Jacob Burch and Lon Harris hosted episode 14 of This Week in iPad on Thursday, July 8th^th along with guest co-founder Akshay Kothari of Alphonso Labs, which produces Pulse News Reader for the iPad.

Harris thanked Matthew Paulson of iPad Weekly, the official blogger for This Week in iPad, at the beginning of the show.

Sponsor #1 – Gazelle (3:00)

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News (8:15)

iPad Today – Leo Laporte’s TWIT.TV network will be launching a new iPad-centric show today which will be streamed live at 1:30 PM PT with co-host Sarah Lane. The show will be available later for download on TWIT.TV

Corporations Love the iPad – Wells Fargo, SAP and Mercedes Benz are increasingly adopting the iPad as a business device. Burch said that he believed that the device hadn’t expanded past a niche market yet, but that people will get used to the device. Harris said that the device needed a keyboard in order to be successful as a business device.

iPad Cam Case – A designer has developed a concept case for the iPad which would feature a rotating camera. Harris said that the design was a bit “clunky” and that he didn’t feel he needed a camera for the iPad. Burch said that he doesn’t miss having a camera on the iPad. Burch noted that he didn’t believe that video calls (face time) will take the place of an audio phone call.

Mac Sales – NPD data showed that Mac sales remained strong, despite concerns that the iPad would cannibalize sales of Mac computers. Burch said that he believed that Mac sales would eventually plateau and the hosts agreed that the iPad would largely be a content consumption device and that mac devotees would likely buy both devices.

Geeks Hate the iPad – Andrew McAfee wrote an article on Forbes saying that geeks hate the iPad because Apple doesn’t, as he believes, allow for open innovation on the device.  Burch said that he believed Apple’s strategy for the system is their prerogative and that not all geeks hate the iPad. Matthew Paulson joined the show and suggested that the writer was link baiting.

Sponsor #2 – Print Magic (31:00)

“Print Magic” Wellala is also a sponsor of This Week in iPad. The application allows users to print to any Wi-Fi connected printer directly from an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Users can copy and paste text into the application for printing and users can also print images from the iOS photo library directly. Print Magic and Print Magic HD are available from the App Store. Host Lon Harris said on This Week in iPad that the app is “incredibly fast” and “works like a dream.”

Guest – Akshay Kothari (36:00)

Kothari shared that when developing Pulse Reader, Alphonso labs, aimed at building news in a visual manner without focusing on providing the maximum amount of content. Kothari said the biggest pain point for users is the 20 feed limitations, which is done for memory management purposes. He added that Pulse News Reader would allow for more feeds in the next update and providing better organization for feeds.

Kothari said that in the future, news readers would likely no longer sort stories via source and instead users would perhaps share stories in social news clouds in which users could read news that their friends are reading. Kothari said that in the last several weeks that the further development of Pulse has been focused on improving performance of the application.

Harris mentioned the New York Times takedown request which got Pulse News Reader removed from the App Store temporarily. Kothari shared that Pulse included popular reads which many people were adding and that he thought the New York Times got upset because the application was pre-loading their feed. Kothari expressed disappointment that the New York Times went to apple instead of directly to Alphonso Labs and said that his company had a good working relationship with Apple.

Planet of the Apps and Closing Remarks (52:00)

Harris showed off his pencil and rubber band iPad stand and said that he would discuss how to build the iPad stand on next week’s show.

Harris thanked the show’s technical staff for their hard work on the show.

iBooks – Harris showed off iBooks and said that the application almost provides too much information on a single page. He noted he liked iBooks’ search feature and the ability to look up words in a dictionary. Harris said that the major downside of the application is that many major books are missing from the iBookstore.

Borders – Burch showed off the Borders eReader application which Burch referred to as “slow” and Harris said the performance issues of the application is “close to a deal breaker.” Burch noted that a lot of free books were available for the application, but that the free books don’t render well.

Barnes & Noble – Harris reviewed Barnes and Nobel’s eReader application and said that it had the best selection and noted the application’s dictionary-lookup and note taking abilities, however, Harris said that the dictionary was a bit lacking. He added that the buying process was unintuitive and needs improvement.

Kindle – Burch reviewed the Kindle application for the iPad and said that the application had a great selection and that the software performed well and that the buying process made sense, despite taking users to the Amazon site instead of an in-app purchase. Burch said that the Kindle has become his “default reader.”

To close the show, Harris thanked Gazelle and Wellala for sponsoring the show and Matthew Paulson of iPad Weekly for being the show’s official blogger.