IPads, usb ports and outlets at every seat in the Delta terminal at JFK. Why don’t I fly Delta more often?

GarageBand

GarageBand on the iPad is spectacular. Not only is it the only touch app that doesn’t leave me wishing for the desktop version, but it is the first touch app that is clearly superior to its desktop counterpart. It splits up mixing and recording in the clearest way I’ve seen, takes advantage of multitouch and the smart instruments are actually smart. The best thing I can say about this app is I’m in the process of exporting all my Logic recordings to Garageband so I can start using my iPad as my primary recording device.

Download GarageBand

Screens

Screens lets you login to remote Macs and control them using your iPad. It’s a simple IP based setup with no extra software to install and can remember multiple machines. It also has great multitouch functions to make your Mac feel like a touch device.

Download Screens

Stash Pro

Stash is a password protected library for videos, images, documents and a private browser with separate history from Safari. The app has a decoy library, shortcuts to hide the screen (boss mode) and secret gestures that unlock your private stash. Not a replacement for multiple user accounts in iOS, but the best alternative I’ve found.

Download Stash Pro

Air Display

Air Display lets you use your iPad as a second monitor. It requires an installation of a Mac app to connect to your iPad, but is otherwise will auto connect when you open the app. Great for adding extra real estate when using a laptop.

Download Air Display

iSwifter

Say what you will about battery consumption or playback performance, but there are a LOT of sites that require Flash. And even sites that support iOS often have premium content blocked. iSwifter a basic browser that runs Flash (no bookmarks, multiple windows or even history) but it does that one task well. And when it’s a choice between a laggy version of Flash or nothing, I’ll take Flash anyday.

Download iSwifter

Textastic

While I’m not convinced Textastic is the ultimate code editor for the iPad, it works. It stands out when tweaking CSS or Javascript for a site meant to run on the iPad. It would be difficult to code an entire site in the app, but for editing up files via (s)ftp or dropbox this app let’s you make simple changes on the go.

Download Textastic

Flud

When Pulse was first released I loved it. The interface was different, it was easy to use, but over time I found myself using it less. The interface for Flud is VERY similar, but it’s ability to easily add rss from Google and auto categorizing content by type have won me over. It’s probably is more of a Pulse version 2 than it’s own idea, but better is better.

Download Flud

Zite

Zite is one of my favorite RSS readers two reasons – it’s simple to set up, and customizes your content the more you use it. My problem with TweetMag and FlipBook (both stunning apps) is I spend more time getting the app set up properly than using it. Zite hooks seamlessly to Google Reader and Twitter and automatically creates categories and stories based on what you already follow and groups them automatically.

Download Zite

Air Video

This app requires a little setup, installing a free video server on your mac, but allows you to stream almost any video from your Mac to your iPad. It can play back most videos, even non-supported video formats like FLV. You can have it play back as it encodes or save an encoded version on your Mac for realtime playback later.

Download Air Video

Muji Notebook

Notebook is great for sketching wireframes and taking notes – I rarely use paper for these tasks anymore. The interface is understated (in a good way) an it has a virtual screen that protects the iPad from receiving input from your palm while writing. Unfortunately, the handwriting recognition is terrible, see WritePad for this.

Download Muji Notebook

Sketchbook Pro

This is THE drawing app for the iPad. It has multitouch shortcuts for menus, powerful brushes and pinching / sliding to control the size and transparency of your selected tool. It’s downsides are the lack of a good blending tool and the limit of 5 layers.

Download Sketchbook Pro

Honorable Mentions

Twitter for iPad – This is my favorite Twitter client on any platform. It may not be the most advanced, but it’s the easiest to use and allows you to get through a mass of tweets easier than any other app. It also makes great use of multitouch allowing you to drag on a tweet with two fingers will show a full conversation, or pinch and zoom on a tweet will reveal a users profile. Download Twitter

MyFav.es – Although this is a web based service, it’s a great visual launcher for website bookmarks. Visit MyFav.es

Aweditorium – A new image based music discovery service. Clicking on thumbnails of bands reveals music and videos by the selected artist. It doesn’t make it easy to find a specific artist, but you will stumble onto great new music. Download Aweditorium

But something has happened in the last few years.

Bing is an interesting look into search. And I was REALLY interested in the possibilities of the Kin, especially the online timeline of activities, and the Kinect is amazing. Then Windows Phone 7 was released a few weeks ago and I may need to reassess everything I thought I knew about Microsoft.

Windows Phone 7

What I Love

The Interface

The interface is beautiful. Easily the prettiest OS I’ve ever seen. It’s very minimal, the typography is great (something I never thought I would say about a mobile OS) and it doesn’t look ANYTHING like an iPhone. I’m sure people will see this both as a positive and a negative, but honestly, with all the iPhone clones out there it’s refreshing to see something different.

The start screen

The phone lock screen shows your next calendar appointment, unread emails, time and date – a great step towards delivering on the promise of you getting your life back from your device. I actually find myself opening my phone less as I have a better snapshot of what is going on.

The buttons

I’ve always believed the iPhone has too few buttons. There are some cases when reduction becomes oversimplification. I think most Android phones get a little button happy, but the WP7 gets it just right. It has a hardware back and a search button (I now miss their presence on my iPhone) as well as a hardware camera button. The iPhone has always been handicapped when trying to capture spontaneous actions, but the Windows Phone can fire off a shot even when locked.

Services

Bing search works well and is customized to search the feature in the phone you are currently using. The built in voice search is very accurate, assuming you aren’t in a loud room – I attempted to use it in a bar and the results were hilarious. I love the idea of Zune pass, and think a music subscription built into a phone could be huge, but right now it only works on a PC. Bing maps aren’t quite as useful as google maps (and I miss the subway stations being tagged by train) but the integrated nearby features with ratings are really great. And while the Xbox features are still early stage, this has the potential to be a game changer.

Facebook Integration

Facebook is integrated deep into the OS. Your Facebook pics appear next to your other photos in your library, and you can share photos you take to Facebook with one click. Your address book and Facebook friends mesh seamlessly, and your Facebook friends feed is available with your contacts. You can also add your Facebook friends to your start screen and bookmark their profiles for easy access.

Undecided

There are a few aspects of the phone I can’t totally get behind. These are not all bad, and in some cases are partially great, but have some aspect that doesn’t quite live up to expectations.

Start Screen

On the iPhone you can scan multiple screens to the right, and on Android you have a combination of multiple screens as well as a list of apps. The Windows Phone has one LONG screen for all of your favorites and a list of apps. Those are the only options. You can’t group items together, and as your list gets longer it gets hard to manage quickly. The tiles are large enough for it to be easy to stop on the app you are scanning for, but it’s less than ideal.

Animations

Personally I think the animations in the OS are tasteful and add to the beauty of the interface. I think this today. It’s easy for me to imagine a time when they become repetitive and some early adopters are already complaining about animation fatigue.

Email

I love the ability to see unread, flagged and urgent emails. Deleting emails is incredibly easy and this is the only phone I’ve seen that supports Hotmail. Exchange support is top notch. But there are some big downsides. The phone is hard to type on (more on this later) and all of your inboxes are completely separate. Not just segregated within a single mail app, but totally separate apps, and checking emails from multiple accounts can be arduous.

What I Don’t like

The Browser

The other side of the coin to relying on Microsoft platforms is having to use their awful browser, Internet Explorer. And to top it off it’s IE7, which was originally released 4 years ago. Let that one sink in. One of the most sophisticated internet devices on the planet is running a four year old browser. You often end up being redirected to wap versions of websites, not even to a proper mobile version. And not only does it not support Flash, but it doesn’t even support Microsoft’s multimedia platform Silverlight.

Apps and Marketplace

I hate to bash on this too much as it’s a new platform, and there is limitless potential here for games, but the app store is small, confusion and the apps in it (even from major brands) are of questionable quality. There are also a TON of preinstalled AT&T apps bringing you the same dirty feeling from when you first boot up a new PC to your phone. Carriers have too much control over these devices, from apps to gross branding on the actual device, and we’ve all seen how this one ends.

Syncing and Connecting

There are some real ups and downs here. Apple has gone predominately with an iTunes based syncing method, while Google is all cloud. There are obvious pros and cons to both but the WP7 fits poorly in the middle. Calendars and email sync nicely to the cloud, but content has to be synced using PC only software. It seems like Microsoft is stuck between being an entertainment device, and a window into the cloud, but accomplished neither.

Input

Input is another huge blow to the phone. The on screen keyboard is one of the worst I’ve used. The buttons are too small and it often makes mistakes that other devices would catch. Inserting the cursor into text is great when you get used to it, but with no copy and paste it’s really handicapped. Also, the four way swipe paradigm that all the apps use can easily be confused if you swipe too quickly. The screen accidentally swipes to the right about 10% of the time if I swipe up too quickly. Hopefully most of these issues are software based and are not some shortcoming in the hardware of the phone.

The Details

Does anyone know what “pin to start” means? I realized it after a few seconds, but the start paradigm doesn’t exist anywhere else on the device except in this menu. Some of the interfaces go beyond minimal and begin to feel unfinished as you dig deeper into the device. The grey, black and white start to feel too much like wireframes and not enough like finished interfaces. Clicking “home” always takes you to the first tile, so managing a long list becomes tedious. There is no sharing of video. As far as I can tell, the only way to get videos off the phone is by plugging it directly into a PC.

Conclusions

While this is one of the best V1 devices I’ve seen, there are times where it is very clear it’s a new platform. It’s different, some might even say experimental, but I wonder how much becomes novelty over time. All in all I think this is a solid platform, with the only unforgivable flaw being the browser. I find myself enjoying using my phone again, but would never be able to switch permanently until Firefox/Opera/Chrome appear in the Marketplace. If you are in the market for a new smartphone, especially if you are a PC user, this could be a hit for you. It’s stylish, different, yet user friendly. It feels less like a phone, and more like a portal into the social web. It’s great seeing Microsoft taking a stance against their competitors and I think long term, this platform has all the right underpinnings to be a huge success.

Download the Stickybits iPhone or Android application and track down a barcode. Using the app you can tag an object, view your tag archives, or see what other people have tagged near you. Each item gets its own page on Stickybits.com where you can comment, upload media and follow the conversation from the web.

Frankly, I’ve been waiting patiently for QR codes to matter but with companies like Stickybits using pre-existing targets, and the huge advancements in image recognition software QR has a hard road ahead. Stickybits is currently only on the iPhone and Android platform, but their unique strategy around making codes social may push them to the front of the pack.

Check out Stickybits and get the app here.

Thanks to Jeremy Kutner for introducing me to this one.

Check out the full article here.

Check out the video on YouTube.

Check out JQTouch here.

Check out JQTouch in action on a device here.

Check out the full article here.

Read more about our involvement in the project here.

Check out the link on the official movie site below.

We also received two great mentions for the platform with TrendHunter.com calling Fanbase “trail blazing music promotion” and GetToTheFuture.com giving us a great review. Check it out!