Though most people still consider Blackberry the phone of choice for business users, the iPhone is quickly growing in popularity as a serious mobile solution for businesspeople on the move. Even if the only reference to business needs in Apple’s new commercials touting the FaceTime video calling feature for iPhone 4 is a man sitting in a hotel room, reconnecting with his family back home, this capability carries obvious potential for mobile business conferencing. But beyond Apple’s standard features, there’s a whole host of apps available for download that can make your iPhone a true source of productivity and efficiency. Let’s take a look at five of them.
Though Contact Hero sounds something like a video game involving fake plastic instruments, it, in point of fact, is a mobile contact solution, merging and organizing your contacts from Outlook, Gmail and other web-based email systems. The beauty of this app is the interchangeability of any of your gadgets: you can access Contact Hero from your laptop, your iPhone, and your Blackberry, without needing to synchronize your contacts. Perhaps the most useful feature is its call reminder system, aiding follow-through and preventing important calls from being forgotten. ($9.99 per month.)
This app, free with a QuickBooks online account, lets users edit and add employees, customers, and vendors; access balance sheet and profit & loss reports; and view vendor, customer, and employee lists. So, basically, everything that you can do with QuickBooks on the web, optimized for the iPhone screen.
Let’s go straight to FileMagnet’s official description because it’s quite concise and good:
FileMagnet makes it easy to copy files from your computer onto your iPhone and iPod touch. You can view all the popular file formats, including PDF, Microsoft Office, RTF, and iWork ’09, even when you’re not connected to the internet. Transferring files is effortless — FileMagnet wirelessly connects to your computer using a free program available for both Mac and Windows.
Want to share a document? The new email button allows you to send a file to your friends while on the go.
This is a great option at a reasonable price ($4.99) to handle your mobile document needs.
This simple and affordable app allows you to easily log and report hours and time from your iPhone. You can manage several projects and tasks, take notes, add time retrospectively, and even edit previous entries going back 14 days. Record Time works offline as well as on-, syncing when you reconnect. ($1.99)
OK, this one is really very cool. WorldCard Mobile allows you to input contact information to your iPhone by take a picture of business cards. Seriously. Just take a picture of any business card you get using your iPhone’s camera, and this software will recognize and sort the relevant details, adding them to your phone’s contacts. This app, which supports seven languages, costs $5.99.
What apps do you use for business?
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