Kyle Baxter

The iPad is fantastic at a lot of things, but how does it measure up as a clock? The tablet's big beautiful screen gives developers a lot of space to experiment with the design and features of an alarm clock app. I took a look at three iPad apps that offer different approaches to clock functionality.

Night Stand HD from SpoonJuice offers nine different clock styles from which to choose, including an analog clock, three different variations of an LCD alarm clock, and a world clock. Several of its styles are quite appealing--the colored LCD and "flip" style both look great on a night stand or desk at night. Others, though, aren't good at all, namely the analog clock and "Nixie" style.

NicheVision's Aarde Web Browser offers desktop browsing features for your iOS device. Optimized for the iPad as well as the iPhone and iPod touch, Aarde delivers features such as ad-blocking, the ability to change your browser's user agent and open tabs in the background, note-taking, Google Bookmarks support, sharing, and a privacy option.

That's certainly an extensive feature list, and a few of those capabilities are welcome additions to iOS browsing. Ad-blocking, a feature Apple's mobile Safari browser lacks, works quite well. In my testing, Aarde blocked most ads I came across (including Fusion Ads but not, oddly, the Deck) without blocking innocent images as well.

IdealApp's $7 Cal-N-Icon tries to make keeping-and searching-your calendar easy by attaching icons to events. The iPhone app delivers what it promises, but not with much flair and not without a few frustrations.

The concept behind Cal-N-Icon is fairly straightforward-attach an easy-to-decipher icon to an event so you can spot the event at a glance. So if you have a doctor's appointment, put a doctor's icon on the event; if it's your kid's baseball game, slap a bat-and-baseball icon onto it.

Think of Appigo's Corkulous as a corkboard for your iPad. Corkulous tries to make it easy to organize thoughts for everything from remodeling a room to planning a birthday or coming vacation-or practically anything else you'd like to brainstorm.

Corkulous sports an array of objects-labels, post-it notes, to-dos, photos and contacts-that you can place on your virtual corkboards. To access them, you "pull" open a file cabinet in the bottom-left of the screen and drag them onto the board. You can even drag out more corkboards onto your board, so you can drill down on a topic.

The appropriately named iNapkin 2 is a simple brainstorming application for the iPad. The $3 offering from Luksor allows you to sketch out ideas and write notes on a napkin or lined paper background and e-mail them. iNapkin 2 is certainly functional, but it has a few issues.

You access the pen, text, and eraser tools through a toolbar at the bottom of the screen. When one tool is toggled on, a floating palette for controlling the tool pops up in the upper-right corner. You use the palette to adjust the tool's attributes--the color and thickness of the penstroke, say.

The iPhone's built-in Notes application works well, but sometimes a little more power would be nice. Brid looks to fill that need with its $4 Awesome Note. It delivers the additional power, but, unfortunately, overdoes things a bit.

Awesome Note can organize notes by folders, export and import from Google Docs, and search notes. The app also offers a quick memo option--separate from regular notes--and gives you the option to password-protect your notes. What's more, you have a number of note themes to choose from, to give your notes a distinct look.

I began cycling in the spring, and quickly learned two things. First, I was out of shape; second, I wanted a way to track my rides. More specifically, I wanted to record distance, time, speed and the route taken so I could see my progress over time.

There's no shortage of expensive GPS devices that can handle all that. But I already own a device with GPS functionality--my iPhone. So I I scoured the App Store looking for software that fit my needs and found iMapMyRide a free download from MapMyFitness. The app tracks your rides and syncs them to the MapMyFitness Web site. iMapMyRide also works as a partial replacement for bicycling computers, displaying data such as the time elapsed, distance covered, current speed, and your pace.

Using a certain song as an alarm sounds pretty simple--so simple, in fact, that the iPhone's built-in alarm clock doesn't let you do it.

Enter AlarmTunes, a simple app from McLean Mobile Solutions that plays whatever song you want when the alarm on your iPhone or iPod touch goes off.

Tracking expenses is always important. During a recession, it is crucial.

App Cubby'sGas Cubby for the iPhone tracks gas and car maintenance expenses, charting your miles per gallon, the cost of gas over time, and services expenses. It also reminds you when it's time to change your oil, your brakes, or perform other maintenance. The app costs $10, though there's also a free version called Gas Cubby Lite that limits you to five records.

I don't really get excited about single-purpose utilities for the iPhone and iPod touch. But Sophiestication Software's Groceries app merits the excitement. It makes grocery lists easy to create, manage, and--dare I say--a little fun.

Groceries allows you to create as many shopping lists as you want--I create lists for different markets that I shop at, for example--adding items using the plus button in the bottom right corner of the screen. Tapping that button brings up a search box, where you enter the item you want. Groceries searches as you type, pulling up both generic items (soda) and name-brand products (Coca Cola). The app has a large database of items, and it remembers new ones that you enter. Groceries sorts items in your list by aisle, which is quite convenient--it makes sorting through long lists easy.

I study Mandarin in school, which means learning how to read and write Chinese characters. My technique isn't the best--I write the characters over and over again and hope it sticks. Needless to say, that doesn't always work.

MyWords-Chinese (Traditional) intends to make the process more fun and effective. It's one of 37 MyWords apps offered by Innovative Language Learning; the company's MyWords offerings in the App Store run the gamut from Arabic to Vietnamese.

Price comparisons are a common problem while shopping for groceries: Is the 20 ounce drink for US$1.50 or the 32 ounce for $2.49 a better deal? The answer is found by converting their price into its per ounce cost, but this is a difficult to do in your head, and certainly not something you want to do while grocery shopping.

Fortunately, Ilium Software's Apples2Oranges solves two pressing problems: price comparisons, and how much of an ingredient is needed in a recipe.