Productive Organizer

With iOS 5.0, Apple introduced iCloud, which enables the users to store the following in iCloud, Apple’s own cloud storage:

1. Email
2. Contacts
3. Calendars
4. Reminders/To-do
5. Browsing history
6. Notes
7. Photos
8. Documents / Storage
9. Backup

Now depending on whether you prefer to do that, there may be reasons why you would not want to do that.

For myself, I do not want to tie in to Apple’s Tech Network so much. The downside is that you may have to rely on many other cloud services and storage solution.

In time, average consumers might find this to be a huge switching cost. This is great for Apple. For folks who want to buy Apple’s stock, this is a great upside.

How I would prefer is to set up my cloud solutions this way:

As you can see, for me to get this to work, I would need to cloud sync to Google and Apple separately

1. Toggle those services you want to sync to “Off”
2. Toggle those services you want to sync to iCloud to “On”
3. For Notes, you would need to create a @me.com account.

But the real question which I dare not try is: Can we use Exchange Sync to Gmail and iCloud at the same time?

Have anyone tried that and whether it works?

When I had my iPod Touch, the best application that I got my hands on was GoodReader.

I was astounded by how well and how fast it renders PDF on a 3.5 inch device. I never thought I could read PDF so well after my ordeal with past Windows Mobile.

When I got the iPAD 1G not long ago, the first app I got my hands on was GoodReader for iPAD.

Sure, there are iBook and Dropbox PDF readers but there are 2 upsides of GoodReader over these app.

Storage/Transfer via USB, Dropbox, Google Reader, SugarSync and other WEBDAV servers

I don’t really like to be constrain by Apple’s draconian way of file management. I store most of my reading materials in my 7.5 GB free dropbox (find out about DropBox here!)

With GoodReader’s USB app and these cloud storage I can access my current PDF materials from where they are and not need to bind it to iTunes.

GoodReader even allows you to sync PDF materials with Dropbox!

Annotations!

The second upside of goodreader is that it allows you to edit and add annotations to your PDF materials.

Take a look at what you can do on them. When you read your PDF on your computer these annotations will still be there. This makes it a great way to personalize your reading material.

Conclusion

As an avid reader and investor, I do have a lot of financial reports from various banks and it used to be awkward reading them on my iPod Touch, but the iPad really makes reading and keeping these reports filed properly easy.

Any professional who wants to keep a tool that will hold tons and tons of reference and reading materials should get a tablet such as an iPad.

It is really the main reason why we get a 10 inch device.

We get more and more innovative use for Dropbox. We have AppBrain which was able to send links from your Chrome Computer browser to your Android Device.

What about your Android Device to your Chrome Computer?

1. Install Phone 2 Google Chrome at your desktop or laptop
2. Install the application in your Android Device here from the Android Market.
3. What the app will do is create a file in your Dropbox filesystem at /My Dropbox/phone2chrome/pages.
4. On your computer click on the Phone2Chrome extension button to read the link.

[Hattip NirmalTV >>]

Evernote and Dropbox have become 2 defacto standards for cloud note-taking and file storage.

I enjoyed both so much on PC and now with the smartphone revolution I enjoy using them even more. Take a look here at how Dropbox works. its free! [Link here>>]

Evernote and Dropbox allows you to access your files from any computer. Now you can even access them on your WebOS, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad and Android phones.

For most people, what they are looking for is taking notes on their tablets like iPad and Galaxy Tab and then being able to view them on the desktop MAC or Windows.

NoteShelf for the iPAD looks to be the solution. It allows you to export to Evernote and Dropbox.

This will likely work much better than Evernote’s iPad or iPhone’s solutions. In fact NoteShelf is part of Evernote Trunk Program.

As one of the editor on GottaBeMobile notes, actual use of it lives up to expectations:

Noteshelf recently added the ability to export documents to both Evernote and Dropbox. This is huge in my work flow. I’m able to choose whether to export a page or an entire notebook to either Evernote or Dropbox. I can send the document as an image or a PDF. All of my notes for productions eventually make it into Evernote anyway. You can also export your notes to iTunes or via email. But what has me excited about this functionality is that Noteshelf is now essentially extensible in ways that it wasn’t before. By the way, other Digital Inking Apps use the Dropbox APIs as well, but Noteshelf is my choice of the moment.

Last night after a long day of rehearsal I needed to gather up my thoughts from my notes to prepare the agenda for our production staff today prior to the next dress rehearsal. I could have just opened up the notes on my iPad and sat that device adjacent to me while working on my MacBook Pro. Instead I just opened up the PDF file on the MacBook, and used that to create today’s agenda.

This functionality in Noteshelf makes this App really shine on top of its already excellent Digital Inking experience. Hopefully the next update will allow for Fast App Switching now that iOS 4.2 is out. I would have probably been able to eliminate the MacBook from the process I just described if that had been available.

Interested to know more about Getting Things Done with mobile applications on the iPhone and Android? Take a look at our Getting Things Done series on step by step guides to apply GTD in everyday life.

So this update is getting to what Android is good at. If I am in Safari or Mail, I want the option to open this attachment or file with Documents to Go, Quick Office, Good Reader.

Evernote and Dropbox will get really huge. Imagine a lot of third party apps allow sending notes and texts to these 2 cloud app and making them the defacto cloud storage and cloud note storage.

The more iOS implments these enhancements the more it moves closer to Android platform. It looks like this strategy is working out well. Close and control their OS and then slowly open it up in a control manner.

Easily send files into Evernote from other apps- iOS 4.2 allows apps to register themselves as destinations for certain file types. Evernote is now registered for PDF, TXT, WAV, MP3, HTML, and several others. This means that you’ll be able to send files into Evernote directly from other applications.

In Safari and Mail- Certain file types (PDF, TXT, HTML) now have an Open in button at the top right corner when they’re viewed. Tapping on the button will show Evernote as an option. Opening the file in Evernote will create a new note in Evernote with that file as an attachment. To send an audio file into Evernote, tap and hold on the file.

Third party apps- Developers can now enable the same functionality in their applications. There are already many applications that can send files into Evernote. Look for many more to add the Open in feature, which will allow you send files into Evernote from anywhere.

And more… No Evernote release is complete with a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes bug fixes that make using Evernote all the more enjoyable. This one’s no different. And there’s lots more to come. Stay tuned.

Now this is interesting news. Most folks who have used Dropbox have things favorable to say about Dropbox as a backup and computer files synchronizor

It would seem some one finally thought:”wouldn’t it be great to have dropbox functionality on a personal server?”

I fully will support this product but only if it designs well:

1. Small memory footprint
2. Syncs across at least 10 computers
3. Trustable sync and conflict resolution mechanizm

Dubbed SparkleShare, Bons is building his project using Mono, GTK+, and Git. Like Dropbox, SparkleShare sets up a local folder which is automatically kept in sync — though not in the cloud. Instead, you and your friends/coworkers set up connections to each other’s shares (or you can keep everything to yourself, of course). That’ll make SparkleShare an extremely interesting option for teams who need to collaborate via the ‘Net — and for users who want to keep files in sync without floating them in the cloud.

And since you’re hosting your own server, there’s no monthly fees to worry about — which is always a bonus.

A Linux release is the first item on the agenda, with OS X and Windows versions to follow. Bons is seeking contributors — if you’re interested in helping out, drop him a line on the SparkleShare web site!

[via Download Squad >>]

Kyith:

We are seeing alot of Third Party Office integrating not with the local file store but with services such as

1. Dropbox
2. Box.net
3. SugarSync
4. Google Docs

To me its very convenient that i store my documents there and edit on my iPod Touch and iPhone or iPad. Take a look at how well the iPad can display an excel sheet.

The excel sheet is the last mobile frontier i feel:

Dataviz today released an update to their Documents To Go Premium that supports the full resolution of the iPad. The update was released as a Universal update meaning that it works on both the iPhone and iPad — and you only need to buy one copy to use it on both devices.

The update also brings MobileMe and SugarSync support to the device allowing you to read and store files on those cloud services. The iPad update also supports syncing documents to the app via iTunes File Sync. But honestly, that’s the least attractive way to get documents to the device. Documents To Go offers a desktop sync client that works so much better and allows two way sync.

Dropbox is one software that have dominated alot of our lives. We have seen that they have clients that sync for Android and iPhone but what about your Windows Mobile 6.5 phones?

Enter DroppedBoxx

So I’ve been working on a DropBox client for Windows Mobile called “DroppedBoxx”.
I’m after some feedback on it so far and possibly some testers…

Features (Currently)

• Login (of course)
• Browse Dropbox files and folders
• Download Files
• Download then email
• Upload files
• Take photo and upload
• Delete Dropbox Files

Features (Future)

• Copy/move files around dropbox
• Sync Folders
• Record audio and upload
• Create new Folder
• Display account usage
• Track application (self) usage

Known Issues

• File Menu doesn’t always position correctly when switching landscape <-> portrait
• Random Image Upload corruption…

DroppedBoxx is free and you can give it a try @ XDA Developers.

Folks who have not read my previous review can read over here what a good suite Quick Office have provided us to edit and create word documents and excel spreadsheets on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

But what if you are the savvy folks who would like to edit documents that are stored on the cloud such as Google Docs and Box.net? or my favorite application Dropbox?

The current version of Quickoffice allows you to do that!

I am an extensive user of both Google Docs and Dropbox so QuickOffice Connect is great and simple to use. Just sign in to your Google Account and your Dropbox account and you can download and edit documents from these cloud storage!

Here is a good tip of using Dropbox during your Vacation to backup your photos to the web via WIFI:

Use Dropbox and the hotel’s Wi-Fi connection instead of emailing photos and then saving the attached photos to a folder on your Mac. The simple answer involves making sure that you have a Dropbox account (doesn’t everybody?), the Dropbox iPhone app [Free, iTunes Link], and access to a Wi-Fi network.

Within the Dropbox app, tap on the Camera button, then tap Existing Photo or Video. From the iPhone’s photo albums, you can send your photos to any one of the folders in your Dropbox. As Jeff points out in his post, this has the added benefit of making sure that your vacation photos are backed up online.

Once you’ve moved the photos to your Dropbox, it’s a simple matter of moving or copying them over to your Mac’s photo library by literally clicking and dragging them (or option-clicking and dragging if you want to make a copy and keep the originals in the Dropbox) to the iPhone app icon in the dock.

There’s only one issue; you have to move one photo or video at a time with the current version of the Dropbox app. Let’s hope that Dropbox can address that in an upcoming version of the app.