As someone who’s often working on the road, I’m always on the look out for great mobile apps and thought being Friday afternoon and all that I’d share the few I’ve come to rely on:
1. Email Management:
Mailbox from Orchestra is an app that’s been generating quite a bit of buzz, and with good reason. I’ve had years to perfect my email management skills on the desktop, but managing my mail on the road was a constant challenge. With Mailbox’s elegant design, you can easily skim messages—archiving what you want, deleting what you don’t—all while staying on top of emailed conversations I need to be a part of now and “snoozing” those I don’t. The biggest caveat: it’s only available for Gmail, but other platforms are coming soon.
2. Task Management:
My life is ruled by lists—for work, home, shopping, travel. And while I’ve tried a number of apps, nothing ever seemed to improve upon old-fashioned pen and paper. That changed with Clear from Realmac Software. Clear succeeds where others don’t, because it’s even easier than pen and paper. The app boasts an all gesture-based interface. Instead of buttons and drop-down menus, all you have to do is swipe, pull, and pinch to get your tasks under control. Now, my to-do list no longer has to include managing my to-dos.
3. Storage:
Just about everyone uses Dropbox, but do you have it on your phone? Dropbox Mobile is a must-have app for storing files and collaborating with colleagues while on the go. No more emailing heavy documents back and forth or wondering if you really are working with the latest version. And it comes with two gigabytes of free storage.
4. Travel:
For those of us who don’t have assistants (or aren’t quite comfortable with depending on others to manage our arrangements), KayakPro Mobile is a great way to find the cheapest flights, hotels, and rental cars while managing itineraries and tracking flight statuses—without the annoying ads. It even comes with handy tools like baggage fee calculator and terminal maps for 100+ airports.
5. Outdoors:
One of the great things about working on the road is the road doesn’t always have to be paved. Whether I’m out hiking the trails or fishing the lakes, the Trip Journal is a great travel app (ranked #1 by Google) that lets me document my outdoor experiences and share them with friends, family, and, ahem, envious co-workers. With Google Earth integration, I can show travel routes, waypoints for visited locations, and trip stats such as distance and time—all with content sharing across Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and more.
What are some of the great mobile apps you use?