Tim Mercer

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That little saying takes on a whole new meaning with the iPad version of TypeDrawing from developer Hansol Huh.

As the name suggests, TypeDrawing for iPad lets you draw on your tablet using words instead of lines just like the iPhone version of TypeDrawing let you doodle on that iOS device.

The golf swing is probably one of the most unnatural motions in sports. Developing a good swinging motion takes lots of study and practice. As with any endeavor in sports, a key component to improving your game is self-evaluation, and getting your golf swing on video is probably the best way to figure out exactly what you could improve. iSwing: Golf from Keuminotti sets out to help you record, analyze, and improve your swing.

iSwing lets you quickly capture video of your swing using the iPhone's camera--even with the 3G model. Of course, the frame rate will be lower when you use the 3G's camera as opposed to the more advanced cameras in the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4.

In Osmos, a puzzle/action game by Hemisphere Games, the bigger you are, the better. Built specifically for the iPad after enjoying success (and earning awards) on the Mac and PC, Osmos is a game of nebulous, colorful cells called "Motes" and your quest to become the biggest, most dominant mote on screen. An oddly soothing and entrancing game, Osmos is so well adapted to the iPad's unique control scheme that you couldn't imagine playing it on anything else.

Osmos has you play the part of a lowly Mote, which looks like a single-celled organism. The goal is to become larger than all the other Motes on screen. Accomplishing this is rather simple--just not necessarily easy. When you collide with another Mote that is smaller than you, you absorb them and become that much larger in mass. Colliding with larger Motes on the other hand has the opposite effect and you quickly get swallowed up by them. In the world of Osmos, size really does matter. It's survival of the largest. To propel yourself in any direction you just tap the opposite side of your Mote that you wish to travel in. So to move right you would tap the left side and so on. Doing so jettisons small amounts of matter essentially pushing you in the opposite direction but making you a little smaller with each tap.

Summer may have given way to autumn here in the U.S., but that's no reason to put the grill away just yet. And whether you're a seasoned grill master or just barely able to stack charcoal, Weber's on the Grill from Weber-Stephen Products is sure to have something for you. From the very basics of grilling to more advanced recipes, there's a little something for everyone.

There's two separate versions of the app, both of which cost $5--Weber's on the Grill for the iPhone and iPod touch and Weber's on the Grill for iPad. They're both essentially the same with only a few differences.

SketchyPad from Nick Golovin is a handy app for designing mock-ups of Websites and application user interfaces. With SketchyPad, you can use your iPad to quickly illustrate a layout or concept for a client or just play around with different ideas you may have.

SketchyPad has lots of stencils and user-interface design elements that you can drag into your mock-ups. For Website layouts, the app offers a browser window, text areas, tabs, navigation buttons, and much more. If you're designing an iPhone or iPad app interface, you can pick from templates of the iPhone or iPad screens, iOS keyboards, navigation buttons, and toolbars, to name a few. Every so often, SketchyPad adds new elements via updates.

Photo Captions HD, a $3 iPad app from Sprite Labs, lets you quickly add captions, frames and graphics to your photos, or even create greeting cards and collages.

You can use any picture you have in your iPad's photo library. Once you've selected a photo to use, you can add other photos to create a collage of pictures. You can also add frames, text bubbles, images and symbols, or filters. The app provides a nice selection of frames as well as text bubbles and icons in lots of different styles.

If you've ever wanted to create your own animated drawing, Animation Creator HD from Red Software just might be what you're looking for. With this app, an iPad, and some patience, you've got all the tools you need to start animating.

Essentially, the workflow in Animation Creator HD matches what a traditional animator would use. You draw a frame, draw the next frame with your subject in a slightly different position and repeat. Play these frames back, and your subject appears to move. This can be quite a tedious process, but that's par for the course in hand-drawn animation.

With its large touch screen, the iPad is a great device for sketching, doodling and painting without having to lug around paper, canvas, paint or other art supplies. With the right app, your iPad becomes a mobile art studio so you're ready to create that next masterpiece whenever inspiration hits. Sketchbook Pro from Autodesk is just such an app. With its many advanced features, it proves to be one of the best painting apps in the App Store.

Sketchbook Pro supports up to six layers with opacity controls and a few blend modes like Multiply and Screen. You can resize and reposition each layer independently. The app provides undo and redo buttons for mistakes and line, square or circle tools for drawing those shapes.

Modern Conflict HD is a real time strategy (RTS) game for the iPad from Click Gamer. It has the basic elements you would expect from any RTS game-- resource management, the need for a sound strategy and the goal of domination over your enemy-- but unfortunately, Modern Conflict offers little else to distinguish itself.

You start the game in a tutorial mode that gets you familiar with the controls and nuances of Modern Conflict HD and then it's on to either a survival or campaign mode. The survival mode is just that -- survive as long as you can against a constant barrage of enemy forces. The campaign mode is where you'll spend most of your time playing against different enemies on varying maps and terrains. You start out with a limited number of bases under your control. The enemy has its bases as well and the first one to control every base on the map wins.

Color Splash for iPad is the perfect app for desaturating your photos while leaving selected details in full color. Having developed Color Splash for the iPhone, Pocket Pixels has turned its attention to the iPad and that device's larger screen to deliver even more great features to this popular mobile image editor.

To start, you select an image you have saved to your iPad's photo library. Color Splash automatically turns that selected image into a black-and-white photo. To get the color back into the parts of the picture you want, you just use your finger as a brush and paint it back in.

Uface from app developer Blank lets anyone create their own custom avatar for social media sites without the need for any drawing skills. It's a fun addition to the iPhone and iPod touch.

To start, you select your gender and then mix and match other facial features to get the look you want. There are hundreds of different eyes, noses, hairdos, lips, glasses, beards, eyebrows, and more to choose from. You also have your pick of several hand gestures, hats, chat bubbles, and backgrounds to make your character even more distinct. You do all this sketching on your choice of seven types of virtual paper--notebook, canvas, plain white, or yellow, to name a few.

Baby Decks DJ from Async gives you two virtual turntables on your iPad so you can try your hand at DJing without dropping a ton of money on a professional set up. The app comes preloaded with a few beats and some nice scratch records with which to experiment. You can also load your own music into the app's library from your computer over a shared Wi-Fi connection.

To load new tracks into Baby Decks DJ, you just type an address provided by the app into your desktop browser and select the track you would like to upload. Once you've added that music to the app's library, you can play those tracks on the turntables at any time.