Social Networking

AIM
AIM for iPad has a few social networking issues—namely, you can’t retweet or direct-message friends when using the built-in Facebook and Twitter clients—but it’s a solid app for those with contacts who primarily use AOL’s messaging service.
Flipboard
If it survives the potential wrath of content owners, Flipboard, which collects links posted to Facebook and Twitter and formats the content in a slick, magazine-style format, could be the birth of the personal newspaper, and Rupert Murdoch’s nightmare.
Twitter
Crafting new tweets may prove irritating due to an overcrowded screen, but the Editors’ Choice award-winning Twitter for iPad is the best mobile Twitter client around, hands-down.
TweetDeck
It may not support social networks such as Face-book or location-based services such as Foursquare, but TweetDeck for iPad is a respectable Twitter reader with an intuitive interface and accurate geo-tagging.

Business

Dragon Dictation
Featuring very accurate voice transcription and the ability to share messages via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter, Dragon Dictation is both fun to use and immensely helpful—as long as you’re connected to the Web.

Communication

Dropbox
Simple to use and extremely useful, this file synchronization app will keep all of your files in step, though the lack of built-in file editing and a few other limitations, may prove irritating to some.
Evernote
This app will help you stay productive on the go by making text based as well as audio notes, but you’ll want to upgrade to the premium version to unlock its full potential.
Textnow
This capable iPad SMS app is priced right, easy to use, and features the very cool ability to send free, unlimited texts, and embedded photos.
TextPlus
Prolific texters who want to save money on SMS messages will find this a very solid alternative to dipping into their mobile budgets.
Truphone
With acceptable voice quality and a decent selection of IM client compatibility, this VoIP app turns an iPad into a well-rounded communication tool that lacks only text-messaging capabilities.

Entertainment

ABC Player
ABC Player turns your iPad into a TV by delivering full episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Desperate Housewives, V, and Dancing With the Stars, and many more popular shows. Full-screen video looks sharp and smooth, with only limited commercial interruption. This app is almost good enough to make us forget we can’t watch Hulu on the iPad.
MoMA AB EX NY (for iPad)
Art enthusiasts with iPads should consider this a must-download. At every turn in MoMA’s new Abstract Expressionist app are surprises, much like in the MoMA itself. Once you’ve selected an image, you can save it, share it, or learn about it. And videos offer perspectives on each painter’s intent and techniques.

Marvel Comics
Here’s yet another example of something you can’t do with a Kindle: read comics in their colorful, crisply drawn glory. Marvel’s free iPad app offers a standard page-by-page view with zoom and pan controls, as well as a panel-by-panel, animated guided view. There’s also a fully integrated store for buying your favorite comics.
Barnes & Noble Nook
Nook for iPad not only grants access to over a million e-books, but it includes “LendMe” technology, so you can share titles with friends. “Lifetime Library” allows you to access your e-books from any device running Nook software.

Kindle Free
Amazon’s ubiquitous Kindle app, unlike the hardware-based Kindle, displays full color photos, a smoother interface, and offers plenty of type options. You also get access to the same Web-based store, which features over 450,000 books-many times more than what iBooks offers —plus free book samples.

Netflix

Free (with a Netflix subscription, which starts at $8.99per month) Netflix already has movie rental giant Blockbuster on the ropes, and also started early with online video streaming. Nowhere does the latter make more sense than on the iPad, where Netflix strikes a shrewd balance between screen size, portability, smooth playback, and unlimited movie watching.

Pandora Radio
Pandora virtually pioneered Internet radio, thanks to its robust music-choice algorithms, and now offers an iPad version with a user interface overhaul the desktop version needed long ago. It displays a sliding panel of albums, all of your playlists along the left, and— new to the iPad version-plenty of detailed artist info as each track plays.

Creativity Aps

Photoshop Express
The iPad is perfect for viewing photos, but what if you want to make changes to those pictures? Adobe’s Photoshop Express lets you crop, straighten, rotate and flip images, as well as add a variety of filters and effects. For fine editing you will still need to work on a PC, but for basic fixes this app is fantastic.

News, Reference & Info Aps

AP Mobile Free
There are alot of great news applications for the iPad, but if I had to pick one it would be AP mobile. Not just text stories, but also photos and video, this apps keeps you in the loop. It also supports a local news feed so you can get news that is truly close to home.
NPR
NPR went for a magazine-style approach with its iPad app, which emphasizes news, arts & life, and music coverage in three sliding panes. The app delivers hundreds of NPR live station and on-demand streams. In addition, NPR for iPad features photojournalism with full-page zoom, plus the ability to share stories over e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook.
Zinio
What iBooks and Kindle do for books, Zinio does for magazines. The iPad’s form factor ends up being just right: It’s large enough and sharp enough to display accurate content in full color, while being much more portable and prettier than a bookshelf full of dog-eared ‘zines. Spin, Car and Driver, and PC Mag are some of the offerings.

Epicurious
Conde Nast’s first iPad app for foodies—and mourning Gourmet readers—is excellent. Epicurious features a gorgeous interface that feels and reads like a luxurious, fully searchable cookbook. You can find recipes by main ingredient, course, cuisine, dietary consideration, and dish type, and even by season or occasion.

Life fori Pad
Life’s legendary photo collection comes to the iPad in glorious HD resolution. Downloading the free app, of course, lets you explore Life’s deep archives, but you can view up-to-the-minute news, photos, and special features as well.

Reuters News Pro
Reuters News Pro delivers the venerable newswire’s core product, news and market data, with a broader experience than either NPR’s magazine-style app or Bloomberg’s finance-heavy app. It features dozens of customizable categories, a personalized watch list for business news, and geographic-specific news views.

Wikipanion Free
Wikipanion for iPad sifts through all of Wikipedia’s HTML and metadata,sorting it into a beautiful, content-driven interface. The left side displays the table of contents, and the app remembers your font-size setting. The app even tracks page history by visit date, plays back embedded OGG audio, and saves images to the iPad’s photo library.