Top 4 apps of the moment {Geeky}

There are so many apps that I would like to try, just for the curiosity of it and because I am suck a sucker for all things virtual. However, I try to resist the frenzy as much as possible and have to say that some of the latest discoveries have been real improvements in my daily tasks.

I still believe that the sense of freedom they bring is but an illusion: they only add more tasks and time congestion to our already overly busy 24 hours (who am I kidding?). So, how can they still be helpful? They have streamlined some processes for me without adding too much fuss to their own procedures AND they have saved me when everything else failed, especially though seamless integration.

1 - SCANNER PRO

Point in case: the ScannerPro app installed on my iPhone. My HP scanner is out of order. As always, this happened when urgent and sensitive documents needed to be scanned and sent out. Murphy’s law and all that. That’s when I remembered the ScannerPro app: I simply laid the documents flat on the carpet - urgency call - and the beauty of the app is that it detects by itself the borders of the page to be scanned and when it can actually snap a picture (i.e.: when your hand is stable). That’s it, in a few minutes, you have an actual scan with no extra borders, blurred sentences etc. 

Brilliant.

2 - IMAGE TRANSFER

At this point, I had the choice to send the scanned document via email from my phone; however, when writing sensitive content, I like to work full screen. Apart from uploading the document into my GoogleDrive, I had a simpler option: using ImageTransfer. 

This is another simple app allowing you to send pictures to different devices in no time at all. I chose to send the picture (scan) to My Computer and it gave me a URL where it took seconds to download it to the hard drive and save it in the dedicated folder. Done. 

The combination of these two apps together has been saving my administrative process these past few weeks. It so happened that I saw immediately how well they could serve me provided I had an Internet connection - and that, at least, did not let me down.

Lifesaving.

3 - OUTLOOK

There are two additional apps I would like to tell you about, interestingly enough, both Microsoft apps. I will start with a good oldie - Outlook. For those of you following me on Twitter, you may have read my praise of the app - I like it even better than the traditional application. Efficient, compact and über user friendly: if you are used to handling inboxes and emails, the app is a breeze. 

The feature that I preferred instantly was the opportunity to have 4 different accounts (or more!) that were installed in a few minutes, no glitches and conflicts between Outlook, Gmail and whatnot. FINALLY. This is where high quality resides for me, as a user now: apps need to bridge gaps and need to promote compatibility. Major plus. 

The other undeniable advantage is that you can file away your emails and the changes are reflected on the server. This means the end of the overflowing inbox on your app and the double work of still having to go to your actual server based inbox to tidy it up. You do this one via the Outlook app on your smartphone, and it’s over.  One downside: it seems that you cannot create and manage folders from the app itself, and this is a real pity and for me all it lacks to actually reach utter perfection. 

Efficient.

4 - ONE-NOTE

OneNote is the one closing the loop, and again a Windows product: I have been an extensive and messy user of iPhone Notes forever, but ended up having double notes, overlapping ones etc. The beauty of the note format is that they it not the Evernote kind of note taking, at least in my book: they are straightforward and helpful to jot an idea down on the spur of the moment. As ideas accumulate though, the beauty starts vanishing since finding the information I knew I had written down somewhere in my stash of notes becomes a time-consuming task. 

OneNote has reached, for me, just the right level of granularity and flexibility - it bridges the gap between Notes and Evernote. You can create tabs, list, checklists etc. The layout gives you instant visibility on the structure of the information.  Add to this the fact that now Paper53 and OneNote can work together and integration makes it even more  handy! 

Practical.

Do you use any of these apps? If so, what do you think of them? Do you have any app combination to suggest, pretty much like the scan-send recipe mentioned above? 

Find more apps and internet related musings of mine under the Computer and Internet category.

Happy testing and discovering my friends, until the next app update!

P.S. Curious about other apps in the meantime? Head over La Mouette, by Florence, to read about her favorite apps of the moment (article in French). Very different from the ones listed above, they may well be perfect to balance your app usage out.

Credits: TheDaydreamer