Category: iPad Apps

Review: Instapaper for iPhone and iPad

Instapaper ($4.99) is one of my most-used apps for the iPhone and iPad, but it’s more than just an app—it’s a free web service that lets you quickly and easily save interesting articles for reading later by clicking a bookmarklet in your web browser. Instapaper strips away ads and presents the content back to you in a minimalistic format, available for offline reading. In a world where online ads are getting more annoying and intrusive, Instapaper is the TiVO for the web, giving control back to the user over web content.

Saving Articles for Later

The primary way to save articles to Instapaper is via something called a bookmarklet—a fancy bookmark that performs a function when clicked. Setting up the bookmarklet takes 2 seconds, just go to this page and drag the Instapaper bookmarklet into your browser’s bookmarks. When you come across an interesting article you want to read later, click the bookmarklet, and the article is added to your Instapaper account.

Instapaper also works with over 130 iOS apps as well as Google Reader and NetNewsWire, letting you add content to your account using those services Also available from Instapaper is a special email address that allows you to forward email to your Instapaper account for offline reading.

Besides the iPhone and iPad, Instapaper also works on the Amazon Kindle as well as having its own website where you can access and edit content.

iPhone and iPad Apps

The Instapaper app is a universal app, so buy it once and it’ll work on both your iPhone and iPad. You’ll also need to sign up for a free account. While Instapaper is a good iPhone app, it excels on the iPad, mostly due to the iPad’s bigger screen and more comfortable reading experience.
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Review: The Daily, iPad Newspaper, Good and Getting Better

Convincing someone to pay for news these days is a tough sell. Especially on the iPad where, via apps and a web browser, you can get an infinite, free supply of it. The Daily is the latest experiment by big media (and it doesn’t get any bigger than Rupert Murdoch) to get people to pay for their news. It’s a subscription-based, 7-days-a-week newspaper built from the ground up for the iPad that will cost $0.99 a week, or $39.99 a year for access.

Does The Daily warrant opening up your wallet? It’s getting there, and every day seems to get better. Much of the content is exclusive and original. Some of it is even useful (the apps section, the occasional fitness article). The graphic design and interactive features are attractive and cutting edge. The full-screen photos can be stunning. But The Daily also needs work in some crucial areas. There are the usual technical glitches (some people report repeated crashes—we always recommend restarting your iPad to fix app crashes). The content takes a while to load (a minute or more depending on your connection). The subject matter is a bit narrow for a general-topic newspaper (where are yesterday’s box scores? And no business news?). And some features needlessly complicate the app (the carousel, and a brief video introduction to every issue). But overall, The Daily is an attractive, informative, cutting-edge daily that provides at least a half hour’s worth of professional, magazine-quality content every day. There needs to be some fine-tuning, but the larger picture is that $39.99 a year for what is really a daily magazine is quite a bargain, considering what people pay for only 12 issues of other magazines a year.

The Good.

The photography is stunning. The developers recognize that the iPad excels at displaying photos—there’s something about the picture-frame shape, bright screen, and handheld intimacy that makes the iPad the best photo viewer I’ve experienced. And they exploit it. Turn the iPad on its side and you can swipe through photos full screen (although this feature can be confusing, as the occasional text ends up in the mix). Turning back to portrait lets you return to normal reading mode. There are top-notch stunning photos too—just check out the ones coming out of Egypt right now.
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The 25 Best Free iPad Apps

With more and more iPad apps flowing into the App Store every day, it can be tough to find the best of the best. To help you cut through the clutter, the following is a list of our picks for the 25 best free apps for the iPad so far, in no particular order.

25 Best Free iPad Apps:

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