Suggested to me by more than one person was CalenGoo ($6.99 on iTunes). One of the downfalls that I noted for both SaiSuke and the built-in Calendar App was the inability to import tasks. Not a huge deal, but something I’d really rather have, which CalenGoo does.

Now, I’m not going to go through a feature-by-feature what this App has. I’m just going to go over it briefly and explain why it might be perfect for you.

This App works great, but it doesn’t have the smooth graphics that you might be used to with others. It’s barebones on the design side, and I’ll think you’ll see why shortly. The developer has put way more time into the features and customization and really didn’t worry with how it looks. However, I wouldn’t call it ugly, it still has a clean interface.

First lets talk about viewing and editing your calendar. Here is a screen shot of your four basic views, Day (which is more like ‘detailed week’ in my opinion), Week, Month and Agenda.

While the views are all pretty standard, quick adding of events is slightly different. In month view, if you want to add something, you’ll have to double-tap on the date, which will bring up ‘day’ view, and automatically start a new event edit window. In Week view, the day you tap highlights and you can add to that date by tapping the +. In agenda view you’ll need to scroll so the date you want to add to is at the top of the screen, then click the add +. Of course, at any point you could just click on the Add Event + and select whatever date or date range you want anyways. So it’s not a big deal. I only wish I could select (highlight) the date in month view, as every other App I’ve tried allows.

For the most part I like that this App makes you double-tap on any event to get the details. It can be bothersome when you’re just trying to surf around your schedule and you keep bringing up the details windows for events. The scrolling month view is brilliant and makes seeing events weeks away a breeze. This is one of the reasons I searched for a non-Default Calendar App to begin with.

The other was Tasks and CalenGoo finally brings that to me. I know there are other ‘Tasks’ Apps, or even apps that let you use many, many of the Google services at once. I simply wanted my Tasks and Calendar together. It’s just a simple list, but I rely on it, and can edit, erase, add and complete tasks remotely now. Horray.

One last thing, and this is something I’ll have to show you, instead of go into wordy detail about. The customization settings on CalenGoo are RIDONKULOUS. As in, there are a billion. The developer takes everybody’s opinion about how this App should work very seriously and adds features based on user suggestions. There are literally pages and pages of custom options. Lucky for us users that like it as-is, it works great, if you want to be able to really feel In Charge of how your App Runs, check out these screenshots:

Yowsers, right? That’s just awesome. People who use CalenGoo love it, including myself. While I am still most comfortable editing my events in SaiSuke, I use CalenGoo as a quick reference all of the time. As a ultility app it shines, and shouldn’t be overlooked.

One such of these Apps is MaxiVista – because, while it is a very niche product which does basically one single thing (without any fancy extra functions or customization), it will definitely appeal to the majority of iPad/PC Owners (which, by my very scientific estimations is at approximately 20-80% of iPad owners). I am sad that not everyone knows about it, because every single iPad owner I’ve told about it in person was instantly impressed. So lets get on with the review, shall we?

What it does: Simply, it turns your iPad into a Second Monitor on your Windows PC.
That is pretty much it. You download the App ($9.99), and go and download the software needed for your PC (which works on XP/Vista/7), boot it up, and go. To say that this is Dead Simple would be accurate. I have notoriously bad luck with installing and updating hardware and software. No matter what it is, I will always, without fail, screw something up. The simple fact that I downloaded, installed, and used this software within 5 minutes shows how easy it is. If I didn’t screw it up, you can’t.

Once you load up the App on your iPad, and run the software on your PC MaxiVista will automatically link the two, and you go ahead and set up where your new ‘second monitor’ is located in relation to your primary monitor. Like I said, Dead Simple.

How it works: Magic. I don’t know.
I’m sure its similar technology to VNC. However, as far as I am aware this will only work if you are on the same network. I mean, that makes perfect sense though.

What it’s good for: Lots of stuff.
I generally have my iPad set up beside my computer anyways. I keep the Mail App running so I can get alerts when I get new mails, or maybe I’ll have Tweetdeck up on my iPad so I can keep an eye on twitter while I’m working on something else. I was basically already using the thing as an extension of my PC when I was on the computer.

Before

Now, I keep a Browser full of email Tabs (especially more convenient now that I can sign in with multiple accounts in Gmail within one browser), and my Gtalk open. You could, if you wanted, also use MaxiVista with your iPad in Portrait, instead of Landscape, simply by turning your iPad.

Now, with MaxiVista

What it’s not good for: Touch & Video
There is no multi-touch (or touch whatsoever) capabilities within this App. While this is a feature the developers have stated on their website they plan to implement in the future, for right now you’re going to have to interact with whatever is on the screen with the mouse.

While the refresh rate is pretty decent for it being connected over Wifi, there are still points at which it lags. Resizing Windows I found to take a while, and playing Video from my computer (such as with VLC) ran very poorly. However: I do want to say that streaming/flash videos such as Youtube or Vimeo actually worked surprisingly well (not perfect, but ‘Good Enough’). Actually. I was surprised to find that all Flash Sites worked well within my regular browser. I don’t know what I was expecting (Perhaps a big gray box saying “No Flash on iPad, Stupid!” ?).

iPad showing Vidmeo Video, & Flash Site

One last downfall – No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t reset the resolution at which my iPad displayed as my second monitor. It certainly shows up on my Display Properties, but even when I reset the resolution, nothing changes. I wish this were a customizable option either via the regular method on my PC or at least as an option within the settings of the program itself.

Display Settings, this didn’t work.

So that’s MaxiVista for you. Simply it works, it’s not perfect, but it’s great. And while Mac users have a few options to choose from, until Air Display comes out with their Windows version, MaxiVista is our only option, lucky for us PC users, it just works.

Basically what Plastic Bullet is, is a filter/effects App which doesn’t do fancy avante-garde art style or funny borders/stamps – it mimics the effects of a Toy Camera or old-style photography. It uses light-leaks, over-exposures, colour tints and lots more to create unique, and beautiful photo edits, randomly.

I’m going to highlight the Random aspect of this, because it’s very important. Most photo editing Apps let you control the effects you’re putting on your photos – not Plastic Bullet. It develops your pics randomly, showing you four options at once, you can click on each to see them full-size and then select the Heart Icon to save them locally. If you’re looking for an App that makes these sorts of images completely custom to your settings, this App is not for you. I, however, am super-lazy and just want to say “yes” or “no” and be left with a whack of cool looking photos.

To get a great overview of how the App works, have a look at the video that the developers created:

(FLASH VIDEO, sorry iOS readers)

Here are a few pics that I edited with Plastic Bullet.

This is the original (taken on a BB Bold, my iPhone 4 was MIA, sorry for the quality ;) ):

My Roommate and her Boyfriend at the Pirate Festival last weekend.

And some Edits:

So, it’s pretty obvious that this App takes boring photos and turns them into awesome looking, vintage even, ‘Photography’. A few downfalls, aside from the lack of customization, that I will note. 1) No matter the original size of the photo, the saved edits will always be 800×600. This is an issue that Red Giant has stated they plan to fix in an upcoming update (However the App itself hasn’t been updated once since its launch in Mid-May). Second, on iOS4 (or possibly just iPhone 4), the orientation is wacky, sometimes. Doesn’t effect picture output, but sometimes makes it difficult to scroll through the edit options. I’m hoping this will also be fixed an a not-too-far-away update.

[UPDATE]
Less than 24hrs after posting this, Red Giant went ahead and did the update that I was waiting for, hooray! The app now fixes all orientation issues, and will save at higher resolutions [exact resolutions based on your iPhone model]. They also added Facebook and Flickr uploading ability – and Multitasking for iOS4.
[/UPDATE]

This App is well worth the $1.99 you’ll shell out for it. I did, and couldn’t be happier.

When they announced that the iPhone was coming to Canada July 30th, my heart sank a little bit. I was going up to the Cottage for that one night only. But decided it wasn’t such a bad situation when I realized there was a Rogers Store within a 40 minute drive. So I called to ensure they’d be selling it – got up early in the morning (8am), and got to the store about a half hour before opening, at 9am, and landed myself a spot about 7th in line.

Two hours later, and after only two purchases were complete, one of the Rogers employees was kind enough to inform us that they only had one left in stock – that they only received 4 in total. *Angry*

I decided to put it out of my mind for the rest of the day. Forget Launch Day. If I couldn’t do it right, I’d not do it at all. When I got home Friday Night I simply called my local Apple Store (at Square One) and asked if they still had a long line-up. I spoke with a super-nice guy who let me know that they were cutting off the line shortly – and it would probably be best to come in the next day, as they’d still have stock.

So that’s what I did. I had a bit of a nap, got up bright and early at 4am, and headed in for a mini-camp out.

This was when I started to use my Google Calendar pretty hardcore. Like, every day pretty much. While I eventually got out of the habit of using it on my iPhone all together, once I got my iPad I knew that I’d get right back into the saddle, needing to have my updated calendar with me at all times, and most importantly, being able to update my Calendar on the go.

So, I started to use the built-in Calendar App. While it worked just fine, I really found the interaction with the software to be… almost annoying. I know that it seems like a bit anal to say, but not having the ability to swipe from month to month was the straw that broke my back into seeking out and trying SaiSuke for the iPad. I needed to see if there was a better way! I’d been so impressed with SaiSuke for iPhone I was overjoyed (and not too surprised) that they made SaiSuke for iPad.

I’m going to try to be fair in my review here, but this might just end up being a post explaining why SaiSuke is better at everything.

A few things I should mention first. One. SaiSuke is only for Google Calendar Users, so you need to be using Google Calendars (if you use iCal or Outlook or whatever, you can sync with Google Calendar and then use SaiSuke this way, see the Google Calendar Help for more info on Syncing.).

Secondly, this is a very detailed review, and I’m trying to cover nearly all aspects of using the Apps, however if I miss something, or if you have a question about a specific feature I didn’t detail or procedure I failed to mention, please feel free to comment. I’ll reply with as many details as I can muster.

Here goes:

Syncing your Calendars

Well, first thing is always first, right, you want to get your Google Calendars up into the Apps.

To import your Google Calendar into the Calendar App, you’ll have to run Google CalDAV set up within your device As Outlined Here. Now, keep in mind that because of this I had to change the way that my eMail was imported, too. No biggie. ***However after setting this up you’ll actually also have to activate Google Sync for each additional Calendars, other than your default, on your Google Account to have them show up, too. (Pay close attention to the bottom text of the link above, otherwise you’ll get lost.) There are other methods to import your Calendar, but this is the most reliable and efficient.

The benefit of this over SaiSuke is Push notifications for new events. They literally show up like, instantly.

For SaiSuke, you simply fill out your Google Login information in the settings and configure from within the App which calendars you want to show. Done and Done. You won’t get push notifications, but you can sync whenever you want. (There are specific settings in regards to this I’ll cover later).

A Note About Apps Accounts
Both Calendar and SaiSuke worth with Google Apps accounts (if you don’t know what this is, don’t worry you don’t have one). However, Calendar allows you to import several calendars from several accounts, including Apps Accounts (as long as Google Sync CalDAV is enabled via the admin). SaiSuke allows you to only log in to one Google Account at a time.

Viewing Your Calendars

(Click on the screenshots in this review to see them Full-Sized.)

There is one drawback to SaiSuke on this view. It doesn’t show the start time of each of your events on the Month-Calendar. Instead you need to select a day to see the full schedule for that day. This doesn’t bother me personally, but would like to see that changed in future.

However, what it does do that Calendar doesn’t is show overlap-day events on both days. You’ll see above that my “work” schedule on Calendar only shows up 8pm Mon-Wed. On Saisuke it shows it’s actual time 8pm-6:30am on two dates Mon-Thurs. I prefer this. Some might not.

To get details about specific events on this page you need to click on the items, in both Apps. Calendars shows you the time of the event only, while Saisuke gives you full details. See below:

Day View

This is the second most common way I view my events. I’ll simply show you the difference between the two and you can judge which you prefer (keep in mind I did click on the event for more details – so minus the pop-up on both Apps for the regular Day View).

I am going to say this one thing: SaiSuke automatically provides a link for any address that’s included in the details of the event. Super. Helpful.

List View

Again, just have a look at the difference here.. you let me know which you prefer.

This is the view without the “edit/details” popup for both.
Can someone explain to me the benefit of having my events show up twice with the Calendar App?
For both the Day and List view, they think I need to have them show me the information twice on the same page?

Finally, and I cannot stress this enough. On each view in SaiSuke you can swipe sideways to go to the next month, week, day, whatever. A feature that is lacking on Calendar, and one that makes navigating this App a dream compared to Calendar. This feature alone is worth the extra money for me, but of course there is more:

Adding/Editing Events

You can add events from any view within both Apps. I mostly use my calendars in Month View, so I’ll proceed with the rest of this review that way, probably.

Calendar is stupid, because you cannot tell which day you have selected unless you have a particular EVENT selected. It should highlight whatever day you’ve selected, this is basic stuff. In any case, adding an event in Calendar looks like this:

SaiSuke has a sort of Quick-Add feature where you can choose the date/time and event info without having to type anything. However if you want to add details, you can, here’s how that looks:

Have a previous event that you want to copy? SaiSuke has you covered. You may have noticed on the Details PopUp when you view an event in Month/Day view hat there is a ‘Copy’ button. Simply choose this with any event, and choose your new date, hit ‘Paste’ and all the same details will be used again. This is of course different than the Repeat option, which is also available on both.

Pretty simple stuff, both do what they should – while SaiSuke has event ‘Types’, and the Copy feature, it’s the only real benefit over Calendar. Other than the fact that on Calendar you can only set events on the fives of the hours (9:05, 9:10, 9:15, etc), whereas in SaiSuke you can simply choose any ol’ time you want (9:01, 9:27, etc).

Notifications

While this might not be a feature that everyone uses, I still need to mention it. Calendar has the option to add an alert for events. Its a popup and alert beep on your iPad to let you know your event is coming up.

Within Saisuke you can choose alerts too, but you can select the Popup, an Email or Text Message. Which is obviously because Google Calendars offers this. Still, far superior, don’t you think?

What SaiSuke’s got the Calendar Doesn’t.

This is where SaiSuke Shines. Settings Galore. Instead of walking you through each of them I’ll just give you a preview of the Menus:

And that last one being most important. Sync Settings. This is where it is OK that SaiSuke doesn’t have push. Not only can you sync manually from every page within the App, but you can set up your own details for auto-sync – and you can do so for Each Calendar Separately. If you only want to have one-way (Google>iPad) Sync on one of your calendars, you can do that, or the other way around. If you only want to sync your work calendar once a week – you can do that. It’s completely customizable.

So, while it was obvious going into it that I prefer SaiSuke, I hope this gives you an insight into the benefits, at least, of buying a Google Calendar App. The interaction alone with the App is worth some dollars, and all the additional superior layout, design, features and customization is what makes SaiSuke one of the best iPad Apps for productivity, and totally worth the $9.99.

The only feature I wish that were on both, or any calendar App for that matter, is the ability to sync in my Google Tasks. For the meantime however, I feel like the Memo section pretty much takes care of this on SaiSuke and I’ll be singing its praises for a while to come.

If you’ve come across a great Google Calendar App, or if you have any questions about SaiSuke, drop me a line here! I’m always on the prowl for suggestions!

Well, it is cool. It’s supercool.

For the mechanics of drawing you have 35 different brushes to choose from, ranging in shapes – however you also have the option to customize the spacing of the brush shapes, from 1-20px, in my experience this pretty much determines the ‘Brightness’ of your brush. While the size, from 5-128px, well, that’s size :)

There are 11 preset colours, however you can choose literally any color from the rainbow wheel, and at any brightness too. Which, given enough time and talent, means that the possibilities for fantastic glow-style art are unlimited!

You can share via Facebook, Email and upload to Flickr right from within the App (however, I do have to say that it uploaded my photo to Facebook upside-down and flipped horizontally, and I’m not sure why). The tracking is great, a very important part of touch-draw Apps. And I really am constantly impressed by the glow effect – which looks stunning on the iPad but only slightly less so once exported to jpg.

For the time being, I’m absolutely addicted to doodling on this thing. If you can catch it while it’s still free, I highly recommended it. I do not know what the regular price will be, but I’d be willing to pay up to $1.99 for this App.

Here are a few examples of what I’ve made:
(Please click on them to see full-size, they’re much better that way)

Self Portrait

I call this one Troll Baby Flower:

Bright Angel:

The Time Vortex: (For all you Doctor Who Fans out there)

and my favorite Far Away Earth:

Perhaps more importantly, am I creating these posts because I genuinely want to share these articles and/or feature these blogs, or am I simply doing it for Content?

I started thinking about this because of an article I read on Matt Gemmell’s Blog (which I’ve been reading obsessively ever since the ‘Your App’s Website Sucks’ article);

Sharable Experiences
It’s verbose, so here’s the td;dr – social media integration is overblown, it’s not enough to be able to share, it’s being worthy of being shared.

I make no illusions to the fact that I know people aren’t swapping my url around on twitter or Facebook much, while I am a content creator, I also see myself as a content sharer. I’m sharing my opinions, lots of people do, and sometimes when I find another persons opinion that I like, or think is interesting, I want to share that with others.

Not unlike how I did just a second ago with that article that is about this very topic. Oh, Meta.

In any case, there are a million trillion websites that are dedicated to what I apparently want to do once a week or so: share with my readers what I’ve read and liked. So, I think I won’t make individual posts anymore rounding up news articles. If there’s something interesting enough to warrant me writing about, I’ll just dedicate an entire post to it.

But I still want to share awesome articles. So here’s how:
Visit and Subscribe to my Google Reader Feed

I’ll probably be updating it a couple times a week, with interesting or fun articles I’ve found online. Now, this is my personal account, so like my Twitter you’ll sometimes find non-iPhone related stuff, but, honestly, for the most part that’s all I like.