With increasing emphasis being placed on telecommuting, there is no wonder that the lines between home and work have been skewed. While home PCs have moved ever closer toward being used for pleasure, other devices like the BlackBerry have poured in to fill the need for work tools so that always busy professionals can keep up with goings on. The release of Apple’s iPad has introduced one more tool in the blurring of the work/home lines. With the release of apps that function for both home and work use, businesses can now keep well in touch with their pros on the go. The following five are prime examples of iPad apps designed to do just that.
Roambi – Anyone who has tried can tell you that creating presentations on the go can be quite difficult. The internet is all about visual media, and as such being able to visualize data is a must. Now, Roambi from MeLLmo allows users to do just that. Excel data can be imported and used to create great looking charts. Also, when working with the iPad version, users can tap various chart areas for more info. There is also a Pro version of this app that will allow users to use Google Docs and Salesforce CRM to perform updates ($99/user/year).
Cortado Workplace – While Google Docs has certainly had its day for document creation, there is a new force to be reckoned with. Cortado Workplace allows users to not only edit and print; it allows access to corporate documents directly from the iPad. By connecting with the site at https://webdav.cortado.com, documents can be dragged and dropped from Windows explorer or Mac Finder to the iPad for editing. Cortado has proven itself to be much more adaptable to new formats than its competitor. Also, in the works is a new paid premium version that will allow users to convert files to ZIP or PDF form as well as to fax documents all from the iPad.
Evernote – If it is difficult to think of being able to keep up with every great thought or plan that you have had, then there is an app that you must check out. Evernote is the app for those businesses who love to track all their brilliant, and some not so brilliant, ideas for later reference. While the lack of an integrated camera on the iPad, users will lose out on the ability to use the character recognition feature. The good news is that other abilities are preserved such as the @myEN Twitter message archiver and the Web Clipper site archiver functions.
QlikView – QlikView is a much more visually pleasing method of creating charts than Roambi. Both apps do the same things, but QlikView offers a more interactive means of moving through the different layouts for charts. The iPad touchscreen can be used to magnify data as well as to choose whether to view it in landscape or portrait mode. This app even allows for super convenient one-button emailing once you are finished with your document.
Quickoffice – With a name including the word office, you can probably imagine what this means. This app is a fast and basic means of creating PowerPoint presentations, Excel charts, and Word documents quick, fast, and in a hurry. Anyone who is mildly proficient with Office will be able to jump right in on this app. In the works for this particular app is added functionality so that social networking sites such as Docsdoc or Scribd could be used for sharing documents. The one big drawback to this particular app is its current cost which is $14.99.