This week’s roundup of iOS apps features offerings to show you where to go, what to look at when you get there, and how to share the best photos of those places with your friends.
We’ve long praised the drag-and-drop functionality of Blogsy for iPad, Fomola’s $5 blogging app that works with a number of publishing platforms. The latest update adds increased support for Movable Type, Blogger, and WordPress, and fixes a problem that crashed the app when accessing the iPad’s photo library
This used to be an App Store entry, but has been reinvented as a web app to be used on your iPhone. Clueful’s job is simple: Check out the other apps on your phone and see how they’re sharing your data and handling your personal information. It’s basically a very focused search engine, but one that will help you protect your privacy.
Izik for iPad bills itself as the “first search engine optimized for your tablet.” Enter a term and search results unfold in a magazine-style layout somewhat reminiscent of the Flipboard app. “Pinch” a result and share it to Twitter or Facebook; this week’s update fixed a few bugs to the still-new app.
In this day of Google Maps, you wouldn’t think that an old-fashioned offering like the $2 National Geographic World Atlas for iPhone and iPad would retain its appeal. But National Geograpic relays its information with such beauty and precision that you’d swear you were in the back of a library somewhere, examining dusty sheets of thick paper to prepare yourself for a long voyage. Version 3.0 is completely redesigned, offering updated country information and up-to-the-minute weather information for locales across the globe.
Pixable, a free offering, aggregates the photos from your various social networks—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—into a single, attractive layout. The newest update gives the app a refreshed user interface, and makes the offering universal to both the iPhone and iPad.
If you do take the trips plotted out in the National Geograpic app, the $1 Travelgram app will let you apply Instagram-style filters to your vacation photos, while also captioning them with their location as well as the time they were taken. Pics can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, and other services.
Looking for a simple iOS-based way to do your taxes this year? TurboTax SnapTax lets you take a picture of your W2 and answer a few questions; it then calculates your tax bill. You can file directly from the app or on the web. A warning: The app is free, but completing the process will require an in-app purchase of $25.
Believe it or not, the iPad can help you appreciate nature a little more. WWF Together for iPad is a free app that offers an astounding mix of great information and beautiful photography documenting the natural world. It’s an excellent resource for educating your kids, but you’ll probably want to spend time looking at it, too.
Favs has been updated with iPad compatibility … GoodNotes has a vast range of updates to make it a better PDF- and document-viewer … eBay for iPad offers a number of new features for both sellers and buyers … and Showtime Sync (pictured) has some bug fixes to let the channel’s subscribers view shows and movies on their tablet.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.