I have been passionately enamored with my iPhone since I received my original 3G as a Christmas gift from my family on December 23, 2008.  Since that time, I purchased the 3GS, and the iPhone 4 as well as both the iPad and iPad2 the day they launched. We have been extremely happy with both the all of the phones (I think she may be using it more that I do… well for Facebook anyway ;0)) and they have become a tremendously easy communication platform for us to not only keep in contact, but to sync our calendars, document our lives, explore the web, learn, and create in ways that we have not previously been able to with any other phone and some computer platforms.

I find myself recommending many of the iPhone and now iPad Apps that I use to others either individually, in mass emails or text messages, or through creating specific blog posts about certain Apps. I thought it would be a good time to consolidate some of this information into a page that I can update as I come across new and intriguing Apps. So here it is! Overtime, I will be adding to this information.

iPhone and iPad Apps

Photogene for iPad by Omer Shoor is really an amazing application. I use of for all of the image manipulation on my site and it is a great companion to the camera connection kit. It supports various RAW formats. Photogene allows you to export several photos at once, and it supports a wide selection of export destinations, including Flickr, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, FTP and mail. Editing tools included in Photogene:- Crop and straighten.- Sharpen and noise reduction.- Full set of color adjustments (including levels and curves). Correct underexposed photos and add a spark to washed-out ones.- Red-eye correction and healing tool (remove unwanted blemishes or spots).- Special effects such as reflection or vignette and more. Photogene is also available for the iPhone as well.

MotionX GPS Drive by Full Power has to be one of my most favorite apps.  The Full Power Team is amazing and have created a truly awesome turn by turn GPS application especially for the cost.  (about $19.99 / year – or in $2.99 pay as needed bites).  With the recent 10 update, GPS Drive is the first turn-by-turn navigation solution on any platform to integrate Facebook Places, Wikipedia GeoInfo data complete with live traffic updates. Because there is no “maps download” you always have the latest location, contact, and mapping information at your fingertips. Additionally, the ability to pay once and use GPS Drive on multiple iOS devices (not at the same time) is a great way to extend turn by turn navigation to an entire family without huge costs. MotionX GPS Drive HD is also available to tun the 3G iPad into a fully capable GPS navigation device.

MotionX GPS by Full Power is also an amazing application. Great for cycling, hiking, jogging, sailing, flying, geocaching, and more! MotionX-GPS shows your position and track at all times on street maps, topo/terrain maps, satellite/hybrid maps, or marine charts. Record or follow your tracks and share with a single click your position, track, trip statistics (date, start time, elapsed time, distance traveled, average speed, etc.) and a picture taken along the way. I use MotionX GPS to track my cycling and mountain biking rides for both distance and timing. Simply Awesome. If you the 3G version of the  iPad or iPad 2, MotionX GPS HD brings the same amazing navigation and tracking features to the larger screen.

Notability from Ginger Labs is my favorite note-taking app for the iPad. While there are a number of iOS apps that can be used to take notes like: notepad (built-in to iOS), evernote,Penultimate, Pages and more… It shines in its ability easily take and format notes while also recording the audio that is occurring at that same moment. Notability is the perfect companion for the iPad in education. The app is simple to learn and use, but has a robust feature set which includes the ability to audio record a lecture while taking notes. Here is a review I wrote for EdReach.us for more information about Notability.

Blogsy from Fomola is simply the best blogging app for the iPad hands down. If you blog on Blogger or WordPress and have an iPad, you must get Blogsy.  I am currently writing a full review on Blogsy now, but needless to say I am unbelievably impressed with this app.

MobileRSS HD ~ Google RSS News Reader from Nibirutech is my RSS reader of choice. Like many it links into my Google Reader account, but it has great options and small usability features like pull down to go back and side swipe to switch to the previous or next story that make it a winner in my book. I also like the fact that I can add RSS feeds right from within the app simply by entering the URL of the website… I don’t need to find the specific feed, use the special XML link to add something into my reader. Additionally, I can star and share from MobileRSS. It also can a robust sharing panel that cam move a story to many outlets including copying the link – not just the feed link, but to the actual story or even beyond if you follow something using the in-app browser – a must for a blogger) and even opening into Safari itself. With the latest release, you can even setup MobileRSS to pull the full text of stories from feeds by the specific feed itself. This helps to cache information for offline reading from the sources most important to you as opposed to all your feeds. Definitely one to check out. If you DON’T use an RSS reader you are missing out. Here is a post I wrote for EdReach if you are interested in learning more about the potential of RSS. There is also an iPhone version of MobileRSS Pro ~ Google RSS News Reader

The Weather Channel® Max from the Weather Channel is a great weather app. For those of you who, like me, are weather “geeks” this is a must have application as it cannot only provide up to the minute weather details, Weather Channel MAX uses predictive technology to provide “future” radar up to 6 hours from the current time. Personally, I have found this to be amazingly accurate for future conditions. That said, to know what is on top of me right now, I also have Weatherbug on my iDevices. There is also an iPad version called The Weather Channel Max for iPad.

WeatherBug Elite from Weatherbug is my choice of weather apps for the current conditions. If I am looking to see what is going to happen in a few hours, I use Weather Channel® Max, but when I want to know what is hitting my house specifically right at this moment, I turn to WeatherBug Elite. Using a touch technology, Weatherbug Elite has the ability to drop a “pin” right on a location you are interested in monitoring. It then blends the radar and other equipment measurement indicators for each of the Weatherbug locations nearest to provide an extremely accurate picture of current conditions. Last year, there was a storm that produced a small tornado about 6 miles north of our house. Even though the entire area was under a tornado warning, (and we took appropriate precautions) I was able to follow this storm and by radar watch it pass north of our house by a few miles. There is also an iPad version called WeatherBug for iPad.

Dragon Dictation from Nuance Communications is really an amazing app. Like its desktop counterpart (Dragon Naturally Speaking), Dragon Dictation converts spoken language to text quickly and easily, often within seconds. For the most part it can remove much of the clicking and typing that is necessary when creating an email, text message, or simply moving your thoughts from words to text.  The accuracy is very good and even if the app misses a word, often what you really said is listed as one of the options after you tap on the word to correct.  To be blunt, within two days of using Dragon, it made it to the main home page on my phone.  So, if you are looking for a great way to interact quickly without a lot of the time typically spent typing check out Dragon Dictation.