iPad is Engadget’s 2010 winner is a post from iPaddendum, the blog of iPad news, views and app reviews!

Back on the air. is a post from iPaddendum, the blog of iPad news, views and app reviews!

Price: Free! for the app itself; content is $3.99 per issue, via in-app purchasing
Size: 5.6 MB
Format: iPad-only app

First of all, I should mention that this is not the same Wired app that was on sale up until a few days ago. That app was a single issue of the magazine, and significantly flawed in its implementation. This app is an entirely separate (and improved) entity and, as such, you’ll need to grab it from the iTunes store all over again.

Now, what is the Wired app? It’s a framework for purchasing, downloading and viewing digital copies of the Wired paper magazine.

The Good

The app’s interface is minimalist and elegant, and largely easy to use. The front end is a gallery of Wired issues (including a free iPad Edition preview, and the June and July 2010 issues so far). From here you can purchase issues (in-app purchases use your iTunes account), download them, and select them for viewing.

Once you’re viewing an issue, a tap in the centre of the screen invokes the user interface, which auto-hides when not in use. A slider at the bottom of the screen lets you scrub through the issue page-by-page, and a menu bar at the top offers four options: the Home button takes you back to the issue gallery, a drop-down menu lists the issue’s contents by article, the issue number is a tappable link back to the cover page, and the horizontal navigation button gives a side-scrolling gallery of the issue’s contents, article by article (including ads), with multi-page articles flowing down the screen.

This last view gives a clue to the real strength of the Wired app. The content itself is more than just an electronic copy of a paper magazine: it’s not just a PDF. The magazine uses “new digital publishing technology developed by Adobe”. What this means in practise is that they can – and do – embed interesting multimedia content to enhance a story; for example, June’s short piece about Trent Reznor included audio samples to illustrate the stages of a song’s development. A one-page article about a Lego Lamborghini featured an animation of its assembly that you could swipe through to see the model grow on the ‘page’. And it lets them transcend the limits of paper; several stories take one page, with an option to tap multiple buttons to show different image captions, information overlays and so on — which is something that would take multiple pages in a print magazine, and probably get cut as a result.

Equally, the format’s versatility has affected the layout of the magazine: reading through it isn’t just a case of endlessly scrolling from left to right. Multi-page articles are oriented ‘vertically’, so you scroll downwards to read the rest of a story – which can be confusing to start with, but it’s a welcome change from “…continued on p. 120.”

The Bad

Unfortunately, this format comes with some weaknesses — the biggest is that multi-page articles with a scroll-down aren’t always immediately obvious. There are navigational cues of varying subtlety, such as borders and graphics that flow off the bottom of the screen, suggesting more content to see below, but unless you’re paying attention it’s too easy to skim sideways, leaving you confused at the start of a new article.

Navigational cues are also an issue in that it’s possible to accidentally tap on things you didn’t realise were links and wind up on a completely different page, with no back button in sight. (The cover is particularly prone to the latter; trying to scroll from the cover to the internal content can be an adventure!) Conversely, sometimes things look like they should be tappable links, and aren’t. This is improved in the most recent issue, with a circled arrow or yellow-highlighted text marking internal links.

The other major usability quibble is physical; changing pages requires a significant swipe motion; tapping hotspots is generally more pleasant, and better for those with restricted motion (whether due to physical limitations or being nested in a blanket on the couch).

Apart from usability issues, the biggest problem is size: the app is a fairly svelte 5.6 MB, but full issues of the mag are huge, around half a gigabyte, which will chew up storage space fast — especially as there doesn’t seem to be a way to delete issues once you’ve got ‘em. In some ways this is worse than the old version of the app, which was a one-app-per-issue model; at least with that system you could delete unwanted issues from your iPad without losing all of them.

There’s one significant feature that the app doesn’t have that you might expect: an interface for viewing wired.com content. It does have an internal browser for viewing external links but so far there’s no integration of Wired and wired.com content. I hope that’s on the way.

The Bottom Line

The improvements in the space of a month are impressive, and Wired seem to be committed to further development, including reducing the file size, and upcoming paper/digital subscription bundles. Despite the usability hurdles, the Wired app is an enjoyable read and a welcome expansion of the paper magazine. If you enjoy Wired magazine and don’t feel the need to own the dead-tree version, I recommend digital consumption.

Wired review – magazine app is a post from iPaddendum, the blog of iPad news, views and app reviews!

iPad popularity defies projections is a post from iPaddendum, the blog of iPad news, views and app reviews!

Price: Free!
Size: 0.7 MB
Format: iPad-only app

What It Has

The main area of HelTweetica features tabs for your main timeline, @ mentions, direct messages, and favourites, all of which behave in roughly the way one would expect. The timeline is a very information-dense screen; compared with some other Twitter clients there’s very little padding around each tweet, or whitespace within a tweet. I’m not sure yet whether I like it or not; it’s very utilitarian, but may lack elegance. Unlike many Twitter clients, HelTweetica is black text on white, which is great for readability.

There are a couple of usability niggles; for instance, you have to scroll back up to the top to see the tabs in order to switch to another view. The icons for replying, retweeting, DMing and favoriting next to each tweet are rather small, and closely packed. And there’s no obvious way to reply to a direct message without going to that user’s profile and writing them a new DM.

However, there are also some very nice features, such as the Conversation screen. When you hit an “in reply to so-and-so” link in a tweet, it takes you to a screen showing you all the tweets in a “reply to” sequence, with the tweet you selected highlighted. This makes it painless to catch up on a conversation in someone else’s timeline, and is a nice addition.

Accessing linked URLs is also a smooth experience; HelTweetica has a limited internal browser, and also offers the option to save the page in the ever-popular Instapaper, open the linked page in Safari, or email the link.

The menu bar offers a selection of more ‘advanced’ features: a profile selector (although you can, as you’d expect, also get to a profile by tapping their name in the timeline), a search function (including saved searches), a display of your lists and subscription to other peoples’ lists, an Analyze button (which renders your current timeline down into a list of tweeters by frequency), and the All-Stars feature.

The All-Stars feature is particularly interesting; tapping the button takes you to a page with the userpics of the people you follow. It’ll periodically search those people and then display a recent tweet from them for a little while, then repeat the process – the devs describe this as “a Twitter screensaver”. Unfortunately the (limited) controls over the display are tiny, and there’s no way to go from a userpic or single tweet to the user’s profile or timeline; you have to back out of the All-Stars display and then find them via your timeline or the profile viewer. That said, it’s a fun feature and might be an interesting way of keeping an eye on your Twitter feed, particularly if you follow a lot of people.

HelTweetica does offer multiple account support but keeps the accounts entirely separate; you select your active account from the “Accounts” menu (which is only accessible when you’re on your main timeline/mentions/DMs screen, not from within conversations or while viewing profiles or search results) and you can then only see that account’s timeline, lists, searches, and so on.

What It Doesn’t Have

Apart from the usability problems mentioned above, HelTweetica has a couple of other shortcomings.

The most obvious to many users is the lack of any URL shortening services, which are very common in Twitter clients. Felt Tip may be expecting that iPad users are less likely to want to tweet URLs compared with desktop users, but this lack is likely to be a significant hurdle if you do tweet a lot of URLs.

The second problem is another usability issue; there’s no fast way to get back to your main timeline view. This isn’t a problem if you don’t tend to follow links around the Twittersphere, but getting back to your timeline from other peoples’ profiles requires you to retrace your steps, which is time-consuming and annoying. A simple “Home” button on the menu bar would solve this, of course.

And, finally, there are no options for push notifications, which makes keeping up with your Twitter feed an all-or-nothing affair.

The Bottom Line

HelTweetica is an interesting Twitter client with some really clever features. The usability hurdles and lack of URL shortening may make it less attractive to power users, but it’s certainly worth checking out, and for a free app it’s pretty powerful. (It’s also tiny for what it does, so if your iPad is jammed full, it won’t take up valuable space.)

HelTweetica review – Twitter client is a post from iPaddendum, the blog of iPad news, views and app reviews!

Price: $1.99 in the US App Store
Size: 9 MB
Format: Universal iPad & iPhone app

What It Has

Awaken has a number of different clock functions: a full-screen digital clock, an alarm function, and a sleep timer. And, somewhat incongruously, it has a full-screen flashlight with a number of colour choices.

The clock itself has a number of styles, including a clock overlaid over a digital photo frame feature, and I find that the clock part of this style is a little hard to read, as it’s offset against an overlay that’s a bit too transparent. The other clock styles are eminently readable, however, and all take advantage of the iPad’s rotatability.

The alarm feature lets you save a number of alarms – I’m not sure if there’s a limit on the number; I’ve never reached it if there is. Alarms can be a once-off or recurring, with music or a buzzer with a number of alarm tones (including some suitably jarring ones). There are some usability niggles in this section – for instance, new alarms always default to music rather than an alarm sound, and once an alarm has passed you have to manually delete it from the list. Aside from these glitches the alarm’s very functional, however.

The sleep timer allows you to leave the iPad playing music and it will turn off or fade out the sound and screen brightness after a preset time (up to 24 hours). It allows you to select music by artist, song, album or playlist (based on your iPod playlists) and provides music shuffle, too, although it lacks the other options of a full-featured music player.

What It Doesn’t Have

There are two features of the iPhone/iPod Clock that Awaken lacks, however: it doesn’t have a stopwatch, and it doesn’t have a timer. You can always use the Alarms setting to get around this latter lack, but that’s not as fast or convenient as a proper timer would be, and I hope to see this appear in future versions.

In addition, Awaken doesn’t offer any analogue clock options, which doesn’t bother me, but some users may prefer a different style.

And, finally, although there’s a desktop version of Awaken and this app also works on the iPhone/iPod Touch, there’s no way to sync alarms between different versions of the app – this probably won’t bother most users, but power users with lots of preset recurring alarms might find that disappointing.

(It is also worth noting that some users report that the alarm doesn’t always go off, especially after receiving text messages, alerts from other apps, and so on; this has been reported with other alarm apps too, including the iPhone OS built-in clock, so it may be a problem with the platform rather than the app.)

The Bottom Line

Overall, Awaken has an appealing price tag. It provides a useful and attractive clock, and a feature-rich alarm, and we recommend it for typical users. Those who rely on timer/stopwatch features may find it less useful.

Awaken review – clock app is a post from iPaddendum, the blog of iPad news, views and app reviews!

iPaddendum reviews focus on what’s useful (and not) about an app or game. As such, we don’t generally distil our opinions into a star rating – we’d rather highlight the kinds of users who’d find the app useful, and whether we feel the app is worth the pricetag.

My name’s Eleanor and I’ve been blogging for years, most recently about computer games. I’m passionate about technology and the way it can improve our lives, I’m a happy iPad owner, and I hope you’ll find iPaddendum useful and interesting. If you’d like to get in touch, you can email me at eleanor at ipaddendum dot com.

Welcome to iPaddendum! is a post from iPaddendum, the blog of iPad news, views and app reviews!