For Alex Butterworth…
I was talking to Alex on Monday night – and he is, by the way, one of the most fascinating visionaries of new/transmedia creativity that I know, so much so that I suspect it’s not publishers he needs to talk to but AI pioneers – and I promised a list of iPad apps which I loved. So here – you can all have it.
1. Penultimate
Use your finger to sketch or take notes on the iPad. Takes a bit of getting used to, but amazing. Click here.
2. Flipboard
I love this because it samples my massive Twitter feed and makes something more readily readable. I still mostly use Twitter through other apps, but I pick up on different things this way. And Facebook, which I use but have never really got along with, suddenly makes sense to me.
3. Twittelator
A question of taste, really, which Twitter app you use.
4. PrintCentral
Print directly from the iPad. Big whoop. Except that you can also use Bluetooth to zap files directly to your desktop or to another PrintCentral-equipped iPad. That actually is really useful: it always makes me crazy when you can’t use the short range Bluetooth to move a file to another machine. It’s so… wrong.
Lush, gorgeous, intriguing images from around the world. You may not think you want it, but you would be wrong.
6. iBooks & Kindle for iPad
The Kindle Store is cheaper and bigger. I prefer the iBooks app. I hope that if we let them crush one another, tiny mammals will outpace these dinozillas of ebooks and eat them. And no doubt it will shortly be a three-way knife fight, with Google joining the fray.
7. DropBox (*)
Everyone says this is amazing – cloud storage for the iPad, moving files from one place to another over teh interwebz. I haven’t used it yet. Why? The T&C suddenly made me nervous: I wasn’t comfortable dumping an unseen manuscript onto it with all the disclaimers about it not being their fault if you were pillaged. Note: this is because I am a paranoid jackass.
That’s it for now – although everyone should please add their own faves in the comments. I use Pages for writing on the iPad, but while it’s good enough, it’s not much to write home about. I should check out some other apps, but I haven’t. I want everyone to get together and pay, collectively, for Scrivener for iPad.
(* Yes, I originally wrote “Dopbox”. It’s early. Then some cheeky South Africa bird who just happens to be a kickass author spotted it and teased me in my own goddam comments thread, and I *WENT BACK IN TIME* and changed everything. I didn’t edit it. I *WENT BACK IN TIME*. And now I’m leaving this note so that you will all know about my awesome. Oh, yeah, before you ask: I’m leaving this note after coming forward in time again, which explains the stamp. HAH.)
