Since I was an early adopter of the iPad, specif­i­cally to use it for my free­lance busi­ness, I have had many peo­ple ask me what I use it for and what Apps I have found that have been very helpful.

This post will address some of those ques­tions. To note, I no longer carry around my large lap­top every where with me any­more. the iPad has replaced that for me. (Yes, I still use my beast of a dek­stop for when I need to do mas­sive work.) I have put links to the apps where I could.

A few things to note first.

I use Google Mail, Cal­en­dar and their Docs & Spread­sheets. The rea­son is the flex­i­bil­ity and ease of use with the iPad. (If you have your own domain, you can use their “Google Apps” for your domain and have all their apps avail­able for your employ­ees or users). They also work great together. So if I get an email that has an event noti­fi­ca­tion, I can add it to my Google Cal­en­der. If I get attach­ments, I can add them to Google Docs. It’s also easy to share Docs with oth­ers or have peo­ple “sub­scribe” to your cal­en­dar (great for if you just want peo­ple to see when your “free/busy” you can add a wid­get to your website…check out my “sched­ule” link on bjpds.com for an example).

Google Mail — Offers IMAP for email. Its kind of like Microsoft Exchange, if your famil­iar with that. Every­thing is housed online, then when you set up the IMAP account on your devices (MS Out­look, iPhone, Black­berry, iPad, on the web, what­ever) it shows the same inbox on all. You deleted or move in one place, it deletes or moves in all. Very easy to Sync.

BE WARNED: Google uses IMAP a lit­tle oddly, and it takes some get­ting use to. Even though tech­ni­cally google doesn’t use “Fold­ers”, they use “Labels”. So if you label cer­tain emails as, say, “Fav Tweets”, it will show up online in a “label” folder as “Fav Tweets”, but on your devices it will act more like a folder. So just remem­ber that Label=Folder.

Google Cal­en­der — lets you have mul­ti­ple cal­en­dars, yet they all show up on the same cal­en­dar. Which is great for sched­ul­ing. Every­one in my house has their own cal­en­dar, then we have one for bills, My free­lance Biz, Amy’s Biz, and then our din­ner menus. This way we can see every­thing and make sure we don’t dou­ble book. This syncs GREAT with the iPad or iPhones, AND they now keep the cal­en­dars “color” (Each of our kids cal­en­dar is color coded to their favorite color). Again, you can turn any cal­en­dar to show up on a web page by using its embed code fea­ture. You can also show just how much infor­ma­tion will be displayed.

Google Docs & Spread­sheets — Is a good online Doc­u­ment pro­cess­ing pro­gram and it works great with some of the apps below I will talk about. But its not per­fect. In regards to Doc­u­ments, you may loose some spe­cial for­mat­ting. With Spread­sheets, you may loose some com­pli­cated for­mu­las or for­mat­ting. But, Google is always updat­ing and rede­vel­op­ing to address its shortcomings.

Drop­box — Drop­box is a great online backup (FREE) tool. Basi­cally, you install the pro­gram on all the com­put­ers you use, then it places a “My Drop­box” folder in your doc­u­ments. Any­thing you add or delete here, gets added or deleted on all your machines that are logged into the account.

They have an App for the iPad and iPhone AND many apps offer Drop­box syn­chro­niza­tion to keep your apps synced across devices. You start out with 2GB of space (you can pay for more). You can also refer peo­ple, if they sign up, you get 250MB added to your account. So, if you sign up, LET ME KNOW, and I can send you a refer­ral email. Then it adds to my space, then you can refer peo­ple and add to YOUR space.

They do have an iPad app, that lets you READ-only the files, and open them up in cor­re­spond­ing apps.

You can also share fold­ers (within your Drop­box folder) with other Drop­box user. But please note: if you share, the space that folder takes up will not only take away from your total space, but the per­son you shared it with. So if they have a new account (2GB) and you toss a bunch of stuff in that folder, their new account size will start to get filled up). So remem­ber that you “share” in the space usage with shared folders.

Print­ing on the iPad — Apple had announced that print­ing would be avail­able for the iPhone and iPad…but then they changed it to work with only print­ers that had spe­cial ePrint­ing enabled (newer HP printers).

But you can get around that and go back to their orig­i­nal plan with this app. Fin­ger­print is a great way to quickly print to a printer or make a PDF or add to your drop­box account. You must be on the same Wifi for it to work.

If your away from your desk, and you have an app (or if your on a remote com­puter) that lets you save to a spe­cific loca­tion into your Drop­box, you can enable print­ing in drop­box.  So if your away from your office, you can drop a file in that spe­cial folder in Drop­box and your printer will have it wait­ing for you when you get back to your office.

Cases and Docks — I have the Apple iPad case. Its light­weight, props it up into two dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions and works well. I have the Apple iPad Key­board dock. I DO NOT rec­om­mend get­ting it, if your using a case. There is not enough space between the dock con­nec­tor and the plas­tic piece that holds up your iPad for a case. There is JUST enough room for the iPad itself…so the “con­nec­tion” never con­nects if you have a case on it. I rec­om­mend get­ting the Apple Wire­less Key­board. Then you can use what­ever case (and if you have an iPhone, you can con­nect the key­board to that too, for even more portable on the go working).

Or, you can get the ZAGG case. It is a case AND key­board in one. Make sure though that you get the one for the CORRECT iPad model you have (Gen 1 or Gen 2) as they are dif­fer­ent sizes.

Now on to the Apps:

Gen­eral Business:

Log­MeIn — If you have a work Desk­top and an iPad (or mul­ti­ple com­put­ers) I rec­om­mend Log­MeIn. This is a web-based remote access pro­gram. You log in to ANY com­puter online, and you can access ANY com­puter that you have (eas­ily) setup to remote access. They have an iPhone and an iPad app that works GREAT. So if you for­get to sync a doc­u­ment to Drop­box, you can still access it. To use it online is free (but they do have paid accounts that give you more fea­tures), the App is $30…not cheap, but worth it! (This is also handy if you have rel­a­tives that you are always their “IT” per­son, I placed it on my dad’s and sister’s PCs, so that I could remote fix them when they have issues…)

Cal­en­dar, Email and Con­tacts — I use the Apple stan­dard apps for these. They work great and sync with my Google stuff. ‘Nuff said.

2Do — I use this app for my To Do Lists. It uses the GTD (or Get­ting Things Done) method­ol­ogy. You can have mul­ti­ple “lists” or see them all in the “Today” tab. If another per­son in your biz uses 2Do as well, you can send them tasks. It also lets you do “Projects”. Projects allow you to have mul­ti­ple tasks, grouped under a “project”. It also syncs with “Too­dledo” which is web based. I don’t use the online ver­sion, I just use Too­dledo to sync across my iPad and iPhone.

Docs to Go Pre­mium — This is the App I used to edit all my doc­u­ments, when I am on the go. There is a cheaper ver­sion, but it doesn’t have all the fea­tures. This syncs to Google Docs, Drop­box, Box.net, and a few oth­ers. It lets you edits your Doc­u­ments, Spread­sheets (and I think pow­er­point files) on the go and then can save them back to those locations.

It does have its lim­its. You may not always get all the for­mat­ting you want, or all the com­pli­cated for­mu­las, but it does the trick. You can always edit any final docs at your home PC.

(Side note: I do have the iWork Suite of apps: Pages, Num­bers, Keynote. I like them, they are beau­ti­ful. But if you have a PC at home, then its a lit­tle trick­ier to sync, and you can loose some for­mat­ting, if you use a Mac, then you can use these–but, you can only sync between iTunes, not Drop­box or other online services–so its limiting).

Square — If you process credit card or even cash pay­ments, then this is it! It’s free to use. No annual charge, no monthly pro­cess­ing lim­its. Just per trans­ac­tion fees (which are cheaper than some of the other mer­chant credit card proces­sors out there) and you can process CASH transactions.

You get a FREE credit card swiper don­gle for you iPhone OR iPad (they have apps for both) the iPad app lets you put an inven­tory in the App for faster pro­cess­ing. Then the client signs the screen (you can attach a photo of them too) and then email them the receipt. Done. Its GREAT!

Deliv­er­ies — If you order a lot of pack­ages in the mail, this is a great app. If accepts track­ing num­bers from a mul­ti­tude of sources. Then it can list them all for you and show you the days away, and where it is on the map. Very easy to use.

iAn­no­tatePDF — If you deal with PDFs (and do lots of com­ment­ing, redlin­ing, or mark­ing them up) then this is the app to use. It lets you high­light, com­ment, strike-through or markup PDFs.

Max­iVista — This app allows you to use your iPad as a sec­ondary mon­i­tor on your home PC. So if your iPad is just sit­ting there next to your computer…plug it into an out­let (to charge–because this will drain power) and use it as a sec­ond mon­i­tor to max­i­mize your effi­ciency. You will need the dri­ver from their site AND you need to have both PC and iPad on the same Wifi.

GoToMeet­ing & WebEx — If you con­fer­ence call on any of these two ser­vices, then these apps allow you to see the web con­fer­ence and use your mic and speak­ers to join in. Great when your away from your desk.

Ever­note – This app lets you cre­ate notes, sound clips, web clip­pings or send whole web pages to access later. There is a web ver­sion, a Fire­Fox plug-in (to let you select text from a page–or photos–and send to Ever­note) and an iPhone version.

I use this to send arti­cles that I want to keep for­ever (not arti­cles that I will merely read later…I use InstaPa­per for that) or tuto­ri­als or other notes, so that I can access them later…especially since the web changes so much and what is there one day, may not be there tomorrow.

Jot­NoteS­can­ner Pro — This allows me to take a photo with my iPhone and then it will straighten and opti­mize it for read­ing, then I can send it to Ever­note. Great for Busi­ness cards, receipts, or news­pa­per clippings.

Sound­Note — This allows me to take notes at a meet­ing AND it records the meet­ing. So later, if I feel like I for­got a note, I can click on a sen­tence of my notes and the record­ing JUMPS to that part of the meet­ing so I can hear what I missed.

Penul­ti­mate — This is a note-taking/sketching app. Great for quick notes. (I rec­om­mend get­ting a Pogo pen too, it makes writ­ing on the iPad easier.)

Mint — This app is used in con­junc­tion with their online app Mint.com. No data entry of your finan­cial data (it grabs it from your bank…just not credit unions..at least not most) and your loans, real estate value, assets, 401K, etc. and it helps you bud­get. A great app to see your finan­cial data in and track your spending.

Skype — Free phone calls between “skype” devices on Wifi or 3G (you can get pre­paid min­utes to call actual phones too) its an iPhone app, but works on the iPad. You can “text” (more like Instant Mes­sage) other skype users or call them, or video chat — from your iPhone or com­puter) for free. You can use it over 3G (but uses data services…so watch out).

If you want to use it to con­tact real phone num­bers from your iPad, you need to pay for min­utes. You can “face­time” from your iPad…well, you will see them, they can’t see you, as the iPad has no camera…rumor is its coming.

Gist — This app (along with its online ver­sion) allows you to see all your “impor­tant peo­ple” (i.e. clients or busi­nesses) and what they post on social net­works, blogs, news arti­cles, web­sites, etc.It scours the web based on their con­tact infor­ma­tion and shows you any­thing it can.

This is very help­ful if you need to inter­act with your clients or keep your­self in their fore­ground to gen­er­ate pos­si­ble busi­ness leads or rev­enue or pos­si­ble upcom­ing projects you could sub­mit a pro­posal to.

You can then rate your clients by impor­tance (for instance, I only want to see clients that are at a 50 or higher.) it makes it very easy to then con­nect and com­ment on their stuff from all these var­i­ous sources (You can also fil­ter the sources too).

I no longer need to spend time on Face­book, then on Twit­ter, Then on LinkedIn, then on their Blogs, etc.…it brings all those var­i­ous places to me in one spot. Also, if it shows them mul­ti­ple times in my “client” list…I can “merge” them and the pro­gram then knows they are the same peo­ple or business.

Design:

These are var­i­ous design apps that I use to help me be more productive.

myPan­tone — This is an iPhone app, but it works fine on the iPad. It lets me find Pan­tone Swatch col­ors, cre­ate swatch sets and even take a photo and attempt to match a color.

myPan­tone X-ref — This allows me to find out the con­ver­sion of var­i­ous Pan­tone Books (say find the match­ing Pan­tone swatch between their Solid Coated and their Process Color books)

iDesign — This app lets me cre­ate quick Vec­tor illus­tra­tions, that I can then send to myself and open in Illus­tra­tor to finish.

iMock­ups — This allows me to make mock-up web­sites (or iPhone Apps, if I did that) on the go. I can sit with a client and quickly mock-up the lay­out of their web­site, then when I get to my office I can use that as my tem­plate to cre­ate their sites design.

Mood­board — This allows me to cre­ate a “feel” of what their brand or design should be like. I can pull in pho­tos, color swatches, web clip­pings, text, etc. and put together a “mood” board for the client to get a feel of where I am think­ing of going, with­out design­ing a bunch of stuff that they may not like the design of. A way to visu­ally brain­storm a design.

Sketch­book — This lets me sketch on the go. It has lay­ers, brushes, col­ors, tools, etc. I can then export as a PSD file to open in Photoshop.

iThought­sHD — If you brain­storm a lot, this mind-mapping soft­ware helps you do that. They have an iPhone app too. It also syncs with Drop­box so that you can use desk­top mind map­ping soft­ware to edit or print.

iFont­Maker — This lets me cre­ate cus­tom fonts that I can email and use on the Computer.

Pho­tog­ra­phy:

Photo Recipes — Scott Kelby cre­ated this app. It shows you video of var­i­ous lighting/situation setups on what he does to get “the shot”. Some great tips and ideas for photographers.

Pho­tog­ra­phy Con­tract Maker — This allows you to have Model Release, Copy­right Release, Photo shoot Con­tract, and 2nd Shooter–Work For Hire con­tracts on the go. You fill in the detail, every­one signs the screen and then you can email the con­tract out to the var­i­ous par­ties. (You can cus­tomize the con­tracts). They have an iPhone ver­sion too.

Sec­ond Shootr — This app lets you man­age your var­i­ous Photo Shoots. It’s an iPhone App, but can work on the iPhone/iPod.

Not only does it han­dle your var­i­ous Photo Shoots, but it can house the var­i­ous peo­ple (and their con­tact infor­ma­tion) in the photo shoot (like who the brides­maids are, etc.), what equip­ment you need to bring, and what shots you need to take. (Like check­lists that you can check off). It can also house the loca­tion infor­ma­tion for the app as well.

Grey Kard — This app has var­i­ous “gray card” or “cal­i­bra­tion” cards for your photo shoot. You take a photo with the gray card on your iPad in the shot, then you can use it to help color bal­ance your photo (then apply that to all the pho­tos in the same loca­tion shoot).

Port­fo­lio to Go — This is a Flickr app, that accesses your Flickr gal­leries and then you have a “port­fo­lio on the go ” to show poten­tial clients.

Smug­Mug — If you have a smug­mug account (and if you don’t, you should) this allows you to access those gal­leries and show­case them to poten­tial clients. (The app Blos­som, does the same thing but it also lets you down­load pho­tos from your account, but be warned, if you use water­marks, it down­loads the water­mark on your photo too).

Read­ing:

Flip­board — I use this to read all my news now. It can open any RSS feed (through your Google Reader Account) and then dis­plays those, or any Face­book, Twit­ter, or Flickr streams to this app and dis­plays them in a sort of “Mag­a­zine” for­mat. Visu­ally beau­ti­ful and it feels like your read­ing every­thing in a magazine.

News­Rack — If Flip­board isn’t your thing, News­rack will sync to your GoogleReader (or a few other RSS read­ers) and show you all the new posts in one place.

Instapa­per — If I find an arti­cle on a page that I want to read later, I sim­ply click on the “Read Later” book­marklet (that Instapa­per helps me install) and then I can read it later. The nice thing is, I can read the orig­i­nal ver­sion or a “stripped down” text only ver­sion (it will show pho­tos if they are in the news arti­cle, but it won’t show any ads or other pho­tos in side­bars from the orig­i­nal web page). A great way to read arti­cles when I have time.

iBooks — I use this to read all my books (aside from my pre­vi­ous eBooks I bought on eReader–they have an app too) and all my PDFs. I can even cre­ate “col­lec­tions” and sort my PDFs by cat­e­gory (comics, crafts, design, books, etc.)

Enter­tain­ment:

AirVideo — I don’t put movies on my iPad, unless they are ones I pur­chased from iTunes. For all other movies or TV shows, I use AirVideo (and its PC app, AirServer). Any video that is DRM free on my com­puter (and I put the folder loca­tion in AirServer) I can then watch or “stream” to my iPad over Wifi OR 3G. They also have a iPhone/iPod version.

Stream­ToMe — Much like AirVideo, but its strickly for audio files.

Con­clu­sion

Those are the apps I use. There are a few that I would like to get (there is one app for the iPhone that lets you take a photo of a build­ing or spot and then it can cal­cu­late what the sun will be like, from that spot, on a cer­tain day. Great for photo shoots that are out­side and you want to know where the sun will be at, for light­ing on that day. But its $50.…)

If you have any ques­tions, I would be more than happy to help you get set up to opti­mize your mobile work­ing and be as effi­cient as pos­si­ble. Just drop me a line!