I'm an Engineering Geologist by trade and am considering one of these (instead of a netbook) for field mapping and damage assessment work. I'd like to be able to fetch local maps, add info and labels to them like building damage, faulting, landslides, tsunami damage, take georeferenced photos and send them back to civilization. I'd also like something like Adobe Illustrator for building/trading custom maps and graphics.

The iPhone is slick, cute, had tons of apps, but the screen is just too small for my needs. Also I'm a ham radio operator and wonder about ham-related apps like Morse code and other digital modes, satellite tracking, contest logging, basic circuit design.

Is there some sort of Master List of apps? I want to find out if this is a unit I could actually use for Emergency related work.

Thanks!
Radiotuber

I would say your best bet for a 'Master List', would be the app store search. There is reportedly an app for just about anything.

Even though you don't have the iPad yet, you can still install iTunes and search the app store from there.

Edit:

Also I'm a ham radio operator and wonder about ham-related apps like Morse code and other digital modes, satellite tracking, contest logging, basic circuit design.

I just did a quick search and found an app for each of the above

Hi there...I don't have an answer for you, but hopefully others may.

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Hi and welcome to the Forum!

2 very informative threads from which you will learn many tips and shortcuts for the IPad.
http://www.ipadforums.net/ipad-gener...dont-know.html
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Enjoy!

Well, Skitch would work well for annotating pictures of damage, and even maps as long as you take screen shots of them from another app.

You'll want the 3G/LTE iPad (GPS built in). Make sure location services are turned on for the Photos app and you are good for geo tagging the photos.

There are literally tones of map and GPS apps out there. I'd recommend looking at The MotionX GPS HD app as a kind of general tool. Lots of interesting features and multiple map sources (though they mostly show the same things). This is not the same as the Drive app by the same company.

It's available for the iPhone too, so you can check out the general feature set; but it's is so much easier to use and has more features on the iPad.

I'm not familiar with a any map building apps, though I would not be surprised to see one. There are plenty of drawing apps, both pixel and vector based.

If you are not already familiar with it from the iPhone, Evernote would be an excellent app for gathering and organizing text, visual, and audio notes. You would need a pay account if you want access to all your notes when away from an internet connection, but you can make them offline. Oh, the data limit of the free account might be constraining too. 5MP pictures add up.