Best iPhone apps for work
The iPhone is undoubtedly a polarising device. It probably has more fans than detractors (or at least I like to think so), but it is primarily seen as an entertainment oriented phone, pretty much the polar opposite to the Blackberry.
So I thought I’d highlight some of the most useful tools it can provide for business.
Scheduling with Calendar and Google Calendar
I use Google Calendar not because it’s incredibly good-looking, but because it has great methods for subscribing to other applications and systems. The iPhone can subscribe to Google Calendar and sync dates and events back and forth. The magic part is being able to sync Google calendar to other apps, meaning that you can make a date on your iPhone and see it appear across your workflow (mine appear in Lighting in Thunderbird). You can add as many calendars as you like.
http://www.google.com/calendar/
Syncing files with Dropbox
Dropbox is a file-sharing program that uses peer-to-peer technology to synchronise the contents of folders across different systems. You can use Dropbox to sync files between your own PCs (or Macs) as well as choosing to share folders within your Dropbox folder with other people. The iPhone part comes into play when you download the Dropbox app and are able to view copies of your files on your iPhone. Handy, no? You can also view, download and restore files from the Dropbox website.
Dropbox is free for a starter account and gives you a whopping 2gb. If you invite friends to Dropbox you’ll get an additional 250Mb per person.
The Google App offers a quick portal into it’s services. It’s by means revolutionary and there are more complete apps for accessing Google services, but it has killer speech recognition (ie. It actually works) and a pretty icon.
The Google App links in to many of its services and can prevent a tiresome login each time you need to access a service.
2do
My favourite todo list app, mainly because you can link it without having to subscribe to an expensive system. Version 2 is on it’s way soon, with even more features. Add tasks, lists (collections of tasks), multiple sections for different types of task and sync free with Toodledo.
The interface is not only extremely good-looking, but allows for drag-and-drop, sorting, sharing and different views.
Tabs are used to great effect to separate sections and the application icon can display the number of tasks falling into a category you select.
The official website lists far more features than I can here: http://www.2doapp.com/en/2Do/tips.html
