If you’re thinking of making money off an iPhone or iPad app, there are lots of things you may not have thought of. Most of them are in this book.  What’s great are the first person accounts from successful iPhone developers, such as Josh Williams, founder of Gowalla, a popular social networking site. The developers discuss all the decisions they went through, from what colors to use to problems when people with wide fingers didn’t know they’d tapped an icon because they didn’t see it react. The same decisions and problems discussed here would apply to making apps for the new Android phones, though the Android is not directly addressed.

With its big pictures, jazzy writing style, and great ideas for using your iPad, this book is a winner. You might not have thought of transferring university courses to your iPad, but you can. You can also put in parental controls, transfer movies, fill out forms and get directions. The author has written several best-selling computer books and moonlights as a stand-up comic. Once we got the feeling that this was rushed out the door: He said “right-click” when he meant “tap. ” There is no right-click on the iPad.

“iPad, the Missing Manual,” by J.D. Biersorfer, $32 from missingmanuals.com.

Biersorfer writes the weekly computer Q&A column for the New York Times. This book is nothing if not thorough. From turning your iPad on and off to preserving the battery, it gives you tips and tricks you’ll want to know. Organize your bookmarks, save a photo you saw on the web and turn it into your iPad’s background image, make shortcuts to your favorite websites available from the home screen and transfer a library of free books. Actually, it turns out that any free book you download to your computer from Gutenberg.org is probably already available for free, using the free iPad’s iBook app. We added “The Origin of the Species,” “Peter Pan,” and “The Circular Staircase,” a 1908 crime mystery by the author who created “femjep.” This stands for “female jeopardy,” a sub-genre in which the heroine is in trouble and must be rescued.

• Da Vinci HD: Leonardo’s paintings fill your iPad screen in this 99 cent app. Looking at “The Last Supper,” we found it hard to believe we never noticed that there are 11 male disciples and a woman next to Jesus.
  

  

  You can save the paintings to your iPad photo collection, email them, or read about them.

• The Elements is a 1.8 gigabyte app, so we had to download it to our computer first. But it’s visually stunning. You get to see all the elements that make up our earth, in pictures, video and live data. The live data comes in from Wolfram Alpha’s mathematical search engine. Not cheap at $14, and we have a few criticisms.  The write-ups are jazzy but lacking substance. They rely on old information and leave out important characteristics like chemical valence, the ability to give up an electron or accept one. This of course is crucial information in determining what kinds of compounds the element can form. You can see the elements in 3D, if you buy $5 glasses.

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• Sudoku Soccer from Avanquest.There are free versions available but this one, for $2.99, has a World Cup theme. Fans cheer as you move the ball into a slot and give it a number. Choose your team and your rival from among 32 countries. You can cheat and take a time penalty. Also available for iPhones and Android phones for 99 cents.

Apple maintains an online apps store and getting into it is harder than it may seem at first. This is because Steve Jobs, the big Apple, has rules about good taste and usefulness. Despite this, the best-selling iPhone app recently was one that used the phone’s speaker to imitate people’s release of gas after digesting certain foods. More than 100,000 copies were sold in the first two weeks.

– “Using Mac Os X, Snow Leopard,” by Yvonne Johnson; $23 from quepublishing.com.

This book made us want to go out and buy a Mac. Step by step, it takes you through all the things you can do. Joy was struck by the photo greeting cards, comics, audio recordings and website tools. The author has 60 books under her belt and the experience shows: every step is easy to follow. The book plus website tutorials is $23 or you can get the digital version and tutorials for $16.

– “iPhone and iPad  Apps Marketing: Secrets to Selling Your iPhone and iPad Apps,” by Jeffrey Hughes; $25 from quepublishing.com.

This is a beautifully put together book on step by step marketing for iPhone and iPad apps. It’s interesting that we have never been disappointed by books from Que. Somewhere up there they must have a great editor, or a very good set of rules.

– “iPhone App Development, the Missing Manual,” by Craig Hockenberry; $40 from missingmanuals.com. Covers all the steps for creating and marketing, including advice on how to get your new app into Apple’s app store.

• Roambi Visualizer is a free iPhone and iPad app that makes charts from the data you give it. The data can come from programs like Excel, Salesforce, Google Docs, etc.  The Visualizer analyzes the data for impromptu presentations.
• Web Ex is well known for its desktop conferencing service. But it’s also an iPad and iPhone app.  It allows group calls with screen sharing. It’s free to join a meeting, but to host one, you need a subscription. There’s a free 14 day trial.
• Air Sharing: This $10 app for iPhone or iPad lets you send the contents of your computer to your iPad or iPhone wirelessly.  View and share PDFs, Word documents, etc., and open email attachments that you otherwise couldn’t. Before buying you may want to try out the free SugarSync or DropBox.

• Like the Sprint EVO 4G, it has a front and rear-facing camera, for video chatting.  This is called “Face Time.”
• It’s the thinnest cell phone on the planet, though frankly, we don’t mind a little thicker. (It’s .37 of an inch, compared to half an inch for the EVO 4G.)
• It doesn’t use the super-fast 4G cellular connection, which is why there’s no “G” in the name.
• The phone costs $200 if you have a contract ending in 2010 or you’re a new customer. Other wise, the base price is $300.
• The battery: Video playback lasts 10 hours, talk time 7 hours in “3G’ mode and 14 hours in “2G.”
• The screen display is incredibly sharp –four times the pixel count of previous iPhones.
• The camera is five megapixel, compared to three for the iPhone 3.
• AT&T is still the carrier.
• According to Gizmodo, it lacks the support for the cloud (think Google Docs) that Android phones have.

We’ll call you back when we get more information.

Top 11 Arguments for the Kindle

1. The “3G” wireless connection on the Kindle is free. You don’t have to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot to download books, or shell out an extra $100 for a 3G version of the Kindle.
2. The Kindle gives you free sample chapters on any book in their 500,000 book library.
3. The Kindle lets you look up words,  highlight passages and make notes (and in a few weeks, you’ll be able to share passages with friends) without leaving your book.
4. Blogs are faster to get through when you have a list of headlines and no distracting graphics.
5. You can get Kindle tech support any hour of the day or night.
6. You can read the Kindle in bright sunlight.
7. The Kindle charges faster.
8. You’re not forever having to clean the Kindle screen.
9. The Kindle is cheaper.
10. The Kindle is lighter. Hold it aloft in one hand while lying on the couch.
11. The Kindle is easier on your eyes than the iPad is,  if you’re reading a book or long article.

Top 11 Arguments for the iPad

1. Glorious color.
2. Newspapers and magazines have videos accompanying their stories.
3. Blogs are more useful when you can click on their links.
4. The Wall Street Journal app is gorgeous, and lets you look at a “now” edition, which is up to the minute. It lets you save  individual stories or sections.
5. USA Today and the New York Times “Editor’s Choice,”  look just like the real newspaper.
6. You can play your iTunes collection while running a slideshow of your photos.
7. You can read the iPad in the dark.
8. You can easily see graphs and charts without the zoom feature that isn’t available yet on the Kindle.
9. The touchscreen is a joy to use.
10. The 3G version has GPS, so you can find out where you are.
11. Besides being an e-Reader, there are endless apps for games, email, social networking, productivity tools, TV shows and movies.

“FitnessBuilder PRO 3.1″ lets trainers create workouts on the iPhone or iPad and share them with other iPhones and iPads, or email them as PDFs.  The app can also take the place of a personal trainer, through hundreds of videos, images, and workout routines. These include all the hard-core free-weight exercises, as well as things like yoga,  Pilates and calisthenics. There are also areas for recording personal statistics and accomplishments.

FitnessBuilder is $10 for iPhone or iPad.  For more exercises, (up to 5,600), there’s also a monthly subscription. More info at PumpOne.com.