All Entries Tagged With: "Productivity"

Home Design 3D – CAD for the Pad [Video]

Useful apps are no longer a minor contingent at the App Store. The newest CAD app for iPad, Home Design 3D, follows on the shirtsleeves of the semi-successful design app, Home 3D for iPad, but already looks a lot slicker. ‘Course it ain’t always easy to make an app that runs as well as it looks, especially if it looks this good. Home Design 3D is an iPad port of the desktop software of the same name – er – if you switch the words around a bit. The desktop app has a million 3D objects and textures to furnish your designs with, simultaneous 2D/3D plans, and loads more. TMA will be taking a closer look at Home Design 3D when its final draft is drawn up (get it?). In the meantime, feast your eyes on LiveCAD’s handiwork (video demo after the gap):

http://www.livecad.net/EN/
http://www.facebook.com/livecad.net

Dropbox is my friend

Dropbox is awesome.  Go and get it, especially if you work with teams that must share files on a regular basis. Our app development team works from Montana, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, Woodside, and Palo Alto on a day to day basis, so its critical that we have some way to share the work that we do.  We tried a number of different web applications, and by far, Dropbox works the best.

Create your own PDF files on your iPhone and iPad with Save2PDF

EuroSmartz, the first dev team to bring functionality of printing photos, contacts, web pages and more to the iPhone back in 2008 (see our PrintBureau Review), has delivered another “World’s first” in Save2PDF. With Save2PDF, users can now easily create PDF files on the go while using nothing but their iPhones and iPads. The unique app will convert the most common file formats into a PDF, including Word, Excel, Pages, Numbers, Web Pages, Emails and much more. The other cool feature of Save2PDF is the ability to select individual pages from multiple document/PDF sources to create a single and new PDF file.

There’s currently nothing like it at the App Store and iDevice users who’ve always wanted to create their own PDF files should definitely check it out. Save2PDF for the iPhone goes for $4.99, while the iPad version is $9.99. Demo video and more info after the break.

Save2PDF for iPad, 5.4 MB – $9.99
Save2PDF for iPhone, 8.0 MB – $4.99

HiFutureSelf In Review – The Future Is Now…Going To Remind Us Of Something

Todo apps are great. They can help you stay on top of all the things that need getting done and as far as your iDevice goes, there are thankfully plenty of options available. One “problem” however, is that most of them are very much “list” based. There are times when you just want to keep things simple, like when all you need is a reminder for something – this is where HiFutureSelf comes into play.

PDF Expert for iPad now Supports Signatures

Readdle, makers of the trusty ReaddleDocs app, has just updated their PDF Expert for iPad (see our iPhone review) with 2 useful new features. Already able to annotate text and allow for handwritten notes, the app now gives you the ability to include signatures into any PDF file. Rather than have the user scribble them out every single time it’s needed, PDF Expert provides a template area where you can carve out your signature beforehand. Once it’s created, simply tap and hold on the area of screen you’d like for it to appear and choose the option “Signature”. Rinse and repeat. With the template, it eliminates any potential inconsistencies and makes the process much quicker.

Omnifocus iPhone and iPad apps Updated

Omnifocus, long considered as THE premier Task Management tool that is based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, has now been updated on both the iPhone and iPad to fully support the upcoming iOS 4.2 update. The biggest addition is background sync completion, which means that users can now finally close the app even though it hasn’t completed the sync process. Like many faithful Omnifocus addicts on the iPhone, I found it counter productive that I had to wait until sync was 100% done before I could exit and do other things on the iPhone. With this new feature, it’ll be much easier to quickly add something into the inbox, hit the sync icon and leave without further delay.

AppSwitch in Review – Taking the power into our own hands!

One of the more confusing aspects for both the geeks and casual users of iOS 4.0 is definitely the multitasking part. A friend of mine, after having recently bought an iPhone 4 complained to me about a bug which caused the whole screen to shift. Only when it happened again and I was around to witness it did I reveal to her the secret — that it was in fact the multitasking tray. And I’m not even going to start about the bizarre idea of mixing in there all recently opened apps regardless of whether they support multitasking or not. But thankfully for this last part, a clever team of devs  - XCool Apps – have come up with a completely legitimate solution – AppSwitch.

GoodReader PDF reader now supports Annotations, Highlights and more

.
GoodReader, arguably the best and most popular PDF reader app for the iPhone and iPad, has just received the highly anticipated update that brings about a new and significant feature: Annotations. No longer are you able to just browse your PDF files with GoodReader, you can now highlight and markup text (underline, crossout, insert etc), create sticky notes and even scribble your own notes (along with lines, arrows and circles) right on the document.

This 3.0 update rocks. I’ve tested the latest version on both my iPhone and iPad and the annotation features work wonderfully. Being able to finally make notes and highlight the pdf file just like you would with a text book or magazine is absolutely indispensable. Best of all, both the iPhone and iPad versions of GoodReader currently costs only $0.99, which is a fraction of what you’d pay for similar apps that also support annotations. If you’re in need of a highly capable PDF reader, there’s really no better option on the App Store.

Good.iWare, GoodReader for iPhone, 19.8 MB – $0.99
Good.iWare, GoodReader for iPad, 11.1 MB – $0.99

Pocket Informant (Calendar & Tasks) in Review – A done task a day keeps the world at bay…

I have never been a big fan of keeping a ToDo list. It always felt that it takes more time to write things down to do later, than actually doing them, thus wasting valuable minutes and attention span. But that was until I became a project manager. Once the burden of several complicated projects fell on me simulain, I noticed more and more that unless I jot things down, I tend to forget them occasionally. But we’re in the iCentury, right? So when simple jotting is not enough, enter the various Task keeping apps and more specifically – Pocket Informant (Calendar & Tasks).

Appigo’s Todo task manager now supports iOS 4 features

Appigo’s Todo, a highly capable and fully featured task management app for the iPhone/iPod Touch has just received a significant update that finally takes full advantage of iOS 4.0. Todo now supports Hi-Res graphics for the Retina Display, multitasking, ability to create multiple alerts per task and even local notification. For those who rely on Todo to keep track of their busy work schedules, these new additions will undoubtedly make the app even more handy.

Coinciding with this 4.0 update, Appigo has also launched their new Todo Online service, which allows for over-the-air Cloud sync for all your iDevices that run Todo. The asking price for this new feature will cost $19.99, and a 14 day trial subscription is also available. Make sure you grab this update if you’ve already purchased the app.

Appigo, Todo (TMA Review), 5.4 MB – $4.99
Appigo, Todo Lite, 5.5 MB – Free