Okay, I’ll admit it. I bought it on a whim. Being a bit of a gadget guy, I had to get the iPad 2. There it was in the store, and it looked so cool and slim and professional (In a word, so Apple). It spoke to me, and I ponied up the bucks and bought it.
What began as a whim, however, has quickly become an indispensable business tool. Here are seven ways I use my iPad for business:
1. Meeting Notes
Being an executive coach and business consultant, my week is full of meetings. I prepare for meetings, conduct meetings, and record my thoughts during and after meetings. Apart from the cool factor of opening up an iPad instead of a manilla folder in a meeting, I’ve found my iPad unbelievably easy to use to quickly jot notes and capture random thoughts. The pre-installed iPad Notes app is okay, but not robust enough for what I needed. For awhile I used an app called Notability, but (inexplicably) it didn’t have spell-check, so emailing meeting notes to clients was unwise. What I now use for all my meetings is an app called Notably. It’s incredibly elegant, well-designed, and automatically synchs with Dropbox.
By the way, with your iPad video camera you can easily conduct virtual business meetings anywhere using WebEx, GoToMeeting, or Skype. My favorite, however, is the multi-user, multi-screen app from video upstart ooVoo.
2. Tasks and Projects
I’m a raving fan of a software called Things by Cultured Code and have it on both my laptop and my iPad. From the first day I bought a MacBook Pro, I’ve used Things because iCal task management is just deplorable (Let me tell you how I really feel). The iPad app is even better than its software cousin. At $20 it’s a bit on the expensive side for an app, but, in my opinion, Things is worth every penny.
Things allows me to closely manage the dates and deadlines for both my tasks and projects, set reoccurrences, assign tasks to areas of responsibility, and tag them for quick reference–all quickly and easily. The underlying architecture of Things is based on David Allen’s immensely popular book, Getting Things Done, but it’s not overly dependent on it. The iPad app automatically synch’s with my laptop via the wireless network in my office and allows me to stay on top of everything I need to do everyday. Cultured Code’s online support and resources are second to none.
3. Appointments
Speaking of synching, you can’t beat iCal and Mobile Me for keeping track of appointments and meetings. I put an appointment in my iPad and it’s automatically posted online, on my laptop, and on my iPhone. From all reports, Apple’s IOS 5 and improved cloud service will only make this better. For me the best part of this iPad functionality is that my wife can check my calendar at any time and know exactly what I’m doing. She can also schedule appointments for me, which is how I ended having a colonoscopy recently (but that’s another story).
4. Document Management
The big concern, of course, with using an iPad is reading and managing documents and fulfilling the quest for a paperless workplace. Enter GoodReader, the best five dollars you’ll ever spend in your life. It reads every conceivable document, from Word files to TXT files, iWork files to PDF’s, allowing you to mark them up as well. It also views pictures, plays audio and video, and reads maps. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do on my iPad, but it’s amazing. In addition to all this stuff, GoodReader syncs with a half a dozen different remote servers to keep everything up to date. Technology expert, Mashable, calls it, “the Swiss Army knife of awesome.”
5. Travel
When you travel, you have your airplane ticket, your hotel, your car rental, and God knows what else to keep track of. My iPad helps me keep all that stuff in one place through an amazing app called Tripit. Download the app and forward your travel info to “Tripit”:http://www.tripit.com/, and, voila, it’s all there for you to see along with other great things to do in the region you’re traveling to. If anything changes in your itinerary, Tripit will send you an email alert and text alert to your phone. Almost makes those body scans worth it. Tripit is provided free from a company called Concur, who also has an excellent app for business expense tracking that fully synchs with your credit card. Check them both out.
6. Books and Magazines
My Kindle was cool when I first got it, but there’s nothing like reading a book in vivid color like you can on an iPad. In fact, Amazon’s Kindle app for iPad is simply amazing and their book selection way beyond what’s available for iBooks. The coolest of the cool, however, is an app called Zite. Zite is an online magazine that crawls the internet for articles that match your personally customized categories. Read an article and rate it, and you’ll get more of what you like. In other words, the more you use Zite, the smarter it becomes, all for free. Who needs magazines?
7. Background Music
No, I don’t want music gobbling up the memory of my business devices. But there are times when I want to listen to music as I read, write, and reflect at work. If you’ve ever listened to Pandora, you already know how online music streaming works. But Pandora’s become a commercial wasteland, so I listen to the app IHeartRadio. There’s tons of commercial-free music of any genre, as well as live streaming of radio stations across the country. All for free. A nice set of Bose headphones almost makes the workday seem like a vacation (Not really, but Bose headphones are pretty great).
I’m sure I’m just getting started using this post-PC tool for business. I love the exceedingly responsive touch screen and find the keyboard easier to use than the mechanical ones we’ve all become used to. With cloud computing advancing at an amazing rate and ubiquitous wireless networks, look for your iPad to become even more useful in the future. BTW I tried out about three or four different iPad covers to protect my investment, and landed on this slick leather one from Snugg. It’s perfect!
