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From one-person shops to giant enterprises, if businesses agree on anything right now it's "iPad Yay." The Apple tablet hasn't even reached the terrible twos yet, but it's clearly making its presence felt across countless verticals and different industries. For at least a couple of mobile professional writers (who might have been termed "ink-stained wretches" in times gone by), the iPad's capability as a writing tool has led it to largely replace their laptops for day-to-day work. While consumers may be the drivers behind most iPad sales, chances are that the iPad-toting professional on your gift list is using his or her iPad for a combination of personal enjoyment and work tasks, so why not find a gift that supports and extends the biz savvy of everyone's favorite quasi-computer? Here's our brief list of gift ideas that you could conceivably write off on your taxes. Cloudy Days If your business iPad user is a sole proprietor or running a small business, they don't have to compromise about getting big-biz-level enterprise tools anymore. The same Google Apps or Box.com infrastructure that supports huge corporations can be theirs for a modest investment. Consider gifting a pro Dropbox account (50 GB is quite a bit of room to maneuver), or going with Box or Egnyte for more sophisticated file services & sharing. (Dropbox's Teams product is great, too, but requires more coordination with other colleagues.) Maybe a Pogoplug account, or a subscription to one of 37 Signals' highly-regarded services? If your businessperson is already a user of 37 Signals' Backpack business collaboration tool, the $9.99 Pouch app makes their iPad a fully-featured Backpack client. Another collaboration platform, Pagico, just released its official iPad app last week. Then again, what we want from the cloud, often as not, is access to the files we have sitting right there on our computer at the office or at home. With the free Polkast service and iPad app, business users can quickly get to their PC or Mac storage over local networks or remotely as long as the computer is on. It's not the sort of thing that BigCorp IT departments find particularly appealing, but for a lean and mean solo operation or small team it might just do the trick. Speaking of big IT, the pricey ($29.99) but indispensable LogMeIn Ignition client makes it easy to remotely control one or hundreds of remote computers from the iPad's Read More

Continuing our focus on business apps for the iPad, today we look at tools for visualizing data and information. The iPad's interface begs to be used for manipulating visual information, and it certainly delivers. And if you're used to creating charts and diagrams at your desk with Microsoft Excel or Visio, these five apps will deliver comparable tools that you can use from anywhere. Numbers is the spreadsheet application Apple's iWork suite. The iPad version, like the desktop version (and most spreadsheet applications), can create various types of charts and visualizations from data within spreadsheets. OmniGraffle is an iPad app for building charts, diagrams and other visualizations. It's pretty expensive at $49.99, but it has a dedicated following. It's also available for OSX. OmniGraphSketcher is a cheaper alternative priced at $14.99. We also covered Roambi Visualizer in our round-up of business intelligence tools for the iPad. It can visualize data from sources such as SAP Business Objects, SAP Crystal Reports, IBM Cognos, Excel and Salesforce.com. The free version only works with Excel, CSV files and HTML. The pro version, which costs $99 a year per user, adds support for Google Docs and Salesforce.com. Pricing varies for the enterprise edition, which offers support for many more formats. On the lower end, Easy Chart HD is a simple and inexpensive ($.99) way to create and share bar, line, pie and sidebar charts. For those just looking for a way to organize concepts, thoughts and ideas on the go, Instaviz is a diagramming app for building flowcharts and mindmaps. Read More

Dec 29th 2009 at 9:00PM My favorites are, GV Mobile (Cydia)Tweetie 2 (App Store)Price is Right (App Store)The Time (App Store)Last.fm (App Store)Backgrounder (Cydia) Check out my website, it is home to dozens of tutorials for Mac OS X at http://www.mactuts.co.cc My Favourite iPhone Apps Weather Pro-... well, I am British Remember the Milk - For GTD - Things to Do - synchs with Outlook, Web and my iPhone Evernote - for Notes & Web Clips ooTunes for Radio - anywhere Tweetdeck Sky Mobile TV, Sky+ Remote record, Sky News, Sky Soccer Score Centre TUAW / Engadget - for my Apple centric techie goodness Pastebot - awesome and simple app for copy paste on and between iPhone and Macbook / iMac Spotify - not too happy about the monthly cost but I need it for the iPod Touch in my little boys room Omni Focus for a simple Project Management tool Grocery iQFacebooktwc MAXSportacular Mainstays on my Homescreen are... Two of the best designed apps:-Ramp Champ-Jamie Oliver's 20 Min Meals Things I use the most:-Twitteriffic-Facebook-ShopShop My list TweetieBeejiveFacebookBattle.net AuthenticatorConvertbotStanzaPhotoshop.comKotoba!Wikipanion+Space Invaders Infinite GeneMinigoreEDGE (at least, when it's been on the App Store)CanabaltTap Tap Revenge 3Pocket God MLB.com At BatTwitterrific PremiumAmazon.comeBayDelicious LibraryNavigonGrocery IQ ShazamHopStopLazyTextReelDirectorTwitbird ProAir MouseChaosDragon Dictation My list:facebookCNNUSA todaybeehive IMRhapsodynavigonscrabblelast.fmrecordereBayps mobile NimbuzzTweetieTV ForecastPanoramaRadioBoxAccuWeatherWifiTrakDropboxPing!BroadcasterMyspaceQuickPicInstapaperTomTom LogMeInFieldrunnersBomboozleBix Quickoffice, Dragon dictation, hp iprint, todo, facebook, sketchbook, sketches 2, Jotnot scanner, N. O. V. A, madden 10, real tennis 09, Lose it, espn scorecenter, mma torch. I think I have a pretty good blend of work and play in my must have list TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog) is a website devoted to tips, reviews, news, analysis and opinion on everything Apple. © 2011 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved. We value our readership, especially when we receive tips which help us write compelling content. Use this form to send us a tip. Note: Some fields are required. Read More

No one likes poring over spreadsheets, especially on the iPhone’s relatively small display. It would be nice if there were some way to break down spreadsheet information into visual representations that actually make sense.  Thankfully, there’s an iPhone app for that. Roambi Visualizer turns your iPhone into a handy spreadsheet cheat-sheet that converts your information into simple-yet-informative charts and graphs that look as good as they are helpful. To use Roambi Visualizer, you’ll first have to sign up for a Roambi account on the company’s website. Then, simply upload your data-packed spreadsheet through the web-based interface and choose the type of chart/graph you’d like to use to display your data – from sales reports to employee profiles to demographic data, Roambi will probably have a graph to fit your needs. Then, when you’re satisfied with Roambi’s analysis of the data, you can push the eye-catching charts and graphs to your iPhone. Roambi Visualizer is an incredibly useful app if you deal with spreadsheets often. If you deal with obscure or ridiculously complex data, don’t expect Roambi to turn all that noise into pretty graphs, but most people probably won’t run into that problem. Best of all, the app is free on the iPhone AppStore. Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see... Read More

Maybe it's odd to be recommending iPhone apps right now, with the house of cards that is the confused App Store policy falling down on Apple's head. But business users, we know you've got no time for listening to the woes of developers. You need to get things done. From file sharing and mobile meetings to serious data analysis and business intelligence, here are nine of the coolest apps for enterprise iPhone users that we could find. Considering the economy, we also tried to stick to the free and low-cost options, and you'd be surprised just how much you can get for so little. For data geeks, this is the coolest enterprise app ever made. Roambi is basically a visualizer for reports and business intelligence, and the enterprise server lets you connect with data from applications like Excel, Salesforce.com, Web Intelligence and Crystal Reports. If you haven't taken a look at this, go do so right now. Cost: freeGet it Box.net is a SaaS collaboration and file-sharing platform that positions itself as a SharePoint alternative. The free mobile app, which is also available on BlackBerry, lets you stay up to date on the files being shared in your company. There are other file-sharing and FTP apps out there, but Box.net is fast, is reliable, and has the right approach to collaboration. Cost: freeGet it I prefer Fuze Meeting's mobile version for meetings and Web conferencing to the Cisco WebEx iPhone app. It works just as reliably and has a chat feature that's on par with others, but it's a much more intuitive and interesting experience. That's sure to be a win when it comes to holding people's attention during mobile meetings. Cost: freeGet it Bump isn't limited strictly to business, but it's the best business card replacement on the iPhone. All you have to do is open the app, hold your phone, and then gently touch hands in the fist bump position. That's it. There are other virtual contacts applications, but the physical action required in Bump is just cool. Adding a simple meatspace component was a stroke of genius and makes Bump a joy to use. Cost: freeGet it The best thing about this expense recorder is that zero functionality is withheld in the free version; you're just limited to 10 expenses. Entering your data is easy, but the two really nice features are how they're viewed and what you Read More