So, after a tense few days pacing up and down, your beautiful new iPad has arrived! Life will never be the same again, and as a proud parent you’ll want to do the best by your little one, so stop by after the ‘read more’ to find our list of essential iPad apps to help get you through those first few weeks.

Epicurious

Whether you’re a budding Masterchef or a complete novice in the kitchen, the Epicurious app for iPad is an absolute meal-time essential. You can search for specific recipes, browse categories for inspiration, shuffle through suggestions for seasonal events or even tell it what ingredients you’ve got and it will suggest a meal. The required ingredients can be organised into shopping lists, and photos and reviews are provided to help you choose the right dish. This is a beautiful app that turns your iPad into the ultimate cookbook.

– Epicurious (iTunes / App Store)

Dropbox

File system? Who needs a file system?! Dropbox for iPad allows you to view, open and even edit…

As we reported just the other day, Sella.co.nz is available now on the app store. Now I’ve had more of a chance to play with it, what do I think? Well I have to say it’s great and has changed the way I will sell online. In fact it’s an app that we feel is an essential app for New Zealanders and so we have added Sella to our App store Essentials. Hit the read more for, well, more and a gallery full of screenshots.

Well, first impressions of the app are good, very good in fact. It’s clean, well laid out, easy to search and find what you are looking for and you can receive all manner of notifications and the best thing…. you can both buy and sell from this app.

Listing an item for sale is the main feature of this app. With clear and straight forward steps and the ability to be able to switch between the app and notes, Safari or any other form of copying info about the item you are selling (for example I copied and pasted a feature-set for an item I am…

All-in-1 Gamebox is one of those apps that has been hanging around the Top Ten for a while now, and currently it is sat in pride-of-place at number one. It’s an interesting concept: you buy the app for $1.29, and with every update another game is added for free, meaning your initial investment of $1.29 keeps on delivering more-and-more value.

Having started with eight games on-board back in October 2009, the app now boasts an impressive twenty-six games, so the return on investment is very good! But if you’re like me and are sceptical by nature, you’ve probably seen it and thought “26 games for a $1.29? Must be rubbish” and passed on it. Well, a couple of months back I gambled $1.29 (big risk-taker, me) and bought a copy. Read on for my review of this box of delights.

It won’t come as much of a surprise that the bet paid off: after all, at the same price as just one low-end app I only needed to enjoy just one of the included games and I’d have come up trumps. What might be a surprise, though, is that with just a few exceptions, almost every one of the…

Go get it folks, Snapr is available for download through the App Store now. You’ll want to get in quick to secure your user name of choice.

– Snapr

And don’t forget to bookmark the website – Sna.pr

Hit the “read more” link to find out more about the Snapr iPhone app and a sneak peak at the Snapr web-service.

With SXSWeek just around the corner upon us we thought we’d give you a heads-up about an awesome looking new web-service and their iPhone app which has been submitted to Apple and due to be released any time is available now.

Snapr is a new social media company from New Zealand and they have been selected to present at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas this March as part of the “Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator” competition. Snapr is one of only eight finalists in the “Social Media – Personal” category and out of over 200 international entries Snapr is the only company from New Zealand to be selected for this prestigious technology event.

First up here’s the press release to give you a little info:

New Zealand social media

…

I know, I know, why are we posting about another international blog and their app. Why are we posting to tell you about it when you more than likely already read Engadget or TAUW and already know about the app. Well because it’s an app which we believe no discerning iPhone owner should be without.

Lets face it, if you own an iPhone you are more than likely into gadgets and technology. I am guessing most of you read Geekzone, Gizmodo, TUAW and Engadget. When Engadget changed the design of the website I simply stopped reading it. Personally I find there is too much going on on the screen and with so many different sized fonts and colours I don’t know if I’m Arthur or Martha.  Reading Engadget now, whether at home, office or on the go just got a whole lot easier and a whole lot nicer.

The app is fantastic for keeping up with all your favourite stuff from Engadget, iMobile and Engadget HD. I won’t go into all the features of the App, you can read those here, just hit the link below and download…

How much would you pay as a one-off fee to be able to text, MMS and push-to-talk with your iPhone or iPod touch-owning friends and family as much as you like, forever? $1,000? $100? $10?? How about $1.29? Sounds nuts, but with WhatsApp Messenger that’s exactly what you’re getting. Read on to find out how you could save a bucket load on your mobile bill.

WhatsApp Messenger is like the iPhone’s native messaging app on steroids. To get started, you need to purchase the app and persuade any iPhone or iPod touch owners in your circle of friends to do the same. Once installed, there’s no messing around with usernames and passwords – all you need to do is tell it your mobile number and your name and you’re good to go.

To initiate a chat, WhatsApp Messenger gives you access to your iPhone’s contacts list. When you select a contact who doesn’t have WhatsApp, you’ll be given the choice of email, text or calling – but these options simply redirect you to the appropriate existing iPhone function. However, when you select a contact who also has WhatsApp, you will see a ‘chat’ option and this is…

Continuing with our App Store Essentials section and our first app in to our NZ App Store Essentials is Flicks. We previously reviewed this app and said how great it was, well we feel it’s time this one was an essential.

This comes from the same team that developed the Yellow App (Smudge Apps) and shows what great things our own NZ devs are capable of. We’ve included the review below so hit the ‘Read More’ link to check it out.

First things first, what does it do you ask? Well, that was my first question too. Flicks (bought to you courtesy of flicks.co.nz) lets you browse movies that are showing now or coming up soon at the cinema. You can do a heap with this app including view session times, read reviews, search by various strings including actor/director/theatre or movie and best of all you can also watch trailers.

Now some of you may think I am a bit strange with this next comment but when I first opened the app I couldn’t believe my eyes… not because it looks amazing (and it don’t look half bad)…

There’s no denying it: with its accelerometer controls, the iPhone was made for a Star Wars X-Wing game, and when Trench Run was announced a month or so again, my attention was well and truly captured. Flying an X-Wing and blowing up the death star. On my iPhone! Ready to play anywhere! Sounds amazing, right? But now that it’s out is it classic Star Wars quality, or Phantom Menace rubbish?

Star Wars Trench Run is based on one of the most iconic scenes of the Star Wars franchise: the battle and destruction of the Death Star from the original Star Wars movie. Anybody who has played Star Wars: Rogue Leader on the Nintendo Gamecube has essentially played this game before. Using the accelerometer, the player must pilot their X-Wing through dog fights with TIE Fighters, complete the titular trench run (which is a considerably more complex affair than the movie version), shake off Darth Vader and destroy the Death Star itself.

The game opens with some footage from Episode IV and then takes the player to the main menu where you can choose to play the game in ‘mission’ or ‘arcade’ mode. In mission mode, each ‘stage’…

It’s easy to forget with its miriad of features and functions that the iPhone is just that… a phone. And while making and receiving phone calls on the device is just as much of a joy as performing any other function, there are two ways to improve on the experience: one is to be able to make cheap phone calls, and the other is to be able to make free phone calls. In the second in our series of App Store Essentials where we highlight the absolute must-haves that were launched prior to the 3GS and OS 3.0, we take a look at Skype.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, you’ll be well aware of Skype and what it does. There’s no doubt that it has shaken the telecommunications industry the world-over with its free VOIP calling between Skype members and cheap calling to conventional land-lines, but until recently using Skype meant being chained to your desktop or laptop. Now, Skype is beginning to roll out clients for most major mobile platforms with the iPhone version having been around since March 31st.

Skype for iPhone works beautifully, but it…

It’s our understanding through the discussions we’ve had with you that many of our members are first time iPhone owners. That got us to thinking that for a large number of you, the current batch of post-OS-3.0 apps on the App Store are all you’ve possibly been exposed to. But there is a whole raft of titles that are in our mind essential purchases that, due to the nature of the App Store, have had their time in the charts and then faded from the spotlight. In our new series of App Store Essentials, we’re going to bring you the best of the New Zealand App Store. First up is a game: Need for Speed Undercover.

If there’s one gaming genre where iPhone users aren’t left wanting, it’s racing. There are racing games for Africa in the App Store – some good, some awful and, occassionally some great. Need For Speed Undercover fits into the latter category. Made by EA Games and based on the successful console franchise, this is one slick production that both entertains and also delivers on that wow factor.

In NFSU, you play a former street racer who’s been coerced into…

If you’re an iPhone newcomer, you may not be aware that there is a free Apple-produced app on the App Store that really should be baked in to the iPhone OS. Called simply ‘Remote‘, it’s a fantastic app that turns your iPhone into a remote control for iTunes on your Mac or PC. Even if you have downloaded it already, you may not be aware of all the ways you can use this app to turn your home computer into a music powerhouse. Read on for our definitive guide.

Getting up and running couldn’t be simpler. Download the app, and with iTunes running on your computer, start it. Your iPhone will find your computer’s iTunes library. Select it, and Remote will generate a 4-digit pin code for you. In iTunes, you will now see the remote control appear as a ‘device’ in the left-hand sidebar around where your iPhone would normally appear when connected via USB. Click it, and you will be asked to enter the 4-digit pin code from your iPhone. Once entered, the two devices are paired. You only need ever do this once.

You will now be able to control your iTunes library on…