Top Ten iPad Apps

It's been over a week since I returned from Guatemala. And nearly three weeks since I purchased the iPad 2, my first ever Apple product. In that time, I've tried my hand at quite a few tablet applications. Coming from Android, the sheer selection and quality of App Store offerings was a little staggering. With some work, I've managed to narrow my favorite apps down to ten.

10. GarageBand: Even if you aren't a musician- and I most certainly am not, GarageBand is an incredibly entertaining application. It keeps kids entertained and also allows you to have an easily portable selection of instruments ready at any time. Don't want to lug your guitar and case across the world on a Trans-Atlantic flight? GarageBand may lack the aesthetic feel of a real guitar- but it works.

9. Pages: The Pages app turns your iPad into a functional productive office device. It allows you to create a variety of different document styles and save those documents as Word files or PDFs. It also lets you open .doc files (and more). There's nothing too flashy about Pages, but it deserves a mention for its sheer usefulness. The iPad 2 isn't wildly comfortable to type on, but it makes for far more enjoyable editing and research than any other form factor I've explored.

8. Flow Paper: This is one of my two favorite doodling apps. Flow Paper allows you to adjust the length, flow and opacity of your strokes to create layered geometric waveforms of varying colors. It is multitouch compatible and more than capable of sucking several hours of idle time down the drain.

7. Photogene: If you're looking for a powerful, intuitive image editing app, this is it. Photogene allows you to adjust color levels, exposure, contrast, and saturation. You can apply filters- to sharpen or curve the image, and you can also crop, resize or rotate your picture. There are also a variety of options for things like text balloons and watermarks.

6.Drawin...ds HD: Yes, it's another drawing app. This one simply provides you with a black canvas that you can scrape away to reveal a psychedelic background. Yes, it is silly. That doesn't stop me from loving it dearly.

5. Copia E-Reader: No other reader app on the market handles the social dimension quite as well as Copia. By turning reading into an up-to-the-page, social activity it adds a competitive urge to make progress on your library. And the lively community gives readers of all stripes- Marxists and Dickens fans and Sci-Fi nerds- a place to discuss their favorite books as they read them.

4. PhotoBooth: As simple as it is, you wouldn't expect PhotoBooth to stay interesting for long. And yet, whenever I hand my iPad 2 over to a friend it is the the first app they open up. And whenever I end up somewhere new and beautiful, out comes my iPad and up opens PhotoBooth. I've used it to snap mind-bending shots of an east Texas sunrise and the heat rising up from cracks in the Pacaya Volcano. Can you say...best free app ever?

3. iMovie: I hate editing video together. iMovie for the iPad 2 may be the least painful way I know to edit simple videos together. It isn't as powerful as Adobe Premier, but it does everything the average user needs, and then some.

2. Fluid Monkey: I've never seen anything quite like this app before. You'll have your choice of populating the screen with multicolored gases and liquids that move around based on the direction and tilt of the tablet. You can also throw little balls up in there that bounce around as well. The sheer number of options and the aspect of physical control make this an app capable of hypnotizing a large number of people, under the right (booze) circumstances.

1. The Browser: I realize this may sound like a cop-out, but the browser really is the iPad's leading "killer app". I spend as much time surfing on my tablet as I do on every other task combined. The iPad 2 has replaced my laptop, desktop and smartphone as a preferred browsing device. Whenever I can justify using it for work, I do. Being able to lean back in a couch and lose myself in the Internet's sprawl is enough to justify that $499 price tag several times over.

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