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User of iPad faced a new influx of new apps l in 2011 .Here’s my list of some of the favourites from last year.
ZITE (free) :
Zite is a free personalized magazine for your iPad that automatically learns what you like and gets smarter every time you use it. Zite delivers all the great news, articles, blogs, and videos you want – and helps you discover new stuff that you'll love.
When using the apps it prompts you to choose categories of interest. You can also let it check your Twitter or Google Reader accounts for your favourite topics. Based on that information, Zite builds a magazine with article from around the web. Graphics are sharp. Layouts are inviting and the recommendation get smarter over time.
SNAPSEED
Snapseed makes any photograph extraordinary and is brought to you by Nik Software, the recognized leader in digital photographic products and technologies. Whether you use an iPad, iPhone, or both, you'll always have Snapseed at hand.
Enhance your photos with one tap. Tweak photos to perfection with Tune Image or selectively adjust only a part of your photo with revolutionary Control Points. Add incredible effects with innovative filters like Drama, Vintage, and Grunge. Share photos with your friends and family with social network support, or print your photos directly in Snapseed. There’s little questions that it one of the best. Snapseed works with efficiency to photo editing, with a highly intuitive interface and just enough editing and filtering options to give you control, without being over whelming.
THE FANTASTIC FLYING BOOKS OF MR MORRIS LESSMORE
It brings into the animation old days of Humti dumpty World but with interactive digital storytelling . The program is created by William Joyce, an illustrator and animator known for his works for Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney, and The New Yorker, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore blurs the line between a children's story ebook and an animated movie. Based on a short film of the same name, the interactive ebook can be as hands-on or straightforward as the user pleases thanks to buttons on the side that can turn off sound effects, the voiceover, and music.
Each page of the 27-page book has some sort of interactive feature. The user can help Morris Lessmore repair books, play the piano, and spin Lessmore's house around in the air when it gets picked up by a tornado. You will like the graphically stunning narrative that’s part movie- moviebook , where the pictures animate at your touch . you can turn up the volume, hide the text and let the app tell the story , or mute the narrator and read in the old- fashioned way. Point to rotate with the virtual world in at your finger tips
TOONTASTIC (free) :
A great storytelling app for adults and children, Toontastic takes much of the work out of an often- daunt task. Toontastic v1.4: Attack of the Megazoid Monsters includes three new playsets featuring Sir Stomps A. Lot smashing and grabbing through San Francisco, King Jinx taking a waffle-cone sized bite out of the Chrysler Building, and Mr. Lizard – that slimey scourge of a sea monster– terrorizing Tokyo
The app breaks down a tale into five basic components and adds cartoon scenes, music and characters for the storyteller to select. You narrate a scene. While dragging characters around the screen.
LIVING EARTH HD WORLD CLOCK AND WEATHER (US$1) :
A sea of more complicated and ambitious apps, Living Earth is beautifully simple, it offers a live satellite view of the globe so you can glimpse cloud cover in your area , while a graphic tells you the current temperature, you can add favourite locations and, for streaking weather events, you can take a snapshot of the globe and share it . When I first started the App up, the first thing I noticed was the super realistic blue marble on screen. The Day/Night, Light/Dark sides of the Earth are both brilliant, especially considering the cloud cover is accurate meteorologically and updates often with the changes in real life.
You can set up multiple time zones and flip through, and as you do the earth spins and focuses on the spot where it’s providing you the information for (with a faint white glow), you can also set the earth to rotate on its own, which is one of my favorite things to do. I set the ‘Leave Screen On’ while it’s on the dock on my desk and simply have it slowly rotating around and around, from day to night, while still providing me with the weather and forecast info, it’s a pretty and functional desk accessory.
While at this price, this App definitely fits the bill, I do hope that they stick to their word (in the App Description on iTunes) and add an alarm clock in a future update. If they can manage to add a few more functional features, they might be able to boost the price up, however, if they added an alarm and kept it at this price, they would have one of the best and most visually stunning alarm clock Apps available.
BACK IN TIME (US$8):
Back in Time tells the story of the universe with a 24-hour clock, where the big bang start the day and humans appear in the final seconds. Back in Time is a new iPad app that tells the story of the universe. Now you can explore the past through photos, animations and videos.
An imaginary clock will guide you through this quest, proposing a simple analogy: the whole Universe started 24 hours ago.The Big Bang, source of Time and Space, is the first event in our journey – the clock marks 0:00 hours. Today, 13.7 billion years later, the clock marks midnight. In between, a sequence of key events that brought us where we are today.
Made especially for iPad;
Over 300 remarkable images;
60+ amazing animations and videos;
40+ illustrative timelines;
More than 200 little-known interesting facts;
Music by the renowned compositor Rodrigo Leão;
Developed for 5 languages (English, Spanish, German, French and Portuguese)
No Internet connection required.
Spin the clocks hands and you can explore historical highlights , through videos about dark matter. Text-based discussion on the Cradle of human kind photos of Lucy, the legendary fossil, among many others. The text is best suited for older children and adults , but it makes for great browsing for younger children, too, and the subtly moving graphics provide a compelling backdrop.
