News, Reference, and Information Apps
AP Mobile to Zite
AP Mobile to Zite
AP Mobile
Free
There are a lot of great news applications for the iPad, but if I had to pick one it would be AP mobile. Not just text stories, but also photos and video, this apps keeps you in the loop. It also supports a local news feed so you can get news that is truly close to home.
Bing for iPad
Free
Bing is a visually rich app that lets you search and browse news, movies, Bing homepage images, local businesses, trending topics, perform vocal searches, and much more.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
$19.95
If you want to carry an encyclopedia in tow, it's hard to go wrong with Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 2011, which brings over 25,000 encyclopedia entries (although somewhat brief entries) to the iPad in an easy-to-read format.
CNN
Free
For news junkies and loyalists, CNN App for iPad serves up a heaping plate of streaming videos, and a side social networking.
The Daily
Free
News Corp's daily tablet newspaper raises the bar for iPad publications with its pioneering subscription model and beautiful, interactive interface.
The Elements: A Visual Exploration
$13.99
This interactive book shows what happens when you mix imaginative writing, beautiful graphics, live WolframAlpha data: you make chemistry interesting to just about anyone. Each element gets two main pages: one showing a crisp photo and plenty of live statistics (such as the current price of gold), and another with detailed background, interesting anecdotes, and visual examples.
Epicurious
Free
Nast's first iPad app for foodies—and mourning Gourmet readers—is excellent. Epicurious features a gorgeous interface that feels and reads like a luxurious, fully searchablecookbook. You can find recipes by main ingredient, course, cuisine, dietary consideration, and dish type, and even by season or occasion.
Free
Flipboard offers iPad users an entirely original alternative to browsing the Web for news; its magazine-style layouts and breathtaking use of photos and white space show the way forward for digital media.
Guinness World Records: At Your Fingertips
$4.99
Sure, you can read the records online for free or download the whole record book on Kindle for another $5, but Guinness World Records: At Your Fingertips lets you flick through the most twisted trivia with your iPad.
IMDB
Free
Featuring an image-driven interface featuring movie trailers, popular actors, and a list of currently theatrical releases, the IMDB iPad app is a must-have for movie buffs who want the latest Hollywood news.
Life for iPad
Free
Life's legendary photo collection comes to the iPad in glorious HD resolution. Downloading the free app, of course, lets you explore Life's deep archives, but you can view up-to-the-minute news, photos, and special features as well.
NASA App HD
Free
Consider it the next best thing to being an astronaut or astronomer. NASA App HD features thousands of NASA photos, streaming video, shuttle launch information, and countdown clocks.
NPR for iPad
Free
NPR went for a magazine-style approach with its iPad app, which emphasizes news, arts & life, and music coverage in three sliding panes. The app delivers hundreds of NPR live station and on-demand streams. In addition, NPR for iPad features photojournalism with full-page zoom, plus the ability to share stories over e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook.
Reuters News Pro
Free
Reuters News Pro delivers the venerable newswire's core product, news and market data, with a broader experience than either NPR's magazine-style app or Bloomberg's finance-heavy app. The app features dozens of customizable categories, a personalized watch list for business news, and geographic-specific news views.
Star Walk for iPad
$4.99
It can be tough to find even basic constellations in the sky, much less planets or galaxies without a computerized telescope. Star Walk for iPad solves that problem. Hold the iPad at the sky and move it around, and the app shows you exactly what stars, galaxies, planets, and other objects you're looking at. It pops up constellations as they appear, and plays spacey ambient music in the background.
Weather HD
$0.99
Weather HD has the best graphics and user interface of all the iPad weather apps, though it lacks the more detailed statistics, radar maps, and videos that the others offer. Still, Weather HD does the job in the simplest, prettiest fashion.
Wikipanion
Free
Wikipanion for iPad sifts through all of Wikipedia's HTML and metadata, sorting it into a beautiful, content-driven interface. The left side displays the table of contents, and the app remembers your font-size setting. The app even tracks page history by visit date, plays back embedded OGG audio, and saves images to the iPad's photo library.
World Atlas HD
$1.99
World Atlas HD offers stunning executive, political, and satellite-style maps. You can zoom in down to the country level, and then keep going to street-level maps. A pop-up window on the left offers tightly written country histories and basic socioeconomic data. You can get most of this with the bundled Maps app and some Internet searches.
Zinio
Free
What iBooks and Kindle do for books, Zinio does for magazines. The iPad's form factor ends up being just right: It's large enough and sharp enough to display accurate content in full color, while being much more portable and prettier than a bookshelf full of dog-eared 'zines. Spin, Car and Driver, and PCMag are some of the offerings.
Zite
Free
Zite auto-curates a digital magazine based on content in your Twitter feed, Google Reader subscriptions, and viewing habits to deliver an excellent news-reading experience.
