InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology
e2 Conference & Expo - Boston 2013
IPad Productivity Apps

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Evernote runs on several platforms, storing and syncing your documents (word processor) in the cloud for retrieval from any device. You can create documents in Evernote on the iPad just like you can with Evernote on any other system.

Even though there is an Amazon Kindle app for the iPad, one its limitations is that while you can download books, you cannot download newspapers and magazines. Just books. On the other hand, there are applications from the likes of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times specifically for the iPad, and potentially more publishers will follow suit. Additionally, you can view those publications online using the iPad/Safari web browser, so one could argue that iPad users don't need newspapers from the Kindle store at all.  Although many think of the iPad as an information consumption device -- and it is -- it is also good for personal and professional productivity tasks, including for enterprise professionals. We found a variety of such applications already available for the iPad.  Adobe Idea is an iPad application that lets users sketch out ideas, and then send them to others via e-mail. You can start out with a blank slate and just start drawing with your finger, or you can pre-load graphics (photos) and sketch on top of them.  Using Adobe Idea to sketch out ideas is pretty simple, and has an intuitive, small menu of options. User controls let you select color (from a limited palette), the opacity of the line, and the thickness of the line.  Adobe Idea can be used to mark up a photo, in this case the painted side of the Yerba Buena Arts Center where Apple first unveiled the iPad. The Idea tool includes the ability to move your image around, and an eraser that works just like it should (you use your finger).  Adobe Idea is best used as a quick sketch application, and as such, it's very easy to e-mail the sketch to others. Just as with almost every iPad application the   Cube for iPad lets users track expenses and time spent on projects quickly and easily.  You can assign an item to a project or a task within Cube, and tie it to an expense or a date.  Cube uses a scrolling wheel interface for changing the date. Maybe it's overkill, but it feels a little like playing a slot machine.  Cube uses Google Docs, so your tasks and projects and expenses are tied directly into a Google calendar.  Evernote runs on several platforms, storing and syncing your documents (word processor) in the cloud for retrieval from any device. You can create documents in Evernote on the iPad just like you can with Evernote on any other system.  In Evernote, you can change your view of documents, based on date, on location, and then you can search for documents using tags or keywords.  SugarSync lets you take your laptop or desktop data and share it into the SugarSync cloud. From there, you can download documents and view them (and send them to others or yourself) right on the iPad. The file manager shows what files and folders you've synced.  Sugarsync lets you view your transaction history on your desktop or laptop computer, and you can add more folders as well.  Viewing files in SugarSync is pretty easy. The UBM Fnelson folder are all of the documents and folders I've chosen to put into the SugarSync cloud. There are also shared folders, web-only storage and sample files.  Getting to your files with SugarSync is easy on the iPad. The files actually get downloaded to your iPad and are cached locally (it can cache up to 100 MB, and starts replacing older files as it hits that upper limit. However, one of the downsides -- not SugarSync's fault, just the nature of the iPad's closed system approach -- is that the documents you download can't be accessed any other way -- say a Word document in the iPad Pages app. You actually have to e-mail it to yourself from SugarSync, then open the document from e-mail, triggering Pages, where you can then manipulate the content.  Mellmo's Roambi portal lets you organize and manage your reports. The application supports documents from IBM Cognos, Microsoft Reporting Services, Microsoft SharePoint, LifeRay, Excel, Salesforce.com, SAP BusinessObjects and Crystal Reports, Google Spreadsheets and CSVs. These reports are then viewed through visualization templates.  Using Roambi's Publish Manager, you can select from a list of visualization templates with which to view your data.  In Roambi's Publish Manager, you map your data into one of Roambi's templates, and you can manipulate the data in the visualization you've created.  On the iPad, you use the Roambi client to choose a template and view data stored in the Roambi portal.  This is the Trend Analysis view in Mellmo's Roambi for the iPad. You can select fine-grained views of the data, even doing comparisons by   Using the Pie Chart view in Roambi, you can select different data points by using the pie chart as a selection wheel, drilling deeper into the data from there.  The Roambi CataList view offers a different look at data. You get different views on the charts, and the summaries give you a sense of whether numbers are up or down, for example.  With Rackspace on the iPad, you can easily and quickly configure just about any type of server -- just a couple selections and away you go.  Rackspace supports several different server types, including various Linux distros, Oracle, Microsoft and more.  Once you've selected the type of server in Rackspace, you select its size. And that's it.  Once you've provisioned your server, Rackspace shows you the status bar as it gets created. This process takes about a minute or two.  After you've provisioned your server in Rackspace, you can use the iPad app to configure it, set up backups, reboot it, and many more options.  Users can create workspaces using the Citrix Receiver client for the iPad.  Setting up a workspace requires an IP address (or host name), user name and password, a domain, and away you go.  Using the Citrix Receiver client for the iPad, you can access Windows Apps. Dazzle is a self-service IT model, so users can access the apps they want.  The Citrix Xen Desktop lets users access their Windows 7 desktops from the iPad, an iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, as well as a Mac or PC; coming soon to the Blackberry.  Who says the iPad only runs Apple's Safari? Here it is running Internet Explorer.  Who says the iPad doesn't run Adobe's Flash? Here it is playing Flash video via Internet Explorer running on Windows 7. 


Evernote runs on several platforms, storing and syncing your documents (word processor) in the cloud for retrieval from any device. You can create documents in Evernote on the iPad just like you can with Evernote on any other system.