If you’re like me then you lead a very, very busy life. I wouldn’t be able to keep track of it all as easily as I do without my iPhone. Here are some of my favourite productivity apps that keep my life in order. I use each of these at least once a day, many of them I use throughout the day. I hope you find this list useful.
ListOmni Lists – This is one of the best list maker apps on the iPhone. It’s competition List Maker, is also excellent but I prefer ListOmni because it is what I’m used to. One can create lists of any sort, each of the fields in a list item can be drawn from user-customisable dictionaries. It’s robust. The company that makes this app also makes apps for specific lists (like groceries) but this one can handle it all.
ShapeWriter – One of the coolest apps I have on the iPhone, this one is a keyboard that types as you draw your finger over the keys. Instead of tap-tap-tapping each letter, you just start at the first letter of a word and trace over the letters in the word in order. The program works surprisingly and amazingly well and you can even add custom words to the dictionary that are recognised as easily as the built-in ones. Very, very slick. Has a Lite version that is not free.
Newsstand – is my rss reader of choice. I’ve divided all my feeds into categories and I usually pick one or two categories to read on the train to work in the morning. Combined with a ReadItLater account I can easily mark articles for later reading when I have more time. Very necessary, this app is.
Read It Later – This app stores web pages for later reading. It downloads the page to your iPhone so that you can read it while offline. You can view pages as just text as well. I find this far better than bookmarking all those read-once articles. Again, another app I find very necessary. Also has a free version.
Pocket Informant – There are dozens of todo apps on the market. I use Pocket Informant because I like its user interface. There are times that I’d rather just have a simple todo list but for the times that I need complex scheduling and prioritising Informant comes through. Also has a Lite version.
Snapture – this is my camera app of choice. I like its 3-picture technology and the ability to sort pictures before saving has come in real handy.
HanDBase – I’ve reviewed this app elsewhere. I use this database every day. I’ve over 30,000 records in one of my databases and it handles it flawlessly.
HiCalc – I don’t need a calculator all the time but when I do this is the one I use. It’s amazing, has more features than I’ll ever need. This puppy does thousands of conversions (even clothing sizes!), graphing, any base calculations, RPN or standard, and well, much much more.
Concise Oxford English Dictionary – As an American living in Britain it comes in handy having a dictionary that displays the local language. This edition has a sound module that I find to be an incredible waste of space. Many of the pronunciations in the dictionary do not match the pronunciations of my colleagues at work. We’ve had a great laugh over the dictionary’s pronunciation of words like “typo,” the dictionary says “tippo”.
Weatherbug Elite – I use this instead of Apple’s weather app. This app has considerably more detail than the built-in iPhone weather app. Of course, living near the coast one can hardly count on a single description for weather throughout a 24 hour day…
Simple Mind – I’m using SimpleMind more than iThoughts these days. This will probably change with iThoughts’ next version but who knows? Simple Mind is quick and easy mind map creation. I use it to help me organise complex problems, to sort details and to see them later in a context that is understandable.
Awesome Note – This is my notebook of choice, there of dozens of notebook apps to choose from, I just happen to like this one’s visual thing. I do most of my writing in Shape Writer and this app just acts as a storage place.
momo – Probably my most used app on the phone. This keeps track of those random thoughts I have throughout the day. I can type em, tag em, and forget em. They are date-stamped and tagged so I can find them easily again. What a neat thing. It’s like a personal twitter, diary thing.
Pocket Money – this is my budgeting app. Keeps track of my accounts and spending. I like the UI on this one, it has a big number pad for entering amounts and that feature alone makes it better than those that don’t have such a keypad. The graphical display showing budget amounts, amount spent, and progress of the month is excellent. It has a lite version that you try before you buy.
I use many more apps on and off but these are my mainstays. What are some of your most-used productivity apps?
User Interface Explorations 