Apps for iPad: Science Population, Office2 HD, Skitch
updated 04:30 am EST, Thu December 22, 2011
Educational, business and creative apps
Three completely different new iPad apps help show off the platform's full range of capabilities with interactive educational content, serious business use and creative imagery. The magazine Science offers an app that features content aimed at the ongoing impact of our planet's human population and the issues that arise from that growth; ByteSquared takes your business mobile with Office2 HD, and Evernote debuts Skitch for the iPad.
The story that humanity had reached a total population of seven billion people made headlines around the world, but experts believe that number could reach 9.3 billion as early as 2050. The Science Population app ($5) pulls content from the award-winning magazine to focus on the environmental, social, economic and personal implications of the planet's rising population.
The app presents a timeline, prediction models and stories about the distribution of humans going forward and how trends may cause massive economic, political and cultural shifts. It also features articles, videos, podcasts and interactive graphs.
Office2 (squared) HD ($8) is a productivity app for business and has updated its Microsoft Office-compatible app for the iPad to version 5.0, which adds file versioning (up to 10 versions), floating image support, MLA footnote and endnote integration, rulers, multi-column layouts, section breaks and the ability to add shapes to documents. The app can read and save Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, spreadsheets and presentations, transferring and printing files wirelessly or to cloud storage centers like Google Docs, Dropbox, and Box.net.
The app also supports PDF reading and creation from documents and allows users to continue working on office documents even while on the go. It can handle even complex spreadsheets and presentations and fully utilizes the touch interface to make working with documents intuitive.
Cloud-based app maker Evernote recently acquired the Mac app Skitch, a screen-capture and annotation program that made it easy for people to create and share images with captions, arrows and other informative or decorative elements on them. The company has now brought out Skitch for iPad (free), which works with the iPad's built in camera as well as photos, webpages, maps or a blank canvas and freehand drawing, direction and writing tools.
The resulting creations can be saved locally within the app, or stored in the cloud via an Evernote account. Files can be shared by e-mail, via Twitter and Skitch for iPad also supports Airplay, letting you wirelessly project the images to any HDTV with an AppleTV connected to it. Airplay support allows iPad users to mirror the iPad screen as they create, making Skitch useful for educational use, presentations and live demos. The company is also planning an iPhone version, and an Android version is also available.
