I got an iPad! Now what?
January 19, 2011
So you got a new iPad for Christmas, and it’s just the best thing since your first 5-lb cell phone: gorgeous display, the friendly familiarity of your iPhone, thousands of apps available, and that intangible “cool” factor that sparks interested questions and envious glances from friends and co-workers.
But the holidays are over, this lovely piece of technology is laying on your desk at work, and you find yourself wondering, “OK, so what can I do with this thing?”
The iPad is not a laptop replacement, nor is it meant to be. The laptop/notebook computer is great if your primary workday task is creating or editing data – think creating documents or spreadsheets or using your accounting software. In these examples, you are creating new data, and the laptop or notebook has software installed such as Microsoft Word and Excel, or financial software such as QuickBooks or Peachtree Accounting, that allow you to create and manage data. These devices also have plenty of storage space for the new files you are creating.
If your workday involves lots of data review, however, the iPad can be quite useful. If a majority of your time is spent reading email, reading/reviewing documents (Word, Excel, PDF, etc.), reading/researching content available on the Web, or presenting documents to clients or prospective clients, then the iPad may be a great tool for you.
Following are just a few of the ways we use the iPad here at SPINEN. You can find the apps listed below in the iTunes store online, using iTunes software on your desktop, or from the “App Store” app on your iPad or iPhone.
Review & Research: Instapaper, Evernote, Pages, Numbers
Instapaper
Throughout the day, most of us are doing several things at once – sometimes to the point that the workday feels like a never-ending juggling act. Those things that take more than a few minutes often get pushed aside. Here at SPINEN, one of those things is reading; we constantly find blog entries, articles, whitepapers, etc. on current and emerging technologies that fall into our “must read” category. Other times we conduct research for a client, and make note of resources available online pertaining to our research.
During a typical (i.e., hectic) day, it’s hard to find adequate time to read these items – and that’s why we love Instapaper. This simple application gives you a “Read Later” bookmark that you can use to note items you have found online and flag them for later review. You can also email links or forward long email messages, such as newsletters, directly to your Instapaper account. Each account has its own secret email address; anything you send to that address gets added to Instapaper.
The available iPhone/iPad app lets you see a list of the items you have flagged and read them as you have time. We find this a great way of making use of “down time” – while traveling, waiting for appointments, etc. An Instapaper account is free, as is the special bookmark folder for your Web browser on your PC.
At the time of this writing, the iPhone/iPad app is free (with ads) or $4.99 for the Pro (no ads) version.
Evernote
Where Instapaper helps you remember things you need to read, Evernote helps you remember everything. Evernote lets you capture almost anything – snips from Web pages, photos you have taken with your phone, emails, notes and to-do lists you create on the fly, voice memos, and more. You can organize the information you collect into multiple “notebooks,” allowing you to create notebooks for home and work, or for different projects and clients. You can view info you have collected in Evernote in the Evernote software on your (PC or Mac) computer, or using the apps available for iPhone/iPad, as well as Android, BlackBerry and other platforms.
One of the fascinating features of Evernote is that is incorporates an automatic OCR (optical character recognition) function. For example, at a meeting, you take a picture of a whiteboard full of handwritten notes with you iPhone, and send it to Evernote. Evernote will automatically try to recognize the handwritten text in the image, and turn it into editable text (you may be familiar with scanners that have this capability). We have tested this function and were pleasantly surprised at its accuracy.
For individual use, the desktop and iPhone/iPad applications are free. Evernote does offer a “Premium” account, which offers a larger upload allowance each month, allows more file types to be uploaded, and permits collaboration among multiple users.
Pages & Numbers
For you Windows users, Pages and Numbers are the Apple equivalents of Microsoft’s Word and Excel applications, respectively. You do not have to have these apps to read and review documents – right off the shelf, the iPad will allow you to view Word and Excel documents (as well as other common file types, such as PDF). If you need to edit these documents, however, you will need Pages and Numbers.
Most of you will probably prefer the comfort of your desktop keyboard, or even a laptop keyboard, to the iPad’s touchscreen version. Not that the iPad onscreen keyboard does not work well – it is great for taking quick notes or dashing off a reply to that urgent email – but for long editing sessions, a regular keyboard is more comfortable for many users. But if you need the ability to do light editing of Word or Excel documents with your iPad, these are the apps for you.
Pages and Numbers are $9.99 each.
