Full Deck Solitaire

 Full Deck Solitaire is fantastic free solitaire game available for iPad from the Mac App Store and comes with 22 "deliciously delightful" solitaire games wrapped into one tight little package. The card movements are all well animated, with appropriate optional sound effects, and you've even got the option of an animated "video background" of the sea lapping up on the shore on a moonlit night. You can of course use your own background image if the stock green ones don't do it for you. You also have three decks to choose from antique, clean and large print, or if you hate all of them, you can define your own card backs from an image of your choice. You have three choices of card size too, meaning you can just about customise the whole card playing area to your liking.

Each game has a nice load of statistics, that tell you how many games you failed to win, at least in my case, and of course there's a full set of rules available should you have never played a particular game before. So, if you're looking for a decent solitaire game for your Mac on the cheap, you can't get much cheaper and better than the free Full Deck Solitaire.

iBite

De Santos restaurant in New York has become the first to use iPads for their ordering and payment systems. The iPads can do everything associated with the day-to-day functions of the restaurant—namely, taking orders, sending them to the kitchen, and paying for the bill—but makes it simpler and much more time- and money-efficient. The customized POS system, which appears as an app on every server's iPad, can access the restaurant's table and seating chart, as well as a full visual menu from the kitchen and the bar. 

"Nowadays in New York City, the menus don't list the entire specifications of each dish," Gonella says. "With this software, you can show them exactly the dish itself and all the specifications for each dish, so people are really buying what they're seeing and there's no more confusion. It's pretty important."

With the entire menu in detail on the iPad, waiters simply choose each item from the library of menu options. Once the order is complete, it's sent wirelessly to the kitchen and bar, where the order is printed out and punched.

iPad MoMA

The NY Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has a brilliant free app available for Ipads at the moment. The recent Abstract Expressionist New York exhibition has been published for iPad as a series of superb hi-resolution images and videos of the abstract expressionist works.

You can learn about the artworks, the artists and NY history through a multimedia presentation of maps of studios, galleries and points of interest. There are a series of videos of historical interest, discussions and artciles about key works as well as a glossary of art terms.

The finished app is a fantastic resource for art teachers or just great general reading on this important period in art history. Abstract expressionist art is possibly the most discussed, the most ridiculed and reviled and the least understood of all art periods. MoMA has gone along way to making the movement understandable and accessible as well as providing an important resource and teaching tool....and best of all its a free download. Beautifully produced and thoughtfully assembled. (And while you're there, you might also want to look at the Free books App from MoMa as well)

Burn brightly, Pete

Put a 1000 books on your iPad for Free

The British Library has released 1000 books from its 19th Century collection into a free iPad app that includes novels, historical works, poetry, philosophy and scientific books.

The books have been scanned in high resolution and color so you can see the engraved illustrations, the beauty of the embossed covers, along with maps and even the texture of the paper the books were printed on. You can search the collection, browse titles by subject, and even read commentary on some of the titles. The books can be downloaded for reading offline. The app only works in portrait mode, but some of the illustrations are oriented in landscape view. Many of these literary treasures will likely never be offered as standard e-books so this is a unique opportunity for readers. Although the app is free, the British Library plans to charge for an enhanced version of 60,000 titles later this year.

Burn brightly, Pete

iPad Pen Alert

Scribbly is an alternative type of stylus for your iPad or iPhone. Replicating the look and feel of an old school marker pen it's designed for wireframing, sketching and notetaking - coming soon from the UK.


Burn brightly, Pete