Business Apps

I absolutely love my iPad and often get asked about how effective it actually is as business tool – here’s my answer… the iPad is like any technology tool it can be very useful but it takes time & patience to find how what best suits you and your industry. I have jotted down some of the apps that I find most useful at the moment – but I must confess that I am fairly fickle and do have regular ‘clear outs’ of apps once I find something better. I’m also interested in finding out which apps you use for business – so please let us know using the ‘comments’ section below and we’ll add them to our list.

Name	£	Description
lino	free	Online ‘stickies’ service for making notes; easy to use and linked to email so reminders are sent to your email account. There are no limits to the number of ‘stickies’ or  noticeboards you can set up – so you can set up different noticeboards for different projects easily and colour code them. Can upload docs, images and web links to the ‘stickies’ – a bit similar to Infinote.
Prezi viewer	free	Used to view prezi presentations (www.prezi.com); can drag to pan and zoom in / out of topics during meetings and add in additional notes, comments. I never use ppt now as Prezi has the wow factor in presentations – syncs with the desktop version, enabling presentations to be created & viewed on both
Pages	£5.99	Word processing app – multi touch gestures for creating letters, reports, project plans, etc. Inserting images, tables and text has never been so easy. Once downloaded a tutorial guide is provided which shows you how to use the application fully.
Numbers	£5.99	Spreadsheet app – can be a bit tricky to start with but the tutorial guide covers all the key points.
Keynote	£5.99	Presentation app and can be connected to a projector to deliver presentation to bigger groups – much slicker than powerpoint and again a tutorial guide is provided.
Infinote	free	Another note taking app which is best used during brain storming activities – you can have multiple noteboards, can print from your iPad and has search functionality too.
Flipboard	free	Social media in a magazine layout which makes it easy to read all feeds from my Twitter, facebook, Google Reader and Flickr accounts – highly recommended
Memeo ConnectReader	?	Syncs with Google Docs and can be used to import from Google Docs to Pages, Numbers & Keynote – some duplicate functionality withDropbox but I use both
Adobe PhotoShop Express	free	Used to edit and share photos – particularly useful when illustrating projects to clients
iTranslate	free	Universal translator for the iPad
Good Reader	£2.99	PDF reader for iPad – can be synched with Dropbox and be used to ‘read’ books, movies, maps & pictures
Dragon Dictation	free	Easy to use voice recognition app can be used to send voice notes / reminders to yourself / make notes from meetings and update Twitter etc. Works well but you need to talk clearly and needs wifi to work
WordPress	free	Used to update company wordpress blog – moderate comments, create / edit posts and pages
Invoice2go	Free (Lite)	20 built-in invoice styles, can be used to create / email invoices, keep track of payments owing & made and even calculates totals and tax. Need the full version (£8.99) to be able to add your own company logo to the invoices. It also produces an interesting range of useful reports / graphical displays.
Word Web	free	English dictionary and thesaurus
Doceri Remote	free	Needs wifi! Can launch, present and annotate any document / presentation or web page. Need to download the desktop Doceri onto the pc you wish to ‘control’ – at present the desktop Doceri is free
Stanza	free	e-reader app used to purchase and read e-books
TripAdvisor	free	Travel review app – used to find reviews for hotels, flights and restaurants. Very easy to use
Year Calendar	?	All – in – one year planner which syncs with built-in iPad calendar. Lots of icons and colours can be used to plan events easily
LinkedIn	free	This is an iphone app as yet there isn’t an iPad app for LinkedIn however you can still access discussions, send messages and edit you profile easily
Dropbox	free	Free cloud storage service which syncs files between iPad and pc – folders can be shared with others. Email attachments can be saved straight to Dropbox and you can always have access to the files
Twitbird	free	There are LOADS of iPad apps for Twitter – it’s down to personal preference and I do change apps based on functionality – at the moment this is the one I prefer

iPads for business use … what do you use?

I absolutely love my iPad and often get asked about how effective it actually is as business tool – here’s my answer… the iPad is like any technology tool it can be very useful but it takes time & patience to find how what best suits you and your industry. I have jotted down some of the apps that I find most useful at the moment – but I must confess that I am fairly fickle and do have regular ‘clear outs’ of apps once I find something better. I’m also interested in finding out which apps you use for business – so please let us know using the ‘comments’ section below and we’ll add them to our list.

Name	£	Description
lino	free	Online ‘stickies’ service for making notes; easy to use and linked to email so reminders are sent to your email account. There are no limits to the number of ‘stickies’ or  noticeboards you can set up – so you can set up different noticeboards for different projects easily and colour code them. Can upload docs, images and web links to the ‘stickies’ – a bit similar to Infinote.
Prezi viewer	free	Used to view prezi presentations (www.prezi.com); can drag to pan and zoom in / out of topics during meetings and add in additional notes, comments. I never use ppt now as Prezi has the wow factor in presentations – syncs with the desktop version, enabling presentations to be created & viewed on both
Pages	£5.99	Word processing app – multi touch gestures for creating letters, reports, project plans, etc. Inserting images, tables and text has never been so easy. Once downloaded a tutorial guide is provided which shows you how to use the application fully.
Numbers	£5.99	Spreadsheet app – can be a bit tricky to start with but the tutorial guide covers all the key points.
Keynote	£5.99	Presentation app and can be connected to a projector to deliver presentation to bigger groups – much slicker than powerpoint and again a tutorial guide is provided.
Infinote	free	Another note taking app which is best used during brain storming activities – you can have multiple noteboards, can print from your iPad and has search functionality too.
Flipboard	free	Social media in a magazine layout which makes it easy to read all feeds from my Twitter, facebook, Google Reader and Flickr accounts – highly recommended
Memeo Connect Reader	?	Syncs with Google Docs and can be used to import from Google Docs to Pages, Numbers & Keynote – some duplicate functionality with Dropbox but I use both
Adobe PhotoShop Express	free	Used to edit and share photos – particularly useful when illustrating projects to clients
iTranslate	free	Universal translator for the iPad
Good Reader	£2.99	PDF reader for iPad – can be synched with Dropbox and be used to ‘read’ books, movies, maps & pictures
Dragon Dictation	free	Easy to use voice recognition app can be used to send voice notes / reminders to yourself / make notes from meetings and update Twitter etc. Works well but you need to talk clearly and needs wifi to work
WordPress	free	Used to update company wordpress blog – moderate comments, create / edit posts and pages
Invoice2go	Free (Lite)	20 built-in invoice styles, can be used to create / email invoices, keep track of payments owing & made and even calculates totals and tax. Need the full version (£8.99) to be able to add your own company logo to the invoices. It also produces an interesting range of useful reports / graphical displays.
Word Web	free	English dictionary and thesaurus
Doceri Remote	free	Needs wifi! Can launch, present and annotate any document / presentation or web page. Need to download the desktop Doceri onto the pc you wish to ‘control’ – at present the desktop Doceri is free
Stanza	free	e-reader app used to purchase and read e-books
TripAdvisor	free	Travel review app – used to find reviews for hotels, flights and restaurants. Very easy to use
Year Calendar	?	All – in – one year planner which syncs with built-in iPad calendar. Lots of icons and colours can be used to plan events easily
LinkedIn	free	This is an iphone app as yet there isn’t an iPad app for LinkedIn however you can still access discussions, send messages and edit you profile easily
Dropbox	free	Free cloud storage service which syncs files between iPad and pc – folders can be shared with others. Email attachments can be saved straight to Dropbox and you can always have access to the files
Twitbird	free	There are LOADS of iPad apps for Twitter – it’s down to personal preference and I do change apps based on functionality – at the moment this is the one I prefer