Lokion Interactive

Over the past year, I’ve become a ded­i­cated and habit­ual iPad user to the point that I’ve aban­doned my net­book for most tasks. Although not per­fect, the iPad com­bines porta­bil­ity and a con­sis­tently good user expe­ri­ence into a neat pack­age that has largely elim­i­nated the need for me to carry a heav­ier netbook.

While the stan­dard iPad func­tion­al­ity for email and web brows­ing gen­er­ally does a fine job, there are a few apps that are indis­pens­able for my own busi­ness pur­poses. Read on to see if these apps might enhance your own iPad experience.

• Drop­box — I use this app sev­eral times a day to trans­fer files between home, work, my phone, and my iPad. I also use it to share files with fam­ily mem­bers and col­leagues. Although Google Drive may even­tu­ally sup­plant this app and (mostly free) ser­vice, right now I’m stick­ing with Drop­box for my file shar­ing needs.
• GoodReader — I pri­mar­ily use this to read and mark up PDF files, although it has other uses as well. It’s really nice for me to be able to scrib­ble notes on a PDF while in a client meet­ing (or while on a train/plane) and save the anno­tated ver­sion of the PDF for later use. I can email the marked-up ver­sion directly from my iPad, which also comes in handy. This app may give you a rea­son to try out one of the many sty­lus options for the iPad, although it is not strictly necessary.
• Quick­of­fice Pro — This app inte­grates with Drop­box, enabling me to read and edit Microsoft Office doc­u­ments while on my iPad. It also deals fairly well with Google Docs, which I’m using more and more as an alter­na­tive to Word and Excel, par­tic­u­larly when col­lab­o­ra­tion is a require­ment. One note here: this app doesn’t deal well with very com­plex spread­sheets. So if your spread­sheet is larger than about 5Mb with com­plex lookups and if-thens, then this app will prob­a­bly choke on it.
• CloudOn - I’ve only exper­i­mented with this so far, but it’s a free cloud com­put­ing app that lets you deal with the larger, cra­zier spread­sheets. You need decent con­nec­tiv­ity for it to func­tion, but if you have a spread­sheet that kills Quick­of­fice, this is prob­a­bly your next stop.
• Igni­tion (Log­MeIn) — I use Igni­tion every day. It lets me con­trol my PC or Mac remotely from my iPad, although I have to spend about $50/year for the priv­i­lege (there are some free options as well, so do your home­work and choose the solu­tion that most fits your needs). It does require a sim­ple soft­ware install on the PC or Mac, but it’s a fan­tas­tic option for deal­ing with spe­cialty PC appli­ca­tions or per­form­ing Mac-based tech sup­port from the road. Even though the cur­rent ver­sions of Win­dows and the Mac OS aren’t really designed for use on a tablet, Igni­tion does a good job of bridg­ing the gap, par­tic­u­larly in a pinch. This app is another good can­di­date for sty­lus use, par­tic­u­larly if you are deal­ing with a PC appli­ca­tion that has lots of small but­tons and drop-downs.
• Flip­board and Zite - These are two very visual elec­tronic news aggre­ga­tion apps. They each have their strengths, but both are inter­est­ing and use­ful. Zite has become my go-to morn­ing news read, and it learns from sto­ries that you like and dis­like, get­ting more rel­e­vant to your inter­ests as you use it.

I’ve found the above col­lec­tion of apps to be wor­thy of download/purchase and I depend upon them daily.

There are a cou­ple of related apps that war­rant men­tion­ing here, although they aren’t strictly for busi­ness. The first is a free game called Cargo-Bot. While it’s an enter­tain­ing game on its own that helps teach pro­gram­ming con­cepts to non-programmers, the really inter­est­ing thing about the game is that it is the first app in the app store to be devel­oped com­pletely on the iPad using an app/development envi­ron­ment called Codea.

Codea allows you to pro­to­type and develop an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence directly on the iPad, which opens up a wealth of cre­ative oppor­tu­ni­ties for the future. It’s based upon the pro­gram­ming lan­guage Lua, which is open source and avail­able on mul­ti­ple plat­forms. Codea won’t turn you into a pro­gram­mer overnight, but it may be the first step towards a brighter future for spe­cialty iPad apps aimed at spe­cific ver­ti­cal mar­kets, or towards eas­ier app pro­to­typ­ing for reg­u­lar busi­ness users.

Have you found an inter­est­ing busi­ness app for the iPad? If so, we’d love to hear about it.