iPad Apps According to Meg

My goal of the week was to explore the app store and expand the list of apps I use. Basically, I wanted to force myself to take advantage of all the cool things my iPad can do, which I may as well use! Most of the things I tried out were journalism related, and the ones I particularly liked were apps that will help a lot with school and classes...

So without further ado, here are my reviews. The award for top app goes to....

1. HootSuite! This app makes it insanely easy to follow our Notre Dame #NDJED thread by allowing me to save the search and create a feed solely to follow tweets with our hashtag. By not having to specifically search for the #NDJED feed every time I open Twitter, I have found myself following the class feed more closely, and taking the time to read and comment on other people's tweets more often. This is, after all, why we have the feed. I'm glad we are taking full advantage of the #NDJED feed and happy that HootSuite will help me follow it as closely as I can. It could potentially allow me to follow Facebook in the same window, if I chose to hook mine up.

The app HootSuite is great for allowing me to follow our class #NDJED hashtag.

2. Evernote reminds me a little bit of Pinterest, but is useful in a more academic way. For me, it has been helpful to just have an outlet to record all of the thoughts going on inside my head, and to tag things that seem interesting so I do not forget them. The app allows me to keep track of cool things I come across on the Internet, keep track of reminders, post and save pictures, etc. While there are other apps on my iPad that can do these things, the most helpful part of Evernote is that you can save and export your account so that it can be shared with others (great if you are working on a group project of some sort). Also, it keeps all of your ideas in one place. This app is great.

3. Dropbox is an oldie-but-goodie that I discovered last semester. If you are a student working with multiple devices, such as an iPhone, iPad and laptop, Dropbox is a must. It is especially helpful to allow me to send photos back and forth between my devices, but I also use it to send readings/articles/papers from my laptop to read later on my iPad.

Dropbox is great for transferring academic documents among devices and transferring photos as well.

4. Photoshop Express is another app I worked with, and I would highly recommend it. It's free, which is awesome. Although I usually use photo-editing apps like Instagram or iPhoto, Photoshop Express has more effects and allows me to crop/enhance photos so that they look even better. I think this will be a really helpful app to use when putting photos up in my blog or in projects later in the semester.

5. Ustream has been used by many people in our class to broadcast all of the exciting things going on at Notre Dame. This app is awesome because it allows you to still take advantage of the many events that are happening without having to go to all of them in person. Especially at a school like Notre Dame where cool things are going on all the time, I forsee this app becoming really useful in our #NDJED class. If any student is attending an interesting lecture/speech/event on campus, they can Ustream it for everyone to see and then the rest of the class will be able to tune in. This weekend Fiona did so with the Meyo run and it was great to be able to watch that even though I didn't make it over to watch it in person.

Fiona's Ustream broadcast of the Notre Dame Meyo Run on Saturday, February 2.

6. Banjo has a great idea behind it: make an app where all of your social networks can work as one. The app is cool in that it allows you to input your current location and see what is going on across many social networking sites all around you. However, the app is somewhat hard to understand at first, not the most user-friendly. Also, some of the information seems irrevant because it is posted by people you may not know.

So, there's my thoughts. These apps were all free or cost only a few dollars, and they all helped to expand what I can use my iPad for greatly. They also just make life easier in many ways. Using them in conjunction with my all-time favorite apps like Feedly, Flipboard, PDF Notes, and Readability has allowed me to expand beyond just using my iPad to read the news and check email. These apps show how the iPad is getting better at bringing us future of news. The addition of these great apps to the device make it even more usable and helpful in daily life.