So I've got an iPad... Now what do I do with it?

So I’ve got an iPad… Now what do I do with it?

My beautiful iPad arrived for my 23rd birthday (thanks Mum and Dad!) and I love it. I haven’t been so excited about a new toy since I got my Animal Hospital pet ambulance aged six.

But now what do I do with it? Besides making the odd video, Fruit Ninja-ing my way to a repetitive strain injury and cradling it to sleep at night…

Obviously I have discovered the iMovie app but other than that, how else should I be using my iPad as a journalist?

I’m an Apple virgin (unless an ancient iPod nano counts) so any ideas about great apps to download and crafty ways to use my iPad would be much appreciated.

Shall I tell you some of the stuff I’m looking for, to kick things off?

- The best Twitter client – especially one that can be used for multiple accounts

- I do love iMovie, but any other great apps for video and audio editing

- Bookmarking and note-taking apps, such as Evernote

- The sleekest newspaper and magazine iPad subscriptions

- Plus anything else you think every journalist should be doing with their iPad!

Suggestions via Twitter, Facebook or the comments will be received with deep gratitude.

Love, your clueless Postgrad!

mikeysmith

The official twitter app supports multiple accounts. It's not perfect, but it's about as good as it gets right now.

mhd_bass

@mikeysmith thank you! Yes, I really am dense enough not to have noticed... Problem solved, what would I do without you lovely wannabe hacks?!

mhd_bass

Thank you so much for all your suggestions - I've already downloaded quite a few! Still wish I could find a good multiple-account Twitter account though, any ideas?

HenryCTaylor

Also, all this talk of iPads on WannabeHacks is making the site look like the tech section of the Guardian! Great to see some progressive talk about technology's impact on journalism.

HenryCTaylor

Don't forget to use apps that are iCloud enabled, too. That mostly means native apps, but when you forget your iPad you can carry on working using iCloud.com – life-saver.

egrommet

@wannabehacks wordpress app, dropbox, garageband app for audio editing (plenty of decent audio editors too), snapspeed for photo edit

mikeysmith

For writing I use a combination of Notesy, iA Writer and Nebulous, all of which sync to the same folder on my Dropbox, and from there to my Mac and iPhone. They all support Textexpander as well, which is difficult to explain, but massively useful for writing/blogging on mobile devices. Check it out, you won't regret it. I occasionally use OmniOutliner for blocking out longer pieces too.

If you haven't already, you'll download GoodReader eventually. And you'll wonder what you ever did without it. May as well get it over with.

For reading/RSS stuff, I use a combination of Reeder and Instapaper, both of which are pretty much perfect. I use the official Twitter app for now, but I'll jump ship the very second TapBot make an iPad version of TweetBot.

There's a really good book called iPad at Work by a blogger called David Sparks in the iBook store. It's *really* helpful for working out which apps are right for you.

OllieInGear

@wannabehacks Write blogs in Notes app, email to self to add pics and edit, then upload onto my sites on PC. Super convenient.

Awdures

Sky news is brilliant as is the Guardian, social staples like Facebook, twitter, TumblR and Skype, which works really well on an ipad. I also have Mashable. Cardmuncher, Wiki, translate and Living Earth HD are handy, randomly I also have guitar tabs from ultimate guitar.com. And of course, life would not be worth living without Angry birds. Enjoy, the iPad is hours of fun, we won't expect you to surface again for a few months.

joeyclose

cardmuncher, (or alternative) great if you have lots of business cards handed to you (I'm in finance, so a massive help) you just take a picture of the card and it finds the person on linked in and has all their details right there for you.

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