The 20 best iPhone apps of 2011 for productive geeks

The 20 best iPhone apps of 2011 for productive geeks

Takeaway: Here are some iPhone apps that can help you work smarter and improve your productivity.

Mobile apps have become an embarrassment of riches for iPhone and Android. In a world with over 500,000 iPhone apps and over 250,000 Android apps, the toughest part is finding the most useful stuff.

My iPhone picks are all third-party apps that can help you be more productive, streamline regular activities, reduce the number of gadgets in your life, and take advantage of the top benefits that mobile computing has to offer.

iPhone Apps

1. Dropbox

Dropbox is a great cloud service that automatically syncs a folder of files between multiple computers (Windows, Mac, or Linux). This app extends Dropbox to the iPhone and includes a built-in reader within the app for PDFs, image files, and Microsoft Office files.

2. Evernote

Once you get used to typing on a virtual keyboard (and it honestly took me over a year to do it), then these devices are great for note taking, and Evernote is a great note taking app. It is similar to Dropbox in that it saves data locally but syncs it across all your machines and devices.

3. Due

There are a ton of to-do apps on iPhone but I prefer Due for its simplicity and its audio alerts. However, this is an iPhone-only task list. If you want something that can sync with your PC, Mac, or the Web, then try 2Do or Things.

4. Tripit

I love Tripit. It is by far the best app I’ve found for keeping track of all my travel itineraries. It is powered by some excellent backend systems. You simply forward your confirmation emails (or use the Gmail plugin to do it automatically) for your flights, hotels, rental cars, and more to Tripit and it automatically organizes them into trips with all your details and confirmation numbers.

5. Analytics App

For some reason Google doesn’t have an official app (for either iPhone or Android) for Google Analytics. The best one I’ve found to go deep into all of the data is Analytics App.

6. Ego

Even better than Analytics App for a quick-glance dashboard is Ego. It shows basic data from Google Analytics as well as a bunch of other sources, including Squarespace, Twitter, and Feedburner.

7. Twitter

The official Twitter app (formerly known as Tweetie) is still the best Twitter client on iPhone (although Osfoora is catching up). Twitter itself is an amazing instant-intelligence engine. Two other great social media apps for iPhone are Google+ and Foursquare.

8. Reeder

Twitter has largely replaced RSS for me for finding and filtering the latest news. However, I still track some RSS feeds and the best tool I’ve found to do it with is Reeder. It syncs with Google Reader so it’s easy to flip between the mobile app and the desktop, plus the app lets you share to Twitter (and Facebook) and save to Instapaper and ReadItLater.

9. Amazon Kindle

I’ve never fully warmed up to the Amazon Kindle e-reader, but I’m a big fan of the Kindle iPhone app. Since it was released I’ve read a lot more books simply because my phone is always with me and I can pull it out and read a few pages anytime I’ve got a couple minutes free. Alternatives:Nook, iBooks, and Kobo.

10. Audible

As much as I like the Kindle ebooks, I actually consume more books as audiobooks via Audible. In the past you could download these and sync them via iTunes. But Audible now has its own app, which lets you connect to your Audible library and download over the air, and even gives you a self-contained player optimized for audiobooks.

11. Podcaster

Sure, you can use iTunes and the built-in iPod app to listen to podcasts, but if you’re an avid podcast listener (I regularly follow This Week in Tech, Buzz Out Loud, and Tech News Today) then the app Podcaster offers a better experience. You can download over the air (so that you don’t have to constantly sync to a computer to get the latest episodes), you can skip forward and backward 30 seconds, you can increase playback speed to 1.5 times normal speed, and the app is even compatible with AirPlay.

12. Photoshop Mobile

Photoshop is, of course, the best known photo editor in the world and its mobile app doesn’t do anything to hurt that reputation. But while the desktop version is known for having a zillion features, the mobile app is distinguished by its simplicity. It’s the best iPhone photo editing app for simple crops, brightness adjustments, and sharpens, for example. However, once editing is built into the native Camera app in iOS5, editors such as Photoshop Mobile may quickly become unnecessary.

13. Pano

Pano makes it easy to take excellent panoramas with the iPhone. It helps you line up your shots and it automatically corrects many of the imperfections. My wife is a photographer with a big, expensive Nikon camera and she’s regularly jealous of some of the shots I can get with the iPhone and Pano.

14. Instagram

The camera and camera app on the iPhone are now good enough to replace a point-and-shoot. You can even take pictures that are worthy of saving in your family albums. For those, I upload them to Flickr using the iPhone app. For the everyday photos that I just want to quickly post on social media, I use Instagram. It is very quick, dead simple to use, and very social media friendly. But, do me a favor and go easy on the filters. They are badly overused by most Instagram users, while 90% of photos are better with no filter at all.

15. Navigon Mobile Navigator

I used to carry a separate Garmin GPS unit for turn-by-turn directions but I eventually got rid of it and decided to just use the iPhone instead. In researching the various apps, I eventually decided on NAVIGON, which is a company that makes a lot of the built-in navigation systems for many cars. Tip: Make sure your iPhone is plugged in to power when you run a GPS navigation program like this because otherwise it will quickly drain your battery.

16. Where To?

A great companion to a GPS system is the app “Where To?” which lets you quickly look up various types of shops and services, from Cuban restaurants to medical specialists to animal hospitals to local museums and much more.

17. RunKeeper

This is a great little app that can save you from buying a pedometer. It uses the iPhone’s GPS to track the miles you’ve run or walked, and it compiles the data into some nice dashboards that you can view on your phone or on RunKeeper’s website.

18. Nutrition Menu

Another app for all of you health-conscious geeks out there is Nutrition Menu. This thing is a mobile compendium of nutritional data. It has calorie information on common foods and most major restaurants, and it has calorie-burning information for many types of exercises. It also allows you to track your daily weigh-ins and makes notes on your progress.

19. GroceryGadget

This is an app plus a website and you can quickly sync between the two. The way it usually works for me is that my wife makes a grocery list, enters it into grocerygadgets.com, and then it syncs to my iPhone so that I can swing by the grocery store and pick up the stuff.

20. RedLaser

This is a great app for shoppers. It turns the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner and it’s quite accurate. You simply scan a product’s UPC code and let the app go to work to find it in Google Product Search and TheFind. For food it will even look up allergen information and for books it will scan to see if you can get it in a local library. You’ll be amazed at how fast it works. A similar product is SnapTell, which not only scans barcordes but you can also take a picture of the cover of a book or DVD and it can look them up that way. These apps are great when you’re shopping at a retail store and want to check the prices of products online before buying. It also reads QR codes.

10 ways tablets must improve to become fully accepted

10 ways tablets must improve to become fully accepted

Takeaway: The popularity of tablets is on the rise in both the consumer and business spheres. But some limitations continue to hold them back.

I have an Android Xoom. I want to be a big fan of it. I want to use it. But as it stands, it’s mostly relegated to the occasional usage in bed when a laptop is too much heft and heat. What is it about tablets that keeps users from more readily adopting? I believe there are several things that if improved, would have more and more users flocking to the devices.

1: Better integration with PCs

I’m talking better docking stations that allow users to easily use their tablets with existing peripherals. These docking stations need to be able to accommodate the usual arsenal of tools (keyboards, mice, speakers, external drives, etc.) to be fully effective.

2: Better keyboards

As a writer, I have to say the virtual keyboards on every tablet I have tried have been less than effective. I realize that those who can text at the speed of light are probably okay with the onscreen keyboards. But for those who do serious writing (authors, students, or anyone who writes more than a single page of information), a real keyboard is a necessity. Unless you want a serious case of numb fingers, sore wrists, or worse, a physical keyboard is a must.

3: Better integration with printers

Printing is a real pain on a tablet. For the most part, third-party applications are required, and some of those aren’t free (nor are the services). Yes, on Android you can use Google Cloud Printing and set up printing fairly quickly. But that’s not an ideal solution and won’t work in all situations. Tablets need the ability to print easily before they can be considered viable alternatives for every day computing.

4: Improved browsers

There are a lot of browsers out there. On my Verizon-branded Xoom tablet, I use a combination of Firefox and Chrome. Why two? Because Chrome is fast, but it doesn’t offer some of the features I like in Firefox. And Firefox has trouble with Flash on the Xoom tablet. Give us one browser that can be used for all necessary functions and make sure that browser is fast and secure. I would have thought Chrome to be the best choice, but it has started developing a few issues that could prevent it from being the one.

5: Built-in handwriting recognition

It’s on its way — at least in theory. Tablet PCs have had this feature for years, so I was shocked when tablets were released without the ability to do handwriting recognition. But I will take this even further — I want tablets to pick up the full-featured recognition tablet PCs have: handwriting, input, and drawing. Now that tablet would be effective and useful.

6: Lower prices

HP’s fire-sale pricing of the discontinued TouchPad not withstanding, tablets are pricey. The iPad and the Xoom are more costly than a more powerful laptop would run. Bring those prices down to netbook level and acceptance will fly sky high.

7: More internal storage

Seeing as how SD cards are not the ideal solution for drawing more people to tablets (although they are better than the simple fixed-size storage currently offered by most), the internal storage size for tablets needs to be significantly higher than that of the higher-end smart phones.

8: Less phone, more laptop

One of the issues surrounding most tablets is that the manufacturers (and platform developers) are still locked into that “oversize smartphone” frame of mind. Tablets need to break away from that mindset or they will be trapped in a metaphor they should avoid completely. Smartphones serve a specific purpose that tablets do not. When tablets are nothing more than big smartphones, they are treated less like the productive tools they can be and more like an expensive toy that is better suited for social networking than actual work.

9: Better USB support

Some Android tablets (like the Xoom) have support for USB — minimal support. In the case of the Xoom, the support pretty much ends with USB flash drives. Offering more support for some of the standard hardware (keyboards, mice, CD/DVD drives, etc.) would be a huge leap forward. Naturally this entails some substantial hurdles (the installation of drivers, for one). But these issues should be easily resolved by the collective intellect of the developers on all platforms.

10: Easy access to SD Cards

Some tablets have done a decent job of giving users access to SD cards. But not all tablets are created equal. The iPad and many Android tablets are bereft of SD card slots and this, in my opinion, lessens the effectiveness of the device. Since internal storage is most often limited, these SD cards can be a real game changer for hard-core users. Without them, users are going to be forced to pick through their files and remove what they really don’t want.