CloudOn has introduced version 2.0 of their document viewing and editing service, adding several key new features. First, Box has been added as a cloud storage service alongside Dropbox, with plans to add more services in the future, according to CEO Milind Gadekar when I spoke with him about the update recently. Box support should come as a boon to business users looking to take advantage of CloudOn, as according to Chris Yeh, Vice President of Platform at Box, “Over 120,000 businesses and 82% of the Fortune 500 use Box to store, manage and access their business content.”

The other major feature of CloudOn 2.0 is Adobe Reader support for PDFs and any other files that support their viewer, including Photoshop files, and images. The PDF viewer is more extensive than built-in support, including support for features like 3D modeling in PDFs that the iPad’s built-in PDF viewer does not support. This goes along with improvements to streaming performance in the newer version, the ability to open attachments in CloudOn and email attachments directly from the app. Emails will display as being from the same address as the user’s CloudOn account. The free update is available now.

FREE!

CloudOn

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-01-03 :: Category: Productivity

Learning and discovering new passions makes life more exciting and fulfilling. I think we can all agree on that. But what’s a cool new way of learning? Why not try Snapguide? It’s a new app that allows users to share their passions, as well as discover new ones.

It’s all based around the concept of step-by-step guides. Users can create their own step-by-step guides as easily as they can check out other people’s creations. There are already hundreds to choose from, covering a wide range of subjects such as cookery, gardening, repair work, arts and crafts, fashion tips and entertaining.

Those who feel they can add their own knowledge can create their own guides by taking photos and videos of their project through their iPhone then adding captions either by typing or using the app’s voice-to-text functionality.

Sharing these guides is as simple as possible with options to post guides to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or send via email.

Snapguide is available now and it’s entirely free.

FREE!

Snapguide

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-03-29 :: Category: Lifestyle

Most businesses are struggling with the concept of enterprise mobility, or rather, how to keep track of data and keep it secure when your workforce is scattered and working from phones and tablets rather than office computers. Quickoffice is offering a whole suite of solutions with their new ProSelect HD app.

This new app support WiFi file sharing, cloud storage services, cut/copy/paste, ‘Open In’ support and SaveBack™, Quickoffice’s patent-pending API. One of the most useful features of ProSelect HD is its ability lock files in their original location, preventing users from saving files and documents in unsecured locations and potentially causing loss or leakage of data. The app also supports native iOS file encryption and email, which makes it very easy to integrate onto an iPhone or iPad.

The app is available via Apple’s Store Volume Purchasing for Business and costs $29.99. Anyone interested should get in touch with Quickoffice via email and send along their Apple Program ID.

Office² HD is one of a select few quality iPad apps that allow Microsoft Works users to access, work on, and keep MS formatting. Microsoft made a lot of late Q4 entries onto the App Store and many are hinting at and hoping they will bring their own mobile suite of productivity apps to iOS soon. Until that happens, however, students and business people who are PC/MS users have had to rely on third-party apps, which have real limitations, particularly when it comes to advanced editing and layout on Apple tablets.

ByteSquared aims to change that. A recent update to Office² HD offers Word users near-desktop quality creation and editing tools for both .doc and .docx files.

Simon Bates, CEO, states: “Office² HD’s latest update transforms mobile office productivity from a secondary method of completing office tasks to a powerful and even preferential manner of quickly and efficiently keeping in touch with your office. I feel this new version easily makes Office² HD the app of choice for editing Microsoft Office documents on iPad.”

We won’t know if it’s “preferential” to an MS app until there is one, but it’s a big step forward and both Word users and Apple should benefit from an app that puts iPad productivity solutions to non-Apple-devoted hands.

$7.99

Office² HD

iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2010-04-01 :: Category: Business

Car Trip is an inexpensive app that helps users while driving. It keeps track of the exact distance till the destination as well as plans the most advantageous route to take to get there.

For the fuel conscious, it also calculates how much fuel is required and how much it’ll cost the driver, according to the average speed of the car. It might be a feature already available on some cars but for those of us with older cars, it’s an extremely useful concept for long trips.

The app is laid out in a simple manner and even keeps track of the next five days of weather reports which is useful for planning ahead.

For the planning obsessive who’s working on a budget, Car Trip is an ideal way to organize an all important long distance trip.

It’s out now, currently priced at $0.99, before returning to its original price of $1.99 soon.

$0.99

Car Trip

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-01-15 :: Category: Travel

Originally designed for the iPhone, Appigo’s Notebook app has gone through a major update and is now a universal app designed to play nicely with the iPad as well. The productivity app is well known for offering a simple user interface and solid feature set to create, share and edit notes. The new 2.0 version is now optimized for Dropbox syncing, which allows the user to share notes on all iOS devices as well as Mac and PC platforms. In addition to sharing between the user’s devices, this new support makes sharing with friends, family or colleagues even easier.

The update plays off the company’s thought that adding a powerful collaboration tool was necessary for its users. The new version adds a familiar notebook interface with full-screen editing capabilities and overall the update seems to be a cost effective productivity tool for users with multiple iOS devices. The notes are saved in standard text format and is compatible with PC and Mac text editing applications. Notebook is available on the iTunes App Store for $4.99.

$4.99

Notebook

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2008-09-12 :: Category: Productivity

Car ownership is great when everything is running smoothly. It’s not so great when said car gets a dent in it however. There’s no app out there that could magically fix the car for free but there is an app that could help get the best price for fixing the dent: DINGIT.

DINGIT enables the user to take photos of the dent, enter details about the car then submit it to the DINGIT.com website. The site then does its magic and sends the photos and information to auto body shops around the local area in order to receive the best estimates for a repair.

Users get up to 5 estimates within days, sent straight to their email inbox thus saving them time in consulting companies themselves. An estimate on how long the repair will take as well as the price is also offered, plus additional services such as courtesy cars or pick up/drop off services.

This app could be a huge timesaver for those unlucky enough to have a dent in their car and a very busy lifestyle.

DINGIT is out now and it’s free.

FREE!

DINGIT

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-12-21 :: Category: Productivity

Recently, a startup named CloudOn launched their eponymous app that offers users the ability to edit Microsoft Office files on their iPad. The app supported Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets, all available through CloudOn’s WorkSpace technology. As well, it supported Dropbox synchronization for uploading and editing files from the cloud-based storage service, and the ability to open attachments from the email client in the app directly. The app also launched for free, which compared to most apps with similar functionality was a steep discount.

Astute readers will notice the usage of past tense throughout the article so far. That’s because a free app with the ability to use Microsoft Office on the iPad was apparently quite popular. The app launched on January 3rd, and was so initially popular that CloudOn had to pull the app from the App Store in order to meet demand. They’re currently accepting invitations to get back in to the service when the app relaunches, though no date has been offered for when it will be back up for download. Until then, we’ll have to suffer the tyranny of editing our Office documents on our computer, or with pricey paid apps!

FREE!

CloudOn

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-01-03 :: Category: Productivity

There’s no question that the iPad has changed, or at least begun to change, the way we create and consume media as well as organize our personal and professional lives. One app new on the App Store that promises to help with this is Forms by PBF. The company has pegged it as the personal database for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch with the ability to create custom applets without writing a line of code.

It features an in-app function called Forms Builder, which makes it extremely easy to create highly customized forms. Easy to setup, the app allows the user to define the data that they’d like to organize and create a custom form for projects such as a recipe list, sales charts, workout schedules or even an inventory manager. It also allows the user to share their database between multiple devices by simply exporting and then importing or over-the-air with use of a URL that can be clicked on the additional device for instant access. The Forms app is universal and available on the App Store for $9.99.

$9.99

Forms - Personal Database For iOS

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-12-11 :: Category: Business

With the Web eventually came gobs of written material and sifting through it has become a chore to find the good information. Sure, using RSS feed readers is nice, but they’re sometimes clunky and take time to curate and setup. Nick D’Aloisio, a 16-year-old kid from London, might have an answer in his new app called Summly. The app works to simplify the way people browse and search the web by automatically summarizing search results, webpages and news articles.

The interface seems easy enough in that the user simply enters a search term or enters a URL and the app automatically provides the top information from the source in a bulleted list as well as the link to the full article. And Summly seems to be onto something as researchers from MIT tested the company’s patent pending summarization technology and found that it indeed was accurate in providing precise results. Best of all, it can produce results in any language, but is optimized in English, French, German, Dutch and a few more. The app is available now on the App Store for free.

[ via Gigaom ]

FREE!

Summly

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-12-13 :: Category: News

Mint.com is a service that I wish would come over to the British shores. For now though, I’ll just gaze longingly at how the already excellent personal finance app has now been optimized for the iPad and improved upon.

Built with the iPad and iOS5 in mind (which is now a requirement to install Mint.com Personal Finance), the overview screen has been redesigned so that users can quickly get a snapshot of their finances as well as the latest alerts and bill reminders. Cash and pending transactions can be entered to ensure the most accurate view of the user’s finances, plus detailed transactions are viewable. Multi-touch graphs make everything easy to understand, particularly for those who work best with visual imagery, so its users always know where their money is going.

It’s a sizeable enough update that re-establishes Mint.com Personal Finance‘s position as a great app for all US and Canadian users in their quest to keep an eye on their finances. It’s out now.

FREE!

Mint.com Personal Finance

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2008-12-18 :: Category: Finance

We rather liked Elements Dropbox Powered Text Editor when it was first reviewed last year. Developers, Second Gear Software, were obviously determined to make it all the better by releasing a significant update in August of this year and they’ve gone one better by releasing yet another major update in the form of Version 2.1.

The most significant addition here is that of iCloud support. Elements 2.1 now allows the user to sync their settings, appearance preferences and scratchpad contents between different devices thanks to such support. Something that’s particularly ideal for those who use the app on both iPhone and iPad.

As well as that, there’s now the ability to copy the Markdown generated HTML preview to the clipboard enabling writes to transfer their words to the CMS of their choice, ideal for those using an CMS that Elements doesn’t yet support.

Along the way, Second Gear Software has also fixed numerous bugs and changed a few minor things. Most curically, Elements now requires iOS 5 to run.

The update is available now for free for existing owners. Those yet to give Elements a try can purchase it for $4.99.

$4.99

Elements For Dropbox - A Markdown Notes and Writing App

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-08-17 :: Category: Productivity