Bevil Wood­ing

Look­ing to get the most out of your Ap­ple iPad or An­droid tablet? For new tablet own­ers, it's not al­ways easy to fig­ure out where to be­gin. With the right apps, you can trans­form your tablet from a tech toy in­to an in­dis­pens­able mo­bile com­pan­ion.

Much like soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions on your lap­top or desk­top com­put­er, apps are at the heart and soul of the tablet ex­pe­ri­ence.

Apps al­low you to trans­form your tablet in­to an en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre, a per­son­al nav­i­ga­tor, an epi­cure­an en­cy­clo­pe­dia, an in­ter­na­tion­al ra­dio sta­tion, a news cen­tre, a so­cial net­work hub, an ed­u­ca­tion tu­tor, an of­fice as­sis­tant, a weath­er fore­cast­er, a can­vas or a portable li­brary.

Fol­low­ing are some es­sen­tial apps for Ap­ple iPads and An­droid tablet users. These apps will keep you up to date on news, sports, en­ter­tain­ment, weath­er and much more. Best of all, the apps are free.

Ten apps for your new tablet

Ever­note

Cat­e­go­ry: Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Ever­note pro­vides one of the best ways to or­gan­ise your in­fo in­to vir­tu­al note­books con­tain­ing text, pho­tos or even voice notes. What dis­tin­guish­es Ever­note is how it syn­chro­nis­es your notes us­ing a pass­word-pro­tect­ed Ever­note ac­count.

You can ac­cess Ever­note us­ing your tablet, lap­top, desk­top, or smart­phone. This makes it ide­al for au­thors, stu­dents or jour­nal­ists to man­age their con­tent on the go.

Face­book

Cat­e­go­ry: So­cial net­work­ing

Face­book tablet app gives users most of the func­tion­al­i­ty they can get on the pop­u­lar so­cial net­work's Web site. Up­load pho­tos, post to your wall and troll your so­cial net­work to your heart's con­tent. If you're a Face­book fan, this is a must have.

Flip­board

Cat­e­go­ry: News

Flip­board is one of the best news and so­cial me­dia ag­gre­ga­tion apps. The Flip­board app makes the most of your tablet's large dis­play to cull blog posts, so­cial net­work­ing feeds, im­ages, video, and ar­ti­cles in­to an im­pres­sive lay­out that repli­cates the print read­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

Kayak

Cat­e­go­ry: Trav­el

Kayak tablet app lets you ac­com­plish es­sen­tial trav­el-re­lat­ed tasks with­out hav­ing to any­where near your phone or com­put­er. You can search for flights, car rentals, and ho­tels and com­pare deals. You can al­so book a ho­tel room, track flights and man­age your itin­er­ary all from with­in the app.

Kin­dle

Cat­e­go­ry: Books

The Kin­dle app puts Ama­zon's ex­ten­sive book cat­a­logue at your fin­ger­tips. Read Kin­dle books, news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, text­books and PDFs us­ing a very easy-to-use in­ter­face. Choose from more than a mil­lion Kin­dle books from Ama­zon's Kin­dle Store or en­joy hun­dreds of free ti­tles.

In ad­di­tion, the app's view­ing set­tings lets you cus­tomise your read­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Even re­duce the bright­ness on your dis­play and in­crease the size of the text from with­in the app to re­duce eye strain.

The Kin­dle app al­so au­to­mat­i­cal­ly syncs so you can start read­ing on one de­vice and pick up where you left off on an­oth­er de­vice.

Google Earth

Cat­e­go­ry: Trav­el

The Google Earth app brings the func­tion­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al good­ness of its desk­top coun­ter­part to your tablet. You can pinch, zoom and swipe your way to near and dis­tant places, fly over build­ings and vir­tu­al­ly walk the streets of ma­jor cities. This app is a sure hit for young and not-so-young world ex­plor­ers and ge­og­ra­phy buffs.

Pho­to Ed­i­tor

Cat­e­go­ry: Pho­to and video

Pho­to Ed­i­tor by Aviary is one of the best free pho­to ed­i­tors avail­able for any plat­form. It has all the func­tion­al­i­ty need­ed to quick­ly and eas­i­ly ed­it your pho­tos on the go. From pho­to ef­fects and fil­ters to draw­ing and cos­met­ic tools, Pho­to Ed­i­tor helps you ed­it and share your point and shoot mas­ter­pieces.

Skype

Cat­e­go­ry: So­cial net­work­ing

The Skype app brings all of the loved free-In­ter­net video and voice call­ing func­tion­al­i­ty to your tablet. Make free voice and video calls over Wi-Fi or 4G to oth­er Skype users, or for a fee to land­lines and cell num­bers.

Skype takes ad­van­tage of the ex­tra screen space by show­ing nav­i­ga­tion tabs and re­cent com­mu­ni­ca­tions on the left side of the screen, and thumb­nail im­ages of con­tacts on the right side.

Dur­ing video chat, users can keep the left nav­i­ga­tion pan­el in view, or switch to full-screen mode, for a portable busi­ness con­fer­enc­ing or just to show the fam­i­ly what you've been do­ing around the house.

TuneIn Ra­dio

Cat­e­go­ry: Mu­sic

TuneIn Ra­dio is the top stream­ing-ra­dio app of­fer­ing more than 70,000 AM and FM and In­ter­net sta­tions, plus two mil­lion on-de­mand pro­grammes from around the globe. Lis­ten to your favourite talk pro­grammes when you're far from home, or browse through lo­cal ra­dio, rec­om­mend­ed sta­tions, pod­casts, for­eign lan­guage broad­casts, pod­casts and much more. TuneIn al­so of­fers an ex­haus­tive list of gen­res like Clas­si­cal, Jazz, Reg­gae, and Oldies.

Web­MD

Cat­e­go­ry: Health

Feel­ing out of sorts? The Web­MD tablet app, based on the pop­u­lar Web­MD Web site, tries to help work out what might be wrong. Check symp­toms, ac­cess drug and treat­ment in­fo, and even get first aid es­sen­tials. You can al­so per­son­alise the app by sav­ing drugs con­di­tions and ar­ti­cles rel­e­vant to you.

Ho­n­ourable men­tions

Be sure to check out these apps as well.

All Recipes (food)

Ama­zon (shop­ping)

An­gry Birds (games)

Chrome (In­ter­net)

Dig­i­tal Pan (mu­sic)

Fit­ness Bud­dy (health and well­ness)

Khan Acad­e­my (ed­u­ca­tion)

On­Live Desk­top (pro­duc­tiv­i­ty)

Pa­per by FiftyThree (art)

Tri­pAd­vis­er (trav­el)

These lists are by no means ex­haus­tive. There are many more in­ter­est­ing and use­ful apps for Ap­ple or An­droid tablets. Do write and share some of yours with us.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and the founder of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, a tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion NGO.

Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing or e-mail: tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters@bright­path­foun­da­tion.org