I’ve been quite pleased with my purchase of an iPad, but when you spend your hard earned monies you want to be more than quite pleased. The reason I purchased an iPad was because I thought it was a revolutionary device, one that would bring a new dimension to surfing the web, enjoying multimedia and playing simple games.

But most of all I was looking forward to some apps from some highly skilled developers that would take advantage of the amazing apple UI that made the iPhone the best device of our time so far and the quality HD screen that displays bright vivid images beautifully.

Until now, I have been largely disappointed with the apps on offer, until now I have been struggling to find an app that delvers something new and noteworthy. Until now! So what app have I stumbled upon that has urged me to go as far as pick up my iPad and blog about it?
Answer: Flipboard.

Flipboard is a new take on the flip style flash interfaces many catalogue sites such as Next are offering. It allows you to add categorised content that is gathered from multiple sources to your contents page. So, you’re interested in technology? Add the TechCrunch feed, love food Add the smitten kitchen feed. The feeds are then presented in a flip style format, but you can also touch the article you want to read more about to see it in large format. This is presented beautifully with a slick zoom fade animation. If you want to see the full article on the web then a simple click on a web link takes you to the page. The clever part here is that it doesn’t just open up safari, it does this in it’s own browser so that when your finished you can go back easily to where you left off.

As well as adding content from multiple feeds, you can also add your Twitter and Facebook accounts. This again presents your Facebook and Twitter feeds in the same flip magazine style format. As far as Twitter is concerned, for me, this now makes it 100 times more interesting. The reason for this is the tweets from people you are following are pulled in as well as some of the content from links they are including in their tweet. This means you can read a snippet of the information on the URL they’re tweeting and see if you’re bothered enough to read the whole article.

The Facebook feed is also nicely done, allowing you to focus in on certain status updates or photo postings and add your own comments.

From the opening of Flipboard where you are presented in style with pics of the latest articles slowly zooming in and out, to then point you close the app after feasting on the all the content you’ve just flicked through. You know it’s an application you won’t be deleting any time soon.

I wouldn’t like to criticise anything about flipboard. You can see the time and effort that has been put in by the development team with every aspect of the app. I would like to see the option of adding more content boxes on the contents page, but understand this may have performance implications. The only other improvement I can think of is the ability to add urls of any rss feeds that are then pulled into the flipboard environment.

All in all though… What a Flippling good app! (sorry!)

As I sit here enjoying my pork pie sandwich and watching a line up of hopefulls contend to be the uk eurovision entry, I cast my mind over the days events and think about what I’ve spent my hard-earned cash on.

Well, I purchased a second controller for my new wii, resident evil game, two snack sized pork pies and a loaf of bread.

in the uk?

What I didn’t buy is a brand new 190mm(w) x 243mm(h) x 13.4mm(d), touch screen, 16gb, wi-fi enabled, 1ghz A4 processor, 9.7 inch LED-backlit screen and 10hrs battery life device.  What I didn’t buy was the new apple ipad.

A couple of weeks ago I was going through one of my “I love apple” 15mins and was bigging up the fact they were launching this amazing new device globally at the same time.  Unfortunatly, that hasn’t happend.

Those lucky people in the US have been able to order today though, so if we’re lucky Steve Jobs is logging how many of his fellow countrymen have pre-ordered and therefore will be able to judge the demand that will be present in the UK and rest of the world.  Then when the ipads launched over here, apple will be able to meet demand and keep all its loyal followers happy… yeah right.

Almost certainly apple will limit supply, fire out a few thousand press releases about how the ipad sold out within a couple of hours and then say they’re working flat out trying to meet demand.

So, when is the UK public going to get its hands on the ipad?  Late April.
Yep… Late April.

You could buy one through using bundlebox who register a US postbox for you and have said they won’t charge duty.  Not bad.  But also be careful.  I’ve noticed a lot of blogs recommending this route and I’ve no idea how geared up they are.

If you can wait until the end of April, personnaly I would.

After all you’re only missing out on a non-flash-complient, non-multi-tasking, non-camera-owning, big ipod touch… and a revolutionary, lifestyle-changing, user interface experience you won’t find anywhere else.

Damn you apple for this love hate relationship.  If only you were marmite! I could make up my mind so much easier!