I’ve long been better organized electronically than I ever was with dead trees and paper so Evernote was a natural application for me to adapt to organize my notes and research. It has become a go to application of sorts for me because I centralize so much personal, professional, and especially project information within various Evernote notebooks.
Here is a overview of how I made the move into Evernote:
Skitch – the popular Mac graphics app recently acquired by Evernote – is now available for the iPad as a free app in the App Store. This is a logical next step for the app especially with the growing number of graphics and photo editing apps in particular appearing on the AppStore. I am checking out the app to see if it is a better screen capture option for me on the iPad because I write about iPad apps on a semi frequent basis.
With Skitch for iPad, you can edit photos already on your iPad; annotate screen shots; markup web pages; annotate maps on your iPad (and you can then email the map to somebody who needs it); and sketch images from scratch.
I am still rocking a first gen iPad 3G with WiFi but it is an important productivity tool for me. After recovering from going a little too app happy in the early days of my iPad ownership, I’ve come up with the right mix of apps that keep me productive and well informed.
Here are my favorite iPad apps for 2011:
It made my day yesterday when I checked my iPhone for AppStore updates and saw the news under the OneNote for iPhone update that OneNote for iPad is now available. I wrote about the launch of OneNote for iPhone and bemoaned the lack of a native iPad app but my prayers have been answered with the launch of OneNote for iPad! With all the rumors about the possibility of Microsoft Office coming to the iPad in 2012, I see this launch as a positive sign in that direction.
Just like its iPhone cousin, OneNote for iPad syncs with the OneNote 2010 WebApp. You have the option to synchronize OneNote data only when you are on WiFi – a must have feature in a world of shrinking data plans and tighter management of data plans on corporate mobile devices.
I am always on the lookout for a better Adobe Acrobat PDF reader for my iPad so the recent launch of the free Adobe Reader for iOS really caught my eye. It also works on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod Touch. Considering the tense relationship that Adobe must have with Apple, they are not ignoring the iOS platform by any means, which is good for users.
The Getting Started Guide that ships with the Reader is well conceived and walks you through how to interact with PDF documents using this new reader app. In fact, I encourage technical writers with an interest in documentation for mobile apps to check out Adobe Reader for iOS for the Getting Started Guide because it shows what can be done with mobile app documentation.
The first contestant in my home office for the iOS 5 upgrade was my 1st generation iPad 3G. It’s a device that sees a lot of use during the day but if I bricked it would be a crisis but not as bad as if I bricked my phone. iOS 5 performance on my iPad has been great (but not quite as great as my iPhone) and except for some groups getting out of whack my upgrade was a rather painless affair.
Now that I am back to more of a semblance of life after getting my groove back, I am relying on my iPad a lot more especially when it comes to documents. While the iPad may never replace my laptop, it does let me do away with carrying around papers. The new Evernote integration with Quick Office Pro HD really caught my attention.
Quick Office Pro HD is one of the apps I use when I want to review documents on the go. While the pace of development for iPad apps that can substitute for desktop Office applications is on the uptick, I am still waiting to see the apps take wide advantage of integration opportunities with cloud-based apps like Evernote and others.
Now that my iPad and iPhone have been running iOS 5 for about a week now, I am finally turning my attention to iCloud, Apple’s heir apparent to MobileMe and their first real contender into the cloud services market. Despite Apple’s reputation for perfection and iteration, the cloud has consistently eluded them for years.
I want to see Apple do well in the cloud this time. Their previous missteps are not befitting a company of their caliber.
I wrote a while back that I am debating on giving up my RSS feeds. While dragging my feet on the task, I came across news that Reeder for iPad, my favorite RSS reader for the iPad now integrates with Evernote. The integration is elegant in its simplicity too! Sometimes I am caught with downtime when I only have my iPad and have been researching tools for capturing information from my iPad into Evernote.
Taking my research mobile is very important to me to help my productivity when I am out. The Reeder/Evernote integration fits squarely into my requirements.
I watched the launch of the iPhone 4s and iOS 5 with great anticipation. Apple product launches are always worthy of watching. After matching up my personal predictions versus what actually delivers is an annual tradition of mine. It’s also a lot of fun to learn how far off some of the analysts, pundits, and journalists are off in their predictions. Though as time goes on, my viewing of Apple product launches are about learning what I can from live blogging, and then piece together the rest of the news that evening after I get home and the server traffic dies down after the live session.
Last weekend, I upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 5 after a successful (albeit time consuming) upgrade of my first generation iPad 3G to the new OS. The overall upgrade of my iPhone went relatively smooth – I did it on a Friday night before going to bed – without the server errors that dogged my iPad upgrade and many others on launch day.
Here are the iOS 5 highlights (for me at least):
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