Droid X
Android phones have definitely advanced beyond the G1 and Samsung Moment. Most of the new generation Android phones came with many features and better hardwares that made analysts categorized some of them as “superphone”. The Nexus one, Droid X, Sprint HTC Evo 4G, HTC incredible top this elite class. Even with the advancement of the Android OS and improvement of the hardwares, these apps have withstood the test of time and still deserve a place in your phone. Here are the best Android apps for business and information.
Business Apps
Locale is not your typical business-oriented app, but it can do wonders for your reputation. The app can automatically put your Android smartphone on silent mode if you are at the office (no more embarrassing ringtones disrupting meetings), or it can put the ringer up when you arrive at home.
Aside from adjusting your phone’s settings depending on your location, Locale can also be a silent lifesaver: Its power-conserving feature, when enabled, automatically turns off power-hungry components (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) when your handset’s battery level is low. However, it will cost your $9.99
Documents to Go does exactly what its name suggests: It lets you view and edit Microsoft Office documents (including 2007-version files) in an intuitive interface. In addition to working with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint items, you can view PDF files.If you just want to view email document attachments, you can opt for the free version, but the premium is still worth it at$ 14.99
GDocs
Does your company prefer to keep its documents in the cloud? GDocs gives you better access to your Google Docs online documents than you’d get by viewing them through a Web browser. Currently GDocs can edit text documents and view spreadsheets and PDF files.GDocs can view your documents online or download the text files for editing (and sync them back when you’re done). The app lacks advanced formatting options, but it’s a promising start considering that the program is still in beta.
Bump
Here’s a fresh take on the tired old business card. Bump allows you to swap contact information or photos between two phones simply by bumping them together. And the app isn’t limited to Android phones either — it works with iPhones as well.
Armed with this smart and fun little app, you’ll no longer have to keep track of paper business cards from conferences or meetings, as they’ll all be available in your address book (and safely synced with the cloud). For another novel way to throw contacts around, check out Hoccer.
Google Voice
Besides making iPhone users jealous with a native app (instead of a Web-based version), Google Voice can be a life-changing service. It can unify all of your phone numbers and send you SMS messages via email, while offering low-cost international calls.
On your Android phone, you can use Google Voice to get email containing your transcribed voicemail, make calls from your unique Google number (which rings all of your phones), and embed voicemail messages to share. Even better, Google Voice integrates natively with your phone’s address book.
AK Notepad
Leave your jotter behind: AK Notepad is just the app for quick notes on the go. This simple yet powerful notes app includes a reminder feature that will send alerts to you based on the time you took the note.
You can export notes to specialised apps like Evernote, and you can send notes to yourself via SMS or email; you can even stick notes on your home screen for easy reference. And if you’re into customization, you can change the appearance of the notes windows and set up special LED notifications for reminders.
Meebo
Stay connected to virtually any instant messaging service with Meebo. You can log in simultaneously on AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo to keep in touch.
To save a collective log of all your chats to access online, you can create a Meebo account. If you need a Twitter client, too, check out Seesmic or Twidroid.
Scatterslides
Run your next presentation from your Android phone with Scatterslides. This app can stream your presentation via Wi-Fi to large displays; it can also behave as a remote control for your presentation, allowing you to move from slide to slide by swiping the screen. Scatterslides lets you preview slides on your phone, too.
The app supports Microsoft PowerPoint and OpenOffice Impress files, complete with embedded animations, audio, and video. Note that you will need the free, downloadable Scattershow Playerinstalled on your PC or on a thumb drive to use Scatterslides.
Cab4me
If you’re in a rush to make an off-site meeting, waste no time and use your Android phone. Cab4me makes hailing a taxi superfast with the help of location detection. Use the quick mode to select a company and order a cab with one tap using your current location, or go advanced to select how many passengers you need to travel with.
You can also use the traditional call mode, which will automatically dial your selected company so that you can request a pickup place and time.
Information Apps
TED Mobile
Every year, the world’s brightest and most creative minds assemble at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, where they are asked to speak for no more than 18 minutes about whatever interests them the most.
Since the event’s inception in 1984, business leaders, academics, scientists, philanthropists and other brilliant thinkers — including the likes of Bill Gates, Malcolm Gladwell, Peter Gabriel, Jane Goodall, and Al Gore (and that’s just a sampling of the G’s!) — have answered TED’s call, sharing their insights about the world we live in. TED has been so successful that it has spurred spin-off conferences under the name TEDx all over the world.
MotherApp’s TED Mobile application puts these great thinkers in the palm of your hand, allowing you to browse more than 700 TED Talks arranged by theme or by tag, or to search by keywords. Their short length means you can get a little deep thinking in bite-size pieces whenever you have a few moments to spare.
FactBook
Travelers, people doing business overseas and the just plain curious will find a wealth of information about every country in the world in FactBook, a version of the CIA’s World Factbook Web site adapted for the Android by Urbian Inc. Updated regularly, the CIA World Factbook profiles each country, giving an overview of its political system, economy, demographics, customs, geography and climate — all invaluable information for building affinity with new clients in foreign counties you know very little about.
All this information is stored in the FactBook app so you don’t have to be online to access it; the data is refreshed twice a year from the World Factbook site, according to the developer. Each entry in the app includes a button that opens the relevant page in Wikipedia for even more information, but for most questions, FactBook offers more than enough information.
Congress
Sunlight Labs’ open-source Congress app can help you keep on top of all the things national legislators do, big and small, that affect your life and business. Congress defaults to your current location, giving you a directory of the state’s U.S. senators and representatives; you can also search for legislators by state, ZIP code or last name.
Click on a legislator’s name to see a profile with a photo, positions held, bills sponsored, committees served on, and links to call her office or visit her Web site. You’ll also find Twitter updates, YouTube videos and recent news about the congressperson from papers around the country. Click on a committee name to see all the other members of that committee.
The app also shows the latest bills introduced in Congress (some important and some just weird), laws passed and, when the information is available, how various members of Congress voted. Click on any bill to find out its sponsors, history and any votes.
Newspapers
While just about every big newspaper has a smartphone application these days, Dale Jefferson’s Newspapers app gives you access to a broad swath of them in a single app. With news from dozens of papers from across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and France, there’s no reason to ever feel uninformed about current events.
Of course major papers such as The New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Guardian, and Le Monde are represented (as well as online news sources like CNN and the BBC), but even regional papers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and Fresno Bee, are listed. Some papers have additional features; The Wall Street Journal, for example, includes a stock symbol search.
The Newspapers app taps into the publications’ mobile sites — each one carries its paper’s unique branding, layout, types of news and so on. There is no search — the stories simply go back as far as each paper’s mobile page goes. For just under $2 (specifically, $1.70), you can upgrade Newspapers to allow you to save favorites, if that seems important.
Geodelic
Where can you get the best Italian, Chinese or Indian food nearby? How can you find a top-notch tailor, plumber or dentist? What hotel is worth staying at when you’re traveling for a meeting? Fire upGeodelic and have a look.
Geodelic is a location-sensitive search tool that finds the closest restaurants, hotels, movies, banks, gas stations, and more based on your phone’s GPS coordinates. You can view your results on a map or in a list, or in a fun “carousel” of points of interest (shown here), then call or get directions to each recommended spot right from its listing.
What sets Geodelic apart from other local search apps is its ability to “learn” based on your previous searches and give you customized updates. For instance, if you search for music-related terms a lot, Geodelic will prioritize record stores in your carousel. It will also give you updates on upcoming concerts and events based on your history. Geodelic’s ability to guess what kinds of places will most interest you makes it especially useful when you set foot in a new city or an unfamiliar section of your hometown.
Quote Pro
Use Quirk Consulting’s Quote Pro to stay on top of the stock market’s ups and downs throughout the day. Check out any stock’s current status using the symbol search, or assemble multiple portfolios of stocks to keep track of.
Quote Pro offers an at-a-glance summary of your chosen stocks, as well as a more detailed collection of streaming stock quotes, news feeds, trend charts and daily market information one tap deeper.
Mint
Mint.com is a free online personal finance and budgeting service that aggregates all of your banking, credit card, loan, investment and property information, helps you create a budget, and automatically assigns each expenditure to a particular budget line.
[ Track your spending and keep to your budget with Mint. Click to view larger image. ]
The Mint Android app gives you an easy-to-use and surprisingly thorough view into your Mint.com account, with a summary of your current total account balance, where you stand on your budget, and a rough monthly cash-flow analysis on the home screen.
Alerts also appear on the home screen, letting you know things such as when an account balance is low, when you’re over budget in a particular area, or when you’ve received a large deposit or bank fee. Drilling down lets you view every transaction on each bank account or credit card, and assign it to a budget line if Mint.com hasn’t already done so automatically (which it’s surprisingly good at).
Business people will find this apps useful.
[via InfoWorld]
