By JAY PALMER |
An unscientific poll of colleagues and friends list those apps they considered indispensable.
APPS, THE FAMILIAR GEEK-SPEAK for software applications, are what make smartphones smart. We ran an unscientific poll of colleagues and friends to see which they considered indispensable, focusing on the seemingly half-billion or so available for the Apple iPhone and iPad. While a few cost as much as $15, most are free or cost less than a buck. Our respondents' selections:
1Password: If you select too easy a password, a hacker can make life hell for you. But remembering a complicated one is hard. So a password-keeper is essential. Though it's relatively expensive at $9.99, 1Password syncs with Macs and Windows PCs and integrates with many browsers for automatic log-ins.
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Digital Calc: It's the best of the basic calculators. Big buttons eliminate typing errors and a "memory tape" lets you look back at all the numbers you have entered, just as the real paper tapes did on adding machines of yore.
Currency: This handy little guy converts dollars into any one of 112 other currencies, or vice versa—and the exchange rates are updated several times a day.
Pulse News: Who needs to spend hours surfing the 'Net for news, when this app aggregates articles from scores of sources of your choice, displays them clearly and are easily navigated? You can read the front page of The Wall Street Journal, breaking news on Politico or the latest addition to Wired.com.
Instapaper: You can save a few trees, and a lot of time at the printer, by firing up this app. It lets you save Web pages (news or otherwise) on your device for later offline reading.
GoodReader: This is manna from heaven for investors and others deluged with PDF reports. It opens PDFs and other file types and lets you store them in files of your own creation, separate from your other e-mail.
Documents to Go: Some Barron's reporters say they can't live without this one, which lets you open, edit and save Word and other Microsoft Office programs in an iPhone or iPad.
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