_iPad App Reviews – Fun

These 3 are in the category of fun since they are sort of random.

ABC Player

Kudos for ABC on this one.  Real nice app.  The iPad just makes images pop and when you have some great images, it makes the app look even better.  That is what this has.  Awesome large images and previews of ABC shows.  Ability to watch quite a bit of past episodes, check scheduling and keep a history of videos watched gives this app a lot of positives.

Epicurious

For the aspiring cook, this app is for you.  It feels like the Betty Crocker cookbook.  Tabs on the side, big images, ingredient list, reviews and more.  Solid functioning app.  The one thing lacking is video.

GAP 1969 Stream

I like this app not because of the GAP or products, but because of an entirely new way to navigate.  The app gives off the impression that it is endless.  Keep scrolling left, right or up or down you will never come to the end.  It repeats, but it works as well.

_iPad App Review – News

Today is the news category.

USA Today, Reuters, and Bloomberg

USA Today

USA Today takes a safe approach to their app.  It looks EXACTLY like their newspaper and functions like a web site.  At times you can get lost when navigating through articles.  The ads don’t function that well.  Orientation of the device does not provide that much enjoyment.  The app is ok.

Reuters

The Reuters app is a great news app.  Very clean.  It uses icons that we are familiar with (the dot notation for swipes).  Image gallery, pop up video and ease of getting back to all of the main articles.  They make use of orientation by moving the article to the right and giving you options to jump to other sections or directly into an article.  Interactive stock tickers give this app a little more life.  Overall, solid.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg took a different approach to colors, instead of white or light background they went black.  Not a fan.  Very little images if any, navigation is clunky, drop-downs seems like a band-aid to get to where you want to go.  Hopefully next release will be improved.

_iPad App Review – Books

Like the previous reviews, the topic today is Books.  I will be looking at Alice in Wonderland, Disney Digital Books and Marvel Comics.

Alice in Wonderland

Here is another app that got a lot of hype.  You can read a story and move objects around.  Is that really ground breaking?  It is basically a picture book with areas that you can either swipe/drag or rotate and they move.  I think pop up books and scratch and sniff are more interactive then this.  From a layout and design perspective it is pretty cool.  Reading to your kids the book also is nice since they can interact with some objects.

Disney Digital Books

Every once in a while someone hits it out of the park.  Disney did just that.  The Toy Story version of the digital book is pure awesome.  Simple animation makes the book come alive.  Read along with highlighting the words helps the little ones read.  Ability to record my own voice so my kids can hear me read the book to them is awesome.  Add some games, have some of the pages ‘color-able’ and you got a great app!

Marvel Comics

I will say this first, I am a biased Marvel Comic fan.  With that said, this app is awesome.  The store is a simple lift from the Appstore (looks identical) but that is not the point you should care about.  Nor the ability to download a ton of old and new comics.  The point you need to pay attention to is once you start reading or I should say ‘living’ the comic.  The comic view provides a traditional read of the full page but you can also dive into each of the letter boxes and read the comic that way.  You eye is no longer jumping to the action box half way down the page but your involved in the intense story of the box.  Swipe and it animates to the next box.  Nice job.

_iPad App Review – Magazines

Today I am taking a look at Magazines.  Lets see how these publications translate to the iPad.

Men’s Health

Men’s Health is a ‘container’ app that you can view and purchase other issues.  They do a OK job with this app.  The content is lifted straight from the print piece  and put into the iPad.  So swiping through pages is the normal.  What you see in print is what you see in the iPad.  The one thing they added is interactivity ‘on-top’ of the pages.  What I mean by that is when you land on an article blue plus signs light up where you can interact.  You can view a video or take a poll.  It is nice since it takes the guess work on what your supposed to do.

BMW Magazine

Talk about a glorified PDF reader.  No interaction except for some hot spots to link out to the web.

Wired

There has been a tremendous amount of hype surrounding this app.  The hype was around 2 areas, the first being the app itself and the second being the controversy of Adobe building the app in Flash, which Apple denied.  That is another story.  The app itself, in my opinion falls short.  The app does not train the user into what to do next.  Your left clicking (touching) and swiping random spots just to see if anything is linked.  There are ads that do some interaction and others where you think there would be but do not.

_iPad App Review

If your a techie or into the digital world you have heard by now of this device called an iPad.  Even if you are not a techie, you probably have heard about it.  More and more companies are jumping at developing applications for the device and are inventing new ways to interact with it.  Some of the applications are good, some are not.  The iPad provides the developer with more screen real estate than the iPhone so options can be a little greater when it comes to creativity.

I will be taking a look at a few applications from Brands or Publishing companies.  The reason I am choosing that avenue is I am a Technologist at Story Worldwide and need to keep up on the trends and happenings that my clients competition is doing.  There are some great apps developed solely by independent developers, which I may feature but for now just Brands.

The 3 I have chosen are the following, Nike Football, Financial Times and the Weather Channel

Nike Football

The Nike Football app gets high marks with me.  Very easy to use.  Vibrant colors and a ton of videos.  A few things I like are the use of the bottom portion of the screen to put simple navigation to go from section to section.  I enjoy the large use of images on every screen and the ability to orientate the iPad and the screen shifting to a better and more usable position.

Financial Times

Yet another newspaper app, this one succeeds.  They don’t try to do too much with it.  FT presents the articles clean and the navigation between them is easy.  They provide an indicator to get back to the start or the main page of the newspaper on the left hand side.  I feel that is easy to find since you a swiping left and right.  The other big plus is the background color is a tan/parchment color which is easy on the eyes.  Much nicer than the standard white background.

The Weather Channel

If you have the Weather Channel app for the iPhone then you are fully aware of its features.  The iPad version is the same thing just in a bigger format.  Radar maps are bigger, video is bigger, 10 day forecast is bigger.