Hay Day for iPad - best farming app

Price: FREE
Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hay-day/id506627515?mt=8

Hay Day might just be the best farming app of all time. If farming is your thing, you should get this one. You will start out clearing the land of trees, rocks and ponds. Once you've pass that stage, it will be farming all the way!

The best thing about Hay Day is that not only does it involve farming, but you have the capability to process the raw materials that you get and end up with other fun stuff. Some example of raw materials are: crops that can be harvested, animal by products like milk and eggs, minerals from the mine, fruits and berries from the trees/bushes. These materials can then be processed to make cheese, bacon, cake, ice cream, bread, burgers, pancakes, etc.

Since this can only be played while online, it makes good use of this connectivity so that we can play with friends and help each other out. The marketplace is also a cool feature where you can sell your goods to other players.

Tips: Buy cheap stuff from marketplace and resell at a higher price. Advertise your best goods so that others will come in to your farm. Buy cheap stuff from Greg! Ask for help in filling up the boat.

Google Maps App for iPad - Pre iOS 6

Price: N/A
Link: N/A (Built in to pre iOS 6)

Google Maps application is so good, period. This is one of the reason that I am still holding on to my iOS 5.0.1 OS for iPad and not upgrading to iOS 6. Who needs siri on my iPad anyway .. hehe.

My favorite thing in here is how you could drop a pin anywhere in the map and click on the icon for the street view, then you can basically navigate around town as if you are floating in the air, passing through bridges, roads, wherever. Its as if you can visit places and go sightseeing without even leaving the comfort of your room, it is also a great way to check out places before actually going there. 

Other distinct features:
 - hybrid view, satellite view, hybrid view, terrain view
 - traffic overlays
 - location search
 - direction search
 - cool interface.

iBooks for iPad - Top app for me

Price: FREE
Link : https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks/id364709193?mt=8 


iBooks is actually the reason why I bought my "old" new iPad anyway. My main reason was instead of purchasing physical books which costs a ton of money and several kilograms of dead weight. I could load hundreds of e-books on this device and it will save me money in the long run.

Books that can be viewed in iBooks are either PDFs or the epub type of books. Although epub books have the beauty of flipping pages like a real book, i don't really like the fact that it messes up the formatting and image sizes. I recommend getting ebooks in PDF format where the beauty of the original formatting is not reconciled.

I've put in educational books, magazines, comics, manuals, brochures and even airline tickets in iBooks thus making this the top app in my old new iPad. :)

The best thing in here is that it is very easy to get PDFs straight to iBooks, all you have to do is to open or download any PDF from your browser and click Open in iBooks option and it's there.. and stays there. :)

Note: I found a really really really good place to get IT ebooks for free -- http://it-ebooks.info/

Me and my Old "NEW iPad"

Here I was on August 13 all excited about getting the New iPad, I've been patient enough letting iPad 1 and iPad 2 come and go without getting a hold of it. So I remember going to Greenhills shopping center to search for the cheapest price i could get for the cheapest variant (iPad WIFI only @ 16GB) and fortunately enough I was able to get a spanking new white NEW iPad for PhP20800 with a free screen protector (matte), this is way lower than the official price of around Php25000.

This is the start of my life with my NEW iPad.

 <--my spanking old new iPad

Of course right now we know that the NEW NEW iPad is already announced making my NEW iPad the OLD NEW iPad (names are really quite confusing) or the now obsolete iPad in the ranks of iPad 1 (can't believe iPad 2 outlived my iPad :S).

Anyways, I wanted to make a series of posts to show my favorite apps and those that makes my life better (or worse). :D