6. Kindle/Nook/iBooks
If you don’t own a Kindle or a Nook, iBooks is definitely an excellent option as an e-Reader. However, if you do have a Kindle or Nook, the iPad has both apps available for free. You can have your library of books within the app, so if you’re traveling around with your iPad and you didn’t want to carry your dedicated e-Reader along with you, you can still read your books from the Apple tablet. The apps all give you the option to adjust text size, brightness, color and font – the whole shebang. Bibliophiles who are permanently glued to their e-Readers might want to give one of these apps a try. The only downside, even with additional brightness settings in the apps, is that it reading on the iPad can be on the bright side when you’re in bed at night.
iBooks link, Nook link, Kindle link [All free]
7. Angry Birds HD
How can we forget the game that has taken the mobile world by storm? Angry Birds HD is optimized for the iPad screen, so you can enjoy the game as you would on your iPhone, but with crisp graphics instead of the scaled-up version of the mobile app. If you aren’t familiar with the game, you’re basically a clan of birds attempting to recover eggs from evil pigs. You launch birds from a slingshot against the pig fortresses, and breaking the piggy defenses become more difficult as you progress through the game. Of course, there are a variety of birds with special abilities to help with that task, too. If you decide to download this game, be prepared to waste, and lose track of, lots of time. But it’s worth it!
Angry Birds – iTunes link [$4.99]
8. Twitter for iPad
Everyone’s doing it. Celebrities and regular schmoes alike are on Twitter sharing interesting events, articles, videos and the minutiae of their daily lives on the fast-growing social network. The dedicated Twitter app for the iPad allows you to post your thoughts and musings, you can attach links and your location, view friends’ updates and a whole lot more. It’s definitely a feature-rich app and makes digesting and sharing anything and everything that should or shouldn’t be on Twitter a breeze. Like the iPhone app, Twitter for iPad is totally free. If you want to see what the buzz is all about, sign up for an account within the app on your new iPad!
Twitter for iPad – iTunes link [Free]
9. Skyfire for iPad
It’s not a big secret that the iPad and iPhone don’t play well with Flash video content, but that’s what Skyfire is for. The app lets you view the web as it should be viewed – with Flash videos and ads and banners and everything else in between. Skyfire converts Flash content into iPad-friendly content so that you don’t land on mostly empty pages wondering where half of the good stuff went. The only thing Skyfire won’t convert are Flash-based games, but most of those require a mouse and keyboard, anyway. The app is so outrageously popular, in fact, that it sold out immediately and overloaded Skyfire’s servers when it was first released.
Skyfire – iTunes link [$4.99]
10. NY Times
For those of you that subscribe to the New York Times, or perhaps you read it online every day, the iPad app is actually quite nice. It looks much like it does on the web, but everything is condensed and sized to fit the iPad screen perfectly. You can swipe through sections as headlines slide over to reveal new ones, and the sections menu is tucked away neatly in a corner so the text and news isn’t obstructed. The content is the same as what you’d find on the web, so it certainly isn’t a watered-down version of the NY Times by any means. Best of all, the app is totally free. If you read the NY Times daily, this should definitely be one of your first downloads.
NY Times – iTunes link [Free]