Whether on the go, or lounging around at home, Apple's iPad is one of the most intuitive devices for getting online currently available to consumers. Sure, it lacks the ability to view Flash-based content, but savvy iPad-owners know that's not a barrier to getting the most out of the interwebz on an iOS device. To quell the complaints of all of the iPad naysayers out there, we've put together a list of ten of our favorite websites that'll let you get the most out of the internet on your iPad.
One of the best MP3 aggregators online today, The Hype Machine scours the web for the best songs and blog posts about music available. As the site is updated on a regular basis, you're always sure to find something fresh to groove to.
Offering up their special brand of scathingly funny tongue-in-cheek humor, America’s Finest News Source will keep you in the sarcastic loop with loads of iOS-compatible video, infographics and guffaw-inducing stories.
For a, shall we say, more objective view of world events, iPad owners can always count on the New York Times for their news. Chock-full of rich media content and well-formed writing, the newspaper’s website is a go-to source for timely news on your iPad.
Stargazers that don’t want to spring for Vito Technology’s awesome Star Walk iOS app can make sense of the nighttime skies using a free HTML 5 powered star map called NakshArt. After asking for your current location, this clever browser app will cook up a chart detailing the planets and constellations that can be seen with naked eye in the event that you can tear yourself away from your iPad for long enough to look up.
If you’ve hit a brick wall trying to find new music in iTunes, Mixest is for you. Offering up scads of great indie music that you may never have heard before, Mixest provides a free streaming-soundtrack so good, that it’ll renew your faith in rock n’ roll. If you’re end up hitting upon too many tunes you know, no problem: just tap the "More Obscure" button to hear something fresh and vibrant.
No doubt you’ve seen a few Vimeo-branded videos floating around the interwebz. It’s time to take full advantage of their site. Full of a wealth of user created content, Vimeo offers a rich variety of user-made videos: some funny, some banal, and many freaking awesome. You can even take in a few excellent tips from Vimeo’s Video School on how to improve your own videos. Sweet.
Bitspace is a service that, for a reasonable monthly fee, allows you to upload your entire music collection so that you can stream it to anywhere at any time. While Bitspace offers free apps for both iPhone and iPad, both their website and web-based music player work brilliantly when loaded up on Mobile Safari.
While everyone’s been making a big noise about Google’s Chrome OS, the folks at Glide have been offering up an a respectable in-browser operating system and a number of cloud-based applications for sometime now. Signing up for a free Glide OS account not only gives you access to the company’s in-browser OS but also provides you with a snazzy @glidefree.com email address and 30GBs of storage space. Not too shabby.
Another paid service, Rouxbe will teach you how to cook from nuts to soup. With video content suitable for chefs who have never turned on a stove before to tutorials that’ll educate even the most veteran of kitchen wizards, Rouxbe will have you cranking out savoury faire in no time at all.
There are plenty of shopping sites out there that you can browse from your iPad, but none of them are as slick as Wantist. Just tell Wantist the type of person you’re buying for and the type of gift you want to purchase, and Wantist will offer up a list of items that suit the bill using a slick, easily to navigate interface.
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