Most of us have smartphones. Many have or soon will have ipads. The right productivity apps can save time and effort every day. Check out the 3 tools below and see how far the new anywhere world has advanced.
ActionComplete is a task management solution inspired by David Allen’s Getting Thing Done – The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. ActionComplete combines an app for Android phones with a Web app. It follows the Getting Things Done methodology, which focuses on management of four types of tasks:
- Actions
- Waits (Waiting for)
- Projects, and
- Ideas (Someday/Maybe)
Tasks can be assigned three types of metadata: Tags, People, and Places. You can filter on the different types.
Tungle is a scheduling app for iPhone, Blackberry and Android smartphones. It syncs – actually much more than syncs – with your calendar. What it syncs with is impressive:
- Outlook (with or without Exchange)
- Google Calendar
- Apple iCal
- Entourage for Mac
- Lotus Notes
- BlackBerry Yahoo!
- Windows Live
- TripIt
- Plancast
You can propose multiple meeting times to one or many people, inside or outside your organization, and across systems and time zones (time auto adjusted). Others can see your availability (free/busy) but not your calendar details. Similarly, they can propose meetings and times with you.
Voice Recognition on smartphones and pads can be very useful. You can request driving instructions, nearby restaurants, and so on. When taken to the next level, Speech-to-Text, you can gain an amazing productivity boost over a slow and frustrating virtual keyboard. You simply speak and your words are turned into a text message or email. Dictation speed can be up to five times faster than typing.
Dragon from Nuance Communications is the king of the hill. It has decades of experience with voice recognition/speech-t0-text software. It offers multiple apps, including:
- Dragon Dictation for iPhone and iPad
- Dragon for Email for Blackberry
- FlexT9 for Android devices
FlexT9 goes beyond speech-to-text. It supports continuous touch input (tracing), writing recognition, and tapping with predictive text technology.
All of these apps consistently receive strong reviews. Be sure to check out the requirements.
