Earlier, I posted my top five picks for writing and editing on the iPhone and iPod touch. See “25 iPhone apps every pocket writer and editor should consider” for part one.
Productivity apps round out the second category:
1.Evernote for iPhone , from Evernote, enables you to use the iPhone’s location awareness, camera, audio and Internet connectivity so you can create, capture and find content across platforms. It automatically synchronizes with all other versions of Evernote, including clients for OS X, Windows, Web and other mobile devices so content is accessible from anywhere.
Evernote for iPhone acts as a gateway to the Evernote Service, enbling users to easily access their content. In addition to tagging and filtering, Evernote also performs image recognition, making printed or handwritten text within images searchable. The Evernote recognition technology is optimized for camera-phone snapshots, which are often characterized by poor lighting conditions and reduced clarity.
The app and Evernote’s basic service (40MB monthly upload allowance) is free. There’s a premium service (500MB upload allowance) for $5.00 per month or $45 per year.
2.Remember the Milk, from Remember the Milk, is a popular Web-based task management tool and in conjunction with Remember the Milk of iPhone.
Keeping track of my tasks and calendar on the iPhone has been painful. The apps I’ve looked at—and there have been several—haven’t been all that useful because entering info is often too laborious. I don’t want to spend more time setting up tasks and calendar entries than it takes me to do the job.
Being able to sync with your RTM online account is one of the best features of the app. If you move around a lot, you can tag your to-dos with key words and by location using the iPhone GPS (assuming you have a 3G or 3GS.
Remember the Milk for iPhone is free for subscribers of Remember the Milk online. A Pro Account will set you back $25 per year. There’s a free 15-day free trial you you can try the service before you shell out your dough.
3.Smart Alarm, from Mobile App Center, is more than a simple alarm clock app–it’s also a weather detector and a news and stock ticker. The idea is that this app will pleasantly wake you up in the morning with one of 52 sounds, a dash of weather, a squib of news and a line or two about whether your stocks are flying or frying. In fact, if the app was capable of bringing you breakfast it would be called Smart Butler, or something like that.
Truth is, Smart Alarm works better for me as a day-time clock and timer when I work: I can keep an eye on the day’s top stories and stock performance and if I need to, set the alarm to wake me up in time to go to a meeting or better yet, home before the evening rush hour. $2.99.
4.Groups: Drag & Drop Contacts Management, from Guide Ways Technologies, makes sorting your contacts into groups as easy as falling off a roof. Launch the app and it sucks up all the names in alphabetical order from your Contacts list. Then, drag and drop your contacts in groups and email to your heart’s delight.
Once you’ve created a group, holding the Smart Group tab pops up a screen with options to email the group, rename or delete the group, and to remove all the members of the group. $2.99.
5.WritePad, from Stan Miasnikov, is mainly a note taker but it’s also a new text editor for iPhone that uses advanced handwriting recognition input (English only) as well as keyboard for text entry. It includes spell checker, context analyzer, and standard editing operations such as copy, cut, paste.
The apps recognizes cursive, print, and mixed handwriting styles. To enter text, simply write with your finger on the iPhone screen in either landscape or portrait mode. There’s no training required to start using the app but WritePad will adapt to your writing style and its accuracy will climb.
Also, you can use simple finger gestures to select text, cut, copy, paste, insert special characters such as space and return, invoke the spell checker for the selected word, correct recognized text, and gestures.
You’ll find WritePad useful as a notepad because you can store content as text files, and as an email writer because it allows you to send files via email by tapping the Send Mail button in the toolbar. Free.
