• Kindle & iBooks – The Kindle and iBooks readers are the only apps you’ll probably need for reading books, and PDF files that people email to you. Both Do are excellent eBook readers, but books typically cost less in the Kindle store. On the other hand, I’ve found it much easier to get PDF files into the iBooks reader, so you’ll want to have both installed on your device. Don’t waste your time on the Kobo reader.
• Zite & Flipboard - Zite is a free personalized magazine for your iPad that automatically learns what you like and gets smarter every time you use it. Flipboard on the other hand had a little bit slicker interface than Zite, but it does not learn your likes and dislikes as you read over time, but stick with the sites and categories you’ve chosen to read. I’d try both out to see which you like better.
• Facebook & Path - Almost everyone is on Facebook now, and if you are, you should install the Facebook app. The user experience using the app is much more responsive and polished than the mobile web browser interface. You might also want to try out Path. Path allows you to post through to Facebook if you choose, or limit your posts to other Path users.  If you try it, I suspect you’ll like it.
• Evernote - An excellent tool for capturing, syncing data between your desktop and cell phone. I love the ability it gives me to take a picture of a white board, and then later do a key word search on the text that Evernote has OCR’ed for me. I like to call it my “external brain”.

• DropBox – DropBox, combined with Document to Go Premium is a great solution for those who want to be able to edit MS Office documents on their mobile device, and have those files automatically sync back to their desktop or laptop computer.  See my previous Blog post for more details.
• Documents To Go Premium ($17) – Open & edit Word, Excel & PowerPoint Documents from all the most popular cloud sources: Google Docs, DropBox, Box.net & SugarSync.
• Notability ($1) – An excellent tool for taking notes, that also allows you to record audio and sync it with your notes as you take them, as well as import and annotate PDF files.
• Gmail – If you use Gmail, you’re punishing yourself by not downloading the Gmail app for your iPhone and/or iPad. The Apple mail app is ok, but you’ll be much more comfortable in the native Gmail app.
• GoTasks – I use the task manager built into Gmail, so this free app has been very helpful in giving me a elegant app interface into those tasks.  I actually prefer GoTasks to the native Google interface.
• TripIt – “Tripit turns all your flight, hotel and rental car confirmation emails into simple, mobile travel itineraries just by hitting forward.”  Once you’ve used TripIt, you’ll never go back to managing your travel itineraries any other way.
• Google Translation & Google App – Google translate let’s you type or speak phrases and give’s you back a translation in the language of your choice. The Google search app allows you to take pictures and traslate the text into another language.  It can also take a picture of a business card and add it to your contacts on your iPhone.
• Flixster – Want to get quick reviews for movies, or find out what time a show is starting locally, Flixster comes to the rescue. Flixster’s critics and audience ratings are usually very helpful.
• Photosynth – A great free tool from Microsoft for taking panoramic photos with your iPhone.
• Downcast ($2) – If you are a podcast listener, I highly recommend you try out Downcast.  Why? 1. you can skip ahead 30 seconds or 2 minutes with a press of a button. 2. You can download your podcasts over the air and not have to plug into your main computer to update your podcasts. 3. You can start listening to a podcast as soon as it starts downloading rather than be forced to wait until it’s finished downloading. 4. Lastly, if you want to seed up your listening experience you have your choice of 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2, 2.5 or 3 times faster than normal.
• AirVideo ($3) - If you already have a video on your desktop computer, but you don’t want to have to spend the time and effort into converting it into an iPad friendly format, Air Video allows you to simultaneously trans-code and stream the video to your iPad or iPhone over your wifi network.  This works wonderfully when you’re at home, but will not work when you’re on the road.  Even so, Air Video is a app I use on a weekly basis.
• Navionics ($15) - If you are a sailer or boater with an iPad 3G or iPhone, Navionics Marine software is a must buy! Not only does the software track your cruises, but gives you access to tide and current information.  Once your done on the water, you can upload your cruise track to Facebook, or email it to yourself or to your friends to view in Google Earth.
• ShipFinder - Ship Finder provides a near real time map show the location of commercial shipping in coastal waters. If you are interested in shipping, cruising or sailing in ports and locations across the world, this is an app that you’ll enjoy.
• Marine Conditions for Victoria BC – While this is more of a mobile web app than a true iPhone or iPad app, it is something I wrote myself. It allow you to view up to date weather, current and tide information for the Victoria, BC, Canada area on your mobile device. Enjoy!

Serious Tools

• Evernote – Cost: Free or $5 / month – An excellent tool for capturing, syncing data between your desktop and cell phone. I love the ability it gives me to take a picture of a white board, and then later do a key word search on the text that Evernote has OCR’ed for me. – http://evernote.com
• Google Mobile App – Free – The app’s easy-to-use voice or image search feature locates what you are looking for without typing. Try an image search with Book or DVD covers, bar codes or house hold items. Google Goggles is a useful and fun tool. – http://www.google.com/mobile/google-mobile-app/
• Dragon Dictation – Free – Speech to text app that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text content for everything from email messages, SMS, Facebook or blog posts – http://www.dragonmobileapps.com/
• Read it Later – Cost: Free – Allows you to bookmark interesting news stories on your desktop computer and then read those articles on your iPhone when you have a spare minute or two. It re-formats pages to make them easier to read on a small screen. – http://readitlaterlist.com
• myHomework – Free – Allows you to keep track of you homework, classes, projects and tests. If you need help staying organized this may be a useful tool for you. A great way to get your mom to stop nagging you about your homework. – http://myhomework.rigoneri.com/
• Wunderlist – Free – To Do list for iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac & Windows. An excellent generic GTD or Getting Things Done tool. iPhone/iPod Touch, Mac & Windows applications. – http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist/
• Mind Maps – Cost: Free or $7 – Turns your iPhone into a brainstorming, idea collection and thought structuring device – http://simpleapps.eu/simplemind
• iBooks – Free – a free ebook reader from Apple that allows you to read PDF files, and free ePub files from the internet. You can also purchase popular copyrighted books from Apple. – http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/ibooks.html
• YouTube – Free – Your teacher can’t explain something to you so that you can understand?  Try searching for the topic on YouTube and see if there is someone who can give you a good explanation. More often that not, you’ll find a master teacher that has taken the time to record a video for you. – http://youtube.com
• Google Docs – Free – Google Docshas real time collaboration capabilities, with built in version control, and all you need is a web browser.  If I was back in school, this would be the only tool I’d use for group projects. – http://docs.google.com

Fun & Useful Tools: They won’t necessarily help you with your school work, but they are cool none the less.

• StarWalk – Cost: $3 – Tilt your iPhone towards the sky to and the image on your screen will correspond to the area of the sky you are pointing your phone towards. A very cool app. – http://vitotechnology.com/star-walk.html
• Urban Spoon – Cost: Free – One of the funnest ways to find restaurants in your home town or on the road. Check out the “scope” to see how we might be finding our way around unfamiliar locations: visiting a new city or unfamiliar shopping mall – http://urbanspoon.com
• Run keeper – Cost: Free or $10 – A great tool that maps your runs for you via GPS. The integration between the mobile app and their website is outstanding. – http://runkeeper.com

1. Take notes. Taking notes in Evernote is way better than searching for that pad of paper that’s lost or at home. It’s also better than a text document on your computer because either you won’t remember the name of the document, you won’t have that computer, or you will have deleted the document inadvertently.

2. Take pictures. Got into a fender bender? Take a picture of both cars, the other car’s license plates, and the other driver’s license. Drink a great bottle of wine? Take a picture of the label. See a book that you must read? Take a picture of the cover. Evernote has a great iPhone app that enables you to upload these pictures directly to your account.

3. Save documents. When I receive a document (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, or PDF) that I’ll need again, I forward it to Evernote for safekeeping. This is easy because Evernote provides a unique email address to enter documents in your account. I do the same for pictures that people send me. This is very useful when you use more than one computer to create documents or send/receive email.

4. Photograph business cards. Rather than collecting a pile of business cards that you’ll never go through, photograph them with your iPhone and send their images to Evernote. Evernote recognizes text on the card, so you can search for names such as “Apple” or “John” when that’s the only thing you can remember about the person. If you’re using Evernote on a mobile phone, it can also geotag the photo so that if you can only remember that you met the person in Cupertino, you can still find it. And you can save trees: When someone hands you her card, take a picture of it and hand it back.

5. Track expenses. When you get a business receipt, photograph it, and send it to Evernote. Then you or your secretary can grab it later for expense reports and tracking. I lose many of my receipts, but if I stick them in Evernote, there’s a backup when I need them. If you’re really anal, you can configure your scanner to sendyour receipts to Evernote so you have great looking scanned receipts.

6. Store your online passwords and receipts. Whenever I buy something online or create an online account, I forward the confirmation or receipt to Evernote. Now when I forget my password, registration number, or date of purchase, I don’t have to go through all sorts of gyrations to recover them. (This happens approximately once per week.) You can, by the way, encrypt portions of documents at Evernote for greater security.

7. Retain news and content from websites. As you come across interesting article, use the Evernote web clipper to review and use later. It’s much more likely you’ll read these articles than if you bookmarked it unless you’re a fanatic about processes such as organizing, synching, and reviewing bookmarks. Even if you are, bookmarks often break when URLs change. It’s much better to have captured the article once and for all.

8. Record the wisdom of whiteboards. Think of Evernote as a poor man’s Smartboard to convert text on a whiteboard to a digital format. This means that after the enjoyable day at the company offsite, just take a picture of the whiteboard and send it to Evernote. Evernote will scan the text so that you can search for the word “mission” to find the fifty-word mission statement that you promptly forgot. This works for projected slides, too.

9. Dictate your thoughts. The Evernote iPhone application enables you to record your thoughts and then upload it to your account. This is perfect for when you have a brilliant thought and want to ensure that it’s not lost among the detritus in your brain. If you give your secretary access to your account, you could make a dictation on the fly, and he can listen to it back at the office. [I personally use Reqall for transcribing text - Rich]

One thing I’d add to Guy’s list is Evernote’s ability to consolidate your itinerary into one place when you’re travelling.  Very handy indeed.

Evernote allows you to clip web pages, images, PDF file, word documents, etc, on your computer, and then access them on your iPhone!  Evernote makes all of the files full text search-able on your desktop and your iPhone.

Evernote

On the iPhone itself, Evernote can be a wonderful tool for capturing thoughts and images while you’re away from your office, or accessing things on your cell phone that you’ve captured on your desktop computer.  In my office, the easiest way for me to record things it by typing, or better yet, copying and pasting.  Away from my office, typing anything of length on the iPhone can be painful.  Thankfully Evernote gives you options.  First, you can type in, or edit notes already in Evernote.  So if my itinerary that I’ve put in Evernote changes, I can go in and edit the text to reflect the change, just like I can in the desktop version of Evernote.

Accessing Clipped Articles in the Library: You’re in the library and need find the reference in an online article that you clipped so you can do further research in the musty stacks.  Take our your iPhone, launch Evernote, do a key word search for the note you’re looking for, and in seconds you have the full article in front of you.

Evernote on the iPhone

I also have the option of making a audio note.  The note is recorded on the iPhone, and then synced with my Evernote account so that it will be downloaded to my computer(s) next time I log on.  I can then do what ever I need to with the information in the audio note.  An interesting feature that I have not needed, but could be useful, is that the iPhone tags each audio or text note with the GPS coordinates where the note was taken.

Lastly you can take pictures of things you want to remember in store them in Evernote. An example of how you could use this is that you can take a picture of a sign, and Evernote will make the text in the picture full text search-able for you.  One way that I use this feature personally is to put all of my favourite Dilbert and Calvin & Hobbes cartoons into Evernote so that I can search the cartoons’ text for key words.  It is not perfect (as it depends on the clarity of the words), but it’s pretty good.

Searching for Text in Photos and Drawings: You’re looking for the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon that you clipped last year, as it fits in perfectly to the lecture on “Risk Analysis” you’re about to give. Simply open Evernote on your iPhone or desktop computer and do a key word search for text in the cartoon.  If the text is relatively clear, you’ll have the cartoon in front of you in seconds.

One specific application that I love is using Evernote for traveling.  I add my itinerary, my car rental, hotel and conference information into Evernote so that I can access it anywhere.

For the non iPhone users, Evernote has BlackBerry and Windows Mobile versions of their software, as well as Windows and Mac client software.   If Evernote is not installed on a computer you are using, or if you are using a public computer, you can always use the web based version of Evernote, which is quite capable.