My dozen best iPad business apps
December 30, 2011
Izzy the ‘Pad is the first computing device I’ve ever slept with.
Literally. I hate to say it, but she’s pretty much changed the way I do stuff. That red leather thing growing out of my left arm? That’s Izzy, in her snazzy red case, and embarrassingly enough, she’s rarely more than a couple of feet away, even at night.
It’s been almost 8 months since Izzy and I got together, and in that time she’s taken over a lot of functions I normally do on a desktop, laptop, TV screen (or on paper). Apple’s made an excellent chameleon out of the iPad 2; find the right app(s), download them for a nominal fee, and Izzy changes roles in a heartbeat.
So when someone asks me about my favorite iPad apps, I respond with “favorite for WHAT?” Business? Entertainment? Art? with business, i.e., USEFUL iPad apps. These are my favorites right now (since the last time I did this), not necessarily in order of importance, and they’re all available in the iPad App Store.
Please note that I’m not including apps that come with your iPad–iPad’s own mail, browser and other utilities are certainly critical businessware. This is just the icing on the business cake.
Evernote (free/$45/yr): Meeting notes and documents
More and more, I’m working in the cloud (i.e., storing my files in one or five places online and accessing them there, from multiple physical locations). Evernote is a prime example; you establish an Evernote account online, download the app onto your iPad and whatever other devices and computers you have. It then synchronizes notes, documents and images across multiple computers.
Evernote provides a text editor, image, audio and video managers, OCR of images, and a reasonably good file management system. At work, I take notes on Izzy in Evernote, snap pics of whiteboards or presentation screens, and save it to my Evernote account. I can access my notes, email them to meeting colleagues, edit and reorganize or combine them. It’s a great audit trail for complex projects, and since my boss is extremely fond of brainstorming on whiteboards, a good way to record them exactly; I snap a pic or two with Izzy, annotate it, and then send it around.
The free version of Evernote suits me for now, but if you pay $5/month you can upgrade to the Premium version, which allows bigger files, does a better job with the sometimes problematic image recognition, and offers several collaboration tools.
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DocScan (free/$3.99): Image capture
I use this primarily as a companion to Evernote. DocScan allows you to use the iPad cameras to take pictures of whiteboards, paper documents and other things. That’s not exactly miraculous–many of the apps here do that–but DocScan is designed to increase contrast and eliminate image distortion, making a quick snapshot of a white board easier to read, by humans or devices.
That’s especially important in Evernote, since Evernote Premium can search your images and PDFs for text. The premium (HD) version of DocScan allows you save files directly to Evernote, Google Docs, Dropbox, etc., and also to print them.
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Dropbox (free: File management)
Dropbox is another cloud tool, this time to manage any kind of file across multiple devices. It looks like another hard drive to your devices (it supports Android, IOS, Mac, Windows and Linux), so you can store a file on one device and retrieve it on another nearly instantly. I tend to move between Mac, Windows and mobile nearly constantly, so it’s a lifesaver for me. Nearly all my workfiles wind up on Dropbox.
It’s not without limitations–if you delete a file on one device, you delete it on others. The free version allows you to store a measly 2GB of files, but you can increase that by getting your friends to sign up. Most people I know, though, buy a storage plan; Dropbox allows you to store up to 100GB for $199/year. The downside of that is that 100GB is the ceiling, which means it’s not great as a rich media storage tool.
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PrintCentral for iPad ($8.99): Paper printing
I know, I know, we’re a paperless society, but with all this other business app stuff you gotta figure SOMEONE will need a printed copy of SOMETHING, right?
At $8.99, PrintCentral is the most expensive app in this group, but it’s probably also the best-supported app, and it fills a lot of the gaps between iPad-as-gadget and iPad-as-business-tool. It lets you print to any WiFi printer, or any local printer (i.e., one connected to your Mac or Windows machine). More important, though, it also lets you print over your company network.
Setting up the network printing is a bit complicated–you’ll first need to make sure your computer can talk wirelessly to your iPad, or install WePrint printer sharing software on your company computer–which might take permission from the IT security department. Then you establish a new Google Mail (gMail) account, exclusively for print documents, and connect it in your WePrint settings.
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Square: Merchant transactions
I don’t use this in my dayjob, but I sure as heck do for teaching and art sales (and also as a quick way to accept money when someone pays me back for something). I’ve been using the Android version on Derrick-the-Droid phone for some time; the iPad version is far easier to use.
Square is free–you sign up, give them bank account information they can verify, and they send you a free magstripe reader in the mail. You can then set up your “cash register” when you download the iPad app. It allows you to create an inventory of products, upload photos, descriptions, pricing and other considerations for each product, and arrange your merchandise by “shelves,” i.e., categories.
I’ve talked about Square before so I won’t belabor the point..but for what it does this is one of the most useful tools I’ve EVER seen on a computer, and that’s saying a lot.
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Jot: Whiteboarding
By day I’m a content manager/information architect, which basically means I look at websites with an eye to making them more useful for visitors. I do a lot of what’s called wireframing, i.e., building a map of the information we want to present on a new website. Many times, though, the pages already exist, and it’s easier for clients to sketch changes they’d like to make.
Jot allows me to quickly snap a screenshot of a web page, hand Izzy to a client, and let them literally fingerpaint their requirements onscreen. I can share it with employees in other locations using Jot’s “Live Server” (although I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know how well that works). When we’re finished, I can save the file as an image and email it to all meeting attendees.
It’s not ideal–not everyone likes to fingerpaint, and big fingers have trouble with the details–but it’s free, which is a heckuva lot cheaper than the electronic whiteboards we could be using.
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iMovie: Quick video creation
This is quite simply the easiest way I’ve ever seen to make movies: You hold up your iPad, turn on the video camera, and add a title. iMovie is how I capture a lot of my kittens’ antics (you can see them on YouTube), and I’ve also used it for quick sessions at work.
This is one of the few paid apps on this list. It isn’t high-powered; titling is limited, the included themes are limited and kinda hokey, and you’ve got to figure out how to get your video into the iPad to use it–it doesn’t directly import video files but expects you to shoot with the iPad’s somewhat limited video camera. (And trust me, an iPad makes an awkward steadicam).
OTOH, it’s five bucks. For that price, it’s astounding.
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Lynda.com: Technology and marketing training
If you do much with web development, photography or marketing technology, you’ve probably explored Lynda.com, probably the best training course websites around. Subscriptions start at $25/month, and it’s a great way to stay up on a lot of diverse tech skills.
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PhotoSync (image and video file transfers)
iTunes is great at a lot of things, but I don’t really care for the way it synchronizes image files with an iPad–it tends to be an all-or-nothing affair. And straight file imports from iPad to Mac from Mac Preview are even worse. PhotoSync is an extremely powerful tool that can transfer files WiFi, Bluetooth or turn your iPad into a web-based photobank, letting you pick and choose what you want to upload to your computer.
Interestingly enough, the one thing that DOESN’T work (for me, anyway) is tethering the iPad to your computer the way you sync with iTunes, but that’s minor. I generally use the browser on my Mac or PC (it supports both) and navigate to the iPad’s Photosync IP address. From there I can thumb through every image and video on the iPad, select the ones I need, and quickly package them into a zip file and upload.
Better still, PhotoSync is free.
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Perfect Browser: Web browsing
This one isn’t strictly necessary; the included iPad browser (Safari) does a pretty good job. However, it has a goofy carousel-like way of storing a maximum of nine windows–instead of using tabs–that drives me nuts. PerfectBrowser offers a more familiar tabbed interface, and is just a bit slicker overall. I seem to use them interchangeably; some websites look better in one or the other.
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Tap to Chat: Instant messaging
Google doesn’t offer a GoogleTalk app yet (that I’m aware of, anyway), and my colleagues and I text through GoogleTalk. This is (so far) the best app I’ve found for that on iPad, and it allows you to aggregate feeds from Facebook as well.
Keynote ($9.99) and Slideshark (free): Presentations
I honestly don’t use this much; I thought I’d be doing a lot more presentations with Izzy than I actually do. It’s not impossible to hook Izzy up to a projection device, but it’s too much hassle to move from Windows PowerPoint–the standard in my company–to Keynote on Mac, then Keynote on iPad. OTOH, Keynote is a slick way to build very professional-looking presentations, especially if you’re looking to make a flipbook or something similar out of them. I don’t have the iCloud version yet–there’s a computer swap in my future before I sync up Izzy to install IOS 5–so I can’t speak to that.
Slideshark’s a bit different–you upload any PowerPoint presentation from your computer to your free Slideshark account, then download and present it on the iPad. It generally gets PowerPoint formatting right–a pain with Google Docs, Keynote and many other non-Microsoft apps I’ve tried–and it mostly does animations and transitions as ordered. If it allowed you to insert hyperlinks and turn your PPT into a linkboard, it would be ideal.
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*I feel kinda icky being this much of an Apple fanboy(ette), but really, this thing is THAT good.
Bullseye’s moving the furniture…
October 21, 2011
…and consequently I have no idea where to sit.
To put it more understandably, Bullseye just unleashed a new website design on the world and in the process broke a whole boatload of links to really important content. Bullseye’s technical documents are pretty much without peer in the art glass industry; I link to them a LOT.
So now a whole boatload of links on MY website are now busted. I am an unhappy camper.
I’m assured that Bullseye technical wizards are working their fingers off to speedily fix those broken links. Until they do, if you click a link on my site and it breaks on bullseyeglass.com, your best bet is to type whatever you’re looking for into the Bullseye search box.
Sorry about that.
And would somebody PLEASE tell me where the reactivity charts live?
Sigh..
iPads and paradigm shifts
October 19, 2011
Izzy the ‘Pad has settled into my life. You might say she’s become an extension of my left arm, and it’s scary how much she’s changed my tech habits. I’m thinking she’s probably doing that for a lot of people.
Pre-Izzy, I did about 40 percent of my electronic tasks on smartphone, the remaining 60 percent on a computer (desktop or laptop). That’s changed with Izzy, to about 5 percent on smartphone, 30 percent on laptop and 65 percent on iPad.* My smartphone–the admittedly MUCH less-than-stellar Derrick the DroidX–has all but turned back into a dumbphone. As long as I can get Wifi, there’s not much point in websurfing with the DroidX’ tediously slow connection.
Bullseye on iPad
September 29, 2011
So here’s one more reason to buy an iPad (as if I needed one): Bullseye‘s just released a very cool little IOS app for glassists, and it works on iPhone, iPod Touch and…(drumroll)…iPad. And it’s free.
It’s a collection of Bullseye tools and educational documents, pretty much what you find on Bullseye’s website, including tipsheets and technical notes. There’s a Fahrenheit/Celsius converter in there, weblinks to the Bullseye Gallery, their online store and other parts of the website, and a browse-able version of the latest Bullseye catalog.
The human factor
July 21, 2011
Got a great reminder last night that “cool” and “user-friendly” aren’t always the same thing. A plugin that I added to make my blog more readable on mobile devices wound up confusing the heck out folks.
Sorry about that.
A few weeks back I started noticing that sites I browsed with Izzy the ‘Pad (my iPad2) had suddenly evolved into flipbook magazines. A flipbook, for those of you who haven’t seen one, is an interactive design that lays out content as if it were a magazine, with pages you can turn and a front cover. The most famous of these is one of my favorite iPad apps, FlipBoard: [Read more]
iPad apps: My 11 most useful (so far)
June 6, 2011
After a couple of weeks with Izzy the ‘Pad I’m still thinking of her as a jumped-up iPhone without the phone. IOW, with the right apps she’s actually a pretty useful device.
I’m doing the pneumonia/quarantine thing again, and Izzy’s pretty much been my connection with the outside world…as well as my source for movies, books, websurfing, idea-sketching and just futzing around. And I’m finding that she shines best when she’s NOT trying to be a laptop.
Izzy the ‘Pad
May 30, 2011
The mucoid curtain slammed down and I hit the sheets. Again. Sigh. Last winter’s dance with pneumonia and bronchitis apparently makes me vulnerable to any bored respiratory nasty looking for action and I found another one last week. I am sooooo ready to stop doing that.
OTOH, sicktime freed me to explore Izzy the ‘Pad, my new iPad2, which came to me through a bit of luck. Since the last time I won anything was when Brian Mitchell sang out “FIVE!!!” in my first grade class–I won the right to sell Bluebird mints to the teacher–I was kinda buzzed about the whole thing.
Turns out the buzz was really hypoxia from virally gooed-up lungs but hey–I’ll take what I can get.
Facelooking
March 28, 2011
Does age/culture/sex make a difference in the way people communicate on Facebook? Can you distinguish those things simply by someone’s online posting style?
I honestly don’t know but I’m beginning to think it might be possible. Still, I’ve googled every term I can think of–conversational styles and Facebook, Facebook posting classification, cultural influences on Facebook, etc., etc.–and nobody seems to have studied this. Be interesting if they did.
I started thinking about this when I hadn’t been on Facebook for a few days, so that friends’ queries and requests had built up and took a couple hours to resolve. I started noticing definite patterns in the type, style and content of the posts. (Moreover, I noticed I was changing MY posting style to match theirs, which is a whole ‘nother discussion.)
Labor-slaving devices
March 17, 2011
The odometer read “4999,” and it was just a tiny bit thrilling: CherryBaby was about to turn 5,000. We edged down the road together…closer, closer…yay! 5,000 miles!
And Cherry binged at me. Loudly. A yellow exclamation mark lit up on her dashboard, along with a sign: Maintenance required soon.
Apparently, this is what new cars do; they tell you when it’s time for an oil change or a checkup or whatever, just in case you’re too lazy–or dumb–to figure it out for yourself.
Inventables
March 4, 2011
OK, I’ve died and gone to heaven: A geek shopping site with more wacky stuff than I can shake a lightsaber at.
Charlie (a frequent commenter on this board), forwarded the URL for Inventables with a note that, as a fellow geek, I might enjoy it.
Understatement of the year; so far I’ve found maybe 20 things I really, really need to experiment with, and perhaps another seven or eight that have me thinking, “Yeah, THAT is really cool, but what if I changed it slightly and used it for THIS…”
Which is apparently the whole point of the site; Inventables, according to its charter, is an online store intended to “streamline the process of innovation and inspire everyone—regardless of profession—to explore what’s possible.”
DEFINITELY give this one a look. And enjoy the possibilities.