5 Great iPad Apps for Professionals

The iPad was officially released in the Philippines yesterday. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails and messages asking for app recommendations specifically to boost productivity and help with work. I’ve compiled 5 of my favorite iPad productivity/work applications for everyone’s reference. I actually have tons more of apps that I want to share and I’ll write about them as well in the coming days. I’ll have a lot of blogging time in the next few weeks mostly due to the holiday vacation so be sure to keep on checking back here at New Media PH.

Developed by Behance, Action Method is a superb multi-platform task/project management application for the iPad ($1.99) and the iPhone (Free). You can create multiple projects and have separate action steps in each. You can also delegate action steps via e-mail to those in your contact list. It also has a “Focus” feature which allows you to tag up to 5 important tasks that you have to do (appears on the home page of the app). It also has several analytic tools to measure your productivity and find out project bottlenecks.

I’ve tried several free and paid task management apps and so far Action Method is my favorite. It’s the app that I open each time I get to work and I update it all throughout the day. What’s also great about this is that it also syncs with the iPhone. When I’m on the go and I need to update my projects all I have to do is access the app via my phone and it will sync with the iPad without any problems.

This is my favorite note taking app which is available for both the iPad and the iPhone. It’s pretty simple – just create your note (text, photo, or audio) and it will sync to an online cloud. You can access your note on the iPad, iPhone, or MacBook. This is the ideal app for people who constantly get ideas while they’re on the go. Personally I use Evernote to jot down notes during meetings and I also whip it out each time I have a blog post or business idea.

Oh yeah, Evernote is a free app! Highly recommend you guys get it.

The best way for me to organize my thoughts is to do mind mapping. I’ve been on the lookout for great mind mapping applications for the iPhone and the iPad for quite sometime now and my current personal favorite is iThoughts. It’s available for both the iPhone and the iPad but it’s a little pricey. The iPhone version costs $7.99 while the iPad version costs $9.99. It’s a classic mind mapping app and it also lets you export your mind maps in PDF or photo formats. There’s also an option to sync your work to DropBox or MobileMe. If you find mind mapping boring, iThoughts has a lot of fun icons that you can use to liven up your map.

I’d honestly rate this as one of the best productivity apps in the app store but the only thing holding me back from doing so is the price, haha.

Instead of checking out all of the blogs and websites you regularly visit for news on the browser, put them all in one application! There are actually a lot of RSS readers available in the app store but Pulse is one of the very best (and it’s free!). With Pulse just input the websites (called “sources) and it will lay it outon your iPad for reading in a visual (mosaic) manner. You can put up to 60 sources in Pulse (which is a lot). It also has features for you to easily share it with your friends via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter. It’s also integrated with Instapaper so you can read your favorite articles offline.

By the way, you can also put your Facebook account as a source on Pulse. You’ll be able to see the updates and comment on them. Read the full review of Pulse News Reader in Apple Manila.

This is another app that I just can’t live without. Dropbox is a cloud based storage system. You get it first for your iPad or iPhone in the app store (Free) and then you download it for your MacBook. Dropbox creates a folder in your MacBook and everything you put there syncs on the cloud and you can access all of these files on your iPad or iPhone as long as you have internet connection (you can download the files though if you don’t regularly have internet).

The 5 apps listed above are just some of the great apps available in the store which will help you be more productive. Expect more articles like this in the next week or so. Happy holidays everyone!