listen to an audio file where I talk about these iPad Apps
 

Awesome Apps

I really did not know much about what the iPad could do as a work tool and  I guess I didn’t really pay attention to the little instructions when I pulled this beauty out of the box because I didn’t know it had a microphone. Which, is really very handy because it makes this app possible: SoundPaper (the iPad equivalent to Livescribe.) If you are unfamiliar with the amazing digital pen made by Livescribe I highly recommend you check it out. I have one and it has pushed my note taking and review to new heights. Back to SoundPaper – just like with Livescribe – you record, and then when you want to review you click on your notes and the words being said at the time the note was made will play.

I tested it last week at a local meetup and I am very pleased with the results. There were about forty people in a warehouse style meeting room with a high ceiling and no real sound absorption, and the audio from the event is not bad at all. Now, I won’t say the recording in this location was great but I can understand the audio of the panelists just fine and they sat about ten feet away from me. For a mere $4.99 this app is a real gem that you have no monetary excuse to pass by!

Next up is Keynote. Now I have a Mac but my plans for using the iPad as a mobile work tool meant that I was going to create presentations on it, as opposed to importing them. It’s a breeze to make highly attractive presentations on the device with this app and for $9.99 Keynote makes an impressive addition to the iPad.

Keynote comes with some templates so that you can hit the ground running but it would be nice if you could make your on the device. I didn’t  have any photos on my iPad so the next app made it a breeze to add them to my ipad without using iTunes.

GoodReader is only 99 cents and to be honest, that’s ridiculous! GoodReader allows you to link your iPad wirelessly so that you can drag and drop files on your computer and they end up on your iPad. You can also link with several cloud file sharing sites like dropbox.com, box.net and Google Docs.

GoodReader is labeled as a PDF reader on iTunes but it is so much more than that. The PDF reader does allow large PDFs to load extremely fast which is a bonus. I have a 1019 page PDF file that I can scroll through and navigate at lightening speed.

If you add music and video files they will play via GoodReader, not iTunes, but that’s not an issue for me. Actually I prefer it as it keeps my business files in one area, recreational files another.

Dragon Dictation is my next wonder app, not only for what it does but also for its price – free. Simply talk and get your words transcribed. My English accent seems to be a little problematic for the app meaning I get some highly amusing words appear instead of the ones I want, but it can still make getting an article ‘written’ a faster process. I use my Blackberry headset with built in microphone and that helps the recognition rate go up but I am seriously considering getting a tiny external mic for my iPad to use with this app and SoundPaper.

I think that the iPad will do for my reading what my iPod did for my love of music. I had gone for years not playing much music but when I got my iPod music came with me almost everywhere and I fell in love with all types of genres all over again. I have now been reading on the ipad and am already reading a lot more. I don’t put it down to the novelty factor but the ease of use factor. I have been highlighting and note taking like a crazy person – for my business book reading this is good news.

Having the ability to easily go to my notes or search through a book is a big deal for me and after trying the Kindle and iBooks apps I decided I preferred the Barnes & Noble e-reader app. Why? Although it lacks the cool page flicking of the iBook app it has great customization – you can make your own themes and change them out easily. The dictionary also enables you to search words deeper via Google and Wikipedia, which the Kindle and iBook apps don’t. I also really appreciate the way you can even choose page display width. The Kindle, when in landscape mode, doesn’t go to a two page view, but the B& N e-reader app does, just like iBooks.

Lastly Atomic Web Browser Lite makes browsing so much easier because of tabs. Doing browsing of any real length of time gets to be a pain without tabbed browsing. And for matters of privacy this app makes clearing cookies, history and more a breeze.

I know I have a lot more apps to explore and try out but in the meantime these add-ons have taken my iPad experience to great heights. The next step I think will be getting a good RSS reader and Apple’s Pages for my writing, and after that, who knows?

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