continued for part 1
Use Your Voice
The onscreen keyboard on the iPad is surprisingly easy to use, but sometimes it's easier to just say what you want. Fro example, you might want to capture an idea just by speaking it and then email it to yourself. For that, use
Say it & Mail it Pro Recorder ($3.99). You can dictate your notes and brainstorms and email them without typing a single word -- the app automatically fills in your email address and a subject line. Or, if you prefer, tap the screen to edit the address and add in a name from your contacts list. You can even include your Google Maps location in your email.
If you'd like to have the message transcribed as well as sent as an audio file, turn to
QuickVoice2Text Email ($2.99). This app captures your spoken message, as does Say it & Mail it, but it also gives you the option to have the message converted to text. Your recipient then gets a text email with the sound recording as an attachment. The only reasons we don't recommend this app clearly over Say It & Mail it is that it looks like an iPhone app inexpertly blown up to iPad size, and because the listed $2.99 price is supposedly only good for 12 hours (though it's been the listed price for 2 days now as we write this), so we don't know how much it will ultimately cost.
If you already have iTunes, go directly to
Say it & Mail it Pro Recorder or
QuickVoice2Text Email.
Time Tracking
As Liz Phair sings, "It's nice to be liked, but it's better by far to get paid." And often the only way to get paid is to be able to say exactly how long you worked. For that, you need a time tracking app.
Time Master ($9.99) fulfills one of our prime requirements for a time tracking application--it lets you track time either by entering start and stop times or by entering duration directly. It can manage multiple running timers and keep the timers going even if the app itself isn't running -- important in the (so far) monotasking iPad. Time is tracked according to client, but you can also further break it down by projects and tasks. Similarly, you can set billing rates according to client, project, and task, or just have one billing rate for everything. You can also use the app to track expenses and assign them to a particular client or project.
Two in-app purchases make Time Tracker even more useful. The Invoicing module lets you create and email PDF invoices right from your iPad, including your business logo. And the QuickBooks Export module will export your entries as an IIF file that can be opened in Windows QuickBook 2007 Pro or later (no Mac support).
If you already have iTunes, go directly to
Time Tracker.
Charting And Visualization
Sometimes you want to quickly sketch out a project plan, a flow chart, or a mind map. While it's the most expensive app in our roundup at $49.99,
OmniGraffle (from the Omni Group, longtime Mac developers) will be able to accommodate pretty much all your diagramming needs. You can think of it as Visio for the iPad, if you're familiar with that popular Microsoft Office program.
With OmniGraffle, you can draw directly on the screen to create shapes and objects and the relationships between them. The app comes with a large collection of standard shapes, 3D objects, connection types, and other "stencils," and it supports third-party stencils as well. Or, if you prefer, you can draw directly on screen and let the program turn your lopsided circles and skewed boxes into perfect ovals and rectangles. (There's also a freehand drawing mode that preserves objects the way you draw them.)
The app supports standard diagramming features, such as connectors that stay attached to shapes as you move things around. As you create shapes and connect them, they get rearranged on screen to reflect their changing; or when you're done, you can choose Lay Out Now to arrange everything across your screen. OmniGraffle isn't as cheap as mobile apps you might be used to, but it may prove to among the most indispensable.
If you already have iTunes, go directly to
OmniGraffle.
In The Cloud
We've looked at several ways to put documents on your iPad from your computer, but sometimes you might forget a file before you leave the office. To make sure you can access your important documents no matter where you are, you can use
SugarSync or
Box.net (both free) to store and share documents in the cloud.
At its heart, SugarSync is an online backup service. With individual plans ranging from $5/month for 30 GB of storage and business plans starting at $50/month for 100 GB for up to three users, SugarSync backs up any or all folders on your computer with rudimentary version control. The iPad app lets you access your stored files, edit them (with an appropriate app on the iPad), and re-sync the edited versions. You can also designate a folder to be shared with others.
Box.net doesn't do automatic backup -- rather, you drag and drop files to its icon on your desktop as though it were a local drive. Again, you can organize the tiles into folders. But Box.net is more collaboration oriented: you can designate folders to be shared, and then others can access the files and edit them or add new files if they wish. Box.net accounts range from free for one user and limited storage to $15/user/month for multiple users and ample storage).
If you already have iTunes, go directly to
SugarSync or
Box.net.
Business Intelligence
A picture is worth a thousand words, and that's the point of
Roambi (free). We liked the way this business intelligence app presented a visual dashboard of data about your company's activities on the iPhone, and the iPad goes it one better by using the larger screen to present that much more information at once. It also includes new trend analysis and comparison features.
As with the iPhone version, the app is free, but you need to use it with the desktop Roambi software, which creates Roambi Views that you publish online and access from your device. The free version of the publishing software lets you upload specific Excel data to create Views, but for $99 per year, the Pro version makes sure the data is up to date. You can publish data from Google Spreadsheets and Salesforce.com CRM and refresh Roambi on the iPad to get a View of the latest information. And Roambi lets you present the information in a meeting by connecting the iPad to a projector.
If you already have iTunes, go directly to
Roambi.
Meetings
The iPad is a mobile device, after all, and that means sometimes you'll need ways to stay in touch. You don't want to miss an important presentation or meeting just because you're not in the office, do you? Two of the most popular options for online meetings and presentations are GoToMeeting and WebEx, and both of them have clients for the iPad.
GoToMeeting for the iPad (free) -- one of the few iPad apps that has no iPhone version -- lets you be join online meetings simply by tapping an emailed link. Once connected, just as on the desktop client, you will be able to see whatever the presenter chooses to share on screen. You can see who else is attending, switch from portrait to landscape mode, and get sound either through the iPad itself (headset recommended) or through your phone. The app only works if the presenter is using the latest version of GoToMeeting, however.
The capabilities of
WebEx are essentially the same. You can view a meeting at full screen, get audio through a headset or phone, and launch individual or group chats with the other people in the meeting. In addition to joining a meeting through an email invitation, you can launch the client and enter the meeting number directly. Neither app currently supports scheduling or hosting a meeting.
If you already have iTunes, go directly to
GoToMeeting or
WebEx Meeting Center on Apple iPad.
Remote Management
Wouldn't it be handy to be able to access your office or home PC from your iPad? That's the reason to have
Jump Desktop ($9.99), a Windows Remote Desktop (RDP) client. Jump Desktop lets you connect to a PC running various version of Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server, and 2000 -- pretty much all versions except Home and Starter editions.
You use your Google account to log into your PC-which means you can use one login to access and manage all of your PCs-or you can use a host name and IP address for each PC if you prefer. Windows desktops are displayed on the iPad at the device's full resolution, and color depth can be reduced to 8 or 15 bits to reduce bandwidth requirements. Jump Desktop supports left and right mouse clicks and scrolling, as well as function and modifier keys on its built-in soft keyboard. (It also works with the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, if you have one of those.)
If you already have iTunes, go directly to
Jump Desktop.
source:informationweek end...thanks for reading
