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Office2 lets you edit Word and Excel files on your iPhone

An office app for the iPhone and iPod ouch that lets you edit Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in .doc and .xls formats. (Note that the app’s name is pronounced “Office Squared,” and that the ”2” appears as a superscript when you’re searching for it on the App Store.) iPad search

Office2 also provides integration with Google Docs, letting you edit Google Docs documents and spreadsheets from within the app. You can also access, move, and delete documents stored in Google Docs, iDisk and any WebDAV server.

The Office2 word processor lets you view, create, edit and save documents in Word 97-2003 (.doc) format. It also supports character formatting, tables, images, searching of text within documents, undo and redo up to 100 undo levels, and auto-correction and auto-completion.

The Office2 spreadsheet works with Excel 97-2003 (.xls) and handles multiple worksheets with unlimited rows and columns, searching and sorting of cells, cell formatting, cell types, and pane freezing among other spreadsheet necessities. Office2 uses the iPhone’s touch screen effectively, letting you tap and drag to change row heights and column widths, and tap cells to compose formulas.

Those of you cringing at the thought of doing any sort of document or spreadsheet work on an iPhone or iPod touch will probably do best avoiding this app—or hold out for an iPad and its customized version of the iWork apps—but for those who often need to review and edit documents and spreadsheets while on the go, this app could make life easier.

iPad: Perfect for digital comics?

There are three major comic-book buying apps for the iPhone: Panelfly, Comics, and iVerse Comics. And there are also a bunch of comic-reading apps for the iPhone, my favorite of which is ComicZeal.

Now, I don’t want to tell these developers what to do. But I will. Developers, download the software-development kit for the iPad and get iPad versions of your apps working on the device for its launch!

There will be a lot of debate about the iPad’s viability as a product. Will it sell? Will it make a good e-book reader? Will it save the newspaper industry? And we’ll probably debate all of those items in the coming days.

But for now, let’s take a moment to consider the humble comic-book lovin’ geek. The iPad may be the best device yet invented for the reading of digital comics. The iPhone is nice, but its screen is just too small — zoomed out, a comic page is unreadable. Zoomed in, there’s a whole lot of panning around going on.

But the iPad’s 1024-by-768-pixel display, while in the unfashionable 4:3 aspect ratio, is just about the right shape for a comic-book page. And the iPad packs enough pixels that comic pages should be readable at full-size on the iPad. At worst, the panning around should be kept to a minimum.

A comic page shrunk down to the iPad's screen resolution should still be quite readable, as this extremely cropped sample image suggests.

Presumably these developers are already on the case. I know the guys at Comixology, makers of Comics, are: on Wednesday they posted a comics-on-iPad concept video. My reaction: their demo relies a bit too much on their pan-and-scan interface, which works great on the iPhone but seems kind of unnecessary on the iPad. Still, I’m sure there’s plenty of room for innovation and interface variation when it comes to comics apps on the iPad. I can’t wait to try them all!

Apple iPad announced, is iPod touch on steroids

Just as expected, today Apple announced their iPad tablet. It's not everyday that you see news about something other than mobile phones at our homepage but considering the hype that one this generated we just couldn't help ourselves.

The tablet is actually running a UI very similar to the iPhone's and is compatible with all its apps. However it can only use its 3G connectivity for data transfers so it doesn't quality as a phone.