I’ve had my iPad for a few weeks now and I’m always surfing though the App Store to see what’s new and, better yet, what’s free.

Here are 10 great apps I’ve found for the iPad so far that are worth checking out.

Simplenote
Forget Apple’s Notes application, Simplenote is a note pad that will sync your iPad to the web, to your computer and to your iPhone. It is simple, free and syncs. What more can you ask for?

AccuWeather
With big beautiful images, AccuWeather is one of those apps you just have to show your friends. The weather never looked so good.

I just received my free Google business cards in the mail.

No, I don’t work for Google, but it’s a promotional item for Google’s profile pages. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Ohh and you can see my Google profile here.

For quite a while now I’ve been looking for a solution to sync iCal and Google Calender. I’ve even though of giving up on iCal and using Gcal.app (an application) full time. However Plaxo 3 was released the other day and it syncs calendars for free.

Running a few tests, it indeed does sync my iCal and Google Calendar. However, it’s not instant. When I make an update to one calendar, it’s a bit of time before it shows on another. I’m not sure the exact amount of time, but it’s more like once an hour or two. Even by hitting the sync button in the Plaxo menubar icon, the changes don’t seem to take effect on Google Calendar right away.

I’ve recently re-checked out NeoOffice. NeoOffice is the Mac version of OpenOffice and is a great alternative to Microsoft Office. NeoOffice is free which makes it $400 less that the Microsoft version.

The download is big, but it’s a program that sure can do a lot. The interface is very nice and it makes the program look stunning. It also loads quite quickly on my Intel iMac.

One of the things I really liked about NeoOffice is that it can read and write Microsoft formats including .docx. I do have to interact with these files so it’s nice to have an easy solution.

On our weekly trip to SuperTarget today we noticed that two packs of General Mills cereal now come with two free iTunes songs. Not only that, plus you get a coupon for a $1 off a $15 iTunes card. Now that’s a decent deal. Especially since we always buy cereal.

Free iTunes Songs at Target Hosted on Zooomr

It’s December which means MacAppADay has started. Today it’s a nifty little iTunes controller and I’ve seen YummyFTP in the previews. Get your free download before they are gone: http://macappaday.com/

To fill sometime between now and my next ‘announcement’, I thought I’d share five nine free Mac apps that make my day easier.

1. Firefox – Customizable web browser. I love it.
2. Thunderbird – For work Email.
3. TextWranger – Great all around text/html editor.
4. AOL Radio – XM Radio for free and almost commercial free. Sweet.
5. Adium – The only chat application worth having.
6. Journler – Best everything app. Text, Video, Audio and much more.
7. Quicksilver – Sweet HD search. Like Spotlight only prettier.
8. Skype (on a good day) – I use this daily for my work phone however I’m having issues lately.

It all started with MacZot a few months ago. The idea was to give discounted, and sometimes free, applications to Mac users. Recently MacUpdate jumped on board with the daily special idea and now MacAppADay is next on the list.

MacAppADay is all about free apps and it sounds almost to good to be true. “Throughout December, each and every day, we’ll give away 5000 copies of a popular mac application. Even if all the apps were only worth $5.00, that’d be $150.00. And some of them are worth a lot more. Oh, and this is not a competition. Everyone gets every single application.” Now that’s a big promise for any site.

I heard that Zooomr was giving out free pro accounts for signing up and blogging an image so I thought I’d join up. Still not sure how it all works, but I’m waiting for my free upgrade.

For my first image, I looked back though some old photos and found a picture of a nasty fish that was served up at my sister-in-laws wedding. It’s salmon and doesn’t it make you want to …um… dig in?

There has been lots of talk online about Writely, iRows and Google Spreadsheet lately that I though I’d take a moment and talk about the Zoho offerings. ZoHo is a company that makes an online word processor , spreadsheet application, polls, to-do lists, chat and more. Most applications are free and are all very good; and not invite only.

ZoHoWriter is basically the same as Writely. It’s a free online word processor that import & export Microsoft Word documents along with many other types of text files, export PDFs and it’s all web based. They deal with documents a little better though with a left hand menu that includes all your documents. All accessible from one screen and they can even open in tabs. Pretty sweet.