The 5 best Ipad apps for .99 cents

Well the Ipad is for real. I bought a Gen 1 off Ebay and it is pretty sweet. I shunned the Ipad for quite a while before giving in and owning one. It is very user friendly and a polished product, not that Apple would let an Ipad be on the shelf if it wasn’t perfected.

The app selection is never ending for the Ipad. I think there are 50,000 and growing at this time. I will write a post talking about the free apps someday, but today I thought I would focus on the apps that are under a dollar. It takes me a while to actually pay for an app, if there is not a free version available to test I probably don’t buy it. I try to stick to apps that will return to me something useful, intelligent, or creative.  Here is my list of apps that are definitely worth the .99 cents per.

• Craigslist Pro –  Once you use Craigslist Pro you will curse the day you need to use Craigslist on a computer again. CraigsPro has built an app that organizes Craigslist and really makes it easy to identify what you are looking for. It shows the pictures next to the listing and it has filter options to weed out certain listings. It also has the ability to set a min/max price for what you are looking for.

 

•  TuneIn Radio – Here is a great app that allows you to find free online radio stations, podcasts, and talk radio. The .99 cent app does away with ads and allows you to record, pause, and rewind the show you are listening to. It also has an alarm feature as well as a sleep timer. I easily found TWIT shows I usually listen to as well as Jim Rome, etc.

 

•  Draw Something – Feeling a bit creative and artistic? Draw Something is an app that connects your Facebook friends or complete strangers together and you then draw a picture trying to describe a word. For example if Draw Something gives you the word “airplane” you must then draw an airplane on the screen. Once you have drawn your picture your friend has to guess what you are drawing using scrambled letters on the bottom of the screen. No longer must you sit through another Pat Sajak / Vanna White episode when you have this app. It lets you show off your artistic side and helps strengthen your brain to brain coordination. **Update** They raised the price on Draw Something to $1.99

 

• Luminance – A photo editing app that allows you to easily crop, rotate, add effects, apply filters, and share them easily with friends. You can edit using layers so you can see the picture changes and easily go back and change a layer.

 

• Penultimate – This is the mother of all note taking apps. If you are a student or just someone who likes to go CSI on your projects and document everything this is the app. They’ve tried to make the paper look like real paper, or maybe my Ipad screen is just dusty… The paper has an ever so slight tinge of yellow to it as if the note paper were kept in a “3 pack a day” persons house, this adds to the unique writing experience.  Anyway it integrates with Dropbox so all your notes are out in the cloud for you to reference anytime. Best used with a stylus, amazon.com sells a relatively cheap stylus that has decent reviews. Link or Link or a good review of sylus for Ipad go here.