A great new iPad painting app hits the iTunes App Store this week, a lovable yellow sponge sucks up some of my free time, and a whole new way to gather, manipulate and use Twitter is released, and a photo-editing tool all make this week’s best iPad app list.
INSPIRE PRO ($7.99 normally, but it’s 99 cents for a limited time)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Art and I just don’t mix. But that doesn’t stop me from trying every painting app that enters the iTunes App Store. Grabbing Inspire Pro was a no-brainer, due to the low, low introductory price of 99 cents (regular price $7.99—get it while it’s hot!). Of all the drawing/painting apps I’ve tried, Inspire Pro seems to mimic paint on a brush better than any other app. When you begin to swipe your “brush” across the screen, the paint wears away. You can adjust how much paint you can load on your brush, choose from a flat, round, fan or clumped brush or a palette knife, and customize size and pressure. Brush one color over another, and they begin to blend beautifully. All of the tools necessary are within a quick tap.
SPONGEBOB MARBLES & SLIDES HD ($4.99)
We’re big fans of SpongeBob Squarepants in my house. And while SpongeBob Marbles & Slides HD ($4.99) probably isn’t going to win any game design awards, it is going to captivate any SpongeBob fan with its quirky background music and silly noises. You draw slides on a screen to guide marbles in this physics puzzler (SpongeBob? Physics?). Lots of different levels are set in various areas of SpongeBob’s hometown Bikini Bottom. Fun for adults and kids alike.
DELBMARCS (99 cents)
With a relaxing piano soundtrack, DELBMARCS (Scrambled letters) might help you drift off to sleep. But once you start increasing the difficulty of descrambling letters to form a word, you’re going to be hooked. Choose between 4 and 12 letters in this 99-cent iPad game; when you’ve descrambled the word, you’re given the option of moving onto the next word. Get a new word at any time, a hint — or even get it solved if you’re entirely stuck.
TOUCHUP FOR IPAD ($2.99)
For those who like manipulating photographs, TouchUp for iPad ($2.99) is a great addition to your app library. With a nice stable of effects and the ability to color or tint with a brush, TouchUp will help you turn your photographs into beautiful works of art. Samples, organized by skill level, are included, so you can play with features before messing with your own photos. Once you’ve got something frame-worthy, share it right from the app via email, Facebook or Twitter.
TWEET LIBRARY ($9.99)
It boggles my mind how many Twitter-focused apps there are, but Tweet Library ($9.99) is different. Download your tweets to create an archive right on your iPad you can also search, organize and filter them. You can also create unique timelines, so you can get a more focused collection of your own — and others’ — tweets. On top of all this, Tweet Library is also a fully-functioning Twitter client. Anyone from the Twitter-obsessed to the casual user can use Tweet Library to find unique ways to narrow down all of the information coming at them (and out of them) into usable, concentrated collections.
