8 Free iPad Apps for News and Media
November 11, 2011 
1 Comment
The iPad is great for consuming media, including books, magazines, news, radio, TV shows and more. There are a lot of news and entertainment apps available for the iPad and one of the best things about these apps is their ability to be customized. You can choose content based on your likes and interests, thus creating your own personal radio station, magazine and more.
Here is a list of some of the most popular apps that can truly enhance your iPad news and entertainment experience.
iBooks (Free)
iBooks allows you to purchase and download books from the iBookstore and read them on your iPad. It has a pleasant interface that allows you to adjust brightness, font-size, color and type-face for easier reading. Other features include a built-in search, and the ability to bookmark, highlight and take notes on the text.
Kindle (Free)
With the Kindle app, you will have access to over 1 million books, newspapers and magazines from Amazon’s Kindle Store. It has a minimal interface for reading books and full-color images for reading articles. The Whispersync feature allows you to sync the last page you read, along with bookmarks, notes and highlights across all your mobile devices. Most books are $9.99 or less.
Flipboard (Free)
Flipboard is a customizable magazine, with a nicely designed format, that allows you to flip through and read stories from news outlets, popular magazines and your social media services. It shows you news, photos, videos, and updates from Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Flickr, National Geographic, Oprah, Rolling Stone and more. You can also like, comment, favorite and share your stories directly from Flipboard.
Pulse News for iPad (Free)
Pulse is a customizable news reader that features an interactive mosaic interface of colorfully-displayed articles from your favorite websites. When you scroll through and tap on an article, it will be displayed in a clean and simple format. If you like an article you can share it across your social media or bookmark it to read later.
Zite Personalized Magazine (Free)
Zite lets you customize the articles in your magazine based on category sections like World News, Film & TV, Personal Finance, Sports, etc. Every time you choose and read an article, Zite learns more about what you like. It has a beautiful design and clean reading interface. You also have the options to share, bookmark and email the things you like.
Netflix (Free)
If you subscribe to Netflix, you can watch TV shows and movies that are available through Netflix’s instant streaming service. It allows you to resume watching movies from where you previously left off on your TV or computer. You also have the ability to browse movies and update your instant queue. (Netflix subscription required.)
Pandora Radio (Free)
Pandora is a personalized radio that only plays the music that you like. It will customize your station based on your favorite artists, songs or classical composers. The free subscription includes ads and interruptions, but you can also subscribe to Pandora One ($3.99 a month) for music-only.
Remote (Free)
The Remote app allows you to control iTunes and Apple TV from any of your devices over your wireless network. If you have Apple TV, it is much easier to manage the TV interface using gestures on your devices. You can also access and changes songs on your iTunes from anywhere in your home.
Download a few of these apps and have fun customizing your iPad for news, media and entertainment. To explore more apps, visit the Apple App Store.
I use the Kindle app and the Pandora app quite a bit; they’re a couple of my favorites. Although if I’m going to be sitting down and reading for an extended period of time, I’d rather have my actual Kindle with its E-Ink display. Still though, it’s a great app for when you’ve got a few extra minutes and just want to get through a chapter, and then it syncs with my Kindle so I don’t have to try to find my spot. Pandora’s good too, although I don’t use it much anymore. My favorite activity on my iPad is watching TV. I love taking all my programming with me, and the TV everywhere app through DISH Network does just that. Anything that’s on live, or recorded on my DVR I can stream to my iPad, and it looks great. You do need a Sling Adapter hooked up to your DISH receiver though, but that’s as simple as plugging in a USB cable, and as an employee of DISH I know there’s specials going on to get the Sling Adapter for free. It’s definitely worth looking into, and I wholeheartedly recommend, especially to anyone who lives an on-the-go lifestyle, or does a lot of travelling.
Oh yeah, and the other interesting app on this list (for me anyway) is Zite. I’m going to have to try that out. I’d be excited if it does a good job of aggregating relevant science articles for me. That would be very convenient. Thank you for the heads up on that one.