The iPad is a particularly amazing device to travel with, because of its portability and all the things it can do, like have worldwide internet connectivity with 3G and give you access to updated maps all over the world. That’s why today we’re bringing you an app that can help you connect with locals from all over the world and get questions answered regarding their area, right on your iPad. It’s called Ask A Nomad. Are you interested?

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The Situation

Ask a Nomad

What’s the best place to eat in this city? How can I go from the airport to this area? Is it safe to walk through this part of town at night? Questions like these are hard to find answers for through traditional search engines like Google, instead it’s much better to have the advice of a local that knows the place well and can guide you through the best parts of town, give you down-to-earth advice, and point you to the best local businesses instead of the usual franchises.

Ask A Nomad

Worldnomads.com

Ask a Nomad‘s catchphrase is, fittingly, “Keep traveling safely”. It is a project by World Nomads that tries to connect users all over the world to provide answers about certain places by the local people, while also giving you the opportunity to jump in and answer questions about your city and help others.

The service is available online to anyone, but there’s also a mobile app designed just for the iPad that integrates the website’s features with a pretty cool interface so that you can use the app on the go. This app is what we’ll be taking a look at today.

Navigating

Navigating

Although you can read through existing questions without an account, you might want to start by making an account since it’s really easy to get one and you need one if you want to use features like answering questions and marking your favorites.

The app has a toolbar on the bottom and another on the top. On the bottom one you can find navigation buttons for your questions, your favorites, and your profile, as well as the “Ask a Question” button and a couple of buttons for logging in and accessing the settings.

On the top toolbar you can filter the locations that are shown by “Nearby”, “World” and “I Know”. The first one will show you questions near your area. The second one will let you choose between which countries/cities you’d like to see questions from. And the last one will let you add several different places that you’ve been to, so that questions from each of them can be displayed to you.

The interface of the app makes the service much easier to navigate in comparison to the website, as it is a lot more organized and makes it much faster to go through a number of questions with its list-like question navigation system (filtered by date), and a collapsable side-panel for reading more about each one of them or providing an answer.

The Questions

Questions

A great thing that the app does is limit the amount of characters that you can use in your questions, Twitter-style. This way, you’re forced to be quick and concise, creating a much faster and easier way to read through a series of questions. You may also add any number of corresponding topics to your question, as well as a description where you have a lot more length to make your question understandable.

Keeping track of your questions is easy to do with the “My Questions” button located on the bottom toolbar, and you can as well use the “favorites” feature to bookmark any questions that you’d like to keep up with in the future.

The Service

Service

Of course, Ask A Nomad isn’t the only app that can help a tourist find his way around a new city. There are tons of popular services that can do sort of the same thing, or something quite similar. Even Foursquare can help you find information on new places and recommendations from local people that have already been there before. Of course, perhaps the most similar service that comes to mind is TripAdvisor, although its purpose gets a little blurry, seeing as it also tries to be a lot more things like a hotel review site and a flight search engine.

However, Ask A Nomad shines in the fact that it only tries to do one thing, and is quite good at it. The app is solely dedicated to providing an easy way to ask and interact with questions, instead of just giving you a somewhat easier way to access a discussion board (like the TripAdvisor app does). TripAdvisor might have a lot more active users and a bigger community behind it, but Ask A Nomad provides a better experience at doing this one specific thing.

Conclusion

Ask A Nomad provides a great platform for asking and getting feedback on places around the globe, as it is perfectly adapted to the iPad to create a mobile experience that is very easy to navigate through. However, the service might fall short on certain aspects, especially when compared to bigger similar services.

The question catalogue isn’t so big yet and the community of the app is a little geographically limited, but the app is well underway to hit a point where there’s a solid background of information in most relevant places, if it isn’t already there. I love the idea behind the app and I have already found it useful in a recent trip I took, especially because of its ease of use that its great interface and the mobility of the iPad give it.

But what about you? Have you used anything similar, or has this caught your eye at all? Let us know in the comments below!

Previously, to listen to Spotify on the iPad, you had to download the iPhone app. This was useful, but highly unproductive. If you have ever used an iPhone app on the iPad, you know the feeling of only using half of your iPad’s potential and pixels. Now all of this has changed with a completely new redesign just for the iPad – and it sure is beautiful.

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From the Top

At first glance, the new Spotify interface looks a lot like Twitter’s app. The app is divided into panes. The left pane has six buttons along the side that allow you to navigate the different social and special features of Spotify. The right side of the app has either one or two panes depending on what you have selected. The “What’s New” section is packed with recommendations based on trends that are linked to your Facebook account, new releases added to Spotify, and even top tracks and playlists near your location.

Spotify for the iPad is broken up into multiple panels.

Spotify’s search engine is powerful, fast, and extremely easy to use. Start typing an artist, track title, album title, or playlist name and Spotify automatically starts listing matches sorted in an easy-to-read and navigable format. From there you can start listening and exploring right away.

Social Music

Spotify’s power lies not just in its vast library but in its social networking features. Because Spotify is hooked straight up to your Facebook profile, everybody’s listening choices are right at your fingertips. You can see what music is popular among your friends and discover new favorites.

Spotify for the iPad also has an Inbox feature. If someone shares a song with you, it will automatically end up in your Inbox. No longer do you have to go through the trouble of “what was that one song she was talking about?” when it can now rest safely in your Inbox for later listening.

The What's New section is filled with new music to explore.

Playlists are crucial to Spotify’s social network. Whenever you group a bunch of songs in a playlist in Spotify, you can publish it so that others can view and listen to it as well. Whenever you go to the “People” tab on the far left, tap on someone’s picture. There you’ll see a pane full of that user’s published playlists and add it to your own.

Feel like being a little anti-social? Turn on the Private Session feature. All of your actions will not be published until you’ve been inactive for six hours.

Offline Listening

Because Spotify Premium allows you to listen to your music on mobile devices, chances are that there will be a time where you will not have any Wi-Fi access points available or cellular signal to backpack on. Luckily for you all of the Spotify mobile apps support offline listening. Simply select what playlists you’d like to have stored on your iPad and listen away. You can even force offline mode to occur if you need to save battery or reduce the use of internet.

Spotify for iPad has tons of special features such as Offline Mode and a 0 to 12 second crossfade option.

iPad Beauty

Spotify on the iPad is very beautiful. All of the album art is high resolution meaning that it will look great on your fancy new Retina display. What’s more is that Spotify for the iPad has a now playing full-screen view where you can swipe in either orientation to get to the next or previous track.

Searching is a snap! Spotify for iPad organizes all of your results in an easy-to-read fashion.

Gapless playback and crossfade is supported just like the iPod app, in fact, your lock screen even behaves just like you were listening your iPod with full album art and track title right then and there. Tapping the home button twice brings up volume controls as well as play/pause and next/previous track buttons.

Apple’s AirPlay feature is integrated into the heart of Spotify for the iPad. Simply select a base station or Apple TV to pump out your favorite tunes on your giant face-blasting speakers.

Performance

The iPad is a faster machine than the iPod touch and iPhone and it always appeared to run slightly smoother than its smaller devices. However, streaming speed and reliability is always dependable on your connection. I have never had any trouble switching from song to song on Wi-Fi.

Search has been extremely speedy, in fact it starts searching as soon as you start typing. The high-resolution album art loads very quickly but again that will depend on your connection speed. What you’re looking at is a very solid app.

Pricing

The main Spotify service is free. If you want to take your service on the road or out of the house, you have to subscribe to Spotify Premium which costs $9.99 a month. This is the only way to get Spotify on your iPad, although the app itself is free. It is nice to note, that if you want an ad-free experience and just listen to Spotify on your computer, you can achieve this with the Spotify Unlimited service available for $4.99 per month. This does not support mobile devices however.

In Conclusion

Spotify for the iPad is an incredibly beautiful and solid app. Navigating through the app is simple and self explanatory. The high-resolution album art is beautiful and the full-screen view is a great way to show off the vastness of the iPad’s display.

The app performs marvelously with quick speeds and very few, if any, bugs. With all of the extra Spotify Premium features available at your fingertips, Spotify for the iPad is a must have for any Spotify user.

I’ve been exploring mSecure, an app for iPad from the developers at mSevenSoftware, that aims to organize and secure all sorts of sensitive information, whether it’s personal or business related. There are many apps on the market that fill this niche, and even some clear frontrunners. So the question is: is there room for another password manager on the App Store?

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Interface

In terms of interface, mSecure is strictly utilitarian. The top-level screen in the app is a list of groups, which allows you to keep the data for your personal life (such as credit cards, social media passwords, etc) separate from your business information (account numbers, network logins, for example). Just as everything else in mSecure (as you’ll see) can be edited and customized to fit your needs, so too can these groups. Separate your private data into as broad or as granular sections as you wish.

In the main view, a search bar decks the top of the screen, your list of entries separated by category (assuming you’re in the “All” view) takes up a majority of the screen, and a simple toolbar sits at the bottom.

mSecure's no-frills interface.

The Preferences menu, and a few other various menus present themselves via pop-panes like the one above. The interface is simple, but nothing spectacularly designed. There are a few options available in the preferences menu that can help alleviate some of the visual monotony, such as theme (which changes the colors of the toolbars) and fonts.

One last note on the interface: I found there to be various functional redundancies within mSecure. For example, in the screenshot above, a search can be conducted by either tapping in the search bar, or by tapping the search button at the bottom (which moves your cursor to the search bar). I’d like to see these remedied in future versions of the app to streamline the interface and performance.

Usability

So, as a form-as-much-as-function kind of guy, the interface isn’t as honey-dipped as I would like to see. That being said, I can’t say very many negative things at all about mSecure’s functionality.

Each entry is a blank slate for you to customize as you see fit.

The entries that you create to house your sensitive data are impressively flexible. Each entry can be assigned to a group and given an icon from a set of preloaded graphics. There are seventeen preset templates, along with the ability to create unlimited customizable data fields, which make mSecure one of the most versatile apps of it’s kind.

As with most apps of it’s type, mSecure allows you to set a master password to keep all of your sensitive information secured. Until you do this, certain features like auto-lock will be disabled. The app makes this process easier (and, in an appropriate fashion, more secure) by offering to generate a password based on chosen parameters.

Random password generator for elevated uncrackability.

One particularly unique security feature is the self-destruct option. This will wipe out all of your password entries after a certain number of failed attempts to unlock the app.

Because mSecure is available on several different platforms, it includes a sync feature that is powered by Dropbox (and they assure me that iCloud is coming soon). As an avid Dropbox user, I found this to be among the most satisfactory of the app’s features. However, while the tap of a sync button is simple, background syncing would be better (and perhaps this is a feature that will be added with iCloud integration).

The Competition

So how does mSecure stack up against the other front runners in its niche? Well I think it is safe to say that its prime competitors are the oft-discussed 1Password and, my personal favorite, Wallet. And I’ve already addressed how mSecure doesn’t show the kind style and grace that those other apps exhibit. However, in terms of pure utility, mSecure is a solid app.

The only place that I can determine that mSecure’s functionality falls short is in the way that it handles using your credentials to log in to a webpage. Wallet has the ability to launch a secure webpage within the app and use your credentials to log in, and 1Password simply switches to Safari and fills in your information, but mSecure requires you to copy your password (and email/username if necessary) to the clipboard to be pasted into a Safari page.

The method for implementing your stored credentials is just a tad clumsy.

Obviously, the ideal solution would be to allow extensions in mobile Safari, but we can’t blame these developers for that. Unfortunately, mSecure’s work-around seems to be the least elegant of the three.

The Verdict

I think it’s probably clear by now, but in the spirit of being ernest: for design and utility, I would take Wallet or 1Password over mSecure. I don’t think that it is a bad app, I just find the competition to be more refined. However, at $9.99, mSecure is near the bottom of the price scale for similar apps, and I will give it credit for being very flexible.

What is your password manager of choice?

From apps that will entertain you for hours, give a new take on how you use your iPad, or allow you to add some quick effects to a video, this list is sure to expand your horizons!

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Longform is an iPad application that attempts to help you to discover just that, long form content. Not only that, Longform provides you with a very nice place to read those pieces along with handy features for sharing and utilizing your other services. Let’s take a look at this app and do some reading!

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Longform.org

This application is an extension of the website Longform.org. This site is a curated list of some of the best long reads from around the Web. The site is closely integrated with some “read later” type services, such as Instapaper, Readability, Kindle and Pocket (formerly Read It Later). The site makes it incredibly easy to mark some articles for later viewing through your favorite service on your favorite device. You can certainly just click right through to the article from the list as well.

Longform.org

In short, it’s a wonderful source to get to some of the really great content out there on the Web. The editors and contributors hand pick each article and as an added bonus you’re able to send them to your favorite reading service. It’s fantastic.

The folks at Longform.org decided to extend the experience to an iPad application which is what we’re looking at here. It isn’t just a website to iPad app port, but rather an application developed with Longform.org in mind.

Interface

The content is really what this application is all about and it definitely feels that way. The interface is probably what you’d classify as minimalist. It’s very basic. You’ll see your saved articles and subscriptions along a left-hand navigation menu with the articles displaying in a scrollable fashion on the right side. Each article displays the title, source and a short blurb about the article. On top of the menu area are some controls for customizing your subscription list, adding new subscriptions, and the settings for the application.

The main view.

It’s all very, very easy to navigate and essentially has no learning curve if you’ve used any iPad application before. You’ll be reading in no time which is perfect given that’s what Longform is all about.

Subscriptions

This application relies on pulling information from other sources. Those other sources are called subscriptions. The philosophy with Longform is that you’re restricted to subscribing to a curated list of websites. The editors and contributors of Longform have narrowed down the list for you, making your path to great content even quicker.

Checking out the available subscriptions.

This may sound like a serious restriction to some people, but I’m seeing this as a really great feature. There’s an abundance of great content out there and you can either spend your time digging for it, or reading it. Will the editors miss some things you may think are awesome? Yeah, probably. However, these folks have narrowed down the list to a manageable number and all of their sources produce great long form articles. Allowing the first cut to be made by some folks that have been doing this for a while is totally fine with me. More time to read.

I should note that all of the Longform app’s content is available offline, so it’s perfect for those situations when you don’t have network access.

Saved Articles

A section of the Longform menu is dedicated to saved articles. This uses Readability as the tool for your saved articles. Your reading list for Readability can be viewed from here and any article you view in Longform can be saved to your Readability list (more on this shortly).

So yeah, this does sound a little strange, but essentially it is just a way to save articles for reading later. Readability is just baked in and used as this component of Longform. While this does work, I would have liked to have seen a more in app function to save articles for reading later. If you don’t have a Readability account there really is no other method for saving articles.

Reading

While I would say that the core feature of Longform is the actual discovery of great long form content, the reading of said content comes in a close second.

Read mode.

Tapping on an article will open up either the website for the article or the article in the Longform read mode. Buttons on top let you toggle back and forth from one view to the other and a setting enables you to set what view you’ll see by default each time you open an article. I really enjoy this aspect of the application. You’re able to find some excellent reads and then read them, all in a very solid content-only view right within the same application.

Sharing an article.

Some standard features are available in this mode such as sharing an article to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or via email. It’s also possible to save the article to Readability (save for later for this app’s purpose), Instapaper and Pocket (formerly Read It Later). You also have some basic view customization options that allow you to change the font size and type as well as the margins and line height of read mode.

Customizing read mode.

Final Thoughts

I simply love the service that Longform.org provides. They put thought into finding some of the best long form content available on the web and they do it for free. Wading through the mess that the Web can be sometimes to find the good stuff can be completely daunting.

Now, with the expansion to an iPad app, we’re seeing that service extended. To be honest, I felt great about contributing my $4.99 to purchase this app to repay them for all the content they’ve directed me to over the years.

I think the concept of Longform.org lends itself perfectly to an iPad application. People do a lot of reading on their iPads and actually longer form reading is particularly nice when compared to a computer. Applications like Readability and Instapaper do cover this space quite well, but where this app shines is the fact that it presents you with all sorts of great reads. You can open the app and be reading a great article within seconds. The article was hand delivered to you and you essentially did nothing to find it.

However, I think there is some room for improvement. Connection to the services they’ve been so tightly connected for so long is great, but I’d like to see this app be a little more capable on its own. There are an abundance of little features that could be added that could make this already solid application into a really great one.

Longform is one of those applications that feels like it exists for the greater good. It helps us to discover some of the best content the Internet has to offer. It cuts away all the junk for us and reveals only the best parts. There is so much great writing out there that so many people don’t even know exists and Longform is there to bring that stuff to light. I’m excited that this application exists and I’m excited to see where it goes in the coming years.

Yes, the camera on the new iPad is significantly better than it used to be. But, that doesn’t mean it’s actually any use – I still find it frustrating and nigh on pointless to use the iPad to take photographs.

So there you have it, this weeks question presents itself; how often do you take photos with your iPad?

I’m happy to be proved wrong and shown just how many people do use their iPads to regularly take shots, but I’m skeptical about it myself…

For the purpose of keeping this pure, I’d like you to discount using the iPad for FaceTime, I’ll freely admit that the iPad cameras are great for that! Let’s keep this just about photographs, shots that you aim and focus in on. Let me know in the comments how you feel about using the iPad camera in the wild!

That is certainly what Readdle, makers of Scanner Pro, want you to think anyway. Scanner Pro is a universal app that allows you to scan various types of document using your iPad’s camera. I have used this app on my iPhone and find it excellent. I have an iPad 2 so I decided to see what limitations there are when scanning with version 4.0.2 of the app. Readdle do say for optimum results you are better off using the iPhone version, or a new iPad. Let’s see if they are right…

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Getting Started

So that’s the first thing to keep in mind. The iPad version of this app is optimised for use with the new iPad and its retina display capabilities, that brings me to my first point about Scanner Pro.

Paying $6.99 for an app that may not work particularly well on my device feels like a risk I wouldn’t normally take. However, the iPhone version works really well (including the iPhone 4), so it seems strange that the app may struggle on an iPad 2.

Well, here is the good news. You won’t be wasting your money. There are indeed some limitations in regards to quality of the scans, but there are also ways around those limitations. So lets take a closer look.

What Is the App For?

The name is pretty self-explanatory, but Scanner Pro does particularly well with certain types of documents. In general you can:

• Scan handwritten notes and sketches to keep a digital copy.
• Scan receipts and invoices to keep a digital copy.
• Scan interesting book pages and magazine articles for reading later.

What Does It Look Like?

When you first start the app you will be greeted with the main document window:

Scanner Pro's main interface.

At first glance there don’t seem to be many options, but the neat interface has some useful features tucked away. For example, from the Settings menu, you can link your Dropbox, Google, and Evernote accounts:

Scanner Pro's settings.

I think that capability is critical for a productivity app. Evernote and Dropbox are popular the world over for good reason. Any app that claims to help with productivity must support them. Scanner Pro also supports Google Docs so all the main cloud based storage systems are covered.

Other than Settings, there are buttons for taking a new photo, and adding an existing one from the Photo Library:

Interface buttons.

Functionality

To scan a document, it is simply a matter of tapping the camera button. You will get a grid for alignment and a reminder to hold still while taking the photograph. Once you have tapped the button to take the picture, Scanner Pro will have a guess and which part of the image you were trying to capture:

Scanner Pro after photo taken.

You can use the drag handles to adjust the area that will be included in the scan. There are a set of buttons that appear on a toolbar at the bottom of the screen:

• Find borders – will try and work out the outline of the area you have photographed.
• Select all – will change the selection to include everything in the photo.
• A4 (might say letter) provides a menu for you to choose a document size.

Let There Be Light…

I did all my testing using natural daylight from a nearby window. The iPad version of Scanner Pro would probably struggle under tungsten lighting, unless you have a third generation iPad.

Readdle do provide a warning with version 4.0.2 of the app:

Readdle quality warning.

That tells you everything you need to know.

Some Scanning

I decided the best way to test the app was to try a scan on:

1. A newspaper article.
2. A magazine page.
3. Handwritten notes.

1. Newspaper Article

Scanned newspaper article.

Both images are acceptable as a record of the article. The image on the left uses the “photo” option, and the image on the right uses the “document” option. The “greyscale” option makes no discernible difference from the “document” option.

2. Magazine Page

Scanned magazine article.

The image on the left comes from the iPad app, and the image on the right comes from the iPhone app. I used the “photo” option in both cases. The iPad version suffers from graininess as Readdle have suggested it might. The iPhone version however is fine.

The app gives you the ability to include images from your Photo Library, so scans that turn out better from your iPhone can still be included into the document you are creating.

3. Hand Written Notes

Scanned hand written notes.

As before, the image on the left is the iPad version of the app, and the image on the right comes from the iPhone version. I used the “greyscale” option in both cases. You can see that the iPad version suffers from graininess again, whereas the iPhone version is really good.

If I was using the new iPad you can see that the quality would be excellent. I think the iPad 2 version of the document scan is still usable though. As I said before, using images from your photo stream is possible so if you are not happy the workaround is to use the iPhone version of the app to do the scan.

I also tried the pages from a book and the result was much the same. As long as I used the “Photo” setting for the scan on my iPad, it produced an acceptable result.

Other Features

A key feature of this app is how easy it is transfer your scans to various cloud storage services, or simply by email. Readdle have made the process so slick that scanning a document and sending/uploading it takes only a matter of a few minutes at the most.

Clicking the Edit button at the top right of the screen lets you select a document:

Selecting documents.

From there, you can choose the Export button:

Choose an export option.

Choosing email will offer you a choice of sending the sans as a JPEG or PDF. Choosing PDF creates a new email message, attaches the PDF and even fills in the subject line for you:

Emailing your documents.

Click Send and thats that, message sent with documents attached.

The process of uploading to Dropbox is very slick too. From the Export button choose the “Upload to…” option:

Uploading to Dropbox.

You will see the various options available. Choosing Dropbox:

Uploading to Dropbox.

Creates a ScannerPro folder and clicking the Upload button will send the scans to the folder – simple as that.

Conclusion

I was skeptical about scanning with my iPad to begin with, but after spending some time with the Scanner Pro app, I have seen the possibilities. The thing is, I was never really sure that the iPad needed a camera, but apps like this convince me otherwise.

It might be a coincidence, but recently I have had several situations crop up where I have needed to quickly copy a printed document, and Scanner Pro has provided me with a way to do it. Admittedly I used the iPhone version, but the point is, the app still provided the means to do it. If I am completely honest, the iPhone version is better overall than the iPad version. That probably isn’t the case if you have a new iPad though.

Is it worth the price tag? Well yes, if you have a new iPad and are likely to do a lot of scanning. If you have an iPad 2, you could take a look at DocScan HD it does a really nice job too, and has some nice export options. It’s cheaper too at $3.99.

360 Panorama has been fit for the iPad long before the new iPad made its debut. Better yet, it offers features the stock camera app would never be able to do without a lot of editing afterwards. Read more about it after the break.

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What Is 360 Panorama?

What 360 Panorama does is in the name itself: it takes panoramic photos. For those of you who don’t know, panoramas allow you to see much more of the photographer’s environment as it stitches many photos together. Essentially, you can get a 360-degree view in any direction. Usually panoramas are quite hard to create as it requires lots of photo-stitching and cropping in a secondary application.

Panoramas are created just by panning your iPad.

However, creating panoramas within this application takes out the majority of the work involved in creating a good panorama. All you have to do is click the record button on the bottom of the screen and pan your iPad in any direction to create your panorama. We’ll discuss how well this feature works in the next section. When you are done taking the panorama, you are able to view the final product by swiping or tilting. Pretty neat, eh?

A 360˚ View

As mentioned before, 360 Panorama creates a panorama by snapping photos as you pan your iPad. In many cases, this method can create rather poor results as it stitches photos together as you go. I am happy to say that 360 Panorama does an amazing job at this; everything fits together perfectly with the occasional, squint-to-see seam.

Adding comments is one of the many extra features in this app.

The finished project is customizable. You can view it on either a black or white background and as either a 360-degree photo or a stereographic. You can even add captions to the photo so you can remember where you took it.

Getting great results is heavily reliant on how well the user uses the application and utilities themselves. My biggest issue is that edges are often very choppy and do not line up. 360 Panorama does have a grid system within the application to help you line up your photos, but I found this close to useless. Basically, cropping down the edges is a better bet than trying to get your images lined up within the app.

Also, if you pan too fast, you may need to return to fill in holes which might alter your results with this application.

One thing to note is that 360 Panorama does require Location Services to work properly as it requests access to your photo library. This can cause the application to use a bit more of your battery than you may prefer, but it doesn’t make too much of a difference.

Perhaps the most glaring issue is this: why would I want to take pictures with my iPad? It’s cumbersome and awkward to hold, and most of you don’t have your iPad on you when you would want to take a panorama. Luckily, 360 Panorama is a universal application, so you can use it on both your iPad and your iPhone. Even though it isn’t the most useful, it is still nice that the developers made iPad compatibility with the application.

Sharing the Moment

What fun is taking a picture if you can’t share it? 360 Panorama comes packed with sharing options, and some of them are really awesome. To make the most out of its sharing features, you will have to sign up for an Occipital account. This could easily be done by hooking up your Facebook or Twitter profile to the service.

There are two ways you can share your panoramas on the service. The first is just sending it as a simple flat image. The flat images don’t require an Occipital account; however, you are limited to sending them through email or saving them to your camera roll.

360 Panorama comes packed with several different viewing options, like this awesome stereograph.

The second way to share your photos requires the Occipital account; however, it is much cooler. The “360″ photo allows the viewer to swipe the photo to view it in its entirety. In essence, it’s just a much more hands-on way to view photos. Your photo will be uploaded via Occipital and you will receive a link to view the 360 view. If this link is opened on a mobile device with a gyroscope, you can tilt your device to view the different parts of the photo. Needless to say, it is an awesome and unique way of viewing photos. You can see an example of a 360-degree photo here.

360-degree photos can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Email directly from the app. However, you can copy and paste the link to the photo to send it to friends on other networks.

The Verdict

360 Panorama is definitely a neat application to have. It completely simplifies the panorama taking process and creates some of the best results I have ever seen. Better yet, there are multiple viewing and sharing options so you can share the moment with anyone.

Although the app is pretty great overall, it does have its weak spots. The grid system is quite finicky, and using your iPad as a photographic device isn’t exactly desirable. However, as the app can be had for just $0.99, it’s definitely something you should check out.

Koder is a code editor for the iPad that offers syntax highlighting, a snippet manager, and access to remote file connections. If you need a way to code on-the-go, this just might be for you!

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The latter are my definite favourite, as they allow you to sift through all the news to find the content that is both relevant and of interest to you. I never buy a daily newspaper and I don’t really use apps like BBC News seeing as I have to spend 10-15 minutes sifting through the wealth of news to find the stories that I want to read – usually it’s just the news, business and technology bits.

Well, this is where Editions comes in handy. I’m not going to insult you by explaining what a personalised news app is, but instead of being a feed aggregator (such as Flipboard), Editions actually creates your own personalised daily news “magazine” from the interests and sources you choose and you even get a pretend personalised subscription sticker on the front. Let’s take a closer look to see what it offers.

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Introduction

Editions, which is developed by AOL, is completely free from the App Store and is, in my opinion anyway, probably some of the best software the company has written (at least in the past 5 years anyway). Once you’ve downloaded and installed the app, Editions will ask you which sections you are interested in so it can help build your magazine around articles which you consider interesting.

The home screen of Editions, showing your recent magazines.

Editions features an automatic delivery feature which you can customise to suit your needs. I, for example, set mine to download at 6:00 am every single morning so I can read my magazine on the way to work without having to eat up loads of mobile data downloading it. You can also set up push notifications so that the app notifies you when your new magazine is ready for delivery.

Editions features automatic downloads, so you can choose when your new magazine should be downloaded automatically.

Browsing Your Magazine

Once your magazine has downloaded then it’s time to get reading it! The home page of your magazine features a top story from that day based on the sections you’ve chosen and, if you live in the US, Canada or UK and have entered your postcode into your profile page, a 3-day weather outlook.

The front page of your magazine, showing the top stories from that day and a 3-day weather forecast.

Editions automatically retrieves any appointments from your iPad’s calendar and displays these prominently on the front page as well and, if you’ve linked Editions to your Facebook account, reminds you of your friends’ birthdays – a useful touch I feel as I use Editions far more than Facebook on my iPad!

The table of contents page features no surprises apart from a really easy way to browse through your magazine quickly and easily. You can also scroll through all the articles in your magazine really easy by tapping on the Articles button, which brings up a list of pieces all arranged by category.

The scrollable list of all your articles sorted by category.

Viewing Articles

Editions makes browsing the news a very easy and pleasant experience owing to its absolutely fantastic and simplistic user interface. Your articles are arranged in a grid with bigger articles getting more space and on average, you have about 3-4 articles a page.

Editions displays your articles in a grid style, with longer articles getting more space on your screen.

On longer articles, you can simply swipe across the screen to read the complete article (however without any pictures or links), otherwise simply tap on the article to bring up the full version. Articles open in Editions’ built-in browser and, to help the app learn more about you and your interests, you can choose whether that article in question was of interest to you or not. Simply click on the tick next to the tag if you want to see more content with that tag, or on the cross if you want to see less.

Browsing an article via Editions' in-built browser.

Sharing content can be done straight from the article, and Editions can post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and can also send articles to “read later” services such as Instapaper and Read It Later. You can also bookmark articles for future reference.

Customising Sections

Editions polls the most popular news sources in order to grab content for each individual section, however, you can tweak the app so you’re only seeing what is of interest to you. On the title page of each section (which features a top story), there is an option to edit each one, whereby you can add a particular news source (for example, The Verge), or follow particular products or companies (for example, the iPad or Microsoft).

Editing a section in Editions ensures that you only see relevant content.

All changes that you undertake in Editions (for example changing sections or customising them) are seen in your next daily magazine.

Final Thoughts

Editions is probably my favourite news app for the iPad and certainly the one that I use pretty much on a daily basis. I love the personalisation aspect of it and this feels a lot stronger than similar apps, such as Flipboard and Zite, where it is just displaying content that the app thinks is relevant to use. The interface is absolutely great, and for owners of the new iPad – Editions got its retina display update right at the beginning of April, meaning that it looks even better.

I don’t like the fact there is no choice to download data for offline use (this is certainly advantageous for people with only Wi-Fi iPads) and you pretty much have to remain connected to the internet if you want to fully browse the news articles within your magazine. However for a free app, and one from AOL, Editions certainly is a surprise and is definitely worth a look.