Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is a wonderful new iPad app celebrating this famous and loved piece of music. I’ve never been a big fan of classical music but something about the look of this app grabbed me and I decided to give it a look.

Wow, I am so glad I did. This is just a fantastic app, even for someone like me who’s not knowledgeable about the music. Here’s a bit of the App Store intro for it:

Beethoven’s 9th Symphony for iPad presents four of Deutsche Grammophon’s legendary recordings of this iconic work, with the amazing ability to switch instantly between each performance at any point in the piece. As you listen, you can watch the synchronized musical score, be guided by expert commentary, follow Beethoven’s 1825 manuscript or immerse yourself in the hypnotic graphical BeatMap of the orchestra, precisely highlighting every note. The app also includes a treasure-trove of specially filmed video interviews with musicians, writers and great conductors discussing Beethoven and his masterwork.

Here’s some of the app’s features that I’ve found gripping:

– The music itself of course. The app offers four of the ‘legendary’ performances of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – and you can switch between these as you listen with just a single tap.

Ferenc Fricsay’s first stereo recording of this work from 1958 with the Berliner Philharmoniker; Herbert von Karajan’s famous 1962 recording with the same orchestra; the widely loved and charismatic maestro Leonard Bernstein’s video recording from 1979 with the Wiener Philharmoniker; and the ground-breaking 1992 recording on period instruments conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.
[click to continue reading…]

The Yahoo! Mail app was updated and revamped this week; it’s now a universal app with a new iPad version.

Here’s a few of the notable feature of the new Yahoo! Mail iPad app:

Especially designed for your iPad, this app lets you sit back, relax, and effortlessly sift through emails:
✔ Full screen “Reading mode”: Email with photos, newsletters, and shared articles now appear beautifully in full screen at the tap of a button. Flip through messages as in a magazine.
✔ Advanced options for message actions: Upon selection, messages are automatically grouped by sender, so you can keep your Inbox more organized. Delete unnecessary social media notifications, star messages from a friend, move messages from family into folders, all in a few taps.
New “Starred” folder: Conveniently find all your starred messages in one place. Available on both iPhone and iPad.

I have to admit, I hadn’t used Yahoo! Mail in quite a while – but I decided to give this new app a look this weekend. I think it looks good – better than I remember Yahoo! Mail looking on iOS anyway.

Do we have any Yahoo! Mail users here? If so, what do you think of the new iPad app?

What Color Is Your Parachute? Job-Hunter’s Workbook is the new iPad edition of the hugely popular job-hunting guidance book.

Here’s a bit of its App Store intro:

The most popular job-hunting guide in the world, WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE?, has sold more than 10 million copies in 27 countries. Now, for the very first time, you can work through WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? JOB-HUNTER’S WORKBOOK on your device. … Top career expert Richard N. Bolles is known as the founder of the modern career development field, and this is the first interactive tablet edition of his core suite of activities.

What Color Is Your Parachute has always been more than just a sit back and read it type book; it was always more of a workbook which requires the reader to do some thinking and some work in order to get the most out of it. This iPad edition is true to that tradition.

Step-by-step exercises will help you discover your favorite:
• Transferable skills
• Fields of knowledge
• Job environments
• Values and goals
• Working conditions
• Levels of responsibility and salary

This book was recommended to me years ago by a client. I read it and did find it very helpful at a time in my life when I was seriously considering a career change. Now I’m pretty set in that area – but I installed this app just to see what an iPad edition of it looks like. As a very quick first impression I’d say it’s still extremely useful, but I find it a pretty drab, boring design. I feel like its pages were made more interesting or just worked better in the printed book. It also works only in portrait mode – I’m never fond of this limitation in book / magazine apps for the iPad.

Here’s an App Store link for What Color Is Your Parachute?; it’s priced at $2.99 – which is listed as a limited time 50% off deal.