30
2010
3 Productivity Apps for your new iPad – Guest Post by Ric Dragon
An article by Josie S.
Ric Dragon is an artist/painter, jazz drummer, and CEO and chief strategist for DragonSearch, a provider of internet marketing services to Loehmanns, Steuben, and many other clients. You can read more at his company website, his personal website, on twitter @ricdragon, LinkedIn, or on Facebook.
Just last week my business partner, Don, was telling me that I needed to acquire the iPad. “Remember how the iPhone changed your relationship to Twitter? Well, the iPad is going to do the same for other things”. I knew that I had a vacation coming up, and that vacations in general can be the best time to get accustomed to new gadgetry. And, when Don talks with that certain conviction-in-the-voice, I know to listen, and heh, who really needs to have their arm twisted to get a new gadget? So, I got one.
Before I left for vacation, I chatted with Jim Edelstein from 33Oxclove, a neighboring company that produces all of the websites for a major New York museum. As part of his job, Jim spends an incredible amount of time in meetings with museum curators, vendors, and employees. You might even say he is a professional note taker. Jim suggested that I get an app called “Note Taker HD” along with a stylus. He demonstrated how simple it is to take notes, and send them to others at the end of a meeting.
The stylus actually ended up being difficult to purchase – they aren’t to be found at your local Best Buy, and I didn’t have time for an overnight shipment. Fortunately, there was an Apple store in Holyoke, a town we’d be driving through on the way to Cape Cod. I purchased a Pogo Sketch Stylus for just about $15. Any cool points I might have gotten were offset by the fact that the only available color that day was pink – entertaining my son to no end. While all three of the apps I discuss can be used without a stylus, with it, they are the proverbial “killer apps”.
Autodesk Sketchbook Pro
The first app I downloaded, though, was Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro, a drawing program. As an artist of over 30 years, the Sketchbook Pro/iPad/Stylus combination is the first piece of technology that has really gotten me excited. It’s one thing to sit at a desktop with a drawing tablet, another to be able to sit on a park bench and draw. This is the cat’s pajamas, the bee’s knees, and the best thing since sliced bread. Oh, and did I tell you, I really like it.
The majority of functions I’d consider to be de rigueur in any graphics program: different brush tips, color selectors, and of course, the ability to erase. But Sketchbook Pro also has layers, allowing you to build up different parts of an image, and maintain the ability to go back. The only change I would request on this app is that the user be able to switch more easily between drawing and erasing.
A side note: My vacation is being a houseparent at a summer camp my son is attending for string quartet musicians. I can tell you from past experience, drawing at concerts is not usually embraced by musicians – at least not when they can hear that pencil scratching away. The stylus on the iPad is perfectly silent.
iThoughts HD
I love mind mapping. I have filled many a whiteboard up with mind maps. I think there is an element of “media determinism” about it – that is, the media invokes a way of thinking that nothing else quite does. In mind mapping, you start with a central idea. From there, you stub out associated ideas – and do the same with those “sub ideas”, repeating until you run out of associations.
I could use the Sketchbook Pro tool to draw mind maps, but a real mind mapping tool does something a little different. That’s why I find iThoughts HD to be so useful. First, it’s easy to move elements around. There is also a built-in hierarchy of elements, while sometimes limiting, helps me to clarify my thinking. Also, with this app, you can collapse entire nodes, and focus on other nodes.
The ability to change colors adds a dimension that can be used for a variety of concepts – such as urgency.
Note Taker HD
This is the app about which Jim was telling me and one that he uses daily. Since I’m away from the office, I haven’t had a chance to field-test this in an actual meeting. I am, along with most people I know, a consummate note-taker. With me, it’s the activity of writing notes that helps me, somehow placing those thoughts in a different part of my brain. On the other hand, it could be nice to reference notes – something I often have a great deal of difficulty doing. Note Taker HD has a few extra features… notably, an edit screen where you can see the overall sheet of notes (thus rather small), while writing into a close-up view area. If you work in the close-up view, you can just click “advance” to the next section of the note.
For me, the iPhone really was a game changer vis-à-vis social media. Tweeting from the desktop was never going to make sense for me – I’m always too wrapped up in other activities. With the iPhone, it became something I could do in those little moments in-between. Add the camera to that, and you’ve got a veritable social media device. The iPad lacks a camera, keeping it from being a social-media-killer- device– but with apps like the ones I describe above; it should prove to be a work horse nevertheless. My problem now is I’m burdened with several devices. Perhaps I’ll pull out the mind map app and figure this out.
What are your favorite iPad apps? Do you use these apps, what’s your experience with them? Let us know in the comments.
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