What’s On My iPad, January 28th 2013

As a frequent traveler I rely on my iPad as in-flight entertainment/work tool on pretty much every flight.  It’s great not to have to rely on the airlines to provide an imperfect technology solution.  Here’s a list of what’s new on my iPad:

• Evernote and my Moleskine notebook:  I’ve always been a notepad kind of guy.  There’s something I inherently enjoy about keeping physical notes on certain meetings or phone calls.  The problem with that is I always find myself in a different city than my notepad, or I brought the wrong one with me.  I have a lot of notepads.  I experimented with a bunch of different styluses and writing programs for the iPad but found none to my liking.  Enter Evernote.  I’ve used it for a while now to keep general notes synced between my laptop, iPhone and iPad.  But the notebook is where things take off for me.  See, you take notes in the book, then snap a quick picture and Evernote keeps track of the notes for you.  It even scans the text and makes it somewhat readable and searchable (probably more effective for people who don’t have crappy hand writing like me).  The notebook also includes stickers that you can use to automatically tag something, and the tags are customizable.  I’ve only been using it for a few weeks right now, but I love the notebook.
• The Season Premiere of Smash:  One of my favorite shows on television.  It doesn’t actually premiere until the first week of February but it’s available early on select American Airlines flights and iTunes.  I found it on iTunes but I think it’s pretty cool that you can actually watch new episodes before other people see them on an airplane now.  I always tune out the pre-programmed in-flight entertainment but this might get me to start paying attention again.
• Angry Birds Space:  Everyone knows there are a ton of Angry Birds games out there.  They’ve all centered on the same theme for the most part, but Angry Birds Space requires a bit more thinking as it folds in gravity.  Good mindless fun.
• Kane and Abel:  One of my favorite fiction novels, by Jeffrey Archer.  If you haven’t read it and enjoy a quick fiction read that’s suspenseful but not crazy, this book has it.  I continue to recommend this book to friends and I have yet to see someone come back and tell me they didn’t like it.  The book itself is over 30 years old but I first discovered it from my best friend over a decade ago.  Well worth the time if you have it.

So, what’s on your iPad?