10 iPad apps you can't live without

Reading Amazon's Kindle books on an iPad works better than reading them on a Kindle, which has a smaller screen.

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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

10 iPad apps you can't live without

January 8, 2012

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2012, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2012, The Post-Standard

New iPad? The apps that come with it are great, but there are a lot of things they can't do. Here's my list of the Top 10 additional apps for any iPad owner. They're all available at the App Store. Touch the App Store icon on your Home Screen to get to the App Store.

Zite (free). This personalized news and features magazine sets the standard for how we'll all follow such topics in the future. It's extraordinarily clever and always up to date. Zite is an aggregator that collects news and features from other sources, doing it better than any other aggregator for pad or computer.

Friendly for Facebook (free). If you're among the 17 billion Facebook users, stop doing it on your computer and start taking advantage of this marvelous app for the iPad.

Kindle (free). Odd, but true, and sensible when you think about it: Reading Amazon's Kindle books on an iPad works better than reading them on a Kindle, which has a smaller screen.

New York Times Crosswords (free). Probably one of the best examples of what an iPad is good for.

Scrabble (regularly $9.99, but it's been discounted for $2.99 lately). Play against the iPad alone or online against up to 25 others in multiple games.

GeoEye (free). Aerial views of cities, natural wonders and hundreds of other locations. Zoom in with incredible 3D detail.

Dropbox (free). Store anything in the "cloud" and retrieve it from any location. Dropbox is fabulously popular.

PhotoToaster ($.99). Surely the easiest-to-use and most stunning photo editor out of two or three dozen good ones for the iPad.

Dragon Dictation (free). Amazing speech-to-text app. Just talk and you'll see your words on the screen. It has to pause now and then for processing, but you'll get used to that. (I erroneously called this a "text-to-speech" app in the printed version of this column.)

Find My iPhone (free). Despite the name, this app will locate your iPad, too, if it's lost or stolen. You can even delete everything on your iPad remotely if you locate it after someone's grabbed it. Cops love this app. (I incorrectly referred to this app as "Find iPhone" in the printed version of this column.)