If you haven’t noticed from my prior posts, I’m always looking for time savings and efficient ways of doing things. Using my iPad and iPhone for work and at home has allowed me to do just that. Here are several iOS apps that members of the Artisan E-Learning team love. Just $49.95 spent on these eight apps will save you time and help you work more efficiently!

1. Air Display  $9.99

Air Display is an inexpensive app that turns your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch into a wireless secondary display that works while on the same network as the main device. You can also use it to mirror your desktop, which is great for meeting with clients. It has quickly become one of my favorite apps on my iPad, and one that I use quite a bit! It’s especially helpful for people who travel for work – now you can have your second monitor without all the weight! It even allows you to take advantage of iPad’s touch features. And you can play Flash animations on the iPad using this app!

This app works great for graphic design. You can dock the tool palettes on the iPad and have the entire PC screen available to you for your photo. You can also use it in the office – now you can carry your second monitor down the hall with you and into a meeting. And you can even use this app on your iPhone, too!

2. AudioNote – Notepad and Voice Recorder  $4.99

AudioNote is an incredible note-taking and voice-recording app. When you type or draw into the app, a timestamp corresponding to the recorded audio is added to the note. That note then becomes a link to play the audio recording from that point. It allows you to go back and listed to just a section of the audio from a meeting or lecture without listening to the entire recording. When you’re playing the recording back, the notes highlight as you’re listening to the corresponding audio. You can also use your camera to add photos of slides or a blackboard to enhance your notes, and the photo acts the same way as the typed notes – just click the photo, and jump to that portion of the audio.

This app is a fantastic tool for students or business. It’s designed for the iPad, the iPhone, and the iPod touch. Diane uses it especially during client meetings. She can go back to her notes to see why we made a decision to do something at any time.

3. Dropbox  Free

Dropbox is free cloud-storage and file synchronization software. It’s no secret that the iPad and iPhone lack the ability to store and organize files – Dropbox gives me that ability. I can also use Dropbox to sync photos and videos taken on my iPad or iPhone, and I can share files in my Dropbox account with friends and family very easily.

Note: the free service is only up to 2GB. For every person who uses this link to create a Dropbox account, Dropbox will give us both 500MB free! Beyond 2GB, check this pricing page.

4. Quickoffice Pro HD  $19.99

Quickoffice Pro HD is the best Microsoft Office suite app I could find for the iPad. It works with most MS Office documents (doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, and pptx), and allows you to create, view, edit, save, and track changes directly from your iPad. It works with files you’ve received in your email or synced from the cloud, including Dropbox.

5. Goodreader for iPad  $4.99

Goodreader is a file viewer that allows you to read and annotate massive PDF and TXT files, as well as view most MS Office file types, iWork files, HTML, images, and audio/video. It allows you to synchronize your files (including using Dropbox), too. My personal favorite feature of the app is that I can open a PDF, annotate it (including signing), flatten the file to make it official, and send it. No more need for printing, signing, scanning, and then emailing back!

6. Adobe Ideas  $9.99

Adobe Ideas is a sketchpad app that allows you to use many of your favorite Photoshop tools on the go from the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll use a picture to demonstrate its capabilities. This is a simple sketch/notes Diane took from Julie Dirksen’s session on game design at ASTD TechKnowledge 2013.  Click the Adobe Ideas link above to see more shots of what Adobe Ideas is capable of.

And a couple of honorable mentions:

7. Adobe® Connect™ Mobile for iOS  Free

Adobe Connect is a paid conferencing platform that can be used for web meetings, webinars, and e-learning. If you’ve attended any of our Tools Training classes, you’ve used Adobe Connect! The Adobe Connect app is available for free for the iPad and the iPhone. While the app is universal (works as the same app on both iPad and iPhone), it functions differently on the two devices. But you can still host and manage meetings from either device and fully collaborate using whiteboards, polls, and chats. You can also use it to host or attend web meetings and webinars.

Note: In July, Diane will be hosting a free “Is E-Learning Right for You?” webinar using Adobe Connect. You’re welcome to join!

8. Waze social GPS, maps & traffic  Free

Waze is a GPS and traffic app that relies on users, rather than outdated news reports. Designed for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, this app gives you up-to-date accident reports, road closures, and gas prices. You can also get voice-guided navigation and automatic re-routing. All of this for FREE!

Now that I’ve shared a few of my favorite apps, please share some of yours!